Chapter 304 - Interlude: Ancestral Founder (Patreon)

Reivyn and the twins got comfortable sitting at the table, Reivyn at the end and the two girls next to each other on one side. The two girls were discussing in a low voice their totem. Reivyn had noticed their furtive glances cast his way the day before, so he understood they didn’t want him eavesdropping on their design. He was Skilled enough with his Divine Sense to filter the information out, but out of respect for his family, he always turned it off at home unless he needed it for a specific reason. As such, he hadn’t actually seen any details of the design, yet.

“Can I see the totem design you’re working on?” Reivyn asked.

“Sure,” Kailey nodded.

Reivyn’s expression brightened.

“When it’s done,” Riley finished.

Reivyn’s expression fell.

“Fine,” he said. “I know you’re doing it for us, and I really appreciate that. I’ll respect your decision to keep it secret until it’s ready.”

The two girls fell silent in their discussion and stared at Reivyn for several long seconds.

“What?” He asked, furrowing his brow.

“Nothing,” Riley shook her head.

“You’re just being reasonable, and we weren’t expecting it,” Kailey said, sticking her tongue out at him.

The two girls descended into giggles as Reivyn faked being outraged. The three bantered back and forth for a couple of minutes until Ameliyn arrived and sat down to the side of Reivyn, across from the twins.

“You all ready for your lesson?” Ameliyn asked, a bright smile on her face.

“We’ve already learned a whole lot about the Vyndinn Empire, though,” Kailey pointed out.

“Won’t you just be rehashing old information for the two of us when you teach Reivyn?” Riley asked.

It was a legitimate question, one that even Reivyn had pondered. He looked to his mother for her answer.

“That’s an easy problem to solve,” Ameliyn answered. “I’m not going to teach Reivyn the official history of our empire. Instead, I’m going to recant a little of the myths surrounding our ancestral founder, stories I haven’t told the two of you. It’s new information for all three of you.”

Reivyn perked up at the information. He would have been fine learning about the official history of the empire, even if it meant his sisters would have been a bit bored, but he didn’t mind switching things up, either. He had a suspicion about their ancestor, and he wondered if it would be revealed from the stories Ameliyn would tell.

“To begin, the Realm was a far different place during the time our ancestor was active. The cream of the crop geniuses were able to Ascend at mid Tier 6, and most people who Ascended did so during their Tier 7 Class, long before they reached Tier 8.

“We don’t know the specifics of exactly how this was achieved by the people of the time, but we do know definitively that our ancestor and his close compatriots were among the very first to Ascend having to reach max Level Tier 8. The main theory for why he didn’t Ascend as a mid-Tier 6 when it was possible is rooted in the Grand Realms War Myth.

“Before he was a commander in the Grand Realms War, he was an Adventurer like most other Classers who sought Ascendance, but there was no Realm-spanning Adventurer’s Guild at the time. Things were done a little differently in those days…”

—

“Come on, come on, come on!” Vynn excitedly cajoled his friends, urging them to move faster. “If we wait, we’ll miss the Grand Transport!”

“Slow down, Vynn,” a gruff looking young man with a shaggy beard, Dierdin, rolled his eyes. “We have hours until the activation, and we all already have first class tickets.”

“It’s not missing the activation of the transport he’s missing,” another youngster, Brenton, winked at the others.

“Yeah, it’s pretty obvious to everyone else,” a stoic, solid young man, Refinux, smirked.

Vynn paused and glanced at each of his three friends for a moment.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “The Grand Transport only activates once a decade, and there will be thousands of people lining up to get in. Hours might as well be seconds!”

“Uh huh, su~re,” Brenton said, clapping Vynn on his shoulder with a grin. “Don’t worry, we’ll get there on time, even for the activation.”

Vynn continued to deny any ulterior motives for wanting to arrive as quickly as possible. He stuck to his excuse that he would just feel much better once they were inside the huge teleportation circle located at the center of their continent.

Usually, it would be suicide for most people to travel to the center of any continent, the ambient Mana fostering horrifically powerful monsters and beasts, but the centers of each continent had long been tamed by the Divine Emissaries. The paths leading to the grand runic formation, and the surrounding settlements, were protected by literal Ascendants. Their Divine might was strong enough to blow any Tier 8 creature to smithereens with a simple look.

It was a bit hyperbolic to say they could destroy things by looking at them, but not entirely. The Skills available to Ascendants were fueled by Divine Mana, and they almost always evolved to a Tier several-fold higher than the equivalent a mortal could train. As such, ocular Skills that could destroy monsters with a look weren’t unheard of.

The real difference was their Divine Bodies. Vynn wasn’t privy to the secrets behind everything, but Stats were completely different for Ascendants as compared to mortals. An Ascendant with a Divine Strength of 2 was more powerful than a Tier 6 Classer with a Strength of several thousand.

The Divine Emissaries were relatively low level Divine Classers, but that was relative to others in the Divine Realm. Serving a tour in the mortal Realms was a duty they could accept from the organization overseeing the continents in their jurisdiction.

It was not clear if the mortal Cultivator Sects were modeled after their Divine counterparts or the other way around, but they were basically the same thing. So much so that there were mortal Sects that had official relationships with Divine Sects in the Upper Realm.

Vynn and his friends were just normal Classers that didn’t come from any of the Sects scattered through the Upper Regions, but the Divine Emissaries never made any distinction between Cultivator Classes and any other type of Class. Most of those who Ascended, after all, weren’t Cultivators. It was a simple numbers game. For every Cultivator Class, there were a million regular Classes.

That wasn’t to say Vynn and his Party didn’t have their own unique backgrounds. They were fostered in a fierce Adventurer Clan. They were among the leaders of the youngest generation of new mature Classers, having reached Tier 5 before the age of 16. It was an impressive feat considering they hadn’t lagged behind on their Achievements and Life Experience to unlock powerful Classes while Leveling up extremely quickly.

There Clan was fiercely competitive, both internally and externally, and often through their Tier 1 kids to the wolves, so to say. They didn’t actually let their kids fend for themselves to the death, but anyone that needed rescuing was removed from the pool of those given special care and resources once they reached Tier 3 in preparation for reaching their personalized Tier 4 Class. It meant their Clan walked the Path of the Elites, with fewer powerful Classers, but their lead Classers were usually head and shoulders above the best found in other similar Clans.

Vynn was the son of one of the current branch families of the founding family. Most of the Clan members could trace their lineage back to the First Family, but Vynn was closer than his compatriots, his family only branching off the direct descendents’ a couple generations past. Even direct descendents weren’t given special treatment, but it did mean Vynn’s Bloodline was purer than his friends’, and that was even before taking into account his atavism.

It was a fiercely guarded secret that the First Family had somehow cultivated a Draconic Bloodline. The details were intentionally obscured. Nobody even in their Clan knew the exact method used to achieve this feat, but Vynn suspected it was intentionally removed from their histories out of shame.

I mean, how else does one usually acquire a genetic Bloodline?

It wasn’t guaranteed that it was done through natural method, but then why would it be intentionally obscured. Some of the more optimistic Clan members believed it was to destroy the method so it couldn’t be replicated.

Like it matters either way, Vynn snorted. No Dragon has been seen for millennia. We know they’re not extinct by any measure, but they’ve basically removed themselves from human-controlled continents. Not too hard, relatively speaking, considering we’ve only spread across an infinitesimally small fraction of the Realm.

The four young men continued to banter back and forth as they tread upon the path leading to The Center, as it was called. The path led from eight different directions across the continent, and the road was created in a way that a single step on the road was equivalent to thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of steps off of it.

Vynn knew that it wasn’t simple spatial or time distortion, but it was powered by Divine Magics, so it was leagues above his understanding. He was hundreds of Skill, Affinity, and Class Levels too soon to grasp a basic understanding of the concepts.

As they traveled on the Path, the density of fellow travelers increased. Soon, they were jostling to move among those too slow for their comfort. Vynn never understood why people who were in enough of a hurry to use the Paths weren’t in enough of a hurry to walk at a reasonable pace. There were far too many people just meandering about with their heads in the clouds, in his opinion.

It had nothing to do with the fact that his and his friends’ base Stats were considerably higher than everyone else’s. Nothing at all… It wasn’t like their Draconic Bloodline gave them a powerful boost each Level. No, nothing like that.

Eventually Vynn and the others arrived at the first settlement on the outskirts of The Center. It was just a typical city that could be found among the thousands of Regions spread across the continent. The outer settlements weren’t run by the Divine Emissaries. Only the most central area directly surrounding the grand formation was occupied by the Ascendants. They were still protected by formations attached to The Center, though, so they had protections against the local monsters and beasts.

Many of the people traveling upon the Path stepped off the road to take a break at the settlement. Vynn and the others powered on, now with the crowd thinned out. Vynn’s three friends joked that he had much better resting accommodations in mind than to stop at a simple outer mortal shell, but Vynn ignored the jibes.

Despite the vast distances in real space between the settlements, the Party passed by several in only a few minutes due to the space-bending nature of the Path. Vynn was simultaneously getting more antsy and less worried as they approached the actual Center.

Eventually, the Path ended on the outskirts of a vast plateau located on the top of the highest point in the center of the continent. The huge mountain range had been flattened by Divine Emissaries of the past to build their grand formation and the city that surrounded it.

The grand formation was layered in Space runes that multiplied the size of the teleportation hundreds of times. On the outside, the teleportation circle appeared to be only a dozen yards across, but once one stepped into the formation surrounding it, they would find it was dozens of miles in diameter. It had to be to accommodate the thousands of travelers who appeared every decade.

“Come on,” Vynn jerked his head to the side. “Our friends should be arriving from the Path a couple quadrants over.”

“Yeah. Our ‘friends,’” Dierdin said, deadpan.

“Well, it’s true,” Vynn defended himself.

“We all know you only care about one of these friends,” Refinux laughed.

“Shove it,” Vynn said. “You all know we’re going to need a full Party for the expedition, so all of our friends are important.”

“Yeah, but their group only has three people in it,” Brenton pointed out. “What are we going to do about the eighth Party member?”

“We’ll figure that out once we get there,” Vynn said. “Let’s just meet up with them first. I’m sure we can pick up a straggler for the expedition.”

The group of four blended in with the others mingling in the city surrounding The Center. Most of the people here were at least Tier 6 with many of them well into Tier 7. It was very rare to find any Tier 8’s anywhere in the Realm as it made more sense to Ascend and transform with Divine Mana before having to slog through all the Levels in Tier 7 as a mortal.

They could still be found in the Realm, but it was one in a billion, and always due to unique circumstances. It just wasn’t cost-effective to continue Leveling Up as a mortal when Ascending was an available option.

The four threaded their way through the throngs of people until they arrived at the entrance to another Path where they expected their friends to arrive any minute. There were various inns set up around the entrances of each Path, and the Party found a tavern with an outdoor seating section to wait and watch.

They only had to wait about ten minutes or so before Vynn spotted the golden locks of the leader of their friends’ Party bobbing through the crowd at a distance. He sprung to his feet and hopped over the little fence partitioning off the seating area to the chuckles of his friends, but they followed after him.

The crowd serendipitously thinned to reveal the most beautiful, blonde-haired young woman Vynn had ever laid eyes on. She was the daughter of a rival Adventurer Clan. They weren’t rivals in the sense that they were hostile with each other, but they often tried to one-up each other. Vynn and his friends had encountered the other group of young Clan members on various occasions and had become unlikely friends.

They still liked to try and one-up each other, but their interactions were much more benign. Their one-upmanship was done in a light-hearted manner, and they had made a pact to form a full Party for an expedition through the Grand Transport when it next activated.

Everyone knew that there were unique opportunities in the different Realms the Divine Emissaries could send mortals to through their vast network of Realm-spanning teleport circles known as the Grand Transports. Traveling to different Realms could offer various boosts to Life Experience and unique opportunities for Leveling Skills and Affinities, not to mention the more dangerous ones having lots of Class Experience for the taking.

The activation of the Grand Transports was a huge affair every decade, with thousands upon thousands of Adventurers and Cultivators leaving and returning from Adventuring through hostile Realms.

Vynn only had eyes for the young woman with golden hair in front of him as he walked up to her group. She spotted him right away and gave him a sweet smile in recognition.

“Mierna,” he said, coming to a stuttering halt in front of her. It had seemed like he was going to scoop her up in a hug at first, but then thought better of it and lamely came to a stop to give her a simple wave in greeting.

“Vynn, it’s so good to see you again,” Mierna said. “It’s been what, two years?”

“Two years and three months,” Vynn said. “But who’s counting?”

Mierna laughed, causing Vynn’s cheeks to redden.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know we picked up another Party member already a couple months ago. We won’t have to look for a straggler to complete our Party after all.”

A young man Vynn had failed to notice until just this moment stepped forward from where he’d been walking side-by-side with Mierna. He extended his hand for a shake with a friendly smile on his face. Vynn Sensed a sort of darkness surrounding the young man’s aura. It wasn’t anything malicious, but it was notably different from everyone else’s around.

“The name’s Abyx,” the young man said as he and Vynn shook hands.

“Vynn,” Vynn replied.

“Mierna and the others have told me so much about you and your friends. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

What’s going on? Who’s this guy? Vynn had a sinking feeling in his gut.