Ascendance: The Rebirth Of The Unknown Gamer

Aura had spent a full month puppeteering the Heart's Light guild members, and had sent them to both the Toffler Republic and Firen to work on spreading rumors he could use to his advantage.

Firen had already seen considerable damages and was beginning to turn their anger and confusion towards the destruction of the Toffler republic, but the republic had yet to see any harm from the brewing conflict.

Aura had gotten his hands on the flame core, so he left with his two slave assistants to begin the second event of the coming war.

---

Hartner was just leaving the tavern when he saw it, a massive ball of fire headed straight for the city.

When it struck, the screaming and panic had already begun, and Hartner had already started sprinting at full tilt towards the guard post.

He wasn't on duty at the moment, but they would need all the hands they could get.

Or at least those were his thoughts until he saw three dozen more fireballs even bigger than the first begin to fly towards the city.

The magics were launched from the canyons near the edge of the city, and it was impossible to determine the culprit by sight alone.

Hartner's guess was the Firen Kingdom's mages.

After the siege of Sunspire, one of the major cities of Firen, the kingdom's people had been calling for war.

The nobles could only hold the commoners back for so long.

No doubt some hotheaded adventurers or mages got together and launched a full out barrage of high leveled flame spells at his city.

If this attack didn't result in full blown war, then it could only be assumed that the country's leaders were idiots.

With the momentum this conflict has created, war was inevitable whether or not the government got involved.

As all this ran through Hartner's head, the city he loved and served was burning.

The screams of dying women and children reached his ears as he pushed through the panicking crowds of idiots.

The only places safe from this bombardment were underground and in enchanted buildings, but it was still better to be indoors than standing in a large, easily targeted crowd.

Hartner was absolutely certain of this as he watched yet another massive fireball head towards him, this time with there being nowhere for him or the crowd surrounding him to run.

He sighed and swore as he watched his life flash before his eyes.

"At least I don't have to pay my tab."

---

Duke Burros, current chancellor of the Toffler Republic, was awoken quite rudely by his manservant, who was quite sadly, the bearer of bad news.

And who also likely never to bear any sort of news again, given his current state of headlessness.

Despite the fact that Toffler was a republic and was therefore "democratically" ruled, the only people who had voting rights were nobles, and the only candidates for chancellor were the three dukes responsible for ruling the three major areas the republic occupied.

And the only right given to the duke who is called chancellor is the right to convene meetings between the three dukes, at which they decide the general policies that the country follows.

Otherwise the three dukes may as well be kings of their own respective countries.

The bad news that unfortunate manservant had brought required a meeting of not just the three dukes, but of all the nobles.

Almost certainly there would be war, though how far away said war would be was entirely dependent upon what kind of attacks each country would carry out upon the other in secret.

---

For Aura, his work was done, but for his puppets, there was still much to do, rumors to spread, people to assassinate and all sorts of underhanded methods to guide the two countries to an unfortunate and bloody conflict.

In the meanwhile, Aura needed to collect the things he would need to completely wipe out the population of the Republic.

Fortunately, he had already established himself as a highly skilled mercenary in the Firen Kingdom, so all he needed was the weaponry.

In this particular circ.u.mstance, he decided that he should use a combination of death and poison attributed attacks to poison the Toffler Republic's groundwater, bringing it to an abrupt and extremely violent death.