[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 104: So a Guy with One Arm and No Hands Walks into a Bar ….

For the second time that day, Kale opened his eyes to realize he wasn’t dead. The pain from his many wounds was gone, and that surely seemed like a bad sign.

You didn’t just get better by lying there bleeding out.

Didn’t I do something?

The memory was fuzzy, but he clearly recalled one last act of defiance. He gripped the red commander’s ankle. He could have shaken him off.

Kale realized why a moment later when his brain caught up with current events. He was staring into the glassy eyed face of the dead commander.

“Up you get,” Simon said, pulling Kale up to his feet. “That was a stupid move you did back there.”

Kale swayed drunkenly. “Which one?”

Simon gave him the very first honest smile he had ever shared with him. “Exactly.”

As Kale woke up, he realized that he could feel his left arm. And looking… there it was, properly attached to his body. And his hand! He had both hands!

“You might want to check your notifications,” Simon suggested. He knelt down and cleaned his dagger on the dead commander’s cloak.

Kale couldn’t understand what was going on, but the notifications cleared things up a bit.

They were filled with EXP mentions. Each of the people he killed or participated in the fight with had awarded “substantial” extra EXP for defeating somebody above his own level.

Though he had been aware of gaining a couple of levels throughout the battle, he didn’t have time to focus on them.

But all of the soldiers that he had fought against were nothing compared to their commander. Apparently, he was far higher than anything Kale had come across.

You defeat [Allen Scartz (Level 27 - Copper Swordsman)]

You gain colossal Experience for slaying an Impossibly Tough opponent!

Level Up!

Your [Berserker] Job has reached Level 17.

+4 Strength | +4 Vigor | +4 Dexterity

+2 Bonus Points

Level Up!

Your [Berserker] Job has reached Level 18.

+4 Strength | +4 Vigor | +4 Dexterity

+2 Bonus Points

Level Up!

Your [Adventurer] Legend has reached Level 6.

+1 to all Stats

+2 Bonus Points

Level Up!

Your [Berserker] Job has reached Level 19.

+4 Strength | +4 Vigor | +4 Dexterity

+2 Bonus Points

Level Up!

Your [Berserker] Job has reached Level 20.

Flawed Ascension Complete!

You have now reached Copper Rank.

Your Flawed Ascension awards no bonus points due to your lack of a Path and Profession, and your Legend being too low at the time of Ascension.

Rank Up!

Your [Berserker] Job has reached Copper Rank.

You now receive the following per level:

+6 Strength | +6 Vigor | +6 Dexterity

+2 Bonus Points

Level Up!

Your [Berserker] Job has reached Level 20.

+6 Strength | +6 Vigor | +6 Dexterity

+2 Bonus Points

You have defeated a Divine Champion (Hesel).

The god, Hesel, has extended the same offer to you as he did to his previous Champion:

Divine Contract: Champion (Hesel)

Hesel, the God of Battle Sight and Clarity, has offered you a Divine Contract for slaying his previous Champion. Should you accept, you will gain a Divine Boon, and will become a Divine Champion of Hesel’s. You will be tasked with upholding Hesel’s name and standing by battling other Divine Champions and taking over rival settlements. For each settlement and Champion you conquer, your power will grow and your Divine Boon will enhance in rarity.

Shocked at all the EXP and level ups, Kale still didn’t understand how he was whole and hale. It wasn’t just his arm and hand that were there again… it was the unsettling awareness that he had regrown them.

Looking down at all the blood, he could still see his arm and his hand on the ground.

And yet, when he flexed his fingers, they felt real. No different than they had always felt. Perhaps a little better, actually.

His HP and MP were also full, which was unusual for leveling up.

Did this have something to do with achieving this odd “Copper Rank”? Kale hardly understood anything about the leveling system beyond the obvious, but at least this Copper business made the “Unranked” part of his Legend make sense.

Copper’s pretty weak if they’re going by the strength of metals. So that’s what I am, huh? Weak, but somehow still better than nothing. I’ll take it.

Especially if it could cause him to regrow lost limbs and pull him back from the brink of death.

There was that whole Divine Contract bullshit to deal with. Kale knew he didn’t want anything to do with it. He had been agnostic on Earth, and dammit, he wasn’t going to start fawning over a celestial being just because they were real here.

It helped that Hesel seemed like a massive asshole.

Not only did his previous “Divine Champion” nearly kill him and his entire group, but he had also been the one to start this conflict to begin with. Like hell Kale was going to turn around and accept his offer as if it was anything less than a slap in the face.

“You can take it,” Kale said to Simon, who looked up with a confused expression on his face.

“Take what?” He motioned to the corpse questioningly. “I figured you and I would split the loot, considering we killed him.”

“The Divine Contract,” Kale explained. “I don’t want it. Not if it means I’ll turn into a piece of shit like that.”

Simon’s confusion only grew. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps your… transformation has done something to your head.”

“My… what?”

Simon motioned at him, then pointed at his arm on the ground. “You rose up and started to glow for a second, then regrew your hand and arm.” Simon took a deep breath. “I thought you were dead, but when you grabbed his ankle… well, thanks. You saved my life. I owe you.”

Kale bent down and picked up his muscular arm by the bicep and gently patted Simon’s shoulder with its limp hand.

The young man looked absolutely horrified, which only made Kale’s booming laugh grow louder. “Think nothing of it,” he managed to say once he could speak again.

There was a distant ominous rumbling of thunder, as if denying the Divine Contract had pissed off Hesel. Good, go fuck yourself, Kale thought in the god’s general direction.

He didn’t want any part of that nonsense, especially if that sort of thing created this Allen person. Kale rolled him over with the toe of his boot then, for added insult, he slapped the man’s face with his own severed arm. “You could have just asked for help instead of trying to kill us.”

“He can’t hear you.”

“I know that! But this is cathartic.”

“As you say.”

Simon and Kale looted the man. Most of his armor was ruined from the combat. Whatever poison Simon used had eaten through much of his belongings, but he still had an excellent longsword and several [Health Potions] on him.

Kale wasted no time in taking the vials and two rings. Simon wanted the longsword and a few jewels they had found on him.

There was a pouch for money as well, more of those strange rel pieces. They split that up amongst themselves and Kale hurried up the hill toward the twins’ hiding spot.

He held up the ruby vials to the pair, who looked stunned to see him. However much EXP they had gotten from the fight, it was clear they hadn’t earned enough to hit the next Rank like he had.

It was unfortunate, but at least they had some [Health Potions] to spare. Kale tossed them over. Though they only took one apiece, the twins were looking much less wan by the time Kale finished telling them what happened.

Apparently, Chris had tried to intervene, but it hadn’t done much except slow the commander down. At least, that’s what he had thought from this distance. Kale told him the truth of the matter and even explained what happened when he hit Copper.

“You’re… uh, still holding your arm, dude,” Chris pointed out squeamishly.

“Oh, yeah.” Kale put it into his Inventory.

Kylie looked aghast. “Did you just—”

“Don’t give me that look, Kylie,” Kale said. “It’s mine, ain’t it? Got a right to it. Might be useful later.”

“You’re going to do something very unsettling and unfunny with it,” Kylie predicted.

“Very probably, yes.”

“Too bad Sam isn’t here,” Chris said, groaning as he got to his feet slowly. “He was the only person who clicked with your sense of humor.”

“He isa man of class and taste,” Kale said, stressing the present tense. Kylie and Chris had a hard time believing him that Sam was alive and that a ghost had visited him and explained it all.

They had asked some difficult to answer questions since. Such as, if the ghost could come once, why not come again to tell them where Sam was?

Kale didn’t know, and he didn’t want to burst his bubble of hope.

Simon trudged up the side of the hill, sporting the commander’s longsword at his hip.

“Dual wielding, are we?” Kale asked with a grin. Berserker had come with the [Dual Wield] Skill Sphere and Kale absolutely loved it. It was hard to fight against, and most people were simply overwhelmed by the number of strikes he could get off with his axes when he got going.

“It has come to my attention that I could be better served if I trained both long range and close quarters fighting,” Simon answered in that strangely detached way of his.

Kylie and Chris shared a look. Kale raised a questioning brow at them, but the twins shook their heads.

So, he hadn’t tried to betray them. Odd.

Not so long ago, that would have seemed impossible. Everything about the guy made it seem like he was the best person in the world.

It wasn’t that he was phony or obviously faking it, he was usually very sincere and easy to like. But Chris had gone to talk to him about one of the Tiles they were trying to set down when he overheard Simon talking to himself.

He was arguing with somebody, Chris had said, but there was nobody there. Talking about killing people, about getting rid of the dead weight. It was unsettling news, and it changed the way they all saw him.

Even Ping, who had been far more likely to side with Darren than anybody else, had rallied with the other three against Simon.

The guy didn’t know yet, but they had long since talked about exiling him or at least getting off at the next hospitable Skyshard.

It wasn’t anything personal, but none of them knew him very well, and you didn’t want to spend the apocalypse with a guy who argued with himself about killing you and your friends.

Ignoring a red flag like that was a one-way ticket to the Darwin Awards.

But now that he had risked his life to save them… Kale didn’t know what to think. Had he wanted to switch sides, he could have easily dispatched the rest of the group while they fought and offered the Skyshard to the commander.

Kale didn’t like thinking of him as Allen. It was too personal.

Much better if he didn’t think of the commander as a human being who had hopes, dreams, and aspirations of his own. Likely they were all bloody things that nobody but an insane person would want… but still, it made him too human.

He envied Kylie and Chris, who could kill from afar. They didn’t have to hear the screams or see the fear in the eyes of the people they had killed.

“Kale, you good man?” Chris waved his hand in front of his face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Again.”

“I’m good,” he promised them, swallowing the bile in the back of his throat. It wasn’t that he had killed another person that was bothering him.

It was the iron certainty that these were just the first people he would be forced to kill.