The Path of Ascension

Chapter 227

Reality rippled around Matt as the Ascension flooded the planet with energy and he delved into the depths of his spirit. He dove past his cores and Talents, yet intertwined with them, following the meditation and practice Luna had guided them in. His awareness expanded into a white hole, unleashing an Endless amount of mana into his surroundings.

Knowing he was limited on time, Matt started to get to work.

Concept, Intent, Aspect.

The three portions of a Domain, and he was inside his Concept, wanting to build his Intent. There were a number of ways to actually do so, and Matt considered his plans as he began.

Technically, he could start with any portion of the Intent, his Phrase, Image, or Anchor, but he always considered himself a visual person. And frankly, he had no idea what his Phrase was. So, he decided to try and figure out his Image, or possibly Anchor, though the latter was a long shot. He had ideas, of course. His sword, his mana-concentrating mana stone, his heart of the black hole, his house… the list was endless.

But that would be easier to test after Tier 20, when trying the wrong item wouldn’t kill him. For now, he just wanted to get a vague idea of his image. Something that might work. And considering his end goal of solving his mana concentration issue, the obvious idea was a black hole.

He wouldn’t be able to really try to form it, and to be safe, he was going to step back as soon as he felt any level of willpower overuse, but he could still get some information by figuring out if his spirit resonated with or rejected the image.

With that in mind, Matt imagined a massive black hole, the other side of his white hole, eternally pulling in all of its surroundings, pulling in mana and crunching it down into a single point. Endlessly absorbing, endlessly condensing.

And…. nothing.

It wasn’t a rejection, which was good, but Luna had warned him that something like this might happen. He’d hoped that it might actually be easy for once, but logic told him that making an Intent that was the absolute antithesis of your Concept would outright fail. It simply would not be a possible next step to one’s Domain. But if he could frame it as a complimentary-yet-opposite next step, it was certainly possible.

It would just be hard.

And, from the looks of it, he’d need to establish more resonance with his spirit while utilizing his anchor and phrase if he wanted to try and make a black hole his image.

Still, he didn’t want to give up quite yet, so he instead tried imagining the moment after a supernova, the largest explosions in the universe… Well, the largest natural explosions in the universe, when unimaginable amounts of mass and energy were collapsing, pressing in on themselves to fall into a singularly infinitely dense point.

He imagined his spirit wavering slightly, but with a sigh, he released the attempt. Even with the energy of the Ascension suffusing his very being, the image simply refused to materialize.

Not wishing to waste the opportunity he’d been given, he started cycling through different possible images from his list, testing for any level of compatibility.

The unimaginable pressure of a planet's core, boundless physical strength, an unbreaking bulwark for his friends, an eternal sentinel, an unstoppable force, an eternal cry that he was more than simply his mana, a liquid drop of mana falling through the sky, mana sparking and becoming essence, a beam of light piercing the boundless sky, his mana flooding out and powering the world, an endless arsenal of talismans, eternal rivers of fire and lightning and ice and storms, the Empire growing and lasting forever, his house, countless stars in the sky, a white hole creating matter, a star burning forever with essence at its core, a never-dying flame, Minkalla and its ever-shifting tests, an everlasting winter, eternal night, everlasting day, a never-ceasing storm, an impossibly deep ocean, the infinity of space, the everlasting circle of life, him with a halo, forming his armor around himself, handing out mana stones to those around him, forming a rift within the palm of his hand…

On and on it went. Some fit well, others were immediately rejected, and slowly, Matt built up an idea of possible ways that he might be able to take his Intent.

It all depended on the rest of his Intent, of course. Low-compatibility images could click into place with the right phrase and anchor, and even the most promising images may not work with phrases and anchors of his choice. And even something that felt promising could fail when truly put to the test, but he wouldn’t be able to know that until he attempted to form his Intent with purpose. Considering he would be risking death to push that far at Tier 13, he had no inclination of doing so now.

Travis and Keith had what they suspected were good and likely-compatible Intent portions already, and were utilizing this Ascension to feel out their compatibility as a unit. Matt had a much easier job in that he was simply feeling out a single portion, but he wanted to try and make as much progress on that portion as was safe.

Matt picked one of his images that had resonated with him the most, albeit the most ambitious one, and sank into deep concentration. It was a nigh-impossible idea, but he would be an Ascender, doing the impossible was his entire purpose.

All Domains had some level of throughline. Most either narrowed to a single point or expanded their scope and intention in some way, while others meandered like a river or literally built upon one another. It was that last type that Matt was aiming for here and now.

After all, his Concept was a white hole, and he knew of exactly one white hole in the entire realm: at the heart of Minkalla, powering the entire world. And so, he would attempt to make Minkalla itself.

Of course, attempting to recreate the ever-changing planet in its entirety would, even if it did work, would simply result in a muddled and unfocused Intent that would theoretically be an excellent base to develop into any number of potent abilities, but would, in practice, simply be so generic as to be useless. Similar fates had befallen people who attempted to create ‘reality’ Domains or ‘magic’ Domains. Attempting to do everything was the same as attempting to do nothing, and even less effective.

But, the framework of Minkalla, what it represented, was perfect for Matt.

It was a place of improvement, an entity which could never be truly predicted. Seven floors and seven abilities was probably a bit too ambitious, but the core idea could work.

After all, his Talent allowed him to do practically anything, which meant he was spoiled for choice most of the time. But even then, he still had his preferred styles that he liked to use.

If he could establish some form of mode-shifting within his Intent, where with meditation he could change the abilities he had access to, he could come into each situation with a new set of powers. Modular Domains were a known phenomenon, if rare, and while usually associated with an armory or library of some kind, there was no reason he couldn’t be as Limitless as Minkalla if he set it as his goal.

Of course, Intents were as limitless as Concepts, in theory, and while the abilities they granted tended to be much more potent and comprehensive than their predecessors, it was as hard, if not harder, to expand their abilities into something unrelated to their initial gifts.

A flexible, modular Intent, meanwhile, would make him much more capable of doing anything. Perhaps not all at once, but he could live with that.

He needed mana Concentration? That could be one of his powers. Would he need to make his skills able to handle more mana? Another setting of his Intent. Making his armor as resilient as possible? Just develop a new ‘floor’ and activate it.

His main struggle would be the incredible difficulty with establishing a modular domain. Everyone wanted one, but few possessed the compatibility or right framework to do it. Matt was, in his own estimation, in a perfect situation to deal with both of the problems.

That didn’t mean he’d succeed, but he wanted to give it a shot with the Ascension to assist him.

There was no reason not to shoot for the stars, after all.

He might just hit them.

Using his Concept and its white hole as the metaphorical core, he started to recreate Minkalla in his own Image.

First was the white hole itself. That was simple enough, only requiring his Concept as a base. From there, a pillar of indestructible crystal stretched out from the center, which he thought of as a channel for the Intent's power.

Next, he started building the rest of the planet around the idea that there were multiple distinct floors that could be changed or put away at a whim. As he tried to solidify that idea, the entire structure of the Intent's Image fell apart, and he was forced to start over.

This time. he pondered what Minkalla actually did with the floors it wasn’t using.

He had seen the planet as it changed cycles. and knew that it absorbed the floors, but that didn’t explain what it did with that much mass.

It took him a few minutes, but he realized his understanding was probably wrong. Minkalla wasn’t pulling floors out of nowhere. It wasn’t even made of floors, not how he thought of them, at least.

Inside Minkalla, everything felt like a solid entity, but it wasn’t. That was an illusion built by the floor themes and interconnected ruins. A floor of Minkalla was a theme placed over the floor that changed the rules of that floor. He didn’t need the floors of his Intent to change out like pieces of a puzzle, but rather he needed them to be able to accept any theme he placed over them.

Starting over, he started to sketch the outline of a planet surrounding his Concept and filled it in with floors that could channel power through their layouts. The deeper the floor, the more dense the power, and therefore, more potent, letting him recreate a facsimile of Minkalla and its increasing rewards for deeper floors.

He struggled on actually making the idea of floors that channeled power, but eventually had the idea to make the floors shifting containers, not unlike the ruins in Minkalla. But instead of ruin filled monsters, he made each ruin a rune.

Between talismans and general enchanting, Matt had come to both appreciate runecraft and love its possibilities. Making each floor a dense network of runes both fit him and worked on a more practical level. Denser clusters of runes were generally more powerful than widespread runic structures, which gave him the framework to build the idea that the deeper the floor he put an Intent power on, the more powerful it would be.

Still, he wasn’t having any luck getting his spirit to accept or reject anything beyond the pillar of indestructible crystal encasing his Concept, but there was enough stirring to indicate that there was something there for him.

But given how little energy was remaining in his spirit, the Ascension was coming to an end. Some other time, he’d give his phrase and anchor some effort, but before he finished, there was just one idea he wanted to test.

He’d had the humorous idea that he could just take Minkalla itself as his Anchor, but that would be a bad idea, even if it were possible. Whatever he chose would have to have a weaker and smaller spirit than he did, which the massive planet certainly didn’t.

It didn’t matter, though, as even meditating on the idea of making Minkalla his anchor, even a Created simulacrum, was firmly rejected by his spirit. Even if it was possible, it seemed that it wouldn’t be a good fit for him.

As he woke up, he found himself still sitting on the couch with Liz and Aster next to him and curled on his lap respectively. Keith was next to him on the other side, with Erin and Daniel farther down on the couch.

Spreading his spiritual sense, he found the others who had clearly finished up sitting in the kitchen chatting. He couldn't hear anything, but figured they had sent up a soundproofing barrier to give the rest of them their privacy.

Checking the time, he found that close to a day had passed, but despite that, Matt felt good.

Joining the others, Matt was almost immediately given a plate of food from Leah, who asked, “How did it go?”

Matt nodded even as he shoveled a forkful of potatoes into his face. “Good. I managed to find a resonant image, and while I was only able to get the very start of it established, I have a fairly decent idea about potential ways my Image could go. No luck with a phrase or anchor though.”

Mara pouted as she stored a pile of food back into her spatial ring, while Leon just pushed a glass of lemonade to Matt. “Care to share?”

After he swallowed his next mouthful, he explained his thought process with his Intent's Image.

While impressed with his ambition, their primary reaction matched that of Luna’s, reiterating that he needed to be extremely careful until at least Tier 20. Matt assured them that yes, he wasn’t interested in killing himself, and turned the question around, asking if they’d had any luck with their own Domains. He was met with predominantly shaking heads.

Leah sensed she was close to finishing her Aspect, and just needed to find a suitable phrase. She had compatible pieces of everything else required, but hadn’t hit upon the right phrase to make everything resonate with the other components.

She didn’t seem worried, and neither did anyone else, which matched with Matt’s recollection that a lot of Tier 45 and 46 individuals were working on getting their Aspect, so they could safely ascend and keep advancing.

Aster woke up not much later, joining the group at the table, and was immediately served a dish courtesy of Leon.

“I’ve got good direction for my phrase, something like ‘The Bitter Cold’, and a few other backups in case it isn’t compatible with the other parts.”

They got about halfway through the recap of how everyone’s Ascension had gone when Keith woke up and joined them, prompting a restart of the conversation.

Travis congratulated him with a hug and kiss before shoving a plate of food in front of him, which caused Mara’s feather hair to stand on its end while her face went red, her own plate of food just inches away from being placed down.

“I’ve got a few solidly compatible phrases and images, but still nothing good for the anchor.”

Travis speared a piece of asparagus and groaned. “Tell me about it. I still have no idea about my Phrase. That last one was flatly wrong.” With a shrug, he added, “Well, nothing really worth worrying about until we’re Tier 20. And by then, I expect that we’ll be the lowest Tier in the family again. We’ve got time.”

Keith nodded along and joined the conversation going on that didn’t involve Domains. Or, the one that didn’t involve their Domains. They, or rather, Mara, Leon, Sam, Annie, and Leah, were talking about the drama about the Ascension and Jebediah being Yellow for so many years.

It was apparently a minor scandal for their age group, as everyone had honestly believed that he had been quietly killed off by Georgios, and his revival had made everyone start to look into past events with a little more scrutiny.

Georgios, for all that Matt didn’t like his possible attitude to someone with his kind of Talent, was a well regarded Emperor.

He had led the Empire in two wars, expanded the Empire's land by close to thirty percent, massively expanded social services for low Tiers, enacted the mortal protection laws, and had a hand in a number of other initiatives that had helped the Empire as a whole.

That said, he was also ruthless to anyone who was acting against what he considered the Empire’s best interest. So while things were better for the masses, there were a number of individuals who were crushed under the man's iron fist.

People like Jebediah Tallow.

Except, it turned out Jebediah wasn’t dead, and instead co-opted to make the Empire better, which made everyone look at incidents like his with new eyes.

Leon and Mara were quite sure that a few of the names bandied around were well and truly dead. Not because they knew as Royals, but because they had met Georgios and were sure that he was perfectly willing to vanish people who stood in his way without losing even a moment of sleep over it. During his rule, it was understood that either you got in line, or got crushed underfoot as he marched forward.

The entire idea was so odd to Matt. First of all, he directly benefited from Georgios’ expansions of both territory and social services, even if his family had been killed because of lazy nobles. The second was that being firm in one's convictions was great when those convictions were noble, but what if Georgios had been a bad ruler with selfish motives?

That same determination and ruthlessness would look very differently if used for other means.

He had read an opinion piece a few years ago that came to mind as he thought over the implications of a ruler with so much power.

The article pointed out that most of the Empire's recent growth and expansion was directly because of the rulers having so much power when compared to the other Great Powers. Despite also being led by Tier 50s, they were more constrained by the laws, and more importantly, historical checks to their powers firmly established in the wake of the shattering.

The Empire had always imposed less fetters on its rulers, which was why after taking the throne, Agatha had been able to so rapidly change the direction of the Empire.

A double edged sword if Matt had ever seen one.

One bad ruler, and everything could fall apart.

Picking a successor was not a task he envied.

He’d happily do his part powering the Empire until he Ascended, but Matt never intended to sit around this realm forever to be the battery for everyone else.

His musings were interrupted by Liz waking up and sauntering over.

Before she was able to sit down, Mara vibrated and lunged at her youngest daughter, shoving a plate of food into her hands. Preening, she walked back to her seat, leaving Liz thankful but confused.

When she had gotten the first mouthful of food down, Travis asked, “What did you get figured out, little sis?”

Liz blushed and looked away, but then a grin blossomed over her face. “Well, I’m quite confident I know what my final anchor will be.”

In lieu of explanation, she took a giant bite of lasagna and slowly chewed it.

Once she swallowed, the smile returned alongside a shrug. “My blood, obviously. I tried a few different phrases and images to pair with it, and while nothing felt quite right, I’ve got a few promising leads that all had some pretty good resonance with my blood as an anchor.”

Overall, none of them had made that much progress, but that much was expected. He, Liz, and Aster in particular were starting so far ahead of the curve, it was slightly incredible they even managed as much as they did, all told though all of their progress could be outright wrong in the end.

Once Liz finished eating, they went to join their friends who were in their own comparative rooms, but what they found was two somber groups of people.

Kyle spoke first, seeing them.

“You three missed the drama. The Unbroken have broken.”

Matt looked around and saw everyone was alive, but everyone but Kyle and Tara on that team still seemed shocked.

Tara explained, seeing their confusion. “Kyle and I decided to go to Minkalla with Annie, Emily, and Conor. We were given the option to jump teams…” She paused as she worked her jaw as if searching for words.

Annie shrugged and continued, “They only agreed because none of us are expected to complete the Path, and our managers agreed. With the joining of teams, we agreed to step off at Tier 22 at the latest.”

Conor smirked and finished for his girlfriend. “If we make it that far.”

His tone told Matt that it wasn’t their own words, but probably their manager’s— or rather, their manager’s words through their liaison’s mouth.

Aster brushed past his and Liz’s still forms and jumped onto one of the tables. “This seems like a good thing! You don’t need to stay on the same team to be friends and family. We all have our own journeys.”

Samantha, who was closest, ruffled Aster’s ears, to her contentment. “You are right, but we are still sad. We've been together for so long, it feels wrong to separate.”

Matt couldn’t say he was surprised at the splintering of The Unbroken, but he was surprised that Kyle and Tara had been given permission to join another team.

It was fairly rare that any team compositions were permitted to change after Tier 5, and it only got rarer the higher up the Path one got, even adjusting for the lower numbers at those tiers. The Path administration had to personally approve changes on a case-by-case basis, and while Matt didn’t know the specifics, he knew it was to try and prevent anyone from being carried by a stronger team.

The news, while good for everyone, had put a damper on the mood, which led the three teams of friends to a more somber evening than the celebration they had planned.

Still, they forced themselves to enjoy their time together as they were quickly running out of time as a group.

After all, the Ascension was over, and everyone had things to do.

Emily's now-larger team had to learn how to work together in preparation for Minkalla, while Melinda’s team was officially stepping off The Path of Ascension. Melinda had said her mentor, or Baxter, had already told her she was getting carried to Tier 20 in the fastest possible time frame, so she could start working on her Intent properly. All while getting a crash course on wartime healing.

Matt couldn’t help but feel that things were changing. Changing so quickly, he almost felt lost. He had never imagined his friends would be stepping off The Path voluntarily, let alone at Tier 12.

It just seemed so contrary to the ideas they had back at the PlayPen. But that was almost forty years ago, and things changed.

Lives moved forward and diverged.

Looking to Liz and Aster, he hoped that wouldn’t happen to them, but knew in his heart it would.

Eventually.

Eventually, they would complete The Path and enter the army, then fight to protect the Empire, and that could be a separation. If that wasn’t a separation, one of them could die fighting. If that didn’t happen, they would eventually leave the army and start progressing to Tier 45, where they would ascend to a higher realm.

Somewhere on that timeline, they would no longer be connected at the hip.

He just needed to make sure they continued to be a family when that inevitably happened.

Something far easier said than done.

***

Allie stretched as she pushed her chair to the limit of tipping.

Just as it was going to fall backwards, she shifted her leg and slammed her chair back down with a loud clang.

Twisting, she brought the chair up to one leg and spun like a top, using quick touches of her feet to make her spin faster and faster.

When a beep happened on the console in front of her, she came to an immediate halt to view the readout, hoping for something interesting but seeing it was just a sighting of Frederic Macheteuil, and very obviously a clone at that.

Hoping that where he was would be interesting, she sighed at the disappointment.

He had just entered a mana bank. The man had been selling shares of those companies for the last few years, which made this nothing new. She was sure he’d be selling whatever portion of control he or his noble house had of that company before leaving, never to return.

An utterly boring event he had repeated a few times. Even then, he hadn’t even sold out of any significant portion of his controlling interests of mana reserves.

Allie generally left such speculation to the professionals, but had to wonder if he was selling the shares for a reason, or if it was a diversion. She had offered the idea that he wanted out of the entire business, but Zack and the other analysts had disregarded that idea, as Frederic wasn’t selling enough to indicate such.

He had close to eight percent of his family's wealth in mana storage centers due to his father’s, and his own, efforts in buying small interests in almost every company with mana storage capabilities. To directly undo that work himself seemed contradictory to his own motives, and the leading theory was that he was getting out of specific mana storage centers, not all of them.

Allie wanted to dig into the situation and see if they found anything juicy, like an affair, child, or corruption. If they found that kind of dirt, things could get interesting.

Not that she'd actually get to do the blackmailing, but it would still be fun to be a part of it.

“Anything interesting?” Zack joined her, but from the way his eyes were flicking, she was confident that he was already reviewing their logs.

“Nothing. The entire city went quiet for most of a day, and then the higher Tiers woke up faster than everyone else. Everything is normal.”

Zack flicked a finger and set a recording of two higher Tiers breaking into a shop and pilfering a load of weapons and armor. “This isn't interesting to you?”

Allie shrugged. “Not really. It's clearly an inside job. Insurance fraud, I'd bet, but really could be anything. If not insurance fraud, it's the owner's kid doing the robbing. Look at how quickly they hit the place and leave, but also manage to avoid the bait gear. I reported it as possible blackmail material, but otherwise, it's meh.”

Zack eventually agreed, but then brought up a ship orbiting in space. Like so many others in the system, it was a repurposed food hauler meant to move mid to high Tier foodstuffs from the outskirts of the Empire inward, where the populations gathered.

“Did you see that this hauler continued moving operations while the ascension was underway?” His question was a good one, as the event had been an oddity, but one she had looked over.

“Nothing there. Captain of the boat just formed her Intent last week and decided to work while everyone else was conked out. She cleared it with local space and air control, with the promise she’d personally be piloting each carrier remotely. She got a fat bonus for the timely drop off by the company, and dropped off the smuggled goods easily.” Before he could ask what smuggled goods the captain had brought in, she flicked a finger bringing up the relevant file. “She was smuggling a number of those [Flexibility] skill shards from the Clans. Nothing really interesting.”

Zack settled back and sighed with her.

“Well, at least we get to watch the kids again. It was fun, last time, and we never know if there will be someone interesting coming up the Path.”

Allie groaned. “Ugh. Speak for yourself. I just want this whole tour to be done, or at the very least give us something interesting. Maybe something in the Federation, or the Sects? It’s just not the same without the thrill of death.”

Zack shrugged. “We will return to more thrilling assignments in time, you know why management is keeping us here.”

Allie summoned her dagger and flicked it into a set-up target. “Yeah, and I’m sick of being stuck on information gathering. Low-level information gathering, at that.”

With an effort of will, she ripped the dagger out of the target and called it back to her hand before throwing it once more.

“Yes, well, once the war starts we’ll be plenty busy.”

Allie tipped her chair and let herself fall all the way back to the floor, where she lay just looking at the ceiling.

She hated it when Zack was right.

“Yeah. Yeah, we will. And I certainly don’t want it to come faster, but—”

Zack interrupted her. “Did you see the report that Mara and Leon’s youngest is getting married?”

Allie perked up and jumped to her feet. She had not seen that, and it seemed like prime gossip.

“She’s already Tier 15?” Allie was pretty sure that wasn't the case, as she had seen the girl just ten or so years ago at the Tier 10 Pather Tournament they had spied on. There was no way the girl was Tier 15 already, and noble families, even the non-hereditary types, adhered to the Tier 15 marriage age. So either the girl was bucking tradition, or had a serious red flag.

Both seemed promising.

“No, she’s mid Tier 13, though the wedding isn’t going to be for a few decades. Apparently, her and her now-fiance went into Minkalla two cycles ago, probably either at peak eleven or mid twelve. Either way, they got their faces heartily kicked in and ducked out after the fourth floor.”

“Ah, that would do it. Bit of a brush with mortality, wanted to tie the knot quickly?”

“That, and her partner has a bond. Ice fox, smart for her Tier by all reports. They’ll be stepping off the Path at Tier 15 when she goes off to the Academy, and my guess is they’ll be getting married right before then.”

“Oooh, that was a brutal Minkalla cycle. The Sword Chick, PenBoy, and Spicy Whatever Her Name Is, no wonder they got out early.”

Her partner had been in charge of that information gathering, and she was now curious.

“Queen, Quill, and Torch, yes. First, anything actionable about Elizabeth?” Zack prodded her.

“Hmm. Oh, that’s odd.”

Zack raised an eyebrow, and she elaborated, “There’s a pretty straightforward paper trail following them for most of their careers on the Path, though a little messy, and they participated in a lot of low-Tier training events. But after they took part in a training war in one of the vassal kingdoms, the number of events with any records drops dramatically.”

“You think it might be fabricated?”

“If it is, it’s beautifully done. There are even just enough missing records as to be believable, and not in any kind of pattern either. They just have far, far fewer confirmed public events since then… just the tournament. Any records of them actually going into Minkalla?”

Zack shook his head. “No leaks of entry records in the past century. It’s only a bit of family gossip that indicates that they were in Minkalla, not that that’s much of a surprise.”

“Still. It’s interesting. They don’t have a manager, so a quiet trip to Minkalla is a bit unusual. Well, it might be worth passing word along to a team to sniff them out. Corruption on the Path could certainly be an interesting tidbit to pass along, especially after that inspiring speech by Tallow. Now can we talk about the Mightier?”

“The Mightier?”

“Well you know, the pen is mightier than the sword, and a torch that burns twice as bright burns for half as long and royals are strong? And they’re all really strong. It checks out!”

Zack massaged his temples, “You didn’t think that through at all, did you?”

She had, actually. And it had worked perfectly. “No comment. Have there been any other sightings of our little threesome?”

“Not since Queen’s last tournament, no. Presumably, they’ll be on the planet somewhere for the Ascension. Assuming it was Quill who had an inspiration after completing Minkalla-”

“It totally was. You saw the reports. Luna herself, blocking the inspiration? She retired centuries ago, who else would they have dragged her out for if not for scalding letters?”

“Assuming it was Quill who had an inspiration while leaving Minkalla, we would expect them to be about peak Tier 13, if trying to push their advantage, or mid Tier 13 if stalling.”

“And let me guess, nobody matches that description on the planet?”

Zack just raised an eyebrow. “Do you hear yourself? There are six billion, four hundred and seventeen million, nine hundred Tier 13's here currently. I—”

“Okay! I get it, there’s too many people they could be. Bleh. Not that it would actually help, all of these sightings are basically just gossip fodder, not—”

“Not what you expected you’d be doing when you agreed to this post?”

“Exactly!”

Torch, Quill, and Queen were high on their, and everyone else's, priority to dig up information. Two separate elite teams who entered Minkalla together at Tier 11 and emerged a substantial way into Tier 12, probably, but the Empire had done a remarkable job at keeping their whereabouts quiet in the aftermath. If there were any records of them leaving the Minkalla system, they weren’t anywhere that they had access to. Even in her most recent tournament, Queen had withheld enough of her capabilities while utterly dominating her competition that nobody could tell when she had Tiered up inside the Forge.

Strength of extra Concept powers was a great indicator, but only until they started to strengthen said Concepts themselves.

She personally suspected they had gotten to the seventh floor before having to Tier up. Everything their information channels said the final floors of that cycle were a dumpster fire of teams killing each other, after being bottled up on a fourth floor Courtly Warfare.

Before she could get lost in her daydream, Zack pulled her back to work.

“Help me go through the information about the Tier 10 Pathers. Our scanners got a lot of good passive body scans, which we can use to try and match with other information.”

Trying to avoid the unfun part of the job, she made an attempt at distraction. “Want me to go get us something to drink?”

Zack pointed his finger and summoned a pitcher of energy drink. Outsmarted but content, she poured herself a cup of the colorful liquid and sighed at the intense flavors.

Flipping through the information, she started creating profiles for each of the Pathers and then compared those profiles to what Zack made, then added their combined profiles to their spies’ profiles.

Sadly, no one in this batch of Pathers even seemed interesting, which put a damper on her excitement.

At least their last Pather mission had had three standouts.

Still, work was work, and Allie was good at her job.

She just couldn’t wait until it got fun again.