Sensations, impressions, tastes, sounds; Brock was met with an onslaught of all those and more as he once more floated in the realm of colours and the insensible. They overwhelmed his already strained senses, bombarding him with not only knowledge but also truth.

It was vague, like a draft you could feel in a house but never pinpoint. It whispered within his brain so loud he was afraid of it rupturing, the greater truths it spoke of incomprehensible in their glory, even though Brock felt himself on the cusp of understanding. The true meaning behind it all was on the tip of his tongue, yet he couldn’t cross the threshold. Not yet.

As he floated within, he was ceaselessly beaten to the left and right as powerful flows of energy radiating from the violet orb ahead in the centre of it all raged outward, tainting the realm and flooding the array of pathways visible through Brock’s skin, illuminating him in an empowering glow of plum as it was slowly corrupted to crimson.

His body felt just about ready to burst from the furious flows of the energy. It travelled through him with no regard for the stability of its host, forcing him to succumb to uncontrollable spasms as he attempted to keep himself afloat in the endless expanse.

Through racking shakes, Brock watched as various tsunamis of energy roared through the space within, progressively shifting to the taints of other colours: reds, oranges, greens, blues. The amount seemed endless to Brock’s agonized eyes as he looked on helplessly.

Of all the different everythings he felt, Brock caught the slightest sense of a connection, a resonance with a stream of truth as it leisurely squirmed through the air. It felt hot, akin to the pervasive heat of the blood he had so closely bore witness. The energy warring inside him seemed to stem its wild currents for a moment, assisting Brock subtly as his arm reached out and touched the truth. The violet power seemed to crave for it, to be once more united with that which had made it whole.

The stream began to dissipate, but Brock felt the precipice of understanding he was trapped upon shatter, and a boundless truth came rushing forth into his mind. It was an infinite blast of information, more than even pre-System Earth’s most advanced supercomputers could compute, and he felt his mind beginning to shut down and corrode from the overload. Though despite that, as the colours around him began to ebb and fade, Brock claimed the weakest links of the information.

A smouldering heat. Warmth. Hunger.

The final thing he felt before everything became nothing, was the intrusive pain of something so extreme, it caused the energies around him to shudder in response. Every single cell in his body seemed to sing in a chorus of agony as the raging energy in his pathways began to assimilate into his flesh, desperately chasing the piece of them that Brock had reclaimed.

Then, as the pain reached its peak, everything was gone, replaced by darkness.

**

“Oh fuck…”

Groaning as he awoke, Brock slapped a hand to his head almost instantly, a throbbing headache assaulting his brain with fervour. He didn’t know what the hell had happened, although he could recall select sensations and stimulations, albeit just barely. If there was one thing he knew for certain, it was that the experience had left him feeling like cow shit. His body ached so much that he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to move in the case a fight abruptly broke out.

A sudden, small squeaking noise brought his attention from his pain to beside him, however, and he groggily looked over, laying his eyes on a cat-sized creature with wiry fur. It appeared almost akin to a rat, and to Brock’s absolute horror, it had its head buried in his bag, discarded pieces of paper wrappings and chunks of subs littered around it as it tore deep into his food.

“Hey! You shit!” Growling at the rat, Brock yanked the bag out of its reach and flinched when the horned creature hissed at him. Cursing, he batted it to the side with his hand and watched it snarl at him once more before skittering away, a clump of lettuce held tightly within its jaws.

[F] Skeever (LVL 1)

Giving it the finger as it disappeared into a gap in the rubble, Brock sighed and searched through his bag. To his dismay, the Skeever had left two of his subs in ruins, and eaten a good chunk out of a third, smearing the inside of his bag with a variety of delectable sauces. Grumbling and genuinely considering tracking down the creature and lobbing it into the lake, Brock threw the destroyed foods aside and checked the integrity of everything else.

Even if it had only grazed one of the other sub wrappings, he was throwing that shit out. He didn’t know if the System made it worse or better, but Brock wasn’t going to risk ingesting the bacteria that rats carried. It’d be really hard to fight monsters when he had to deal with the troubles of having rabies.

Or the black plague.

Luckily, the rest were untouched, and thankfully the cookies and water were too. Clicking his tongue, Brock closed the flap, tying the newly detached sash to a side handle of the bag and slinging it over his shoulder once again. As he looked up to the sky, Brock raised his brows in surprise.

It was sunrise.

He had no idea how long the strange fruit had rendered him unconscious for, but it was long enough that he’d slept through at the least the better part of a day. By now, the bloody stream had been reduced to a light trickle, while also having carved out a dedicated divot in the rubble as its uneven riverbed. The island in the centre of the crater had long disappeared, and the violet tide was lapping up against the shores of the mainland, slowly eating away at its integrity.

While Brock wasn’t sure how long ago the beast had been slain, judging from the fact some of the thinner patches of blood had already begun drying, compared to how he saw only wetness before, he assumed the beast hadn’t been killed all that long before he arrived. Maybe half a day at the least.

In the meantime, the scent of rot in the air had downgraded to the sewerage-esque smell he had caught a whiff of when it first appeared, the hawk’s body now nothing more than a sloughing mess of decaying flesh and the odd feather or two. Disgusting did not even begin to describe how it looked.

But Brock’s expression brightened as he remembered the more important things and decided to check on the gains the fruit had given him. His body felt remarkably more powerful, something which filled him with boundless joy, but he opened his status to get a more concrete look at his improvements.

Status.

Brock Carter.

Race: Human [F] LVL 5

Ascendancy: SEALED [F]

Level: 1

[Stats]

Strength: 36.3 [+10%][Base: 33]

Agility: 37.4 [+10%][Base: 34]

Dexterity: 31.9 [+10%][Base: 29]

Constitution: 35.2 [+10%][Base: 32]

Vitality: 36.3 [+10%][Base: 33]

Intelligence: 44 [+10%][Base: 40]

Wisdom: 38.5 [+10%][Base: 35]

[Augments] - Augment of Sparks (0%).

[Titles] - At The Precipice, Agent of Chaos, Blessed, Destined for Greatness, Underdog, Hidden Fangs, Leader of the Pack, Login Bonus, Opportunist, Enlightened.

Free Stats: N/A

Shards: N/A

SEALED: N/A

Aside from the new addition of the ‘base stats’ section, something which was immediately explained by a prompt detailing that his stats had reached a suitable threshold for it to be deemed relevant, Brock noticed his actual stats had undergone a qualitative change, as well as the addition of a whole other area to his screen.

Plus, two more new titles.

Though, it was with great restraint that he instead turned his attention to his race level, which now stood at a lowly 5. Inwardly, he rejoiced at the change, excited that he may have finally found a route to power if he could only find more of those glowing fruits. Though that hope was brutally extinguished as he opened the descriptions of his new titles.

Opportunist: Be the first on your planet to consume any sort of Treasure. +5% to all stats.

Enlightened: Claim an Augment. +1 to all stats.

Treasure was the keyword there, and while Brock was beyond elated to see he had improved his retroactive boost to ten per cent, his mood was majorly dampened by the implications of the description. You never saw anything called a Treasure appear commonly, now did you?

The answer was no, and it left Brock feeling depressingly sour as he discarded the menu and finally set his eyes on his newly gained ‘Augment’.

“Augment of Sparks, huh?”

Just saying it aloud, he could feel the potential dormant within the word. It was one of heat, energy, and power. Brock had to say, however, that while it might have a lacklustre name like Sparks, it unmistakably held great strength, enough to boost Brock’s overall combat potential by a ton, if his estimations were accurate.

Augment of Sparks (0%): +2 Strength, +2 Intelligence.

Opening it up further, Brock grumbled at the lack of description to give him any insight into the use of the ability and eyed the two stats it gave as a boost. Glancing at the part stating it was only at 0%, Brock felt slightly worried that he had potentially received an incomplete Augment from the strange realm, but he felt it more likely that it was merely the grade it was at. Like its own level.

Doing a quick equation, Brock found his original bonuses from his race level to be five stats to each in total, so +1 to all stats per level. He was astonished that the percentage bonuses granted by his titles alone afforded each stat almost 4 levels each worth of increased points, and he took great joy in the fact that the boon would only grow as they did.

After bathing in his happiness, and dancing around a little, savouring the extra spring he felt in his step as he did so, Brock tallied up the total of his stats to a whopping 259.6, a vast difference from his prior total at 186.9. The calculation was as effortless as ever with his increase of over ten points in Intelligence. In fact, almost every stat had seen a boost of around ten stats.

It was freeing, to see himself grow so explosively.

Flexing his hand until the bones began to pop, Brock stretched out the soreness of his muscles, the pain ebbing with haste in the wake of his enhanced Vitality. He sighed in ecstasy as his new body filled him with the confidence to tackle the danger of the jungle. If he had to.

With a critical eye and a smug expression, Brock mentally measured himself up against the Alpha and felt reluctant to say he could barely manage to put up some resistance now. Judging by the speed it had moved, Brock felt his reluctance was well deserved as he was certain it would still move faster than he’d be able to react to for the most part. The creature had probably been leaning heavily in the direction of Agility.

Eventually, Brock got over the high of improvement and set his mind back on his quest to find the Source. With the war field having calmed down greatly in terms of ambient power, Brock was certain it was time to move on, as even the small blotches of orange blood only gave him a slight headache now, instead of the whole kitchen kaboodle.

Though, before all that, there was one last thing he had to do.

Holding his hand out eagerly, Brock said the magic words, “Fireball!”

And was then left subsequently disappointed when nothing happened at all. He didn’t even feel any sort of sensation or reaction from his Inner Self. Brock brought his hand up to his eyes and tried to imagine the Augment of Sparks as a calm flow of molten energy as it crept through his pathways and sprung to life on his palm in the form of a flame, though that also yielded no result.

Sighing, Brock gave his final attempt and turned inward. He searched his paths closely for any sort of sign, before he finally appeared in the presence of his chained Ascendancy, the heart of power dormant in his chest. Brock was about to throw in the reigns and call it a day, but he caught the barest glow of light circulating around the heart, akin to that of a firefly.

He moved his mind closer to study the firefly of light, and as he did so, felt a familiar warmth. Curious, he reached out with his mental avatar and brushed his fingers against the dim glow, recoiling back in shock as it flared in intensity and settled into the form of a small orange flame with the occasional streak of violet within. Intimately, he felt a connection form with it, and Brock knew how to call upon its power.

Retreating to the outside world and opening his eyes, Brock held his hand in front of him excitedly, his palm outstretched and facing the sky. Prodding the flame orbiting his Ascendancy, he let its mysterious power surge and enter his pathways, roaring through the tunnels carved within him and reaching his hand, shooting out in a quick explosion of fire and power.

The shockwave it created sent Brock reeling and he grunted as he fell on his ass, the resulting boom of the explosion echoing throughout the overgrown streets. Before Brock could even stand, a single overpowering roar responded to the noise in the distance, and he grimaced as the ground began to shake furiously.

“I... genuinely hate my life…”