Ever since those blue screens had arrived, Andrew’s life had gone completely topsy-turvy. He’d just been trying to get laid at Mandla’s party, and he’d woken up as an adventurer. No one else called it that, but as an avid consumer of isekai anime, his most guilty pleasure, he knew exactly what it meant when a system granted people weapons and skills.
It was why he’d been the first to choose his Legend. His only regret was hesitating so long, there could’ve been a world-first title in being among the global vanguard. Even as they’d learned more about the system and realised just how impactful the Ascent could be, he didn’t regret not going for his bloodline resonant class, [Heavy Gunner]. Karl had told him about his Trial and it sounded horrific. Nicola’s words from the first day still rang in his ears.
“Those of us on the Ascent, we’ll be the frontline. We’ll be the first into danger and the last out. And as long as we stick to the plan, we’ll get you all home. Believe that.”
As a rugby player hoping to go pro, he was exactingly aware of his strengths and limitations. He was a team player. He made a good captain, but only with a good coach above him. He wasn’t going to be on the frontline of anything. Still, no one wanted to be weak, so he grinded for levels like all the rest of them.
Which is why he was so dismayed when he came across Nicola and Karl duking it out in front of a rhino corpse? No it was still breathing. Meanwhile the two Ascendants were tearing the copse of trees apart like it was nothing. Just their two Rungs and they made all of Andrew’s eight levels look like a piece of shit.
Nicola, atop her huge horse-sized hyena, was firing her bullet shots along with some ability that let her produce many ghostly arrows in a volley that showered the area in projectiles. The trees here weren’t the behemoths in the forest, but thick as a man’s waist and no doubt toughened by the system like everything else. Nicola could bring one down with three bullet shots.
For his part, Karl was weaving in and out of the trees, chasing her down as she tried to get a good enough angle to put the rhino down. Each swing of his sword gouged deep runnels in the trees it hit, just two swings being enough to topple the things.
Meanwhile, a [Slash] from Andrew would maybe bite a quarter of the way into the tree. More than enough force for beings made of flesh, even to cleave through bone, but the raw power the Ascendants could bring to bear this early was frightening.
Nicola’s hyena giggled madly as she dextrously stepped her way between trees as the archer sitting atop her calmly let off shot after shot. Her bullet arrows tore ragged holes through the edges of Karl’s wooden shield, but clanged off the shiny metal boss in the centre, and Karl was expertly manoeuvring his shield to catch her bolts in the resistant part as he ran next to her, keeping her away from the fallen rhino. Her hunter arrows simply weren’t fast enough to avoid getting cut out of the air.
She loosed another one of her volley shots and a small cloud of arrows descended on the Viking, who unleashed his shield skill. The pulse of force scattered the bolts. She huffed in frustration.
“Karl, don’t make me set all these trees on fire. I will do it.”
“Just to stop me from gaining a bond like yours? Feeling threatened, ja?”
“Feeling like shooting you in your face.”
Just then Andrew finally ran close enough to intervene.
“STOP! Guys what’s going on here?”
The two Ascendants froze before seeing it was him. Nicola rolled her eyes. She did that a lot.
“Tell your lackey to fuck off, he’ll get hurt.”
Hey!
“Hey! What the fuck was that for?”
She seemingly ignored him, staring Karl dead-on.
“I’m serious, Karl.”
Andrew looked to Karl and he was staring Nicola down just as intensely.
“Andrew, go check on the rhino for me. Maybe make it a bit more comfortable if you can.”
Andrew kept looking between the two, before gulping and going to see to the rhino. What the fuck had he just walked in on?
Nicola just closed her eyes and sighed.
“You’ve forced my hand, Karl.”
The arrow nocked within her bow flashed with a golden light, and now its tip was on fire.
Oh sh-
Almost in slow motion, Andrew watched the first burning arrow leave Nicola’s bow, fly across the intervening space, whip past his shoulder, and break apart on the fallen tree next to the rhino. Then all hell broke loose.
With a whoosh, the trees, fallen and standing, around the rhino all went up in flames as Nicola inundated them with incendiary arrows. Her hyena turned and ran even as Nicola poured more fire arrows into the copse from its back, now aiming to set the entire thing aflame. With him and Karl inside it.
This bitch is crazy.
Karl meanwhile had immediately sprinted to the rhino’s head and even as the inferno raged all around them, he was whispering softly into its ear and gently stroking its head.
This man is crazy. Is insanity just a result of being on the Ascent?
“Karl we need to go right now!”
He tried shaking the furred warrior by the shoulder, only to get waved off. The conflagration was making him sweat in his heavy armour and more and more routes were getting blocked off by burning trees falling onto their only ways out. They were getting trapped in.
He tried more insistently to shake Karl out of whatever madness had struck him before they died with the rhino, but the man was resolute. The heat was prickling at Andrew’s face as flames threatened to lick at his armour. He seriously considered ditching the idiot.
But he saved my life. Goddammit.
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Whatever Karl was trying to do wasn’t working. He was focused on the animal with the broken leg in front of him, trying to coax it awake as its eyes drifted, probably delirious with pain. Andrew on the other hand, kicked it in the rear.
The rhino’s eyes snapped open as it retaliated with a bellow, kicking him in the gut with its good leg and sending him flying a few metres away, clutching his stomach with a groan.
That was a bad idea.
“Yes!”
Frowning at Karl’s exclamation, he looked through smoke and tear-filled eyes to see the wildest sight. The rhino glowed with a golden light as Karl glowed with a grey light, outshining even the red-hot inferno swirling around them. The beast’s wounds rapidly healed as Karl’s skin visibly grew greyer and thicker. Karl himself stared down at his forearms in wonder as his pale skin transformed into tough light grey hide. As if to cap off the metamorphosis, a tiny little horn grew at the tip of his nose.
The now healed rhino got up onto its feet, and Karl came and scooped Andrew onto his shoulder as the beast’s horn began to shine with a grey radiance.
“Let’s get out of here, ja?”
----------------------------------------
Mandla paced within his room in the burrow, thinking. He’d had what he thought was a productive day, organising scout missions, collating data into their turf map, creating a battle plan and importantly, sowing influence among the Support Legends, who he realised were crucial to any long-term success.
The sun had set with him confident he had a real shot at taking the Hegemon position. Then Karl had come back.
He and Andrew both had scorch marks on their armour and stank of smoke, but wouldn’t say what had happened. Their strange state however was the last thing on anyone’s mind as they had come back atop a full sized rhino. A fucking Symbiote.
Because everyone’s just fucking getting one of these I guess.
Karl had changed, just like Nicola. His skin was now light grey and looked tough. His formerly blue eyes now pierced with a stormcloud hue. And he had the cutest little horn on his nose. It looked kind of ridiculous but made the whole thing no less impressive.
Still, Mandla wasn’t Nicola. He wasn’t going to run off into the darkness to prove how grown-up he was. No matter how tempting it was.
He’d heard the whispers. People talking about which they’d prefer in charge between Karl and Nicola. That they were the clear choices. The Symbiotes gave them a sort of legitimacy Mandla couldn’t match.
This might be a blessing in disguise though. Instead of only one of them with this symbol of legitimacy, it’s the both of them, putting them directly at odds. I could position myself above both.
Going by the sheer offensive power each Ascendant could bring to bear, Karl and Nicola were head and shoulders ahead of Mandla and Kaveh because of their Symbiotes. But Mandla had been showing his organisational skills from day one, had been directing people effectively ever since they’d first woken up in this forsaken new world.
Leading wasn’t just about strength. But he couldn’t ignore his weakness compared to them. He summoned his [Ixwa], staring into its gleaming blade.
It purred under the attention.
I need an edge. Something I can do that they can’t. Nicola is probably a better organiser than I am, robot that she is, and Karl is a way better fighter. I can’t just think in terms of the things they excel at.
He needed to make a bet on himself. If he put himself on the spot, could he reach out and grab everything he wanted? He was a casual student of history, having played many historical war games, and knew Julius Caesar was the type to do exactly that. Stack as many advantages in his favour before going into any sort of conflict, then rolling the dice and trusting himself to see it through. It had definitely worked out for him, the man had chiselled his name into history and laid the foundation for one of the greatest empires in human existence.
He wasn’t Caesar however, far from it. Hesitation and indecision plagued him.
I need to talk to Kaveh.
Leaving his room to find the man, he walked along the tunnels in silence. They’d foregone their nightly [Janna] session tonight as there were many preparations being made, many of them from his instruction, and the assassin couldn’t be spared.
He found Kaveh atop the mound, standing silent sentry. Seeing Mandla, he wordlessly shuffled to the side giving him a spot to sit down.
“Aweh.”
“Aweh bro. What’s up?”
Mandla sighed.
“Just feeling kinda useless, I guess. It’s like all of a sudden I’m the bitch of the group, trying to squeeze in between my two bigger, stronger brothers.”
Kaveh chuckled at that.
“I wonder what that’s like? What must it be like to have to navigate having no clout when you feel like you should? How strange that experience must be, to be an Ascendant and not have as big a say as you’d like.”
Mandla rolled his eyes.
“Okay okay, I get it, damn. They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit by the way.”
“You’re sarcastic all the time.”
“Yeah, but its smart when I do it.”
Kaveh shoved at his shoulder with a wry smile.
“Come on, man, what’s really up?”
Mandla looked up at the night sky, brilliant and almost ethereal compared to what it used to be.
“I don’t know, bro. It’s like… seeing those screens that night, waking up with all these powers and shit… it was a promise, you know? A promise of something new. Something different. Better. Like, you know how much I hate office jobs?”
“Vehemently.”
“Exactly, it represents tedium, slavery to some imaginary line and the ultimate expression of conformity. It’s basic. So when this whole apocalypse thing happened, lowkey, it was freeing. I could rise above, finally. But now, I’m being faced with the reality that even as shit is going biblical, I just don’t have what it takes to really Ascend. Even now, my life is trending toward mediocrity. I don’t know dude, I guess I figured I was special somehow.”
Kaveh let out a deep belly laugh at that.
“Only you would see being one of an elite class of demigods, one of the toughest people on the planet, as mediocre. You really are all or nothing with this. Do you remember how we first met?”
Mandla looked away in embarrassment, smiling at the memory.
Kaveh had been fresh off the boat, barely speaking English when he enrolled into Mandla’s primary school. Nonetheless, upon introducing himself, the ten-year old Mandla had declared Kaveh his new friend and described his in-depth plan for world domination to Kaveh’s silently nodding countenance.
“Yeah, of course.”
“I never told you what it was like for me. My dad had been teaching me about famous Persian heroes from history, and that previous night, he’d told me the story of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the first Persian empire. A man who reverberates through time. I barely understood English of course, but when I stepped onto the school premises that day, my head was filled with ideas of great men and massive empires. When you introduced yourself to me, I didn’t get half of what you said, but you know what I thought just off that first impression? It’s kinda cringe, but verbatim, I was like ‘This is a man like Cyrus, one who can change the world.’ All these years later, that’s never changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve always thought you were going to change the world. Somehow, someway, you’d turn the course of humanity. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, but I never doubted you were going to make your mark. That’s still true bro. I’ve always had faith in you. Maybe have some in yourself.”
Fuck, am I blushing?
Kaveh’s unflinching support touched Mandla in a way he couldn’t express with words. Instead, he gave his friend a hug.
“Thanks bitch.”
“Any time, bitch.”
With a newly burgeoning confidence, Mandla ran back down into his room and rapidly scraped away the prospective battle plan drawn in the dirt.
Like Kaveh said, he was all-or-nothing with this. His old cautious plan would allow them to whittle away at the herd, grinding them down over a day or two before facing the big one. But that would just give Karl and Nicola time to showcase how awesome they were.
All or nothing.
His mind working feverishly, he drew up a new plan. A bold plan. One which put him in the spotlight and gave him the opportunity to sink or swim.
It was time to roll the dice.
----------------------------------------
In the morning, having spent the whole night tweaking and adjusting his plan, he presented it to the other Ascendants.
Nicola looked down at it skeptically.
“Isn’t this a bit… much? I mean, I agree on principle but this seems excessive.”
Karl looked like he wanted to say something similar, but simply held his tongue. There was definitely tension between them, even if Nicola was acting like nothing was wrong.
Mandla shrugged.
“All that matters is winning, right? This is going to give us the win. Just takes a bit of preparation.”
“And you plan to be..-”
“Yup.”
She exhaled heavily.
“You know you’ll die, right? This is suicide.”
Mandla smirked.
“Only if it doesn’t work. Besides, we’ve stalled long enough. We need to act decisively. Let’s kill that damn elephant.”