The Evernon Saga - The Journey Of Ascension, A Struggle For Godhood.

The sun shined with its breathtaking rays across the vast fields and plains of Nashya, a well-populated and prosperous country located on the continent of Evernon, on the planet Terra. Nashya, or better known as 'The Royal Kingdom of Nashya', is located on the very northern part of Evernon, with its North-facing side being a coast. Its territory is shaped like a shield, and has very well-defended borders. It is also known as the 'Warrior Country', which is exactly what it is, with the majority of the army being comprised of Knights and Warriors of all kinds. The most common and rightfully popular professions in Nashya are: Mining, Blacksmithing and Farming. The whole country itself is Warrior-focused, and allocates its resources accordingly, priding itself in the production of the finest, most well-equipped Warriors on the planet.

The sons and daughters of Nashya all dream to become Knights and Valkyries, and attain the glory that comes with it. Some succeed by the time they are grown up, others don't. Those who don't have the talent necessary to become Warriors, work hard to aid the current and future Warriors, by either mining for ores, smithing weapons and armor, or farming to fill the hungry bellies of the Warriors. They help wholeheartedly in any way they can, to support the Warriors and their country's efforts in creating the best Warriors they can. The people of Nashya are a simple and cheery folk, with heavy emphasis on family and friendship, but with a terrifying competitive nature when it came to raising their children the best they could, be it in terms of character, nutrition, or skills with the sword and battle, the citizens of Nashya have never been defenseless civilians.

******

Two young boys, aged 6 and 7, ran frantically across a grassy field. The reason? They were being chased by 11 other children around their age due to the game they were playing. It was called Knights versus Zombies, where roughly a quarter to a third of the players start as zombies, and have to 'infect' other players. The zombies are unarmed and have to hit other players on their bodies 3 times to transform them into a zombie. The Knights wielded wooden shields and blunted wooden swords, long sticks to serve as spears/halberds, or bigger sticks to act as two-handed weapons. For a zombie to be killed, it has to be hit 8 times, this is to compensate for the lack of attack range since they were unarmed. The game was fun for the kids, but the real reason the game was introduced, only perceivable by the a.d.u.l.ts, was to train the children's armed and unarmed prowess, be it attacking, defending or dodging, this game had it all. If all the Knights were turned into Zombies, the Zombies won. If all the Zombies were 'slain' with their hit counts taken up, or rendered otherwise unable to immediately continue fighting, the Knights would win.

At this current moment the two boys were sprinting as fast as they could away from the miniature horde of Zombies, their lungs were burning, and their legs felt like they were made of lead, as they slowly had to stop running, and turned around to see the horde hollering at them.

"William!, your rule ends today! We're going to turn you into a zombie this time for sure!"

"Magnar, you meanie! You hit too hard, it's a game! But now we're gonna get our payback!"

6 year old William and 7 year old Magnar looked at each-other, grimacing. William readied his shield in front of him, and hefted his little wooden sword in his right hand, while Magnar swung his big stick around in circles menacingly, whilst grinning. This made the rest of the horde hesitate for a moment, leaving only one kid left who was charging towards the two Knights. William rushed in front of Magnar as the Zombie threw a punch, which he blocked with his shield. But the punch was suspiciously light, and before he could react, William saw a knee being aimed at his left ribs!

Just as William was about to take his 2nd hit this game, a thick stick came thrusting downwards into the ground next to him!, blocking the knee and causing the stick to wobble. A front kick nailed that Zombie square in the c.h.e.s.t as he flew back a meter, landing at the feet of the horde. This made the horde even more hesitant, as the kicked Zombie wheezed on the floor, groaning in pain. However, as soon as they saw Magnar's arrogant grin, they were once again infuriated.

"Surround them!, We'll split them up and finish this!" yelled one of the kids.

The rest were thinking similar thing, and rushed in. Wordlessly, William and Magnar leaned back-to-back onto each-other and stared the many kids around them down. Magnar whispered something briefly into William's left ear, causing his eyes to widen and eyebrows to be raised, but he nodded nonetheless. William then jumped as high as he could, as Magnar simultaneously turned around to push him with a right kick as hard as he could. William already had his shield facing Magnar's kick, and had his legs out straight in front of him. He used the force from Magnar's kick and flew forward, drop-kicking 2 Zombies along the way, putting them down on the ground wheezing as well. Magnar then pulled his stick out of the ground and began taking wide swings at the Zombies surrounding him, holding them off while William got his bearings as 3 of the remaining 8 Zombies came to fight him.

William used his shield, sword and speed to dodge, parry, and block all attacks that came his way. It was very taxing and demanded his full concentration, but he managed to hold on. After just barely a minute had passed, William was already dripping with sweat from the exertion. These weren't attacks from ordinary children. While they did not carry significant power in them, they were swift and well thought-out. Such were the young sons and daughters of Nashya. Magnar was also slowly approaching exhaustion, swinging his two-handed stick in wide arcs with impressive speed and power. All that could be heard were the swishes of the stick as it pushed its way forcefully through the air, an indication of how truly swift and scary his swings were. Such terrifying swings made the remaining 5 Zombies fearful, keeping them at bay because they didn't want to get hit by even one of those swings. They were afraid that it would break something if it successfully made contact with them.

William was waiting patiently whilst defending himself, slowly feeling a familiar sensation building up in his head, heart and the core of his body. It was a feeling that could only be described as a cup being filled up with water, and being close to the brim. As William defended, this feeling grew stronger and stronger over the course of a couple minutes, until the 'water' which had already crossed the brim, finally 'overflowed'. Suddenly, William's time seemed to slow for a few seconds as the feeling of something opening surged throughout his body. He had leveled up! A refreshing, and cool wave of energy spread throughout his body in waves, eliminating his fatigue and clearing his mind, making him feel calm and soothing all anxieties and stresses. William mentally checked his Status:

Name: William

Age: 6

Level: 5 -> 6

Experience: 100% -> 0.00%

Health: 350/350 (250 -> 350)

Mana: 245/245 (245 -> 245)

Tier: 0

- Attributes -

Strength: 5 -> 7

Agility: 7 -> 9

Intellect: 7

Luck: 1

He had gotten a veritable increase to his attributes, making him almost 50% stronger than he was a minute ago, and almost a third faster! After the acknowledgement of his improvements, William's time returned back to normal as an excited grin appeared on his face. The Level Up, healing, and checking all happened in the duration of a second in real-time, due to the changes in one's perception of time upon leveling up. Of course, nobody would usually notice this without close scrutiny of the individual who was currently leveling up.

Immediately after, the dodging and blocking became considerably easier, and William was able to sneak in a retaliating hit every few seconds. Soon, the 3 Zombies attacking him realized the change and broke out in cold sweat.

"This is unfair!", was what went through the heads of the three misfit Zombies that were fighting William.

William began to whittle down the 3 nervous Zombies of their remaining hits, and what's more, they realized his blows stung much more than they did just 2 minutes earlier. They used to cause a decent, normal pang of pain and then a dull sensation. But now, the initial pang of pain was much more exaggerated than before, with a lasting sting. Magnar spared a glance towards William and his sudden change, and scowled.

"He just leveled up? Before me? But I'm older!" Magnar's thoughts raced as he began to dig deep and really draw upon his body, swinging harder and faster regardless of his muscles' desperate screams for rest.

Magnar mentally probed his Experience, and it was being filled past the 70% mark and it was rising even faster now! This gave him a heady euphoria, which motivated him to remain steadfast in his efforts. Magnar then began to adjust his swings so that they clipped a person or two every two swings. This however, made him have openings, which one of the 5 Zombies tried to take advantage of. But the group realized one thing way too late. They were in no way faster than Magnar's stick.

After clipping two Zombies with an especially wide swing, one on the opposite side grasped the opportunity and rushed forward to score a guaranteed hit on Magnar's back. But as soon as Magnar heard and felt the footfalls behind him, he cancelled the swing he was in the middle of, and used his leftover momentum coupled with a change in foot placement, to rotate his body and suddenly speed up the stick with a swing at abdomen height towards this unfortunate Zombie.

This swing was powered entirely by well-utilized momentum and Magnar's core rotation strength.

The stick continued accelerating and struck the right side of the charging Zombie, shattering one of his ribs! This Zombie flew to the side and slid a short distance, before landing on their back, holding their side and screaming.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"

This scream was bloodcurdling to the other kids, making them stop all attacks as they froze in horror. Even William cringed visibly as he heard the crack that came with the impact of the stick, feeling sorry for the kid who was unfortunate and silly enough to rush forwards recklessly like that.

Two of the kids helped the injured one up and went to take him to the village's only healer, therefore effectively quitting the game. The other kids began to nervously withdraw one by one, giving William claps on the shoulder or back as they passed him but otherwise avoiding Magnar. They only threw fearful glances at him, and making eye contact with their gazes was crushing him on the inside. Magnar mumbled an apology awkwardly, but it went unheard. As he stood there looking slightly dejected in the crimson light of the sunset, William went over to him and gave him a comforting yet firm pat on the back.

"That was a great swing! I don't know if I could have taken that and come out unscathed.", William praised.

Magnar was half a head taller than William, standing at 1.15m of height at age 7 in comparison to William's 1.01m height, barely a meter. Magnar was the tallest of their little band of kids, but when he was sad he was honestly quite cute. Seeing his remorseful expression made William grin cheekily.

"Thanks, but brace yourself.", warned Magnar as he spun on his heel.

"Wha-?"

William tried to ask before a stick came swinging down diagonally towards his right shoulder at an unprecedented speed! If this was the Level 5 William, he would've been unable to defend against this hit. But now he was considerably stronger and faster. He wasn't fast enough to dodge it, but had the speed to shift his body to get his shield there in time, and possessed enough strength to take the hit!

Twang!!

The stick bounced off the shield quite powerfully, throwing Magnar's arms backwards and making him stumble with a bewildered expression on his face, whilst William's shield stayed unmoving and his stance unchanged. His shield hand had a dull pain, but that was nothing compared to the ringing and aching Magnar felt in the bones of his arms. This was the difference that Levels made! Magnar who was currently level 5, was a year older than his best friend William, but a level lower. This was always a pet peeve of his.

However, unbeknownst to him, most kids only officially became Level 1 and became capable of gaining Experience from 5 years of age onward, starting at Level 1, 0 Experience. The fact that he started gaining Experience from 2 years of age meant that he was extremely talented and had very high potential. His childish, imm.a.t.u.r.e nature at the age of 7 just couldn't accept that William was even more blindingly talented, already becoming Level 1 on his first birthday!

After having his blow completely repelled, Magnar's hands were numb and he almost couldn't feel the stick in his hands. That was his full power. The swing that broke that one kid's rib was around 80% of his power, and this was even stronger, with the possibility at least cracking multiple surrounding ribs in addition to the broken one. William was puzzled but Magnar's next sentence answered any and all questions he had.

"I'm close, help me get stronger!" cried Magnar with an audible hint of desperation and extreme frustration in his voice.

William and Magnar had been introduced to each-other when they were a couple months old, due to their mothers being very close friends. Magnar had never been good with wording what he wanted to say, he had mainly been a man of action, and even then he was still kind of awkward. Most other kids didn't talk to him cause it was usually quite hard to understand him, and talked to William instead, as he was more charismatic and eloquent. William also happened to be very intelligent for his age, and was praised by the a.d.u.l.ts as being 'wise beyond his years'. And because William was the only one who knew Magnar so well, he was the only one who could accept his feelings, and strove to learn about his emotions and memorize his various expressions.

William was the only one who understood this brother of his. They were unrelated by blood, but most definitely by heart.

They battled hard, as the sun sunk down across the horizon, with 'bangs', 'crashes' and grunts sounding out as William blocked Magnar's frenzied swings, and Magnar either blocked or took a hit from William, leaving many bruises that acc.u.mulated on his body over time. William knew that difficult situations led to faster growth, and so he began to speed up his dodges and put more power behind his swings. He wanted to put as much pressure on Magnar as he could. Magnar's grunts grew in number and volume, and bruises covered ever more of his skin. However, William was slowly starting to find less openings in Magnar's defense as his wide, clumsy swings became more concise, avoiding wasted movement. William's own strikes were also starting to be unable to hit his target as hard, due to the way Magnar received the strikes. What he was subconsciously doing with his body was similar to when a boxer would turn his head away as he got punched, thus dampening the force received and effectively avoiding a large portion of it. But Magnar was doing it without even realizing it, with his whole body, all while refining his technique.

"As expected, he's not the brightest with his head but his combat sense is blinding!", thought William in awe as he continued to grind away at Magnar, almost as if he were a whetstone and Magnar was a sword.

William was sharpening his best friend and helping him to bring out his potential!

As the sky turned from red to blue, signalling the beginning of night, there was a point where Magnar's face suddenly broke out into a smile, and William saw his bruises regenerating before his eyes. He smiled and was about to congratulate Magnar, but his instincts suddenly screamed for him to raise his shield. And fast.

A loud whoosh battered William's ears as a loud 'Thwack!' came from his already battered shield, breaking it entirely, with a force that traveled up to his elbow, numbing his forearm slightly and making him slide back through the soil. William shook his left arm and threw the broken shield and its debris aside, seeing a very happy Magnar holding his stick with one hand, as he rested it on and across his shoulders. His smile and increased strength said everything William needed to know.

William broke out into a smile as well, as he straightened up his messy, dirty linen shirt and pants and walked towards the village next to the field they were playing on.

"Let's go home?"

"Yeah, thanks Willy."

"No problem, you're Level 6 now right?"

"Mhm, same as you."

"Wait till our mothers hear about this eh? I bet they'll freak out and grow a couple white hairs!"

"HAHAHA, maybe Willy, maybe."

...

"...hey Willy?"

"Yeah Mag?"

"Thanks for not leaving me too."

"Never! We're brothers after all!"

"Yeah!"

And so went the conversation between two contented young boys as they walked home well past sunset. They were dirty, tired, bruised, and awaiting a scolding from their mothers...