Chương 139: Ascending Apparently Required Terrible Decisions

Once the ruined fortress disappeared behind the hills, Ronan and Sieghart continued north beneath Phantom Image, moving slowly enough that the illusion could copy every shifting branch and shadow surrounding them. Their route became increasingly complicated because hiding from sight was only one problem. Chimerians possessed too many different modifications for either traveler to assume ordinary stealth would remain effective.

Whenever the wind shifted toward a distant settlement, Ronan immediately stopped and raised one hand, forcing Sieghart to freeze wherever he stood until the direction changed again. At first, Sieghart considered the caution excessive. Then he remembered Enhanced Smell and how easily he had located hidden orcs without seeing anything beyond rocks, mist, and darkness.

If he could improve an ordinary human nose using magic, Chimerians could probably transplant noses from wolves, monsters, or creatures whose senses made wolves look half-dead. They waited beneath several pine trees while the wind carried their scent eastward, directly toward a cluster of crude buildings barely visible between distant hills. Sieghart could not identify anyone from that distance, but smoke rising between the trees confirmed that another Chimerian settlement occupied the valley below.

Ronan waited almost five minutes before advancing again, choosing a route that placed a rocky ridge between their bodies and the nearest buildings. Sieghart maintained Phantom Image around both of them while Enhanced Smell remained deliberately weak, allowing him to detect nearby threats without drowning beneath every biological odor carried from enemy territory. The contrast amused him slightly.

Other people needed specialized training, equipment, favorable winds, and careful routes to avoid supernatural senses that Sieghart could imitate through one recently invented spell. Magic was convenient like that. Unfortunately, convenience depended upon understanding the necessary principle first. Before seeing Vessa and Orin's glasses, Sieghart had never seriously considered creating spells designed specifically to strengthen his senses. The Chimerians solved similar problems differently.

Instead of learning a spell to improve vision, some simply removed their eyes and replaced them with something better. Sieghart found that increasingly difficult to understand. One strange individual obsessed with becoming stronger made sense. Every society produced people willing to damage themselves for power, status, ideology, desperation, or exceptionally bad decisions. Entire tribes were different.

Thousands of people willingly replacing organs, limbs, skin, blood, and bones sounded less like ambition and more like collective insanity maintained across generations. Sieghart stepped carefully over a fallen branch, then glanced toward another distant settlement where something winged moved briefly above several rooftops. Perhaps willingness was the wrong word.

Children raised among Chimerians probably saw stitched bodies before understanding ordinary anatomy, making grafting feel as normal as learning magic did inside Lunar Arc. A child born with scales might never consider smooth human skin preferable. Someone raised around four-legged warriors might find ordinary human legs weak rather than comforting. That explained acceptance. It did not completely explain desire.

Even if modifications were culturally normal, replacing healthy organs deliberately remained dangerous enough that Sieghart struggled to imagine entire populations celebrating the process. Some people having several screws loose was believable. An entire civilization building traditions around surgical insanity required something deeper than personal recklessness. Sieghart remained lost in those thoughts long enough that Ronan finally glanced sideways while they crossed a narrow stretch of rocky ground.

"You're unusually quiet." Sieghart looked at him.

"I'm often quiet." Ronan waited until another gust passed northward before continuing, keeping his footsteps close enough that Sieghart's illusion covered both bodies without stretching.

"Something bothering you?" Sieghart considered dismissing the question, but Ronan actually knew enough about Chimerian history to make discussing the problem more useful than keeping it inside his head.

"I don't understand them." Ronan glanced toward him.

"The Chimerians?" Sieghart nodded while maintaining the illusion across Ronan's moving coat, replacing visible cloth with distorted copies of stones and low bushes behind him.

"One insane person cutting apart his own body for power makes sense. Entire populations doing it voluntarily feels different." Ronan remained quiet.

"They don't even look like what they started as anymore. Some barely look related to anything that should exist naturally." Sieghart looked toward the valley.

"How does that become normal?" Ronan slowed while examining several tracks crossing the trail ahead, then guided Sieghart around them instead of stepping through and leaving suspicious human prints.

"If you grow up among criminals, crime can become normal." Sieghart waited.

"If everyone around you steals, then stealing stops feeling like some extraordinary moral line. It becomes something people simply do." Ronan pointed vaguely toward the hidden settlement behind them.

"Chimerians work the same way." That explanation matched Sieghart's own suspicion, though Ronan's tone suggested cultural normalization represented only the beginning rather than the complete answer. Ronan explained that Chimerian clans had developed their current identity less than a thousand years earlier, making their transformation relatively recent compared with older human civilizations.

Their ancestors had begun as desperate researchers, failed mages, modified soldiers, criminals, exiles, and people searching for methods capable of challenging powerful Aura bloodlines. Over generations, those experiments became traditions. What began as forbidden surgery eventually transformed into ceremonies, inheritance, status, marriage expectations, and measures of personal worth. Sieghart found that disturbingly believable.

Aura families behaved similarly in the opposite direction, treating inherited strength as evidence that their bloodlines deserved authority over people born without comparable gifts.

"That also explains Aura users." Ronan nodded.

"Exactly." Human nobles inherited power naturally, then built societies that treated their advantages as proof of superiority rather than accidents of birth. Chimerians inherited bodies shaped by deliberate transformation and eventually treated refusing modification as weakness, cowardice, or rejection of their ancestors. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Different origins. Similar arrogance.

Ronan stepped behind a thick tree and waited while two distant winged figures crossed between hills, their silhouettes disappearing against the cloudy afternoon sky.

"The Aura families say they're above everyone because their ancestors were stronger. Chimerians say they can become above everyone by changing enough." Sieghart crossed his arms briefly.

"Both sound annoying."

"They are." Once the scouts disappeared, they resumed moving through the forest, keeping the wind against their faces and the nearest settlements behind ridges whenever possible. Ronan explained that Chimerian ambition extended beyond battlefield advantages. The oldest clans believed bodily modification represented the beginning of an evolutionary path rather than merely a method for gaining strength.

"They want to become more than they are." Sieghart frowned.

"Everyone does."

"Not like them." Ronan's expression became more serious.

"Some of their ancestors supposedly achieved something they call Ascension." Sieghart nearly stopped walking.

"Ascension?" Ronan nodded. The word sounded familiar from enough myths and fantasy stories that Sieghart immediately suspected the explanation would involve immortality, impossible power, or something equally inconvenient.

"What exactly does that mean?"

"They surpassed mortality." Sieghart waited. Ronan shrugged.

"According to Chimerian belief, anyway."

"They became immortal?"

"More than that." Ronan stepped over a stream, then checked the wind before gesturing for Sieghart to follow across the exposed stones.

"They believe some ancestors became gods." Sieghart landed on the opposite bank and stared at Ronan for several seconds, wondering whether the man had finally decided to invent nonsense simply to make the journey more entertaining.

"Ascension..."

"That's the word."

"Actual gods?"

"Depends who you ask." Ronan explained that ancient accounts described several individuals abandoning ordinary physical limitations entirely after centuries of magical experimentation, bodily refinement, and increasingly extreme transformations. Some supposedly stopped aging. Others survived injuries that should destroy any living organism, while several disappeared after demonstrating powers nobody around them could explain.

Chimerian traditions interpreted those events as successful Ascension, proof that enough transformation could eventually elevate a mortal beyond every natural limitation. Whether those beings actually became divine remained impossible to verify, especially when most surviving stories had passed through centuries of worship, exaggeration, propaganda, and missing records. Sieghart found the distinction important.

Either way, from his perspective, that kind of transformation was more like a downgrade given their appearances…

"Being extremely powerful doesn't make someone a god."

"Tell them that."

"I'd rather not." That answer made Ronan smile briefly. However, the concept explained the Chimerians far better than simple hunger for strength. They did not necessarily view modifications as sacrifices. To them, every removed organ represented another step away from ordinary mortality. Every successful graft supposedly moved them closer toward whatever their ancestors had achieved.

Sieghart imagined growing up hearing stories about someone replacing flesh until death itself stopped functioning properly, then being told that refusing similar procedures meant accepting permanent inferiority. That could shape an entire culture. Especially if enough powerful examples existed. Still, Sieghart could not imagine the process ending cleanly. Stories about people seeking godhood at any cost rarely ended with everyone involved becoming reasonable, happy immortals.

His previous world had produced countless myths about immortality, forbidden knowledge, transcendence, and humans attempting to exceed natural limits through increasingly terrible decisions. Most ended badly. Usually for everyone nearby.

"Was it worth it?" Ronan looked toward him.

"What?"

"All of that." Sieghart gestured toward the distant territory filled with altered settlements.

"Cutting yourself apart for centuries because someone claims you might eventually become a god." Ronan shrugged.

"They would say yes."

"They're biased."

"Extremely." Sieghart considered his own situation and immediately disliked the comparison forming inside his mind. He also possessed an ability allowing potentially endless growth beyond ordinary human limitations. The difference was that Sieghart had not deliberately replaced his lungs with monster organs or collected enough stitched body parts to resemble an escaped laboratory accident. Not yet, at least. He disliked that qualifier and mentally removed it.

Ronan continued walking for several minutes before adding something else, almost casually enough that Sieghart nearly missed its significance.

"Some of those so-called gods knew Seraphina." Sieghart stopped completely. Ronan took two more steps before noticing the illusion stretching beyond its safe range and immediately stepped backward toward him.

"What?"

"Say that again."

"Some supposed Ascended were allies of Seraphina." Sieghart stared. Ronan sighed.

"And apprentices." That was considerably more interesting. Seraphina had supposedly prevented her students from starting a war against Aura users before disappearing, and Sieghart already suspected her history contained far more than surviving records admitted.

"You're saying Seraphina taught people who eventually became monster gods?"

"Not exactly." Ronan rubbed his chin.

"Some people later worshipped as Ascended were associated with her. The records disagree about what happened afterward." That distinction mattered, but not enough to reduce Sieghart's curiosity. If Seraphina's allies had discovered ways to transcend mortality, her own disappearance became even more suspicious. Perhaps Ascension had nothing to do with Chimerian modification originally. Their descendants might simply have interpreted ancient magical advancement through the philosophy developed afterward.

Or perhaps Seraphina's students genuinely discovered something capable of transforming mortals beyond ordinary limits and then built entire cultures attempting to reproduce it. Either possibility created questions Sieghart desperately wanted answered.

"Does everyone at Lunar Arc know this?" Ronan laughed quietly.

"No." Sieghart narrowed his eyes.

"Why not?"

"Because most people don't need every dangerous historical theory stored inside their heads."

"That sounds like Mira."

"It should." Ronan explained that senior agents, researchers, and certain descendants knew fragments, but Lunar Arc deliberately kept many early records restricted because old techniques repeatedly inspired modern disasters. Sieghart found that logic irritating precisely because it made sense. Teaching everyone that ancient mages potentially discovered paths toward godhood would encourage experiments before anyone understood the risks. Still, restricting knowledge created different problems.

People like Sieghart became curious. Curious people experimented anyway. Sometimes they accidentally unlocked Necromancy. Sieghart decided not to mention that example. They continued north as evening approached, moving between settlements while the wind gradually weakened and made scent management even more important. Every newly glimpsed Chimerian reinforced the same uncomfortable thought. These people had transformed collective insanity into tradition because they believed something waited beyond humanity.

Perhaps they were correct. That possibility was worse than simply dismissing them as delusional. Sieghart already knew the world contained Systems, corrupted cores, impossible magic, inherited supernatural abilities, and people capable of changing their bodies beyond ordinary biology. Something resembling Ascension might genuinely exist. If so, Sieghart doubted the path was as simple as attaching enough monster organs until reality became impressed.

He also doubted anyone seeking godhood through endless sacrifice remained entirely human by the time they reached whatever destination waited at the end. Sieghart looked toward the darkening horizon while maintaining Phantom Image around himself and Ronan, wondering how many secrets Seraphina had taken with her. His questions concerning Infinite Mana had already been troublesome enough before learning that some of her allies might have literally attempted to become gods.

For now, however, Sieghart pushed the mystery aside and concentrated upon the rescue mission, because solving ancient divinity theories while surrounded by Chimerians seemed unnecessarily ambitious. Still, one conclusion remained impossible to dismiss. Any story beginning with someone seeking godhood at any cost usually ended badly. Sieghart had no reason to believe this world would be the exception.