Chapter 10: Spreading Out
“Nobody’s nearby,” Leese reported, as Raine withdrew the new, much larger and much heavier Cato-spear from her spatial storage. Not that either of them expected anyone else to be atop the enormous plateau, but their previous run-ins had shown that they were more obvious than they would have liked. In a process that had become exceedingly familiar, Raine prepared the weapon by slotting in the small vial of living green powder, revived with water, and then hefted it as she aimed into the air.
The air boomed as the heavy spear vanished into the night sky over the world of Kesul, dozens of links away from where Sydea used to be. It was just one of many worlds they’d seeded since their ascension to Platinum, working their way through the map that Cato had gotten from Yaniss. Both to stay away from the area near Uriva, where all their trouble originated, and to catch up their equipment. They’d taken to cycling between delving through dungeons and striking out to new worlds, seeding a few dozen before returning to the most promising spots.
“Which dungeon was next?” Raine knew the list they’d gotten from Cato just as well as Leese did – she hardly forgot anything anymore – but Leese was better at actually using that knowledge.
“[Great Zokan Heights Dungeon],” Leese said, waving in the direction of the far end of the plateau. “It has a chance of spear growth weapons. Not much, but it’s something.”
“That would be a relief,” Raine said. At Platinum, they were really feeling the lack of appropriate equipment. Even if it was lower rank, the multiplier-type equipment they’d found before was surprisingly powerful with their advantages, giving them strength and speed above anything a normal, well-equipped Platinum would have, but their edge had been distinctly blunted with the vast majority of their equipment being catch-as-catch-can Silver and Gold drops.
The two of them turned, and their movement Skills brought them across the plateau and its nearly continent-sized breadth in a matter of minutes. Each step of her still B-tier [Inferno Footsteps] blinked her forward in space, while beside her Leese’s ice equivalent did something similar with bursts of fire and frost flickering across the landscape. It wasn’t like Arene’s wings, back on Sydea, but it was still a genuine teleportation.
Even months later, Raine Talis found Platinum to be both unbelievable and underwhelming.
Unbelievable, because for most of her life a rank that high had been a distant dream, the end result of ages of hard work and scraping by. They’d saved tokens and taken risks for years just to reach Gold, and moving past Gold would have been harder still. Underwhelming, because with Cato as a patron it had not only been fairly easy, but was now merely the uncomfortable middle child between the anonymity of Gold and the true power of Bismuth.
They wouldn’t even know if they could jump directly to Bismuth until they reached the cap and got the quest, and could see if they had already completed a Feat of Glory. Something that was still a long time away. Before, their ability to delve a rank upward meant that by the time they completed the ascension quest they had a good amount of essence banked, enough to jump them partway through the new tier.