Dismissing his status menu, Brock watched on in silence as the remaining streams of energy slowly left his body, obscuring parts of it in a crimson mist that reeked of power. Disbelieving, he searched every part of his 'Inner Self’ before stopping as he came to the heart of dim energy nestled beside its physical counterpart. What the?

A small aura of red enveloped it, appearing weak and feeble to Brock as it sluggishly pulsated, just trying its best to keep itself alive. The core of energy that it surrounded was blackened and hollow, as though it was denied the very blood that gave it purpose.

Mentally, Brock attempted to prod it to wakefulness, to rouse the dormant power he so very clearly felt it capable of, yet it was with shock that he realized it wasn't asleep, or dying, or even weakened. It was restrained. Ethereal, almost invisible, chains rippled in response to his continued attempts, their empty forms speaking of an unperceivable truth, one of gluttony and absorption.

It reminded Brock heavily of the echoes he saw in the Beyond.

He simply watched his second heart for a while as the truth of the matter began to dawn on him. Frowning, he reopened his status menu to check one last thing.

Status.

Brock Carter.

Race: Human [F] LVL 1

Ascendancy: SEALED [F]

Level: 1

[Stats]

[+5%] - Strength: 26.25

[+5%] - Agility: 24.15

[+5%] - Dexterity: 24.15

[+5%] - Constitution: 27.3

[+5%] - Vitality: 28.35

[+5%] - Intelligence: 33.6

[+5%] - Wisdom: 30.45

[Titles] - At The Precipice, Agent of Chaos, Blessed, Destined for Greatness, Underdog, Hidden Fangs, Leader of the Pack, Login Bonus.

Free Stats: N/A

Shards: N/A

SEALED: N/A

His eyes were immediately drawn to the capitalized ‘SEALED’ in bold next to his Ascendancy. It didn’t take much piecing together for Brock to gather that the heart at the centre of his pathways was really his Ascendancy, the core of his power, if he guessed correctly. The chains were obviously the literal result of it being stated as sealed. He had no idea why the other section down the bottom was sealed too, but he was certain he hit the nail on the head with the former portion.

A fact which he found absolutely no joy in.

If he understood correctly, that would mean he had no way or method to level and increase his overall power. Lest he do it through titles, something he didn't know the first thing about gaining. And like his main level, his race level was also stuck at level one, leading him to believe it was raised either through growing his main level or through some other means. At least, he was sure he hadn't seen any energy branch off and disappear somewhere else.

"Ohhhh shit."

Brock ran his hands through his hair and lifted himself off the Treant's corpse, his hands and front coated in its emerald blood. While it had once been luminant, it had slowly lost its shine, becoming a sickly swamp green. His right foot hurt a fair amount any time he put pressure on it, but it wasn't severely injured, just a bad few cuts. It looked far worse than it actually was.

He went over his status screen one last time before he finally closed it, sighing out to surroundings he hoped were empty and wiping the blood off his knife. He quickly stored it back in his bag, grimacing as he found a few of the subs to have been squashed. Although, he did find solace in knowing they'd still taste just as good. Gotta thank the sauces for that.

For a moment, Brock wondered whether continuing into the jungle was a good idea anymore, especially since he was essentially power-locked, though he dismissed it as he’d never get anywhere if he didn’t continue. It was either he died now or died in a month. From the way he looked at it, it made little difference.

“Life’s a magpie, as they always say.” If it wasn’t clear already, Brock was never letting that slight go.

Sighing to himself once more, the slightly skinnier man covered in blood and wounds continued to pursue his epic quest through the jungle. He held onto the sliver of hope that he'd find some way, unorthodox or not, to increase his power. It's either that or die horribly, I guess.

Turning his mind to the possibility of Titles as he walked, Brock thought to the only 'first' title he had, Destined for Greatness. Considering it had taken around an hour or so before he managed to encounter and kill the first Pontiac, Brock had a sneaking suspicion he had full reign to garner every 'first' type Title without worry.

While he couldn't be certain, he was sure that if a slightly overweight office worker could kill a beast within an hour, albeit scrappily, then there were many people far more qualified than he was who would do so even quicker.

Take his sister, for example, who was a black belt in ninjutsu. He wouldn't put it past her to have killed one within the first ten minutes, let alone speaking of the actual time it’d take her to kill it.

Which he’d pin in the seconds.

If he used all of that as even the slightest of indication, he felt pretty confident in saying that Titles were meant to be suspended for people until they returned from wherever they had been sent.

Something which Brock intended to exploit to the fullest once he could figure out how.

Walking through the wilds, Brock gazed around the hybrid cityscape and thought in depth about his approach. From the way he had been received by the System so far, Brock couldn't say he felt that there would be any Titles related to crafting, a few of those he assumed to be pretty easy to gather if there were. With the brutality he found himself plunged into over and over just to survive, Brock thought combat-related Titles would be more the disguised magpie's speed.

He could also just look at almost any of his current Titles to make that same connection.

One of the Titles that Brock thought would be an obvious choice was something like his Underdog and Hidden Fangs Titles, though he knew that the most likely number to be the next milestone was level 50. Brock had no idea if he could even fight the Alpha, let alone something around four times its estimated level. Sounds like an interesting way to kill myself...

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The other he marked as having the potential for chaining Titles was Destined for Greatness, entertaining the prospect of the Title having something related to killing several monsters first, such as ten or even a hundred. Though Brock would love to avoid combat altogether if possible.

Either way, every option he had was something he deemed far above his current capabilities, further cementing Brock’s idea of him being power-locked. Groaning out his annoyance, he looked to the sky and met its big blue embrace with two stuck-up fingers.

“Honestly, just fuck you…” he sighed wearily.

Idly, Brock let his thoughts wander to his friends and family. He had a feeling his sister was thriving, massacring beast after beast in throngs with her fancy moves and blade skills. His brother, James, was no doubt thinking he was in heaven, probably trying to find a way to min-max, or whatever he had kept trying to explain to Brock. The concept had always confused him.

His mother, on the other hand, was someone he was worried about. She would be reluctant or downright abhorrent of the idea of killing monsters, let alone fighting them. Hopefully, the place they were sent was somewhere safe, where they could at least be eased in the intricacies of the System’s harsh reality.

It was either that or everyone was transported into a place alone like he was and his experience of being sealed off from his power was nothing special. Though, he doubted it.

Finally, his mind turned to Carrie, the only person from his firm that he truly knew and felt a connection with, aside from his tiny, almost non-existent crush on her. He was friends with other people at his work, but he didn't really meet up with them outside of the workplace, nor did he have any friends normally, having become distant with many of them when he moved away for the job he had now. I... miss them.

Brock had no idea how she would be doing right now, but she had always been smart and great at adapting to any situation, so he hoped that while she wasn't revelling in slaughter, she was at least doing something to increase her power. If that was even a possibility they were allowed. Again, he might be the regular scenario, however unlikely it seemed.

Brock’s inner thoughts were cut short as he caught a whiff of a foul stench pervading the air. He looked around, but none of the trees appeared to be rotting nor were there any beast corpses strewn about. Resisting the urge to gag, he pinched his nose and continued onward, wondering whether the growth of the jungle had disrupted a sewerage line full of millennia-old shit.

"Sure fucking smells like it."

The flora around this part was the most untamed it had ever been, trees spanning the height of houses being commonplace, and beefy root bases and hanging vines overrunning almost every part of the road and cityscape around it. The parts that weren't covered by them were coated in various shades of mosses and lichens, with vibrant and bushy foliage springing to life around the base of every building and tree, even growing up through the cracks in the road or the gaps in the pavement.

And while the air still possessed the ambient energy to it, albeit at a far higher density than before, enough to leave Brock’s whole-body tingling with potential, it now had an earthy quality to it, scenting of dirt and rain, with a tinge of the liveliness present in the flora.

Smelling it had been pure ecstasy before the other stench arrived and overwhelmed it.

Grumbling about the humid taste of whatever it was on his tongue, Brock trotted onward, grimacing as the smell continued to become stronger and stronger, to the point where even though he was breathing through his mouth, he could still smell it. He didn’t even know that was possible, and now he did.

Even taking a detour down a side street, something he’d done a few times to either avoid beasts from the signs he’d seen in the surroundings or to further align his path to that of a beeline straight to the centre of the place, only made the stench worse. It seemed that no matter the direction he headed, he was condemning his nose to a slow and agonising death. Great.

Eventually, when the smell became so bad Brock felt the constant urge to puke, he arrived upon a street that had been all but obliterated. Trees taller than a small building were toppled or shattered entirely into splinters, having smashed into the few structures that hadn’t already been ground to dust. Violet blood littered every area of the scene, forming miniature ponds and puddles all over and bathing the location in not only the overpowering stench of death and decay but also the irony taste of blood.

"Woah..."

Almost as an afterthought to the destruction, scorch marks plagued the area, searing stone with the taint of black carbon and charring the splinters of wood to nothing more than charcoal and ash. Though, even the scorches paled in comparison to the supernatural sharpness of the few metallic feathers that had sliced their way deep into the earth.

In the centre of it all, amidst bloody rubble and large craters, a singular corpse lay, covered in more wounds than Brock thought a being could possibly have, revealing more of the beasts' insides than what was outside. In many places, its body had already begun rotting, even though this world had only seemed to have been changed a day ago. That's... weird.

Vaguely, it resembled some kind of bird of prey, maybe a hawk or something other. From what he could recognize through the crusted blood and savage lacerations, it had once possessed a quadrio of wings, talons poking out the bend of each – although one was missing – as well as a beak filled with a seemingly endless number of ivory spikes peeking out from every angle. Its feathers seemed to be a deep brown and its legs a dark purple.

Absentmindedly, Brock spotted the missing wing draped over the misshapen rubble of a building some distance away.

A battle between titans, huh…?

Almost daringly, Brock began to approach the corpse. By his rough estimate, it was probably larger than the entire firm and some of the buildings next to it combined. He sidestepped around swimming pool sized sputters of blood and misplaced chunks of flesh and feathers as he began to close in on it. Scarily enough, up close, Brock could feel the ambient power radiating off of the purple fluid, although the glow he presumed it to once have was long faded.

The pure energy it contained was enough to burn his skin if he stood too close, however.

Finally, after trekking through the war field for over ten minutes, something that spoke at lengths of the scale of it, Brock arrived upon the mountain of rubble the corpse resided atop. At this proximity, the stench was almost blinding, forcing his eyes to tear up. Yet despite even that, Brock continued forward. Something here was calling him.

He could feel it.

Through blurred vision, Brock began to notice the sparse amount of orange blood lying around, the colour akin to the haze the sun bathed the sky in as it signalled the ending of the day. While it was usually in a vastly smaller quantity than the purple blood, the energy it contained was so many multitudes higher that it almost rendered Brock unconscious.

Even merely glancing at it from tens of meters away, the sight of it stung his eyes and gave him a throbbing headache.

“…What… the hell… happened here?” Brock managed to croak out in between the painful jabs the stench attacked his throat with.

Unfortunately, there was no one here to answer his question and Brock continued up the hill, savouring the powerful waves of ambient energy gradually leaving the corpse, this one soothing compared to the hostile power contained in the blood, although it did nothing to assist him.

Brock soon climbed over a chunk of rubble and laid his eyes onto a small island a short distance away, located directly behind the beast. It was surrounded by what could only be described as a rising lake of blood as the small crater was steadily filled with blood as it flowed freely from a gaping wound in the monster’s back. A brittle-looking bridge of crumbling cement and revealed rebar was the only thing that connected it back to the land.

Two items laid atop the plateau of the island, and Brock's cells screamed in hunger as he gazed upon them, their features clear to him even through his teary sight. One was a small golden crystal. A Shard of Awakening.

The other was a small violet fruit, glowing as it hung off a budding tree. The power it contained within felt boundless.