The Path of Ascension

Chapter 219

Their trip to the nearby Tier 18 planet took all of five minutes in Kurt’s ship, simply lifting off from their idyllic Tier 15 world. After a brief trip through chaotic space, they set down in a new spaceport on a new world.

From the nearly empty planet they were just on, the change was dramatic.

Even just leaving the spaceport, the difference was obvious. Where the Tier 15 planet had a few dozen people walking around the streets and a few more flying through the air, the Tier 18 planet had thousands of people in the air and hundreds on the ground. It was absolutely bustling, with a mosh of people constantly traveling to wherever they needed to go.

Luna, riding on Kurt's shoulder, pointed with a paw and said, “Let's check into our lodgings for the evening, and once we do, you three are free to do as you wish. The train to our rift leaves tomorrow morning. As long as you’re there on time, I don't care what you do.”

Matt grinned and felt Aster's own excitement through their bond. They had requested a little time to explore the city before moving on to the guild they would be staying at for the next few years.

As Aster stood on Matt’s shoulder and head to get a better view of the massive building, made of what looked like solidified light mana, Matt felt a presence barge into his spiritual perception.

If he’d been acting as though he were in a rift, with his perception spread over miles, that would hardly be notable. But for politeness, he was keeping his awareness to just within a few feet of himself, Liz, and Aster, and even that registered a fair amount of the crowd casually passing through the area. This presence was different, though, and wasn’t simply passing through. Instead, they were on a clear trajectory towards Liz.

Or, more specifically, her spatial backpack.

Matt’s hand shot out, intercepting the hand as it attempted to grab the backpack, and he pulled on [Mage’s Retreat] to yank the intruder away.

Though clearly Tier 15, his target was no combatant, as even the simple tug was enough to make them lose their balance. As Matt continued to pull down, Liz spun and brought her knee up and into the would-be thief’s face with a crunching sound, breaking cartilage and possibly even bone with the strike.

Aster teleported onto the back of the thief, weighing down the thief’s body and clothes with a restraining layer of ice.

The attempted thief was a young-looking woman with blue hair and bright pink skin, an only marginally rare combination in their current city. Matt couldn’t say he thought the pairing looked particularly good, but he’d seen worse local customs.

Off to the side, he noticed Kurt giving him a thumbs-up, carefully balancing a ‘napping’ Luna in his other arm. No doubt, they’d address a dozen different ways they could have done better on their next train ride.

Kurt’s pen floated up and started writing even as he took a step back. “Guards are coming, how do you want to handle this?”

Before he could think about the implications of that statement, and why they would need to explain anything, two guards floated down, a man and a woman.

“The City AI noticed there was a spell usage here. Explain.” The man barked without looking directly at any of them, instead staring at the fading patch of ice on the ground with the woman still locked down.

It was only Luna’s extensive training that prevented him from rolling his eyes at the guard's words. Yes, the city’s AI would have noted the skill usage, but that same AI would have recorded the attempt at theft, and the guard would know that.

The guard was trying to shift the narrative, and Matt wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Officer, excellent timing. I’d like to report a higher Tier attacking down and attempted theft from a lower Tier.”

Having said the magic words of ‘attacking down,’ he grinned internally as the woman visibly flinched, and the man stiffened.

The male guard only barely uttered out a questioning, “Oh?” before Matt continued.

“Yes. That is so. We would be happy to go down to the station with you if you wish to take our statements and won't believe our AI recordings.”

The woman finally spoke up. “We, of course, believe you, but without anything actually being taken, we can't guarantee charges will be filed.”

The male guard quickly added, “Why don't we just let this go. Easier for everyone involved.”

Liz smiled up at the still-hovering duo with an expression that said butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth as she dropped the final bomb on them.

“We reacted instinctively to a direct assault, and the thief was apparently not prepared for a full-force response from Pathers. Now, I find it quite interesting that apparently, the local prosecutor couldn’t charge someone for attempted theft, considering Imperial Law states that it very specifically is.”

As Liz referred to them as Pathers, both of the guards stiffened like someone hit them with a lightning spell, and quickly turned far more professional in their conduct.

The internal smirk Matt had vanished almost instantly as he realized their little issue with the thief would have been swept under the rug if they didn’t have such a backing, and that irritated him even more than the attempted theft did.

After five minutes of questioning and reviewing their AI recordings, the duo quickly took off to the sky and vanished amongst the flying crowds, with the thief hanging limply between the two of them.

Kurt winked at them as his pen wrote out a quick, “Well done.”

Matt started looking up more information about the local planet as they wove their way through the crowds to their destination a few dozen blocks away.

He hadn’t looked into the planet beyond the guild they were going to visit, which proved to be a mistake. Once he did, he was able to quickly find the information he was looking for.

The blue-haired and pink-skinned individuals were a product of the local nobility, the Adair family. When they won their bid to take over this planet, when it was first brought into the Empire, they had brought their very extensive family with them, including all the side branches and retainers. All of whom had taken on the pink skin and blue hair either through changing their bodies post Tier 15 to show their allegiance, or being with the features thanks to their status as direct descendants of those from the first category.

The hair and skin color weren’t any kind of get out of jail free card, but when combined with a general lackadaisical attitude to petty crime on foreigners, it told Matt all he needed to know.

Nothing was written down about the enforcement of laws against foreigners of course, and even the information packet he quickly read only hinted at the existence of the situation with vague phrases like ‘guards may be limited in their resources’. Even then, when anything important happened to or from one of them, they were always punished, but all the reports he read indicated that if something could be swept under the rug and forgotten about, it would be.

Turning to Luna, he asked, “Am I being naive, or is this bullshit?”

Kurt was the one to respond, his pad floating in front of Matt as they walked. “It is bullshit, but if you think people won't take care of their own this far from central imperial authority, you are naive. They know the limits and won’t push them. Anything public or noisy won't get covered up, but small stuff like petty pickpockets hitting the Tier 14s coming out of the teleport station will get forgotten as much as is feasibly possible. From what I understand, the Emperor has been pushing for independent auditors in the hereditary noble faction’s lands to cut this exact thing. But there’s a lot of push back from nearly all sides; none of them want any more imperial control, even if it's for minor things.”

Matt shook his head but didn’t say anything.

Knowing that it was mostly petty crime that was ignored didn’t really make him feel better, but he understood the Emperor and the Royals couldn't be everywhere at once.

Local leadership needed to be able to function on its own, and in the grand scheme of things, petty crimes being forgotten about wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. And it wasn’t like petty thievery was on anyone's list of crimes to crack down on. Even he could understand that there were bigger fish to fry at any given time.

He tended to believe that corruption was a sign of deeper underlying issues which eventually led to things like uncontrolled rift breaks, but from everything he read, this planet was well managed and had fantastic reviews by the Tier 14 groups who wanted to get a Tier 15 delve slot on the planet.

It didn’t mean he had to like it, though.

When they arrived at their hotel, Matt, Liz, and Aster all freshened up before getting ready to go enjoy themselves.

Despite their earlier run in with a bad actor, they intended to have fun in this city.

It was the highest Tier world in this region of the Empire and catered to immortals, which meant it was Matt and Aster's first time being on such a world when they could explore and have fun. It was also Liz’s first time being a high enough Tier to actually participate in a lot of the activities.

The city was a hub with one of the planet's teleporters located in it, along with a spaceport on the outskirts, and was one of the largest on the already populated planet. But it was famous for one attraction above all.

The Immortal Arcade.

An entire amusement park built for immortals and others down to Tier 12.

And best of all, it was built on a pseudo flying island.

In actuality, the entire park was held up by the four largest skyscrapers, but it gave the illusion that the entire venue was floating. Having seen the price tag for a flying house, Matt knew all too well that a flying amusement park was a pipe dream. No one would pay for a floating island that large, and if they did buy it, they could never afford to keep it afloat while catering to Tier 15s.

Only the wealthiest of Dukes could have one for good reason.

As they were brought up on the exterior elevator, they got a good look at the city and surrounding lands, which Matt was slightly surprised to see weren’t entirely built up. There were large swaths of forest and rolling hills that were riddled with a type of grain, according to [Telescope], which made him reconsider the population numbers he had seen.

The planet boasted a whopping 1.2 billion people, with a majority of them being mortal, but a sizable population was made up of the transient Tier 14 through Tier 17s who came for the easy access to delve slots of those Tiers.

But even a billion people wasn't enough to fill a planet like he had seen on East Flower, Tur'stal, where the entire planet was covered in one large, interconnecting city. East Flower housed trillions of people, which was many magnitudes greater than this planet’s measly populace.

The amusement park was everything he had hoped it would be from the reviews.

The rides were fast and non-human friendly, so even Aster could ride on them without issue, and nearly caused all of them to lose their lunches more than once.

Matt almost got Aster to vomit on the spinning cups ride as he spun them faster and faster. She had at first demanded he spin them faster, but once she started feeling queasy, she begged him to stop, leading to her threatening him in various ways. He only acquiesced when she promised to freeze all of his underwear before he put them on if he didn’t stop.

After they recovered, they wandered to the games of skill, where they tested their reflexes and aim with the various games to collect a number of small plushies, along with a beaver almost as large as Aster that she won for winning a ring toss game. She had it floating next to her the rest of the trip, wanting to show off.

The best was hands down the bumper balls.

There were a hundred of them in bubbles of protective glass that sped up when you ran inside them, all arranged in a single cage that made for a great time. Everyone was clashing into each other and falling down before being sent flying as they got hit by someone else.

At one time, Matt was even ganged up on by Aster and Liz, who coordinated together to send him flying off the wall and back at them half a dozen times.

All the previous negative interactions were washed away as they lounged on a boat floating in a pond while they were served dinner before the fireworks show.

Matt was almost asleep on his feet as they walked back to their hotel, and Aster had passed out, having to be carried back by Liz.

The next morning they were chipper as Luna and Kurt joined them for the hotel's breakfast.

“Did you three have fun last night?”

Matt nodded with the others around a mouthful of pancake.

The chef was excellent, and the bread was fluffy without being airy, making it the perfect vessel for the butter and syrup he lathered it with.

Luna, having already finished an entire five-course breakfast, waved a paw at them.

“Good. So tell me what we are doing here and why I chose this place over any other.”

Aster spoke with her AI even as she devoured what was left of her own waffle. “We’re going to be delving into guild territory. Audrey's Apples’ territory to be specific, which let me state for the record is a dumb guild name, as their guild leader isn't even Audrey anymore. But they just won a guild war for some contested territory, and both participants took some casualties and will be out of fighting shape for a while. They’re a smaller guild than the place they took over can accommodate, so they have some room to spare.”

Liz, with a freshly-cleaned face, finished for Aster. “That means they have rift slots available and they need low Tier rifts for their new recruits.”

Liz nodded to Matt, and he finished, “Both of which we can use. We can help provide some normal Tier 1 through Tier 14 rifts with the enchantment formations without blowing our cover.”

Returning Liz’s nod with a gesture with his fork, he added, “And this gives us the perfect cover to try and make Liz another glove. As long as the Tier 5 rift just happens to be a blood rift, we can easily get first dibs on any growth item that may come out of it.”

Aperology wasn’t a widely explored field, but for Tier 1 through 5, there were a few individuals, corporations, and guilds that specialized in it enough that they weren't too unusual for having the ability to make targeted rifts.

Not that Matt would be using the strategies he had created with Erwin. No, he had gotten a pack of information from Luna that he suspected she stole from a high Tier guild, based on some of the wording.

It was a detailed breakdown of how they created their low Tier training rifts to have the best chance at making a rift with a chance to drop a growth item, ten percent of the time.

The only exception to that rule was going to be the rift he made for Liz, since it would just so happen to be blood aspected.

It hadn’t been that hard to make her glove the first time, and they hoped with a guild full of new recruits funneling through the rift, they could recreate their early success.

Liz took back over as he shoved the last piece of pancake in his mouth. “And we can get access to their Tier 14 through Tier 16 rifts to train on while we’re there. We can also make new rifts, as long as they’re considered our private rifts, without anyone being the wiser.”

“And we don't have to go to some remote, uninhabited planet that leaves us all alone.” Aster quickly tacked on.

Luna nodded before standing up and jumping from chair to chair. “Yes, but one thing you all are overlooking is that that guild is both new and has the brother of a Pather at the helm. That means they’re less likely to pry into our information, which is always good. Remember to look past the first degree of data.”

Everyone nodded to that as they finished up their food and moved to the train station, preparing for a two day trip to the nearby continent where the guild was located. After that, they needed to fly fifty miles from the nearest city to the guild's land.

The guild was located at the foot of a mountainous region that was both windswept and arid, but wasn't quite a desert. It seemed to either be undergoing desertification, or being brought back from said state.

From what he could see, there were only a few buildings that seemed recently constructed, along with a few people working to dig out what he suspected would become a small lake.

As they approached, half a dozen people took to the air, so they politely slowed to a stop in order to introduce themselves.

A man with dark skin and silver hair, like Liz’s Jules identity, handled introductions. “I’m Arthur, Guild leader of Audrey's Apples. I assume you are Peter, Liv, and Paige?”

Those were the false identities they had donned for their time on this planet, with Liz being Liv and Aster being Paige.

Seeing their nods, Arthur introduced the four people behind him. “These are my right hands. Eric and Erin are the twins, and then we have Andre and Abdul. The first two are who you guys will be dealing with mostly, as they are the ones taking charge of the new recruits and their training. Andre and Abdul are helping me revitalize the land here, along with the guild's defenses.”

After they introduced themselves and shook hands, they split off with the twins.

Erin spoke for both of them as they flew a few miles away before landing. “So this is where we want to create the rifts for the trainees. From what we read, lower Tier rifts should be fine to be placed near each other on a higher Tier world like this, correct?”

Matt nodded as he threw his AI into analyzing the ground and surroundings. After getting some surface readings, he pulsed [Earth Manipulation] to get a feel for the underground and fed that information into his AI.

“It's fine. Honestly, on a Tier 18 world like this, it will be harder to keep the rifts from Tiering up rather than dissipating.”

Eric snorted at that, and Matt thought the man might disagree with him, but he waved Matt off. “Sorry, sorry. It's just weird to hear someone say a rift doesn't need constant babying and mana fed to it so it doesn't fall apart.” He nodded to his sister. “We were raised on a Tier 2 world, so we had to be incredibly careful growing up.”

Matt nodded to the man, but didn’t volunteer any information about himself. That would have built rapport with him, but these identities didn’t have any such background and wouldn't be able to relate.

“Well, don't worry. Even with minimal maintenance, the arrays I’m gonna set up should easily last twenty years. Once it's up and running, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.”

Saying that, he sent over the plans his AI had made. Most of it was based on the standard model. Luna’s Aperology book had contained plans for single cell rooms that were fifteen foot squares, set in rows however long the customer wanted. Here, they would then be set in rows ten long from Tier 1 to Tier 14, which was where the guild had asked for it to be stopped.

According to the growth models the guild was going for, they wanted five rows of rifts from Tier 1 through 5 and then one row of ten for rifts Tier 6 through Tier 14 so they could nurture a new crop of recruits.

It reminded Matt of one of his Folded Reflections lives, but these guys were far more wealthy than his guild had been, with a Tier 30 guild leader at the helm and a higher Tier world to call home.

As he walked them through the layout he wanted, Matt used his AI to simulate everything and laid out the false walls that the guild’s own AI showed them, displaying all the security measures he would be adding.

Their guild leader would be the one doing most of the structural work. As a Tier 30, he could create higher Tier materials that would be safer in case a rift break did happen. In that event, better materials would give the people inside more time to evacuate to safety.

Matt, on the other hand, had to design and lay out all of the safety measures that would both keep the rifts from absorbing too much mana and Tiering up, and also kill any monsters that might come on an unplanned Tier up.

The guild leader had everyone build to Matt’s specifications in just two days as he worked with the others to create a lake.

He found it gratifying that the guild leader wasn’t just creating the lake himself, even though his cultivation and mastery over [Earth Manipulation] would have easily allowed him to. Instead, he was working with the guild members, new and old, to manually dig out and create portions of the lake’s underwater features together.

They were building something together, and Matt could see the happiness on everyone's faces after they finished a place for smaller fish to hide when it was filled up with water.

Once he had the building built, Matt quickly started making the formations the rooms needed with the materials provided, which were all of the highest quality, allowing him to quickly work through the thousands of required plates.

Two weeks later, Matt had created over three hundred rifts in the building, set in neat little rows, which completed his side of the deal. He hadn’t used his own mana for the enchanting or creating of the rifts, but even that expensive bill hadn’t bothered the guild leader. Arthur seemed ecstatic to have a way to train his newest recruits, and invited them to join the lake filling ceremony they were holding that night.

They ended up going and having a good time as the guild all together put mana into a water condenser that would symbolize their creation and addition to the lake. Matt knew most of the water from the lake would be coming from a nearby Tier 16 rift with its own lake, just for the sake of efficiency.

The next morning, he was proven right as the lake now housed billions of gallons of water, though Matt knew they would be refilling it often as water seeped into the soil around it. It was an intentional design choice to revitalize the land, but it was one that would demand a certain amount of maintenance.

Once their portion of the deal was done, the guild set aside a bit of land at the farthest reaches of their territory, where they were able to set up shop and create a number of Tier 14 through 16 rifts.

Luna then put them through a rigorous training regimen. They started delving the random Tier 14 rifts Matt made with no restrictions so she could watch, but before long, Luna had them working separately. Liz and Aster ran Tier 15 rifts together or Tier 14 rifts apart, while Matt either worked on his mana control or worked on strengthening his Concept with the black hole core he had pulled out of Minkalla.

As it turned out, Luna had a device to amplify its aura until it felt like the original black hole, allowing Matt to throw his Concept at it and grind away at his Domain, strengthening his willpower and honing his skills.

But that wasn’t all. Once a week, the three of them would take to delving the Tier 16 rift.

With their cultivation and numerous prizes from Minkalla, they were able to clear the Tier 16 rifts together with enough ease that Luna started having Matt create more and more complicated rifts, hoping to make a counter to them, but their skill pools had widened so much recently that it was a difficult task.

Matt almost expected her to start limiting their skills in the Tier 16 rift, but she never did. At least, not in that rift. In the Tier 15 rifts, their restrictions went up and up until they were delving with one skill each.

Days started to blend together into weeks and months as they worked on improving themselves.

With nearly every waking moment spent doing something productive, they fell into the grind to make themselves better, and the results showed.

Liz, after some struggles, finally started seeing results with her blood magic being used in rituals. Going off the information from her blood queen life, she was able to create runes that, when powered by blood, granted stronger or additional effects.

It turned into a fun project between the two of them where they could mix their specialties into a greater whole. Matt was designing and creating a number of runes, and Liz was empowering them with blood from the numerous monsters they killed daily.

Aster, on the other hand, worked on strengthening her Concept and its various powers from Minkalla, along with working on spatial abilities. Something none of them had any luck with, even if she was the closest.

Liz still wasn’t at the flight stage yet, and Matt couldn't stop expanding space no matter how much he tried to reverse what he was feeling. Fortunately, their other Concept practice went far better than their attempts at spatial manipulation. Matt’s two enchanting abilities worked fantastically together, and they allowed him to pack enormous amounts of power into everything he made.

Their weapon skills didn’t sit idle either. Liz, in particular, had taken the opportunity sparked by her new spear to branch out with her fighting style. With some guidance from Kurt, she ultimately settled on making the shield she’d picked up in Minkalla more of a permanent part of her kit. The shorter nature of her new spear actually helped with that, and while she still frequently fell into old habits, she was only ‘dreadful’ at it according to Luna’s standards, which put her well above the average spear and shield fighter.

Matt also trained with Kurt as a blademage, but even he could admit his improvement there was minimal. He had already mastered the basics to a degree that most of his gains were from simple practice incorporating his new skills.

Aster even got training with Kurt, as she was adamant she wanted to learn to fight when she got a human body, and wanted to get a head start on that. Most of her training was watching Kurt explain things, but she seemed to enjoy it, even if she couldn't do most of it herself yet.

One of the most common refrains in their training, which Aster and Liz did while Matt was practicing enchanting, was summoning practice. Liz had taken [Lesser Blood Clone] into her core, and also had [Summon Blood Monster], which combined to give her a breadth of options in a fight, especially when acting as a mage. The summoned monsters from Aster’s tiara were innately more powerful than Liz’s summons, but much more difficult to directly control.

Naturally, Luna did not take something being difficult as an excuse. For hours at a time, Liz and Aster would have their summons fight each other, or run through obstacle courses, which also interlaced with Concept practice by empowering the summons in various ways.

Any time they had free time beyond that, which was rare, April took to training them under Luna’s supervision. The lessons ranged from simple things they already knew about pertaining to their Concepts, to Great Power politics, and even the military command structures for all eight Great Powers and how they varied, along with their strengths and weaknesses.

Before they knew it, three years had passed, and Liz and Aster were almost at the peak of Tier 12, and Matt was only slightly deeper into Tier 13, having diverted nearly all of his share of essence to his teammates.

The plan to get Liz a new growth item hadn’t panned out, as nothing the rift created was useful for her, either being too niche or not blood related at all.

Liz had also been able to work through most of her issues with being a blood mage with the help of a local therapist and a few exchanges with her parents who helped to reassure her that everything would be fine and she wouldn't go crazy just for using a new power. Liz didn't magically get over her reticence over night but it did put her on a stable footing going forward.

It seemed like any other normal day when their and everyone else's AI pinged them.

One of the members of the tribunal, Yellow, was ascending in five years on their homeworld, one of the lower Tier planets in Rusty’s capital system.

With half a decade of lead time, everyone who could go started planning their trip to the system, and the three of them weren’t any different. An Ascension was good for creating a Concept, yes, but it was also helpful for anyone trying to create an Intent or Aspect. Though it was relatively less helpful for those higher levels of domains.

Still, they wanted to be there. It would be a waste to pass it up.

Matt expected Luna to get them to hunker down and focus on their advancement, and she proved them right.

“It's time you three actually finished a Tier 18 rift.”