B5 Chapter 60 – Platinum Rank

Author note: Going to be some retcon and rewrites which isn’t something I like to do, but I feel is justified in this instance.

I was pushing for a few scenes I thought would be cool and believed I needed Tyron to stay Gold for that, but I actually don’t, and I agree that the whole adventure to the Realm of the Dead, and the whole book as an extension, feels like a waste if he doesn’t get level 80 here and now.

So that’s the change. I’m going to rework the battle scene to make it a bit more epic. More losses probably. I’ll change it so the wyvern brings the ghoul baddie through the portal so Tyron gets to kill and study him. Then, at the end of the last chapter, he’ll perform the status ritual and see that he’s reached eighty, and then this chapter will continue from that point.

Again, I don’t like to do it, but I feel like this is going to be a much better book with this change.

Looking at that number on the page, eighty, Tyron felt powerful emotions stir behind his eyes. He choked out a strangled laugh, then blinked to clear the moisture from his eyes.

He’d done it. This was the milestone that Magnin and Beory had reached and so many others had failed to attain. In a world where Ggold was the upper limit allowed to Slayers, his parents had dared to go beyond, demanded it, and now he too had reached that same stage.

With trembling hands, he placed the status sheet down, then folded it in his lap.

If he were asked, he genuinely couldn’t say why it affected him so much, but seeing that number… It made him feel like he was sitting at the dinner table, his mother and father playfully ribbing each other as they prepared the food together while he watched. Just back from another adventure, they still smelled like the road, like blood and oil and smoke and steel, but as always, they revelled in it.

He would sit and watch them, his legs dangling from the tall seat, as the two strongest Slayers into the entire Western Province, to him, the two strongest in the entire world, prepared a simple stew. When it was ready, they would turn to him with broad smiles, asking him how he’d been, what he was learning, as they sat beside him and threw their arms over his shoulders.

Even then, when he’d only been five or six years old, he’d known he wanted to be like them.

In fact, it went beyond a want, he needed to be like them. Deep down, he’d always expected he would make it, that he would succeed and climb to the same heights they had attained. It hadn’t been an ambition for Tyron, it had been a fact. He refused to live in their shadow his entire life, it wouldn’t be tolerated. No, he had to make it, otherwise how could he possibly justify staying by their side?

Now that he’d done it, now that he’d finally made it, for the first time in years, he felt close to his parents again.

And it hurt like hell.

For several long minutes, he simply lay back on the grass and endured. Pain was followed by anger, then grief, then pain, then anger. His rage was incandescent, all-consuming, and in its wake he was left shuddering, with the taste of ash in his mouth. His pain was hard-edged and sharp, like the knife that pierced Magnin and Beory’s hearts, it dug deep into his chest and carved out a space for itself, nestling there like a dragon in its den.

And his grief. It crushed him all over again.

Every member of the horde gave him space as he lay back and let his emotions roll through him. Perhaps he’d locked them away for too long, leaving himself icy cold and unfeeling so that he could do what had to be done, so now they came boiling to the surface.

Or perhaps, even years later, he was still suffering from the events atop the mountain, outside the rift at Cragwhistle.

Regardless, Tyron wept. Tears slid down the sides of his face as he stared into the sky and tried not to think.

When at last the waves of crushing emotion had receded, he felt hollow and listless, as if his insides had been scraped out along with his feelings. Fatigue, or more accurately, exhaustion still gripped him. It would take time for him to recover from his journey to the Realm of the Dead, a while until he felt like himself again.

Filetta had been right, he should have waited to perform the ritual. How else could he explain this excess of emotion? He hadn’t cried since the day he had sealed the remains of his parents in their crystal tombs, and on that day he’d thought he probably never would again.

Scrubbing at the sides of his face, he summoned the ever-present hatred inside him, trying to use it as fuel for the fire, to gain the energy he needed to focus and complete the ritual. This was important, perhaps the most important status ritual he would enact in his entire life. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes.

A guttering ember compared to the roaring flame it usually was, the wisps of hate were all the emotion he had left in him after that outpouring. Carefully, he stoked the flames, terrified it would gutter out, and soon he felt the warmth of it heating him from the inside once again. When he was ready, he sat up and shook himself, trying to throw off the bone-deep lethargy that gripped him.

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Soon, he felt as ready as he was ever going to be, and went back to reading the sheet.

You have raised Skeletons and they have fought on your behalf. Imperator of the Endless Horde has reached level 80.

Seven levels at once was going to be a large influx of attributes. If the Platinum rank provided a boost just like bronze, silver and gold, then he may well pass out when the ritual was complete.

Excitement coiled in his belly at the prospect of reaching platinum rank. Gold was rare amongst the Slayers he’d grown up with, a goal that not many reached, and once they did, they were rarely seen ever again. Most toiled in Silver, either retiring or dying without ever getting higher. Nobody knew about the Platinum rank, even his parents had never told him anything about it.

Very, very few achieved this level in the Empire. There had to be a reason it was so restricted, and Tyron was eager to see what that might be.

That would take place when he ended the ritual. In the meantime, he had to choose two feats and four abilities.

He turned his attention to the list of feats first. With fewer to choose from, it would be easier to make his selection.

Fighting the urge to skip through these selections as quickly as possible, Tyron settled his mind and focused. Every option would be given proper consideration, no careless mistakes. Without a Class Guide of any sort, he had to be ten times as careful as anyone else.