Ascensions, oh sweet Ascensions.

It had been… oh so long since his last ascension, and Rory was finally glad to break through that wall again.

After recovering from the entire ordeal with the Architect's Bane and ensuring they had everything under wraps, Rory had told his group that he needed a minute. Apostolos had attempted to convince him to save it for their return and make some occasion out of it, but Rory had promptly shut that down.

God knows I don't feel like waiting.

Thus, after sitting on a nearby stone, Rory breached the realm and soon found himself floating in the familiar liminal space where all ascensions occurred. The table he'd conjured in the past remained, so, walking up to it, Rory took a seat.

"Now, let's see these options," Rory spoke to himself as he decided to handle his skill offerings first.

It wasn't his most extensive offering, but it was close, with six options presented right off the bat.

"Two plus decades and only six options. Huh, feels sort of like a rip-off." Rory mumbled before shrugging. Much of those two-odd decades had mainly been inconsequential, a trend Rory suspected would only become more exaggerated with every ascension, especially if ascensions started taking centuries as he suspected the future promised.

"Whatever, on with it." He scolded himself as he scanned over the first option.

Great Teacher

The role of the teacher has been admired and respected since time immemorial. A bad teacher can send aspiring pupils to obscurity, never rising to their heights. A good teacher can uplift a student to reach their potential. A great teacher goes even further, helping apprentices and pupils achieve their potential, shatter it, and claw past even their heights, the stars the limit. Grants the ability to inspire skill acquisition more readily among those who learn from you. Furthermore, grants instinctual comprehension of foundational teaching concepts, philosophies, and practices.

"I am almost certain I was offered this in the past," Rory said, dredging the memory from his last ascension.

In fairness, it made sense. Much of his time had been spent educating the new population of Ekhorrus so that they could handle things independently.

But given he was preparing to abandon them, he tossed the option.

"Next!"

Alchemist's Tongue

An alchemist of potent brews must be willing to take risks. Nothing is as emblematic of such resolve as using yourself as the test bed—increased understanding of ingredients by ingesting them and increased knowledge of personally made brews if ingested. Offers minor resistance to ingested poisons and toxins.

"Pass," Rory said after a moment of consideration.

Seriously, who the hell would be willing to stick random things in their mouth?

Builder of Nations

Few can claim to have birthed nations, but few are you. Gain a significant understanding of civilian logistics and systems needed for the operational success of a burgeoning nation.

"Yeah, hard pass." Rory exhaled. He'd been offered many skills like this in the past, but he was still surprised that Eon was still trying to foist them upon him. Or maybe it was just pure exposure; he'd spent almost his entire life on Aelia, building up what would become Ehkorrus.

Compound Mind

Only those with the sharpest minds may understand the secret of fragmenting one's thoughts into separate threads. Further increase the efficiency of such techniques through the ability to fragment one's mind further while enabling sub-minds to engage in activities such as rest, enabling passive cognition recovery.

"Finally, something interesting," Rory announced. Compound Mind sounded like an upgrade to his Mind Palace and ability to splinter his thoughts. If he could spool off a mental thread and have it 'rest' while his main thought thread existed within his Mental Palace, he could sustain it far more easily. Or, inversely, if he could spool off a mental thread, and 'store' it within the Mental Palace, and have it rest within, then he could massively increase his ability to recover from mental strain as he capitalized on time dilation between his Mental Palace and the real world.

Two options left; Rory glanced at the next one, instantly noting a trend.

Projection Manifest

You have practiced utilizing two skills as one and shaping your mind's realms into reality. Individual restrictions will no longer hold you back; your skills shall embrace one another and magnify, allowing for more seamless usage of projection-based magic.

"So, we're just offering upgrades to stuff I already have," Rory noted. Projection Manifest promised to formally fuse Ghost Image and Architect's Reality into a singular skill; whether it would be labeled under Architect's Reality or an entirely new skill was unknown at the time. Furthermore, there was the promise of a 'more seamless' usage of his projection magic. It was, essentially, a combat skill, but Rory pushed the thought away before Eon agreed with him and took the option away.

It's not a combat skill if it doesn't do anything new; it just gives a formal label… Yeah, totally going to leave it at that.

With one option left, Rory expected a final upgrade to a pre-existing skill. With an egg on his face, he was surprised to find that he was incorrect. A brand-new skill unrelated to anything else in his arsenal was displayed.

Seams Unseen

All things within creation have seams that bind their shape and form. Diverse in the skills of a maker, sharp mind, and keen eye, you begin to perceive those very same seams.

"Cryptic," Rory noted rather dryly.

Many crafting skills, high cognition, and enhanced vision skills seem to be the prerequisites for being offered the skill. Rory thought to himself. I don't know if that means it's a generic or special skill requiring the base criteria to be met before it's offered.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Now, what exactly 'it' did was the real question.

"So…. Three real options, three fillers." Rory sighed, thinking about his options.

Compound Mind was great because it would streamline his ability to brainstorm and plan. Projection Manifest would mean he would be saved from the annoying reality of needing to actively practice with both Architect's Reality and Ghost Image, even if he had gotten quite a bit better over the years.

Seams Unseen… Well, it was vague, weird, and nebulous.

Now, why am I even pretending this is a hard choice?

Upgrades were nice, but they were just that, upgrades, stuff he could eventually manage on his own.

Seams Unseen was just too… unknown, too tempting. Hell, the unknown was the entire reason he was leaving Ehkorrus soon.

Locking in the skill, Rory turned next to his attributes.

Annoying set of considerations number two.

From what he'd seen in Ehkorrus, there was an emerging 'meta' -if he recalled the Earth term correctly- for how to best handle attributes. Crafters generally emphasized cognition, followed by growth, durability, flexibility, pneuma, and strength.

Cognition was the ability to think quickly. It was also essential for processing extremely minute, detailed work, like requiring a beefy GPU for video software.

I think it was the GPU. It's been a long time since I've used a real computer.

Growth was necessary for crafting types to 'maintain' the necessary attributes spread for basic functioning at higher tiers. It hadn't been essential for anyone yet, but the concept was sound; the fundamental improvements of one's attributes from ascensions could become lopsided without some external attribute balancing from time to time. If you dumped all your attributes into those areas, it would leave fewer functional attributes for cognition. Given that crafting types weren't putting themselves in direct combat, they could afford to 'weaken' themselves by throwing some attributes 'away' in the short term.

Durability had been championed by Rory himself in the hierarchy of crafting attributes, largely thanks to his experience when he'd first worked with Gem Crafting. While crafting types weren't battling monsters regularly, failed creations exploding in your face could be dangerous without some durability.

Flexibility was entirely due to the need for deft hands and body as one worked with whatever they made. It was another balancing act attribute, as, unlike strength, which would see some increase with tier, flexibility seemed to only increase with direct attribute investment. Gain too much strength and durability over the tiers without some proportional investment in flexibility, and your body would be too rigid to move in the first place, or the strength of your muscles would be too great for your weaker tendons to withstand, each movement like setting off a firework inside your body.

Pneuma was only as important as your craft was magical. For example, an Inscription Artist had far more of a need for pneuma than a regular blacksmith.

Lastly, there was strength. Much like pneuma, it was only as necessary as strength was to your craft. If you wanted to larp a dwarf such as Gil, you'd need a decent amount of strength to mine rocks or hammer away at metal ingots.

While that was all well and good, that wasn't the only thing for Rory to consider, as he wasn't like the usual breed of crafter who never bothered to engage with monsters, especially if he was about to head out on his own.

Jack of All Trades, master of none, or something like that.

It was essentially the core tenet of his Vocation; he did some of everything. He wasn't a blacksmith, an alchemist, a jeweler, or any of the like. No, he was the Architect of the Precursors. That meant getting his hands dirty from time to time, be it crafts or choking out a monster.

So, how was he supposed to distribute his attributes if he couldn't go entirely the route of a crafter or a warrior?

"Well, any leftover growth returns from last time, I'll dump back into growth; that will be my 'crafter' obligations," Rory said as he used up the secondary attribute slider to redirect back into growth. Left with only the 'standard' ascension attributes to disperse, he pondered between the remaining five attributes.

"Let's think about it another way," Rory told himself, scratching his chin. "What attributes do I need least?"

After a thought, he flagged flexibility first. He'd been fine in that regard and thus figured it didn't need much immediate attention unless the 'regular' attribute growth from A6 to A7 was far more than he anticipated.

Cognition would likely still be his most important attribute, so Rory sidelined it for priority after dealing with the low-priority attributes.

Which left Durability, Strength, and Pneuma to consider.

I've seldom touched pneuma.

There were two schools of thought to consider. Having basically never invested in pneuma, he could continue that trend. Or now that he much more commonly used projection magic as one of the main parts of his 'kit,' perhaps it was time to rectify that.

Probably not a terrible idea.

With most of his other attributes given some consideration, only Strength and Durability remained.

So, which is less important?

Preparing to launch into a tedious mental back-and-forth weighing the pros and cons, Rory stopped himself.

Or maybe I take the easy option and stop overcomplicating it.

Now, that was far more up his alley.

Smiling, Rory locked in his plan. There were six attributes, two of which had already been handled: growth was invested with whatever bonus attributes remained from his last time investing in growth, and flexibility was determined to get nothing. With four skills, two demanded more attention, Cognition for the obvious reasons, and Pneuma for the sake that he'd never touched it before. Durability and strength were both standard and straightforward in their benefits, so there was no need to weigh them heavily one against the other.

Thirty, thirty, twenty, twenty. Boom, easy.

Locking in the attributes, Rory took a moment to examine the bell curve, which denoted his overall placement of attributes against those of his tier. Given that the other tier sevens were likely the other founders, Rory knew it would be wildly erratic with such a low sample size, but he still found it fascinating.

Growth investment is still at the top; it looks like no one else bothers with anything other than superficial investment. Pneuma has me ranked about… third or fourth? Hard to say when I don't know precisely how many of the rest of the founders have also reached A7. Flexibility is at the bottom of the barrel; no surprise there… Cognition, I'm second for once. Huh, that's interesting. Durability and strength are also in the bottom half of the rankings. So, basically, in a straight arm-wrestling contest against basically any of the other founders, I'll get my ass handed to me. Not exactly shocking.

Rory understood that he was the least 'threatening' amongst the eight founders as a pure combatant, far more specialized in crafting than the others from what he'd managed to piece together. With that said, Rory wouldn't count himself out in a fight if it came down to it. Perhaps it was a bit of ego from being at the top of the dogpile that was Ehkorrus and the clean victory in his most recent battle with the Architect Bane, but Rory found that he had greater faith in his capabilities than in his early years.

Plus, based on how sparring with Apostolos went, there was a very significant benefit to such a deep investment in cognition. His ability to split his mental thread and process things far faster than one would expect from someone of their tier meant he was incredibly hard to surprise without an instant returning counter plan -or what seemed instant to his sparring partner- who often complained at his inability to take Rory off guard for any usable amount of time, as if he were gifted with precognition.

However, now that others have reached A7, even if they haven't invested heavily in cognition, others might have also begun picking up that trick.

That was a bit of a sobering thought. His split mental threads weren't a skill or ability but simply the application of brain power. With seven ascensions under their belts, others may have reached a point of having enough cognition to begin working it out as well. In fairness to himself, it wasn't likely they'd be nearly as skilled or practiced as he was. Plus, there was the sheer disparity in processing speed that a second mental thread wouldn't overcome, not when his mental threads were processing two or three or however many times faster anyway.

"You know, maybe I should start planning this out a bit more," Rory muttered.

He was, of course, referring to how he'd beat the other founders if it came down to it. The only problem was that he knew absolutely nothing about them.

As they were all likely reaching A7 -give or take a few years- the chances of finally beginning to encounter the others had exploded, especially with the soon-to-be-acquired spatial jumping or whatever funny name he labeled it.

Plans… Plans for the future.

For now, with both his skill selection and attribute distribution handled, there was nothing to do but return to the present.

Dissolving his grasp on the space he was occupying, Rory found himself cross-legged on the same stone he'd sat upon just moments prior, even if it felt far longer to Rory.

"How'd it go?" Apostolos questioned, even Eia looking at him curiously.

"Good, I suppose," Rory answered. "Got a new skill."

"What's it do?" Apostolos asked.

"Dunno."

"What do you mean 'Dunno?'"

"Dunno." Rory shrugged.

"So… you took a skill that you were clueless about what it did."

"Yep," Rory said, winking at his former apprentice.

"The great and powerful founder of Ehkorrus, the enigmatic Architect, my master… the moron." Apostolos sighed as Eia's head bobbed.

"Are… are you laughing at me?" Rory said, staring at Eia in faux insult.

Apostolos glanced at the serpent companion before snorting.

"Seems that way." He answered on her behalf.

"Critics, all of you." Rory shook his head before the smile forced its way onto his face, unable to suppress it any longer. "Dumped my attributes in Growth, Cognition, and Pneuma mainly, with the leftovers going to Strength and Durability."

"Seems like a fair enough spread." Apostolos agreed, understanding his master's rather unique standing with attributes well. "So, should we head back now?"

"Actually, there is one thing I want to test quickly," Rory answered.

"And what's that?" Apostolos asked.

"Wanna have a quick spar?"

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