[Beta] Ashborn - 3. Path to Power (Patreon)

III

Path to Power

The trio didn’t have much on them.

[Essence Stone - F]

A few essence stones, silver coins, herbs, and a map.

Exhaling for several long seconds, I stared at the corpses. Bile should’ve risen up in my throat but didn’t. My gaze thinned. Nothing stirred in my chest as I watched their blood pool in the snow.

I turned to Saber, who ripped a piece off Judith’s corpse and happily chewed. Thunder was close to fire, so it wasn’t a wonder that he enjoyed her essence…

My heart skipped. Seeing Saber enjoy himself…that made me shiver and smile.

“Saber, come here.”

He strode towards me, fighting with his snack. I embraced him and pressed my head against his. I felt warmer holding him in my arms, and the sensation was more than physical.

Saber I could trust with my life.

I released him and stared at his face.

‘The skill mentioned six families.’

So there are five more for me to summon, five more members of my family.

“I cannot wait.”

I stood and spent some time burying the corpses in the snow—hopefully it would keep them from being discovered long enough for me to cultivate.

Back in the cave, my feet crossed into the position of a yogi. I breathed in and out in rhythm. The raw energy coursing through me was cold—it was the power killing the disciples had collected me.

Experience was stored as essence inside your body. One must refine it through meditation to level up. But unbound essence gradually diffused out of your system, so you had a certain amount of time to do so. Multiple techniques existed to refine essence, yet I knew none besides the general method I was using now.

‘At least, Ashe knows none.’

I turned to the attribute in my status screen.

Titles: [Reincarnation]

Reincarnation. You’ve lived through this before. Increased experience gain from all sources. Increased insight speed when comprehending fire-related laws, arts, or essences.

How I had reincarnated as Ashe was a mystery I may never find out. However, the girl’s memories were slowly coming back to me—I remembered the village she had passed through on the way to the cave—but the rest was still far. Everything about her (or my, now) family and the witch hunt. But more importantly, details about this test.

I glanced at the game status.

Location: Everwinter - Mystic Realm

Time left until end of the first test: 63 15:25:45

Realm Points: 43

Everwinter Ranking: 8486

My rank hadn’t gone up by three, which I assumed meant the trio was a lower rank than me, but all these assumption were driving me insane.

Sighing, I shifted my attention to meditating. Cold energy cycled within me. With each revolution, essence settled deeper into my bones. A small amount lingered near my core, where the essence entered my spirit and expanded the base of my power.

Time passed in limbo. Until the system recognised my progress.

Fire Keeper - lvl. 1 -> Fire Keeper - lvl. 2.

3 free stat points gained.

1 SP gained.

I moaned. There rush of levelling was one I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

‘Sp…what is that?’

Hovering over the stat in my description gave me a short message.

[Summon Points - used in the Summoner Shop.]

‘Summoner shop?’

Summoner shop is locked until level 10.

I hummed. It was probably where I bought more summons? The idea of buying my family didn’t sit right with me, though, and a wave of the hand got the screen out of my face. The motion returned my mind to the portal I had conjured.

A flex of the mind and essence rushed through my veins. It slithered out of my index finger, shaping into a ball of fire which hovered over my digit. The object was perfectly smooth.

I carefully moved my finger. As the fire moved with me, a scorching sound echoed. Flames trailed in the air where I passed, and connected. Tendrils of flame shot towards the centre from the circumference. Fire tangled and merged, and my view of the other side blocked completely. Wind gushed out of the trembling, blazing portal, whose wails rippled through the cave.

I called it a portal because that was what it was: a gateway into a plane entirely different from the one I was on.

Closing my eyes, I let the howling wind and heat buffet my hair. The inexorable feeling rose within me, that beyond this portal, was my home.

My hand rose out to touch the surface—

A bolt of energy threw my hand back.

“You dare?!” I yelped.

The gate closed with a hiss. At my side, Saber rose from his lying position and reached out to lick my hand. Smoke rose from my skin, but the injury wasn’t too bad.

“I’m fine. Sorry for worrying you.”

Saber purred and lied back down. He was still regenerating from the arrow wounds, so he was sleepy.

A sigh escaped me. I wasn’t strong enough. It’s why Saber got injured and why the portal rejected me. If I ever wanted to find what was on the other side of the gate, I would need levels.

It wasn’t a great goal but it was the best I had.

‘Get stronger it is.’

To make sure of something, I regarded my ranking again.

Realm Points: 44

Everwinter Ranking: 8485

Right. The level up had given me an extra point.

‘Is the ranking equivalent to strength?’

That might be worrying if so.

Eight-thousand something people stronger than me, a good portion of which would see benefit in killing me.

‘I need to keep a low profile and figure out the layout of the land.’

Kill things where I can, level, and unlock further facets of my class. Saber was decently strong, but he wouldn’t beat a disciple specialising in offence.

Perhaps he sensed my thoughts, because he growled.

“I know, I know, silly. You’re no where near your full power.”

My skill spoke of Tier I summons. If there was a Tier I, there would be further tiers. I just had to figure out how to unlock them. And to do that, I would probably need to unlock whatever this shop was.

I reached for the map I found and unfurled it.

[Incomplete Map]

The map was a sketch. A walled settlement, the one Alex mentioned, was at the centre. A path north led into some woods and beyond that a mountain. It was too big to be where I was now, so it must be to my south. There were a bunch of other markers such as a split of waterways going west from the mountain top, and a stretch of land even further north named ‘The Power Levelling Wastes’ to which there was a date attached: ‘60 23:59:59’.

That was roughly four days from now. Was some type of event happening? Since it was linked to levelling, I should at least check it out.

There was another town at the edge of the Waste with a shield icon drawn on top.

Handwriting on the bottom of the map said:

‘Castle Shield. No-combat ruling.’

I assumed that meant the guards wouldn’t stand for any conflict between disciples.

Which made it my next destination.

The disciple’s cloak tumbled in the breeze. His spear reached underneath a particularly chunky patch of snow and poked into something soft.

“Ray, the cave is empty!” Judith’s voice called from atop the hill.

Ray angled his weapon and pulled, knowing already what he was about to find.

The frost had kept his disciple-brother’s face from rotting, but the eyes had already been picked by scavengers. His favourite, red scarf was torn as well.

Ray removed the scarf, then shoved Alex back underneath the pile of snow. “I told you to wait…” he muttered.

He squeezed the shaft of his barbed spear so tight that blood flowed.

Scar’s boots crunched in the snow and stopped at Ray’s side. The half-healed mark lining the blond boy’s throat was barely visible over the top of the v-neck of his robe.

Ray placed his hand on Scar’s shoulder. He let a moment pass, threw the scarf around his neck, then stepped towards the cave.

“Anything we can use to track her?” His tone was more frigid than the frost.