Zero to Peak: Ascension Online

Ivan was violently ejected from the western wing, the force of the blast sending him stumbling out into the open.

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Critical damaged sustained.

Armour Integrity: 25%

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The system panel flashed relentlessly in his perception, a persistent, screaming red warning of the dire state he was in. He staggered, his breath catching in his throat.

"Foolish human," a guttural voice boomed, dripping with contempt. The alien that had riddled the room with cannon fire now stood in the plaza behind the western wing, a monstrous silhouette against the billowing smoke. "You engineered an escape for your people, yet neglected to secure one for yourself."

Ivan's auditory nerves picked up the distinct, menacing whir of the alien's integrated arm cannon charging up. BOOM! A searing blast tore through the air, drilling a small, smoking crater into the ferroconcrete where he had been standing a mere second before. The crater was conspicuously empty; it lacked the sizzling evaporation of boiled blood and the grisly sight of mangled flesh.

Instinct had saved him. The alien, its movements surprisingly fluid for its size, rolled to the right just as a retaliatory cannon blast, fired by one of Ivan's soldiers, scorched the air it had just occupied. In the next instant, the battlefield warped. A multitude of shimmering portals tore open the fabric of space around the alien, and from their depths, a torrent of cannon blasts rained down upon it.

Seizing the momentary distraction, Ivan retreated deeper into the building, seeking a vantage point from which he could contribute to the battle from a safer distance. His own life was secondary, but his ability to command his soldiers was paramount.

The enemy alien, however, was far from overwhelmed. It brandished a handheld shield, its surface curved like a longbow, which deflected the energy bolts with shimmering ripples of force. With its free hand, it retrieved a small, conical device from a compartment in its armoured leg garment. Risking one of its four powerful arms, it hurled the device high into the air. It detonated not with a bang, but with an unnerving hum, unleashing an expanding wave of crimson energy. The red hue washed over the area, and the portals, Ivan's primary offensive advantage, wavered and vanished as if they had never been.

Ivan was surprised. He wondered if the portal bending ability was really ranked 'transcendent'.

This momentary lapse in Ivan's control was all the opening the enemy needed. It surged to its feet with explosive speed and charged directly at Soldier A. The massive cannon on its arm morphed with a sickening crunch of grinding metal, reconfiguring itself into a colossal club, an exaggerated and brutal version of a kanabo. Ivan frantically commanded Soldier A to form defensive portals, a desperate attempt to evade the direct confrontation, but the attempt was futile. Unstable, flickering portals appeared for a split second before collapsing into nothingness, disrupted by the lingering effects of the red energy wave.

Soldier A, deprived of its primary defence, could only brace for the inevitable. It raised its arms, attempting to cushion the crushing blow swinging in from its left. Ivan, observing through the soldier's senses, had catastrophically miscalculated the raw power behind the attack. The club connected with a sound like thunder cracking a mountain. It didn't just strike Soldier A; it launched it, sending the armoured form careening through the air and away from the property entirely. Through their shared sensory link, Ivan felt the sickening crunch of numerous broken bones and the rupture of internal systems.

A terrifying implosion shockwave rocked the western wing that instant. Bloody skeletal pulps dropped around the alien that had dispatched Soldier A. The alien gazed at the pulps, discerning them to be the dismembered corpses of its comrades. This was an insult. Infuriated, it gazed up high.

There she was. Raina.

She levitated high above the battlefield, encased within a translucent golden sphere of pure energy. Beside her, a swirling golden whirlpool, existing outside the confines of her protective bubble, grotesquely ejected the last of the bloody pulp to the ground below. She looked down, her expression one of cold fury.

"I wanted you to see what I am going to do to you when I defeat you," Raina's voice, amplified by her power, echoed in the plaza, utterly devoid of mercy.

Ivan was stunned. Raina had not just defeated the trio of aliens she was battling; she had utterly annihilated them within mere minutes. But it's not just the speed of her victory that was shocking. There was something profoundly different about her. She appeared to be more confident. Two intricate lines of mysterious, glowing runes now traced their way from the bottom centre of her eyes, down her cheeks, to the very edge of her jawline. They pulsed with a soft, ethereal light, transforming her from a mere security official into something more primal, like a formidable archmage who wielded cursed, ancient magic to unravel her opponents.

'It seems she's powered up,' Ivan surmised.

As if summoned by the shift in the battle, a long, cylindrical pod burst out from the side of the main building, landing with a heavy thud on the plaza behind the first alien. The pod's cover, a deep, metallic blue, hissed open like a casket with a hinged slide cover. Thick, cryogenic fog billowed out of the interior. A second alien, larger and even more menacing, emerged from the mist. Raina's brow furrowed as she saw it. It was the one she had severely wounded earlier in the engagement.

"You returned," Raina said, her tone dripping with contempt, "so that I can finish the job and kill you properly."

"Stupid female!" the newly arrived alien raged, its voice a synthesized roar. "It is two against one. Do you think that because you have recently powerd up that you hold an advantage over us?"

"I 'soloed' four of you and almost killed you once already," Raina retorted, her contemptuous tone unwavering. "I see no difference between then and now, except that your odds are worse."

The club in the first alien's hand transformed again, the bulky weapon elongating and splintering into a bundle of imposing, javelin-like spears. With a series of mighty heave, the alien hurled the spears at Raina's sphere. The sheer power behind the volley was immense; the projectiles hammered against the golden shield, pressurizing it to its limits. Within two seconds of the relentless barrage, the sphere was riddled with spiderwebbing cracks, on the verge of shattering.

The second alien, the one who had just arrived, made its move. Its chest bulged grotesquely, tearing apart its tactical vest. A short, hollow cylindrical object protruded from its chest, revealing an empty space within the chest. In the hollow chamber, a pool of energy stirred and then burst forth in a continuous, blindingly bright beam. The beam washed over Raina's faltering sphere, obliterating it in a flash of light and suspending the seemingly helpless Raina within its devastating current. The beam of raw, corrosive energy extended far into the sky.

Raina was being disintegrated, bit by bit, under the beam's immense force. Yet, she wasn't struggling; there were no frantic attempts to escape. It seemed as though she had accepted her fate, her skin falling apart as the energy ate away at her very existence.

Alien 2, the projector of the beam, saw nothing wrong with the situation. From its perspective, victory was assured. Meanwhile, Ivan was carefully manoeuvring his other nine soldiers, having them surround the battlefield, hoping that Raina had a final gambit that would preoccupy the two powerhouse aliens and give him the opening he needed for a decisive strike. It was now painfully obvious that these were the two 'Gold' transcendent-ranked aliens he learnt about before venturing inside the building.

But Alien 1 felt a prickle of unease. Something was profoundly wrong. It couldn't reconcile the image of the fiercely powerful woman with this passive acceptance of defeat. It scanned the area, it perceived nothing unusual except for the nine armoured soldiers methodically closing in on their position.

'Do they truly believe they can overwhelm us with numbers?' Alien 1 mused, dismissing them as a tertiary threat.

And yet, the unsettling feeling persisted, a cold dread that grew silently and gradually in the back of its mind. It couldn't place the source, but its instincts screamed of a hidden danger far greater than the soldiers. It tried to shift its position, to move away from the epicentre of the battle, and discovered with a jolt of panic that it couldn't. Something was holding it firmly in place.

"The female human has invoked a strong power," Alien 1 voiced to its comrade urgently. "I cannot move from where I am standing."

Alien 2 attempted to verify this, trying to adjust its stance, and found itself similarly rooted to the spot.

"Fools!" A triumphant, chilling cackle echoed, seemingly from everywhere at once. It was Raina's voice, filled with manic glee.

As if in response, a viscous, magma-like liquid began to seep out of the very ground of the property and the floors of the ruined building. The crimson fluid pulsed with the same runic energy as the markings on Raina's face. Alien 1 and Alien 2 looked down in horror to discover that identical lines of glowing tattoo runes had enveloped their bodies, binding them. The magma-like substance slithered towards them, latching onto their legs and armour with a searing heat.

The two aliens frantically activated defensive mechanisms in their gear, expelling bursts of energy to repel the encroaching magma. It was in that moment of distraction that Ivan commanded his nine soldiers to swoop in and attack. None of their cannon blasts landed a direct hit on the powerful duo, but that wasn't the goal. The barrage was enough to keep them preoccupied, their attention divided.

Raina, no longer a prisoner in the energy beam, had fallen to the ground the instant the magma had interfered with Alien 2's attack. She was grievously injured, but she took a mere two seconds to recover, forcing herself to her knees. With a guttural scream, she began to conjure a complex web of runes in the air before her, preparing to unleash her signature golden bolts, but this time, combining them with a targeted implosion confinement.

The result was terrifying. She hadn't controlled the output. The force she unleashed was not a precision strike; it was a cataclysm. The world erupted in a blinding flash of golden light. The entire authority plaza and building were not just damaged; they were rag-dolled and pummelled by an indiscriminate strike of destructive energy, reduced to nothing more than a crater of churning rubble.