The Path of Ascension

Chapter 223

Matt was sitting at the table in Mara and Leon's suite while eating breakfast with Aster, when Luna appeared from nowhere to sit on their table, startling both of them.

“Get ready. Ciceron just arrived, and I want to get the three of you in sooner rather than later.”

Liz, in the middle of shuffling to the table in her pajamas, rushed over and shoveled the food Matt had made for her down in seconds, before spinning back to their room right after Matt and Aster.

While the two humans changed, Aster brushed her tail out with her Concept, stiff wind split into fibers and replicating a brush.

Less than a minute later, they were ready, and Luna opened a portal that led them to an ordinary sitting room. On the other side, a familiar gray-haired man lowered glowing hands in favor of a deep glare at Luna as he started shouting at their manager. “I literally just arrived in the system three minutes ago, and you’re already inside my house! Do you know how rude that is?”

Luna flicked her tail in dismissal. “You’ll be flooded with applications from other managers, and I dislike waiting in line.”

Ciceron paused and shook his head. “How did you even get in here? I know I’ve changed the codes at least three times since we were dating.”

While Matt was processing the fact their manager had dated anyone, let alone the keeper of the legacies, Luna snapped right back at the other man.

“Well then, change more than the last few numbers. If there is anything to use an AI for, it’s making passwords a three-year-old can't solve.”

Ciceron worked his jaw and growled right back, “It's two hundred digits! Damn it! Ugh. You know there’s a process for this, right?”

Luna flicked her tail as she started licking a paw. “Yes, which would mean you’d need to reject a lot of applications before you got to us. Just put them in now and make it easy for everyone.”

Aster finally lost her patience and asked, “Are you sure you aren't still dating? You two bicker like you are.”

Ciceron snapped. “No!”

Luna just shrugged. “We’re on a thousand year break.”

Hearing that, Matt had to ask, “A thousand-year break? Is that a break or breaking up?”

Luna shrugged. “I needed a good nap, and relationships need work, so it was easier to hit pause on it.”

Ciceron jerked back like he had been struck as he said, “You said it was about the casserole!”

Luna nodded right back. “Yes, after you burnt the casserole, I needed a break. I'd still be napping if these three hadn’t popped up on my radar.”

The look she shot them didn’t hide the fact she’d rather still be napping.

“As much as I’d like to reminisce about old times, the children don't need to know our past.”

The older man looked like he wanted to argue more, but Luna cut him off. “Matt, I imagine Ciceron would be interested in hearing about the white hole you found in Minkalla.”

Ciceron blinked twice, then flickered for a moment, returning to their speed seated at a long table that hadn’t been there before, and setting down a giant tome covered in magically-flowing text.

“Tell me everything, and I’ll let you skip the line.”

Matt didn’t miss the smug look on Luna’s face even as she walked deeper into the house, leaving the three of them to the inquisitive legacy curator.

“So, Matthew Alexander, you found a white hole during your delve into Minkalla, cycle 479 AE. Would you kindly recount the full story? You are being recorded.”

Matt glanced at Liz and Aster, and they shared a shrug as they took a seat and began their tale, beginning with the challenge that had first led them to finding the required materials.

While Ciceron allowed them to recount the entire story without interruptions, he immediately started pelting them with questions, perfectly ordered in chronological order corresponding to when Matt had mentioned it in his speech.

It was almost funny seeing how similar his questioning was compared to Luna’s, while also being wildly different. Luna cared about their actions and decisions, while Ciceron wanted them to identify the exact shade of bronze the treasure chest had been when they pulled it out, going as far as to create illusions for comparison. He was even worse than Erwin, something Matt wouldn’t quite have thought possible before now.

After they had been forced to sample types of sand to find the right consistency, Matt finally had enough, pulled out their house, and dug through the loot closet until he found what he was looking for. He pulled the mirror from the ‘keep’ pile, the key and compass from the ‘find a good buyer’ pile, and even grabbed the cornucopia that had been so involved in finding the other three that was sitting on their kitchen counter.

Ciceron spent close to ten minutes inspecting them, and when he finally went to start recording them, Liz suggested, “Ciceron, while you look at these, can we get our legacies?”

Ciceron looked at them with a bewildered face that strongly reminded Matt of all the times Erwin had completely forgotten something important. “Yes, you are right. I can ply Luna for any missing information when you guys are under. Good idea. I’ll need some time to see if these items are special in any way. The other Great Powers certainly know of this, and hundreds of keyholes implies hundreds of keys… I’ll need to check some old records to try and find some hints.”

Matt nodded. “Yeah, I figured the Empire would know about something like this. It’s so old, after all.”

Ciceron smirked at him. “The Empire may be old, but the Sophron dynasty is young, only three generations, and there was a lot of knowledge lost when Agatha took the throne. It’s hard to interrogate the dead or read destroyed records, after all.”

Brushing himself off, the older man looked between the three of them and pointed at Matt.

“You first, kid. You’re getting the choice of one legacy, so we can skip the memory manipulation.”

Matt raised a finger even as he followed. “Only one choice?”

“Order from up high. You can always refuse, but —”

Luna appeared from around a corner and cut the archivist off. “It is certainly the best overall legacy for you, and I had to get special permission to even request it. Nominally, it shouldn’t be in circulation until its creator has ascended, but an exception was made. If you have something specific in mind, we can go over some of the mage, sword, or enchanting legacies, but you would be better served by my choice overall.”

Matt shrugged. After nearly half a century under her tutelage, he trusted that Luna knew what he would benefit from most, and it wasn’t like he had a single skill that he especially wanted to be developed at the moment. That he could skip the memory modification was a bonus, as was finding out just whose Legacy he’d been approved to use.

“What skill should I put in my innate?” he asked. He usually kept [Cracked Phantom Armor] in his innermost skill slot, but he could switch it with any of his other core skills in short order with the help of Liz’s potion.

“Leave your armor there,” Luna flicked her tail, “Though in truth it doesn’t matter too much. Now, Aster…”

As the black cat started discussing options with his teammates, Ciceron waved for Matt to follow him to a side room. Going inside, he found an obelisk of black obsidian and a large beanbag chair waiting for him.

He settled into the pile of cushions and laid his hand upon the cool black stone, allowing his surroundings to shift into a blank white room with a familiar face awaiting him.

***

Aster felt as Matt’s mind slipped into something of a trance through their bond, leaving her thrumming with excitement.

She’d be getting a Legacy, and with the knowledge of how much Liz and Matt had gotten from theirs, she couldn’t wait. This second chance at Legacies was usually reserved for Pathers who were expected to make it past Tier 20, or people that were similarly promising for one reason or another. But even then, not everyone was accepted.

Even aside from her status as Matt’s bond and accompanying advancement speed, Luna said that her having made it through Minkalla at Tier 11 would have been enough to guarantee a Legacy. Still, Aster didn’t really care how she got the spot, and was just excited to see what all the hype was about. The whole oath-swearing was a pain, but once she was done with that, she and Liz were led to a closed-off room and directed to put on helmets. Aster’s pinched her ears horribly, but she could ignore it well enough to read through the massive book in front of her. At the other end of the table, Liz was discussing some of the options she had with Luna.

Ciceron, meanwhile, was helping her. “To make things easier, and on Luna’s recommendation, I assembled the legacies of debuff mages, ice mages, and winter mages. There’s several, but one in particular you may find interesting is Harkens Mallow’s.”

With a flick of his fingers, the book in front of her flipped open, and Aster read the description provided. Harkens Mallow, according to this, was an Aurora assassin from the Federation who utilized the colors and illusions of aurora to confuse, isolate, and disorientate her targets to set them up for the kill. An unusual combination for certain, but it was usually speculated that she had a Talent for the element.

Her Legacy was geared towards making illusions that didn’t seem real so much as simply intense, making them difficult to ignore even with the knowledge that they weren’t real. There were also some small-blades skills listed, but Aster ignored them.

[Afterimage] was one of the examples given, and with the assassin’s help, Aster could use her skill to make all of the created duplicates either vibrantly aurora-colored, or mere streaks of light. They would be completely different from Aster’s actual appearance, but they would gain the ability to overload and overwhelm even spiritual senses in the same way that exceptionally loud sounds made it harder to focus on a whisper.

Looking up at Ciceron, she asked, “Nothing else Aurora based? Really?”

He shrugged. “Aurora is an uncommon element, especially in the Empire. The only reason we even have this one is thanks to some war reparations in the wake of Duke Water’s Path completion and subsequent war. Whether or not it’s a good legacy for you I cannot say, simply that it bears some merit.”

Eventually, she narrowed her options down to about a dozen Legacies, and Ciceron pulled the corresponding pages out cleanly from his book so she could decide as he gave the book to Liz and started discussing what her options were. With Luna’s help, Aster eventually narrowed twelve options down to three, each with a distinct role.

Harkens Mallow, the aurora assassin, Aaron Dell, the offensive ice mage, and Aspen Erhulz, the winter wolf.

If she went with Harkens, Aster planned to try to make [Absolute White] into an aurora-aspected skill, ideally turning the concealment and slowing mist into a riot of color capable of stunning, freezing, and disorienting only her enemies while concealing her allies.

It was tempting, but nothing else he had on offer was useful for her.

She was a mage, and if she ever got in a fight with someone in her league who specialized in melee combat, she had exactly one good option.

Run to Matt or Liz before they hit her.

She didn’t have anywhere close to enough strength to wrestle a melee fighter and never would, which made the practical training of that legacy useless.

Aaron Dell was an ice mage who had eschewed the more common restraining and battlefield control aspects of the element for raw burst damage, unleashing icy destruction in as few skills as possible.

While Aster was primarily a support, she was also the bond to a future Ascender, and that meant she’d be expected to carry her own weight somewhat. [Cracked Shatter] and [Glacial Spear] certainly worked to give her a lot of icepower when the situation suited it. ‘Death is the strongest debuff’ was a saying among debuff mages for a reason. Matt’s power came primarily from his incredible endurance, but that resulted in him having very few powerful opening moves beyond his talismans. Liz was unstoppable once she got going, but against single, powerful foes she could sometimes struggle to build up momentum.

If Aster focused a few of her skills into being a powerful opening move, she could cover for a few relative weaknesses, and what else was a support mage for?

[Cracked Shatter] would be a good candidate, she felt. While her skill, or even the non-cracked version, weren’t listed on the page, she felt she had a fairly decent grasp on what Aaron would be able to help her grow it into. Currently, it almost turned her [Ice Spear] into an ice-aspected [Fireball], but she expected that she could make the detonation directional, turning an omnidirectional explosion into a torrent of jagged fragments of extremely hard and sharp ice, accompanied by a blast of freezing magic. If she was really lucky it might even become cascading, where anything frozen by the secondary blast of magic would explode as well, unleashing a continuous hail of razor-sharp ice, lacerating everything in their path.

It wasn’t quite a straight-up opening move, but it was close. At minimum, Aaron could make her [Cracked Shatter] more potent with less setup, and that was promising.

Ciceron even said that legacy wouldn’t reduce her spells' abilities to slow, as the mage had never forsaken that portion of the mana type, even in her later years.

Her last option was Aspen Erhulz, a fairly traditional winter wolf from the Clans. His approach was the closest to Aster’s current setup, meaning she had the most options for developing either a single skill or generally improving her entire arsenal.

[Dispelling Wind] could be developed out such that it would slowly strip away mana from attacks it was countering, and even feed into itself, creating a very nice, if minor, feedback loop. [Absolute White] could be enhanced such that practically anything without a spirit of its own in its area of effect would be frozen in space. [Air Body] could be developed into a winter-aspected skill and allow Aster to slow and freeze opponents simply by passing through them. [Glacial Strike] could gain a transmutation effect, making enemies transform into ice rather than simply becoming coated in a thick layer of it.

Or, she could spread out her efforts between all of them and more besides, getting less of an individually powerful skill but instead learning general techniques for winter skill modification.

Letting out a low whine, Aster looked to Luna and asked, “What do you suggest?”

The cat simply shook her head and licked a paw. “This is a decision you must make for yourself, Aster. I will continue to help you as a discussion partner, but the final decision is yours. Though, you should plan for the future and not right now. Your skills until Tier 25 will be valuable, yes, but you are already planning for some very impressive bloodline development into the future, and you would be remiss to not keep that in mind as you consider what role you shall play in the wars to come.”

Aster nodded before mulling that over.

How did she see herself in the future? After an agonizingly long decision, she settled on Aspen. Covering for Matt and Liz while they were building up momentum in a fight might not be as dramatic as turning someone into an ice sculpture, but the core role of a support was to enable and cover for their team. Whatever else she might be, she was supportive of her family.

***

Liz twirled the pen Ciceron had been writing with as she thought about the fact Luna had dated someone. That fact shouldn’t have been surprising, but it made their manager seem all too normal for the woman she knew.

Aster was still hogging the Book of Legacies- apparently there was only one, and it was the same book in all cases, regardless of what kind of legacy was being chosen- and she and Luna had already exhausted their non-specific discussions about what she could want.

Even suppressing her cultivation as much as possible to make the time pass faster, it was still taking a long while for Aster to settle on a concrete option as she endlessly flipped between the handful of choices she’d narrowed down.

She had been shopping with Aster enough times to know the girl had the decision making abilities of a spoiled child who wanted to buy everything, and avoid making a hard choice.

Before she was really able to get into that train of thought, Ciceron removed a dozen pages from his book with great care, set them down in front of Aster, and walked over to her

“Now, unlike last time you were here, I can actually give you a wider range of access to our legacies. We actually have one blood mage legacy, but it's for a healer.”

Liz grumbled internally at being pigeonholed, but looked at the first page.

Kelly Lively wasn’t a name she recognized, but he’d apparently been a blood mage of some prominence for his ability to do extensive internal work even on people far past the conventional healing limit. It was a skill she’d tried experimenting with her [Lifeblood Manipulation], but it was almost embarrassing just how inadequate she was compared to a conventional healer.

Even if she wasn’t inclined to try and out-perform the professionals at their own specialty, there would undoubtedly be a fair amount of knowledge present on more freeform blood connection, practice that would be invaluable for her own forays into the wider realm of blood magic.

It instantly went to the top of her list. And the bottom. It was a list of one, after all.

There were, as expected, lots of possible water mage legacies which might be promising. One, amusingly, was even about making certain water spells work on blood, giving water mages the ability to manipulate their own blood inside of them.

She was almost tempted by a water mage that could turn [Water Manipulation] into something that could nearly as easily control ice, steam, and mist, if for no other reason just how much it would help her in mastering all the elements that her spear gave her access to.

In truth, though, the only one which really called to her was one who managed to make mana spent on [Water Whip] cumulative, gradually building up power as long as the skill was maintained. It fit her fighting style well enough, but she ultimately discarded the idea. She was reaching for more these days, and her [Blood Whip] simply wasn’t her path forward.

An idle thought about using the same legacy as before, and expanding her [Blood Tidal Wave] all the more was appealing in a certain way, but Oppa’s obelisk wasn’t even listed as an option for her.

So, no water mage legacies. There were some generically good manipulation-focused legacies that her spear would help her utilize to their fullest potential, but they still weren’t what she was looking for.

One legacy made her stop and stare. King Legion, a one-man-army from many generations ago, had a surviving obelisk with a massive focus on [Clone]-type spells. With his Legacy, Liz could directly make her [Lesser Blood Clone] mostly autonomous, only requiring a minor amount of attention to direct, and while it still wouldn’t have access to her Skills or Domain, would in many ways double her direct combat prowess.

Unfortunately, there were no legacies about binding Oaths, which was a pity. She and Luna had discussed how perfect the pocket-dreamscape was for trying out the last of her Folded Reflections powers, but it wasn’t to be.

Her Concept was a strong contender for what she wanted to work on. Minkalla and subsequent training had drastically expanded what her Domain could accomplish, and there were some very interesting possibilities. A bone mage who could help her master flight, a pyromancer who could teach her to store flame inside her body, and a metal mage who might be able to enable her to enhance her spear with her Concept.

It was the latter who she was currently studying. Kess Vitan was a metal mage with an internal Concept who had, through use of Blood Iron, extended control to his blood, and from his blood, to his sword. With his sword, he could then replicate a lot of the tricks of an external Concept, such as utilizing his sword as a flying sword, and performing Susanne’s ‘cutting through space’ trick.

Given Liz already had two of the steps done, and was able to drink the blood of enemies she killed to empower her weapon thanks to Minkalla, pushing that part of her kit further could be quite promising. Helping her Concept reach outside of her body would help immensely with a lot of her current projects, even her unstructured blood magic. Allowing her spear to be boosted by all of the things which enhanced her blood sounded quite appealing, though it wasn’t certain how much she would be able to do right out of the gate.

The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. Rather than a single ability or skill that she’d be growing, by pushing her Concept to be more external, she could use that as a stepping-stone to countless other abilities.

With a final nod, she made her choice and signaled Ciceron. “I’m ready.”

***

Matt looked at the nearly-familiar face of the Emperor and just stared.

The face was the same, but this Emmanuel seemed open and easy going, with a smile flirting with the edges of his mouth as if he was trying to repress the urge to crack a joke.

It was like seeing someone you didn’t know wearing the face of someone you did.

Emmanuel sauntered over and extended a hand. “Name's Emmanuel, call me Manny.”

The grin turned into a full on smile as he laughed. “Ok I need to know. What can you tell me about the Empire? This is my first time being a legacy, and I have no idea how long it's been. That you’re here means I’ve ascended, right? Was I a good Emperor? Are the people happy? Are we in any crises? Is my wife happy? Or no, she would have come with me, right?”

Emmanuel laughed and backed up, letting go of Matt’s hand. “Sorry. There are just too many things I want to know, and half of them I’d bet you have no idea on.”

Matt returned the easy smile and felt instantly at ease with this Emmanuel.

“The name's Matt, and I can actually answer most of those questions. We are about two thousand years into your reign, and I’d like to think things are going really well.”

Manny let out a sigh and sagged back into a lounge chair that appeared along with an entire living room.

“That's good to hear. But I need you to tell me everything, please. I’m dying to know what I've been up to. Frankly, I didn’t expect you to be coming in so soon. Usually, we wait to make a legacy until the person is about to ascend so as to make the legacy as complete as possible, but I was too excited, and didn’t want to wait.”

Matt had to resist the urge to smile imagining the man's face after he told him his Talent.

“Well, I was apparently recommended for this legacy by someone who I suspect to be yourself. And it's probably because of my Talent.”

Manny leaned forward, and the light hearted joy hardened on his face, which made him a dead ringer to the Emmanuel Matt knew in the real world.

“Oh? I’m interested. Don’t hold out on me.”

Matt let his smile grow. “It's nothing much, but as a Tier 13, I regenerate more mana than a typical Tier 50 mage.”

Manny didn’t move for a long moment before blinking and looking down, then slapping his hand on his thigh. “I can't do that in here. Shit! Ummm. Ok you have my attention, but I'm dying of curiosity. Tell me everything.”

As Matt finished explaining his Talent, Manny leaned back and sighed. “I’m so jealous of my other self. I’d love to get my hands on your Talent. There are so many things I could do with that much mana.”

Matt was about to say something when Manny leaned forward with a serious expression on his face. “The me on the outside is taking care of you, right? If he’s not, tell him I said he needs to remember what we wanted to do before we took the throne. We wanted to make the Empire a better place. We are better than our dad.”

Matt laughed. “He’s taking good care of me. Or, you are taking good care of me?” Shrugging, Matt brushed over the issue of talking to a legacy of someone. “Either way, I’m well taken care of. I will say, I’m glad that you are the Emperor rather than your father. While it might not be fair to compare the two when I was in the Folded Reflection, your dad was the Emperor and happily kept me locked in a box to make mana.”

Manny sighed. “Sorry. I’d like to say Minkalla lied, but dad was always a big picture guy. If one person had to suffer to make everyone else's lives better, he’d happily make that choice for them.”

Shaking himself like a dog, Manny continued. “But you went into Minkalla. Tell me all about that! Let's see if your run was as good as mine.”

With the easy smile, Matt understood how Emmanuel had become the heir to the Empire. Even without his Talent, the man was charismatic and knew how to get people to open up.

“Well, Liz and my bond Aster went in with another solo Pather named Susanne, and we came out as Tier 11s, so I’d think we did pretty good.”

Manny smiled then smirked. “I also went in as a solo Tier 11 and got the flexible innate skill slot. I love that thing. Fantastic ability, don't you think?” As Matt agreed, Manny grinned. “So who’s Liz? Is she your girlfriend?”

Matt laughed. “She’s also your niece. That's how I met you outside.”

Manny almost fell out of the chair as he clutched his heart. “I have a niece, and I never met her. I'm devastated. Who had the kid? I can’t think of anyone who was planning to use Liz as a name.”

“Elizabeth, but yeah. She’s Mara and Leon’s youngest daughter.” Matt paused and thought back to what Alice had said about Erin being born when the couple were already Royals.

“She’s their seventh child now also. Sam, Leah, Alice, Daniel, Erin, Travis, and finally, Liz.”

Manny recoiled like he had been struck on the nose. “Seven kids? What are they eating over there? Carissa and I tried for close to a decade after we reached Tier 40 before giving up on it happening without an elixir or something.”

Matt was about to say something when Manny shook his head. “Seven though. Man, that’s so many.” Side eying Matt, he said, “I’m surprised, but not too surprised. Mara was a Flame Sparrow, and that bloodline is known to be more fertile than most, same as most other prey bloodlines. Wouldn’t have thought that persisted once she was a phoenix. Still, three kids in less than seven thousand years is probably some kind of record post Tier 35.”

Manny continued mouthing the word seven even as Matt told him about their Minkalla run, to which the Emperor was a rapt listener, responding in all the best ways. He both compared it to his run and commiserated with their low points, and even cheered the high points, like killing the Fall General.

They chatted for what felt like an entire day, exchanging stories and jokes as Matt filled Manny in on what his self outside had been doing in the recent years. While Matt couldn't answer too many high level things, Manny seemed happy to get any information.

When Matt told him about Duke Waters and his legendary status, he nearly jumped out of his chair.

“From my grandmother's time, we believed that giving the commoners more breathing room and freedoms would lead to a population boom and subsequent increase in general power. It cost so much to do it, the other Great Powers never bothered. And after seeing the Empire's budget, I’m not surprised, honestly. To do even the conservative increase in social services my father pushed through, we needed to increase tax revenue by almost ten percent.”

Looking at Matt, he sighed once more. “I’m so glad we found you. I’m sure most of my free time will be using your Talent to try and fix our deficit.”

Matt nodded. “There are plans set in place, as I agree. My Talent can do a lot of good, and I don't intend to hide my mana forever.”

Manny growled. “The other Great Powers. Yeah, they would be an issue.”

Hopping to his feet, he said, “While I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and catch me up to speed, we need to keep you out of any boxes, and the best way to do that is to make you too hard to cage.”

As he stood, he continued, “I understand why I sent you to this legacy after hearing your story. My Talent is about taking and using complementary Talents to make myself a scary mother fucker.”

Letting that sink in, the Emperor asked, “What do you think my Domain is about?”

Matt shrugged. “Well, you told me when I first met you that it was about self-sacrifice, but if you had asked me before that, I would have guessed flexibility, or being in the right place at the right time, or something.”

Manny grinned. “No, it's the obvious choice and a viable one. Making yourself better at many things is super useful, I won't deny, but I had a different train of thought.”

He spread his arms and said, “I wanted to be Emperor to protect people. My Talent already lets me fill whatever role I need, so with my Concept, I made sure that I would never be without the power to help. And, with a strong enough defense, you don’t need to worry about yourself; you can just focus on your enemy or your allies. You can take the [Firebolt] so that others don’t have to. That is my legacy. So, let’s see what you have. Show me your best defenses, and we’ll see what we can do.”

Matt activated [Cracked Phantom Armor] and his repulsion armor before he readied himself in a boxing position.

Manny rushed him with an explosive leap, which Matt met with a [Cracked Mana Spear] to the face. He dodged to the side, directly into where Matt had sent a [Wind Cutter], which cut right through him.

Only for Matt’s sword to bounce off Manny’s real body, that had invisibly dodged in a different direction.

Manny laughed even as he faded into visibility with a layer of translucent scales over his body. “Good. Luna was said to make monsters, and I can see that was true. But let's test how good that armor is.”

A mace appeared in the Emperor's hand and he swung it down on Matt’s sword. Unlike what he expected, the mace shattered his sword, overpowered his repulsion armor, and crushed through both layers of [Cracked Phantom Armor], only to come to a dead stop a fraction of an inch above his skin. Matt got the message.

Rolling his shoulder, Matt nodded. “Was that a Talent?”

“Yep. Well, three technically. One which deals additional damage to items, one which improves armor-piercing, and a third to make anything I strike far more brittle. I have a counter for everything, and if you want to resist me, you’ll need to put some real effort into it.”

Ducking, Matt flared his Concept’s repulsion and armor power while casting [Bulwark], trying to integrate them into a cohesive whole.

Despite those efforts, the mace came down and passed right through all of his layers of armor and dissipated the legacy body.

Instead of throwing himself into the fight immediately, they took a step back and Manny started teaching him exactly how to use his Concept to block. The training encompassed how to integrate both his repulsion effects to skills, and just generally reinforce skills with his Concept.

As they settled in, Matt felt as the world around him started to fade away in that oh so familiar way that indicated he was falling into the training.

Being able to better infuse his repulsion Concept into his shield spells would be incredibly useful, like Manny had said. Without having to worry about your defenses, you could go on what would otherwise be a reckless charge to punish your enemies.

When they finally started fighting after five years of more academic training, Matt learned that fighting Manny was like fighting an altered reflection of himself. As long as he kept his defenses reinforced, they were able to have incredible showdowns Matt had only really seen in movies and games. The two of them were both incredibly hard to hurt and had a plethora of skills, which meant no two exchanges were the same.

When he threw [Earth Spear]s at Manny, his spell wasn’t just dodged, but would turn on him mid air as his opponent changed his Talents to better manipulate earth, turning it into a battle of mana control and how forceful they could be with their respective manipulation skills. A battle Matt lost most of the time.

While Matt had unlimited mana to throw at their contests, so too did Manny in this false reality, and Matt stood no chance against someone with three Talents always perfectly suited to the situation. Manny had an innate skill for manipulating every element, a growth talent dedicated to enhancing that element, and Tier 25 talents to shut Matt out from controlling them, or preventing mana usage. The combination made manipulation skills functionally free, or more besides. As a result, Matt lost almost every one of their engagements.

But almost every engagement wasn’t every engagement.

Through a series of quickly swapped manipulation duels of various elements, Matt managed to catch Manny reacting with the wrong Talent set, and he was able to pummel the Emperor with the metal orbs, sending him stumbling back, which was his one victory before Manny increased his strength.

Finding his Concept not integrated sufficiently to block this level of attacks, Matt found himself respawning a number of times before he was finally able to go back on the offensive.

Time passed in a blur as the fights became increasingly complex, with both of them using multiple elemental manipulations at the same time. Matt hadn’t even heard of a Talent that gave increased control with multiple elements, but Manny just laughed and said he wasn’t boasting when he said he had a Talent for every situation.

At first, he had only managed to combine his repulsion armor with his skill armor, but soon after, he was able to reinforce [Bulwark] with the same effect, strengthening the already powerful spell. Flaring his repulsion through [Bulwark] rather than his own body took even more work, but it was well worth the effort. After they got to that point, Matt started making minor improvements to all of his defensive skills, trying to make them innately stronger to resist the varied methods the Emperor had at his disposal to break and or dispel his armor.

By the three quarters mark, Matt had mastered the mental flexibility to use two manipulation skills at once effectively, and had improved all of his defensive spells to various degrees, but none so much as [Cracked Phantom Armor] and [Bulwark], which could now resist even the Emperor’s best strikes without immediately falling apart.

Without even knowing it, Matt felt himself being pulled out of the legacy. Not wanting to break the Emperor's legacy, he didn’t resist.

Noticing his leaving, Manny waved. “Good luck, kid, and when you see the other me, tell him to remember what Carissa said when we told her we were chosen to be the heir. Thanks for letting me learn about the real world. I can rest easy knowing we have people like you to help hold up the sky.”

Matt nodded. “We all need to lift as much as we can. We are in it together, after all. Thank you for the training. I’ll make sure to put it to good use.”

***

“Hit me.”

Liz took in the appearance of the thin, gray haired man in front of her. She squinted a bit. It looked like his hair actually was metal, not just gray. A style that had fallen out of favor a while ago.

“Um, hello. My name’s Elizabeth, but you—”

“I didn’t ask your name, and you doubtlessly know mine. I told you to hit me. Which you have yet to do. Once you manage that, then we might start with the niceties.” He seemed calm despite the venom in his voice.

Liz sighed. Why did she have the worst luck with trainers?