Ascendance: The Rebirth Of The Unknown Gamer

Aura had lived for a total of roughly 552 years, due to the time dilation in Ascendance.

He had experienced quite a lot, but had always come to the same conclusion.

Boredom.

As much as he wanted it to be real, Ascendance was nothing more than a game.

No matter how much he played, there was no point.

He supposed it was due to his depression, but the fact that Ascendance was not real crushed him.

It was a beautiful world, designed to be everything someone like him was searching for.

But it was just a game, a single power outage could prove that the world he loved so much, was just that.

A game.

It was his recurring nightmare, that one day Forgotten Industries would simply turn it all off.

Poof.

No more reason to live.

There was only so much Aura could do to stave off his negative thoughts, so he indulged in dangerous missions and hunted down rare materials, learned to craft and made beautiful things.

Because the knowledge of creating mundane things could be taken back to the outside world.

It was Aura's way of protecting himself from the worst, should it ever occur.

Anything would be better than losing the world he loved, so if it died, he would take pieces of it with him.

This was the way that a sad and depressed man looked at the world.

It was pessimistic and somewhat dangerous.

But it still held out a hand for just a shred of hope.

Only for none to be found.

---

Aura was currently sneaking into the headquarters of Heart's Light, looking for the stairs upwards.

Fiona and Laura were disguised as waitress NPCs and were handing out drinks to the guild members.

Heart's Light wasn't exactly the brightest of guilds so it was highly unlikely they'd notice anything.

Aura had rethought his plan for revenge, and had decided that death wasn't really enough for these assholes.

The executives of the Heart's Light guild had screwed him over in so many ways, and they were undoubtedly the villains of Aura's past life.

Death would send them to the character creation screen, and Aura didn't want them to get off that easily.

Anything goes once the government officially declares their separation from the conflict.

So Aura planned to try his hand at puppeteering in this life.

A rare and extremely forbidden practice, puppeteering is when a powerful necromancer decides to use the living as his pawns, and does all sorts of horrible modifications to their bodies to ensure they can achieve the necromancer's goals.

The necromancer uses torture and spells, with occasional slave marks thrown in to gain complete control of the puppet.

Aura thought that revenge would taste all the sweeter if he could 'fix' the bad attitudes of the guild executives forever.

This would also go a long way towards his final goal of wiping out a kingdom, because puppets like these were perfect for undercover missions, like whisper campaigns and information gathering.

Puppeteered players would be unable to create new characters in the same way as slaves, but they had no chance at freedom.

The difference was that playing as a puppeteered player would give you a certain amount of freedom, as well as incredibly high experience reward quests.

Puppets would grow rapidly so long as they followed orders, and they would experience a sense of euphoria whenever they obeyed, making it a not unpleasant playstyle (excluding the experience of becoming a puppet).

It should also be noted that captured players were fully capable of logging out, but the system would control their avatars so that people wouldn't suddenly find that one of their prisoners had gone missing.

This was also implemented on players in fields outside of safe areas, so that you couldn't see people disappearing randomly, not that many players would be willing to log out in a place filled with horrifying beasties with sharp pointy teeth who have slain countless knights with their fuzzy violence.

All of this became irrelevant as the stairs to the upper floors were discovered and a heavily enchanted Aura walked up them, shrouded in shadows and silence.