Chương 113: BECMI Chapter 112 – The Roads to Immortality

Candidates for Immortality were called Immortal Aspirants. Normally, the first step was for the mortals themselves to start actively seeking the Roads to the Immortal. This could be done with research, seeing wise men, or simply being powerful and attracting the attention of prospective Immortal Patrons, who would let dribbles and drabs come forth.

Then the potential Aspirants sought out a particular locale where they might meet a particular Immortal, reaching this secluded location while suffering the tests of character from their Patron. If they succeeded in drawing the Immortal's attention, by a bribe or gift and simply be being that damn awesome, they were informed of the proper paths to take and strive for Immortality. Five Spheres, five different Roads, although Entropy had the broadest and nastiest, as it was a dark reflection of the others.

The questing and trials of the Roads were as important as the end goal. Increases in personal strength were a given, and different Spheres favored different Classes and species. The first thing that had to be done was recovering an Artifact of the Sphere you were questing on. Given the limited number of Artifacts and how they were usually hidden and buried, this could be quite the quest all on its own.

The second thing was to prepare a Testimonial, a legend that would endure and carry on your history, philosophy, and legends, forming the potential foundation for your mortal followers once you Ascended. Both active followers and a monument were required, and active participation in establishing both. The third thing was to complete a Test appropriate to the Sphere. The fourth thing was to complete a legendary Task appropriate to the Sphere.

Once all were done, it was up to the whim of their Patron to see if they would Ascend, although continued persistence would eventually gain approval, regardless, unless they did something disastrous or wrong… or were lured away by another Patron.

Earth/Matter's Road was called the Polymath, and the objective was to demonstrate mastery of all standard Classes. It favored warriors, mastery of mortal skills, and perseverance. This Road required excellent ability scores, and was nominally aligned to Earth. As Humans were the only normal mortal race about who could be all four Classes, this road intrinsically favored them…

but Halcyon elven magic could duplicate clerical powers, there were dwarf-priests and mages and Artificers, and thiefly attitudes could be duplicated with the right spells and magic items. Basically the hyn were kind of shafted, as they couldn't master any form of arcane magic, and gnomes didn't exist in this current time period… and had no aptitude with clerical magic in the future.

The Polymath ostensibly had to start their road over and attain Five in all three Classes they did not have, before Questing anew for a specific Artifact each time. Each time they succeeded in regaining it, they had to start over in a new Class. Once they completed their three extra careers, they then had to adventure solo until they reached Twelve in each Class.

Furthermore, they needed to raise up a bunch of adventuring comrades, keeping them all alive over the course of their questing, to form part of their Testimony during their Quests. Completion of all these resulted in Ascension to Immortality, with their Patron's help.

The Road of Water and Time was that of the Dynast, basically establishing a legacy across time. It favored Clerics, Faith, and Wisdom, building up a legacy of family and followers and stretching it across the ages. The Quest required finding an Artifact which allowed traveling through time. The Trial involved traveling forward through time and thrice helping their own descendants and followers to save the dynasty the Aspirant had established and keep it alive and moving forward.

The Testimony was about establishing a kingdom or equivalent with a population of at least fifty thousand humans, or ten thousand demi-humans. So, Water's Road meant becoming a ruler, or, more often, the founder and hierophant of a new church or religion. The final Task was sitting that throne for at least twenty years, and having a living grand-child or similar descendant as heir to inherit the throne at the end of that time.

It didn't actually require bloodlines, a philosophical heir or adopted child was fine, but an heir had to be there. Naturally the realm would be tested by Immortals during that time period...

The Road of Fire and Energy was called the Paragon. It represented mastery of Magic and fundamental forces, change, power, and the willingness to use them. It totally and unabashedly favored arcane magic-users of all stripes, of course, and was probably the most pursued of all the Paths, as pretty much all Wizards reaching High Archmage (Thirty) naturally all vied for Immortality, and outnumbered all other Classes combined at those Levels of power.

They also checked one another nicely, interfering with one another's bids for power, ensuring only the most committed and devoted could attain the prize. The Quest was to find whatever Artifact of Energy their Patron bid them retrieve, usually from another mage who had found it and also needed it for their Road. Competition, and basically stealing a McGuffin from another Aspirant! Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

The Trial involved the creation of a unique magic item made by the character alone, complete with a nigh-impossible or legendary ingredient, such as the sound of a cat's footfall used in the Rope Gleipnir. The Testimony involved recruiting at least six apprentices who had to rise at least twelve Levels in their service.

The Monument aspect of this involved transforming the landscape for at least a hundred miles around their home, giving it a unique appearance and specific cultural identity, usually with a highly magical bent to it. The Task, the Challenge to Power, was the biggest check. The Paragon had to be recognized as the most powerful wielder of magic for a thousand miles around their home. Refusing to recognize their eminence meant dueling any mages who did not bow, or driving them out of the area.

There was nothing that said those mages couldn't gang up to defeat you, too, and most would happily do so in order to check any other powerful Wizard they didn't want looming over them. The Challenge to Power was a major event, and would naturally draw other Aspirants to Paragon like flies to a corpse, all of them striving to prove themselves the superior mage.

Of course, being the Aspirant had to be at least a High Archmage themselves, and likely would be an Overmagus, most of the weaker arcanists would just kneel. Elves without Elven Wizard could pursue this Class simply by making a home far from higher-Level human Wizards. Non-Wizards who could beat the crap out of Wizards could also do the same, but it was rare and difficult, and they still had to create a unique magic item.

Ostensibly, Donner of the Ayenser had done it by forging his unique Hammer Moller as a mage-slaying weapon and taking them to pound town.

The last basic Road was that of Air and Thought, the Legendary Hero. It favored creativity, skill, daring, and innovation, and favored Thieves, Mystics, and other such 'clever' rogues and swashbucklers. The Aspirant had to Quest to find a powerful Artifact from Thought. This was often made difficult by Entropy. That was because the Hero's Trial was to DESTROY an Artifact of Entropy, meaning Legendary Heroes were Entropy's most hated branch of Aspirants.

As their Testimony, they had to train up a successor, and create a Legendary Weapon to be passed down to them. Lastly, their Task was literally about being a hero, a paragon of daring, valor, and pursuit of goals, someone bards and minstrels would sing about as a true Hero. They had to pursue a quest with a legendary scale, such as counting all the grains of sand on the beaches of an island chain, driving all dragons from the land, bringing down an ancient and lasting source of Evil, or the like.

The tale had to live on in legends to inspire others to greatness.

I had a rough idea of these Roads, built up of rumors and legends around them, but it was nice seeing the bones of them laid out like that. The meat actually came from the Immortal Patrons, who could make them ridiculously hard to complete or comparatively easy, depending on how they favored their Aspirants… or on the arrogance and hauteur of such Aspirants, of course. The Entropic Roads were complete inversions of the other four, stylized as The Traitor, The Ravager, The Mastermind, and The Epic Villain.

The Traitor focused on stopping the rise of heroes and killing them off before they could become powerful, and all their friends and allies, too, using betrayal. It was the Road that was the bane of adventuring parties, and enjoyed by assassins. The Ravager was the Dynasty-destroyer, bringing down kingdoms and empires, ending bloodlines, destroying philosophies, and burying them all in the trashbin of history, the more violently and completely the better.

It succeeded best when the Immortals who founded the Dynasties actually had to be the ones to eliminate them. As a side aspect, forming a cult of nihilism that yet endured through the ages and worked to end such Dynasties was considered a plus. Barbarian hordes and cults of pleasure and sadism were of equal use here, and its hallmark high point was genocide and cultural extermination, with the acute failure of Immortal Patrons and Aspirant Dynasts considered the mark of true Entropic greatness.

Most importantly, the armies of the Ravager couldn't survive their death. They had to break up and destroy themselves with infighting once they passed on, instead of creating a true dynasty of their own! The Ravager was the Road taken by most humanoid hordes. Build up an unstoppable army of savage marauders, and go trample down anything that got in their way, then destroy themselves once their hero passed!

The Mastermind was about bringing down Paragons, destroying the landscape, butchering their apprentices, and bringing others together to suppress and destroy any overweening idiot who thought they were better than you. If done from the shadows, all the better, using everyone and everything around you to destroy your opponents, including those you trained up to die for you.

The Epic Villain was the darling of the anti-heroic Road, but worked on all of them, succeeding best when either consigning a would-be Legendary Hero to die in obscurity and be forgotten as a total or reviled failure, or when said Hero embraced villainy and was corrupted to Entropy as one of its own, becoming a villain unmatched who was never caught and punished, and even their own successors couldn't rise up and kill.

There was another Road that existed, but Jillius didn't know of it, because it didn't exist in this time as of yet. It was rumored to exist as an extension of the Radiance in Zanzyr, and down in my homelands, whispered about in my mother's tomes, but only truly accessed by the priests of Gaebrel. During my forty years of downtime in the Inn, I'd had plenty of time to investigate the rumored uses of the Radiance while its power was spilling out into the world and before it was fully leashed by Immortal power.

In fact, given how I had worked it out, I was probably the first person temporally to do so, and likely had formed the Road myself. The Radiant Road. The spell used the power and strength of the whole planet's magic to form a Corridor of Ascension. Using the magic, if you could walk to the end of the Road and open the Portal there, you would step directly into Immortality. Quick. Clean. Simple.

Avoided all the competition and pageantry of Immortal Roads, required no Patron to sponsor you and sacrifice the Immortal Power to raise you up. Just learn how to manipulate the Radiance, then research the spells, devise the spells, and execute the spells, all without flubbing up and inheriting some potentially catastrophic side effects of working with trans-magical radiant energy that was on a higher tier than normal magic. Gammathauma radiation magic. Becoming Immortal by devouring the magic of the world.

The source of the day of No Magic. The day Grandmaster Nathanael Jean-Arc had Cast the spell successfully, walked to the end of the Radiant Road, and stepped into Immortality by his own power, the dream of every Wizard born. That annual day was now immortalized by all spellcasting failing, and poorly-spun or aged enchantments breaking and fading. The most vulnerable day of the year to any and all spellcasters, and a clear sign that using The Radiant Road ate at and destroyed the magic of the whole world!