Ascension: Online

After the talk with Furuwa, I ate lunch at the same place I ate breakfast and dinner the night before. Once again, I ordered the same thing, because I was careful like that. Even though I was about to get 75,000 gold, I still didn't want to waste any gold on something I couldn't even eat. I had 30 gold left after this morning, so I spent another 10 now for lunch. The waitress, who had served me three times in a row now, didn't seem tired in the least. In fact, she welcomed me warmer each time I returned.

I took advantage of this eating time to spend the SP and AP I had received from reaching Level 11:

STR: 41 -> 45 (Cost: 4 SP)

AGI: 40 -> 45 (Cost: 5 SP)

INT: 10 -> 10 (Cost: 0 SP)

DEX: 10 -> 11 (Cost: 1 SP)

MAG: 25 -> 25 (Cost: 0 SP)

LUC: 10 -> 11 (Cost: 0 SP)

Apparently, my LUC stat increased passively. This was most likely because I decided to go through with my hunch and confront Furuwa. Really, LUC passively powered up from the weirdest, tiniest things. Maybe this was just A.R.X.A.'s silent way of convincing me to take more risks. I then switched to the 'Skills' tab and widened my eyes as I realized that there weren't just three main paths I could take anymore. There were now eight.

"Man, A.R.X.A... you gotta stop preventing the new database entries from showing up. Other players can get info before I can if you do this," I muttered.

[Are you certain?] she suddenly appeared and asked.

"Yes. Please." I kept my voice low so that no one else would think I was a weirdo, talking to myself.

[... Very well.]

I rolled my eyes, as A.R.X.A.'s hologram disappeared. I then directed my full attention onto the 'Skills' tab once again. The original three paths had been 'Assassin', 'Knight', and 'Support' respectively. Now, the five new paths that have been unlocked were 'Mage', 'Tank', 'Marksman', 'Engineer', and...

"Hm...? 'Ascendant'? What is this?"

Unlike the other seven paths that were all filled with skills, this one only had nine hexagons, representing nine skills. The ninth and final hexagon, at the very bottom of the screen, was bigger than all the rest. Usually, that meant something was important.

I tried clicking on the first hexagon in the Ascendant path, but it wouldn't let me. All I got was a short, low-pitched beeping sound, signaling me that I couldn't unlock that skill yet. I frowned in confusion.

"Hey, A.R.X.A.," I whispered. "Mind telling me what this Ascendant skill path is?"

A flash appeared to my right, and a hologram showing A.R.X.A.'s robotic, emotionless face showed up once again.

[Figure it out on your own.]

"... Well, I can't exactly complain, as much as I want to. You did warn me that you wouldn't answer all of my questions," I muttered.

[However. I will give you a hint.]

"Oh? Feeling nice today, my dear AI?" I teased.

[Each skill path represents a different class. Keep that in mind.] she replied, completely ignoring my attempt to crack a joke. She was merciless.

"So, you're saying 'Ascendant' is a class. Does it have anything to do with Ascending, I wonder...?" I smirked. I had already found the answer. A.R.X.A.'s hint may have been simple, but it was enough.

[... I cannot tell you the answer to that.]

"Yeah, yeah... thanks."

With that, her hologram disappeared once more, just as my food arrived. If my guess was correct, each of those eight hexagons (excluding the big one at the end) represented a tablet I needed to collect. Whenever I collected one, a hexagon would light up. And following the rule of all the other skill paths... it would mean I had to collect all the tablets in a predetermined order. Now that was troublesome. Finding the tablets was already hard enough, but if I had to collect them in a certain set sequence... that was even more difficult.

I didn't have to worry about that for a while though. I was still nowhere near ready to collect any tablets. I decided to just take a look at some of the other skill paths, or rather, classes. I noticed that I could click on the different labels at the end of each skill tree to see the descriptions of each of them. I then noticed a 'Choose' button below every class's description and clicked on one of them because I was curious to see what it did. A pop-up prompt appeared:

[Warning:]

[You are about to select 'Knight' as your main skill path. Once you have made this choice, it cannot be reversed. Learning skills of other paths will cost more AP, but learning skills of the Knight path will cost less later on. In addition, there are certain skills in a skill path that can only be learned if you select that skill path as your main class. Are you sure you wish to select 'Knight'?]

Hmm... main skill path? I didn't know this was a thing. I thought you could just learn skills randomly from any tree without having to worry. That said, this 'main skill path' option was pretty good for those who just wanted to stick to one single class. However... I wasn't that kind of person. I already had a skill from the Assassin skill path anyway - I was already planning on being a hybrid, unlocking the best skills in every single class.

Therefore, I clicked on 'No' and exited out of the prompt, returning to the massive skill tree, now with eight different major branches.

I looked at the various first skills of the different classes. I already had the one for Assassin - Inspect. And after some browsing, without any hesitation, I purchased the first skill in the 'Knight' skill path. It cost 1 AP.

[Name: Way of the Knight]

[Category: Knight]

[Type: Passive]

[Description: Passively increases all of your stats by 1.]

My eyes widened, and I immediately switched to the 'Profile' tab. My stats now read:

[STR: 46]

[AGI: 46]

[INT: 11]

[DEX: 12]

[MAG: 26]

[LUC: 12]

Hmm... it really worked. I smirked. This was quite the nice passive skill, probably the best one out there. Then, I saw another skill, this time in the 'Assassin' skill path.

[Name: Way of the Assassin]

[Category: Assassin]

[Type: Passive]

[Description: Passively increases your STR, AGI, and DEX stats by 2 each.]

I immediately unlocked it. STR and AGI were the two main stats I was focusing on, so this was good for me. My stats had now increased once again:

[STR: 48]

[AGI: 48]

[INT: 11]

[DEX: 14]

[MAG: 26]

[LUC: 12]

Sweet. I found it kind of odd how 'Way of the Knight' was the first skill in the 'Knight' skill path, but 'Way of the Assassin' was the second skill for the 'Assassin' skill path. I looked at all the other paths (with the exception of Ascendant) and they all had a 'Way of the __' skill as their first one. Why was 'Assassin' different? I had no idea. So far, I've only managed to gain mainly passive skills, so I decided to try an active one for a change. After some searching, I found what I was looking for. It was one of the three skills that branched off from 'Way of the Assassin'.

[Name: Vanishing Cloud]

[Category: Assassin]

[Type: Active]

[Description: A quick and short dash in one direction. For the duration of the dash, you become untargetable and can move through objects, including living beings. Useful for dodging enemy attacks, throwing the enemy's aim off, and suddenly reappearing behind them, travelling through them to do so.]

[Cooldown: 20 seconds]

Not bad, not bad at all. I bought the skill with 1 AP. In order to use this skill, I probably just had to 'think' its skill name - in this case, 'Vanishing Cloud'. Since it worked for 'Inspect', I didn't see why it wouldn't for this one. I decided to try it out later.

Since I already finished eating, I took out 10 gold from inventory and placed it on the table. I decided to save the other 2 AP I had since I didn't have time to browse more skills right now. I had already finished my food; it wouldn't be polite for me to still keep the seat, especially during peak times like this. Besides, I wasn't exactly in a rush to spend all of my AP.

I walked out of the restaurant, and looked around. After making sure no one was close enough to get hit, I cast a quick skill.

'Vanishing Cloud.'

I felt myself dash forward incredibly fast, so much so that it felt like I had outright teleported. I then looked around for something to dash through, since apparently, the skill made me untargetable for its duration. I headed for the western gates of the city, which luckily still had a portion of the wall still standing for me to phase through.

I walked up right in front of the wall, and mentally said the spell name.

'Vanishing Cloud.'

I was propelled forward by a gush of wind, and the next thing I knew, I was on the other side of the wall, outside the city. I blinked in surprise. This skill was definitely quite a useful one to have. It was versatile, and could be used for both offense and defense. The cooldown of twenty seconds was also not half bad either, though it definitely could be better. Still, this is one of the most basic skills in the 'Assassin' category, so I didn't expect it to be so powerful. I was pretty happy about that.

After some mental debate as to what I should do next, I ultimately decided to just explore Tianyin City a bit. Half of the place had already been destroyed, but there were still plenty of places to look at.

I didn't know when I would have another leisure afternoon like this to spend, after all.