“I-I don’t know,” the girl said, finally dropping her boxcutter and falling into Amelia’s arms. The other kids broke down as well, their shoulder sagging either in relief or in defeat. It was difficult to tell.

The girl continued softly. “I was— *hic* —on the way to school when the bus just…” she shook her head and wiped the tears forming at her eyes, “…just swerved off the road. I only remember flashes after that. Falling and screaming, and then I woke up, in like, a temple… and there were five of us.”

Amelia just let the girl hug her without saying anything at first.

The guy with the glasses spoke up in response, discretely shifting to the side to hide the wet spot on his khakis. “Um, I was on that bus too!” he said, startling when everyone’s eyes fell on him. “Th-there was a… giant talking snake with uh, white scales and red diamond patterns, and-and um… a monocle.”

“That’s not actually helpful but okay.” Allen tried to relax his posture as much as he could, but it didn’t seem to be working very well, even after taking off his mask and only leaving the hood up.

“I was too confused to understand anything,” one of the other girls added. “And then there were slimes, and then… we’re here.”

“The snake told us to…” The first girl looked at Amelia, her face a mask of confusion. “…to bite the tail of fate, and… reach greater heights, or something,” she said while shaking her head pleadingly.

“It was also speaking in iambic pentameter,” the nerdy kid supplied, much to no one’s interest.

“Damn, that’s worse than Andy,” Camila muttered under her breath, barely audible to Allen.

“The snake speaks only liesssssss,” Allen thought, barely holding back a giggle.

“Can you tell us what’s going on!?” one of the other girls asked. She pushed herself to her feet with her friend still clinging to her. There was vomit staining her shirt and shorts while the other girl was practically smeared with it.

“You died and got reincarnated,” Allen said as casually as possible, yet two of the kids still flinched. “We’re in some event now, not sure what yet. Probably a deathmatch though,” he added.

None of that seemed to be reassuring to the teenagers.

“Why don’t we just start with names?” Amelia quickly asked before the girl in front of her started hyperventilating. “I’m Amelia, I’m a Healer.”

[“Remember what Andy said, don’t let them find out we’re from Earth,”] Allen said to all four of his teammates via telepathy.

“I know that!” Amelia snapped, glaring back at Allen.

An awkward pause followed; Allen just raised an eyebrow.

It took Amelia nearly a second before she realized her mistake and turned back around with a bit of red on her cheeks. “And can somebody please clean this up,” she continued, gesturing at the vomit covered teenagers.

“I… I’m Sophie,” said the box cutter girl.

“Since my job evolution, I can probably mimic simple Purity spells like Cleanse,” Christopher piped up, moving closer to the teenagers. None of them seemed as frightened of him as they did of Allen. Likely the wise old pastor energy he exuded. “Just give me a moment,” the professor added, summoning a ball of fizzling miasma above his hand and staring at it intently.

“Th-there’s magic?” the other guy asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose. He looked just as excited as he was surprised, for a moment. “We… really did get isekaied,” he muttered to himself. His shoulders jumped when he noticed everyone was looking at him again. “I’m-um... my name’s uh, B-Blake,” he stuttered.

“Stacy,” said one of the other girls, the one who was standing. Then she pointed at the dark skinned guy laying face-down on the floor, passed out. “That’s Jayden, he’s in my PE class.”

“A-Ashley,” the other one said. Her nice blouse was completely ruined with puke, but her skirt looked fine. Not that either were suitable for whatever deathmatch related things they would be doing.

[“Anybody remembering any of those names?”] Camila asked through the telepathy.

[“Yes,”] Christopher replied, still completely focused on his magic conjuration.

[“Damn, he’s got the new Jordan’s,”] Ty remarked, looking over at Jayden with a grin. He seemed excited to find another black guy from Earth; they weren’t exactly common on Unnamed World, mostly staying on the Southern continents.

[“No way I’m remembering them all,”] Allen opined, [“I do one name at a time, two at the most,”]

[“Can’t we just ditch them?”] Camila asked.

[“Probably. I don’t really want to be hard carrying noobs, to tell the truth. But then again…”]

[“Andy did say we would be ‘paired up,’”] Christopher remarked. [“So that leads me to believe we shouldn’t just abandon them.”]

Camila huffed. [“Fucking hell.”]

Amelia let out a deep shuddering breath. [“Can you all please shut up! They’re scared. Don’t you remember what it was like when you first spawned!?”]

[“No.”]

Amelia whirled on Allen, staring daggers into his eyes. The amount of animosity she was bleeding into the link couldn’t have been by accident.

[“I mean yes,”] he corrected, biting his mental tongue.

[“I think I’ve got it,”] Christopher announced, duly ignoring the squabbling in the link. [“It uses a lot mana but it shou—“]

An explosion much like the one that had brought the teenagers interrupted everything. Only, this explosion was twice the size and, when all the crackling and fizzling faded away, a single being was revealed.

Six glowing, feathery wings unfolded, bathing the whole ruined temple into blinding fiery light. The wings seemed to take up all the space underneath what little was left of the crumbled ceiling, extending outward in every direction.

The body at the center of it all was difficult to look directly at, yet Allen could still squint with his superhuman eyes, barely able to make out the silhouette of the being.

It wasn’t humanoid. Instead, it floated in the air along with the lazy movements of its wings. Six eyes of burning silver light encircled a single central body shrouded by smaller wings. The six main wings emerged in pairs from above, below, and behind the body while six halos of golden energy orbited above it. And finally, an array of limbs reached out from the back of the being, splitting and refusing as they aimlessly tracked across the floor around it.

The creature was powerful enough that it simply didn’t have a presence at all, neither magical nor mental, just raw overwhelming power. Completely invulnerable. Allen had only met a few beings that felt similar or more powerful. Doc was the first, and all the rest were from dungeons, the Wandering Gate mostly.

He tried identifying the being, immediately regretting it as pain rammed into the back of his eyes, causing tears of blood to leak out.

Name: Ὠ̸̶̧̯͐σ̴͍̚µ̶̨̆&̶͈̔ ̷̦̂ ̵̝̃(̸̭̔þ̷̓͜ö̸̫͠*̶̖̚

Seraph – Angel (Fifth Circle) – Level: [???] (Calamity)

Allen became aware of the teenager screaming while Amelia tried to console them. Ty and Christopher had stepped between them, the professor’s eyes were also bleeding, but he seemed the calmest by far.

He could tell by the mental link that Camila just wanted to fight the thing, despite being the equivalent of an amoeba from its point of view.

Then it spoke with a deep reverberating voice. Although it was almost as if the angel was speaking to an audience and not the people in front of it, neither noting their existence nor making an effort to silence them.

“The Trial of Ascendance has begun,” it said to no one in particular. “Also known as the Cosmic Inter-realm Tournament of the Chosen to its mortal participants, such as yourselves. This is the preliminary analysis stage, which will assess your strengths for placement within the brackets.”

Everyone had gone quiet, including Jayden who had managed to wake up, staring wide-eyed at the angel as it monologued.

“You, the participants, find yourselves on a world long fallen to ruin; it’s people laid to waste and its deities gone to the ethers. It now remains, an empty shell, populated only by the creatures that brought its doom. These creatures will emerge in greater strengths and numbers as this stage continues. Your task, as groups, is to survive as long as possible.”

Allen couldn’t help letting a smile slide onto his face.

“When the final member of your group perishes, your group will be returned from the trial. May good fortune be with you all, mortals.” As the being spoke its last words, all six of its wings wrapped around it again, reducing the blinding light to manageable levels. Then, with a lightning bolt, it shot up into the sky faster than Allen could even track with his mind, much less his eyes. Fizzling golden flames licked up against the walls of the cathedral for a few moments before extinguishing themselves and returning the ruin to its former silence.

Allen blinked away the spots in his eyes just in time to see hundreds of similar upward-travelling lightning bolts fade away in the distance all around them, past the crumbling walls and open roof of the ruin, and above the surrounding tree line.

Allen’s smile slipped and he sighed.

“Well, fuck,” Camila said, also looking around at the lights.

“I agree,” Ty added, “We’ve gotta move, now.”

“M-move? Wh-why?” asked the nerdy guy, Blake.

“Those lights put a target on us,” Allen said bluntly, reequipping his masked helmet and drawing a few hesitant and frightened looks from the teens. “We need to leave.”

“What the hell is going on man!?” Jayden shouted. “This shit is crazy?”

“B-but that thing didn’t say to attack each other!” boxcutter girl replied, Sophie was her name, if Allen strained his brain.

“Nor did it say not to. It only said to work as groups,” Christopher said, preparing his pseudo-spell again. “However, that raises the question of why our two groups were put together, or if all ten of us count as a single group. It’s vague, perhaps on purpose.”

Sophie’s face went pale.

“I didn’t think of that,” Allen told himself. “Will our score go down if we let them die? That’s a pretty shitty way to nerf us. Are our levels really that much higher than everyone else? …Andy probably would have been more worried.”

[“We could just, uh… y’know,”] Camila started. [“It’ll save us a lot of trouble.”]

[“No, we shouldn’t kill them,”] Allen answered casually.

[“Why the fuck not?! I thought you of all people would agree with me!”]

Allen clicked his tongue. [“Andy told us to play nice, and I don’t know about you,”] he replied, [“but ganking noobs for no reason doesn’t seem very nice to me.”]

“It’s okay,” Amelia said, steadying Sophie’s shoulder with a hand. “We’ll help you.”

“First you should get cleaned up,” Christopher said, activating his spell.

The magic washed out in a cone of white miasma, blasting away not only the vomit and the dirt on the teenagers, but the smell as well, which was nice. Blake seemed the most interested in the magic, finally standing up after checking his pants and finding them fully cleansed.

“We’ll talk more while we walk,” Christopher added, helmet reappearing over his face.

“Put these on,” Allen said, dumping five sets of rugged clothes and boots on the ground. Armor was more complicated than it seemed at first. Even equipping it with their inventories would be impossible for the teenagers if they didn’t know how it went on in the first place.

“Damn, that’s convenient,” Ty muttered, shouldering his shield with a chuckle.

He did have armor for all of them though, taken from various slavers and mercenaries. It was pretty high quality too, given their lack of levels.

[“Hey…”]

Allen looked up at Amelia, the Healer glaring at him with a slightly scandalized expression.

[“Why do you have women’s underwear in your inventory?”]

Allen smiled back, thinking for a moment. [“It’s loot!”]