Zero to Peak: Ascension Online

Ivan had a closer look at the burly man who carried an unloaded, exaggerated bazooka on his right shoulder, supported by his right arm. He noticed that the man's tanned skin possessed a distinct silver metallic shade. Ivan wasn't satisfied with the burly man's attire for battle. The burly man was garbed in a simple blue short-sleeved shirt and grey shorts.

"No armour?" Ivan enquired of Door-knob.

"I have a substitute for that," Door-knob shrugged his left shoulder, gesturing at his exposed left arm. "I have tough skin. It's my armour. At least the zombies can't bite through it."

"Good. We shouldn't waste time with talk." Ivan darted away with a sense of urgent purpose.

"I like this guy. He stands on business," Jiggy spoke to Door-knob with his natural French accent.

The trio immediately went after the zombies that had broken past Ivan's 'defensive line'. They were relentless in their pursuit and brutal slaughter. The zombies not only operated on the ground floors of buildings and the streets; a significant number of them had also made their way into the higher floors of buildings and the underground kitchens of a couple of restaurants on the street.

Ivan and his small crew meticulously went into every nook and cranny on the street, systematically snuffing out and slaughtering the grotesque monsters. Together, they slaughtered three hundred and two creatures, bringing Ivan's personal total slaughter to two hundred and forty-one kills.

The adventurers then walked down the street, which had now grown eerily quiet and utterly devoid of people. Civilians were hiding in various rooms within the buildings along the street. The trio was approaching the southern end of the street that linked into an adjacent street on the right. An eighteen-year-old girl suddenly ran frantically towards the adventurers.

The adventurers instinctively knew that the girl was from Section 1 and had been born in the Long Journey. The girl approached them, crying hysterically, desperately pleading for the adventurers' help.

Although she spoke too rapidly to articulate her words clearly, the adventurers understood her perfectly.

"Please, help. My mother was bitten by a zombie, and she has blanked out, drooling like a zombie," the girl cried.

"Where is your mother?" Ivan asked, walking past the girl, gaining a head start.

Jiggy didn't give the girl space to answer Ivan's question. "Were you bitten by a zombie?"

The girl offered no verbal answer. She just stared at Jiggy, a glint of desperate plea and profound sorrow evident in her eyes.

"Is that your phone on the ground?" Jiggy asked, pointing at the ground behind the girl.

The girl was tricked into turning, revealing her left arm, which she had been desperately hiding from the adventurers. There was a grotesque bite mark on her forearm, surrounded by a small patch of petrified skin.

Plup! The girl's head abruptly dropped to the ground, and the rest of her body subsequently lurched to the ground.

"Fuck!" Ivan was grievously shocked by the sudden, brutal slaughter.

Boom! Jiggy crashed violently into a building's ground floor wall. Ivan had launched him there with a powerful punch to the face. Jiggy's face immediately swelled up. He lay on the street ground, partially disoriented.

Door-Knob had to swiftly put away his bazooka into his spatial ring. He halted Ivan from rushing at Jiggy.

"Bro, what's with ya? The girl was bitten by a grade 4 zombie. There are no remedies to reverse the damage that would be done to her. The right thing is to end her life, giving her body an honourable end to her story," Door-knob explained calmly.

Ivan paused, his initial anger gradually ebbing away. The explanation made logical sense, but he hadn't known that there was a grading system for zombies.

"If I find out that you are lying, I will make you wish that you never met me," Ivan threatened, his voice low.

"There wouldn't be need for that." Door-Knob walked over to Jiggy.

Jiggy was a Bronze Rank special character. It took him a couple of minutes to recover from the shock of the unexpected attack. If it had been a Base Rank special character, Ivan's single attack would have been enough to put them in a year-long coma.

"Apart from not informing you about Zombie gradings, the second mistake I made was not letting the girl tell us where her mum was," Jiggy lamented about his error as he massaged his sore nose.

Ivan apologised for his ignorance.

"It's obvious that you are a fresh special character. And one with a lot of luck, at that. So, no offence taken. But you have to learn about different grades of dungeon break."

Ivan was itching for them to get going. However, he hesitated, feeling a burgeoning distrust towards his new colleagues. The trio entered the adjacent street. Like the previous street, it was utterly devoid of people's presence. There were less than one hundred people on the street, and they were all in hiding. Ivan wondered how he was able to perceive their presence. He attributed it to his increased intelligence. There was no sign of zombie presence at the moment. The duo of Door-Knob and Jiggy were walking ahead of him.

He decided to check his system info.

>>>>

System Info

Character Name: Nnamani Ivan

Avatar Name: Black Riot 79 – Reborn

Rank: base rank.

Core: Adolescent development stage— core is incomplete.

Item Count: 2

Items: (1) Sword (2) Full body armour set

Weapon Name: (1) Black Riot

Skill count: 3

Type: Unique

Weapon Rank: S-rank

Inventory: Player lacks inventory.

Experience points: 102,759 points

Physical attributes

HP – 350

Vitality-20 (+10)

Strength-26.11 (+10)

Agility-26.2 (+10)

Speed – 25.11 (+10)

Stamina-25.15 (+10)

Intelligence-17.11 (+5)

Info: Ten points is the base grading for a regular player. A rating of 10.1 implies that a person is two times stronger at an attribute than a regular human being. If the rating goes higher, the power gap increases at the rate of 0.1 points to +1x power.

Item attributes

Defence – 100. Attack – 1000.

Skill (1): Straight Path Boomerang

Skill description: Your switchaxe becomes a devastating boomerang inflicting damage of 75 points. However, there is a catch: cooldown of four minutes or bypass cooldown by spending four hundred Exp in order to use this skill.

Skill Grade: C-rank grade 1

Skill (2): Axe-man's Cyclone

Skill description: An AOE skill that deals with targets within a circumference of fifty metres radius.

Cons: Ten minutes cooldown.

Damage: 40 points.

Grade: D-rank.

Skill (3): Battle Lord

Skill type: Passive.

Skill description: With every enemy or target that falls by your hands, you accumulate a part of the target's energy. This accumulated energy can be unleashed in a single burst that spans a period of three minutes. During this period, the strength exhibited is comparable to that of a character who is at the peak of Honoured Bronze rank. There is a chance it could rival the strength of a special character at the bottom level of the Supreme Crusader rank.

Cons: However, there is a threshold of how much energy can be accumulated. Once this threshold has been reached, more energy can't be absorbed.

Grade: C-rank.

Potential damage range: 80 to 200 points.

Mission: Upgrade your rank to Bronze Ascendant rank.

Requirement for Upgrade: Possess fifteen D-rank skills. Upgrade your physical attributes to the bronze rank (each attribute should not be less than 12 points). Accumulate a hundred thousand Exp points to be used for the ascension.