Unranked ascension a lit.., p.13
Unranked Ascension: A LitRPG Adventure, page 13
For now, I want to see what I can make out of this upgraded metal!
The young man went back to work forging the weapon. Since the metal had cooled after he had spent some time experimenting, he needed to reheat it. He pushed it into the forge and watched as it regained its bright red glow, then he pulled it out with the tongs and brought it back over to the anvil. Jack hammered and flipped the metal for the better part of an hour until he was satisfied, next he began forming it into the shape he wanted. Through a sequence of stretching and hammering, Jack forced the iron lump into the form he had in mind. It needed to be long enough to keep its user out of striking distance while attacking, strong enough to pierce hard scales without breaking, but also light enough for normal humans to wield without immediately becoming exhausted.
Jack carefully molded and shaped the metal, creating a long shaft with a flat pointed tip. He also pressed a few grooves into two separate areas along the shaft. Once he was happy with the shape, he checked to make sure it was perfectly straight, then he took advantage of his immunity to burns to balance the burning-hot metal on his fingers to make sure that its weight was properly distributed. Once he was satisfied, he dropped the whole thing into a long trough full of water, watching as it bubbled and steamed. After the water calmed down, Jack pulled the spear out and began the process of sharpening the tip. With no power tools, Jack was forced to slowly grind down the metal head of the spear one swipe at a time against the edge of a brick. It was a painfully slow process that convinced him that he needed to build a stone grinding wheel in the future.
Once the weapon was perfectly sharp, he tightly wrapped lengths of thin leather strips between the two grooved areas in the shaft, creating sturdy grips. When that was done, he polished every inch of the metal with oil, which gave off a beautiful gleam once he was finished.
Through effort, you have raised the talent Craftsmanship to level 3.
Jack held the weapon proudly in front of him as he inspected his work, then prompted the system to describe his creation.
Survivor’s Spear: Iron Spear, Quality [Enhanced]
The first weapon forged by a group of survivors. It has been magically enhanced by its creator’s unique aspect.
Strength of the Survivor: Wielder gains +3 strength when this weapon is in use.
Jack smiled happily as he looked over the system’s description of the weapon. It was a much better weapon than he had expected to make, especially given how new he was to this. In his excitement, he decided to bring the weapon to Patrick and get it inscribed right away.
Chapter 27
The Abyss
The world around Lucius turned dark the moment he passed through the anomaly. He felt as though he was being pulled apart and compressed simultaneously, and his mind struggled to make sense of it. Thankfully, that only lasted for a few brief moments. Color returned to his vision—a lot of color. Lucius was grateful for the solid ground beneath his feet as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness assaulting him. He ducked low to the ground and covered his eyes, squinting to try to get a look at his surroundings.
Lucius’ vision soon adjusted enough for him to take in his first images of the Abyssal realm, and when he did, he found it jarringly different than he had expected. “Really... A rainbow?” The sky looked no different than it did on Earth. However, what Lucius thought was a rainbow was something else entirely. He realized moments later that the coloring was all wrong, with the only shades of color being bright yellow and red. As his eyes followed the bow of colors spreading across the sky, he discovered that it wasn’t a bow at all—it was a full circle, and in the center was a massive green orb.
“It’s a planet…” he mumbled in fascination as he stared up at the sky.
Lucius pulled his mind back from the attention-grabbing visual above him and surveyed his surroundings. The ground was covered in rocks like a riverbed, but he did not see any water. Out of the rocky ground grew various plants that would not have been too out of place on Earth. It was not quite a forest—the plants were spread too far apart. It was like someone had taken a forest and stretched it out to cover more ground than it was meant to, leaving the foliage sparsely distributed. The large trees were quite beautiful, though, with perfectly white bark and bright red leaves. If Lucius had seen this place in a movie, he would have complained that it was too colorful to be believable.
Looking back at the anomaly behind him, he realized that it was not floating in the sky like it had on Earth. Instead, there was a ring of runes carved into the ground, the portal lying flat in the center of the symbols. There was a pathway connected to the portal leading off into the distance, which also contained runes on either side. Every few seconds the runes would flicker red, a clear sign of the power flowing through them.
Lucius kept his aspect activated as he slowly followed the path. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing up at the vivid ringed planet lingering above him every few steps. Eventually, he noticed that the planet was not alone in the sky, there was something else in the distance, but it was hard to see from his position. Climbing a tree to get a better look, he caught sight of what could only be described as a massive floating abomination, moving across the distant horizon. It was the size of a mountain, containing thousands of long, fleshy tentacles that drifted along below the bulk of its mass. It was grotesque and disturbing to Lucius. He was so put off by the sight that he didn’t even bother wondering how something so large could float. Luckily, it was far enough away that he could avoid it altogether. Shuddering at the grotesque sight, he climbed back down the tree and continued to follow the path.
He noticed a few more Abyss creatures wandering through the area along the way but was able to avoid them easily. At the end of the path, he caught sight of his destination. The path had led him to a large black tower made of stone. The tower contained the same runic inscriptions, but the ones on the tower were much larger and appeared to be moving power toward the top. Archways led into the tower on all four sides, and Lucius could just about make out a large spiral staircase in the center. The building seemed out of place in the forest, a massive man-made thing in the middle of all the natural greenery. Lucius felt a sense of unease welling up inside him as he looked at it, akin to the kind of feeling you might get when you see a parasite climbing out of a live insect. It felt tragic and malevolent.
As he approached the tower, Lucius pick up a sound. It was still faint, but it was unmistakably the sound of screaming. The voice sounded human and female. He stopped to try and make out what exactly he was hearing, but all he could discern was that it was coming from higher up in the tower. He moved cautiously through the archway and into the lower portion of the structure, gazing at the dark stone walls around him. There were no decorations or furniture, just cold black stone and runes carved into them. With a bit of hesitation, he slowly moved toward the stairs and began climbing up toward the sound of the screams.
Lucius approached the second floor as cautiously as possible until he see the inside of the room above. What Lucius saw was an inhuman nightmare. Standing in the center was a being that appeared to be a man at first glance, but as he looked closer, he saw that the man’s body was covered in pulsing webs of blackness. The webs started in a large mass at the top of his head, spreading out around his body like a fungus. The man’s face had a lifeless appearance, and his eyes were pale and glazed over. He wore no clothing, allowing Lucius to see that the trails of black covered his entire body. The nails on the man’s fingers were long and sharp, he was currently using those nails to dig his bloody hand into a woman’s flesh. She was lying on a stone edifice in the center of the room. The woman had been completely brutalized, but what was left of her clothing was enough for Lucius to recognize the camouflage print typical of army fatigues. She was a soldier.
Lucius couldn’t help but shake in anger and disgust as he saw what was happening. The woman’s arms and legs were already gone—the destroyed remains of which lay strewn around the floor beside her—it was amazing that anyone could be alive after their body had been so destroyed. As the creature shoved its sharp nails into the woman’s flesh, Lucius heard a whisper of a voice coming from the humanoid monster, even though its lips did not move. It spoke a language he could not understand, seeming to revel in its actions. The voice was deep, gravelly, and inhuman. The woman let out another pain-filled scream, but she was clearly in shock and barely had the strength to even cry out in pain.
Clutching his sword tighter than he ever had before, Lucius crept into the room. He had to walk a wide circle around the creature to avoid stepping in the blood and giving away his presence, but he managed to make his way behind the monster. Lucius raised his sword up high, lining it up with the back of the creature’s head. Mustering all his strength, he suppressed the fear rising inside him and lunged forward, pushing the tip of his sword into the back of the creature’s skull.
Matriarch’s Fury did not let Lucius down, and its piercing ability did its job. The power of the sword combined with Lucius’ strength allowed the tip of the sword to break through the back of the creature’s skull without slowing down. He kept pushing until the sword went all the way in, coming back out through the creature’s forehead. Lucius stood still for a moment, expecting to see the familiar message from the system, but instead all he received was an elbow in the gut from the creature in front of him. Lucius stumbled backward in shock, inadvertently pulling his sword back out of the creature’s skull from the force of the hit.
The creature turned around angrily, searching for its assailant, but luckily for Lucius, Guise of the Thief saved him from a swift counterattack. When it realized that it could not locate Lucius, the creature began hovering off the ground, red glowing mist flowing from its hands. Lucius still hadn’t caught his breath after getting the wind knocked out of him, but he managed to roll out of the way, just in time as a beam of red energy came out of the creature’s hand and sliced through the place he had been standing. Lucius jumped to his feet and circled around the creature once again. This time, aiming for its heart, he struck out with his sword. The blade sliced deep into the monster’s body and Lucius did not wait around for it to counterattack, hastily pulling back his sword as he dodged another sizzling beam.
The beam missed Lucius, but the soldier was not so lucky. The beam sliced up one side of the stone edifice and down the other, killing her instantly.
Chapter 28
The Summoner
Lucius moved swiftly around the monster, dodging its lethal attacks deftly. His perception was high enough to determine the trajectory of the attacks before they landed, and he was fast enough to stay out of danger. Even though he was holding his own against the creature so far, Lucius had serious doubts about the entire situation. The system had explained that an anomaly of this size should contain one of the weakest summoners. He had expected something far weaker than what he was facing now.
The second issue was the fact that there had been another human being here. Had a different group of people entered the anomaly in an attempt to close it and been captured by the summoner? It didn’t make sense. This anomaly was in the middle of nowhere, and he hadn’t seen any troops in the area when they arrived. What were the odds of someone else, particularly a soldier, going through the portal before him? Regardless of all that, Lucius needed to defeat the overpowered abomination in front of him first.
This thing doesn’t seem to have any weak spots. I’ve stabbed it in the head and the heart already, but it doesn’t even flinch.
There was obviously some aspect of the creature that Lucius did not understand, something that was allowing it to resist his attacks. It can’t possibly be immune to physical damage! Although Lucius couldn’t seem to use Matriarch’s Fury to kill the creature with a single blow, he was still managing to accumulate more power with each attack. He just needed to avoid being hurt and losing the bonuses from Assassinate.
Let’s see how long you can keep this up!
He stopped trying to land deep or devastating blows on the creature and began attacking with quick slices and jabs, doing his best to build up power through Assassinate.
Through effort, you have raised Assassinate to level 4.
Through effort, you have raised Sword Fighter to level 3.
The room around him was becoming a scorched mess from all the magical energy the creature was unleashing. Lucius guessed that it was tapping into the energy being siphoned out of the anomaly, like the system had suggested. He couldn’t hope for it to run out of juice anytime soon, so he had to rely on his own abilities to defeat it. Being able to accumulate power through Assassinate was incredibly potent in the right situation, and Lucius could already see the effects of his increasingly powerful attacks. He ducked under the monster’s outstretched arm, feeling the searing heat from its energy beam on his skin as he struck out with his sword. His blade made a narrow pass through the creature’s thigh. What should have been an insignificant laceration, however, turned into what looked like an axe wound. When the buffs from Assassinate stacked high enough like that had now, it was as if his sword suddenly contained an explosive power.
Lucius watched in frustration, however, as the large gash in the summoner’s thigh filled itself in with the same black substance that coated its body. So that’s how you’re doing it! Lucius realized.
The strange black substance seemed to be able to take the place of damaged tissue, but that ability probably had a limit. Lucius was determined to find it. He started aiming at a single point on the creature’s abdomen in the hopes that he could overwhelm its self-repair ability. After landing at least five blows in a row, the monster’s abdomen looked like it had been blown out by a cannonball. The creature fell to its knees, unable to stay on its feet in the face of such a debilitating wound. Attempting to capitalize on the weakness of his foe, Lucius moved in, but before he could close the distance, the runes inscribed on the walls around him flashed rapidly in their ominous red, and a blast of energy erupted from the summoner’s body.
A perfectly timed warning from Sense Danger helped him back away just in time to avoid the brunt of the blast, which quickly dissipated as the energy spread out. But the original blast had been so powerful that when it reached Lucius, it still felt like hurricane force winds blowing him off his feet.
Through effort, you have raised Sense Danger to level 5.
The blast had been extremely potent. Lucius was sure that he would have been severely injured if he hadn’t managed to avoid it the worst of it. As the final gust of wind from the blast cleared, he noticed something had changed. The monster’s flesh looked desiccated and sunken, as if it had been drained. Its movements had visibly slowed as well. That blast of energy must have been the creature’s attempt to end the fight, using up the remainder of its accumulated energy to do so.
When it realized its attack had failed, the weakened monster began scrambling toward the spiral staircase. “You want to run? It would be a shame if something happened to your legs,” Lucius taunted. Now that the creature had been significantly weakened and could no longer release those deadly beams of light, Lucius was able to freely unleash devastation upon it. He easily kept pace with its attempts to flee, hacking at the back of its legs in rapid succession. It took him only a handful of swings to destroy its ability to run.
The black sludge was still attempting to repair its wounds, but the process was so slow by now that its effect was almost negligible. Lucius started directing his attacks at the web of black itself. As soon as he did, the creature began flailing wildly in pain for the first time. “Oh, you don’t like that? I should have done that to begin with,” Lucius grumbled. Redoubling his efforts, he sliced again and again at the black webs covering its body. Even in its defenseless state, the creature displayed unbelievable resilience. How the hell is anyone supposed to kill something like this?
Guise of the Thief and Assassinate had helped Lucius get to this point, but any other human being would have been defeated easily by the summoner. Thinking about how unfair it would be for one of his companions to face something like this made him angry. By now, his attacks had reached an absurd level of damage, each blow further mutilating the creature’s body until it was an unrecognizable heap of flesh. Even then, Lucius had to hack away at the unmoving mass for another two minutes before he finally received confirmation of its death from the system.
You have defeated Abyssal Parasitus level 25.
You have reached level 18! You have 5 attribute points available for distribution!
You have reached level 19! You have 10 attribute points available for distribution!
Finally... When Lucius saw the message, he stopped attacking and wiped the sweat from his brow. As he read the line of text, he realized that his suspicions had been correct. That wasn’t a Rift Summoner. Whatever that creature was, it was not what he was supposed to find here. Another message followed the first one though, shedding some light on the situation.
You have defeated Rift Summoner level 10.
“So that was the Summoner? Or at least, it was also the summoner…” Apparently Lucius had been fighting not one creature, but two. That black goop was the Abyssal parasite, and it had somehow taken over the Rift Summoner’s body. Either way, his job was done, and he needed to escape back through the anomaly before it closed.
Before leaving, Lucius approached the body of the poor woman who had been captured and tortured by the despicable creature. Her body had been thrown to the floor by the monster’s final desperate blast of energy. He didn’t have time to bury her, but soldiers usually wore dog tags. At least he could bring those back so what happened to her wouldn’t remain a mystery. He found the tags around her neck and quickly pulled them off. He also noticed something in the front pocket of her uniform when he got closer. Opening the Velcro flap, he found a small notebook and pen. He only glanced at the first page due to a lack of time, but it was obviously a journal, so he took that as well.
