Echos Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Echos Chapter 2

Jasmine was stirring her tea while she sat and watched the initial coverage of the Ascension ceremony with her delving team and a few of their closest friends.

They, like everyone else in the Empire, had used the occasion for an excuse to party. Anything that wasn’t a food establishment was shut down, and the restaurants and bars were packed to the gills.

They’d had some luck with their delving recently, pulling an impossibly valuable [Light Manipulation] from a rift, and there had been enough surplus from the sale that they’d been able to rent out the entire top floor of a fairly upscale restaurant. Part of it was the Ascension, sure, but they had an additional reason to celebrate. At long last, she’d formed her Concept, making her the first person in her team to truly outgrow the bottled ones. The lack of crowds made the celebration all the more enjoyable, and given how noisy the floors below were, she was really glad they’d splurged for it.

She had to admit, Marcus had been smart by inviting Lin and Bianca’s teams to this. They were friendly teams, and their additions had lowered the prices of the venue to something reasonable. It also helped that Felix was on Lin’s team. They had been circling around each other for the last few months, and tonight would be a good night to seal the deal.

Not that they would get married or anything— neither of them were even two hundred years old yet. And as Tier 9s, they were some of the strongest people in their age group, so something like settling down was out of the question.

Frankly, Jasmine wasn’t sure how much longer their team would even be on this planet. She had joined them after becoming friends with Jacqueline when her original team, the team she had been at the PlayPen with, had started to slow down their rate of delving below what she desired. Marcus and his team were far more driven, and like her, were willing to delve twice a month which kept them advancing at a damn good pace.

As one of the news anchors commented on some of the people attending the ceremony, a pair of nobles who had been in seclusion for the last millennia, she reflected that she wasn’t the actual fastest in her peer group.

Her musings were interrupted by Jacqueline, who came over with an entire bottle of liquor. “What are you thinking?”

“Just… a long, long time ago, I was trying to get a sponsor for the Path myself, you know? I thought I was pretty much assured a spot, with my grades and my delving record. I felt like I measured up pretty well to the Pathers I knew, and I had convinced myself that I could do it just as well as they had. But now…” She waved at the broadcast. “I’m just thinking about how Torch and Quill are basically my age, and it makes all of my accomplishments seem a lot less impressive, you know?”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” her friend reassured her. “Ascenders are freaks of nature. Focus on what you do have, what you did accomplish. You came from a tiny world out in the middle of nowhere, with no high-Tier sponsors, bloodlines, or long-lost treasures to your name. And now, still less than two hundred, you have a Concept, are closing in on Tier 10, and are one of the top delving teams on a Tier 9 world. There’s plenty of noble brats who can’t even claim that. Don’t compare yourself to the likes of them.”

Felix nodded as he sidled to her side. “Exactly. An Ascender is one out of a quadrillion. Quintillion. Sextillion. I dunno, some really big number. Even if you account for them, it hardly changes the average.”

“Median.” Jacqueline interjected.

“Median, yes. My point is, why compare ourselves to someone who might as well not exist? They’re freaks of nature who eat rocks for breakfast.”

“With no milk.” Jamal smirked as he cut in, but Felix just nodded.

“Freaks who eat rocks with no milk. Like think about it, how many people did you know before Awakening, or at Tier 1, are even still alive? For me at least, pretty much everyone I grew up with passed away from simple old age decades ago. Shit, the only reason my parents are alive is because I was able to pay for them to advance, and even they’re still getting older faster than they’re cultivating.”

Jacqueline snorted. “Way to get morbid, man. This is meant to be a celebration.”

Jasmine shook her head. “No, I get it. I dealt with that a couple decades ago, after my parents passed away. A hundred and fifty is old for Tier 4s, and they were basically content with that. And here I am, older than they ever got but looking younger than they did when I was born. But screw mortality! A thousand years or bust!”

Jacqueline raised her glass in a toast and loudly said, “I’ll toast to that!”

Everyone on all three teams raised their glasses, even as Marcus asked, “What are we toasting?”

Jacqueline smirked as her bait had been taken. “To looking young!”

“Hear, hear!”

Even as everyone else drank, Marcus grumbled. “Fuck you, Jacqueline. We didn’t all start advancing as teenagers.”

Jacqueline raised her glass once more and called out, “A toast to a midlife crisis that pushed you to start delving!”

“Hear, hear!” For all his bitching, even Marcus raised his glass and downed its contents with enthusiasm.

Jasmine smirked as Marcus started to tell Lin and Bianca’s interested teams the story about how when he was in his forties, he came home to his wife sleeping with another man, and instead of confronting them, had just walked away. Instead of drowning his sorrows, he had initiated a divorce and sold most of his belongings before joining a delving preparatory training center and beginning a life as a delver, never to look back.

By the time he was getting to the end of his story, the newest Ascenders had started walking down the lush-looking purple carpet, and everyone went quiet to listen to the news anchor.

“And here they are. Quill, Torch, and Scoop. If you haven’t bet on who the newest Ascenders are, you have just moments left.” As the commentator started plugging a few local gambling halls, Jasmine turned her attention to the zoomed-in images of the newest Ascenders.

She had watched the Light and Shadow ceremony, so she was filled with anticipation for when the trio would reach the middle of the throne room and unveil their true identities.

She wasn’t like most of the others who had gambled, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t interested in the real identities.

Zack Varon and Allison Spein had been the children of a pair of mortal nobodies and immortal nobodies, respectively. And though that didn’t really matter on The Path of Ascension, the fact that someone like Zack could have grown up in a city like her made her somehow feel closer with the Ascender.

Would any of the trio have that same connection to the lower rungs of society?

Despite her parents running a successful company, she had come to realize that anyone who was operating on credits was a nobody. After she reached Tier 4, she hadn’t even used credits unless buying a snack or street food. Even that had become rarer as she moved to a Tier 9 world when she reached Tier 6, and now that she was Tier 9, she made more money in a single delve than her parents made in a decade.

She—

Jasmine’s brain froze as she tried to process the people who had just been unmasked.

Her eyes went right past the attractive redhead and went to the blond man walking down the throne room.

She knew him.

Except that was impossible.

But her eyes knew that jaw. It was a little older than what she remembered, more ‘early twenties’ than ‘mid teens’, but she knew that nose. Those lips. The small twitch of his cheek that said he was holding back a smile.

Except that was impossible.

Jasmine tried to process things as her eyes flicked around the screen looking for the information panel.

And there it was.

Elizabeth Moore.

Matthew Moore.

Aster Alexander.

Seeing the third name caused Jasmine’s mind to collapse.

What were the odds there were two blond, green-eyed Matthews who looked the same and were obviously connected to a fox-eared girl named Aster Alexander?

When the Commentator started reading out the information about the trio, Jasmine wanted to reach through the screen and get him to skip the information about the woman… until she realized that the woman was Matt’s wife if the new last name was to be believed.

The daughter of two royals, Matt had apparently married way, way up in society, but then the information turned to him.

Matthew Moore né Alexander, born on Lilly.

Aster Alexander, Winter Fox bonded to Matthew Moore.

Jasmine’s brain broke.

The rest of the world vanished. Colors washed away, sounds grew distant and muted, nothing but her and the broadcast existed in her mind. She unconsciously stepped forward towards the projection, eyes fixed on a face unchanged yet alien.

He’d barely aged. While she looked like a Tier 1 in their late twenties, he nearly still looked like a teenager. Early twenties if she was pushing it. His hair was the same sandy blond that it had always been, his eyes just as piercingly green as she remembered, though the spiraling galaxy that took the place of his pupils gave him an utterly otherworldly look.

Gone was the cute, slightly scrawny kid she’d known. A wiry frame had been supplanted by an absolute wall of muscle, the ever-present dirt and scrapes that came from him working himself to the bone, day in and out, had been replaced by the faintest echoes of long-healed scars. The goofy grin had been replaced with a confident smirk.

But underneath it all, he was unmistakable.

“-him, Jasmine?” a noise penetrated her mind, and Jasmine shook herself out of her stupor.

“W-what?” she asked, her attention still torn at Matt walking down the carpet as an Ascender, and her friends elbowing her in the side.

Jacqueline chuckled. “I said, did you know him, Jasmine? You’re from Lilly as well, right? He’d be about your age, did you ever see him at your PlayPen? Given your reaction, it sure seems that way.”

“Uh, um. Yeah, I knew him. I, uh, I dated him.”

“Sorry, could you repeat that?” Marcus prompted.

“I dated him. He was… he was my first real boyfriend.”

Marcus dropped his drink at that news, but Jacqueline shook her head as she clearly shared his shock.

Not really sure what she was saying, Jasmine added, “I met him not long after Aster hatched. That's how we met, Aster was being really freakin adorable at a party, and she was attached to this cute boy, and… I… I have no clue what is going on. What the fuck?”

As everyone crowded around her, Jasmine searched through her [AI]’s earliest pictures until she found one of the tiny ball of fluff she remembered. She connected to one of the bar’s supplementary screens and shared the picture for everyone to see.

Matt was there sitting cross-legged on the floor with a tiny little floof trying to get the toy he was waving in the air.

Matt and Aster.

Jasmine flipped through a few more pictures until she found one with her and Matt on a date, with Aster trying to sneak a bite of the food they had brought from the PlayPen’s cafeteria.

Jacqueline whispered, “What the fuck is right. How did you never tell us you dated an Ascender?”

Jasmine looked around and saw shock and awe in everyone's eyes. Holding up her hands, she shook her head, still a little unsteadily. “I… I didn’t know he was an Ascender. We… We basically stopped talking after I left my PlayPen. I haven’t thought about him in… well, over a century.”

Marcus had recovered his drink and was crowded in with everyone else around the table and asked, “What was he like?”

Jasmine nodded absently. “Nice.”

Jacqueline shook her. “No, you need to give us more than that. You dated him, you have to know.”

Jasmine shrugged, eyes fixed on Matt and Aster getting handed writs of nobility. “It was… a century and a half ago? Um, he was cute and fun, but kinda intense sometimes, I don’t know what you want me to say?”

Jacqueline grinned. “How was he in bed?”

Jasmine blushed as she felt everyone's eyes on her. She wasn’t usually prudish, but this somehow felt different.

Somehow, Matt becoming an Ascender had made what they had shared as kids far more personal.

Lin laughed and egged her own. “Come on, you have to share!”

Jasmine threw up her hands and tried not to pay attention to how Felix looked like he had been hit with a club. That potential relationship had been shattered, it seemed.

Oh well. The damage was done, so she might as well share a little. “We were young… but I’m sure his wife is happy.”

Bianca sighed. “Damn, I wish I could marry a princess. That must be nice.”

Karl nodded. “Anyone got a prince friend they haven't told us about? I’m single.”

That got everyone but Jasmine to laugh as they were all looking at her. “Hey, I know an Ascender, not a Princess.”

***

Griff sat with his wife Jessica as they watched the Ascension. They were mostly feeling each other up, having drank more than a little bit, and were about to get frisky when Griff jerked upright as he registered who was on the screen.

That looked like Matt.

Purging the alcohol in his system, he looked closer.

That was Matt.

“Mother fucker!”

Jessica poked his lowest rib. “Why are you yelling?”

“That's Matt!”

“Yeah, I can read?” The question in her voice told Griff that his wife hadn’t understood.

“Matt. The PlayPen kid who visited us near the end of our time working at the Lilly PlayPen.”

Jessica sat up, and Griff was about to say something when there was a knock on their door.

He was going to ignore it until the person messaged the house, “Delivery from Matthew Alexander.”

In a burst of speed, he was at the door and jerked it off its hinges as it would have been too slow to open normally.

His [AI] registered a Tier 15 courier who scanned him before proffering a small box.

He hesitated only long enough to return the door to its spot as best he could before rejoining his wife.

“A present from Matt.”

“This almost feels ominous. Did you piss him off enough to send a bomb or something?”

Griff gasped at the accusation. “Me? I would never!”

Jessica snorted. “Bullshit. It's happened twice now. Did you sign him up for some spam messages or anything?”

“Really, I didn’t. I swear.”

“Then why did he send us something?”

Griff shrugged, which left them at an impasse.

Jessica shimmied away to the other end of the couch. “Well, open it up. I want no part of whatever vengeance you brought on yourself.”

Griff really doubted that Matt would do anything like that, but he really didn’t know why else Matt would have sent him an express delivery.

Not able to do anything but open the box, he did so.

A screen popped out, and Matt, sitting there in an Ascenders uniform, grinned at him. “Hey Griff. It's Matt. I just wanted to say hi. Also, rub your nose in it a little.”

Griff looked at his wife, but she was glaring at him, clearly expecting something negative from the beginning of the recording.

“Remember after you killed that healer?”

A white-haired woman barged into the recording. “Thanks for that, by the way! I wouldn’t have liked living with her. I’m much happier being bonded to Matt!”

That must have been Aster, and memories started to flood back into Griff.

Matt had to wrestle the fox girl out of the recording, but once he did, he continued with a shit-eating grin that made Griff start to worry. That was the face he had when he was pranking one of his friends. “You said that, and I quote, ‘Matt, you are not better than the seven hundred and fourteen trillion people before you’. Well, as it turned out, you were wrong. To commiserate that, I sent you a bottle of wine and a whiskey. Now you and Jessica—” He waved. “Hi Jessica, I hope you’re well and have wrangled Griff a little— can toast to me proving you wrong.”

Griff was taken aback when Jessica reached into the box and pulled out the bottle of wine and exclaimed the label. “Ohh, nice! This is a super expensive vintage of Tier 18 pinot noir grown on East Flower.”

Griff grabbed the bottle of whisky and needed to search the name and brand to find out what it was. As his wife said, very expensive.

He was half tempted to put it on his wall and frame it, but as he smelled the surprisingly good smell of the wine, he knew he needed to open the bottle. He normally only drank wine when he couldn't get away with not drinking it, but that bottle smelled good.

The whisky smelled even better. Like fresh rain, freshly cut wood, fragrant fruits, mixed with just the faintest hint of a sweet caramel.

Pulling a glass out of his spatial ring, he poured out a finger of the whisky and sipped it.

The sip hit him like a punch in the gut, but in a good way. The whisky was Tier 18 and strong, but that just enhanced the flavors even further. He ran his tongue over his teeth as he let the flavors linger.

Damn, that was good.

Shame he wasn’t a higher Tier, or Matt might have sent them something better.

Hearing Jessica sigh, he looked up and she explained, “The wine is so good, but I had the thought it was a shame that we aren't Tier 25s or something. Matt might have sent something even more exquisite to us.”

Griff snorted. “How mercenary of you.”

Jessica laughed in his face. “Ha. Tell me you didn’t have the same thought.”

Griff shrugged. “Oh, I had the thought, but I didn’t say it. That makes me better.”

Instead of bickering with him, Jessica looked out the window. “With Cassy Tier 10 and established on her own, maybe it's time we got the gang back together and started back up with some serious delving? Not this half-hearted shit we've been doing.”

Griff thought about it for a moment and nodded. “But after we finish these bottles. If the others get wind of this, we won't get to drink but a few sips.”

Raising his own glass to Jessica’s, they toasted to a good idea.

Sipping his whisky, Griff corrected himself.

It was an exceptional idea that paired well with an exceptional whisky.

***

Miles was eating breakfast, picking at his french toast as he watched the Ascension half-heartedly. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the utmost respect for the accomplishments of what may as well have been gods among men, because he did.

Mostly, he just was glad he’d finally transferred out of Recruiting. His replacement would be up to her neck in new hopefuls trying to replicate the success of the Empire’s newest celebrities, but he was Tier 10 now and beyond all of that. Even as a relatively high-level manager, it had been an utter nightmare in the wake of Light and Shadow’s completion, and he was happy to be away from the worst of it.

And it felt good.

Really good.

The Masks fell away, revealing the identities of the new Ascenders, and Miles picked through their public profiles, wondering what new fads and copycats would sweep through the delving community, hoping to recapture the success of the best in the Realm.

Elizabeth Moore, a pyromancer warrior pretending to be a blood mage, daughter of two Royals. That would be amusing, but fire specialists were common enough it was unlikely they’d see too much of a resurgence. And maybe it would inspire some more savory folks to try out blood magic. It was always the most self-important and edgy kids who tried to go for blood, until they realized just how nigh-impossible it was to make it work. He wondered what had prompted the cover.

Aster Alexander, a winter support mage. That was interesting. Ice would definitely see an uptick in the next few years, and maybe the trainers would finally have an easier time of persuading people of the value of support, now that there was a support Ascender around to serve as an example. It looked like she was a beast bond to Quill, Matthew Moore, interesting.

Then there was Matthew Moore himself, a talisman mage slash endurance warrior. He was from… Huh. He was from Lilly? What were the odds? It had been a few decades since Miles had been on the planet, but he still remembered it fairly well. Matthew was something of a common name there, it being in fashion for a while, if he recalled correctly. Then… ah, yes, two hundred years ago would have been right in the middle of the Rift Breaks.

Terrible business, that. So many kids had been left orphaned and homeless, and Gavle’s Good Guilders had done their best to provide support and training to a bunch of the kids affected.

Picking through Matthew’s public history was a lot like walking down memory lane, being reminded of so many recruits he’d passed into the Guild. Orphaned as a kid, Awakened at thirteen to a Detrimental talent, that was interesting. Joined the Path at fifteen, and was off-world by the time he was seventeen.

Miles chuckled to himself softly. Pretty much every orphan with a half-decent Talent had been offered a spot at at least one Guild, and he wondered which Guild was kicking themselves for passing over one of the Empire’s latest Ascenders on account of having a bad Talent.

To satisfy a passing bit of curiosity, he pulled up for Gavle’s recruitment records from a hundred and fifty to two hundred years ago, looking for a ‘Matthew Moore,’ if he’d ever popped up. It had been a few years since he was recruiting director, but he still had the database access.

Nothing showed up, and Miles was momentarily disappointed before he realized that, of course, Moore must have been his married name. Searching just ‘Matthew’ turned up far too many records, and he was about to give up on the momentary fancy when tried ‘Matthew Alexander,’ on the off chance his bond had taken his original last name.

That returned a result.

Name: Matthew Alexander

Intelligence: Average

Drive: High

Weapon proficiency: High

…

Talent: Detrimental

Verdict: Applicant does not meet minimum requirements.

Recruiter’s Notes: Very promising candidate, offering ten-year contract. Addendum: Awakening tripped contract default clause due to Detrimental rating. Matt clarified his Talent forbade mana cultivation, and it wasn’t simply a technicality. I felt sorry for the kid, so provided him with a handful of EmpireNet brochures and some advice. -Miles

Miles blinked a couple of times at the notes with his own name attached, feeling slightly numb. Apparently… Gavle’s had had Quill cross their desk, and he had been the one responsible for rejecting the then-boy. He wracked his brain, trying to remember. At least… it sounded like it hadn’t been up to him personally, just the Talent scanner, so he couldn’t be truly blamed for missing the opportunity of a thousand lifetimes slipping through their fingers.

Miles’ french toast sat uneaten for quite some time, as he wracked his memory for his interactions with Matthew.

Had he taken him out to dinner once? It seemed unlikely, but sometimes former kids he’d recruited came back to meet up. Would someone he’d declined do that as well? He felt like he had, but he couldn’t remember for sure but then he found the memory saved in his AI.

Ugh.

Miles' face fell.

He was never going to live this down.

***

Wrangle smiled as he watched the news report.

He had been feeling good, and this revelation made him feel all the better.

Helping train an Ascender. Now, that was an achievement that few could match.

It was almost madness, but his spiritual damage had just healed, and now the children he had helped train were Tier 25 and that much stronger than him.

Looking inward, he felt good.

He felt ready.

Wrangle had originally wanted to make some more preparations before making another attempt at creating his own unique skill, but with the revelation the kids he had helped train were Ascenders, he felt energetic and ready.

Twisting and pulling, he gathered the small bits of information his spirit had created, solidified through years of practice and hard work. They weren’t enough to make a skill in and of themselves, but they were the precursor to a skill.

Few really pushed themselves that much, but Wrangle had done his research. New skills were rare because most things were already done.

There were two ways to make skills. The first was for the insane, and the second was for the persistent.

The first was creating an entire workable skill outside of your body, manipulating essence and mana into an intricate sculpture, and then pulling that active skill structure into your spirit without messing anything up. If you managed it, you would have a brand new skill, but one slip up, and you would shred your spirit as the foreign energies got rejected by your spirit instead of being assimilated by it.

There wasn’t a single person in the last million years who had been verified to manage that, and even Wrangle disregarded it as an option.

The second option was for the determined.

If you needed a way to throw a ball of fire you got a [Fireball] skill shard, you didn’t work on controlling your personal mana and converting it to fire mana while accelerating it away from yourself.

If you were crazy enough to do so for years, if you were willing to manually create the effect you wanted for decades, it would slowly engrave those movements into your spirit. If you were extraordinarily lucky, you might, might, one day, solidify the small pathways you carved into your spirit into a fully formed skill. The fewer skills you had, the more likely that was, which made that method nearly impossible for anyone in civilized society.

Unless you were insane, there was little reason to create a new skill while not using any skills.

No, that method was only possible for the forefathers who had come before.

Instead, if you wanted to make a new skill, you had to do all the same things and then manually consolidate those little bits of skill fragments into a skill on your own.

And that was dangerous.

As he damn well knew.

But Wrangle felt lucky today.

He felt good.

And he had never been one for waiting around, which had made the last two centuries awful.

The first skill fragments came easy. He had spent his entire life as a summoner and had been pushing his summons to be stronger every chance and skill he had. While most of those improvements were inside his already absorbed fully formed skills, some of those changes had been burned into his spirit itself.

Now, he gathered those bits and pieces.

The next skill fragments he gathered were about mana constructs.

Summons, at least the ones he used, were created from mana. They weren't the still living bodies of rift monsters like tamers gathered control of, nor were they the dead bodies of monsters necromancers like to reanimate, but something more benign.

Mana summons were mana given form and a small bit of intelligence. Most summon skills took a snapshot of a rift monster and used that to control the mass of mana and give it form. That intelligence and its accompanying form were locked into the shape of the monster before its death.

But why?

It was a question he had asked himself and anyone else a million times over.

The skill was creating something from data it gathered from the monsters. He wasn’t a tamer or a necromancer who used the monsters’ bodies, so why couldn’t he edit that data and merge the forms of monsters he recorded in his [Library]?

When he started looking into skills that could do that, he found there weren’t any. Not any that he could find for sale near him, not any that he could find in the Empire, not any that he could find in any of the other Great Powers; he couldn’t even find rumors of such a skill. Anyone who had done something similar, used either their Domain or Talent to accomplish it.

And that was unacceptable.

Once he gathered the fragments about empowering monsters, he gathered the next two ideas he had been working on.

Splitting the data about mana constructs and then merging different clumps of data together.

The fragments were scarce. There was no skill to act as a framework for his idea, and he had been forced to modify a few [Create Summon]s to conjure deformed monsters before he could even start to build free-floating fragments in his spirit, but he had done it.

Once he had gathered the fragments, he started pulling them together.

When they started to clash, he moved them into what he felt was the correct shape.

Creating a skill's structure was less a science and more of an art form.

Sure, there might be a theoretical best layout for the skill, but the skill fragments were just that— fragments. And no one would know the shapes they were in before they started pulling them from the background noise that existed in their spirit.

That meant once you had them gathered, you needed to start shaping things. And you needed to move quickly, because the spirit didn’t like foreign, unstable entities inside of it, and would quickly start to reject it.

The last time he attempted this, he had run out of time before finding a stable arrangement. But this time, things would be different.

He felt it.

In his bones.

In his spirit.

It felt like days, but was closer to two hours, before he gasped as he felt the fragments subtly shift and settle into their final placements with a snap.

Wrangle paused for a moment as he waited for the spirit wrenching pain he had felt once before.

But there was nothing.

Falling back, he started laughing even as the chattering of the news anchors washed over him.

Holding up an invisible glass, he mentally toasted Matt, Liz, and Aster.

Carpe diem.

They had all earned it.

***

Justinian watched the recording of Quill, Torch, and Scoop’s Ascension from a gorgeous mountain range that overlooked a mist-filled valley with a waterfall and stream that wound down to the plains beyond.

They had been the first shining light in an otherwise empty world.

Or at least, Torch and Quill had been. He hadn’t even known there was a third member of their team before now.

Still, when it was revealed that Scoop was Quill’s bond, things made more sense.

He couldn't wipe the smile off his face as he saw how happy they seemed.

Being an Ascender was a big deal. Even someone who had been trapped in a box knew that.

Legends of Duke Waters, Lila Worldwalker, or The Cosmos had filled his days of watching movies.

They were heroes for the masses.

And now his heroes could be heroes for everyone.

That felt right.

When things were at their worst, he knew that Matthew, Elizabeth, and Aster would be there to kick down the door and create a path to freedom.

Standing, he brushed the dirt off his pants and readjusted his backpack. He had another fifty miles to cover today if he wanted to reach the next valley before nightfall, but when he had heard the news, he knew this valley was where he wanted to watch his heroes' Ascension.

Justinian knew he wasn’t cured, but he was doing better with each passing day.

His hiking was still a bit of an emotional crutch, but he could now enter and spend a full month in a town before he got the urge to start exploring again.

He was even thinking about joining an explorers' guild to wander planets that flew past the Empire in chaotic space, but he couldn’t do that until Tier 15, and he wasn’t sure he wanted immortality yet.

That seemed like too large of a choice.

He could do it at any time.

Freedom was good for the spirit, it seemed, because not even a decade after he had been freed from his cage, he had created his Concept. Almost by accident.

I Am My Own Freedom.

He still wasn’t even sure what his phrase meant because he sure as shit hadn’t felt like freedom, but he liked it.

It sounded nice.

And his image was gorgeous.

A glittering starscape with a trail made from a denser path of stars that stretched out further than he could see.

Maybe if he kept searching, he’d one day find out exactly what his phrase meant.

But in the meantime, he was in no rush.

Nothing bad would happen to him.

Torch, Quill, and Scoop were there to protect him.

That was what Ascenders did.

Had done.

Would do.