"Primordial Bloodline integration: 10%. Skyborn Bloodline has advanced."
"Bloodline Effect:
Attribute growth doubled. Free attribute points per level increased to 10–20."
Kael’s eyes went wide.
There it is.
Every class advancement in Ascension came with a built-in stat bump free attribute points doubling from five to ten per level after the first advancement, then again after the second, and so on down the line.
Standard progression, same for everyone.
The bloodline had just doubled that doubling.
Stacked on top of the base bonus, Kael was now pulling the kind of per-level growth a player two full advancements ahead of him would be getting.
On paper, ten extra points a level didn’t sound like the end of the world.
Compounded across a hundred levels, it was a different story entirely.
Two, three cycles from now, this gap isn’t going to be a gap anymore. It’s going to be a canyon.
The scale of it wouldn’t show up right away. It never did with compounding advantages they crept, quiet and patient, until one day the numbers simply stopped making sense to anyone standing on the other side of them.
Two fresh skill unlocks sat waiting alongside the bloodline notice.
[HEALING LIGHT]
Grade: A
Effect: Bathe a companion in restorative light 2% max HP regenerated per second, for 10 seconds.
Cost: 100 mana | Cooldown: 40s
[WILD AWAKENING]
Grade: A
Effect: Rouse a companion’s feral instincts +20% attack, +20% attack speed, +20% movement speed, -20% cooldowns, for 60 seconds.
Cost: 200 mana | Cooldown: 90s
Ordinary players got D-grade filler on their first advancement, if they were lucky. Kael had walked away with two A-grade skills back to back one more data point in a night that was quietly rewriting what "hidden class" was supposed to mean.
Healing Light in particular made him grin. A percentage-based heal was already rare currency in this game most healing scaled off flat numbers that got worse and worse as max HP climbed.
This one scaled with the target, which meant it only got stronger the bigger the Husk grew. Paired with Feast’s permanent HP stacking, it turned an already-obscene tank into something closer to unkillable.
Wild Awakening was simpler math a straight burst window, good for exactly the moments that needed it.
Then there was the class-advancement reward waiting in his inventory.
He’d almost forgotten about it in the noise.
He dug it out, cracked it open, and read the description twice just to make sure he wasn’t misreading it.
[WARDEN’S MANDATE]
Grade: SS
Effect: Transform a bonded companion into a piece of equipment, granting the user 80% of its total stats and skills. When the equipment’s durability is exhausted, the companion reverts to its true form with 10% HP remaining.
Cost: None | Cooldown: None
Kael let out a low breath.
The fusion skill.
This more than the tanking, more than the infinite scaling was the exact reason he’d walked toward the Beastlord pillar in the first place. Every other class in the game was locked to one shape, one skill kit, one lane.
A Beastlord who mastered fusion wasn’t locked to anything. Wear the right companion, and you became whatever that companion was built to be.
Fusion skills like this one didn’t come easy, even for the class built around them. Most Beastlords who ever managed to unlock one topped out around a 30% stat transfer solid, usable, nothing special. Kael had expected to grind for months before he even saw one on offer.
He’d gotten it on his very first class advancement. At 80%.
SS-rank doesn’t even feel like a strong enough label for this.
The only real cost was an equipment slot a minor inconvenience measured against eighty percent of a companion’s entire kit riding along with him at all times. Not a downside. A rounding error.
He opened the skill’s interface out of pure curiosity, and the preview resolved instantly: the Husk, folded down into a suit of dark, plated armor.
[Hollow Plate]
Fitting. A tank of a companion made an even better tank of a chestpiece.
With the class advancement fully processed and every reward accounted for, Kael turned his attention back to the reason he’d actually come to this ridge.
He pulled the silver token free and let it guide him deeper into Graystone Ridge, past the dead trees and their reaching black branches, until the path narrowed into a
stretch of bare, wind-scoured cliff face.
The token lifted out of his palm on its own, spinning once, and shot forward into the rock. A slow, rippling portal bloomed open where it struck silver light folding in on itself like water running uphill.
Kael stepped through without hesitation.
The world reassembled around him a heartbeat later.
A valley, sunk low between steep walls, lit by nothing but a sickly gray half-light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
At its center stood a circular stone altar, weathered smooth by centuries, and resting atop it a coffin.
Bronze, once. Corrosion had eaten most of the shine off it, leaving something the color of dried blood and old rust.
The moment Kael’s boots touched the valley floor, the coffin lid shuddered once, twice and then blew clean off its hinges with a sound like a cannon shot.
Something rose out of the wreckage.
Bone. Nothing but bone, wrapped in the tattered remains of what had once been an officer’s armor, a bronze spear held in a grip that hadn’t loosened in a thousand years.
Where eyes should have been, only twin points of cold green flame burned in the dark of an empty skull.
It threw its head back and let out a roar that shook dust loose from the cliff walls.
[SKELETON GENERAL] (Silver-Tier Boss)
HP: 10,000
ATK: 101–115 | DEF: 95
Skills: Combo Strike, Gale Thrust, Undying Fury, Raise the Fallen
A general who bled for an empire that crumbled to dust centuries ago. Death didn’t end his war it just took away everything worth fighting for. What’s left is hunger, and the ghost of an oath nobody remembers.
[Tamable]
[Bond Success Rate: 3%]