Chapter 5: Chapter 4. Ascension

Chapter 4: Ascension

"The first Champion has been chosen!" Weruno, the First Vehl, announced to the world.

He kept his voice light and carefree, as if the ascent of a demi-god was something that happened everyday. He could only laugh. It was a dark time to be alive; he himself had thought only one month ago that the second things calmed down, he would find some talented idiot to succeed him and disappear from everyone's radar. It seemed it wasn't meant to be.

"The Casting type Merger, Gamwick, has been deemed worthy by the gods," he said again for all to hear. He could tell everyone saw it coming, it wasn't a coincidence the last Champions were all Casters.

Normal Casters were already powerful, though rare. Their only weakness would be their frail bodies, but the ascension neatly covered that problem. Weruno didn't mind it much in the past, as all previous crises were about overpowered Beasts running amok; it also amused him to see how creative humans could be when embellishing their heroes' exploits.

"He killed the High Demon while keeping himself and his companions kilometres away!"

"The High Vampire didn't even see what hit him before he was blown away!"

"She grew beautiful, white feathered wings, and rained death on the High Lindwurm's reptile army from the sky!"

In truth, almost no Champion in history had ever fought in close combat with their respective High Beasts. They all found some way to forcefully use their range to win without fighting—even if it was detrimental to themselves and/or their allies. Put nicely, they were very careful people. If you just looked at the facts, they were all cowards.

The sun shone through the window, reflecting off of his head, he could see a bright light on the mirror beside him, and felt the breeze from the top of his head. He paused.

… he was so sick of these kinds of Mergers, they were powerful and showy and had fancy hair and yadda yadda yadda. All of those would be amusing in lighter times—he himself had once set up betting rings in his heydays—but it was hard to laugh now.

Champions were like exaggerated stereotypes of the everyday battle Caster. All their little fears, pet peeves in battle, and range-phobias seemed to be magnified after their ascension. Along with their stupid hair. There was that guy…

But this time the situation was unlike any other dark age before: humanity lost two pillars in less than ten years. Champions would need to have more than overpowering firepower, they needed to be more than walking bombs. Things were worsening in the Human Lands, people were losing hope, and humanity needed Paragons. Blinding lights of hope that showed the way.

That's as far away from a Caster's personality as you could get.

Beyond power and their hair, it was a toss up whether Casters could be of any use anymore if they ran out of stamina. Well, maybe they could distract Beasts with the ridiculous light show on their head. He guessed—hoped—that the gods saw in Gamewick a good damage dealer and would branch out a bit more next.

"And what a surprise!" He exclaimed as he looked down from a giant window where the deformed piece of rock that was the Earth could be seen. Near a gigantic gaping abyss was a city bathed in golden light. "The richest city in the world once again produced a Champion. Hey, let's hope he doesn't die horribly. That would be gold!"

He laughed at his own joke, making sure the people below heard him, then he reinforced the barriers on his floating home. Just as he finished, the doors to his quarters were blown open and disintegrated.

Standing there was a tall woman. Her appearance was average, but with long green hair, healthy dark skin, and shining golden eyes, she was far removed from the usual inbred noble—whom usually looked like beaten up goblins. Like, really, how many children that looked like troll's butts should be born before they accept that Merges couldn't be passed on through blood?

The woman briskly crossed the room, murder in her eyes. He was technically her teacher, and should be stronger than her in his domain, but he still warped himself to the other end of the room just in case.

"Rosepta, calm down-"

"Weruno!" she screeched. The space around him became heavy, making it feel like he was pressed down by heavily armoured dinosaurs. A magnificently deadly fist was heading towards his head. But before he was beaten to death, everything shook violently. He could feel the strength of the weaponry battering onto his home. He laughed, but quickly hid it behind his hand when he felt his bones creaking.

"Ha! Attacking their First Vehl's humble house, where's that Atlantean noble heart?"

"You-" Rosepta was practically foaming at the mouth. A very dark, very, very spiky piece of Space metal in her right hand. She pointed her free hand to the the window, where beautiful golden fire was bravely trying to burn the room, and them, to cinders. "Don't you realise what you've just done!"

"Insult their founding king and made a joke about the new Champion's potential gory death?" he explained in an unsure way. He tried to subtly use his Merge to escape, but found his body to still be under his disciple's ability. "Did you get stronger? How I envy you Special types…"

"You're jealous of everyone," Rosepta said. She glared harder. "And don't try to change the subject. You made fun of the Golden Hand." Here, she rubbed her temples tiredly. "That's their God King! They hit us with Third Rank artillery!"

"So what?" He waved his hand in the air, gesturing to the glowing runes around the room. "This house is my Focus-"

She hit him on the head. "Idiot! Even the floating cross can't handle more than that. You're gonna kill us both."

He finally succeeded in warping away from her ability. He smoothed his rumpled purple robes and faced towards the window. "Don't call it that. Call it by its proper name: the majestic Plusth."

"Never," she said at once, coming up beside him. The golden flames were beginning to fade. "You're so careless. Gamwick is also a country representative, y'know. I bet he has some ties with the Caesar or even the damn White Magician."

"He's a good boy," Weruno said flippantly. He took control of the Plusth and opened a screen. It flickered for a second before showing a bird's-eye view of a relatively big army on the edge of the Eternal Wound.  "He moved as soon as the royal council was over, ages before he ascended, like he was trying to prove something."

"He'll die," Rosepta said simply. She looked at the glowing screen, from this perspective, the people in it seemed like scuttling ants. Because that's what they were. "They will all die, and we'll be short one Champion to really reclaim Babel."

"Maybe he'll get lucky," Weruno said, he closed the screen and turned to look at his frowning disciple.

They sat down near the window, it was calming. He opened up a book and started reading while Rosepta tinkered with her Mimic Soul. Again, he felt jealous. He reached the Fifth Rank decades ago, and couldn't advance anymore, so he could no longer fiddle with his Merge. Time passed, and the sun travelled across the sky. He suddenly thought of something.

"Chaos corruption isn't as absolute as you think. There are things that can survive even if you push it into Black Tar."

Rosepta blinked, and opened her mouth to insult him, no doubt, when a wave of terrifying oppression swept over them. The whole room shook violently, and Weruno was stunned to feel that even the innermost barriers on the Plusth were put out of commission.

He ignored the sudden splitting headache of having his barriers forcefully broken, and checked for dangers. Rosepta released healing waves while he worked.

You are reading story Your Mirthful Earth at novel35.com

It should be known that the outer barriers didn't even waver when hit with Rank Three artillery, or "castle killers" as they were called; those things could destroy reinforced castle walls with ease. But something was weird, as far as he was aware, they were only hit by some kind of remnant energy, and not directly targeted as he had thought. But what could be strong enough to erase his barriers with just remnant Aether?

"I've taken over the burden," Rosepta said, gesturing to Mimic Soul, a black, fist-sized pyramid floating in front of her. It took him a bit to understand that she mimicked his Merge and redeployed the Plusth's barriers in his stead. He nodded gratefully, returning to his checkups.

In comparison to the outer ones, the innermost barriers were as strong as the barriers on the soul. Practically invincible. It was absolutely impossible for them to fail even though they weren't hit directly. No, there is something that could overcome the impossible.

He once again opened a glowing screen, a terrible premonition in his heart, and observed the same spot where the Atlantean Champion and his men were staying at a minute ago.

Rosepta chocked, Weruno felt his blood freeze. The desert in and out of the Eternal Wound was frozen in ice for kilometres. The ice on the side of the Wound was gradually turning black, becoming more and more nightmarish. Like it wasn't bad enough already. And in the middle of this tragedy was a massive pillar of light rising into the sky.

The Sixth Barrier.

"Something just ascended," Rosepta whispered, her face pale, her voice weak. Then, she became frantic. "Weruno! Something is ascending-"

"I know!" he shouted, fear lacing every bit of his body. He could no longer keep his majesty as a teacher, and shamefully kept trembling in broad daylight. The remnant energy just then, he recognised it. Something on the level of a High Beast just broke through the peak of what living beings could reach. "They're dead. He's dead." He realised.

"Of course he died," Rosepta said calmly, surprising him. But Weruno could understand, he, too, suddenly felt as if all fear and uncertainty left him at this moment. "What else could've pushed something already that strong through the limit?"

"It… ate him?" Weruno turned back to the screen, the light show was still ongoing. It was true, he recalled. High Beasts could do that, it just that he had never thought a demigod would ever be eaten. He found it funny how things went. "Shouldn't he have died more meaningfully? I mean, shouldn't the death of a Champion be more epic? This looks more like the death of an uninteresting side character than fate's Chosen One to me."

"Stop being disrespectful." Rosepta knocked him on the head. Her Mimic Soul vanished. She continued, "and there is no fate. He was stupid and so he died a stupid death—"

"Damning us all in the process."

"—he should've gathered the little bit of brain matter remaining from his pride-infected butt before rushing towards the most dangerous place on Earth. What the heck was he even expecting? Ascending didn't miraculously give him Chaos immunity, did it? And even if it did, what about his men?"

Weruno tuned out her rant. It was a big moment, he was in the front row seat to watch the death of humanity. He didn't want to miss even a small bit of this High Beast's transformation. What would it be like when it finished? A normal High Beast was enough to sink superpowers like the ancient Atlantis, how would it compare to something like that?

"… a 'normal High Beast'?" Weruno chuckled. He never thought there would come a time when he would think that and genuinely mean it. He shook his head. "I think we'll need to come up with a new race name for this, Rosepta dear."

He felt someone come up beside him as he continued to look at the screen. "Everything's taken," Rosepta finally said after she also got hooked on the spectacle. "Right now, there are Beast Abominations, Nobles, Kings, Emperors, Ancestors, and even Devils in the world. 'High Beast' was already pulling it at the time."

Weruno nodded along as he listened to the list of extremely dangerous things coming out of his disciple's mouth. He found himself curiously calming down for each name getting out of Rosepta's mouth. Until he came to an epiphany. Then, he laughed.

Rosepta's eyes towards him became more and more itchy and insolent as he snickered like a madman.

"Did you finally go senile, old man?" Rosepta said flatly. "Well, isn't it about time? You're what, a million years old, right?"

"Hey," he said, honestly insulted. "I'm just over four hundred, alright? Even Velzeroth is under the thousand's, okay?"

"What's wrong, then?"

"Nothing," Weruno said, shrugging. "Well, everything's wrong, but you get what I mean." He nodded towards the screen and the bright pillar of pure Aether. "It's just, this feeling. This… fear. Don't you feel like all this has already happened before? When the Abomination appeared, followed by the Devourer, then the first High Beast, isn't it all the same?"

Rosepta's darkening eyes lightened, but she still shook her head. "This time is different, we don't have Babel or even Eden anymore. We're two exponentials weaker."

"No, it's the same." He glared at the screen. He could feel his connection with the Plusth, and the Plusth itself, humming with strength. He couldn't believe he was ready to just give up. "Every single time the world oppressed us, we always thought we weren't going to make it, but we always do. And when new, impossible threats suppressed us, we always find a way to crawl back into the light from the darkness we hid in, and then win. We have always won, and we'll continue to win as long as there is a single one of us staying under the sun's light to fight."

His conviction was so deep that he could feel his Aether overflowing out of him. Surprise was painted on Rosepta's face at the end of his speech; getting excited and spouting cringey lines, it wasn't like him. After a while, they both returned to observing the ascension, not expecting to see the pillar in the screen tapering off.

"It's here!"

Weruno silently readied the Plusth, his face was grim, but his heart was steady. He opened the gates of the most guarded part aboard, the Aether reactor in the core room. Rosepta manifested her Mimic Soul again, and stood on standby.

The light pillar disappeared and an they could finally see the Beast as it rose before them. The thing had seven, serpentine heads and the corresponding flame covered tails. The Beast's heads all rose one by one, and its beautiful silver scales glinted in the sun.

Then, it released powerful roars from each of its mouths. It wasn't even looking at them, but Weruno could feel his vitality being sapped away. He immediately got himself under control, and dumped a large part of the gathered Aether from the core into Mimic Soul. The rest he used to buff the Plusth's processing power, urging it to analyse every piece of data it could gather. After all, there wouldn't come a more perfect occasion than this one to collect information in the future.

"By the gods' grace. Thankfully, I didn't turn off that function."

Rosepta, jolted awake from the large amount of energy flooding into her body, finally started shifting through her copied Merges.

"I found one," she said, the black pyramid beside her was wafting off black smoke. "Tell me when you're ready."

"Go whenever you want," Weruno answered. He didn't want to stay here anymore. Then, just when they were fading away, he noticed the Beast suddenly jerking all its heads towards the setting sun, towards the Eternal Wound. The unmistakable look of dread on all of the Beast's seven faces froze Weruno on the spot.

"What-" Weruno felt like he just missed something that could've changed his life.