Chapter 34: The Frostscale Python

The spear went through clean.

Ashley’s scream tore through the clearing, disbelief written across her face as she stared down at the bronze spearhead jutting from her chest, blood already soaking through pale blue robes.

She spun toward Kael, mouth already opening some question, some demand for an explanation he had absolutely no intention of giving her.

He didn’t wait around for it. A flat, silent command sent the General straight into Combo Strike, and the spear found her three more times in rapid succession, each strike punching clean through a frame that had never been built to survive a real fight.

Her health bar evaporated, and she dissolved into a column of white light, yanked back to the nearest respawn point.

Kael was already moving before the light fully faded, the General falling back into step beside him without a backward glance.

Back in reality, Ashley tore her rig off and threw it onto the bed hard enough to bounce, practically shaking with fury.

"That absolute psycho"

Jenna poked her head in from the next room, drawn by the noise. "What happened? Didn’t take the bait?"

"Worse than that. He killed me. In cold blood, no warning, didn’t even let me finish a sentence."

Ashley’s voice climbed with every word, outrage building on itself. "I lost the skill book AND the quest progress. That’s it. That’s everything, gone."

Jenna’s face arranged itself into sympathy, though something colder sat underneath it a small, satisfied thought she kept carefully off her expression. Serves you right, running the same con twice in one lifetime.

Out loud, she leaned into outrage instead. "That’s insane. What kind of person does that? Absolutely no class."

"So what’s the move now?" Jenna asked. "You get any of it recorded? We could post the clip, make it public, wreck his reputation before the whole server finds out what he’s actually like."

"No." Ashley shook her head fast, already thinking past the suggestion. "A callout post gets clicks, sure, but it also burns the bridge completely.

And he’s bigger right now than Kael ever was at his peak." Her eyes narrowed, calculating. "If I can actually land him, he’s not just a payday he’s the payday. I’m not handing that off to some hate-thread."

"I’ll try again," she said, jaw set. "Worst case, I walk away with more material for later anyway. Either it works, or it gives me something to post that gets even more traction."

Jenna smiled and nodded along, though privately she couldn’t help wondering how someone this transparent kept managing to convince herself the act was working.

"Smart," she said instead. "Very smart." A beat. "Any word from Kael yet?" The name alone soured Ashley’s whole expression.

"Nothing. Not a single message." She scoffed, arms crossing tight. "Used to be, one bad fight and he’d show up at my door within the hour, flowers in hand, apologizing for something that wasn’t even his fault. Now? Radio silence.

Guess he finally grew a spine at the worst possible time." Honestly? Good riddance, she added, dropping onto the couch with a huff, already pulling her rig back toward her lap to plan her next attempt.

If Kael had been listening to any of that conversation, he’d have found the whole thing almost painfully funny.

Two years, poured into someone who’d taken every bit of it for granted and the instant something actually went wrong for him, her first instinct had been to put distance between them as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, a total stranger who’d just publicly murdered her in cold blood got a second chance, a third, an endless supply of second chances, because a stranger’s cruelty was somehow easier to forgive than an ex’s honesty.

Some people just weren’t built to recognize what they had until it stopped being convenient.

Back in the game, Kael pushed forward, the whole exchange already fading from his mind. At a sharp bend along the cliffside path, he tucked the General behind an outcropping of rock and waited.

The Assassins tailing him took the bait a few minutes later, and the ambush that followed was short and one-sided Kael and the Behemoth sweeping in from the front, the General cutting off the retreat. Most of the tail never stood a chance.

Two managed to activate stealth in time and vanish, wisely deciding a third loss in one day wasn’t worth testing.

With the pursuit finally handled, Kael allowed himself something close to relief, and pushed north at full speed for another half hour before the terrain finally opened up ahead of him.

Frostfang Ridge.

Most of what roamed this stretch of mountain sat somewhere between level 20 and 30 territory that would grind a full party to dust if they weren’t prepared for it, let alone a solo player barely out of the tutorial zone.

But the previous night’s haul the Lich, its four Acolytes, all that cross-tier experience had already carried Kael and both companions to level 16.

Stacked on top of the class passive and everything else he’d built since launch, the Ridge was rough, but far from impossible.

Killing the Python wasn’t even the whole reason he’d come this far north.

Kael intended to grind straight through to level 20 on this exact map, and be the first player on the server to trigger the game’s second class advancement.

Once that threshold cleared and once ten players worldwide had matched it Ascension would unlock full extraction: gold, gear, and abilities, convertible directly into value in the real world.

That was the moment everything about this game was about to change, for everyone, everywhere.

Getting there first, ahead of the wave, meant getting a head start nobody else on the planet would have.

Not long after setting foot on the Ridge, a pair of massive snow bears lumbered out from behind a drift, and Kael sent both companions forward without a second’s hesitation. The grind began in earnest.

Hours bled together after that bear after bear, wolf packs, the occasional frost elemental Kael and his companions carving a steady path across the Ridge’s frozen expanse from morning clear through to evening. By the time the sky had gone the color of a fresh bruise, all three of them sat at level 19.

One level shy of the threshold.

Then, cutting beneath a jagged overhang of stone, a bitter gust of wind and snow tore across the path ahead of him and buried somewhere inside it, a shape too large to be anything natural moved, vanished, and moved again.

Exactly what he’d come here for.

[FROSTSCALE PYTHON] (Gold-Tier Boss)

Level 25