Beep.

Darkness. All-encompassing, all-consuming. It was the walls, and it was the world. Life ceased to be yet had never been more perfect. The air was beyond zero, chilling him down to the deepest molecules of his very bones, invading his pathways and mind, slowly tempting him to let go and become something more.

Something long feared and long forgotten. A manifestation of despair itself.

Beep.

Shapes swam idly in the void, silhouettes of impossibility eagerly devouring their brethren and grasping for the Precipice. Their hunger was a palpable presence in the air, selfish to consume any and all in their attempts to grow. Yet, they neither saw nor sensed his vessel as he floated aimlessly among them.

Beep.

Instead, he was assaulted by a cacophony of raving whispers of madness, his mind slowly being rendered a gory mess of hushed noises and incomprehensible tongue. He could neither think nor process through what was happening, only gaze numbly at the black eternity stretching out ahead of him.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

And it gazed right back.

“…COME BACK…”

The man strained his overrun mind to understand a single line of the madness, blood squirting freely from every orifice in his body as it struggled to keep itself together under his scrutiny.

“…COME BACK AND LET ME OUT…”

**

“Clear!”

Harry watched on silently from the safety of the window as a crew of doctors and surgeons scrambled in response to the blaring flatline. One of them frantically placed a pair of defibrillators on the savagely carved chest of the man they were working to save, and with a jolt, his body rocked, and his heart managed to start itself again. The life monitor continued to beep regularly.

It was horrifying, seeing his friend in the state he was in. From afar, Harry had already been able to tell that the man had seen better days, two of his limbs having been utterly ruined. In fact, maybe that was why his admiration for him had only grown. Despite being essentially crippled, he had relentlessly continued to fight, and against all odds, he had beaten the very wretched thing that now left his life-threatening to slip away from him.

Brock Carter, the man without a Tutorial. The Savage. The Beast. Harry had thought him all-powerful, thought him the strongest, yet now he saw how foolish he really was. No one would ever truly be the strongest. There would always be someone or something greater out there, waiting for a chance to test your arrogance.

The knife warrior was barely recognisable at this point, lying limply on the operating table. Aside from the missing arm and the brutally splintered remains of his leg, the man was in tatters. Bone deep gashes were littered across his body, revealing the pulsing organs underneath and oozing red. His lower body was barely attached to the rest, those very same organs hanging out and slumping down the edges of the table.

A small portion of the left side of his face had been shaved off, leaving him without an eye and with his brain revealed, and Harry hated to admit that he didn’t even know if his friend would make it. It was a heavenly miracle that he had even survived the trip to the hospital. Two hours was a long time to persist through the precipice of death after all.

Desperately, surgeons ran to the left and to the right, stemming blood flows and cauterizing larger wounds with heated iron bars. Those that were smaller, they worked tirelessly to stitch up, and slowly, they began feeding his organs back into his body, rearranging them as best they could to normal. From each and every person present, Harry could sense an aura above that of the capped level 10.

Pity he couldn’t thank Jordan for that.

Some doctors even stood off to the side and bathed the injured man’s body in a glow of emerald light, Harry looking on in awe as their patient’s flesh subtly began to knit itself back together. The teenager had experienced their strange healing power personally when they had been mending his own injuries, but it still left him awestruck.

It wasn’t enough, however, and the life monitor flatlined once more, filling the area in the monotone cry of death. Hurriedly, a doctor grabbed the defibrillator again and slammed it down onto the dying man’s chest, jolting him once more and breaking some of the stitches the other doctors had just worked to put in. The room was once again filled with the occasional beep.

Idly, Harry felt the savage scar on his flank for comfort. Brock had certainly caught the worst of the Sky Bandit’s final attack, but that didn’t mean he was the only one affected. The ball of air blades had detonated in every direction, tearing the landscape to shreds and blending the creature it originated from into a bloody pulp.

An errant blade had broken off from the rest as Harry had scrambled back and shaved cleanly through his side. Luckily, he deemed that the wound wouldn’t have proved fatal to him in the moment, and the boy had quickly returned to save his friend.

Doing so had been a dangerous endeavour though, what with trying to keep the older man in one piece as he brought him out of the crater, but he had managed. Harry had seen Brock use the ring around his neck many times to summon out stuff from seemingly nowhere, and he had immediately sifted through it, looking for medical supplies or just around anything that could help him.

All he had found in that department were useless bandages and antibiotics, but he had at least located and summoned out the jeep. He had been somewhat confident he could pull it along, and it would have served as a more stable place for Brock to lie. What he hadn’t expected, however, was the extra few jerry cans of fuel James had appeared to have stashed in the boot for them.

The drive had taken two mercilessly long hours, with each and every second leaving Harry feeling stressed to the point he thought he would faint then and there. The pedal had been slammed to the floor of the car and he had been easily going above 200 km per hour. One wrong turn or big bump, and he could have ended the life of the already critically injured person lying in the back.

Thankfully, he had at least studied geography in school and knew a little bit about Uluru. He had banked on his memory that Alice Springs was northeast from there and had just set his mind to driving. He hadn’t had the time to worry if he chose the wrong direction. Time worrying was better spent speeding.

Finally, he had arrived, and the rest was history. Immediately, they were rushed to the town’s local hospital and taken care of. Harry had been surprised when he sensed a few more individuals past the cap of level 10 than last time, but ultimately, he didn’t really care.

Back in the present, a few hours passed by, and piece by piece, Harry observed the health professionals as they worked ceaselessly to keep Brock alive. And then, eventually, the man was stitched back together, and stable. He was slick and dripping with fresh blood, covered in stitches, scars, and cauterized wounds, but he was alive. And that was all that mattered.

Together, the doctors and surgeons cheered, and Harry breathed out heavily in relief, wiping away a single tear as it dripped from his eye.

**

Groaning hoarsely, Brock inched open his remaining eyelid and flinched as the orb within was blinded by a shining light overhead. Hushed chatter occurred all around him, and in his peripheral, he could make out the figures of people as they madly ran about. The room smelled faintly of a hospital, although it was far overwhelmed by the powerful stench of blood.

With a resounding click, the light above him shut off, and his vision swiftly began to adjust to the room. Surrounding him, masked men and women in blood-stained robes looked on with bated breaths while he surveyed the area. Pieces of shattered bone were placed on a metal tray beside him, chunks of blood and muscle clinging to them stubbornly, and he noticed he couldn’t see out of his left eye.

Or more accurately, that he didn’t have a left eye to see out of.

The entirety of his body was littered with a plethora of gruesome scars, massive stretches of stitches and the charred aftereffects of cauterization. Luckily, his smushed leg hadn’t appeared to be amputated, although it had several bolts going through it and keeping it together firmly.

Idly, he tried to forget all that and recall the blurred details of the vivid dream he had experienced only moments prior, but a distant voice broke him out of his thoughts.

“…feeling?” his ears seemed to struggle to pick apart the sound, and he scrunched his brows in concentration as he attempted to realise the words that were being said to him.

The doctor repeated his question when he received no verbal response, “…how are you feeling?”

Brock truly didn’t know how to reply to that question. In fact, he couldn’t really feel anything if he was honest. His entire body was numb and somewhat neglected to react to his commands. He gave his best approximation of a shrug, “…Like… shit…”

Another lady standing beside him chuckled, seeming to find him humorous, and proceeded to say something else, though Brock paid it no attention. Instead, he searched the surroundings for his younger companion, unaware of the fate he had met, nor how he’d even gotten to this place. His eyes brightened when he spotted the kid watching him from the room window as he sat in a wheelchair, a big smirk stretched across his face.

Brock couldn’t help but smirk back.

The next few hours were filled with several different processes as the doctors tested his condition and reactions, some of them resulting in one or two of the testers leaving the room to speak to a grim-faced Harry. Brock watched it happen through the glass. He didn’t know what they were talking about, but it certainly couldn’t have been good.

In the end, it was announced that Harry could visit him tomorrow, and the boy hesitantly left for the night, returning to his own hospital room. Brock was left alone, gifted a remote that could call on a nurse at any time in case of an emergency, though he didn’t think he’d need it. The System was already getting to work.

He had begun to notice it just as the tests ended, but his flesh was already healing at a rapid pace, at least for pre-System standards. He even felt the bones in his leg slowly begin to regrow, leaving the entire area feeling unbelievably itchy as it burrowed through the flesh. He was no expert, but whatever issues they had told Harry of, he knew would be fixed soon enough.

The System defied logic, and so did the healing it provided.

At least I bloody hope it does.

He lay there silently, staring up to the roof in the dark of night. He had been granted his own private hospital room, though he suspected that was just because they had more than enough of them to accommodate the town’s tiny population. Earlier, he had been made privy by one of the doctors that he was indeed once again in Alice Springs.

The man still had no idea how though. Uluru was more than 400 km away, if you discarded whatever strange alterations the System had made to the landscape. All he could do was pin his survival on Harry.

Bored beyond the very meaning of the word, Brock looked inward, gazing at his Inner Self quietly. He appeared to be relatively the same, although the aura around his Ascendancy had once more exploded in volume, signifying his level had increased by a decent amount. And his Augment of Sparks shone more furiously than ever as it orbited the thumping ethereal heart. But that wasn’t all.

There was also a second Augment orbiting opposite it.

Immensely curious, Brock reached out to the weak orb of gusts and repeated the initial process he had done with his first Augment, brushing his mind up against it and feeling a connection form between them instantly. The once feeble gale flared into a twisting ball of raging wind and instinctively, he knew he could now partake in its power. Doing so inside a hospital was not a good idea, however.

Instead, Brock opened his status.

Status.

Brock Carter.

Race: Human [F] LVL 23

Ascendancy: Fetters of the Bound [F]

Level: 24

[Stats]

Strength: 146.25 [+25%][Base: 117]

Agility: 320 [+25%][Base: 256]

Dexterity: 100 [+25%][Base: 88]

Constitution: 137.5 [+25%][Base: 110]

Vitality: 198.75 [+25%][Base: 159]

Intelligence: 397.8 [+30%][Base: 306]

Wisdom: 266.25 [+25%][Base: 213]

[Augments] - Augment of Sparks (47.79%), Augment of Skies (9.31%).

[Techniques] - Ethereal Shackles [F] (10.11%).

[Titles] - At The Precipice II, Agent of Chaos, Blessed, Destined for Greatness, Underdog, Hidden Fangs, Leader of the Pack, Login Bonus, Opportunist, Enlightened, Mass Murderer, Needless Slaughter, Masochist, Trophy Hunter (Unique), Budding Power, Brainiac, Attuned, Embodiment of Freedom.

Free Stats: 0

Shards: 591,287

Stars of Ascension: 16

If Brock had the strength to whistle, he would have. His power had increased explosively since he had last checked it, when he had gotten Ethereal Shackles, if he remembered correctly. Each and every base stat had finally crested the threshold of a hundred, except Dexterity, and were well on their ways to 250. His pools of Intelligence and Agility were borderline monstrous at this point and were more than double what they’d been when he first arrived in Alice Springs and fought with Jordan.

Another Augment had been added to the respective tab - the ‘Augment of Skies’, as it was called - and he immediately assumed that was what Little Shit had been using, though he had no clue why he’d inherited it. He wasn’t going to complain, however. Just killing the bitchy bird alone had netted him a massive amount of levels, although he pinned some of them being from the continuous murder of its level 30+ babies.

…It sounds a lot worse now than it did in the moment…

His first Augment had seen a noticeable increase in completion percentage, probably due to the desperate insight he had obtained when his bloody hand had been bitten off. A quadrio of new Titles had appeared also, but Brock first noticed that he had no free stats despite the levels he had gained.

Within seconds, he calculated the growth of his stats, and it led him to believe that his freebies had been split evenly between both Constitution and Vitality. Brock wondered if it was a subconscious attempt to keep himself alive by dumping his points into those two, or if the System had intervened and done it for him.

He chuckled at the mere thought of the System actually helping him.

Ignoring that for the time being, Brock opened up his Augments in detail and took a little peek at their bonuses.

Augment of Sparks (47.79%): +17 Strength, +17 Intelligence

Augment of Skies (9.31%): +2 Agility, +2 Dexterity

It seemed that every 20% was a new threshold of some kind, netting him a growing stat bonus. Sparks granted him an extra ten in each from before, while Skies began dumping into his Agility and Dexterity, which was certainly for the best. His Dexterity was getting increasingly outpaced by his other stats, and he worried if it would begin to impair him in any way.

It would be troublesome if he could move faster than his own body could react to, after all.

Next was his Titles, and this one raised Brock’s brows.

At The Precipice II: Overcome the precipice of death twice.

Brainiac: Have Intelligence be the first stat to reach a value of 250. +5% to Intelligence.

Attuned: Be the first on your planet to possess two Augments. +10 to all stats.

Embodiment of Freedom: Slay a Tyrant. +15 to all stats, +5% to all stats.

His first-ever Title, At The Precipice, had somehow progressed to possess the moniker of ‘II’, with a changed description indirectly speaking of how close he was to dying this time. It granted no stats or benefits, just like before. His other Titles were a bit more fruitful, however, giving him flat stat bonuses and percentage boosts alike.

He felt oddly relieved as he rescanned over his previous Titles, noticing that there were quite a few non ‘first’ Titles that gave percentage increases, meaning other people would also be able to enjoy their benefits. The first Titles he owned would be forever barred to them, however, and Brock felt no remorse in that regard.

He found it strangely fitting that the magpie was referred to as a Tyrant in his Title description, though the use of a capital letter made him think it was more an actual title - similar to Alpha - rather than merely a moniker. He dearly hoped that there weren’t more Tyrants like it out there, as that would spell major trouble for humanity as a whole.

Unfortunately, he had a feeling things wouldn’t be so easy.

Finally closing his status screen, Brock deliberated on the sheer amount of Shards he had gathered, and only a single thought came to his head.

I wonder if they have a casino up yet?