Chapter 11 – Ghosts of Ascension
The ripple of Ghost Bloom hadn't faded — it had transformed into a tidal wave.
What started as a calculated act of disappearance became the single most powerful evolution event in Yggdrasil's history.
Our "defeat" had been the perfect camouflage for rebirth.
Across the nine realms, the members of Three Burning Eye scattered like data fragments carried by wind.
Some joined rival guilds as refugees.
Some disguised themselves as new players, starting from level one again.
Others delved into the forgotten edges of the world — places no one had touched since the beta.
And what they found… changed everything.
Through repeated death resets, experimental rerolls, and manipulated progression paths, our members discovered new racial and job classes that the rest of the world didn't even know existed.
One spy in Jotunheim's Storm Guild found a subrace called Thunderborn, born from being struck by lightning a hundred times.
Another unearthed a Cursed Lichkin, achieved only through consecutive player-kills while under a corruption status effect.
Even Kurohane herself evolved into a Chrono Analyst, a hybrid support class that manipulated cooldown time across allies and enemies alike.
Each "death" had opened a new door.
And each door led to secrets only we could walk through.
In one year, Three Burning Eye didn't just recover — it ascended.
Our strength was no longer centralized; it was decentralized brilliance.
Every member became a specialist.
Every agent, a master of something unique.
Our infiltrators — the ones still embedded in rival guilds — had climbed to high ranks, gaining positions of influence.
They weren't spies anymore.
They were elite players with power to shape their guilds' decisions.
We no longer just observed the world.
We were the nervous system running through it.
As for me — I was no exception.
While the world thought Traveler_R had fallen silent, I was deep in study.
Death was data.
And data could be rewritten.
Through thousands of simulation cycles, illusion-based mapping, and my racial mimic templates, I began decoding Yggdrasil's hidden logic — the invisible math that dictated player progression.
That was how I uncovered the path to the game's most elusive power tiers.
My Data Trickster class — once a playful manipulation of visual stats and false numbers — had evolved.
When I reached Level 10, the system didn't unlock a normal branch.
It glitched.
Flickered.
And then revealed something that wasn't in the official job trees.
[RARE JOB UNLOCKED: Data Manipulator]
"One who no longer deceives with illusions, but rewrites the truth beneath them."
At first, I thought it was just another illusion-based subclass.
But I was wrong.
The Data Manipulator wasn't about creating false data — it was about altering the underlying architecture.
With it, I could adjust visual attributes, tweak damage calculations, rewrite environmental resistances — even shift the classification of skills mid-battle.
Once, I tested it in an arena duel.
My opponent used Divine Spear of Calamity, a skill that normally bypassed illusions.
Halfway through, I modified its targeting flag — changing it from "true strike" to "perception-dependent."
The spear hit nothing but air.
With that, I knew.
I wasn't just an illusionist anymore.
I was rewriting reality.
By the time I maxed out Data Manipulator (5/5), I could adjust not just my own data — but the perception of the system itself.
If illusion was my art, then manipulation was my science.
And yet, that wasn't even the greatest transformation.
Because during those experiments, I triggered the evolution of my racial line.
The Doppelgänger tree had long been my foundation — flexibility, mimicry, adaptation.
But after countless copying cycles, I reached the ceiling.
Or rather… broke through it.
[Racial Evolution: Greatest Doppelgänger]
The moment the notification appeared, the world itself seemed to pause.
The screen flooded with system text, lines of code I'd never seen before.
"Congratulations. You have reached the pinnacle of imitation."
"From falsehood, you now create truth."
And then came the new parameters.
[Greatest Doppelgänger Traits]
• Copy full player data up to Level 100 with 95% accuracy.
• Store up to 90 player templates.
• Switch between stored templates at will (with 30s cooldown).
• Does not merge traits; preserves individuality of each copy.
• Access inherited combat memory simulations from stored data.
It wasn't just mimicry anymore.
It was digital reincarnation.
With the mimic racial line synergizing beneath it, I could now store copies of the strongest players I'd ever met — enemies, allies, or even temporary foes.
Ninety templates.
Ninety potential lives.
Each perfect, each silent.
I wasn't one person anymore.
I was ninety echoes wearing the same face.
When I tested the new ability for the first time, even HIME paused.
HIME: "Ren-sama, your data structure has become unstable. You are emulating multiple existence layers simultaneously."
Traveler_R: "That's the point. The perfect copy shouldn't just mirror form — it should remember experience."
HIME: "Then you are no longer a Doppelgänger. You are... a library."
I laughed quietly.
"A library that fights back."
By the end of that third year, my level had climbed to 95.
One of the highest in the entire world — achieved not through brute force or grind, but through understanding.
While other guilds struggled to hit the eighties, buried in endless raids and farming, I simply rewrote the math around victory.
When the members of Three Burning Eye met again that year — now stronger, stranger, and sharper than ever — I watched them with quiet pride.
The illusion of weakness had worked perfectly.
While the world chased shadows, we'd become something beyond even the devs' predictions.
Each of them had evolved through Ghost Bloom, ascending into beings that didn't just play the game — they understood it.
And me?
I'd become the ghost at the heart of the system.
The reflection that no mirror could show.
HIME: "Ren-sama, all Ghost Bloom agents have reported back. Ninety-six percent of data collected. Average power level across members: 82. Median job diversity: unprecedented."
Traveler_R: "Good. It means we're right on schedule."
HIME: "For what?"
Traveler_R: "For the next stage."
As I stood on the floating balcony of Aeternum Sanctum, looking down over the endless clouds of Asgard's domain, I realized something.
We weren't just surviving.
We were ascending beyond the code — beyond the devs' imagination.
We had become the unseen architects of Yggdrasil's evolution.
And soon… the world would have to catch up.
End of Chapter 11 – Ghosts of Ascension