Chapter 244: Advance

Congratulations! You have advanced from Shattered Healer to Harbinger of Light(Unique). You may now level up to a maximum of 300. The following skills have changed:

[Heal(Intermediate)] -> [Greater Heal(Advanced)]

[Smite(Intermermediate)] -> [Smite(Advanced)]

[Cleanse(Intermermediate)] -> [Cleanse(Advanced)]

[Bless(Intermermediate)] -> [Bless(Advanced)]

[Healing Wind(Intermermediate)] -> [Aura of Healing(Advanced)]

[Light of Eirene] -> [Harbinger of Light]

[Avatar of Eirene(Intermermediate)] -> [Avatar of Eirene(Advanced)]

[Aura of Light(Intermermediate)] -> [Aura of Light(Advanced)]

[Holy Mastery(Intermermediate)] -> [Holy Mastery(Advanced)]

Eligible Path of the Stars skills have been upgraded to their Advanced versions.

Congratulations! You have obtained the following new skills with your class [Harbinger of Light(Unique)]: [Resurrect], [True Form(Unique)(Passive)], [Divine Aid(Unique)], [Purifying Light].

Resurrect

Required Deity: Eirene

Call upon the light of the stars to return life into a fallen NPC. This skill does not work on other players. Using this skill requires, and consumes, Souldust. NPCs whose souls have been consumed by an Avatar of Darkness cannot be resurrected until their soul has been freed.

Cast Time: 10 minutes (-1s per level)

Cost: 5000 (-5mp per level)

Consumable Requirements: 1lb Souldust. (-0.01lb per level)

Cooldown: 48 hours

True Form(Unique)(Passive)

Required Deity: Eirene

While Avatar of Eirene is active, wings of light will appear on the back of the casting player. These wings can be controlled and manipulated in order to allow the Avatar of Eirene to fight with them, defend themselves or their allies, or fly. Wings made of light are vulnerable to extreme darkness.

Divine Aid(Unique)

Required Deity: Eirene

Call upon the aid of the Goddess of Eirene to assist you under dire circumstances. The nature of her assistance will depend on the situation in which she is called. The use of this skill has a high chance of weakening your connection with the Goddess Eirene and removing you from your role as the Harbinger of Light.

Cooldown: 30 days

Purifying Light

Required Deity: Eirene

Expend all of your remaining mana and disable all forms of mana recovery for 30 seconds, releasing your mana as light to all nearby allies. Fully restores the health, and partially restores the mana of all allies within 30 meters of you regardless of line of sight. Fully removes all status ailments affecting allied targets, with few exceptions.

Cast Time: 3 seconds

Cost: 100% of current MP

Health Recovered: 100% of Targets HP

Mana Recovered: 20% Of Allied MP

Effects Removed: Bleed, Disease, Poison, Curse, Petrify, Slow, Morph, Burn, Mental, Fear

Cooldown: 1 hour

Aegis kept silent, patiently reading over the details of each skill. He was able to hold back his excitement solely due to the fact that there were no other players in his immediate vicinity, only Clara staring at him expectantly as if she had something more to say.

He was somewhat relieved to see that despite learning four new skills, none of them were able to be improved upon by leveling them up. With that in mind, though, he shifted his attention to his older skills to see what had changed.

Apart from the numbers going up, nothing much, until he reached the skill that replaced his previous Light of Eirene skill. The same skill that was once pacifism, and gave him so much trouble as he started out in the game world.

Harbinger of Light(Unique)(Passive)

Required Deity: Eirene

A blessing granted to one who represents Eirene’s ideals and stands in her name upon the surface of the Shattered World, spreading her light to all those who need it.

Effect: Increases Experience Gained by 200% for all non-offensive skills.

Effect 2: Allows the Harbinger to have two auras active at once.

Restriction: This skill is lost if the favor of Eirene is lost. Taking actions that do not align with Eiren’s ideals will reduce your favor with her. It is possible to regain lost favor through penance, should a High Priest or Prophet of Eirene forgive your actions.

Once he’d finished reading it over, he gave one final glance to his new healing wind skill - now named Aura of Healing. The skill would now heal all nearby allies so long as the aura was active, at the cost of mana. After reading it, Aegis began scratching his chin and pondering how to combine this aura with either his aura of light, or his aura of beauty. His eyes wandered along the ceiling as he did this, theorycrafting various uses of the abilities, before he eventually began to ponder something else.

“Souldust…” He mumbled out loud to himself. “Do you know where to obtain it?”

“I do not, I have never heard of such a thing.” Clara replied with a shrug.

“Hm…” Aegis opened up his interface once more and began searching into the database, ignoring the fact that his viewership was spiking up high again. Despite using the search functionality of the database, and checking related topics, he came up with nothing. There was no mention of something called ‘souldust’ anywhere in the database. “That means no one has ever found it, or figured out how to craft it…” He mumbled out loud to himself again, causing Clara to look at him curiously.

“I’m sure all of this new power being granted to you by our goddess must be overwhelming. But when you have a moment, Eirene has a task for you that she is quite eager for me to give.” Clara smiled patiently.

“Oh. Right. Of course. What is it?” Aegis waved away his interface to be more attentive to Clara. She gave a polite bow.

“The seed you were given - the wildling Bihi’s lifeforce resides within it. Please, allow me to infuse her with the light of Eirene.” Clara held her hands out expectantly with a smile. Aegis nodded in response and accessed his inventory through his interface to draw out the seedling he’d received from the Great Old One, then gently placed it into Clara’s hands. Clara then clasped both her hands tightly around the seed, closed her eyes, and began a quiet chant.

After a few moments, light could be seen escaping the slits of her closed eyelids, as well as shining brightly out of the small spaces between her clasped fingers. The light brightened, overtaking the red glow of nearby lanterns and illuminating the surrounding monastery in purifying white light, until eventually subsiding. Several other acolytes had stopped what they were doing to watch, as well as a couple of curious low level priest players.

Eventually, Clara opened her hands and presented the seedling to Aegis, now giving off a powerful glowing light.

“Bihi is now infused with the light of Eirene. Should she grow up from a sapling to a tree, she will emit a light great enough to push back any and all surrounding darkness. From the leaves she bears, we will be able to obtain a foothold in the abyssal lands that lie below Kalmoore, and begin our campaign to retake the land from the clutches of evil. Eirene can trust no one other than you with this duty…” Clara smiled again as a quest appeared in front of Aegis’ eyes.

Quest[1/10]: Find a suitable location on the land below the Shattered islands, within the abyss, to plant the seedling of Bihi. Use any means necessary to help her grow into a mature tree, and keep her safe from the inevitable onslaught of abyssling creatures that will attempt to destroy her.

Objective: 0/1 Bihi Fully Grown

Quest Giver: Great Prophet Clara, Kalmoore

Reward: Master Class: (Unknown)

Difficulty: Extreme(V)

Restriction: Bihi must survive. You must be a Harbinger of Light to complete this quest.

As Aegis finished reading over the details, his eyes went anxiously wide at the sight of the difficulty listing, and the quest reward.

“As a Harbinger of Light, you stand as a representative of all gods of light who seek to disperse the darkness of the abyss. You have the ability to call upon the other priests of this world to assist you. Should you need their aid, please let me know the details of your request, and I will make sure to share the request with all other Prophets, so that they may call upon the other-worlders that worship other gods to assist you in the name of the light.”

“So, I can trigger a global quest for all divine class players, regardless of who they worship? Sounds serious… I mean, it makes sense. The difficulty does say Extreme five…” Aegis mumbled to himself.

“Did he just say extreme five? Is that the world's first extreme five quest? I think it is…” Hae-won spoke with excitement as Aegis’ chat began to zoom by at extreme speeds, filled with excitement. Hae-won was only just barely able to read out a few of the messages zooming by.

“Extreme V? Is that even going to be possible?”

“AEGIS, ACTIVATE THE WORLD QUEST! ILL HELP!”

“LETS UNITE WITH AEGIS!”

“y does the kid w/ daddy issues get all the cool quests?”

“Maybe he can ask Makaroth for help? They can finally team up!”

“AEGIS PLZ CRAFT ME MITHRAL SWORDS!!”

Hae-won found herself just rolling her eyes at it, opting to pretend she was talking to herself and continued her commentating.

After finishing his conversation, Aegis made his way out of the monastery and back down the road towards Rene. He was barely paying attention to where he was walking, stumbling over various rocks that lined the road several times. He was instead staring at his new abilities, reading over the new values of each of them excitedly. Before he knew it, he was back in Rene.

The players were much more alert and aware of his presence this time around, and as he walked along through the streets he got many cheers of encouragement. Multiple players stopped to shake his hand and congratulate him with smiles on their faces - some completely unfamiliar to him and some he’d seen walking around the city several times now. Ruffily, Amlie, Josephine and Erikson all caught him as he traveled through the townsquare to give their congratulations and cheers, and eventually he’d made his way back to the training hall.

This time, as he peered into the hall, his party members stopped what they were doing. Pyri canceled her cinderbolts, Darkshot pulled his arrows back to his quiver using skillful redirects, and Rakkan canceled his echoes. Lastly, to his surprise, Lina revealed herself by stepping out of the shadows of the walls surrounding the training hall, and all four walked towards him.

“Were you hiding here this whole time?” Aegis looked at Lina in surprise, glancing from the very light shadows that she’d stepped out from, then up to the bright afternoon sun now shining down on them.

“Mhm. I’m much better at manipulating shadows now with my new class.” Lina replied with a big proud smile on her face. As she stepped towards him he noticed a faint cloud of dark mist swirling around her wrists. “I’m a Shadow Assassin.”

“That’s nothing.” Darkshot quickly butted in, stepping forward. “I’m a Sharpshooter. Check this out…” He said as he nocked an arrow and aimed it up towards the sky. All eyes fell on him as he waited with a dramatic pause before rapidly shooting out 10 arrows within a second. They disappeared into the bright sky above almost instantly, but with a downward wave of his hands, all 10 arrows shot back down from the sky and landed on the ground around Aegis, forming a perfect circle.

“That’s pretty cool. What about you two?” Aegis smiled at Darkshot before turning to Pyri and Rakkan.

“Ancient Knight. Rune combinations.” Rakkan said as he waved his hands to cast Rune:Echo - which Aegis recognized due to the rune shape. But following this, he imprinted his enlarged rune onto the echo, making the copy of himself triple his size. He then added his Frostbrand rune, and the giant echo began to give off a faint blue glow.

“Whoa. Any combination?”

“Any. The more runes we find, the more options I’ll get.” Rakkan shrugged.

“I’m a magelord.” Pyri said proudly.

“Magelord? What do they do?”

“Hm…” Pyri eyed Aegis’ live streaming icon. “You’ll have to wait and see.” She smiled deviously.

“Fine.” Aegis rolled his eyes at her. “I’m just glad everyone was able to complete their class quests.”

“You too, man. You took the longest. What’d you get?” Darkshot asked him excitedly.

“Oh, check this out. You’re going to love it.” Aegis smirked as he took a step back. “Avatar of Eirene!” He shouted loudly, erupting in a burst of light as usual, but as not per usual, two large white glowing wings of light formed on his back.

“No way, you got wings?” Darkshot asked with his jaw dropped.

“It’s so pretty!” Lina gasped.

“Not bad…” Pyri nodded approvingly, while Rakkan smirked. “Can you control them like that other guy could?”

“I think so…” Aegis replied, before awkwardly attempting to manipulate the wings. The result was him flailing them around and almost slapping Darkshot, had he not reacted fast and backstepped out of range of the wing. “Sorry… gonna need some practice first.” Aegis cringed.

“We all do. We’ve got a few weeks left before the tournament. Are you guys ready to practice PvPing?” Pyri asked.

“Someone say PvP?” A loud voice called out from behind them, at the entrance to the training grounds. Herilon stood there, walking towards them with a big eager smile on his face, with Sapphire following closely behind him munching on a carrot. “Count me in. Let’s do some PvP.” Herilon rubbed his hands together excitedly, prompting Aegis and his party to all smile, eager anticipation in their eyes.