Scorching Ascension - [Progression Litrpg Apocalypse]

The lizardlings didn't chase Ethan for too long after his escape.

Killing the three escorting him had been quick. Between the intense flames and the extended claws, he burned and ripped them apart in seconds but unfortunately, the camp guards had reacted fast. Ethan managed to collect the fragments from one of the dead lizardlings before he was forced to retreat under a hail of fiery projectiles and thrown javelins. They tried chasing after him through the woods, but quickly stopped once he went back into the first forested cave.

The whole endeavor netted him a level and a handful of fragments, which was always welcome. He was only a couple of fragments away from the tier-2 upgrade, but he wasn't worried. He was about to be swimming in fragments, and he'd be able to afford all the upgrades his heart desired once he begun clearing out the camp.

Crouched beside a particularly large purple moss-covered boulder, Ethan considered his stat for a few seconds, then opted to give it to Spirit and finally bring it up to 10. He'd been tempted to add more to Toughness, especially considering he was about to head in a lizardling den, but with Spirit being boosted, he'd have more powerful flames to play with.

Flames that could now act as a defensive barrier, thanks to Child of Flames.

With the point assigned, Ethan was ready. He summoned his claws and grinned as he saw their new length. The boost in Spirit gave them yet another boost, and now they were around 7 inches long. He glanced into the direction of the new lizardling camp and took a deep breath. "Good. Now I'm ready. Tunnel fighting 2.0 is about to begin."

***

Liz POV

With her crossbow firmly in her hands, Liz relaxed her shoulder and exhaled before she took a step out of cover to get a better shot. She didn't pay the dead and dying lizardlings at her feet any mind and instead, she only had eyes on the runner. Breathing calmly, she lifted her crossbow and lined the sight to the nasty creature's back. The crossbow felt hefty in her hands, but not heavy. Just the right weight. She exhaled, held her breath, and pulled the cold metallic trigger.

The magic bolt shot out, and before she could inhale, a shout of pain reached her as the glowing bolt sunk into the lizardling's back.

You have defeated [Lizardling - Level 8]

You have reached Level 11. 1 stat point awarded.

"Yes!" she whispered to herself as she lowered her crossbow. She was finally getting good with it.

She looked down at the Arcanum, at its polished make, and her smile slipped. Before she could help it, her eyes swiveled to the small golden clouds emanating from the weapons and bodies of the dead lizardlings. She needed the fragments. She could upgrade her Arcanum much faster if she had access to the bounty displayed in front of her.

Liz bit her lip. While at first she hadn't mind spending sometime in this camp to find her bearings, she had quickly came to regret her decision. Things… weren't as they appeared. The camp was not that safe.

She eyed the dead lizardling for a second before she cautiously looked behind for any overseer. When she saw none, she turned to her closest teammate. Her and Gerald's eyes met, and she gave him a nod before she turned to the other two girls. "Let's harvest these."

Gerald raised an eyebrow at her, furtively looked up toward the camp, then nodded back. Audrey—a towering young woman still in gym clothes—leaned over her bloodied and still smoking tower shield and continued quietly chewing on a piece of jerky, but her eyes lit up and she nodded. Her much shorter sister—who was also in gym clothes—glanced back toward the camp far behind them as she twirled her wand around her fingers, leaning against a nearby boulder.

"They won't like that," said Amelie. Then her lips stretched into a smile before she turned to Liz. "Don't get me wrong, they can get stuffed, but we're already on their shit-list and if we take everything here and make a break for it, they'll just find an excuse to take us on a 'joint expedition'. We all know how those things go."

Gerald dismissed his sword and winced as he studied a stab wound on his right thigh. Noting his expression, Amelia pushed herself off the boulder and approached the man, waved her wand at his injury, and Liz watched the wound close up within seconds. Gerald nodded to the girl and mumbled a quick thanks before turning back to Liz. "I agree. We've rested, and we got some levels under our belt. I think we should be on our way before we get dragged deeper into Lance's weird politics. We already paid them back tenfold for healing Martha. We've been giving them half our fragments for close to a day now, and with the speed him and his cronies are leveling, we'll be stuck as their cash-cows for ever."

A few nods were his response. Liz agreed. Ethan had made the right call not getting involved with the camp.

As if he'd heard her though, Gerald, pursed his lips and re-summoned his sword to collect his share of the fragments. "Ethan had the right of it. We better do the same."

Audrey raised an eyebrow. "The one your other friend keeps cursing? The psychopath?"

Her face contorted into a sneer, and before Liz could respond, Gerald beat her to the punch and she admit, it was for the best. She had nothing good to say about Martha. That two-faced snake.

"He did nothing wrong. It was an accident, and if it wasn't for him, we'd be dead twice over. Plus, he told us to stay back, and we didn't. She's just…" he trailed off, looking for the right words.

"… Looking for something to blame," finished Amelie, and he nodded. "Well, as we said before, I'm in. But an overseer's on the way. Bronson. Level 16. What are we doing? Are we staying or are we leaving?"

The four shared a few looks, a bit taken by surprise at how fast they had to make a decision.

Audrey stood up and stretched her shoulders, glancing back toward the still barely visible figure in the distance. "I wouldn't mind it. We work well together. We can take it easy and level. In a day or two they won't be able to mess with us, if we play our cards right," said Audrey leaning over her shield. Liz was reminded of the fitness influencers she'd often see on her social media, which technically made sense. Audrey was a personal coach, if she recalled correctly.

"Same. Let's go meet your friend. He sounds like fun," said Amelie, picking up her bag and putting it on her shoulders before she casually looked for another target while the other picked up their belongings. She aimed for a rock, and a gray-white projectile zipped out of her wand. Even though it seemed it was about to miss, the projectile slowly arced back on target and hit the large rock dead center.

As she picked up her own borrowed bag, Liz wished she had hurried to get to the portal. Missing out on an extra free spell was biting her in the butt.

With everyone on their feet and ready to go, Amelie paused her target practice and put her hands on her hips as she faced the team. "It would be worth teaming up with him if he's not dead yet. You sure he was above Lance in levels?"

Liz nodded and nervously glanced at the oncoming overseer. He was still a couple of minutes away. "Yes. But we can talk about that later, we're running out of time."

Why does it feel like I'm in charge?

Liz turned to each of her co-conspirators and shared a nod with them. "Alright. Let's let him take half the fragments then. We'll say we're tracking a few more lizardlings lower, and and once he leaves, we'll slip away. Deal?"

"Sure," said Amelie as she resumed shooting poor rocks. She was testing how far she could push her projectile off target before it failed to correct itself.

I need that homing modifier. Or do I?

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Intuitively, she felt like she should probably work on her aim rather than have a spell do the work for her.

Cutting off her musings, she shared a look with the others and they all nodded. She wasn't sure if she was ready, but with this team, they had a chance. And once they found Ethan, they could give him some support while continuing to work on their own capabilities. Not necessarily have him join the team, but even working in concert and being allies might benefit them both.

Liz sighed and kept her true feelings from showing on her face as Lance's crony approached as she eyed the make shift camp they'd been staying in over the last few hours, and at the crappy, bare spot she had napped on. The stats helped, thankfully, otherwise she'd still be sore.

I miss my bed, she thought as she rubbed her forehead, getting a whiff of the smell of car grease still lingering in her hand. Never thought I'd miss my garage this much. Even the rude customers.

Looking down at the mushroom forest, she wondered what was waiting for them in there.

***

Smoke and heat battered at him as Ethan wiped the blood off of his cheek.

The tunnel was half obscured, filled with the dark smoke of burnt lizardlings, but surprisingly, it wasn't bothering him too badly. It didn't smell great. But the heat was fine, and the smoke only tingled on the way in. Thankfully, there seemed to be some sort of draft as it was already clearing out.

By now, if he'd been still 'normal', Ethan would most likely have already passed out from the lack of oxygen. But he didn't even have a headache. Hell, he hadn't even coughed once. But that didn't mean he was scot-free.

While the heat and smoke hadn't affected him much, the swarm of lizardlings definitely had. Leaning against the tunnel wall, he slowly bent down and collected his fragments. He knew he'd gotten a level or two, but he couldn't spare the time to look.

Before he had started his assault, Ethan had considered luring one of the sentries out with [Whisper], but after thinking about it, he worried that if he had given them enough time to react to his presence, they would have alerted the whole camp and then would have had to leave again.

So he'd opted for the easy method. He had just barged and started swinging.

Ethan pushed himself off the wall and exhaled, then ducked as another bolt of flames shot toward him from the second fortification. It went past him, and when the second came about, lighting up the dark passage, he raised a claw and let out a large swath of flames that engulfed and dissipated the projectile.

Ethan lowered his right arm and reduced the flames around it, his gaze meeting the slitted eyes hiding behind an earthen rampart . "You guys are definitely the toughest lizardlings yet," he called out, voice echoing in the narrow tunnel.

Stealth had stopped mattering like five lizardlings ago.

"Leave us be, human thing," said a screechy voice hidden behind the dirt wall.

Ethan chuckled at that. "You found out you couldn't capture or kill me, so you want me to leave? That's not how this works, lizard thing."

"Leave! Or you will die!"

In response, Ethan stepped forward while keeping an eye on the walls. He was ready to jump back or forward, just in case they somehow had a way of collapsing the tunnel, but other than that there should be nothing they could do to stop him.

Ethan liked that thought. Being unstoppable. And clearly, the shudder of the air around him told him the system might like it as well.

In any case, he was wiping out this camp. Though he felt it was a bit odd how he wasn't being actively chased out already. Barely ten of them had come to push him out so far, while last time, he'd been practically swarmed with lizardlings. In a much smaller camp.

Either they're busy with something, or this camp is mostly civilians. Hopefully the former.

Lizardling were nasty little shits, but if this place was full of children and whatnot… Well, he'd rather not murder children, even if they'd probably grow up to become the murderous and violent lizardlings he'd learned to expect.

A new individual popped up from behind the dirt wall, and Ethan tensed. This one was wearing a lot of jewelery. If you could call it that. The ornaments were made of stones, barely polished gems, and even bones tied around its neck and limbs. And the jewelery was the only thing this lizardling bothered to wear.

Ethan didn't enjoy the view, though his sense of alarm spiked.

[Lizardling (I) - Level 30]

The buck-naked lizardling pointed a bone-white wand at him, and a small ball of glowing flames shot out.

It wasn't the fastest, nor was it the brightest, but something about it immediately made Ethan raise both arms to guard his face while pushing out as much fire as he could, quickly creating a barrier between him and the projectile.

The ball touched his flame—and Ethan's ears rang.

He could hear a sharp whistle as flames engulfed him. The explosion didn't throw him back, but it most certainly rattled his bones and gave his brain a good shake. Still, he scrambled back and away, just in case this portion of the tunnel collapsed.

Grimacing, Ethan watched as the dust and smoke cleared while rubbing his still ringing ears. The fire hadn't burned him. His own flames had protected him from most of the deflagration, and whatever had gone through wasn't enough to burn him through his fire resistance, but the shockwave definitely did something.

Aside from his ear, his head was pounding, and the bright light of his own flames were making him squint. He was even feeling nauseous. A bit.

Still, Ethan grinned. How amazing would it be if that lizardling dropped this ability's spellcore? This would be a great ranged spell to have. Plus, it was a fire-spell, so his Arcanum title would allow him to tweak and play with it as well.

[Lucky Harvester] would be good here. Maybe next time, if I'm not offered something even better.

After a minute or so of the tunnel not collapsing on top of his head, Ethan ran back in. This time, he wasn't allowing the lizardlings to hide behind their little dirt wall and blast him freely.

The fortification came into view as he emerged from the dust and smoke, and when he met the widening eyes of the lizardling, he roared at it.

Ethan had no idea why.

He was sure if someone had heard that, they'd think he was crazy. He must be looking crazy. He could feel the wild smile on his face. Which might be why the next dangerous looking orb might have been so easy to dodge.

The orb flew right past him as he dodged low, exploding a few yards behind him, renewing the ringing in his ears.

He hoped he wasn't about to be trapped in here. But he couldn't dwell on that right now.

Ethan surged forward with renewed vigor. The decorated lizardling raised its wand for another shot, but Ethan was already upon it. He swung down with an extended, flaming claw, and the sharp talons sliced into the lizardling's hand. It shrieked at him, burnt and bleeding, but Ethan barely had a chance to see its expression before he pointed his hand, sending an almost five-foot-long gout of flame right in its face.

Ethan let the flames roar, and only cut them off when he felt the gnawing ache in his chest.

The fire parted, revealing a surprisingly still living and cringing lizardling. It lowered its hands to hiss at him, and scrambled backward when Ethan jumped over the small rampart. One of its eyes was burnt shut, while a few of its scales had turned black, burnt. It pushed itself backward, and then something unexpected happened.

In the time it took Ethan to understand what he was looking at, a skeletal armor made of bones appeared over the lizardling's naked flesh. It didn't cover everything. The arms and legs were unprotected, but the glowing symbols over the skeletal helmet as well as the similarly magicked ribs that surrounded its chest told Ethan that this fight might take a moment. He suspected that even though the limbs seemed unprotected, they might not be.

This bone armor was probably an Arcanum, and having seen a few varieties so far, Ethan underestimating this one. So he moved.

The lizardling jumped back, snarling as it pointed with a finger, a grimace of pain all over its face. Eyes wide, Ethan refused to give it space and hounded it before he slashed down with his right claws while simultaneously throwing another gout of flames with his left. The armor glowed brighter, and Ethan watched with amazement as the flames parted around a spherical barrier that glowed with the same soft blue as the runes engraved in the armor.

An intense red ball of swirling, concentrated flames appeared an inch away from the lizardling's outstretched hand. There was a flash of light, and Ethan's ears rang again.