Harry awoke the next morning, only to find the previously barren wasteland of the outback replaced by a slew of various items, ranging from gruesome severed heads to oversized weapons and pieces of armour. In the centre of it all was a man as he clumsily swung around an ancient greatsword, slashing gouges in the sand around him and showering Harry with a consistent amount of the stuff with every which swing.

Spitting out sand from his mouth, Harry rubbed his bleary eyes and glared at the weirdo moving around ahead of him, “Brock?! What the hell are you doing?! Where’d you get all this stuff?”

Suddenly realising that the boy was awake and staring at the heap of junk he had strewn about the area, Brock jabbed the rusted hunk of metal into the ground and walked over, collecting a small bronze chest plate from the ground along the way.

“Try this on,” Brock held the armour piece up to his scrawnier companion’s chest and passed it to him. Still slightly confused, Harry donned the item and rolled his shoulders, finding it to be a pretty decent fit. While the vast majority were far too large for a normal human, some were clearly spoils of war against smaller opponents.

Harry beat on his metal-coated chest with a fist experimentally, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Mondays.”

“You said that last time dude.” he whined.

“Mondays are a universal thing.” Brock waved a dismissing hand in his direction, “Don’t question it.”

Harry raised a brow at the powerful man before him and ultimately chose to shrug, before deciding to enter the expanse of assorted loot and find something interesting. If he didn’t want to tell him, there was quite literally nothing he could do to change that.

Brock on the other hand was utterly enamoured with the spatial ring he had tied around his neck.

Even with the hundreds upon hundreds of junk that Ur’Kahn had left stored away from wherever he had gotten it, there were still thirty or so free slots remaining out of thousands. It was more than enough to keep all this shit for later and carry supplies as well, especially since relatively identical items appeared to stack in the same slot. Weird…

Smirking to himself, he leaned down and scooped up a heap of nearby treated animal furs. They were a bit matted, and the edges were torn, but the insides were lined with what seemed to be silk, and it would make a somewhat fashionable replacement for his current suit-skirt. It did beg the question of why a mutant werewolf had this, but he didn’t dare ask it.

While Harry wasn’t looking, Brock quickly hid behind a copse of cactus – actual cacti, not the monster variety - and wrapped the furs around his waist, shedding everything else but his slightly frayed underwear.

A man needed class, even in barbaric furs.

Plus, the hide seemed to originate from some sort of beast, so Brock was coining on the fact it would hopefully be more durable in battle than the usual clothing he’d taken to wearing. He found it exceedingly annoying when almost every fight resulted in an outfit change.

Aside from that, there wasn’t anything else of much use inside the ring to him, other than a few previously used bandages and a majorly oversized crossbow, to the point of it basically being a ballista, so he let Harry have some time to sort through it all and pick out whatever he deemed he needed.

“Go wild, mate!” He yelled out to him. He received a thumbs up in return.

Brock didn’t really favour the idea of armour, figuring it would restrict his movements far too much, especially since knife combat was all about agility and being able to react at a moment’s notice. Sure, he’d enjoy the added protection, but unless it was a softer, maybe leather alternative, Brock wasn’t willing to make the trade.

If he was honest, he was surprised Ur’Kahn - a monster - had so many humanoid items and weapons, and even healing supplies. The severed heads were more in line with what he had expected, but it still was only one thing among many others.

His hope currently with all the items laid out was that Harry could better arm himself. The boy hadn’t even had a weapon, let alone armour for protection. The former was a fault of the overprotective adults of his Tutorial, while the latter was simple due to the fact the Tutorial offered none.

So hopefully, this would serve as a small boost in his combat potential and survivability. Brock didn’t think he’d enjoy having to worry every second of the day about the boy’s safety otherwise.

“Hey, Brock?” Harry called out from the mess, his head peeking high above it all and searching for the man in question.

The fur-clad warrior hiked around to him, wading through a small mountain range of ill-gotten loot, “What’s up mate?”

Harry held up a blue Shard of Awakening, a luminous orange fluid swishing within. Turns out, he just wished to ask Brock for permission to use the stuff he found in the piles. Of course, the owner had let him, although he tried asking the kid to wait until they found a better Shard. But he was adamant, wanting to be of help as soon as possible.

So, Brock let him make his own decision. He wasn’t the kid’s father after all. Not that he’d know what it’d be like to be one.

Or have one, for that matter.

His younger companion ended up dragging out a bunch of armours and weapons from the pile, along with the Shard he found. Brock’s memory was reaching incredible levels, and he knew that the one Harry had found was the only orange fluid one within the piles. There were others, some of higher rarities, like his own, or even golden, but they were useless to the boy.

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With a wave of his hand, all the armours and items outside of what Harry had picked out began to flicker and disappear, simplified images of them reappearing in the inventory screen the ring provided, once again leaving the outback area looking as devastatingly boring as it always had been.

Ignoring a more selective comb of his haul until later, the teenager sat cross-legged beside his small mound of loot with his Shard in his lap. Brock had to admit, he was kind of eager to see what the process of using the mystical item looked like, as he himself had passed out from blood loss soon after using his own.

Gazing at his Shard of Awakening intently, Harry looked to Brock and the man nodded his way encouragingly. He watched as the boy held the crystal a little ways above his mouth and crushed it, vibrant orange liquid seeping out from between his fingers and dripping into his mouth. A mist of sunset coloured energy flowed out from his gullet, and the boy instantly passed out and hit the sand.

Brock rushed in to help him but stopped as his burgeoning energy senses told him that this was just part of the process, his new and improved Ascendancy slowly growing and consuming the weaker one. It was a bit muddled to his senses, but he thought it was best comparable to a predator savagely devouring their prey. It felt oddly… animalistic.

Well, never mind then. Guess I was bound to pass out either way, chomped torso or not.

The kid looked oddly peaceful as the two alien powers ate each other inside of him, and Brock once again found himself unable to do anything while the boy was out of it. Initially, over the next half hour, Brock began to further test his Ascendancy, but as it again proved useless, ended up drawing shit in the sand with a sword from Harry’s pile.

He was a man-child, and he couldn’t care less.

A few minutes before Harry’s Ascendancy swapping completed itself, Brock was forced to scare off a group of smaller dingo monsters as they tried to snatch the kid away from him while he wasn’t looking. Dingoes weren’t called outback seagulls for no reason, always trying to steal your food, or in this case, your human teenager.

Eventually though, Harry awoke, and Brock noted the subtly solidified aura of power he seemed to passively emit. It certainly trumped the power his own Ascendancy gave off, although his felt yet more solid. Sturdier. Most probably, it was due to a gap in rarities.

His aura felt relatively the same, in terms of the specific power it held at least, though the energy emanations themselves seemed to have a unique flavour to it. Senses aside, Harry appeared to check his status menu, and he looked ecstatic afterwards. It warmed Brock’s heart to see it.

“How’d it go?” He asked as he helped the boy back to his feet.

Harry ran over his status screen one last time and beamed at his elder, “My new Ascendancy’s called Hydra’s Fang, and it’s poison based. Injection. Kinda like alchemy, I guess.”

He paused and furrowed his brows, “but… without the alchemy…”

Brock tilted his head at the boy’s antics, before nodding slowly, savouring his Boston accent. It was a really nice accent. That aside, the fact that such a naive boy seemed to be on the road to becoming a walking snake bite gave Brock slight pause, but ultimately, he could turn it into a golden opportunity.

So far, he’d been heading in the direction of specialising in quick and brutal takedowns, but that take on combat fell short when fighting larger, more resilient foes. With the addition of a poison acting on his target and putting the fight on a timer, he’d be able to do a large chunk of damage and retreat, letting his companion’s powers do the rest and finish the job.

“How’s it work?” Brock asked the kid, only serving to further feed his power up high.

His beaming smile widened ever so slightly, “Well, all I can do now is inject a basic ‘hemotoxin’ – whatever that is - through contact, but it’s really useful when you get a lot of wounds on the victim. I could do the same thing with my first Ascendancy too.”

Brock furrowed his brows in confusion, “How do you get other poisons then?”

Harry’s excitement curbed and his mouth straightened into a line, “…experience them.”

“You have to get poisoned… to use that poison?”

“…yes?”

Brock sighed.

Let alone the moral implication of him standing by and letting the kid get bitten and stung by every venomous creature they came across, Brock wasn’t even sure the kid could survive a bite from any of the creatures around currently. But hopefully, they could change that. The latter part, not the former. That part would be up to Harry himself.

The two of them chatted on for a while longer, and Brock found that blessedly, Harry’s Ascendancy gave him twenty total stat points, spread evenly between Strength, Dexterity, Constitution and Vitality. Brock didn’t decide to comment to him on the lack of free stats.

While he wouldn’t force - or even advocate - for the boy to grow his arsenal of venoms and poisons, he would at least assist him in levelling up, probably by restraining weaker beasts and letting the kid load them up with toxins and kill them. It was somewhat cruel, but the world was no longer a friendly place. Not anymore.

Eventually, much to Brock’s delight, they got back on the road, trekking through the endless plains of sand. Harry didn’t comment on the man’s newfound barbaric clothing, and they chatted quietly as they walked, usually about idiotic topics such as how the moon landing was faked. It wasn’t, but Brock let Harry believe he was right.

That kid scared him sometimes.

They saw a few decently levelled beasts over the course of the day, and Brock made an effort to limit their movements with his chain and let Harry do the rest, having donned a light amount of armour and opted to use a simple war axe, finding the weight he could get behind the swing to help his limited strength during combat. So far, the kid had gone from level 10 to a solid level 16.

The hemotoxins actually proved to be far more effective than Brock had originally thought, and the kid made him privy to know that he could level up his slew of toxins just like his Ascendancy, each use with them slowly increasing their power and effectiveness as their levels rose.

Brock thought it was a pretty cool mechanic of his Ascendancy, and it served to make him wish he could use his own even more. I don’t wanna complain… but it’s not fair.

He had let his harrowing predicament slide during a conversation, and Harry had tried to assist him in his issue, but to no luck. Apparently, there had been a humanoid variant of Treants guiding his Tutorial and they had shown everyone several exercises to both practice your control of the passive effect of the Ascendancy and further hone its aura. Brock had just said his hadn’t done so when Harry had asked, and the kid began to ruthlessly cuss them out for their ‘impotence’.

Though those exercises too had proved to be useless, and even Harry, who was not at all an expert let it be noted, was stumped.

“So… what even is your Ascendancy?” As the sun began to set and they slowed down, Harry glanced at his companion - nay, friend - as he searched for a nice spot in the sand to settle down.

Brock deliberated on letting the kid know for a few seconds but ultimately told him. There wasn’t much he could do with the knowledge anyway, and Brock found that he somewhat trusted him, “Fetters of the Bound. I have no idea what it’s meant to do. The fluid I took was red though, if that helps.”

Harry raised a brow, “That’s a bit of a grim name…”

“Mate, your main power is literally making things bleed out and die faster.”

“…Fair point.”

The two of them bantered for a while longer, with Harry speculating that his Ascendancy was possibly related to chains or restriction, as the name would easily infer. Brock felt the kid was on the right track, but it still sounded wrong to him. He didn’t know why, but deep down he had the feeling it was more than that.

Something deeper. Darker.

In the end, the duo had talked long into the night, and together, the two of them fell asleep, one dreaming of brutally slaughtering magpies with his bare hands and the other about the safety of his Ma.