Zero to Peak: Ascension Online

"I'm the leader of the team. My class is Combustionist. I'm at the Base Rank," Wanyama detailed, his voice clear.

Shecyclones, Sarah_Ze_Beauty, Am_I_Me, and Troy_to_Me were the next to introduce themselves in this order. Onelight, still visibly vexed, was the last to introduce herself.

After the introductions, Brainboss didn't allow any further interaction between the new team members and the original team members. He returned the original team members to Bangyu Restaurant, and from there they all sought their way to their respective destinations. It was still 11:00 in the morning.

Meanwhile, in the Church of Serenity, the crusade mass was still ongoing. Priest Rio was at the altar, offering fervent prayers in remembrance of the deceased and the severely ill.

The Pope sat on the first seat in the right row. A warm, serene smile was plastered on his face. His eyes suddenly clouded with an unknown, dark substance, and his consciousness was pulled into a vivid dream. He found himself still seated behind the altar, but the magnificent cathedral was empty, and the lights were off. The setting sun cast weak, reddish light into the cathedral through its stained-glass windows, barely illuminating the vast space and imbuing it with an eerie, mysterious vibe.

Soft, unhurried footsteps echoed loudly, reverberating through the empty hall; someone was approaching the altar.

"You didn't deal with every one of them, Pope Sarr. You wasted that sealed artefact just for a few priests. You should have taken out all the aliens in the vicinity. Why did you only take out the priests?" Lady Flux's voice echoed graciously in the silent, empty cathedral hall.

Pope Sarr's eyes fell upon an approaching figure, shrouded in the deepening darkness of a shadowy patch in the hall. He immediately recognised the figure, draped in a voluminous, dark green skirt dress.

"You are infringing on territorial authority, Lady Flux. You are asking for trouble," Pope Sarr warned casually, his tone surprisingly calm.

"I didn't expend even an ounce of my supernatural power to influence anything in this territory, so it's wrong to say that I'm infringing on territorial authority. If anyone has infringed on territorial authority recently, it's you. I felt an unknown power stir in my territory, with its origin stemming from this very church, from your very apartment."

Lady Flux's figure became clearly visible. A beam of light from a window fell directly on the altar, illuminating everything around it, including Lady Flux herself, who stood beside the altar.

"That power stemmed from the great Goddess," Pope Sarr stated after a brief, contemplative silence.

"Mmm," Lady Flux nodded her head in understanding. Pope Sarr was clearly attempting to dodge taking the blame for his actions. "So, the goddess just invoked herself to unleash her power across two territories on two different days in two different locations?"

Pope Sarr remained silent and utterly unfazed in his seat. Lady Flux didn't plan to pursue the alleged infringement further. She was intensely curious to know why the pontiff hadn't dealt with all the Unds in the vicinity, only selectively eliminating the reanimated priests.

Pope Sarr averted his gaze from the beautiful, pale lady. "Like your spies reported, the Unds have infiltrated key areas within this territory in preparation to unleash the most terrifying chaos they have ever launched against humanity. They have poisoned water supplies, intending to use it to kill people who are fortunate enough to escape the initial chaos.

"The boy you saw… you have seen the boy, haven't you?"

"The scrawny-looking kid in tattered clothing that gives off an ominous, superior aura? Yes, I have seen him. Is he the vessel that the goddess used for her descent?" Lady Flux asked, her interest piqued.

"The Goddess didn't descend. If she did, the little boy's body wouldn't be enough to contain her full essence. She released merely a fraction of her power into the vessel. The powers I invoked the most were the powers of concealment and catalysis."

"Catalysis?" Lady Flux sensed that the pontiff was orchestrating something far more complex.

"How do you think the Unds were pulled away from their various posts across the region to gather around this crusade?"

Lady Flux suddenly grasped the full scope of his elaborate scheme. "You never ignored the warnings from the spies. You meticulously took your time to plot your moves. Now your intricate plan is complete, and you have set it in motion. You first began by eliminating the enemies around you, annihilating the immediate threat. At the same time, you used the vessel's power to distract the enemies' attention and carry out a massive healing upon the populace to rid them of the poison they had accumulated.

"Catalysis — the vessel's powers have created a cascade of events that will force the latent problem to show itself earlier than when it was originally planned to do so. My very presence here is a product of that catalysis." Lady Flux laughed, a sound tinged with self-embarrassment.

She was embarrassed with herself because she had fallen victim to a manipulated arrangement of fate. She was a Pillar of Calamity-rank Special Character, and her power was able to rival a god. She could also achieve the same feat as the goddess — unleashing a fraction of her power into a human vessel.

Lady Flux felt a pang of doubt about the goddess's true prowess. She doubted if the Goddess of Serenity was solely responsible for this entire chain of events. She remembered the formidable, enigmatic Chairman of the Liberation Force, Destiny Spider. He possessed the uncanny ability to arrange fate. But she quickly cast the thought away. Destiny Spider tended to be chaotic in his arrangements. This particular arrangement she was entangled in seemed smooth and almost easy-going.

"Your deductions are all correct. The Goddess is powerful, and she can manipulate any person to be part of her arrangements, regardless of how powerful that person is."

Lady Flux sneered, a hint of defiance in her voice. "This is just a coincidence. You have no idea what I'm truly capable of."

She was not speaking merely to save face. She was genuinely confident that what had transpired was a mere coincidence, given how quickly everything had unfolded. It was simply curiosity that had drawn her presence to the Church of Serenity.

The Pope extended his hand for a handshake. "The governor and his government are not capable of handling this problem. As the Pontiff of the Church of Serenity, I would like to officially add you to the official force of the church. Help save Section 1 from utter destruction."

The Pillar of Calamity Special Character approached the pontiff and shook hands with him, cementing the temporary, yet powerful, alliance between her and his faction.

In Section 3, in Chairperson Beam's personal office within the Unds Central Base, the head of the Unds' brass was informed of his faction's failed assassination attempt on the Pontiff of Serenity and Serenity's Pillar of Faith.

Beam expressed his profound distraught, smashing his wooden table into two halves with a furious blow. He sighed, struggling to control his surging emotion.

'Setbacks are common. Not everything should succeed. Next time, I will succeed,' the Und consoled itself, a grim determination forming.

There was immense pressure upon the chairperson to deliver, and they had failed on the very first mission they oversaw. The next mission they were to oversee was the unleashing of chaos upon Section 1. It was a critical project that they had inherited from the previous chairperson. They weren't going to pass on it. The successful completion of the project would grant them a tremendous boost in reputation.

After the meeting with Brainboss, Ivan scheduled to meet with Daiyu close to midnight. Although the time Ivan would have used to visit the gym had been taken, he accomplished the other goals he had in his daily schedule.

However, he got off work early. He branched into a flower shop and bought a rose bundle to gift Daiyu. He waited in his car for the time to reach 11 p.m. before he would begin his journey to Daiyu's apartment. He used this opportunity to check his system information.

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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: 101,554 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 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 honored bronze rank. There is a chance is 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 that 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