The first thing to hit him was the smell. The overpowering, metallic scent of blood. He could practically taste it.

Opening his eyes to the abattoir the meerkat burrow had become, Mandla awoke seeing nothing but corpses. His body, his real one, thank god, was still hopped up on adrenaline and practically shivering with energy.

Mandla’s mind, on the other hand was disoriented and confused from the shift in perspective. He staggered for a moment but caught himself, thankful that he hadn’t come to on the floor, especially here.

Notifications filled his field of view, but he desperately dismissed them as he looked around for the others, re-establishing an understanding of the situation. Nicola and Karl were still fighting the other two meerkat Dominators, while Kaveh was standing off to the side, clearly just as bewildered.

It had only taken a second.

Recovering quickly, he rushed forward as his chest filled with a surging vitality. The same energy he’d taken from the Dominator was now pulsing, roaring through his veins like his own blood.

Running towards the battle, he summoned his [Assegai]. It materialised faster and smoother than before, and its emotions flooded into Mandla’s psyche. The javelin was almost keening with a yearning to be let loose. Picking out the Dominator that had just pushed Nicola to the ground, he obliged.

His muscles swelling with power, Mandla wound up, stretching nearly to breaking point, and released. The weapon launched out of his hand, howling as it drilled through the intervening space, and blasted clean through the Dominator’s gut.

The burrow wall was briefly visible through the football-sized hole in its torso, before a fountain of blood gushed and its internal organs spilled out of the breach. Onto Nicola.

She shrieked, screaming bloody murder, and either that or the sudden demise of its brother caused the final Dominator to look away from its relentless assault on Karl. Just for a moment.

But it was enough.

Karl immediately took advantage of the moment of distraction, dropping his shield entirely, weaving in through the meerkat’s guard and summoning his [Atgeir] up close. Using its piercing ability, he punched the spear straight through the Dominator’s chest, its crimson-drenched blade exiting the beast’s back in a spray of blood.

With a savage grin of victory, Karl’s body started glowing with golden light, brighter and brighter until a climactic flash lit up the room. Blinking away the brightness that was too harsh even for his Ascendant eyes, Mandla saw Karl staggering backwards, disoriented. He tripped over a meerkat pup corpse, then the dead Dominator above him toppled, falling down on him and bringing him to the ground.

Looking around the earthen room, Mandla slowly panted as he realised there was nothing left to fight.

They’d done it.

The meerkat pups were still mourning the loss of their mother, and thinking back, they weren’t inherently hostile. They’d only attacked after the Dominatrix activated her skill.

The burrow was theirs. Mandla allowed his shoulders to relax.

Shit, wait! The Legends!

Remembering there was still another battle raging in the tunnels above them, Mandla ran forward to pull Karl from under the Dominator’s body.

“Kaveh! The Legends!”

His eyes widening in shock as he remembered, the robe clad assassin ran over to Nicola and physically picked up off the floor in a princess carry, then turning to run back into the tunnels.

Shoving the heavy beast off the Swede, Mandla grabbed Karl by the hand and all but dragged him as he ran after Kaveh.

Racing back into the tunnels, Mandla flicked through the notifications clamouring for his attention.

You have slain a juvenile Suricata Habilis. x97

You have slain a Mini-Elite - Meerkat Dominator. x2

You have survived the First Trial! Access to Advantages granted.

Advantages?

The sounds of battle drawing him in, Mandla hastened after Kaveh, aiming to relieve the smaller, second squad first. He quickly checked his status to see changes.

Status.

Ascendant Status

Name: Mandla Nkosi

Title: Ascendant (+)

Ascendant Class: Zulu iNduna

Position: 2,763,917

Level: 2nd Rung

Bloodline Avatar: N/A

Quintessence: Ascendant

Potency: A trickle

Symbiosis: N/A

Faction: N/A

Skills (Bloodline):

N/A

Skills (Weapon):

Ixwa

Assegai

Isihlangu

Imbemba

Ultimate (Bloodline):

N/A

Iwisa

I’m almost three millionth? I nearly fucking died completing that Trial!

Still, it was an encouraging number. The ticker had gone up to around twenty million when he’d checked before entering the burrow. It was slowly rising, even now, but much slower than it had when he was on the previous Rung.

He was seriously in the running now.

Focusing on the plus sign next to his title, it opened up into a separate category, the Advantages that notification had been referring to.

Advantages

Common

Unique

He was about to explore more but the group finally came upon the heat of the action.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The two squads sent in before the Ascendants were made up of all the soldier Legends, along with a strong contingent of Support Legends backing them up. The first was the largest, with it being composed of the three [Heavy Swordsmen] and Jacob, the [Light Swordsman], backed up by all eight [Defenders], the idea being that they’d poke their spears past the shields while anything that got in close would be dealt with by the swords.

The second was composed of the three [Heavy Spearmen], along with the five [Heavy Chargers]. The Cavalry Legends’ skills were mostly meant to be used with some sort of mount, but the weapons they’d been granted, a heavy sabre and long, hollow lance, worked just fine without one. They’d been forced to leave the lances aboveground as they were too unwieldy for tunnel combat, but their armour and sabres were still crucial to deal with any meerkats that got past the spearmen’s shields.

It was this second group’s battle that the Ascendants found first. Dashing around a corner, the four saw this squad trapped in a room, backed up almost against the wall by the swarm of waist-high adult meerkats. They were about to be overwhelmed.

Not anymore.

Leaping into action, the Ascendants dove into the fray. Mandla manifested his [Isihlangu] and almost brought out his [Ixwa] again before having a better idea. Summoning his [Iwisa] for the first time, Mandla felt the cool wood of its handle restraining a dynamic, volatile energy, begging to be released. He smiled.

Bringing it around in a mighty swing, the club’s studded head smashed into the back of the crowd of meerkats. And exploded.

Like a grenade had gone off, the [Iwisa] unleashed a shockwave of concussive energy in an orb around it, sending the chittering beasts flying from the point of impact but washing harmlessly over the club’s wielder. The closest meerkats didn’t get up again, their organs jellied from the pressure wave.

Smile growing, Mandla began to lay about himself, brute-forcing his way through the crush towards the struggling squad. Blast after blast, he dug through the mass of meerkats, who were slowly starting to turn their attention to their rear.

He saw arrows blow past him as Nicola lessened the pressure on the Legends by picking off the beasts directly in front of them.

Cheers rose up from the beleaguered Legends as they saw the arrows fly in and the Ascendants attacking from behind. They fought with a renewed vigour, sabres chopping down into meerkat heads and spears impaling them on their lengths.

Mandla almost laughed in glee. Second Rung was an entirely different world from the first. He felt acutely aware of every part of his body and the energy swirling through his arteries pushed him to burn through it, to fight until every last drop had been wrung out of him, then fight some more.

He would accumulate scratches and nicks, a few spears even stabbed through his non-shielded arm or legs, but his energy flowed towards any cuts and healed them almost instantaneously. He felt invincible. He felt powerful.

Having successfully split the swarm in two, the Ascendants paired off, Mandla and Kaveh turning to one side while Nicola and Karl dealt with the other.

It seemed both Karl and Kaveh had also received powerful new skills from their Trials, as they tore into the ravenous horde. Kaveh wielded a [Scimitar] that coldly sought out the necks of the meerkats, lopping off head after head, decapitating them en masse while on the other side, Karl summoned a one handed [Sverð] that growled like a bear with each swing, tearing five jagged claw marks through its victims, sometimes entirely bisecting the hapless beasts.

It was a wholesale slaughter and then, all too suddenly, it was over. The chamber rang silent after the last meerkat was put down.

“That was AMAZING!”

Two of the [Heavy Spearmen] rushed over and started gushing over the Ascendants, profusely thanking them for the rescue. The others were mostly gaping in awe at the brutal culling they’d just witnessed.

Kaveh cut their reactions short.

“We’re gonna have to do this all again guys. First squad is still fighting somewhere, let’s go end this.”

With that he received grim nods and they all, Legends and Ascendants in lockstep, rushed off to join their fellow warriors. The memory of the hyena attack was still fresh in their minds. None of them wanted anything like that to happen again.

As they searched through the burrow for the last hotspot of violence, Mandla checked on the Position ticker again. It had climbed to over three million. This troubled him.

He understood the necessity of this power, and honestly, the thrill of being dominant in battle felt like nothing else. But three million people around the world with this level of lethality? As he was right now, with the healing energy within him, he could likely shrug off a bullet. Probably several. And this was just the second level of power.

For the first time, he wondered if having millions of little demigods running around was worse than letting nature take over.

He didn’t get to continue this line of thought, as they turned a corner and saw the tunnel inundated with fur and claws. The meerkats had absolutely flooded this passage with soldiers, all directing their ire at the comparatively tiny group on the far end of the tunnel. The four shields the group wielded were enough to completely block off the meerkats’ advance and spears constantly reached over, between and around the shields to bite into meerkat flesh.

Still the sheer weight of the meerkat army pushed the defiant Legends back, even as they painted the ground with blood for every conceded step.

Looking back at the others, they nodded, all of them ready. Taking a breath, Mandla roared, and behind him the other Ascendants and Legends roared in unison before they ran forward, all twelve of them crashing into the meerkats’ rear, shattering their cohesion.

It was a butchering, the Ascendants’ hammer crushing the meerkats between them and the first squad’s anvil. Heads, limbs, viscera, all of it flew through the air as the combined efforts of the humans slowly, bloodily ground down the meerkat army between them.

The outcome had always been clear.

It was a complete rout. The remaining meerkats, seeing no way out, started digging straight through the tunnel walls, fleeing for their lives. It turned into a stampede to escape the closing jaws of the humans’ two-pronged attack, where the panicked beasts were so intent on getting out they didn’t notice the humans killing them even faster now that they’d stopped fighting back.

Chasing the last remnants of the meerkat horde out of the tunnels, the newly reformed group of everyone who’d attacked the burrow was immediately worried as they saw the beasts streaming out of the burrow, thinking they were going to attack the Classless and other Support Legends. A quick check outside showed that, no, they weren’t attacking. Their defeat had been utter and complete, and now they were scattering, abandoning the burrow for good. Without the Dominatrix’ influence, they wouldn’t fight to the death.

Finally, after what had felt like hours of combat and an entire day within the Trial, they had succeeded.

The burrow was theirs.

----------------------------------------

Nicola pouted.

“I had it.”

Mandla rolled his eyes.

“You absolutely did not have it. I saved your life and you’re too salty to admit it.”

They were overseeing the wider group’s migration into the “liberated” burrow. The space was more than big enough for them all and they wasted no time in moving in. Those who’d remained outside during the assault on the burrow had had a nerve-wracking wait, as all the soldier Legends and even the [Defenders] had been committed to this one huge battle, leaving them vulnerable and exposed on the open plain.

If another hyena raid occurred, they would have been almost completely defenceless.

Luckily, nothing of the sort had happened and they were all now streaming past, silently gaping at the mountains of animal corpses and lakes of blood that had filled the tunnels.

We’ll have to do something about that.

While they were organising everything and sorting people, equipment, and the little food they had left into rooms, Nicola was being a brat.

“What’s salty is you, reaching the second Rung, then immediately stopping me from doing the same.”

Mandla raised his hands.

“Fine, next time I’ll leave you to get julienned, maybe then you’ll be a bit more grateful.”

Kaveh stepped in the middle of their bickering.

“Come on you two, you’re like cats, constantly swiping at each other. We were an all-star team back there and you both know it, so why bring all this negativity instead of celebrating our victory? Mandla, you know she’s an integral part of the team, stop making her feel like deadweight. Nicola, he saved your life, you’re smart enough to know that. We’ll leave the next Mini-Elite for you, cool?”

They both just crossed their arms.

Kaveh shook his head.

“You don’t even realise how alike you two are. I swear it’s like raising children.”

Whatever, bitch.

“Whatever, bitch. I don’t have to like her to do what needs to be done, I’m not an idiot. Unlike someone who’d rather take claws to the face than admit she wasn’t in control.”

She punched him in the shoulder and huffed.

Karl sauntered over, chuckling.

“These two are at it again, huh. Whatever it is this time will have to wait. We have a problem.”

The other Ascendants turned to him, now focused.

“There are still hundreds of pups in the lowest chamber. What are we going to do with them?”

Oh shit.

From the looks on the others’ faces, they’d forgotten about them too.

Kaveh spoke up.

“They’re harmless, right? Let’s just turn them out into the wild. Maybe they’ll find the adults that ran away.”

Karl nodded, agreeing.

“Ja, there are too many to keep here. We must lead them out somehow.”

Mandla shared a glance with Nicola. An idea passed between their eyes.

Fuck, I hate agreeing with her.

He grimaced.

“Look guys, we… our Supports didn’t fight.”

Both Karl and Kaveh frowned, not understanding.

“Yeah so?”

“Ja, so what?”

Nicola piped up, clarifying.

“They need the levels.”

A silence fell over the group as Kaveh and Karl absorbed this.

Kaveh shook his head.

“No, these are pups. Babies. They’re harmless without the Dominatrix. We can’t just cull them, that’s fucking ridiculous.”

Mandla hesitated, wondering how best to approach this.

“Bro, I get that. I really do. The idea is just as distasteful to me. But look at the reality. We just got a huge boost in power from this, the soldier Legends too. But most of the Supports didn’t. These are [Doctors], [Sappers], all the important non-combat roles. Where else will they get the levels? From a giant hyena? From the herbivore hive mind that’s going on up north? They can’t kill those, Kaveh.”

Nicola spoke up in support.

“These classes are there for a reason. If we hog all the levels now, it’s going to come back and fuck us somewhere down the line. Maybe we can face the hyenas without level four [Doctors] to patch us up, but can the other Legends? It’s a hard choice now, that will save us from suffering later.”

Karl was nodding along, uncomfortable but understanding the logic. Kaveh wasn’t having it.

“No, what the fuck? How are you all going to stand there and act like you’re not ordering a room full of hundreds of innocent young to be put to death? Even worse, used as fuel? Xp? They’re blameless in this and we’re going to exterminate them because they’re a convenient source of levels? Fuck all the way off, that’s wrong.”

Mandla grimaced.

“Look, bro. I don’t want to put it like this, but it’s too late for any moralising now. We just basically genocided a fledgling society. They used tools. They made art. The Dominatrix back there willingly sacrificed herself. There’s every chance they were smart, conscious beings just like us, and if not, on the way there. We invaded, and took their home, unprovoked. We’re already in the wrong here. We’re just gonna have to accept that, because unfortunately, this is what we have to do to survive.”

Kaveh drew back, stunned at the revelation. But composed himself quickly and retorted.

“So we must become no better than beasts? Because we’ve been forced into a position where we don’t have the luxury of keeping our hands entirely clean, we must then dunk them full-force into the vilest, most depraved shit? These are pups. Them attacking us is one thing, but just coldly exterminating them is wrong!”

Nicola grabbed Kaveh’s face, cupping his cheeks in her hands as she looked him dead in the eyes.

“Humans or meerkats?”

“W-what?”

“It’s a simple question. Keeping the meerkats alive now, means humans dead in the future. Killing the meerkats means humans alive in the future. It might be twenty people, or it might just be one, but someone will die for a lack of levels. Someone is going to pay the price for our clean conscience and you know it won’t be us. So answer me. Humans or meerkats.”

Kaveh visibly struggled, his emotions all conflicting. He knew, deep down, that she was right. He sighed, defeated.

“Humans.”