Symbiotic Ascension : A Progression Fantasy Adventure

Usually, Glenn's methods to destroy his enemies were pretty simple; Throw a spell more powerful than his opponent's defenses, and turn everything around the fiend into ashes. That's why most of his spells were focused on mass destruction. He slaughtered ancient beings and evil gods' spawns every Monday, he didn't have the leeway to be delicate.

Unfortunately, Glenn couldn't use his usual destroy everything and speak later's tactics this time.

"If one of you destroys these Orc corpses, I'll rip your eyes out!" Milena shouted as she slipped past the enemies in a mesmerizing dance. Her robotics arms stabbed and cut through every zombie on her path, painting the floor of the throne room in even more blood.

Sahro cursed and met the talking Corpse head-on, his prosthesis bursting with crackling crimson Aura. His curved sword clashed with the Corpse's rusty blade in an explosion of crimson lightning and sickening darkness. Liara tried helping her fellow Black Heir, but the corpse simply slashed in her direction, sending her flying into the wall, which, surprisingly, did not crumble.

Lucian tried butting in as well, but the Corpse suddenly seized Sahro's throat, shooting past his sword, and throwing the Black Heir at the Prince. A flash of black light followed them, cutting through the light silently. Sahro and Lucian grunted as they combined their forces, barely blocking the attack. Glenn clicked his tongue and charged in, a Sun in one hand and a Black Hole in the other, until he remembered Milena's words.

"Damn it!" He pulled himself out of the way with Gravity Manipulation, watching as the Corpse's sword cleaved right where his throat previously was. Another flash of black light shot out of the blade, and Glenn attempted to block it by summoning his Saturn's Rings.

"Dodge! That's not something you can block!" Diamanes shouted. Glenn's eyes widened, and he narrowly dodged, his defenses still in place. It was a little too late, and the black flash ate into his shield, destroying the spell and burying into his flesh. The pain rang through Glenn's body as his right arm almost detached from his shoulder.

"Gugh!" He fell to one knee, coughing out blood and activating Regeneration at the same time.

"You think I will let you heal, fiend?" The Corpse snickered and pulled its blade back, preparing a stab. The tip of his sword made reality tremble, warp, and shake like a glitch in the matrix. Glenn cursed and tried getting out of the way, but his wound threw him back down on his knees. Black flames burned in his flesh, consuming him little by little. Without thinking twice about it, he smacked Diamanes into the black fire.

The Corpse stabbed forward mercilessly.

Warp!

Time stopped for an instant as the world turned over itself. The colors disappeared from Glenn's eyes, replaced by only black and white. He could only see the tip of the rusty sword, advancing slowly toward him. He watched it approach his heart, but couldn't move out of the way. It was as if he'd turned into a statue.

A bolt of crimson lightning and a ray of twilight struck past him, colliding with the blade's tip. The colors returned to Glenn's eyes, with them the control of his limbs. He jumped back with a wince, finally feeling his arm mending back with his shoulder.

Lucian slid back next to Glenn, heaving. He was covered in countless cuts, and his magical crown shattered. Sahro stood before them, his energy flaring out at maximum output. Three fox tails unfurled behind him, his skin turning as black as coal. His curved sword crumbled into dust alongside his prosthesis, unable to support the boost in power.

'We need to find a good metal for Liam and Janica. I've seen Sahro's prosthesis crumble more times than a cookie,' remarked Diamanes in a calmer tone. Glenn almost insulted the entity as he endured the pain of his arm healing, but restrained himself.

The Corpse hesitantly lowered his blade, his rotten mouth opening slightly. "Are you...? How?"

Sahro's eyes flashed with red lightning, red, tangible lightning replacing his missing limb and weapon. "Shinku Ikazuchi."

An illusion of a massive red fox appeared behind Sahro, snarling at the Corpse. The latter flinched and raised his sword to defend himself, but Milena and Liara suddenly appeared out of the wave of corpses.

"Odin's Judgement!"

"Dela Luna's Repository: Lunar Grasp!"

A pillar of light crashed against the Corpse's arms and forced him to drop his weapon, while chains of moonlight surged out of the ground and restrained it. Time slowed down once again, a common occurrence these days, and Sahro slashed forward. A crimson line pushed forward, slicing straight through the Corpse and cutting it in two. The zombie herd it previously been created fell to the ground, all split in half like their creator.

The corners of Glenn's lips curled upwards slightly. Discussing Earth's mythology had been a big help to the Black Heirs in crafting new spells and attacks. He never would have guessed that Sahro would take such an interest in Japanese legends, or that Liara would be drawn to Norse mythology. Glenn himself couldn't recall much about either, but thankfully, Exan had no such trouble. Milena's grandfather had more than once proven to them that his memory was infallible during their training.

"Well, that was easier than I thought it would be," Lucian grunted as he stood and dusted his shoulders off. "What the hell was this corpse?"

"What hell am I, you ask?"

Glenn and the others froze, turning toward the split corpse. Sahro frowned, drawing his Aura sword back again, readying himself for another attack.

"He should be dead, dead," Sahro muttered, "Raijin doesn't leave a chance to my enemies..."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The Corpse's two halves pulled themselves together into one whole, darkness pulsing out of the body instead of blood.

"I am a remnant of ages past, a forsaken soul, damned for eternity, waiting for the death of the ones beyond the heavens!" The Corpse's rusty blade flew back into his hand, a black flame engulfing it. The rust fell, crumbling away, and revealing an otherworldly Katana, with a white blade streaked with black in its center. Glenn's eyes widened, feeling like he had already seen that weapon somewhere.

'But where?'

"You..." The Corpse pointed his Katana toward Sahro, before turning it in Liara's direction, "And you... Watch, and learn, for that is—"

A pillar of golden light fell upon the Corpse, melting more of its rotten flesh away. The team stepped back as swords of blood surged out of the ground, stabbing through the Corpse in every part. Spells of all kinds appeared around the undead, shooting countless spells of incredible devastation. The castle shook as the bricks blackened, yet still held on.

"Divine energy!" Milena gasped before hastily raising magical shields to protect her and her teammates. The latter immediately followed her example as the divine attacks grew out of control, exploding in every part of the throne room, obstinately destroying the Corpse time and time again.

But despite all of this onslaught, the Corpse still stood, his rotten flesh growing back like moss off a river's rock, the bones mending back like broken tree branches. Chains of gold fell through the ceiling and wrapped themselves around his throat, wrists, and ankles, restraining him entirely.

Diamanes whistled, impressed. "Wow, I've never seen that before. Or did I?" He clicked his tongue, muttering to himself despite the chaos. "My memories are a little jumbled up, after all... Hmm, Glenn, what do you think?"

Glenn bit his lips, his eyes bloodshot. "Shut the hell up, Diamanes!" he hissed. He could feel an itch in his brain—there was something wrong here, but he couldn't—

"...Onnea?" he inquired silently in confused realization. The golden pillar intensified in strength as his right arm burned with a holy, revengeful light. The same that always appeared whenever he got close enough to a Heart of Darkness.

Only the Corpse wasn't a Heart of Darkness. He didn't have a Seed, and didn't feel like that. Glenn couldn't explain it, but he could tell this wasn't the usual slay the Heart business. The divine attacks suddenly seemed to be thwarted away from the corpse, black and white light pushing back against them. Glenn felt his back get drenched in cold sweat as one of the divine spells was deflected toward them. He dismissed Milena's worries about the Orc corpses, dismissed any sort of prudence about the castle's structural integrity, and conjured a spell to counter what was coming. It looked like... no, it didn't look like anything. It was something out of this world, something perfect, divine. The principle of void incarnate.

Out of all of them, Glenn was maybe the one who made the least amount of progress with his spells. He learned about Earth's constellations from Exan, some physics principles, and space in general. But the reason his breakthrough wasn't as explosive as the others was not that he was bad at learning, or that Exan couldn't teach him.

He simply was already strong enough to bypass all of it. The only thing he could do was develop what he already knew further.

Casting his spells required three things. Mana, of course, but that was evident. No, what he kind of lacked before but didn't anymore was knowledge and imagination.

Two things which he disposed of in large quantities now, thanks to Exan's teachings.

But even with all that, he lacked something incredibly important at this moment: time. In a split second, Glenn's brain made quite a few decisions to save his friends and himself. Diamanes's baffled comments echoed through his mind, yet he couldn't hear them.

"Absolute Zero!" With one hand, he launched a wave of freezing Mana, momentarily stopping the divine, void-incarnated spell. He buried his feet into the floor and used a technique he'd sealed a long time ago: Overload. The speed his six Circles began spinning created an incredible quantity of Mana, the power filling his body to the brim, threatening to crack it open. Sahro launched a crimson, Primal strike of Aura at the void spell, but it got devoured in an instant. Even Glenn's Absolute Zero, which influenced the terrain more than the spell itself, was collapsing at incredible speed. The Mana it drew out of Glenn was incredibly high, almost making him fall from exhaustion.

But it wasn't time yet.

Glenn knew about the void of space, but he didn't know about the principle of the void. If Sahro's attack got swallowed like a frog swallows a fly, then filling it up won't work.

'Fire to fight fire,' he thought. 'Void to fight the void.'

He drew a line in the air with his fingers, his Mana bottoming out for the first time in ages. Thankfully, Overload kept him going, straining his Circles and pushing him to the very brink. Blood trickled off his lips as all light disappeared in the throne room, pulled by Glenn's spell, a simple line of pure energy. Time stopped altogether as the divine spells stopped striking the Corpse, and the latter stopped defending themselves. It almost appeared like whoever was casting all of these attacks upon the Corpse finally realized that one of those had deviated toward the innocents in the room.

A little too late, though. Glenn opened his hand, his eyes blazing with deep purple.

"Final Light," he muttered.

All of the light that the spell had swallowed was spat back in a beam of white-violet, pulsing with hunger. The Final Light collided with the divine void, reality trembling and shattering at the contact. Glenn grinned as Final Light stopped the attack. But his smile quickly disappeared. The void consumed even the Final Light, pushing through it and toward Glenn and the others. Lucian shouted something while his crown struggled to light up again with Mana, while Liara launched herself forward, her wings stretched in a last desperate attempt.

"That is not destined death."

With the whisper, black satin surged from the walls, the ground, and the ceiling and wrapped itself around the void spell. It tightened around it, as if it wanted to strangle the spell.

And it worked.

The satin unfurled, revealing the disappearance of the void spell. Glenn fell to his knees, blood flowing out of his nose and ears, gasping for air. The Corpse stared at the black satin pensively, before pointing his Katana at the sky.

"Did you see?" he asked, looking at Sahro and Liara. "This is what I wanted to show you. The truth. The unspeakable, undeniable truth. Now watch, for I, who forgot even my name, refuse to wield to even them!"

The Corpse roared and stabbed at the sky, just as a golden pillar of light fell out of it again, alongside gold chains, blood swords, and more void spells.

All disappeared as a lone beam of black and white pierced through them all, piercing through the castle's ceiling and revealing the sky beyond. The Divinity disappeared, almost as if cut away. The Corpse looked at the hole in the ceiling before turning toward Sahro and Liara, smiling.

Despite the rot, the visible bones, and the lack of light in his eyes, they all could see that this was a warm smile, a smile friends and family shared.

"May this sight live with you, my descendants."

The sound faded away from his lips as the Corpse turned to dust, his Katana falling out of his hand and clanging against the ground. A heavy silence replaced the cacophony of the previous chaos until an awed, disbelieving voice shattered it all.

"What in the Original was that?!" Diamanes blurted out, his voice cracking slightly.

Glenn looked at the fallen Katana and sneered despite himself.

"Sahro and Liara's ancestor, I suppose. Holy shit."