Now, imagine the history of humanity.

Descended from apes that had walked the Old Earth, and having blossomed only in the last 5000 years of their existence, humankind was fairly late to the ecological party. Before they rose to prominence, time was measured in the millions of years, and divided into great epochs based on which creatures roamed the lands.

Humans were the last great species to roam Old Earth, and ultimately proved it’s utter destruction as well. The Moonfall shattered Old Earth, and broke all that had been forged. Mountains were leveled, the grand oceans burned, and all life was threated with a final and decidedly permanent death. There would have been no picking up the pieces again after such a cataclysm.

Except, humanity survived.

A Deity had descended upon them, and saved that which he could. He taught them to travel the stars, and helped those survivors to terraform and colonize what was once known to the Old Earth humans as Mars. Now, it’s known as Cradle, in remembrance to how it helped humanity to regain it’s footing and eventually become a goliath spanning the galaxy.

However, the most important thing the Deity did, was showing humanity how to unlock their most latent and powerful potential.

And thus were they Awakened.

Now, humanity has spread out all over the place. Almost every planetary system has a human presence in it somehow. This presence can vary from a few simple little space stations used as way-stations and communication relays, to the gigantic space-port cities sprawling halfway across terrestrial planets. Our main character here—Revian Snow, as she calls herself—lives in a modestly sized space-port. It is not the smallest, but neither does it approach the scale of those more central ports. It is average.

She’s a bit of an oddity however, as people with great strength are generally pulled into the closer reaches of the galaxy, nearer to the home planet Earth—which had been painstakingly nurtured back into a livable environment by several different Deities.

Only the most powerful people live there, though. The next best thing is living on Cradle, which has become one massive city encircling the entirety of the planet. For all intents and purposes, Cradle is the center of humanity if one is not a member of the High-Families.

From the center, humanity thins out the farther away you get. The space-port of Jor is actually fairly far out, and is quite a respectable size considering it’s relative remoteness and isolation. In fact, most of the traffic going through Jor is from the Navy of the Grand Earthen Alliance, who police the outermost border of humanity.

Unfortunately, said Border is not the best of places.

As in all civilizations, the outcasts, fanatics, and otherwise most extreme elements of a people gather around the fringes of society. In this case, that would be the Border. It’s not the best of places, and has recently been getting a bit worse.

What do I mean?

Well, let’s see for ourselves.

A group of ships is on patrol. They’ve already passed through Jor, and restocked on supplies before continuing on towards the Border areas. These ships have the Earthen Alliance emblems emblazed below their protruding brides, and are of a size that would classify them as corvettes.

Aboard the lead ship, a man with the rank of captain has just woken up. His name is Jerome Long, and he commands the Jutland, third ship of the Geronimo class. He’s been tasked with heading the 4th patrol fleet in monitoring the areas where the Border sectors begin.

However, right now he’s just concerned with getting showered and dressed for the day ahead. Military discipline meant that he didn’t take more than fifteen minutes getting ready though—after which he made his way down to the mess hall for breakfast.

As he ate, a few officers directly under his command came over, and started up his work day with various reports on what had happened while he was sleeping, what to expect for the day moving forward, and the state of the ship. Captain Long listened while eating, occasionally stopping to read a form or two.

Then, his day really started. Commanding the bridge of a ship can be tiresome and equally boring work, leaving Captain Long lots of time to think.

What might this man be thinking of?

Well, aside from the normal fears that plague a Captain, he ponders over some of the reports they’d been getting back from the borders in the past few months. He was more than slightly concerned, since by all accounts, strange things had begun happening as of late, with a research vessel even disappearing in the last two weeks. The most concerning thing about that incident however, was the fact that it literally just…disappeared. It had been sending data and signals back to the Center, and then it was just gone.

Of course, I know what happened, as I am the narrator here. But I can’t tell anyone. I’m sure it’ll be figured out in due time.

Anyway, the Captain was concerned about this. He didn’t like not knowing things, especially when the lives of all his subordinates could hang in the balance due to his decisions. He’s responsible for them, after all.

Captain long sighed a little, almost too preoccupied with thoughts about the research vessel to notice his second in command—Lieutenant Davis—sit down opposite him.

“Sir, another ship vanished last night—a patrol vessel this time.” She said, her face set into a grim professionalism.

Captain Long immediately paid more attention to her.

“Give me the details, Davis.” He said.

She pulled out some papers, likely with more precise information listed on the ship, it’s specifications, and the details of how it had vanished. She passed the papers to Captain Long. He started flipping through them, making sense of the technical jargon and data.

What he deciphered didn’t make him feel better—not at all.

The patrol ship was larger than the research vessel, and much better armed. It had more crew to go along with it’s increased size, and a continent of twenty Marines on board. The patrol ship—like the research vessel before it— had vanished suddenly. There was no word that something was about to happen, and all systems had been functioning normally up until the point where the comms just…cut out. The tech monkeys were baffled at the mysterious disappearances of not just one ship, but two now.

Now, Captain Long hoped that the ships were fine, and that they had just entered an as-of-yet unknown cosmic event that cut out communications. The fact that they lost contact with both ships right around the same place would indicate that this was a distinct possibility.

But Captain Long couldn’t banish that pit in his stomach. There was a part of him which was deeply suspicious of what was going on.

However, he knew they had no chance of doing anything other than attempting to recover those two ships. Firstly, command had already sent them orders to do so. Secondly, both ships had disappeared right on the edge of the Border. Right about where Captain Long’s patrol force was.

They would find out what had happened to those ships, whether they wanted to or not.

Oh well. As the narrator, I will observe what happens, and bring it back up at a convenient time, story wise. That’s just how things work.

Now then, I’ll bring you back to our main entertainment, while leaving the fate of Captain Long and his task force up in the air.

When I logged in, it was back in the clearing where we had last logged off. The sun was just beginning to climb up over the tree-line in Ashenload, and I could immediately see that I’m the first one here.

I didn’t have to wait long for the next member of our group to show up, though.

Spark appeared in a cornea of light on the opposite side of the clearing, holding his weapons and donning his armor. He looked around, immediately catching sight of me.

“Ah, Revy. You just get here?” He asked. I nodded in response. Spark, grinned, and opened up his player UI.

“Well, it’s 6:30 now. The others should be here soon, I think.”

No sooner had he spoken, then another light appeared in the clearing, and Diana appeared.

She noticed Spark and I, and walked over to where we were.

“Rina’s coming in a bit. She had something to finish up.” Said Diana. Again, I nodded.

So, we waited.

Both Xavier and Rina ended up getting here about the same time, only a few minutes later. As soon as they got here, everybody got up, and started making their way to the cave system. I held up a hand.

“Wait.” I called out. “One more coming.”

Everyone stopped abruptly, looking back on me with surprise.

“You got Eine to come?” Asked Xavier curiously. I nodded, and caught the look passed between Diana and Rina at this conformation. I suspect they knew a little about his true situation, after all.

Anyway, we stopped and waited a little for Eine to show up. He had to first log on, then teleport himself over to where we are.

So, he ended up arriving a few minutes later. Nobody really made a big deal of it when he showed up, though I could see that some people in the group were surprised that he had showed up. Other were surprised and/or suspicious of the fact that I was the only one who knew that he would be showing up.

Oh well. We started making our way to the caves.

After having had some time to think it over, Spark had ended up suggesting a solution to our lich problem.

Basically, we decided to go the cheap and dirty route. Liches, like all other undead creatures, are weak to any type of light—with sunlight being totally fatal for them in most cases. That being said, a lich normally has defenses against light. Most of them have spells designed to lower visibility, block light, or create thick fogs.

Now, Spark’s idea is simple, and easy to do, but would require flawless cooperation and a great deal of luck. Basically, we would use the earth magic inherent to some classes in order to erect a fake tunnel past the actual cave mouth. Then, the liches would be lured past the cave mouth, and into our fake tunnel. The tunnel would then be broken, letting the sunlight hit upon the unsuspecting liches.

Yeah, yeah. I know there are many, many problems with this plan, but it was the best they could come up with. Besides, I don’t think they’ll end up needing it anyway.

So, the fake tunnel extension was built fairly quickly. Not really caring about how authentic it looked, since the liches would likely be too occupied chasing us to notice smaller details, I think the finished product was workable.

Having finished our little trap, the group started to venture into the cave systems. This time, everyone was more prepared for the up-coming dash back to the surface. Spark had brought along potions designed to increase his movement speed for a time. Unfortunately, their effects were rather short-lived, so he ended up bringing along quite a few potions. They’re all set up in a bandolier slung across his chest from his shoulder for ease of access.

So, we cautiously ventured into the caves. There’s really no way for the others to know if the liches were where we had left them last time, or if they had reset back to their initial position deep inside the cave system, with the guilty noble. In other words, we moved as if the liches were around each and every bend in the cave.

Nothing happened, however, and we gradually relaxed. It was looking more and more likely that the liches would be found in the deepest part of the caves, like last time.

Additionally, we ended up getting more confident when venturing forth. That’s not to say we still weren’t being careful though, but rather that we simply stopped checking each and every nook and cranny as we continued onwards. There was a bit of a scary moment as we were about halfway through, where a clattering sound made almost everyone in the group instantly drawing their weapons, anticipating some sort of grand enemy around the corner.

Needless to say, it ended up just being a cave rat. We had a laugh about it, and continued on.

Eventually, we reached the point where the liches had been last time.

Except, the cave was empty this time.

There was just an opening in a back wall, leading deeper into the earth. We all shared a dubious and confused look, before unanimously deciding to go through the opening. What’s the worst that can happen?

Nothing, apparently. We keep going deeper and deeper, only to find that there was a single set of footprints to be found among the dust and dirt lining the cave floor. They were probably from the corrupt noble, who keep climbing downwards for some reason. Seeing no possible reason to stop, we simply kept going.

I mean, the whole thing felt a little odd. Well, more than a little, if the tenseness radiating from the rest of the group was any indication. But I didn’t think we’d be in any sort of danger quite yet.

You know what, I think I’ll skip over the rest of this quest. Just go over the high-lights, right?

So then, we never found the liches.

They were just gone. Poof, nowhere to be seen. We did, however, find the noble cowering at the deepest point of the cave system, curled up in the corner of an alter room of sorts.

Apparently, he has been dealing in the slave trade in an attempt to gain his own lich-dom. Basically, you had to present a number of sacrifices in order to gain the life force required for the transition or something like that.

Suffice to say, we made sure this guy was well accommodated on his ride back to the authorities. He wasn’t happy about it.

There was something odd that we noted though. The alter at the bottom of the cave systems—it radiated almost pure mana. Next time we come through, we’re checking that place out.

For sure. It looks interesting to the rest of the group.

Well, we logged out at this point.

No point in continuing to play, after our chief objective had been completed.

I’m sure that everyone else went to do leisure activities or something after exiting Ashenload.

As for me? I had to get ready for a meeting set to happen in a few hours.

It was time I met the information ring’s representative.