> “Everyone’s heard of Steeleye and his jump past level 30 for defeating Zarconius. But lesser known, and just as impressive, feats get forgotten. I'm known nowadays as a legend, the only person to ever reach level 50. But in my youth, as merely a level 10 , I defeated Tarkus Karlson, a level 20 , in several different strategy games. Before Artur Kingslayer was past level 30, known worldwide as the Oathbreaker and the Demons’ Greatest Bane, he was a level 8 , taking on a unchivalrous poseur of a , Visborne of the Plains, in an honor duel, and handed the level 19 idiot his arse. That’s an eleven level gap. Though the most impressive gap I’ve ever seen, of course, is Stonemuncher’s.”

* Oreanan Vainen, on the Later Years Effect of any legendary figure

The Demon King rose in the capital, the greatest swordsman of her generation died, and the Kingdom began, in many ways, to unravel. A new made his debut in a dark hallway, choking on blood and shame, and a of some fame traveled by foot and by cart, and, sometimes, by veil, towards the embers of a dead dream. Demons crawled out of the shadows in the hearts of man, a handful popping across the world with each passing day now. Overall, the hour was looking dark, and the odds grim.

Six enormous carrion bird-kings sat above the world, each a different size, with different goals, but all united in their feelings of overwhelming superiority. The gears of creation continued to stutter and twist, some small ones even coming free and falling into the infinite Abyss beneath that which was.

Collin Mel Walsh, a man in his early 60s, who by all rights should have been retired and thinking of his adventuring days as fond memories, was instead making with all haste and efficiency preparations for a great civil war, a great cataclysm, that was already coming upon him and every mortal of Esun, like the first harsh winds of a great storm. He leveled once, while giving commands and organizing defenses.

Level 21!

gained!

Meanwhile, in the capital city far distant, a and a were making their way through the streets, both tense, waiting for something to break the eerie silence. A monstrous, deformed bag of flesh slithered out from behind a nearby building in front of them, moaning in pain. Helena put an arrow through it before they’d had time to blink.

“I can sense it.” She said ominously. “Corruption, all around us. It’s thick in the air. A Demon’s active nearby, or at least one was very recently. Given how weak that servitor was, its master is either dead or very underleveled. We’re relatively safe in either case. The real question is-- Wait.” Her entire body tensed, and Greg stepped back from her as she began to spasm wildly, dropping her bow to the cobblestones.

Class lost!

Class downgraded

🠊 Level 19!

removed!

“No!” She screamed in anguish, before collapsing to the stones beneath her feet, unconscious, and continuing to twitch and spasm.

“Archons damn it!” Greg looked at Helena, then up at the sky. “Though I guess that was your plan all along, huh?” He quickly went to Helena’s side, trying to stop the seizing and find out what was wrong with her. “Where’s a damn when you need one!” He shouted in worried rage.

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Inside a world that was, every bit of it, an illusory distraction meant to keep his mind separated from his body, a man named Bim Selkis that was within the dream referred to as Garston trekked across flat, mushy grasslands, finding that time unraveled around him the further he traveled, and moreover, people were becoming fewer and farther between in the strange surreal outlands he found himself traversing.

Level 2 earned!

He leveled in new Classes. In a small hilltop town he found an old woman who looked strangely familiar, though she was missing one eye and her bones were twisted in strange ways, who taught him how to wield a blade. He leveled, though only a little, here and there, all around. He met a weaver who made clothes for the town’s little ones, a small town banker managing few gold coins and many silver and copper ones, a alchemist in a rickety shed next to a pond, a young golden-eyed archer who hang upside down from tree boughs, a smith who made blades and trowels with the same careful eye and strong hands. The list went on and on, and the further he traveled the stranger the folks he met got. He took lessons from each and every one, even from a man who communicated mostly in grunts and some kind of rudimentary sign language and pushed boulders around a valley all day.

After weeks passed, they began to stack upon each other in a blur. Soon, he found himself needing to shave off a beard that went down to his waste. Weeks and months passed in a blur, as his back bent and his mind filled with names and places and techniques.

Finally, he reached a great mountain, which stood alone, taller and wider and more majestic than any of its peers. He climbed the mountain with gnarled hands, eyes rheumy but sharp, and though his hair was gray and his mind overstuffed with knowledge, still he could climb with the precision of a master of the field.

It took days of climbing, stopping and starting, sleeping amidst storm and drought aplenty, catching rain in his mouth and sipping it from cracks in the stone, eating anything he managed to catch.

Four months of arduous climbing later, his back sore, his joints aching, his hair a faded, mossy gray-green from the lichen growing within it, his face made more of lines and memories than flesh, he surmounted the highest point, and found himself able to see every inch of the land he had traveled over all those years stretching out to the horizon before him.

And after all of it, he heard a chime.

Merging….

Calibrating……

ERROR

ERROR

Level 25 earned!

ERROR

“I’m surprised that isn’t a new Talent.” The ancient man said aloud, his voice a dry croak.

“If it’s any consolation, you’re only the eighth person in all of history to earn that Talent.” A man in plain, flowing robes stood next to him, and somehow the ancient man was unsurprised.

“So it’s the six Archons and then you, eh? What about the Giants?”

“Their Talents are different. But back to the matter at hand: you want to go back. You’re past level 20 in a -adjacent Class, so you should be able to open a tear in the Illusion and go back, if you put your back into it.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Oh, you do. It’s difficult to remember, but you learned that too.”

“One question. I have one question.”

“Just one? How fun. Go on.”

“What does it take to kill an Archon?”

“Stab it. Burn it. Jab it in the eyes, kick it between the legs. Insult it, sneak attack it, bash it on the head. All sorts of ways. They’re just people, physically, at least. Big, powerful mages, the equivalent of a level 95 or so with the physical capacities of, oh, a level 75 .”

“People cannot rise above level 50, though. The greatest pure warrior of all time didn’t even make level 45. The highest level person in all of history was you, Vainen, at level 50--”

Vainen laughed, and it was a thing of old scars and long battles, rarely heard and rough from disuse. “Level 50, yes. I remember that. Level 40, too, though that was even longer ago. No, young man, I’m level 65. . It’s a good Class, a very good Class. I’ve got 40 levels on you, but that’s more or less ephemeral-- you received my level 50 capstone Talent at level 25, young man. I and, to a much lesser extent, the Archons may have paved the way, but you and those that come after you will have so much further up to climb. They will stand on the shoulders of their forebears.” He looked at Bim with a grave, but fiery, look. “You already see the cracks. Get to level 30, at least, before making your stand. Just know that many heroes of history stand with you, in spirit if not in physicality. Oh, and one more thing-- . Those two you should have mastered already, if the Archons hadn’t fucked up the gears so badly. Now get back out there. You have a world to save.”