Chapter 152 - And So It Begins

And so, ATP comes to an end. This is the final chapter left from my backlog, and after this, there won't be anymore. I may end up writing a new story or continuing ATP further along the road, but for now, this Patreon is gonna be waste of money for anyone spending on it. 

Thanks for reading for this long, I appreciate you guys more than you can imagine.

Sincerely, R. R. Quan

**

A bellow shook Brock’s bones and he dived to the side. A quartet of paws slammed into the snow, sending clumps of frost flying everywhere. As Brock caught himself and stood, he stared at the mutant polar bear snarling before him. Spittle flew from its mouth, and it hauled itself forward, muscles rippling under the ivory fur of each of its four front limbs.

To his left growled another of the bear monster’s, this one larger and horned. Brock glanced at its level of 99 and gulped. Why hello papa bear…

Breathing, he decided it was time to stop honing his raw fighting skills and start getting serious. He’d been fighting the two of them for over twenty minutes now, and while the practice was certainly shaking the rust from his instincts, it was starting to get dull. The bears were neither fast nor smart enough to pose a threat to him.

Which meant they’d served their purpose. His hands adopted a crimson glow, the veins and bones becoming illuminated from within. Flames licked out from the tips of his fingers. The air hissed. Then he moved.

A paw swung overhead, and he slid under and rolled. Another paw cleaved in above him, and he used Silence to diverted him to the side, avoiding the blow. Quickly, he stood and his leg snaked out, his body twisting. His foot caught mama bear in the snout, rocking her head to the side under the sheer force he could bring to bear with his Aura Technique.

As she recovered and attempted to catch him inside her hulking arms, his hands moved to block them, the searing heat they contained melting through her limbs in seconds. Two of her arms flopped to the snow, and she roared out in pain. As Brock tried to finish her off with a fiery strike to the head, she stumbled back and papa’s claws tickling his jacket and digging into the flesh beneath.

Fortunately, the claws were nowhere near sharp enough to break through the hide. It sure did hurt, however. That’s gonna leave a bit of a bruise.

Brock hissed as a hot pain assaulted him, and spun around, diverting a follow up strike with his forearm and planting a foot in his chest. He snapped at him as Silence send him shooting backwards. If they didn’t have such thick skulls, I’d just pop their heads like a couple of pimples.

Mama bear’s claws came scything in from the left and right while Brock’s attention was taken, and he snorted. From her shadow, chains of blackened energy shot up and pulled her arms downwards, letting her claws rake through the snow and dirt beneath them. Occasionally, crimson lightning flickered along their lengths, and the bubbling sound of her flesh melting joined the noise of their snarling.

I’m… never gonna get over how grim that is…

The martial arts he’d been taught by his sister flashed in his mind, and akin to a twisting blur, one foot whipped around and smashed her in the side of the head, rattling her brains. Then, as that foot landed, his other came around and crashed into her snout. A sickening crunch resounded, and she whimpered.

Gritting his teeth and planted both feet and followed it all up with a strike of his searing fist. The raw heat saw it melt directly through her forehead and reach out the back. Sizzling blood and brain dribble out the hole, and his chains dispelled, letting her corpse flop to the ground. His flaming hands returned to normal.

He felt papa bear charge in his field of air. He ducked low, hearing his teeth snap together overhead. Brock placed one hand on the ground and let his foot slam into the beast’s stomach. It lurched, and he quickly twisted and landed a throat strike, leaving the monster gasping for air. Aside from the ninjutsu he’d learned from Jane, he’d also picked up some Taekwondo from Mio.

And with his stupidly high Intelligence, it had taken him about two weeks to learn both to a black belt level. He’d thought it would help calm his tumultuous emotions, but it hadn’t. After that he’d turned to aura meditation, and he effects were immediate.

The air hissed and a blade of air sliced through the tendons of papa bear’s back legs. Brock rolled clear as the beast could no longer stand and fell back onto his four limbs. Flames returned to his fingertips, and he whipped his hand forward, watching as four crescents of projectile flame carved charred divots into the mass of its body, revealing pulsing innards and burnt bone.

Like most usages he’d developed in the past few months, that one was created directly from using his memory of the Error doing so. Sure, its was far more powerful and tightly constructed, but his did the job. The creation was fairly simple. It only required him to cool and heat up certain parts of air around the flame to maintain its shape.

And unlike a simple fireball, the area of effect was far more direct.

The bear snarled and howled in agony, and Brock finally put it to rest as he imbued his aura empowered leg with Skies and kicked at its neck. The sound of a spine snapping resounded, and the monster fell limp.

Huffing out a breath, Brock rolled his shoulder, savouring the way the bone crackled. His wounds felt itchy, the developing bruises probably already in the process of healing, “Yeah I still got it.”

Idly, his eyes darted over to the direct where he’d came. He could see the flickering glow of the Rift far in the distance, and knew it’d probably be around a few hour long walk back. His aura picked out the remaining traces of aura he’d left behind along the way, although it wasn’t from him.

It was from the several dozen monster corpses he’d left along the way. If not for some quick applications of his Anti-Force Shield, Brock would be long covered in a rainbow of blood by now. Twisting his lips as he considered whether to go back as he’d been out for almost five hours now, Brock glanced at the corpse of the two bears and sighed.

“Yeah, it’s time to go back,” a snort found its way out of his nose, “they aren’t even strong enough to make me use all my Techniques. Let alone the more dangerous applications of my Augments.”

While he hadn’t yet managed to master Augment Braiding, a few… other things came to mind. Ones used by a certain blackened monster. Maybe the reason I feel so disgusting is because I used the entire experience to grow stronger, and I hate that what happened was beneficial.

He shrugged, feeling his mood sour a bit. Makes sense, I guess. See? And who said I needed to see one of Meiyo’s psychologists? Jane. Jane did.

As Brock placed his first foot forward and began his journey back, having only 38 hours left until it was time to go, he sensed a presence flare behind him. Immediately, he recognised the aura as Sasha’s. Strangely enough, hiding among that arrogance carelessness was a very real fear. Dread almost. And he felt that it was directed at him.

“You… looked like you were having fun.”

Brock turned around and eyed her. One hand was resting idly on the pommel of her dagger, “I wouldn’t call it fun. I just needed some practice. Haven’t fought in a while.”

“Right…” Sasha glanced from him to the mutilated corpses of the two bears, and he could see that she didn’t believe him. In fact, he felt that she thought he was a psychopath.

Maybe… maybe I am? Brock joined her in gazing at the corpses. They were a fucking mess. I feel nothing looking at them. And the way I fought them…

He swallowed. This world’s been changing me more than I’d like to admit…

“So…” Sasha continued after silence followed, Brock to intent on his own issues to offer a response, “you wanna spar?”

Brock deadpanned, “You’re an entire grade above me.”

“And?” That hasn’t stopped you before, oh slayer of E Grades.” She teased, a smile quickly moving to hide her unease.

I can’t argue with that. But still… he snorted, “Yeah nah. You’ll beat the shit out of me.”

He glared as her smile shifted to a smirk, “And you know that.”

“I was so close,” she laughed. Even the soundsshe made were stunning. Brock grumbled to himself and continued walking back to the Rift, “Hey! So, we aren’t going to spar?!”

He gave her the finger over his shoulder, “You figure it out.”

**

After sprinting for an hour non-stop and regretting that he hadn’t asked Sasha to teleport him back, as her powers seemed unaffected inside the Rift, Brock finally saw it loom in the distance. Somehow, by some major System fuckery, the Rift seemed to contradict its own rules depending on whether one was inside of it or outside of it.

It appeared far more study of them were in order before they made sense. What was worse, was that this was one of the most stable ones around, adopting a very light shade of purple like Fon had told him. Apparently, the darker ones had environments and monsters that took so much concentration to understand it gave people headaches.

He very much wanted to see inside those ones.

As he neared the stretch of snow that led off to Minerva’s cave, he did wonder if he should tell anyone about her being here. He doubted anyone would go and kill her, as her own faction within Meiyo wasn’t much different from a separate political party, but he decided against it.

The woman wasn’t harming anyone or doing anything while inside the Rift and it seemed she’d be stuck there for a while. Jane’s succession of leadership should go by unhindered, unless Sasha or Minerva’s remaining followers went and did something to interfere. Regardless, he knew she’d be able to handle herself. He was fairly certain she was Earth’s strongest after all.

What he did do, however, was visit them and get Sasha to warp him back to the Rift and follow him down the mountain. When they were finally out of its disrupting range, she went ahead and teleported him back to his house in King’s Cavity.

He had a few people he wanted to say goodbye to first.

Erin and Margo were easy to find, as the former followed the later everywhere, and her cheer was loud enough to be heard from hundreds of meters away. He gave them a brief goodbye and some knowledge on what he was planning to do, as he knew he acted as sort of a backbone for the city. Many felt threatened by the apocalypse around them, and he was a source of comfort for the people. For they knew he’d be there to help when the time arose.

Apart from appearing rather happy that he’d ‘hopped out of his little cave’, they bid him luck in finding his mother and he went on his way. No one else he really cared about was in King’s Cavity currently aside from perhaps Zonoebah, who’d acted as something of a grounding figure for him in his tough time.

They’d had an in-depth conversation about what knowledge he’d gathered, and horrifyingly enough, the System’s ‘rebooting’ applied to him as well. He’d asked the Elemental about what Minerva had said about people dying in the Trial despite the fact it negated death, but upon attempting to answer, the light fled its body and it crumbled to stone.

Luckily, it had reconstructed itself, although its memory had been predictably erased and that was where the conversation ended. One simple ‘thank you’ and ‘see you later’ was all he’d imparted before he’d headed for the hub.

No longer did he bother to wear his disguise, as most people were looking for someone wearing such a thing anyway after the events of yesterday with Anastasia, and chatter erupted everywhere he walked. Fortunately, the shadow scouts were quick in getting him out of there and he was in Meiyo within the minute.

Goodbyes to Carrie, Kim, Jane and his two friends Harry and Fon ensued, and he made a quick jump to Alice Springs to let James know what was going on. Jordan seemed rather interested that Brock was going to evolve in the trial but said nothing more.

He’d wanted to say goodbye to Mio as well, but she was out on a reconnaissance mission involving the Harakat and had been for a while. After a stop at Beatrice’s Bakery and an order that saw the shop out of stock, he checked his supplies and opened his status screen.

Munching on a delicious Danish, his eyes stared at one line.

Level: 100 [Evolution Available]

He still had time remaining until he truly needed to leave, but he decided that it was better to get going earlier on just in case the ritualist was wrong about the time frame. Plus, those extra hours would give him time to search for his mother before the Trial began and everyone was teleported to a random location.

Swallowing the last of his food, Brock sighed. Let’s do this…

[Would you like to enter the Trial of Evolution to progress your Ascendancy?]

[Yes/No]

Brock selected yes and he erupted in a maelstrom of blue and green lightning.