The first thing Brock felt was pain. It was invasive, corrupting the depths of his body with the ceaseless taint of agony. The entirety of his frame felt cut, beaten, and bruised, with the sensation of dried blood gumming up his skin as he slowly rolled over to his side, spewing up globs of crimson. His throat was parched to the point of cracking, bleeding freely and leaving him unable to utter even a single word.

I... feel... like shit...

Wearily, the man cranked open his heavy eyelids, straining with effort as he broke the seal of crusted blood and dust that had formed over them, and bathed his vision with the view of a midnight sky. The sparkling stars provided no light as they looked down on him, almost condescending in their voided radiance.

The place was a ruin around him, splinters of rubble and debris forming minuscule hills or vague shapes resembling that which they had once been, crumbled by the ravages of the fall. It took him a moment to notice, but a gigantic arm was lying limply beside him, its once luscious black fur now matted with violet gore. Faintly, it reeked of death.

Brock tried to move himself more, to get up or at least crawl away from the growing puddle of gorilla blood, but he was left groaning in pain as his body couldn’t find the strength to do so. The entirety of his left flank stung wildly, his previously ironed and fresh suit torn and soaked with his own gore, a rusted rod of metal stabbing through the wound. Oh... shit...

He couldn’t even yank it free of its fleshy bondage, only try to breath more carefully as to not aggravate the injury further. Brock barely had the energy to worry about the potential of tetanus, his mind weary and occupied by the consistent throb of pain it was enveloped in. Swallowing painfully, he blinked, opting to just gaze into the sky and hope that the torturous anguish would fade soon.

Everything before now was somewhat of a blur within his head. Vaguely, Brock remembered the fight, killing the monkeys with the collapsing building meant for the ape itself. The explosion of South’s Augment as he carved into its exposed belly. The pain unlike anything he had ever experienced before.

But I'm... still alive... I guess...

Weakly, Brock let out a gurgling sigh of relief. He had won, despite all odds. It had been rough, desperate, and by the skin of his teeth, but he had truly won, the limp body beside him proof enough of that. Though despite that clear victory, Brock couldn’t say he walked out of it in a better condition. He was alive, but right now he felt like he would have died twice over if it was the him before the System.

He may be the winner here, but Brock knew he’d be out of combat for a long while.

Even hours later, the office worker still found himself unable to move, let alone mutter a single word, though he felt his Vitality quickly working to repair the damage he had sustained. Slowly, as he managed to collect his consciousness to proper wakefulness, Brock moved his lips wordlessly, deciding to use this moment to thank the System for allowing him to survive this ordeal, even though it was the one who got him into it in the first place.

There was no response, but he felt it had heard him.

Over the coming days, Brock heard several beasts come and go, initially curious at the sight of destruction, before the residual energies in the area or the brutalised corpse of the Alpha sent them scrambling off, much to his relief. He was certain even something like that Skeever would be able to kill him as he was now.

It was only six days later when Brock finally felt himself rejuvenated enough to do something once more, his bones still creaking ominously at the mere movement of his limbs. It was a faint sensation, but Brock felt everything below his waist tingling, his spine clearly having taken a savage hit during the fight, though he struggled to remember exactly when. It was all a jumbled mess really.

"Haugh!"

With a grunt of pain, he managed to get himself into a seated position, the grisly puncture wound left behind on his side after he'd removed the rebar screaming out in protest, though it didn’t reopen. Unable to eat or drink for days, Brock noticed that his enhanced body had begun to slim down, though it was that same body that had allowed him to survive that long without either. Built different...

It took effort for him to pry open the scraps of his backpack and find the unruined contents within that were unsurprisingly rare, but Brock soon chugged down the last two of his waters and smashed the lid off a can of beans with a nearby rock, letting the cold sludge slide down his parched throat painfully.

His clothes were utterly destroyed, and at this point, there wasn’t all that much difference in him just being naked. Aside from that, and the molten scrap his knives had miraculously transmuted into, his backpack was rendered entirely unusable, requiring him to seek out a replacement if he wanted to maintain the on-the-road sort of lifestyle he was quickly beginning to despise.

It was only a little while after he had his meal - whether it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner, he couldn’t tell – that Brock came to realise his surroundings were warped and estranged in their appearances, clearly suffering some sort of permanent effect from the gorilla’s Augment. Some blocks of stone were stretched out into long, brittle shapes, while other items were seen bending at impossible angles.

"...What... the...?"

With a start, Brock had quickly realised that he too, was affected. Fuuuuck.

While only slight, his body was left misshapen, some of his limbs barely longer than the other, or with subtle curves where they shouldn’t be. He even felt somewhat off-balance when he tried to stand, his weight distribution altered and uneven. Through the ambient pain, Brock feared that his changes would be permanent, though a prompt thankfully shook him from his thoughts.

[Sub-Quest completed.]

Trophy Hunter: Approach the centre of this domain and slay the Alpha and his pack. Reward: Unique title, hidden reward, hidden reward. (2/2)

Rewards will appear shortly.

Instantly, Brock felt a considerable surge of power flow through his body, relieving his aching body somewhat of its stress and agony. It was only marginal, but the office worker felt the rate at which his body healed accelerate, along with everything else. His senses felt clearer, his muscles tighter and his flesh harder. He even felt smarter, and the headache even began to ease up, if only slightly.

Woah.

Gasping in relief, Brock flinched back as two items flickered into existence before him afterwards, a small wooden chest and a floating book with a seemingly animated cover, the images of both surreal environments and legendary creatures upon it shifting and changing depending on the angle he looked at it from. While the chest was relatively unassuming, Brock felt a millennia-old power dormant in the book.

[Congratulations, you have been presented with a Compendium. These System extensions are commonplace in the Multiverse, granting the user, and their entire race, access to a species-wide collection of experiences, both involving titles, beasts, environments and items. By browsing it, you are allowed insight into that which others have seen, despite your presence not being required at the happening.

Please reach out and touch the cover of the Compendium to integrate it with your Ascendancy.]

Reading through the chunky excerpt of text, Brock was left awestruck, immediately realising the sheer value of this strange book. With it, not only could he gain further insight into that which he had experienced, but he could also potentially arm himself with the knowledge of the other’s locations using it, though it might be a stretch if you had to complete a Unique quest to obtain one.

But, as it was mentioned, it was supposedly commonplace in the Multiverse, so Brock didn’t worry too much.

The word Multiverse itself filled him with a little bit of giddy excitement, as while it was quite honestly not all that surprising, or even unbelievable, after all that he had seen and experienced, the thought of being able to travel to different dimensions and planets held great appeal to the man.

[Please reach out and touch the cover of the Compendium.]

"Yeah, yeah..."

Another prompt replaced the old one, reminding him to actually acquire the Compendium first, and Brock weakly reached out, albeit with far more strength in his limbs than before. Lightly, his hand connected with the surface of the cover, and Brock felt energies beyond his understanding flare to life, the golden book slowly dissipating into wisps of energy as they entered the pores of his hand and disappeared.

Idly, Brock felt a small nugget of something settle somewhere deep inside his chest, most likely within his Ascendancy. Curiously, he called upon it.

Welcome to the [email protected]#[email protected]#--

[Error. Compendium is unusable without the use of a Shard of Awakening beforehand.]

[Conflicting Error. Dormant Ascendancy detected.]

[Solution found. Isolating Function Fragment…]

[Compendium is now disabled until User: Brock Carter once again has a functional Ascendancy.]

Brock stared into the air where the Compendium had once been seconds prior, his eyes unblinking as he spared a moment to read over the prompts and return his gaze back to their original place, “I can tell you’re enjoying this.”

His seething voice was hoarse beyond his years, and it hurt like a motherfucker, but Brock still had to say it.

Sobbing quietly, Brock gave the sky one of his infamous middle fingers and instead turned his attention to the regular looking chest, desperately hoping it also wasn’t some System dickery that he was about to experience.

Luckily, Brock touched and opened the chest without issue, revealing a strange weapon inside, lying atop a pillow of violet silk. Reaching down into it, he looked on in awe as he grasped a wicked looking dagger by its hilt, a chain of unstable purple energy stretching out from the ring at the end and dragging a small bracer along with it.

It appeared to be some sort of exceptionally long kunai, though instead of being double-sided, the blade was flatter and far more geared toward a single edge, one far sharper than even that of his meat cleavers, although the back edge itself was still relatively sharp too. The ethereal chain of energy turned out to be solid, as Brock grasped it and felt the unmistakable resilience of the chains between his fingers.

The bracer, however, was the most interesting part of it all. Unlike what one would expect, it was the top of the bracer that held the sturdy leather straps to attach the piece of blackened armour to his arm. And although it was clearly some sort of metal, or perhaps even carbon fiber, it felt far too flexible to be of any use defending against an attack.

A diminished rift of flickering violet energy was apparent on the item, clinging to the underside of the bracer, the beginning of the ethereal chain that was attached to the dagger appearing from this location. In awe, Brock quickly donned the item and tightened the straps, watching in confusion as the dagger dangled from the short length of chain helplessly.

Using his other hand to place it into his grasp, Brock tried to repeat that throwing attack that he had slain a monkey with during his rapid stair climb, scoffing in disbelief as additional lengths of the energy chain followed out from the bracer as the blade shot forward, embedding itself into a piece of stone several meters away.

It was vague, but Brock felt a connection form between him and the item on his arm, and curiously, he reached out and tugged on it, feeling that previously weak mental connection strengthen into a thick thread between them, albeit in a plane of the immaterial. Almost instinctually, Brock commanded the knife to return, and the bracer obeyed, the chain growing taut as the blade was pulled from the stone and flew back toward him, disappearing into the rift on the piece of armour without fanfare.

Brock tested it and found that he could make the dagger reappear from the rift at will, and while the chain originally seemed endless, it had an estimated range of about fifteen meters. The final test would involve imbuing the item with his Augment, but as that act seemed to be fully responsible for the continuous headache he was currently being forced to endure, Brock held off until a further date.

Satisfied with his gain in the form of a hopefully reliable weapon, Brock opened his Status.