Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “—crafting at level thirty is loads harder and more time consuming than it had been before—” I told Halcyon as we walked our payload into Léandre’s workshop, where it would stay until I could flag down one of his apprentices to come and fix it. “If I didn’t know better, I’d almost call everything pre-level thirty a ‘tutorial’ of sorts, just so those who are interested in crafting wouldn’t get discouraged.”

  “Well, that’d kinda make sense a little bit, right?” Halcyon replied, breathing a sigh of relief as we came to a stop, a hand coming up to rub a bead of sweat from his forehead. “You don’t want to discourage anyone wanting to learn to craft too early, but you also want to hook them on the potential of it as you ramp up the difficulty.”

  “Oh, I get the logic all right, I’m just grousing a bit that it’s going to take me even more time to keep it up, especially as I try and work my way up so I can craft even better things for you all,” I said as I motioned for the man to follow me towards the rear of the room. “Which is actually the reason why I asked for your help—and Caius’s help earlier. Now that we know how to do it, I need to get you all trained on how to essence meld so that you know how to manage it yourselves. That way, you can customize your own gear as you see fit…and also so I can farm out work your way. I just don’t have the time to do everything anymore.”

  “I’m happy to help any way I can, Lyr,” Halcyon replied as he moved to follow me. “And I’m eager to learn how to meld, too. It’s been killing me that I haven’t had the chance to yet from the others. Apparently, Caius said something about it taking a long time to learn?”

  “Sort of,” I said, having decided not to hide the fact that the first meld could be a bit of a time-consuming thing to figure out. “It really depends on how quickly you can get the hang of it, but it can be anywhere from two to four hours to figure out. After that, things get much easier.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” Halcyon said in an easygoing tone as I angled us towards a table filled with an assortment of items, along with a row of heavily laden armor racks beside it, including one that had been obviously made for a giant puma.

  “Whoa, now this looks promising,” he said excitedly as we approached. “Are these all made out of æthertouched iron?”

  “Pretty much,” I replied as I glanced over everything, the dark metal gleaming in the light of the room. “With me being level thirty in blacksmithing, it’s pretty much my only option to work with until I can catch up with leatherworking. So, until then, I hope you have strong legs, cause this round of gear is a little heavier than normal.”

  “Oh, I’ll think I’ll find a way to manage,” Halcyon said as he stepped closer to inspect one of the suits of armor, his body abruptly stiffening part of the way. “Oh. Oh, wow. This one must be yours.”

  “You’d be right on that,” I said, smiling at his reaction. “Level thirty gear might be a pain to craft, but damn if it isn’t worth it. I made a similar suit of armor for Amaranth, too.”

  “You’re not wrong there,” Halcyon replied as he partially recovered from his surprise, his attention still fixated on the armor as he no doubt read over its description for a second time. Happy to give the man time to do so, I decided to pull up the description myself while I waited, just so I could marvel over my efforts once again.

  Ætheric Skirmisher’s Armor Set (Essence Melded: Greater Celerity)

  Slots: Arm, Chest, Feet, Hands, Legs, Head, Shoulders

  Item Class: Magical

  Item Quality: Average (+0%)

  Armor: 600

  Set Bonus: (7/7)

  Strength: +36 Agility: +48 Intelligence: +12

  Armor Type: Light

  Weight: 10 kg

  Special: Ætherforged – The potency and duration of any harmful magical effects directed against the wearer is reduced by 15%, consequently any beneficial effects and durations are increased by the same amount respectively.

  Special: Greater Essence of Celerity – Channeling the power of speed itself, this suit of armor feels nearly weightless, allowing its wearer to move effortlessly, granting +10% Movement Speed and +10% Attack Speed.

  Favored Class: Any Martial

  Level: 30

  “This is amazing, man,” Halcyon continued as he finished reading the description once again, his head moving to look over towards the puma-sized armor set beside it, which bore identical stats. “I knew we’d have a power boost once we hit level thirty, but this? The base attributes have doubled, and I finally see a third one on it! Plus the meld itself…”

  Finding himself at a loss for further words as he trailed off, the mage simply made an excited dancing motion with his body that lasted for a handful of seconds until a second spark of realization crossed his face.

  “Wait, shit!” he said as he came to a sudden stop. “If the gear has these sorts of stats and power creep, what does that mean for when we hit our advanced classes?”

  “I’ve been turning over the same question too, ever since I made the first piece and the stats myself,” I replied with a smile that was quickly joined by a shrug. “In either case, I hope to find out soon. After our little rush through Khudazal, I’ve been sitting practically a stone’s throw away from level twenty-nine. I’m hoping that I can maybe get some free time to make the leap before the orcs get here and pen us in for good.”

  “That would be nice, and I’m not that far behind either,” Halcyon said in an envious tone. “I think that with this gear and enough of us wearing it, we might be able to cause some trouble that the orcs won’t be able to stand up to. If nothing else, it’d even the odds for later.”

  “That might worth doing if we have a good enough opportunity, especially once we have Lionheart and Legion to help us out,” I said, agreeing fully with the mage’s logic. “I’ll bring up the point to Freya next time we chat. Maybe there’ll be something we can take advantage of.

  “But in the meantime,” I added, taking that opportunity to wave the man over towards one of the nearby tables, “the armor isn’t the only gear that we have waiting for us. Thanks to the melding, I’ve finally been able to add attribute bonuses to both belts and cloaks, not to mention the special effect of the essence as well. We can finally start filling those slots with something useful now!”

  “Seriously?” Halcyon asked, his earlier excitement rushing back to the forefront. “That’s great! That’s been another puzzle we’ve been trying to figure out for a while now, too!”

  “You’re telling me,” I said, knowing full well of all our trial and error in trying to enchant equipment to fill those two accessory slots, but to no avail.

  The regular process that we’d used with the æther to enchant our equipment hadn’t ever worked in creating cloaks or belts with attribute bonuses on it. Instead, all that the process had done was simply create a magic belt or cloak, but with no tangible benefits to it. But with the discovery of essence melding, I’d finally been able to find a solution to the problem, being able to apply the bonuses that the essence conferred onto the item.

  “My theory is that the game was essentially level-gating the discovery as so not to overwhelm us,” I said while pointing out all the various shirts, belts, and cloaks that I’d enchanted for the group for Halcyon to look at, two of their descriptions appearing in my vision in the process.

  Serpentscale Tunic (Essence Melded: Lesser Celerity)

  Slot: Under Layer - (Chest, Arms, Shoulders)

  Item Class: Common

  Item Quality: Mastercraft (+20%)

  Armor: 50

  Agility: +4

  Special: Essence of Lesser Celerity – Channeling the power of speed itself, this tunic allows its wearer to move effortlessly and quickly, granting +2% Movement Speed and +2% Attack Speed.

  Durability: 120/120

  Weight: 1 kg

  Favored Class: Any

  Level: 25

  Serpentscale Belt (Essence Melded: Lesser Celerity)

  Slot: Waist

  Item Clas
s: Magical

  Item Quality: Mastercraft (+20%)

  Agility: +4

  Special: Essence of Lesser Celerity – Channeling the power of speed itself, this belt allows its wearer to move effortlessly and quickly, granting +2% Movement Speed and +2% Attack Speed.

  Favored Class: Any Martial

  Level: 25

  Serpentscale Cloak (Essence Melded: Lesser Serenity)

  Slot: Waist

  Item Class: Magical

  Item Quality: Mastercraft (+20%)

  Armor: 30

  Intelligence: +4

  Special: Essence of Lesser Serenity – Channeling the power of peace and thoughtfulness, this cloak allows its wearer to easily focus their mind, granting +4% Mana Regeneration.

  Favored Class: Any Arcane

  Level: 25

  “So far, we’ve been able to fill all the core slots through crafting because they’re linked to all the major tradeskills,” I continued to speak, dismissing the item descriptions from my vision. “But even then, we’ve only been able to take them so far. With essence melding now, we can buff our armor and weapons up another level and make use of the two new equipment slots as well.”

  “That makes sense to me,” Halcyon replied, nodding along with my explanation as he inspected everything on the table. “Now all we need to do is figure out how to learn one of the advanced tradeskills, like enchanting or runecrafting. Then maybe we can finally fill out all our jewelry slots with something useful. Like that ring you found.”

  “I hope so too,” I agreed. “And I’m thinking too it’ll let us do another round of enhancements to these belts and cloaks.”

  “You think so?” the man asked, glancing over towards me with an inquisitive glance. “What makes you think that?”

  “A bit of a hunch combined with the fact that I was able to essence meld my own cloak, which already had an enchantment on it,” I answered, waving a hand towards my fur mantle that I’d left piled in the corner of the table, its description also helpfully springing to life as my eyes landed on it.

  Fur Mantle of Swiftness (Essence Melded: Lesser Celerity)

  Slot: Back

  Item Class: Magical

  Item Quality: Good (+15%)

  Armor: 30

  Agility: +8

  Durability: 80/80

  Base Material: Fur

  Weight: 1 kg

  Special: Essence of Lesser Celerity – Channeling the power of speed itself, this cloak allows its wearer to move effortlessly and quickly, granting +2% Movement Speed and +2% Attack Speed.

  Favored Class: Any Martial

  Level: 25

  “Huh,” Halcyon grunted as he read over the description himself and looked back towards me. “Then, we definitely better pick up those tradeskills as soon as we can. If we have all of these small incremental bonuses available to us now across even more gear slots, that means the game is going to expect us to use them.”

  “That’s my thought too,” I said, having realized as well that if we were getting substantially stronger as we entered into level thirty and beyond that so too would our enemies. “But as I like to say, perhaps maybe far too often, that’s a problem for future us. Present us has one more set of goodies to look at before we get back to work.”

  “There’s more?” Halcyon replied, his eyes lighting up once again at the word despite a brief wave of confusion passing across his face. “What could possibly—oh, you mean weapons.”

  “That I do,” I said as I angled the bewildered mage towards a small weapon rack that bore about a dozen various types of weaponry. “Specifically, the weapons that we recovered from the behir nest. I was able to clean them and fix them up pretty nicely, as well as add in a bit of æthertouched iron to replace the rusted metal that didn’t quite survive the trip through the monster’s stomach.”

  “Ooh, these all look great!” Halcyon exclaimed as he looked over the rack, his eye scanning over each of them in sequence. “Ah, it looks like only this sword here is melded?”

  “That one’s mine, and so far, yeah,” I replied, taking that opportunity to glance at the weapon, seeing its description flash across my vision.

  Savagery (Essence Melded – Greater Ferocity)

  Slot: Main Hand

  Item Class: Relic

  Item Quality: Fine (+10%)

  Damage: 70-95 (Slashing)

  Strength: +36 Agility: +36 Intelligence: +10

  Durability: 240/240

  Weight: 1.5 kg

  Class: Any Martial

  Level: 30

  Special: Æthertouched – The potency of any magical spells or magic-based traits channeled through this weapon are increased by 15%.

  Special: Greater Essence of Ferocity – Channeling the power of ferocity itself, the wielder of this weapon gains +5% Critical Strike Chance and +15% Critical Hit Bonus Damage on all attacks with this weapon.

  “Dang. Well, it looks hot, man,” Halcyon commented, his eyes continuing to scan over the other weapons. “The orcs are gonna regret being on the end of that thing!”

  “I have no doubt,” I replied with a grin, taking that opportunity to motion towards the rack. “But speaking of the rest of this being all unmelded, that’s going to be your job to sort out once we have you trained. By the time you’re done with this, you’ll have the process down pat.”

  “That works for me!” the mage replied eagerly as he finally managed to pull his eyes away from the array of weaponry and turn back towards me. “After seeing all this, I’m itching to get started.”

  “Well, itch no more,” I said with a chuckle, motioning for Halcyon to follow me over to Léandre’s workbench where I’d set up a few pieces of equipment and essences. “So the first step to this process…”

  Chapter 59

  “Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa! You all need to slow down and start from the beginning here,” I said with my hands raised as I glanced between Garr and Caius, the pair both looking wide-eyed and excited as they stared back at both me and Amaranth. “Because you’re both talking over one another and far too fast for me to have a hope of following.”

  “Sorry, Lyr,” Caius replied somewhat sheepishly, glancing at the gronn who simply nodded back at him in response. “Okay, so starting at the beginning. We just heard from Senzin. He finally reached out to Garr via astral projection and gave us an update. About scared the hell out of all of us in the process too. One minute we’re working away, then the next, there’s a ghost lizard talking to us.”

  “That much I was able to get,” I said in a dry tone, unable to help but mentally picture that scene as I signaled for the two to follow me, having been caught by them on my way out of the crafting hall. “So what did he have to say? And also, if we can walk and talk while you catch me up, that’d be great. I was just on my way to the gates to meet up with Freya, Aldwin, and a few of the others. The new guilds are due to arrive really any minute now, and I want to be there to greet them.”

  “Shit, is it that late already?” Caius asked with a note of surprise, his eyes losing their focus for a second as he checked the time. “Whoa, it’s almost nine. Okay, sure thing, it’s probably best we filled in them in as well too.

  “Anyway, though,” the warlock continued as we all started to move, Garr trading places with Amaranth to flank me on one side while he took the other. “After we got over his unexpected arrival, we were able to have to a brief chat and get caught up on what’s happened to them since we parted ways, which in their case has been a fair bit. Hence the reason why they haven’t been able to reach out to us sooner.”

  “It must have been,” I commented as the four of us exited the crafting hall and stepped out into Aldford proper, the night air mercifully cool compared to the heat and humidity within the building. “I mean, it’s been what, four, nearly five, days since we were at Khudazal? And they had a shorter route to travel than we did.”

  “So they did,” Caius affirmed. “But apparently, they ran into a hell of a lot more trouble than we did on th
e way home because after they managed to blight their garden, they had to pretty much fight their way back into the fens nonstop. Apparently, Sthera’s minions, corrupted undead monsters of some sort, were faster to react and chase them than the orcs were to chase us.”

  “Shit,” I replied as I twisted my head to look at the elf. “So what does that mean for all the slaves that escaped into the fens?”

  “It means that they were lost or recaptured,” Garr answered from the other side of me, Caius’s lips pursing close together as he nodded in agreement. “At least those who were not a part of Aryana’s group, or those she rescued during their escape. Also, according to Senzin’s words, none of the prisoners from the northern slave camp have been seen thus far. Though whether that is because they failed to escape to begin with or were caught or killed afterward is an answer only known by Fate.”

  “I see,” I said, feeling my heart fall at the news, my mind wondering if there was something that we could have done to have changed that particular outcome during our raid. But that train of thought only lasted for a few seconds before coming to an abrupt end.

  It’s a hollow thing to say, but there was nothing more we could have done, I thought with a shake of my head as we continued to walk through Aldford, our conversation briefly lapsing. As it is, we barely escaped with blighting the garden. Had we split ourselves up even further, we’d have ended up all getting killed without accomplishing anything.

  “Unfortunately, that was also only the beginning of the news that Senzin had for us,” Garr eventually continued in a reserved tone after we passed a large group of exhausted-looking adventurers who were all covered in thick smears of dirt and ash, clearly having been among those fighting the orcs all day. “He went on to tell us that their escape prompted another push from among the arakissi clans allied with Sthera—enough so that it has cost them two of their closest bases in quick succession. When he spoke to us, he said that they were currently fleeing with what was left of their forces back towards one of their larger cities where they hoped they would be able to make a stand.”