Chapter 344: Ascended Options

Vinnie was just about to say something when the leaderboard updated with the news that everyone had been waiting for.

Marimgar had their first level twenty hero.

"Well, that was not entirely unexpected. But now we will be able to find out what you get when you reach level twenty. Perhaps we might even have others by the end of the day, since they were working together so long," Vinnie noted.

Kalli shook her head. "I think her team will be a bit behind, Esmeralda was one of the first among us to reach level three at the start, and her team is made up of the special forces soldiers who were the first to gain a class without starting with one.

So, they’re a bit behind, though it’s less than a level now. I would say that we will likely see some from the other two top teams today, or tomorrow morning."

A few others who had been lounging in the room perked up at the suggestion, and began placing bets in the app. They took Kalli’s guess as insider information, and the number of people that could go next had just been reduced by nine.

Vinnie shook his head in dismay as he saw what they were doing. The odds were still terrible, one in twenty as to who went next, but there were favourites.

Namely, Sanchez.

If there was anyone that was likely to be next, it was him, and the Sergeant had been top of the betting pool for the first to advance. However, his team did their dungeon runs later in the day, as they liked to take an overnight watch as their four hour work quota.

That let them sleep until noon with no guilt, and the team had become quite used to the schedule.

For Sanchez, it also gave him time to go over the morning reports as soon as he woke up instead of waiting for them, or getting them in a constant stream as Kalli did. It was easier to summarize this way, and he would also be up later at night when the last reports came in.

If there was trouble, someone in charge would be awake to see it.

But because they were sleeping through the morning, Sanchez and his team didn’t know that Esmeralda had been the first to advance yet, and didn’t bother to check before they went to do their morning run right after breakfast.

Five hours in the Naga dungeon, cut off from everyone, would be enough that the excitement had mostly waned before they were able to be contacted.

Then, they would take the flight over to the Frost Giant dungeon, and do their second run for the day.

It was a good routine, he thought.

Sure, they were always on the frontier, but they were usually finishing their day at the Frost Giant dungeon, which was now surrounded by small farms and a lumber mill, processing the constant growth of the magical trees, which were still as light as balsa, but which were growing more durable all the time.

Now, most compared them to the old pine trees, which no longer grew in the area around Marimgar.

They were still softwood, but strong enough for all sorts of building, as long as it didn’t need armour. If you needed a building to last, the synthetic concrete known as Plascrete was the way to go.

However, there was a comforting warmth to log cabins, so they were becoming increasingly popular as outbuildings, animal shelters and such.

The farms near the Frost Giant Dungeon had started raising chickens, so they needed some shelter, but everyone had soon realized that if you didn’t put them in a full enclosure, they would roam and find most of their own food.

And they wouldn’t be as territorial.

They were still evil, everyone decided, but they would rarely attack unless you tried to go into the coop to get the eggs. Only a chosen few could do that without armour or bribes.

The chickens were getting larger, though. And that meant they would need to be culled soon, because unlike Kalli, nobody else trusted them enough to not become a new monster threat if they let them grow to full size.

The ones in Kalli’s care were already the size of an overgrown ostrich, and the coordinator could definitely use them as a mount.

On the third boss of the Naga dungeon, the predictable happened.

Sanchez reached level twenty.

And with that advancement, a whole new talent tree of skills opened up, just waiting for him to purchase the one skill that had been bottlenecking him.

{Ascended Boost} was what the skill was called, the same as it had been for Esmeralda.

All that it did was unlock new skills, and remove the cap on the user’s powers. So, until you had it you were stuck at Awakened Status, though you had already begun to grow much more powerful at level sixteen.

Once it was purchased, Sanchez felt his power grow by roughly a quarter, and saw that he now had an entire skill tree full of useful options.

Not just damage boosts, but physical skills, knife skills, skills that added elemental bonuses to ranged weapons or increased his stealth abilities. It was amazing, and all that he could have hoped that his class could be.

Not just powerful with a gun, but versatile enough to perform in every situation.

He even had the option to add a stun effect to his shots, which would be huge against the bosses. So, he sent a message back to Kalli, informing her of the gains that he had made, and the nature of the advancement.

Which made her wonder why Esmeralda hadn’t messaged. She had been quiet ever since she advanced.

But the necromancer was in mourning.

Her beloved Crocolisk had been deemed {Unfit For Service} and too low level to continue to use. She had to either discard it, or leave the undead creature unbonded, which meant that it would attack everyone it saw.

It was a sad day to be a Necromancer, and she was already planning a search through the swamp for a replacement.