Ascension Online: My Beasts Evolve infinitely

”Server Announcement: Player Unrivaled has claimed the server-first kill of the Iron-Tier World Boss, Thornback Alpha. Rewards: +10 Reputation, +10 Gold, +1 Luck, Skill Unlocked [Lifechain] (S-Rank).”

For a solid three seconds, half the server went quiet.

Then it broke loose all at once.”No way. No way that’s real.”I can barely tag a stray dog outside spawn and some guy’s already cleared a boss?!

”Three hours. THREE HOURS into launch and someone’s already got a server-first.”

”Guild player, has to be. Nobody solos that this early without backup.”

”Forget the guild theory that’s a hidden class. Nothing else explains numbers like that.”

Two zones over, in Haven’s Rest Millbrook Post, five players stood knee-deep in slime guts, mid-grind.

Ironclad’s starting five the exact squad that used to run beside Kael, minus one.

Server assignment in Ascension clustered players by real-world proximity, so a team logging in together from the same office usually landed in the same spawn zone. No surprise they’d ended up stacked in one place.

Four of them sat at level 3. The fifth Ryan Tanner was already sitting at level 5, riding a mountain of experience the other four had been feeding him since the servers opened.

The announcement rang out overhead, and all five faces soured at once.

”Are you kidding me someone already took the boss kill?”Who even is this Unrivaled guy? He’s outpacing our entire clear plan solo.

”Please. Lucky pull. Put us in front of that boss and we clean it up just as fast.”

That last line came from the squad’s healer, arms crossed, lip curled.

She peeled off toward Ryan a second later, sliding an arm through his and leaning in soft. ”Don’t let it get to you. I’ve already got people out scouting boss spawns.

The second we find one, that Gale-class of yours plus four of us on support clears it without breaking a sweat. Iron-tier’s gone fine. Bronze-tier’s ours.”

The healer was Cynthia Miles.

Ever since Kael’s exit, she’d folded herself straight into the starting roster’s support slot though the avatar standing next to Ryan bore almost no resemblance to the woman who’d stood at the head of that conference table.

Narrow eyes, thin lips pressed into a permanent sneer, a frame with none of the curves her real body carried.

Ascension didn’t let you touch your appearance. What you saw here was what was actually underneath all that money.

Ryan’s jaw tightened at the arm looped through his, something close to disgust flickering behind his eyes gone before it reached his face.

”Thanks, Cynthia.” He smiled instead, easy and practiced. ”Mercer’s out of the picture now. Somebody’s got to step up and carry this org. Might as well be me.”

The name landed differently across the group. A couple of glances got traded.

Cynthia’s mouth curved into something ugly and satisfied.

”Don’t worry about him. I’ve already got people handling it.” A short laugh. ”Give it a few more days and he won’t have a name left worth anything. No club in the country’s going to touch him after this.”

”I want to watch that spine of his finally crack.” She said it almost fondly. ”He’ll come crawling back on his knees eventually. They always do.”

Back in the forest, Kael had no idea he was the subject of that conversation and wouldn’t have cared if he did.

He was busy tearing into his loot screen.

A skill book sat glowing at the top of his inventory, gold light pulsing off the edges.

[LIFECHAIN]

Grade: S

Effect: Bind yourself to a companion. While active, 80% of all damage you take is redirected to the bound companion instead.

Cost: 10 mana/sec

Cooldown: 10s

Kael read it twice, and the second time through, a slow grin spread across his face.

There it is. The exact hole in this class, patched.

Every Beastlord build had the same glaring weakness the caster themselves. Companions could tank a mountain, but the second someone got past the beast and onto the actual player, that fragile, squishy human body ended the fight fast.

Lifechain solved that outright. And it wasn’t just any companion sitting behind him right now the Husk was built like a wall, health pool already climbing past two thousand and rising. Redirecting damage onto that thing wasn’t a risk. It was a resource.

Three more items sat waiting below the skill book loot dropped from the Alpha’s corpse.

Rugged Fur Boots

DEF 11

AGI +5

Lv. 4

Blood claw Dagger

ATK 13–15

STR +6

Lv. 5

Braided Hide Wristguard

DEF 10

CON +5

Lv. 4

Drop rates in Ascension were brutal by design. Kael had gone through easily two hundred hares and walked away with four scraps of basic gear to show for it.

Three Iron-tier pieces off a single boss, stat-rolled this clean, would’ve made any fresh spawn-zone player start salivating on the spot.

Problem was, none of it fit him. Every scrap of experience he’d earned had gone straight into the Husk he was still stuck at level 1, nowhere near the requirement to wear any of it. The gear went into storage instead, tagged for later.

The Husk, meanwhile, had eaten enough experience off that one kill to jump straight to level 6. Stacked on top of the class passive, its stats were already brushing up against Bronze-tier boss territory for its level bracket.

Kael checked its health bar nearly topped back off and nodded to himself.

”Back on your feet. Good. Let’s move.”

Stacking health had never been the actual goal. It was the foundation. Once that foundation sat high enough, phase two could start.

The game was barely three hours old. Every early-server achievement was still sitting on the table, untouched first Bronze-tier kill, first player to hit level 10, first class advancement.

Every single one paid out rewards most players wouldn’t see for weeks.

He’d already claimed one first. He had no intention of leaving the rest for anyone else.

Before moving on, Kael crouched over the Alpha’s corpse and hacked its head free with the rusty longsword.

There was a hidden quest chain tucked away in this starting zone one that paid out serious rewards for turning in the heads of three Iron-tier bosses and one Bronze-tier.

Most players would spend their first week just stumbling across bosses by accident, praying for a lucky spawn.

Kael didn’t need luck. He’d lived this exact zone once already knew every boss spawn point in it like his own front door.

He shoved the head into his pack, called the Husk to heel, and turned west.

He had a route to run.