Seeing these D rank beasts, Silas’s heartbeat raced up and his breath hastened, his eyes widening with desire. It had been five days since Svobald the Scourge had officially ended the Test of Merit, and in that time several others had followed the dragon’s footsteps and ascended. This included Dahlia, Kuraim, and Lucian - the usual suspects - among others. But that was not to say that many others had, and Silas badly wanted to enter this list - both for pride’s sake and to prove to himself that he could do it.

The most sensible action now was to retreat and call back up, but that would ruin his chances of ascending. In the last few days, Silas had killed several E-2s (which had all been relatively easy) but no E-1s, so a D rank truly was a giant leap. Yet, he hadn’t been able to fully utilise all his abilities in a proper fight so far, something which he suspected these red monsters would give him. Despite this, he still had to consider what would happen in case he turned out to be powerless against them?

Sucking in a breath, Silas made a flash decision, pulling his hand down into the hidden pocket of his belt. The Transcendence vitamins had been roughly quartered, so he fingered out two pieces. It was more than he usually took, but then again this wasn’t a usual situation. Having taken it multiple times now, he was prepared for his energy levels to soar, for his mind to quicken, and his senses to sharpen to a cutting extent.

Equipped with his spear and his manastone-edged sword, he peered down at the monsters from the cliffside, noticing they were hurrying away. They had lean physiques, and while their bodies were rusty-red, their arms were different in that they were bladed and metallic-grey. Their noses were long and thin like a finger, their ears tapered, and their skin drawn with a net of wrinkles. Black feathered wings as large as their bodies flapped from behind their backs, granting them easy movement. It was peculiar how they seemed like E-1s individually but a D rank collectively - typically, they should have appeared as multiple E-1s even when in a group - but Silas looked past this since there was nothing he could do about it. He had no doubt they had hidden powers, but then again, so did he.

His body crackled with lightning, and he lowered, his muscles bunching, tensing, setting. His rapid rise in power must have alarmed the red monsters as they glanced over their shoulders. When they spotted him, they broke into a band of voices, excited voices. All the same, Silas’s feet exploded out, launching him forwards, and causing the cliffside to buckle under the force. He burst through the air, shooting right at the red monsters who had now made for him. His target suddenly soared, an impish smile on its hideous face, but he was prepared for this.

Sinking below it due to gravity, Silas pulled his spear back to his body and pointed an open palm at the imp. A cord of lightning shot out, coiling around his target and tightening. There was faint sizzling, but this was hardly audible with the air roaring in his ears and the imp’s agonised screech filling the forest. As he fell to the ground, the monster came with him even as it helplessly struggled against the lightning lasso.

Landing, Silas immediately leapt again for the imp, his spear whirling in for it. The imp raised its metallic arms to block, but Silas easily redirected his blow to below its arms, catching it in the hips. As his blade penetrated its flesh, electricity flooded its body and cooked it from within. The imp jolted from the electric shock and fell limp to the grass; its kin were closing in, and it wasn’t dead yet, so it still had a chance to survive. But this chance vanished when Silas’s spear came a second time, this time swinging down to its neck and slicing right through.

The three other imps were mere metres away now, so Silas lurched to the side as one dove for him, following with a step back as another swooped in. Its bladed arm was inches from making contact, a frustrated sneer on its face when it looked up, only then seeing his spear swinging down from above, blotting the sun. Its scream was cut short as Silas rent through its head and upper chest, pulling back his weapon to prepare for the next enemy.

However, the two remaining imps didn’t come for him, instead converging on each other with an escalating release of power. Silas didn’t know what he had been expecting, but he certainly hadn’t been counting on them fusing with each other, creating a blinding ball of light which grew rapidly. Shielding his eyes, he spotted the two imp corpses also fly up from the ground into the ball of light, but he couldn’t look at it directly until its shine abruptly ended. He snapped his head up and, for the first time in his life, gazed at an actual D rank beast.

The four imps were gone, replaced by a giant leering ogre. Its skin was rusty-red, and it was bipedal, but that was where the similarities with its predecessors ended as it was twenty feet in height. Criminally muscled, it had thick black hair all over its body, its beard and hair a dark, unruly bush circling a terrifying face. Its facial features were similar to a human’s, except for that they were all leaking cruel glee, as if the sight of Silas was enough to bring it to hysterics. This ogre had two yellow nubs of horns poking out through its bushy head, and it had fangs as long as Silas’s arms. And relevant to the current situation, the ogre had no wings.

Plummeting out of the air, the ogre landed with a booming crash, the ground shaking below its prodigious weight. It swept its arms ahead of itself and crouched as if peering in at Silas, its chest ballooning out as it sucked in several gales’ worth of air. As before, Silas didn’t know what was coming, but he had a feeling it wasn’t something he wanted to stick around for. On account of this, he sprinted away, each step flinging mud behind him. A few tense seconds later, he felt a blast of heat sweep across his back, and before he could even react, a sea of flames consumed him.

The ogre’s firebreath gushed against his mana barrier, ripping it apart by its threads. It all but collapsed by the time the firebreath ended, deserting Silas in the midst of charred lands, his entire body drenched with sweat and his skin lightly singed. The ogre was there at the edge of his vision, grinning with a manic glint in its eyes. It began to bound forwards, its feet hammering the ground with each step as it blotted the sky above Silas, who stood still, eyes widened to their limits, heart beating so fast it threatened to blow out of his chest.

Slowly, as if he wasn’t about to be stamped out of existence in the next few seconds, he dropped the spear and picked his sword from his belt. The ogre arrived and swung its fists down, just as thunder boomed from the Duellist. Silas disappeared in a blur of speed, leaping so hard and fast he reached the ogre’s bare chest before the second could even tick, slashing through its hairy flesh.

Laughing - or crying - the ogre slapped at its chest, almost hitting him, but he scrambled up its chest to its shoulder, lifting his sword with the blade pointing down and sinking it deep. He lifted it out in one stroke, immediately stepping to the side and using the momentum to swing his sword into the ogre’s neck. Unfortunately, this cut was too small to be critical, and he had to jump down as the ogre trying to smash him again.

When he landed, he noticed that the ogre had disappeared into a blinding ball of light again. As before, it ended some seconds later, winged imps emerging from the ball this time, four winged imps. They appeared healthy and whole, all sign of their injuries and death gone. Without pause, they simultaneously dove down on Silas, who stopped and considered the sight before him.

He connected all the dots he had so far and nodded to himself, deciding on a plan. As the imps neared, he activated Luminous Land and danced around their attacks with his eyes closed. One of them swooped too low, and he pounced at once, his sword chopping it in half down its spine. While a second one tried to flank him, he noted how the two remaining imps had soared to the skies again, no doubt preparing for him to kill their second kin.

So far, it seemed to Silas that the only way to kill this D rank monster was to either kill three of the imps before they could fuse together and heal (although he was uncertain whether a single imp could initiate the fusion process by itself) or to kill it in its far more dangerous ogre mode. Perhaps he could also attack it during the fusion process, but he had a sneaking suspicion that it had some sort of defence then so that it wasn’t totally vulnerable during transformation.

Thankfully, he felt he could work with what he had. Whirling around, he removed the flanking imp of its head, and immediately the glare of blinding light hit him, peeking in through his shut eyes. Waiting, counting the seconds, he acted the instant the light disappeared and the ogre reappeared. Charging towards it, he ducked below its hasty grab and cut one leg, following up with a leap to the side to slice its other leg too. Neither of the cuts were deep, but they did activate Harrying Blows.

Like this, he continued with light attacks which stacked Harrying Blows, all the while flitting around the ogre’s kicks and punches. Then, when he sensed he had stacked enough, he activated Rupture without wasting another second, fearing the ogre would transform to imps again. Fortunately, it didn’t, as Rupture painted a black cross over the ogre’s chest.

The ogre must have sensed the danger it was in as it desperately tried to boot Silas away, missing magnificently and opening itself up. Silas’s whole body crackled, his hair standing on their ends, small white arcs of lightning following his advance as he bolted towards the hulking beast. He leapt with his sword held high above his head, slicing down in a wide downward arc which split the black cross. The second the black cross broke, the ogre exploded with crimson flesh bursting out of its rusty-red skin.

All the spots where Silas had activated Harrying Blows were now cratered with broken casing and bloody, lumpy puddles. The ogre toppled down, the manic glint of its eyes gone as life seeped out of its body.

Drained of all energy and mana, Silas stopped for a long moment, breathing hard. Only when he felt somewhat better did he move for his spear, simultaneously checking the Sovereigns page.

Sovereigns

Name l Race l Method used to ascend

Svobald the Scourge - Dragon - Passing level 100

Dahlia Howe - Human - Killing D rank enemy

Elisha Luna - Human - Completing D rated quest

Dying Light - Drakkar - Killing D rank enemy

Shrjkle - Shambler - Passing level 100

Ferer Greencare - Mycelia - Passing level 100

Dlyo - Stingtail - Completing D rated quest

Fiona D’Alaesa - Shaerd - Passing level 100

Kuraim Jaffer - Human - Completing D rated quest

Lucian Grimes - Human - Killing D rank enemy

Baerl of Time - Drakkar - Passing level 100

Bobby - Pygmy Troll - Completing D rank quest

Klope of Rain - Drakkar - Completing D rated quest

Freddie Littlewood - Human - Killing D rank enemy

Kedlllt - Hydra - Killing D rank enemy

Silas Wycliffe - Human - Killing D rank enemy