Ascendance: The Rebirth Of The Unknown Gamer

The first year's power rankings were out, and everyone was surprised by them.

#1 - Aura

#2 - Winter

#3 - Dawn

#4 - YOLOForever

#5 - JJ

....

Not a single one of the top five players were known to the public, and since Forgotten Industries only releases the list once a year (in real world time), nobody knew how the ranking worked.

These were simply the most 'powerful' players, and all that could be assumed by FI's ambiguous definition of the word powerful, nobody knew whether they were strong or not.

Not to mention that there was no restriction on player names, so billions of players could all be called the same thing and there was no way to contact those who you haven't met personally unless you scroll through the seven hundred page list of names one by one until you get it right.

Plus players can block their names from said list.

The only player within the top 20 who had a trackable name was #4 but he had very clearly blocked his name.

Plus, the only measure that Forgotten Industries posted was a number next to their names, which supposedly measured a player's power setting the #1 as 1000, and everyone else being measured to scale.

Player #2 was measured at 223.

Whoever Aura was, he was more than four times as powerful as the next in line, whatever that meant.

So either FI had some issues with their evaluations, or Aura was a truly terrifying individual.

After all, nobody had even reached level 100 yet, since anyone interested in fame would publish that shit on the forums.

Or maybe Aura had reached the first class evolution and simply hadn't published it?

'That must be it, otherwise how would there be such a massive difference in power?'

The players rationalized this great difference in power as such and none recognized the fact that any game with such an overpowered class evolution function would have major balance issues.

A difference in one level shouldn't make someone nearly five times as strong.

---

While everyone was busy convincing themselves that the power ranking couldn't be this unbalanced, Aura was busy hunting down poison liches for their blood.

The liches were fairly easy to kill, but they often used poison magics and other horrible spells that made the fights really annoying.

He had already collected a solid two hundred bodies, and didn't really need any more, but he was testing continuous blood filtration spells he had invented to ensure that if he ever needed to have a battle of wits against a Sicilian he could survive the iocane powder in his wine.

Things weren't turning out well, however, and he had realized why nobody had ever bothered to create such spells.

How were you supposed to focus force throughout your entire body equally, specifically targeting only magical and nonmagical particulate within your blood?

It required far to much of your focus to maintain, and most caster classes already had a spell for elimination of poisons, so what's the need?

The main problem was, of course, that anyone with eyes could tell when someone was casting a spell, and even spells designed to be stealthy were hard to disguise, so it would be odd if you were to begin casting an antidote spell when there isn't supposed to be poison in whatever you drank.

This wasn't an issue in battle, but in political circ.u.mstances or backroom deals, casting spellwork could be grounds for immediate expulsion from the premises, so it would be nice if he could keep a spell up the whole time without being noticed.

And that's why he was doing this.

There were of course items that could reduce the effects of poisons on the body, or could cast an antidote spell without any telltale movements, but they were expensive and purchase was regulated by the government.

One of the key requirements for such an endeavor is proof of necessity, which can be given in terms of identity, but only adventurers and nobles were allowed to freely purchase these items.

Both groups were watched by the government at all opportunities, and as someone who preferred to operate in the shadows, Aura wasn't up for this.

So he had little choice but to either earn himself a poison resistance through training or to perfect a continuous type spell to counteract poison.