The Path of Ascension

Chapter 235

Liz turned her head to look at the curled-up cat in the seat behind her and took the silent invitation for what it was.

Reaching deep inside herself, she found her bloodline and pulled.

With what felt like a silent pop, Liz went through the unusual sensation of being inverted until she was suddenly two feet tall and very on fire. She had enough practice with the change at this point to reign in her flames with [Fire Manipulation] immediately, preventing any more scorch marks from joining the collection on her seat.

Liz spread her wings and flapped, hopping up to her seatback and using it as a perch to look down at her manager. Luna returned her stare with a blink, slitted eyes meeting the predatory gaze of a phoenix.

“A bloodline is just as much a part of you as your hand or foot, and needs to be exercised accordingly. Fire is a part of your blood, so push out and feel your connection to it, flex it like you would anything else.”

As Luna ran through her little mantra, Liz tried to settle herself mentally and physically.

She needed to relax; that much was apparent even to her, but knowing it and doing it were two different things. The entire issue had come up in a rift a few months back, when she surprised both herself and Luna. After she transformed into her phoenix form, she found her flame powers to be somewhat… lacking. She was wholly unable to reach the level of power she expected. She had still managed to kill the enormous Redwood Anaconda, but it had revealed a glaring weakness.

Her flames were weaker than her upper limit should be.

A weakness she needed to correct immediately.

That had prompted Luna to start training her on the issue during their transit between worlds.

She even did so in beast form after they found that Liz’s bloodline resonated with the older cat’s. Whether that was just due to their close proximity after training together for years, or just because she trusted Luna, neither of them were sure, but it helped Liz settle down and connect with her own bloodline.

Luna’s presence also helped prevent her from burning a hole in the ship that was keeping her safe from the corrosive energies of chaotic space, which would be a stupid way to die.

Liz slowly raised the power of her flames until she felt them reaching their limit.

As they continued to practice for a few more hours, Liz felt her control over her bloodline and its fire powers settle down an inch or so more. As they approached their destination, she hopped back into her seat and pecked at the controls to guide their reentry into realspace. She could have transformed back, or just used her AI to bypass the issue altogether, but she wanted to get some level of practice doing mundane tasks as a bird. If she ended up stuck as a phoenix for a while, like when she would need to molt after resurrecting, she didn’t want to learn everything from scratch at the last minute.

Liz did turn back into her human body to guide the ship down to land, dressing herself and donning both sets of masks as well as her Torch armor, only possible in the tight quarters of her ship thanks to the spatial rings on her fingers.

That was still irritating almost a year after getting her beast form.

The strongest storage rings, those made by Talented crafters, could hold other storage rings within them. Weaker storage rings, like those holding houses, could do so thanks to the enchantments on the houses themselves. However, they cut off the contents from being accessible without first dropping an entire building, and then rummaging through the closet. But most of the time, spatial rings took up space equivalent to their storage capacity when stored within a separate storage device, so a ring that held twenty cubic feet could never be stored within a ring that could only hold five cubic feet of space.

Normally, that wasn’t a problem, but spatial items that were capable of adapting between bloodline forms were annoyingly expensive, and were invariably smaller in size than their normal counterparts. So even if she did get one, she couldn’t actually keep her main ring inside of it. Most beasts didn’t even bother getting one, and instead attached their rings to a collar or other accessory.

That was something she couldn’t really do as a two-foot-tall bird. She was tall for small birds, but small for her bloodline, and beyond that, birds weren't well equipped to wear something like a collar or the like, at least not without it getting in the way of flying.

She had tried, and ended up using a small circlet around one of her legs. But while that worked itself, it was less than ideal, as it made for an easy to target item on her body since she needed to throw it up mid transformation and then catch the ring in her claw. It was a slow process at best, and one that just begged for someone to steal the ring and disarm her of any potions, talismans, armor, weapons, or even clothes.

That in and of itself would have been ok if she didn’t already have a specially made ring sitting in her wedding presents from her sister, Alice, that she couldn't use. That ring would perfectly transfer from her fingers in human form to a tiny, unobtrusive bracelet on her ankle when she was in bird form, and back again.

The issue was that even with its limited storage size, it was valued in the Tier 23 range, forcing her to wait until she was at least Tier 19 or so to be able to buy it back.

Until then, she just had to suffer.

At least she had a stopgap in the form of a pair of [Gossamer Outfit] skills from Erin and Leah. It was a common enough skill that could summon illusory ‘armor’ in the form of clothes, albeit exceptionally fragile ones. They had substance, but even the slightest damage would dispel the illusion. Given the modification manuals they had provided with the skill shard, she knew exactly what they each expected her to use them for. Leah’s was a fairly straightforward catalog of good outfits for a range of occasions, notes on how to hide other clothes with the illusion, and how to make the fabric a little more resilient. Erin’s… well, it offered excellent advice on how to make outfits in multiple parts, if nothing else.

For all that Erin liked to act outwardly reserved, at heart, she was just as bad or even worse than their parents.

Liz snorted at the thought. Who was she kidding, she was absolutely looking forward to trying out Erin’s modifications and outfits. Not that she planned on ignoring Leah’s handbook, and there was something to be said for combining both sets of modifications. She’d also see if anything interesting came of converting the spare shard to blood. It would likely just end up as another form of [Blood Armor], inferior to her [Blood Crystal Armor], but there was always a chance it would end up as something interesting.

She only had her landing port for a few minutes, so Torch hopped out of her ship and pulled it back into its ring, clearing the way for the next arrival or departure. Luna was sitting nearby, licking a paw, and Torch knew from experience that only she was currently capable of perceiving the manager. Her AI connected to the local PlanetNet and began pulling in a steady stream of information to help her get her bearings.

This was a relatively newly settled world, but that only meant it was a few thousand years old. Being a Tier 4 system further relegated it to the equivalent of backwater planet status. It was the sort of planet where only low Tiers settled, as it was needed to bridge the gap to higher Tier worlds. Or, that was the case until a passing Tier 45 entered the system and investigated the entire place with their spiritual perception.

Generally, uninhabitable planets were of little interest unless they were high Tier, where they would be terraformed and moved into more reasonable orbits, and planets past the local asteroid belts were usually gas giants or something so small as to also be useless. That same concept held true in this system, but the passing Tier 45 had noticed something.

One of the moons circling the small gas giant wasn’t a moon, but rather a spatially expanded vault hidden away and filled with a number of Tier 20 goods.

Being a Tier 45, he couldn't care less about such goods, and simply reported it on the PlanetNet, where it made a splash. Vaults like this popped up every now and then, when someone had created a secure storage area for all their worldly goods, then died without telling anyone its location. It had taken some time, but some investigative work had found the creator of the vault, who didn’t have any living next of kin, ultimately transferring it into the possession of the local Duke.

Looking to give one his nieces a chance to prove her mettle, the Duke had invoked an old Imperial law, opening the contents of the vault to anyone Tier 20 and below strong enough to claim them, while concurrently and temporarily suspending the normal prohibitions against murder and robbery, along with most other Imperial laws. Even punching down Tiers was allowed to a limited extent while inside the vault, but the higher Tier was expected to let anyone weaker than them live rather than kill wantonly.

The announcement had caused a stir in the local sector, with a slew of far flung noble families sending eligible representatives to either claim a portion of the valuables, or in the hopes of killing someone from a rival faction. All while disregarding the traveling Tier 15s who, while not numerous in a region without a Tier 15 system, flocked to the site of the news in recent months and wanted their own piece of the pie.

Liz wouldn’t have cared for the treasures at stake, but Torch was just a few planets away when the news had broken, and was looking to make a name for herself. Luna had approved, and now she was here.

A hidden, high Tier vault disguised as a moon in a low Tier area seemed like something out of a movie, and Torch wanted to get in on that action. Luna had made her draft the plan of action and do most of the recon herself, but when her efforts passed muster, they headed over.

With a flick of her wrist, she withdrew her flying spear. and after double-checking that her heading was right, set off into space. Unlike Quill, Torch’s ship didn’t have especially powerful realspace engines, so it was both faster and cheaper on her mana to utilize the smaller and more maneuverable personal flying device. She could even use her Concept to reinforce the spear, and it only needed a tiny drop of blood to refresh the attunement to herself from when she had used it last.

It still took two days for her to reach the gas giant and its attendant moon. Flying was genuinely fun, even as a human, and while the lack of atmosphere and gravity meant she could fly blindingly fast across the solar system, space was still massive. In the end, she was still a baby immortal, and simply was not capable of just crossing a star system in the blink of an eye.

Mindful of how she presented herself, as she neared the moon, she substituted her flying spear with her combat spear and summoned a mass of flames around her, making her appear as though she were a flaming comet flying towards the awaiting crowd. Her splashy appearance garnered a number of looks ranging from hostile to inquisitive, and a few even seemed to recognize her. The rest were just assessing her, from her heavy armor to the flames spilling out from every joint.

Without gravity, they were a little more spherical than usual, and while Torch could have fixed that, it was just a little more vain than she wanted to present.

Still, no one approached her or tried to talk to her, and Torch preferred it that way. None of these people were her friends, after all, and they were about to fight over treasures. Death was a very real possibility for some of these people.

Luna padded around the crowd, visible only to her, while undoubtedly drafting a critique about how they were floating, but she said nothing and Torch returned the favor. Instead, she kept working on some minor body and skill modifications during the week-long wait. Eventually, the Duke’s Tier 25 representative stood up from his meditation and flew closer to the moon.

With a wave of his hand, the rock and dirt disguising the entrance blasted off into space, revealing a massive vault door covered in runes. While Quill would no doubt be fascinated by the endless enchantments present in the metal, Torch only recognized a few pieces to an anti-notice enchantment that had been disrupted when the stone covering it had been removed. She also noticed that he threw out a truly massive plate that stuck to the ‘bottom’ of the planet like a magnet.

The Tier 25 sent a message once the door was located. “All of you agreed to the rules of this expedition, so don't complain if someone inside shakes you down. Once you exit the door, you are considered to be out of the exploration, and normal Empire laws apply. That includes tax laws on your earnings. Rest assured that the reach of the Emperor is long, and he will collect his due.” The man looked at Torch and added, “Well, other than you, Torch. You or your liaison will need to report what you pulled out, along with its value, so the parties involved can be compensated.”

Torch mentally narrowed her eyes at the man, but didn’t let her mask or body language show she was irritated. She damn well knew the Path tax code better than he did. She was even sure he knew that, but had chosen to speak out anyway, which could only mean one thing.

He wanted everyone to know that she was the real Torch, and not some impostor, before they went into the vault. The only question was if he was doing that out of a misguided attempt at trying to protect her, by publicizing her background, or trying to paint a target on her back with that same information.

Without turning, she focused on where Luna sat licking her paw, invisible to all others. Torch had to wonder if Luna had put the man up to that in an attempt to increase her competition, but frankly, she wasn’t sure. Her experience with the older cat said it was entirely possible, but that same experience also told her that Luna would have told her that was the plan, which made the entire situation all the more murky.

From the gazes locked onto her, Torch knew she was in for a fight. The Tier 20s wouldn’t be entering for a while, which was for the best, as while she was confident she could escape from Tier 19s, and at least drive off Tier 18s, fighting four up at her Tier was hard enough, even when she wasn’t Torch.

When the door swung open, Torch and the other Tier 15s darted inside first, with Torch just a body length behind the first delver.

Landing inside, she realized there was a noticeable artificial gravity, but suspected that was a function of the plate the Tier 25 had put on the planet more than anything else. Adjusting to that, she gracefully landed in the branching corridor that led in five different directions.

She chose the second from the left, and charged down it with her new shield held out to intercept anything that came from the front. The growth item was amazing, and had proven itself worth every priceless treasure they’d sold to afford it.

Torch wasn’t entirely certain how the Path administration had figured out what materials would be needed to upgrade her growth items through Tier 20, but they had come through, and provided them all to her as part of her Tier 15 rewards. Her spirit could only healthily handle the strain of her shield and staff at Tier 17, but the power boost they provided was undeniable.

The first room she came across was filled with potions and vials that Torch didn’t have time to identify, but that didn’t stop her from grabbing the lot with fire-wrapped [Air Manipulation], reaching out with so many tendrils and yanking them all directly into a spatial bag. Bags were less convenient, between the size, fragility, and lack of instant access to their contents, but they could hold far more stuff, and she needed all the room she could get. She just needed to make sure it didn’t break in a fight.

Fights that were sure to come.

A man in heavy armor had followed her down the same hall, and instead of splitting off to a separate part of the room and grabbing his own loot, the man decided to lunge at her back, sword leading the charge.

Torch spun, taking a defensive stance and intercepting the glowing sword with her shield.

Her attacker probably expected the skill that she suspected was a modified [Mana Charge] to explode and send her stumbling back, but the magic and momentum alike sank into her shield. The only evidence they had ever existed was the buffs that the absorbed skill provided her.

The man tried to pull back, but wouldn’t have been fast enough, even without his strike making Torch faster. As it was, he was utterly helpless as Torch speared his hip, piercing straight through the joint and drawing a drop of blood.

The small attack almost didn’t seem to register as he reset his footing and tried to cut a backhanded strike at her spear, but before his sword completed his strike, the spells she had cast had taken effect.

[Embolism] was one of her favorite spells from her Path rewards. After rapidly infusing air into blood, she could then detonate it at will. Through her boon and one of her Concept effects, she was able to slip the miniature bomb past her opponent’s spiritual defenses and into his bloodstream without him even noticing.

Ideally, she would wait for the pocket of air to make its way through to their heart, but while this guy seemed greedy, he didn’t seem that malicious, and she detonated the air almost immediately, blowing up his upper leg and hip area instead of his chest or head.

Even as the man fell screaming, she cast [Fever Dream], an illusion curse-type skill that made people disorientated and manic for up to an hour, if they couldn't break free themselves. She had been trying to modify or supplement the spell with her skill-less magic, to no avail, but even on its own, the Tier 20 skill packed a punch to those already dazed and confused like her attacker.

She hadn’t paused in looting the room either, but judged the few vials remaining as not worth the effort needed to grab them, and ran to the next section.

The nearest two doors were already open and had people inside, so she ignored them and ran to the fourth door in the hall, skittering to a stop upon seeing the massive overgrown herb garden that was sitting there, utterly untouched.

Weeds had taken over a lot of the area, but Torch ignored that and pulled out her garden orb growth item, pulling the entire field into it before rushing out the door and trying to find another area free of others. That was growing harder, as a Tier 20 blurred past her into the depths of the vault, where presumably the best items were kept, which handily informed her that everyone was now in the vault.

Not wanting to get caught up in too much fighting, Torch ran past another three rooms to find a room full of sets of armor in an older style, all being picked over by two Tier 16s. Entering, she tried to head for a far corner and not get in their way, but the duo immediately pounced at her, prompting Torch to retaliate with a wave of flames.

That forced one of them back, but the second fighter barreled right through the magical flames with a bubble of water protecting them.

Torch didn’t mind getting into a melee, and cast another one of her new spells, [Adrenaline Rush]. Using her control over her blood, she directed most of the power of the skill to her back, waist, legs, and right arm, which she used to drive her spear through the water fighter's chest.

She deliberately aimed low so she didn’t hit his heart, but even as his eyes went wide, she kicked him off her spear and shot a glare at his companion, who stopped fighting to tend to their friend.

Grabbing the rest of the loot from that room, Torch quickly entered the next, only to be greeted by a team of two, who on seeing her, stopped looting and immediately ran deeper into the vault. While they had looted most of the goods in this room already, she happily grabbed the rest of the items and shoved them into her bag before rushing down the hall, deeper into the depths.

In the next two rooms she tried to enter, she was met with stiff resistance from the occupying teams. Seeing that, she quickly cut her losses to avoid getting into a long, drawn out fight for such little loot when it was easily avoidable.

She was clearing a room of portable formations when a group of five entered and tried to pin her down, aiming to take her already stuffed spatial bags full of loot.

Torch found the Tier 16s displeasing, and expressed her discontent by resisting with prejudice.

Instead of them leaving with her accumulated loot, she ended up walking away with most of their bags of plundered items, which she consolidated into one bag. Sadly, one of the group had managed to get away, but Torch didn’t really mind not getting the entirety of their spoils.

There were still plenty of chances for more, after all.

Seeing that the next room she wanted to enter was a warzone, as two teams fought over what felt like a Tier 15 growth item chalice, Torch kept moving, not caring too much about a single item. At her next stop, she found a gallery full of paintings which had so far been untouched.

Torch debated passing the room of paintings but dedicated herself to grabbing them anyway. While art wasn’t as useful as combat or crafting-related items, Torch knew it could be even more valuable at the same Tier, and decided to risk it.

Unlike potions or armor, she couldn't just use [Air Manipulation] to grab everything, and had to manually grab each one, which cost her precious minutes.

Once the room was empty, she ran deeper in and past a dozen or so open and empty rooms, before getting pushed back out of a room with two teams working together inside. Heading into the adjacent room, she found a team of Tier 17s she recognized from outside who had shot her hostile glares, looting what seemed to be another room full of formation.

Deciding to liberate them of their gains, Torch rushed into the room with a spear and shield at the ready. Most of the other rooms seemed occupied, and she felt confident she could handle a few Tier 17s, even while fighting alone.

She blocked two [Firebolt]s and an [Ice Lance] with her shield, letting them recharge her personal armor and provide a slight speed boost. She wrapped herself in a fire [Bloodrush], leaving a trail of flames in her wake as she dodged an [Earth Spear] and somersaulted over a [Mana Bolt] to get in close.

Before she even landed, she unleashed fire from her armor and [Bloodrush] alike, weaving the flames to blind and disorient the group as she struck out with her spear and shield.

A mage caught the lip of the shield to his face as he tried to create some distance and get away from her flames. It wouldn’t have even taken him out of the fight if not for the fact he was knocked into the path of a skill aimed at Torch’s head, but he slumped to the floor, spasming. As they had moved to lethal attacks first, Torch responded in kind with an [Adrenaline Rush] and [Lesser Blood Sacrifice]-empowered fire [Blood Charge] as she ducked around the glowing axe flying towards her skull, striking out at its wielder.

As blood flew, Torch had to wrestle back the urge to grab it and finish the fight then and there. Instead, she withdrew a talisman Quill had made for the explicit goal of making a lot of fire. It was only tier 14, but that didn’t matter at the moment. The world turned orange, and she moved.

Her next attack was further enhanced with [Heartpiercer], and punched straight through the breastplate of the woman in heavy armor and out the back. The wound provided Torch an excellent opportunity to grab control of the woman’s blood, crushing her brain and killing her instantly.

The final two members of the team apparently decided enough was enough, and moved to turn and run, but Torch was well beyond allowing that.

With a wave of her spear, she solidified the air and then pulled the wall of air back towards herself.

One of the duo was knocked back, as expected, but the other wasn’t quite so lucky.

Focusing on the one almost near the door, Torch cast her final Tier 15 reward that had successfully converted. [Ischemic Harpoon] was what she decided to name her Talent changed version of [Harpoon], a skill which used water to create chains that linked to a spear and allowed for the weapon to stick into its target and be recalled at great lengths with a ton of power.

[Ischemic Harpoon] had all of those same benefits, but instead of being fueled with or attracted to water, it was fueled and attracted by blood. She had also extensively practiced wrapping the entire skill with flames so she could use the skill when pretending to be Torch. That also made people assume it was a fire spell, and try to counter it with a water spell, which wouldn't do much to the blood underneath.

When her spear skewered the man almost by the door, she felt him trying to tear free of the skill, but even with his spirit weakening the spell inside of him, she was stronger thanks to her Internal Concept that was bridging the distance through the chains of blood. Unless he could leave all the blood inside his body behind, there was no way he was escaping.

With a massive wrench, she pulled him back deeper into the room, where she finished him and his final companion off.

It was a pity that [Extract Ore] had broken on convert, as she'd been hopeful it might have been able to rip iron from the blood of targets. Unfortunately, [Anemia] instead joined the truly enormous pile of skills that were not to be, though it would have made this fight even easier.

Stopping only to loot them, she had to marvel at the weakness of these groups.

Apparently, her method of comparison was a little out of whack after fighting other elites in Minkalla, and then delving up several Tiers for so long. These average Tier 17s hadn’t even put up a good fight, which made her question the earlier hostile gazes and immediate deathly attacks. It seemed crazy for them to be so aggressive if they couldn’t back it up.

Just as she was exiting the now empty room, Torch felt the entire vault rock and knew that signified her cue to exit. There was no reason for her to stick around when the Tier 20s started fighting over the items deeper inside the vault, and she immediately turned tail and ran back out to the space around the gas giant.

The Tier 25 didn’t seem surprised to see her, but she didn’t stick around to get her loot examined, and immediately moved far enough to withdraw her chaotic space ship and boarded it, initiating the jump to chaotic space.

Once they left the system, three full spatial bags richer, Luna nodded to Liz as she indicated the bags.

“A good haul worthy of the effort you put in. Do you want to keep that loot, exchange it for something off your wedding gifts list, or exchange it for training with a bondsman?”

Liz was about to say she wanted to exchange the variety of stuff for some of the goodies of their wedding gift list, but hearing Luna mention the bondsman, she paused. When the four of them had first exited Minkalla, and Luna had heard about her additional Concept power, she had briefly mentioned getting Liz a lesson with a bondsman. That conversation hadn’t gone anywhere due to the fact that proper bondsmen and their contract powers were both rare and valuable commodities, usually tied to noble families, as she had been in one life, or tied to the Empire.

While not illegal in the Empire, any Talent, Domain, or skill that enforced or supported magically binding agreements were subject to intense scrutiny and supervision. Having lived a life with that power, Liz fully understood why, but that didn’t make it any more convenient for her to hire one to train her before she exited The Path.

“One of them finally had an opening?” Liz perked up. They were understandably intensely busy, and last she’d heard Luna was still trying to find an opening in their schedules sometime before she would be off the Path entirely.

“Indeed. Cabel Waters, Domain Bondsman with an emphasis on long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships. He’s also taken on students in the past, has a good track record of teaching, and he finally has about six months free in roughly three years. It’s not quite last-minute, but he’ll understand if you can’t make it, but… I don’t know when the next opening would be.”

“Well then,” Liz tossed the bags of loot she’d just won at her trainer. “Sounds like an easy choice to me.”