Ascendance: The Rebirth Of The Unknown Gamer

The item in question was a key.

A key to what, very few were likely to know, but every invention that Wanderer was credited with came from this key.

Her ideas and ability to use it were her own, so it was not incorrect to give her the glory.

The key was no alien artifact, but Wanderer was of the belief that it was ancient and powerful, likely constructed to open a very important lock.

The game's goal was to be that lock, to function as a gateway to the end of that passage and open the door.

Wanderer knew what would happen afterwards.

And she would do anything to unlock thr gate.

The realms of Ascendance were designed to be both finite and infinite with both directions being a valid way to reach the end.

It is misdirection however, that the finite path is shorter than the infinite.

Someone like Aura, curious, smart and most of all perceptive would be needed to release the lock any time soon.

Wanderer was not exactly satisfied with the bloody massacres that will occur once the door was opened, but sacrifices were something necessary in this case.

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Aura only had his desert exploration left before he could only move forward with the mind numbingly boring plan he had put in front of himself.

The desert was filled with all sorts of ruins, but like everything else, they got affected by the weird spacial laws in the sands.

Each ruin was like an MC Escher piece, with nonsensical starcases and funky gravity.

What sucks though, is that not all of the things properly connected, meaning that if your staircase went across two seperate planes, it may or may not be walkable.

Caution is needed in these ruins due to the sheer mindf.u.c.kery of traversing them.

The ruins often contained useful shit and the base of each was almost always connected to the resonant sandstone foundations of the desert.

It's just way too damn difficult to get to them.

The standard way to travel the desert was to tie yourself with a long rope to some sort of flying entity, preferably sentient, so that you could both find the ruins and the way back to safety.

The hellscape was filled to the brim with all sorts of space-time attributed monsters too, making it such a stupidly nasty area that even level five hundred players could get caught up in it and die.

The monsters were the absolute worst, with most being your typical glass cannon mage, except with way too many points in INT, being able to literally predict their prey's actions minutes in advance without using spells.

Spells were a pain to conceal, so an ability like theirs is terrifying, making the monsters the most feared things in the whole desert.

On the other hand, these monsters could be killed by a classless level 1 noob with their b.a.r.e hands if the blasted things couldn't use their spells.

Aura had already absorbed a space-time attributed catalyst crystal, giving him a slight affinity towards the attribute, but it was completely useless without training.

Fiona, on the other hand, had a natural affinity towards darkness due to the black tuna lungs.

Natural affinity was, naturally, better than granted affinity, being significantly easier to utilise the attribute from the getgo and having a higher overall spellcasting ability.

Aura could use space-time spells as they were one of the more versatile spell types for setting up clever traps, and he had gotten very used to casting them in his previous life.

A dedicated space-time spellcaster, especially a classless one with a clever mind, could take down just about anything.