Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “There were?” I replied to the man, feeling my earlier bewilderment at his starstruck behavior shift into something that I was more familiar in dealing with. “How many did you see?”

  “At least four,” he answered as he cut down yet another orc with barely any effort, the low-leveled creature never having had a chance against the lizardman. “But I think they may have lost some when one of those explosions went off right on top of them as we were running.”

  “Good, we can manage four or less!” I replied as I dispatched my own orc with a sweeping flourish of Splinter that left it clutching at its suddenly bleeding throat, a follow-up stab sending it to the ground for good. “Let’s push forward and find them!”

  Not waiting to see if the lizardman would follow me, I took that opportunity to do exactly as I said and rushed forward into the now hesitating horde of orcs ahead of us. No longer appearing to be the eager and bloodthirsty group that had recklessly charged us, the orcs had finally started to come round to the fact that they may have inadvertently tried to grab a tiger by the tail. Instead, they now started to back away from our line with fear, hesitant to throw themselves into the grinder that had chewed through their leading ranks. Which was why when they saw me and the others rush forward to charge them, they all recoiled in surprise, their feet continuing to backpedal as they edged the fine line between rallying or breaking.

  Hoping to push them over that line, I hit the crumbling orc ranks at an Alacrity-fueled run with all the aggression that I could bring, slashing and stabbing at anything or anyone that had the misfortune to be in my way. It was this, combined with the painfully low leveled orcs that found themselves unlucky enough to be in my path, which allowed me to hear a nearby shouting voice as I carved deep into their disorganized line.

  “No! No! Where are all of you idiots going?” it called out in a rage from amid the screaming voices and cacophony of battle. “Go forward! Not backward! They’re over there!”

  Hang on, is that who I think it is? I thought as I heard the voice call out, immediately trying to figure out where exactly it was coming from. Thankfully, the voice continued to shout as I pressed deeper into the orcs’ ranks, both Amaranth and the nameless arakissi warrior that joined us following on either side of me. Cutting a path through the now panicking horde, I eventually managed to catch a brief glimpse of three adventurers standing in a pocket to themselves at the rear of the battle, watching it unravel before them. Of the three, however, I found my eye drawn to the one that had been shouting, the familiar face matching the voice that I still heard screaming in an attempt to rally the orcs.

  It is him! I mentally exclaimed as I saw Ignis’s beet-red face appear in the distance, the man looking quite a bit worse for wear since I’d seen him a short while earlier. He must have gone to the other side of camp while we were rescuing Garr and the others. But at least now if he’s here, we can say hello before it’s time to go.

  “No! Stop dying, you cowards!” I heard Ignis shout as I shifted to fight my way towards him and his companions, silently noting their defensive posture around the man with their weapons at the ready.

  And what are the odds I wonder of that half-elf and dwarf standing next to him being offline right now and just following their task lists? It’s sure late enough that they could be off sleeping, I wondered as I fought my way towards the group, the last few orcs separating us proving to be little challenge. That left us arriving directly in the middle of Ignis’s latest shout, his attention snapping towards us the instant that the last orc fell.

  “We need to catch them before they—” he started to say, a look of dread appearing the second that he saw me. “No! What are you doing here? You can’t be here right now! You’re supposed to be back in Aldford!”

  “It’s nice to see you too, Ignis!” I called out as I rushed directly towards him, only to have the two adventurers on either side of him leap forward to cut Amaranth and me off without so much as a word, their combined attacks blocking us from the man.

  But not the arakissi warrior that had been following close beside me.

  “Oh, man, I knew I thought I recognized you!” he exclaimed as he charged past my attackers to focus on Ignis himself, the smaller adventurer’s eyes instantly widening the second he saw the large lizardman bearing down on him. “Don’t worry, Lyrian! I’ll sort him out for you!”

  Not hearing any reply from Ignis as he vanished behind the large arakissi warrior’s bulk, I was forced to turn my full attention on the two Dread Crew adventurers, quickly parrying a pair of attacks. As I did, I noticed how weak their strikes were compared to what I’d grown used to over the last couple weeks, easily turning away their weapons with little effort.

  Looks like the orcs aren’t the only low leveled people here, I thought as I slapped the flat of the dwarf’s sword hard enough to knock it free from his grip, following the motion with a Shocking Touch-charged sword thrust directly into his shoulder. I don’t think these guys have leveled up at all since the Twilight Grove. They have to be at least five or six levels behind us, if not more.

  Whatever the reason though for their lower levels, it wasn’t something that Amaranth or I were going to complain about, the both of us proceeding to easily dispatch the pair of Dread Crew adventurers in an efficient fashion. Once they were down, our eyes then landed on the familiar shape of Ignis and the starstruck lizardman, the latter standing over the former’s now bruised and bloodied body with a heavy foot planted on his chest.

  “He’s still breathing, just down and out,” he said as we appeared beside him, driving his foot down into Ignis’s chest to force a wheeze out of his lungs. “Wasn’t sure if you wanted to do the honors of sending him for a trip yourselves, but I figured it’d be better to ask. In either case, though, he barely put up a fight for me, and all it took were a couple of good hits to put him on his back.”

  “Did it now?” I replied to the man, a little surprised to see that he’d managed to take care of Ignis so efficiently. From the last battle that we’d fought one another in, I knew that at the very least he had to be a few levels higher than the pair I’d just fought, but that had also been weeks ago. “Then it looks like those other two weren’t the only ones slacking when it comes to leveling. What’s wrong, Ignis? Carver not letting you go out and play anymore?”

  “Oh, fuck you, Lyrian!” the fallen man spat weakly in response to my question, his eyes partially glassed over and unfocused, no doubt the result of whatever his captor had done to subdue him. “This…is all…your fault!”

  “Says the man who’s brutally lost two straight battles now,” I replied to the man in a dry tone as I took that opportunity to glance around at what was left of the greater battle around us and saw that it was rapidly coming to an end. The few of the still-standing orcs had completely broken under the weight of our counterattack and had turned to flee back into the now burning slave camp, with the handful that chose to stand their ground having only seconds to regret it—especially since I saw that a large group of armed and armored slaves had managed to join the battle at some point in the chaos, the once prisoners falling upon their former masters with unrestrained savagery.

  “I mean, were you even trying to win here?” I went on to ask the man as I finished my inspection of the battlefield and focused back on the fallen adventurer. “Because I heard you shouting at those orcs, and I’m pretty sure that all of this is going to be really hard to explain to Carver once he finds out what happened.”

  “And…I’ll tell him…that it’s his fault too!” Ignis growled back at me as he tried and failed to rise, the foot on his chest pressing harder to keep him down. “Leaving me with…scrubs. I never had a chance!”

  “But you had a choice, a long time ago, when you threw in your lot with him. It’s only now that you’re paying the price for it,” I replied, taking my eyes off the man as I heard someone call my name from somewhere behind me, seeing Constantine waving at me near the camp’s entrance with the remainder of the new
adventurers by his side and looking visibly overwhelmed by the experience. “But in any case, that’s not my problem. So what I’m going to do is let…”

  “Ezzac,” the no longer nameless lizardman helpfully supplied as I gave him a side look.

  “Is let Ezzac watch over you for a bit while I go and figure out how to make your day worse. So toodles for now,” I said, giving Ignis a mocking farewell wave before turning away and jogging over towards where the others were gathered.

  And, of course, paying no attention to the cursing shouts that he sent after me as I left.

  Instead, I focused my attention on character sheet, temporarily pulling my attention away from the activity around me to call up my ability list, eager to read more about Perfect Strike, my earlier excitement rekindling itself. Quickly finding it, I didn’t waste a second in bringing up the ability, seeing its details fill my vision.

  Perfect Strike

  Type: Martial Art, General Skill

  Skill Requirement: Swords Skill – Level 25

  Stamina Cost: 300

  Description: You spot a flaw in your opponent’s defense, instantly lunging forward to strike with all of your strength and precision.

  Effect: Your next attack against a target enemy deals +300% weapon damage with a greatly increased chance that it will also be a critical hit, dealing triple damage. Due to the toll that this ability takes on your body, it can only be used every three minutes.

  Note: This ability has no effect on creatures who are immune to critical hits.

  Hell, yeah! I exclaimed mentally as I finished reading over the ability, unable to help grin as I’d read it. Not only had I actually managed to learn an ability that I’d seen on another’s feed, proving that it was possible to do so, but that ability itself was a powerful one that I knew would be a welcome addition to my repertoire. And one that looks like it will continue to scale with me as I gain more levels and get better weapons down the road.

  Buoyed by the achievement, I cleared my vision as I continued to walk across the battlefield, the game text replacing itself with a collection of new faces that I saw standing around Constantine as I made my way towards them. Scanning over them as I approached, I saw that he’d managed to attract the attention of the group of saurian adventurers that had unexpectedly arrived mid-battle, all of them save for Ezzac behind me clustering around the rogue. Having since lost the robes that I’d originally seen them with during the battle, I saw that the group was dressed in near-matching sets of bone and scaled leather armor, the few differences being only in its weight or thickness. But the similarities didn’t end there, also extending outward into the pale bone weapons that they all bore, which perfectly matched the bone of their armor in hue, the combined effect giving them all a very primal and savage appearance.

  At least they seem to be friendly despite looking so vicious, I thought while mentally replaying Ezzac’s reaction after he realized who we were. Despite our success, or even fame, so far with our feed, I wasn’t at all used to experiencing the starstruck behavior that the lizardman had displayed, everyone in Aldford having simply treated us as a normal people more or less. But judging from at least one of the wide-eyed expressions that I saw among the arakissi adventurers as I drew closer to the group, Ezzac wasn’t the only one who was excited to see us.

  “Lyr, hey!” Constantine exclaimed as Amaranth and I came into range, the rogue clearly looking relieved to see me. “So, uh, I see that you’ve already met one of them, but uh, you apparently have an eager fan dying to meet you.”

  “He means me!” one of the arakissi adventurers exclaimed, pure excitement coloring the thin, black-scaled woman’s voice, which slowly began to get faster and faster the longer she spoke. “I’m just one of your biggest fans, and it’s so great to finally meet you and Constantine and Amaranth and everyone else! You’re all literally the last people that I expected to run into in this place! We were running and running with like a thousand orcs on our tail and boom! There you guys are waiting for us! But I guess, now that I think about it, it makes sense that you’d all be here. You must have seen the same—”

  “Ashi!” a blue-scaled lizardwoman suddenly hissed, interrupting her companion before she could truly get carried away. “You’re doing it again! Be cool, girl!”

  “Oh, crap. Am I?” the woman replied, becoming somewhat flustered at her friend’s words as she glanced between us. “I mean, I’m just so excited, and I didn’t even think that we’d ever even get a chance to meet them in person, and then suddenly there they are—”

  “Girl, again!” the blue-scaled lizardwoman interrupted for a second time, prompting a chorus of snorts to erupt from amid the group of adventurers.

  “How about we maybe start with introductions?” another one of them, this time a large green-scaled lizardman, suggested in an exasperated tone, his bright yellow eyes shifting over towards me as he stepped forward with a hand outstretched in greeting. “Hi, my name is Trivium, Triv for short. If Ashi didn’t make it obvious enough, we kinda recognized you all from your feed.”

  “It was subtle, but I think I picked up on that,” I said with a slight smile as I shook the lizardman’s hand, feeling much better equipped to deal with his more normal reaction to meeting me. “In either case though, it’s good to see a friendly group of adventurers out here. We thought we were the only ones. At least other than the Dread Crew.”

  “So did we,” Trivium replied as the group moved on his heels to also introduce themselves, which had me meeting Helios, Nathe, and Zie in sequence. “And on that note, thanks for the save back there. That was a hell of a lot more orcs than we wanted to deal with at once.”

  “No problem,” I said once all of the introductions were finished, readying myself to ask the group how exactly they’d managed to end up in Khudazal, let alone the slave camp. But before I could open my mouth to pose the question, we were interrupted by the arrival of several people at once, the least of which included Aryana, Garr, and a somewhat older-looking, red-scaled arakissi.

  “Lyrian! Good, you are still standing after that skirmish,” Aryana began without any preamble as she and the others joined our group, the woman wasting no time in pressing forward, motioning with her hand towards the lizardman beside her. “Allow me to introduce you to the final member of our resistance here, Senzin. And as I can see you’ve already met the allies that he somehow managed to find to organize his own escape.”

  “More like they found me,” the lizardman commented in a tired voice as he inclined his head in my direction, the expression pausing as he noticed my ætherwarped nature, his eyes darting towards Amaranth beside me. But that distraction only lasted for a second until he smoothly recovered and continued to speak as if he’d noticed nothing. “Though that is a long story in its own right that we don't have time for. By what Aryana has told me, you have my word that they can all be trusted without reservation. More urgently, however, she has said that you were all intending to finish our work and blight the gardens after rescuing Garr and me.”

  “We are,” I replied with a nod. “My town, Aldford, is at war with the orcs and the adventurers aiding them. Destroying the gardens would go a long way to giving us a fighting chance, especially with the reinforcements that they sent out earlier today.”

  “The same would be for my people as well,” Senzin said, his gaze shifting over towards Trivium and the other arakissi adventurers. “While not all of Sthera’s minions require to eat, enough of them do that the gardens’ loss would force her to slow her advance, buying time for our clans to rest and regroup.”

  “Time which we desperately need if we’re going to stay in this fight,” Zie affirmed, the blue-scaled lizardwoman sounding more than a little concerned. “We’ve done all we can to play for space to try and stretch things out, but we’ve hit our breaking point. If we don’t do something to stall them, they’re going to run us over.”

  “Which gives us twice the reason to succeed,” Aryana stated, her attention shifting
to look at me. “And that’s why I think we need to change our plan. I know that originally your group was to split up to escort Senzin to the eastern garden. But with these new adventurers now joining us, that doesn’t appear necessary. They can see Senzin themselves to blight the garden and then escape towards the fens immediately. There would be no need to regroup afterward and risk capture.”

  “Which was the weakest part of our plan,” I replied, giving the woman a nod in response. Originally, our plan after splitting up and blighting the two gardens had been to regroup somewhere in the Hartwyld, trusting that our party sense would allow us to find one another. From there, we would try and find a way to get Senzin, and Garr if he wanted to join him, back to the fens before beginning the trek back to Aldford. If we were able to cut that particular series of steps out of our plan, it would give us a chance to get back home much sooner, and with hopefully less risk.

  “But that would have Garr and his people coming with us as we trek back to Aldford,” I said as I turned to look at the gronn, his eyes moving to meet mine. “Which don’t get me wrong, you would be more than welcome to do so, but you would be placing yourself directly in the path of all the thousands of orcs that left earlier this morning.”

  “A path that I assure you I have stood in many times before,” Garr replied without a single trace of concern evident in his voice. “And from where I stand, my people and I owe you a debt for rescuing us from our enslavement. It would stain our honor to abandon you when we could be of help. If you would have us, then we would join you and your town’s war with the orcs.”

  “We absolutely would,” I said graciously, inclining my head to the man in thanks before turning back towards Aryana. “Alright, I think we can adjust our plans without worry. Unless anyone has any other objections?”

  “None from me,” Trivium replied as everyone in our split circle shook their heads. “But at the same time, we’ve been flying by the seat of our pants since we got here. So if you guys all already have a plan put together, we’re good to follow it. Just tell us what we need to know.”