Unranked ascension a lit.., p.30
Unranked Ascension: A LitRPG Adventure, page 30
“Magar probably won’t attack anyone unprovoked, but I’d rather not take any chances,” Lucius warned.
Chapter 65
Not Everything is as It Seems
Patrick finished the inscription on Garrick’s bow just as Lucius wrapped up his explanation about Magar. Finally looking up from his work, he handed the bow back to the bearded archer and spoke.
“I understand. I’ll make sure everyone is aware of Magar. But you’ve only just returned, and there are only a few hours of sunlight left. At least spend the night and head out in the morning,” he suggested.
Lucius shook his head as he stepped away from the table, waving a hand behind him as he headed for the door.
“The darkness isn’t a problem for me,” he said, before tossing a farewell over his shoulder. “Good luck on your journey home, all three of you. I expect to see you back here in one piece with your reinforcements when I return.”
Tiber gave a silent nod to Lucius’ retreating back, while Roland waved his large arm enthusiastically. Garrick, engrossed in inspecting his newly upgraded longbow, remained silent during the farewell.
Lucius stepped out the front door and immediately picked up his pace as he crossed the yard. He could feel his new armor’s Close to the Earth attribute kicking in, boosting his movement speed with each stride. The sensation was familiar—similar to the way adding points to Dexterity felt—but without the sudden, overwhelming rush that came from permanently raising an attribute.
The air was cool and clean as it blew against his face, the sun already starting to set from its peak toward the west. The area just outside the farmhouse was thick with the smell of iron from the drying pelts set up around the area. Lucius quickly passed the two men chopping wood in the front yard as he leaned into his momentum, gaining speed with each step.
Between his highest attribute—the Dexterity he had poured so much into that it had pushed him up to D-Class—and the boost from his new armor, Lucius’ speed had become surprising even to himself. He found himself eager for nightfall, when he could push it even further through Mythification. By the time he reached the edge of the property, he was already moving twice as fast as the swiftest of the spiders—even James’s prized mount, Ellie.
He tried to wave to Scott and Helen as he passed, but the two unsuspecting guards barely caught a blur of color and a rush of wind. Had they not seen him leave the farmhouse before he picked up speed, they might have thought they were under attack. Even so, his sudden movement startled the spiders beneath them, sending the creatures skittering in frantic circles as they searched for the unseen threat.
He considered stopping when he saw Helen tumble from her spider, mumbling a quiet apology that she couldn’t possibly hear as he glanced back over his shoulder. But the thought of Maryanne’s mother—still trapped in the hands of murderous thugs—surged back to the forefront of his mind. Instead of slowing down, he gritted his teeth and pushed himself to move even faster.
A whirlwind of dust and leaves trailed behind him, growing wider and wilder as he sped forward. As he ran, Lucius pulled the mental image of Garrick’s map into focus, double-checking the route as he veered from the long, winding driveway onto the road. The boost in intelligence from his ring had sharpened his mind, allowing him to hold vivid images like never before. It used to be difficult for him to picture anything clearly for more than an instant—pulling up something as detailed as a map would have been impossible not long ago.
In addition, his short-term and long-term memory had become more reliable than he ever imagined possible. Any trepidation he might have felt about allowing the system’s magic to influence his mind had been pushed aside by the indisputable benefits.
As Lucius moved through the forest at top speed, he felt various threats appearing within the range of Sense Danger, popping up as messages from the system one after another. However, none of the creatures seemed capable of following him, and none of the threats were greater than F-Class.
Getting from the solders’ cabin to the farmhouse had taken around four hours. Lucius had been carrying Maryanne on his back at that time, moving at a speed slow enough for Tiber, Roland, and Garrick to follow. Now, Lucius made the journey in less than an hour. The cabin marked the halfway point between the farmhouse and where the soldiers had spotted Maryanne’s mother, Sarah.
He could reach the area in another hour if he maintained his current speed, but Lucius chose not to. There was no guarantee that the large group of men he was searching for had remained in the same area. In fact, it was quite likely that they hadn’t. Luckily, those men were his enemies, so he could use a combination of Sense Danger and Novice Tracker to hunt them down.
Lucius dropped to half his top speed, shifting his focus to the road ahead. The moment he began actively searching for tracks, his perception surged, enhanced by Novice Tracker. Almost immediately, he spotted three sets of footprints—the trail left by the soldiers during their original escape. He was following the same route they had taken to reach the cabin, only now moving in the opposite direction.
Sense Danger has detected an F-Class threat!
After more than an hour of following the tracks through the dense forest, Lucius realized he wasn’t the only one on the soldiers’ trail. A distinct sensation from Sense Danger prickled at the edge of his awareness—the unmistakable presence of a large group of F-Class threats. When he sharpened his focus, he sensed the group slowly moving down the road toward him. His eyes widened as the realization hit: he had already found his target.
Lucius glanced up at the sun, noting there was still at least half an hour until nightfall. He stepped off the road and into the forest to wait for the men to arrive. Inhaling deeply, he tried to catch his breath after the long, intense run, the sharp scent of pine flooding his senses as he took cover behind a pair of large evergreen trees.
Once his breathing steadied, he stood motionless, resting his eyes while focusing on the sensation provided by Sense Danger. He waited in silence, letting the world narrow to that faint, persistent signal. When the approaching threat finally drew close enough for him to catch the distant murmur of human voices, he opened his eyes—and caught his first glimpse of the group.
Lucius’ brows rose, his eyes narrowing to slits as he focused his gaze on the large, bearded man in a flannel long-sleeved shirt at the head of the group. His fingers clenched into fists as he glanced from the picture in his hand up toward the man.
Inside the storage ring, Whisper could sense Lucius’ internal conflict. The tiny creature climbed out of the warm pile of blankets, letting out a deep yawn before speaking.
“What’s wrong, Father?”
Lucius glanced down at his ring, answering the mythical creature in a hushed tone.
“I’m not sure, but I plan to find out soon. Any guesses as to why the hell Maryanne’s father is leading the group of men that kidnapped his own wife?”
Chapter 66
Scum
Lucius remained perfectly still, carefully watching the convoy of human beings as they slowly made their way toward him. He forced himself to focus, drawing in slow, steady breaths as he fought back the emotions threatening to overwhelm him. The knowledge that Maryanne’s father had not only abandoned his daughter but had also kidnapped her mother—condemning the child to a slow death by starvation—was too much for the young man to bear. The crushing disappointment hit far too close to home for Lucius, and the traumatic memories rising to the surface, one after another, made his breath catch in his throat as he struggled to breathe.
Leaning against a pine tree for support, Lucius continued to stare with growing despair. As the remainder of the group came into view, he counted only a dozen men—half the number that Tiber had seen before. The group must have split up at some point. Walking behind Maryanne’s father, David, was a petite woman who stumbled forward weakly, her face turned toward the ground as if the life had been drained from her soul. Her hands were tied behind her back, and a silver collar attached to a leash encircled her neck.
David held the other end of the leash. He yanked on it when Sarah slowed, causing the woman to stumble forward. With her arms restrained, she was unable to catch her fall and fell face-first into the dirt. David raised his hand to signal the group to stop, then approached Sarah and yanked upwards sharply on the leash, choking her and forcing her to scramble back to her feet. When Lucius saw Sarah stand close to David, his eyes widened and he glanced back down at his photo to double-check what he was seeing.
Something was wrong. The David in the photo stood over a foot taller than Sarah, but the David in front of him now was barely the same height as the petite woman. Lucius couldn’t stop himself from mumbling his thoughts aloud, his despair morphing into confusion.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Quickly covering his mouth, Lucius looked up to ensure he hadn’t been overheard. Once he confirmed that his presence was still concealed, he activated his Aspect fully and began moving closer to eavesdrop on the conversation between Sarah and David. As Lucius approached the couple standing at the front of the group, he saw David reach down and rub his hand over Sarah’s backside. The woman visibly shuddered as she tried to pull away, only to end up getting choked again in the process.
“What’s wrong? You’ve been bitching nonstop about how you just want to see your husband. Well, here he is. I’d like to hear a thank you... Now,” the man leered.
His voice was high-pitched, with a heavy lisp. It was incongruous with his appearance, and hearing such a voice coming from David’s ruggedly handsome face felt jarring.
Before Sarah could say a word, the man quickly wrapped the leash around his hand and pulled hard, choking her so badly that she couldn’t speak. He continued taunting her, demanding she respond while ensuring she could not. It was a sickening display of psychopathy and sadism, many people would be shocked to see human beings act this way, but Lucius was all too familiar with psychopathic behavior.
He glanced at the others, trying to see how they felt about the situation. The group of men stood watching with unhappy expressions, clearly disapproving of the man’s behavior, but none of them intervened. When David noticed the growing disgust on his companions’ faces, he seemed ready to relent.
“Okay, okay. Maybe I’m not being fair. Here, I’ll let you off the hook with a kiss!”
By now, Sarah’s eyes had turned completely bloodshot and she could barely stand. She finally gasped for air as the man loosened his grip on the leash. Moving his face toward Sarah’s, the man puckered his lips, grabbing her hair and pulling her face closer to his. As his face neared hers, something strange happened. The smooth, light skin on the man’s face flickered like a faulty light bulb. For an instant, Lucius could see an entirely different face behind David’s.
A second later, it seemed that whatever magic was fueling the transformation had been depleted. David’s face fell away, and Lucius smothered a gasp. The face that replaced it was covered in a horrid patchwork of scar tissue. Rough, uneven skin covered the new face, evidence of deep and devastating burns suffered at some point in the man’s life. When he realized that his true face had been exposed, he snarled in anger, shoving Sarah back down to the ground as he scrambled to pull a ski mask over his head to hide his face.
“You stupid bitch! You made me waste all my magic wearing your idiot husband’s fac—aaaaagh!”
Lucius had seen enough. In a blur of motion, the hand holding the leash went flying through the air, landing with a thud at Sarah’s feet—severed cleanly from the man it once belonged to. She stared at it in shock, wide-eyed and frozen, until a startled gasp escaped her as her body was suddenly lifted off the ground. She instinctively covered her face with her hands, shuddering in terror as Lucius cradled her and sprinted toward the woods.
Behind them, the group of men looked around in confusion—torn between the sight of their comrade writhing on the ground, blood gushing from the stump of his arm, and their prisoner, who was somehow floating away into the trees.
What the men didn’t know was that Whisper had begun sending messages to Sarah just before Lucius attacked, reassuring her that help was coming and urging her not to panic, no matter what happened next. After setting her down safely, Lucius straightened and turned to face the group. He let Guise of the Thief fall away, revealing himself fully.
“Shit, we’re under attack!”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Get back!”
A torrent of curses and rapid-fire questions flooded his ears as the men reacted to his sudden appearance, but Lucius ignored their words. Holding Matriarch’s Fury before him, he made his demand.
“Put down your weapons and surrender. I’m only going to ask you once.”
The group of men stared at him in stunned silence, their eyes darting between the menacing blade in his hand and the sleek black armor covering his body. It was clear they were hopelessly outmatched, and whatever courage they had was draining away by the second. Finally, the man furthest to the back panicked, turning to run.
He never made it. Before he could take his second step, the sword vanished from Lucius’ hand and reappeared, buried deep in the man’s left thigh. The throw was so fast that none of them even saw it happen—only the sudden, brutal reality of the man crashing to the ground, screaming in pain.
Matriarch’s Fury was once again in Lucius’ hand. Now, two men were laying on the ground, holding their bleeding limbs as they screamed in pain. What followed was a series of thuds and clinks as the remaining men dropped their weapons. Lucius stepped forward, casually sifting through the pile of machetes and crude, homemade spears with his foot. Finding only the lowest-grade [Crude] equipment—nothing worth taking—he turned his attention back to the group of men.
Reaching into the toolbox within his storage ring, Lucius pulled out a bag of thick zip ties. He tossed it to the nearest man and ordered him to tie his companions’ hands behind their backs.
The man scowled as he received the order, but when he saw Lucius’ eyes narrow in displeasure, he quickly got to work.
“What the fuck are you doing, you useless fuck!? He’s going to kill us all the second—OOOF!”
The man with the facial burns had taken off his shirt and wrapped it around his bleeding stump, revealing the terrible scar tissue that covered nearly every inch of his body. As he began cursing at the others, urging them to disobey Lucius, he quickly earned a kick to the gut from the man holding the zip ties.
Lucius raised an eyebrow in fascination when he saw how eager his temporary new assistant was to earn his approval. Shaking his head in disdain, he turned and walked toward Sarah. She was still sitting against the tree, frozen in place and too terrified to so much as blink since Lucius had set her down. As he approached, she trembled visibly, her face a rictus of fear when she saw him getting closer.
“W-what do you want from me?” she stammered.
Lucius tried to muster up the most reassuring smile he could as he extended his hand toward her, his palm out in an offer to help her up off the ground.
“Hello, I’m Lucius. I’m a friend of Maryanne.”
Sarah’s eyes shot open, the fatigue and fear disappearing from her face the moment she heard her daughter’s name. The women seemed to be injected with new life, reaching out to grasp his sleeve with a shaky hand, her voice trembling as she stuttered.
“M-M-Maryanne is okay?”
Chapter 67
The Leader
Sarah grasped Lucius’ outstretched hand, carefully rising to her feet before examining the young man in front of her with curiosity. He had displayed incredible abilities one after another, from becoming invisible to making the rope binding her hands disappear without even touching it. If she hadn’t heard him speak the name of her daughter—a secret she had carefully kept from her captors—she might have been too frightened to even look at him.
Lucius could sense the growing mountain of questions that were about to come rushing out from Sarah’s lips, but he raised a hand to stop her as he spoke.
“Maryanne is safe with Nana. I stumbled upon her during a scouting mission. She misses you very much. Right now, it’s David we need to worry about. Where is he?”
The trembling in Sarah’s hands spread throughout her body as the sudden relief washed over her. She couldn’t help but weep once Lucius confirmed that Maryanne was safe. The pain and humiliation she had endured at the hands of her captors was nothing compared to the soul-crushing misery of knowing that her daughter was slowly starving to death alone in their cabin. Yet, if she told her kidnappers about Maryanne’s existence, the child would undoubtedly face a fate worse than death. What could she have done?
Every day, she prayed that a passerby would discover Maryanne and save the child from the slow, lonely death that awaited her. When she had seen those three soldiers not long ago, she nearly shouted Maryanne’s location to them, but her own fear had gotten the better of her and she missed the opportunity. Now, she was learning that not only had Maryanne been saved, but that she had also been reunited with her grandmother. The unexpected revelation that her prayers had been answered was overwhelming. The anxious tension she had carried for so long finally melted away, but it took her energy away with it. Suddenly feeling too weak to stand, she leaned against the tree beside her for support.
Lucius saw what Sarah was going through and decided to allow her a few minutes to grapple with her emotions.
“Wait here for a moment,” he instructed.
Lucius turned back toward the group of men behind him. By now, everyone was zip-tied except for the burned man and the one holding the bag of ties. The man with the ties looked down at the one-handed man, scratching his chin in frustration. When he saw Lucius approaching, he seized the chance to explain the issue he was facing.
