What is Ascension?
Well, in order to understand that we would first need to understand the leveling system of the [Call of the Black Magicians]. And for that we would need to go to the very basics of the system.
In the system, you will find brackets for race, class, titles, attributes and skills. There are also separate tabs for equipment and shops.
For now, we will strictly co relate all of them with Leveling up.
Attributes define the person's personal characteristics. They are easy to understand and tell you about the general weak and strong points you have, and are directly proportional to your level of growth as well. For each level you get 3 stats points, allowing you to enhance your overall power, cover your weaknesses or enhance your strong points even more.
Skills are easy to understand as well since there comes a description with each of them. And as you level up, you get 1 skill point for each level, allowing you to up your skill even more, performing better than ever before. They define your core playstyle, and are also dependent upon your class for the most time.
As for class, you get to choose one at level 10. Upgrade it at every 50th level after that to something better.
Once chosen a class, you can upgrade them by fulfilling certain quests, and as long as you fulfill their criteria. Not going into detail, there are various grades of class from common to legendary, and the more rare they are, the harder they are to obtain, and even more difficult to upgrade.
Having a class has many benefits. Some increase a percentage of stats, while others decrease skill cooldown. Some class awards you with skills, others with quests, and some very specific ones can even help you get rare attributes.
Then there are titles which you can get from the get go and rewards you with a minor boost and authority here and there. And if you happen to follow a god and get their blessings, a hidden tab for Blessing will open up for you as well.
Now, with that done, let's get back to the main point.
Leveling up and ascension.
Firstly, leveling up gets harder with how up you are in three different ways.
One is that your required exp increases exponentially upto level 125 before resetting. The more you level up, the harder it is to fill the giant exp bar.
Secondly, at every level 10, the weaker monster barely give any exp with you, requiring you to hunt stronger monsters as you grow up.
Finally, after level 125, the exp resets back to very basic, changing the leveling ground all over again.
From level 126, the monster you hunt depends upon your class and race. You only get exp from monsters that are your enemies by class and race. A tricky system to divide players based on classes later on and make them focus on exploring the entire world of the Zarraf.
As your class changes, the criteria of what is a 'monster' changes as well. And it continued to repeat at level 250, 375, and till 500, where you hit your first ascension.
There are many ways to define ascension, but the best way to do it is by calling it as an evolution of a race based on the total amount of power you have at level 500.
Your level, your class, your stats, your skills, your titles. They all reset to basic.
And in return, your race changes to a higher form.
It may seem bad to lose everything at once, but even the most basic ascension would allow you to retain half of your power. Plus you don't lose everything but things get reset to basics, with the return of a faster growth.
Let's take the example of humans for now.
There are three main paths for their evolution.
Demi-Human. That allows them to have attributes of another race, for example, half vampire, half elf, half dwarf etc, allowing them to get the skills etc of both the races without any special means. You get extra skills, titles, even specific race buffs along with all that you already have.
Transformation. Since a human's potential is near infinite, they can also choose to give up humanity and evolve into a complete another being. It could be a demon, elf, vampire, etc. Unlike humans, other races also have many restrictions on their skills and mana, so it's mostly a high risk, high return kind of thing. You lose all your skills, but your skill stat points remain allowing you to upgrade your newer skills with them.
High Human. An evolved form of humans that allows them to grow 5 times faster than before, giving 10 Stat points instead of 3, and 5 skill points instead of 1 per level. There is nothing much attractive to it other than this, but at the end of the second Ascension, that is at level 1000, it opens up at least 5 times more options in contrast with the other two options.
It is more of a short term sacrifice for long term goals.
That is the basis of Ascension.
But there are always hidden pieces of information about ascension. For example, the better your stats are, the more skills you have, the more titles you have, it will allow you to open up a new menu called as [Configuration] where you can choose to sacrifice additional skills and stats in exchange for better benefits.
And that is exactly the reason why Adam was still waiting to evolve right now. That is, he wanted to have everything he could before he ascended.
He already had his class, titles, skills and blessings. But the thing that he needed the most was his stats. He needed all his stats to reach above 1000, and his max HP and max MP to be above a million each.
Which was difficult… but nothing impossible.