Symbiotic Ascension : A Progression Fantasy Adventure

It was a strange thing. Its shaft was white, not like bone, but white like marble, or moonstone. The feathers fluttered even though there was no wind, ethereal and almost transparent. An oddly familiar dark Aura still coated the arrow tip. Not the most common of arrows, that was certain.

The Gorilla crashed to his knees, falling into the black dunes like an anchor.

"What the hell was that...?" Glenn muttered under his breath, shocked. Pebble groaned and flew away, opposite the Orc flying islands. It was a pity, but Glenn was in no condition to fight another Newborn Ruler. He had taken too much of a risk unleashing the black flames against that army of Orcs. But then, even at his peak condition, dealing with Marcus would have been close to impossible.

He might even have died if it weren't for the mysterious archer's critical strike.

'Marcus Chevalier probably survived, you know?' Diamanes remarked. 'If Laurance was weaker than him and still possessed that monstrous Regeneration, I can't even imagine what powers Marcus possesses. Hell, he survived that Black Final Light with just a few burns!'

'Considering he's a Newborn Ruler and I'm just an Archmagi, I think forcing him to reveal whatever that Corrupted form was is already a grand success. And I extracted a lot of information from him. Let's get away and hope that Lucian and the rest took the hint.' Glenn sighed heavily and stuck his face in Pebble's muddy scales. The dragon's wounds were already healing, but it was clear that he was in pain.

"You did a great job, Pebble. I'll try to find you something delicious," he promised. "Bring me to Sahro and let's get out of here. We need to rest before returning to attack the islands. Hopefully, they'll still be there then..."

The dragon groaned in agreement and flapped away.

***

Marcus's eyes flashed open. He rolled on his side, coughing heavily. He spat out a thick lump of blood mixed with dark green ichor, his fingers trembling uncontrollably. With a touch of his fingers, he checked his neck, finding the exact spot where it'd been ripped off.

"I got my head popped... by Glenn? How?" Marcus groaned and forced himself to his knees. "No, he barely had the Mana to muster a spell; he couldn't have defeated me with some hasty, low-effort attack. Someone else, then?"

He looked up, the moonlight blinding him slightly. The twin moons were watching him intently, almost a little too insistently. A short distance away, stabbed into the ground, was one singular arrow.

"A projectile?" Marcus stumbled on his feet, still a little out of sorts. Regenerating the head was always incredibly annoying, but at least it wasn't painful. He crouched and grabbed the arrow, giving it a closer look. He looked at the arrow tip, forged from a strange metal he couldn't recognize. Marcus spun on his feet when he caught a movement in the arrow tip's reflection, but there was no one else here.

"What...?" His eyebrows rose in confusion. Nothing could fool his senses; he was a Newborn Ruler, after all. He could feel everything within a radius of a few kilometers, every grain of sand and every vibration in the ground or through the air. But then what was—

Slice.

A flash of black, a glint of metal. Marcus's eyes widened as he watched the sand suddenly shoot at his face. Or was his face shooting for the sand?

That question was the last thought he had. Marcus's head rolled down a black dune, crumbling into dust, just like the rest of his body.

The moonlight shone down upon him, a white, pure curtain that closed upon the darkness.

***

Glenn lay in the black sand, watching the stars and the twin moons.

'That arrow. It can't be, right?' He pondered.

Diamanes sneered. 'There aren't a thousand pale fuckers with the same energy as that creepy bastard. You know as well as I do the identity of the guy who saved your ass.'

Glenn stood up and winced. His wounds from his fight with Marcus still pained him, despite going through multiple rounds of Regeneration. It wasn't so simple to shake off a Newborn Ruler's attack, it seemed.

"Ah!" Sahro, who was lying nearby, unconscious, suddenly sat up. His hand shot straight for his Katana, his Aura flaring up, and his eyes searching for a threat. "Raijin?"

The fox timidly peeked his head out of his master's shadow. Sahro noticed Glenn sitting a short distance away and sighed in relief. He rubbed Raijin's nose before letting him return to his shadow.

"How's our sleeping beauty doing?" Glenn asked mockingly.

Sahro grunted and rubbed his stump. "What the hell happened? And who the hell pummeled you so hard?"

Glenn rubbed his face, exhausted. "I unleashed a spell comparable to your attack with the Corpse's Katana, and it drew out a Newborn Ruler."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Shit," the Black Heir blurted out.

"Shit," Glenn confirmed. "A Celestial God. But also an Occult Wanderer. And an Earthling like me."

Sahro blinked. "What?"

"Yes." Diamanes simply said, chiming in. "Yes, the situation is fucked up like never before."

"Nothing we're not used to," groaned Sahro. "And how did you escape from that... Earthling-Occult-Wanderer-Celestial-God? Did you kill him?" He smirked, listening to himself pronounce the ridiculous, long description.

Glenn shook his head. "I weakened him and even stole some of his Corruption, but—"

"You what?!"

Glenn sighed. "Alright, let me explain properly..."

A few minutes later.

Sahro frowned. "So you're saying Javier saved you? But how? I thought he couldn't grow anymore due to the White Plague. And... never mind that, he should be dead! Exan destroyed the W.O.R.M. he took control of!"

"He should be," Glenn said, his voice in a low tone. He didn't sound too convinced.

"But we never saw his body," added Diamanes. "And in my lines, with no bodies, there are no deaths. That's what Hollywood taught me, anyway."

"What's Hollywood?"

Glenn clicked his tongue. "Ignore Diamanes, Sahro. What's important is that Javier is maybe alive, and maybe helping us. Perhaps he could even give us a hand in finding Liara, Milena, and Lucian."

Sahro shook his head, grimacing. "You're putting a lot of hopes on a ghost."

Glenn shrugged. "There's no harm in hoping for some good luck. It's not like we're relying on him."

"What's the plan, then?" Diamanes inquired excitedly. "Please tell me it's to rest up and go back to destroy the flying islands."

Glenn opened his mouth to retort but closed it immediately after.

Actually, that was exactly what he wanted to do.

Sahro shook his head dejectedly, yet a loose smile still hung on his lips. Despite all that, the two young men's thoughts couldn't help but swerve back to their missing friends. They'd dove straight into battle for one reason: to send a message to their comrades and show them that they're here. The best scenario would have been that Lucian, Liara, or Milena would meet up with them and help get rid of the Orc flying islands as well as the Newborn Ruler dwelling there. Glenn alone wasn't enough to take care of a Newborn Ruler, but with the help of everyone else...

'It could be doable. Marcus will be expecting us, though. Hmm, maybe going straight back into the fight isn't that great of an idea,' Glenn realized. 'He probably called reinforcements. And one Newborn Ruler is already too hard to deal with—no way we could take on more than that.'

"It's shameful of me to say this, but..." Sahro winced. "After thinking about it, I don't think it's a good idea to rush back in."

Glenn nodded. "Yeah, we're getting carried away. Diamanes, you should stop infusing these suicidal thoughts; we can't die just yet."

"Yeah, yeah, sure, just push the fault onto dear ol' Diamanes," the entity grumbled, "And to say I almost got you to push your limits even farther. Can't you see I'm trying to lead you to the Newborn Ruler stage?"

"Getting my Seventh Circle won't do me much good if I die obtaining it," sneered Glenn.

Diamanes clicked his tongue. "A good point, admittedly. But with no risk, no rewards!"

"We're taking plenty of risks enough," Sahro spat. He rubbed his stump without thinking, crimson Aura running down his fingers in an electrical crackle. Glenn sighed and checked on his Mana. His reserves had filled back up quite a bit, but he still wasn't at peak condition yet. Waiting any longer would most certainly put his friends in danger, though.

"The eternal choice," Diamanes moaned theatrically. "To wait, or not to wait."

Pebble chose for them by collapsing into the black sand and snoring heavily, recovering from his wounds, and the violent fight with Marcus Chevalier. Glenn chuckled and leaned against the one-eyed dragon's side, resting his left palm against his warm scales. He transferred his Regeneration spell, helping the beast recover.

"So we wait?" Sahro unsheathed his Katana, looking at the blade with a hardened expression.

Glenn simply nodded.

"We wait."

***

He had quite an impressive magical career, when Glenn thought back to it. A little more than a year ago, he woke up on Limbo, unaware of the existence of Mana, his guts serving as an open buffet for ghouls. Then he got his first Circle with the Convergence of the Magi Brotherhood, discovered the Magellanic Clouds, which later on evolved into the Milky Way.

Glenn had thought he'd be able to discover even more about the nature of his Mana Heart, but it seemed like a whole-ass galaxy was the limit of his magic. Perhaps he'd find out more when he'd get to the Seventh Circle—if he ever gets there one day. Trying to break through to the Newborn Ruler level was the same as bashing his head against a wall, with the wall being made of bouncy jelly that seemed to mock him with every attempt.

"Why don't you just share the trick with me, Diamanes?" Glenn asked for the umpteenth time while waiting for his Mana and Pebble to recover. Sahro was going through different motions and stances with his Katana, his Aura stable yet gleaming with cruelty. Raijin was playing in the sand, jumping on the shadows cast by his master's body. The twin moons were half-buried on the horizon, the sun peeking out opposite to them.

"I already gave you the trick. Go fight something that will maybe kill you."

Pebble snored lightly behind Glenn, rolling in the sand in his tiny, cute form. The dragon had changed shape while he was asleep, and spent most of his rest on Glenn's knees, before inevitably rolling away. The young man opened his Observer's map absentmindedly, checking to see if it was still not working. Whatever the Celestial Gods—or Occult Wanderers, whatever their true identity was—used to jam the Observer, it covered truly a massive area.

He still had an offline version of the map, with the locations of the towers supposedly leading to Miyāh al-Ḥayāh drawn upon it clearly. But he couldn't get any updates about enemy or allied movements on the front lines, nor the newly discovered connections between each tower on this side of the desert.

"You've opened and closed that map more times than I can count," groaned Diamanes in a bored tone. "Why don't you go back to the flying islands already? Weren't we supposed to destroy the Orc factories and all that?"

Glenn shook his head. "We'll go there once we're done recovering. And we're not wasting a drop of Mana or Aura until we find out whether Marcus brought his friends to the party."

"Tsk, tsk. Just break through already. It's a little annoying to see you crush Saints and Archmagis but get bullied by Newborn Rulers." Diamanes sighed. "Just follow my advice, will you?"

"I'll consider... it?" Glenn frowned. He rubbed his eyes and gave the map another glance. The Observer bugged out for an instant, the digital hologram trembling with a few visual glitches. Suddenly, lines connected every tower to form one, harmonic whole. The enemy front lines reappeared, pushed back a few dozen kilometers into the Ink Dunes. Munirp's forces seemed the strongest they'd ever been.

But more important than anything, there was one point of interest drawn upon the map that hadn't been here before.

Miyāh al-Ḥayāh. The River of Life.