The Path of Ascension

Chapter 245

Once they were back in chaotic space, Matt and Liz took great relief in finally removing their masks and chatting about Eleanor’s Talent. While both of them had mixed feelings about their own Talents, they were quite content not having to deal with the endless dice rolls themselves. Her Tier 3 might make things better, and definitely could improve things massively for the girl, but it was likely to always be a little annoying.

“You know, maybe she could fix most of it with an AI,” Liz suggested. “Like, that light rune she blew out? If she were using an AI to interact with it instead of actually activating the light herself, sure her AI might need to be rebooted, but the light shouldn’t explode or anything.”

Matt was less certain. “I mean it’s possible, sure. But it could count as two separate activations, like when she was using a wand. Dice roll for the wand casting the spell, dice roll for the attack. How sure are you that she wouldn’t get separate rolls for both her AI and the light?”

Luna nodded, having joined them at some point. “It is an interesting situation, and I look forward to seeing the interaction. It is not the most unique Talent I’ve seen, but it’s quite an interesting mixture of specificity and broad-scale impact. I know several of my coworkers would be quite interested in working with her, should she reach Tier 10 upon the Path.”

Liz raised an eyebrow at their manager as she continued, “All managers have their specialities, and there are a handful whose focus is in fortune. Depending upon the nature of her Tier 3, they may work on attempting to shrink the range of her Talent, or move it in a less harmful direction. After all, with the impact of her Talent scaling directly upon the power of the basic action, she could quite possibly kill herself after rolling a one on a particularly strong attack.

“Now, your training. I saw Kurt’s report, of course, but that’s not the same as hearing it from you. You have a good grasp on your ability now?”

Liz nodded and slipped out of Matt’s arms to face both of them. “Yep. He helped me get a good grasp on how it works, and had some really useful skills and abilities for some safe testing… And I’m very glad I waited.”

Matt felt Liz’s Concept flex and try to latch on to him. Not resisting, he felt like Liz was speaking inside his head as she continued speaking.

“I offer a deal. A temporary binding of two into one, lasting one hour. I trade my Domain for yours. Do you accept?”

Matt mentally reached out with his own Domain to connect with Liz’s. Through the connection, he also felt a warm energy flowing to his body, like hotter blood was mixing with his cool blood. The feeling settled after a few minutes but it was incredibly uncomfortable while it lasted.

Matt reached out to feel the new power that sat next to his Domain like an addition to a house. Where his Concept had a feeling of endlessness, this addition felt far more bloody.

Poking a hole in his forearm he let some blood seep out, and with a thought, activated that new addition to his power, causing Liz to flinch slightly.

“Oh that feels odd. Are you trying to harden the blood? I can feel it. It's hard to put it into words but it's kinda sloppy. Is this how you normally use your Concept?”

Matt shook his head. “I was just testing what the new addition to my Domain did.”

Liz nodded. “Well long story short, my oath ability is more limited than it was in the Folded Reflection life, but possibly more useful if we use it right. I can allow us to trade our Domains, or specific effects, and In my training. I’ve gotten kinda good at using other’s Domains. In normal times, or rather with normal people who didn’t go through Folded Reflection or expand their Concept through training, you only get the base effects of the Concept . Stronger blood for me; giving mana and repulsion for you.”

Matt felt his repulsion weaken slightly as Liz started to push everything away from her. He tried to do the same, but felt that he’d need to relinquish the bond if he wanted to do so.

“But I can’t use it when you are using it?”

Liz shook her head. “Not that we were able to figure out.”

Both of them looked to Luna, hearing that, and the older woman pursed her lips, clearly deep in thought. “I very much doubt that you will be able to change that, but nothing is impossible. What we need to do now is to start training you two with the other’s abilities. Liz, you need to see if you can turn Matt’s mana granting into a self directed buff when you use it, you also need to get used to using his armor enhancements. We’ll start with those two for now. Mana draining might be useful for you, but that’s going to be a hard skill to learn, given how difficult a time Matt has had using it for more than area denial.”

“What about my AI empowerment? That could be useful.” His question didn’t earn him the glare he was expecting, and Luna turned to Liz.

“Can you even tap into that power?”

Liz closed her eyes for a minute before her head started to glow, but it lasted only a second.

“Is it that expensive for you Matt? How do you even power that thing? I’d be drained in a minute, two max. I know there’s an extra willpower cost with this sharing, but this is ridiculous.”

Matt shrugged with one shoulder. “It was really draining for me too, at the start. It takes some practice.”

Liz shot him a dirty look that he returned with a blown kiss. That earned him a grin, but Luna turned to him and said, “Matt, I don’t expect you to be able to use many of Liz’s abilities to all that much effect, not with the inefficiency of the oath. We can test out what’s good for you, and what works better on you than on her. Especially for your alter egos, trading specific abilities could prove useful.”

With new abilities, Luna spent over a month beating various uses of the new techniques into them, and while they weren’t ready to use those shared abilities in a fight, they were getting a base level of understanding with them.

That said, they were eager to test themselves and went looking for rifts with established reputations for being hard. They even found one nearby that was listed on some EmpireNet top one thousand list. It was a notorious Tier 17 rift that was known for being brutal and dangerous, which was exactly what they wanted.

A goblin rift.

Given enough essence, anything would become a threat, and goblins were one of the most extreme examples of exactly that.

While incredibly weak between Tiers 1 and 5 and excellent for training, at Tier 6 and beyond, the goblins saw a sharp uptick in intelligence, cunning, and deadliness. The little menaces developed a vicious kind of teamwork and coordination, setting ambushes and traps, utilizing suicide attacks and poisons to slowly whittle away at attackers, and pitting their high numbers against the delver’s individual strength.

That said, not all rifts were created equal, and the rift they had picked out was one known for killing dozens of teams that tried to conquer it every decade. It didn’t even offer anything special in terms of rewards for those that succeeded, except for some herbs that were a bit rare locally. Most people who tried it just did it for the prestige of having done it.

A group which now included Torch and Quill.

Luna approved of their decision, so they bought an upcoming slot before spending the next two years doing missions.

Rift slots on higher Tier worlds still had a fifteen-minute cycle time, but they simply didn’t have the mana to allow people to delve so often. Matt could, of course, fix that with his Talent or even just pay the mana stone fee to insert a delve, but that would draw more attention than they wanted to themselves. Besides, they weren’t in any rush.

Thankfully, the missions Luna sent them on weren’t that hard, and best of all, they were able to do together. It was a nice change of pace after being separated for so long, and it acted as a small continuation of their honeymoon.

During that time, Matt and Liz kept track of Eleanor and Ethan’s progress at the PlayPen.

The two of them struggled with the Tier 1 imp rift but, just before their first year was up, they made it to Tier 2. He was grateful that they played it smart, and was pleased to see Eleanor’s continued usage of improvised throwing weapons, usually the atlatl. They reportedly made a cutting tool which could turn a piece of cheap construction lumber into a atlatl in a minute, and bought arrows from the local store instead of making them themselves. Arrows broke often enough already that Eleanor’s talent didn’t add too much to their expenses, so Matt approved.

They took some scrapes and bruises, even losing an arm in a delve gone wrong due to a badly timed low roll, but they survived by working together and dove right back into the rift once they were cleared. Best of all, they were on track to reach Tier 3 just before the curve, and Matt and Liz were both proud of the hard work that must have taken.

After checking the timing, they decided to recreate the scene that Dena and Eric had when they messaged him after breaking through to Tier 5, where they would explain about Concepts and hopefully set them up to not need to use a bottled Concept by Tier 10.

They also sent a small message that gave Eleanor a heads-up about getting the AI pseudo-skill before they left the PlayPen and lost the discount. Not everyone bought it, as they would rather have better armor or a spatial bag, but they didn’t want the girl to have to rely on Ethan to open doors and use magical items for longer than necessary.

Matt was irked by the warning that their AIs sent both of them when they recorded the first message to be sent to them at Tier 3. Yes, he understood that too much interference would be a detriment to the kids, but a simple congratulations and small recommendation shouldn’t have counted.

Still, it did, and he was sure they’d get yelled at when they sent a video showing them having killed a ton of goblins as well. They would back off on the messages afterwards though. The early portion of the path was meant to test their resolve and resilience, and too much guidance could negate a lot of those early issues, which would dilute the test.

Matt better understood Griff and his irritation at The Path itself now. Some early guidance could prevent a lot of deaths, but the Empire had a lot of competing priorities, with funding chief among them. The timeline for the Path was dictated by international treaties, and the numbers of teachers required to get teenagers through the early stages safely simply weren’t available without significantly more money. A difficult beginning also helped to find the true diamonds in the rough, like Light and Shadow.

He knew Emmanuel cared about each and every citizen in the Empire, and wouldn’t have kept things the way they were unless it was the lesser of many evils. After all, if the Empire wasn’t making powerhouses, they would have been attacked even earlier to slow their growth.

Mara and Leon had both stated a number of times that Light and Shadow reaching Tier 25 was just a convenient excuse, and Matt didn’t doubt them.

He just wished everyone could get along. A childish wish, but one that could make everything so much easier. Sadly as Luna had said oh so long ago, people were just too greedy for that to ever really work. Even just a few people being assholes to get ahead would cause such a utopia to fail, as everyone else started to scrabble to avoid being at the bottom.

He also better understood Leon and Mara’s reticence to let Liz join the Path, as Eleanor and Ethan weren't even his kids, but he worried for them.

Instead of wallowing in his mind, he and Liz did something a lot more fun.

Murder.

When they entered the goblin rift, the first thing they noticed was that they were in a cave system.

Not unexpected, but with how large Tier 17 rifts were, Matt doubted this was all this rift had to offer.

They could have bought the rift guides, and even taken a couple lessons on the rift’s variations to get themselves as prepared as possible, but that would defeat the point. Future enemies wouldn’t come with convenient guides on how to beat them with minimum effort and risk. This was supposed to be a fun challenge, not something they could do in their sleep.

Letting his senses spread out, Matt slashed out with his sword and felt his blade hit a shadow that was just a little too solid. Sparks flew from the connection of blades, but before the goblin could return to the protection of the darkness, Liz’s spear took it in the side. With a twist, she bisected the monster and readied her weapons.

Matt watched the mana flows as they eddied back and forth, looking for another attack. When a portion of shadow mana started to creep towards them, he lunged forward and skewered the closest goblin, using [Dispelling Edge] to cut through the elemental body and letting the essence flow into [Lesser Sacrifice] instead of his core, where it boosted his physical stats by a good margin.

That seemed to be the signal, as the rest of the goblins rushed them.

Liz lowered her stance a little and used her shield to block her side while thrusting out with her spear, using a few [Heart Piercing Stab]s to lengthen her weapon, but was quickly forced to take a few steps around the rift distortion as she was pushed back.

Matt twisted as he slashed out but failed to immediately kill one of the goblins that bounded forward at him. It clutched a dagger that glowed painfully brightly with enchantments and skills and stabbed at his calf. His armor stopped the brunt of the blow, with the second layer exploding away from where the dagger touched it. But even with his reinforcement, the goblin managed to knick his skin with the very tip of the dagger.

A twist and a stomp crushed the monster's head, even as he flared [Lesser Regeneration] to counter the burning feeling he felt traveling up his leg.

Suicide rushers, just the kind of thing that could spell the end of an unwary group. A real person would never use their whole mana pool for a single attack, nobody made it to the high Tiers with that kind of survival instinct, but some of the smarter monster species had them.

Liz, who had finished her fighting retreat, helped him finish off the final two goblins and stood with him as he started to investigate the monsters. She poked one of the goblins that was mostly intact with her spear, as she said, “An ambush right at the entrance is quite pleasant.”

Matt agreed with a grunt, even as he bent over and started inspecting the body of the goblin to find its blade. They needed to find out exactly what poison they had on them, as that might mean an immediate retreat.

He found the dagger quickly, and after a little testing, they found it had both an obvious, burning poison, in addition to a much more subtle paralytic. A less observant person would neutralize the painful poison, and then hours later find themselves halfway through a rift with muscles that suddenly stopped working. Matt had to stop for a minute to purge his current blood and fill up from their backup supply, and have Liz triple check with her healing spells that he was fine.

It was a lovely start to a delve.

With that taken care of, he started inspecting the body of the monster and compared it to the goblins he knew from the low Tier rifts.

It was still a small humanoid, but the knobby elbows and knees were gone from the goblins that he had dealt with in the Tier 1 rift. They were also well-muscled with almost no body fat. Rifts didn’t necessarily need to follow biological trends, but having that little fat would kill a mundane human, and rifts rarely went that far.

All of that was dwarfed by the discoveries he found when he stripped the goblin of its armor.

The first was that the armor had a layer of aluminum inside with a ton of runes engraved on it. That was paired with tattoo-like runes slithering across the goblin's skin. He could feel them trying to reach out and connect with the runes on the armor the moment he separated the two.

“Liz, look at this. The goblins' bodies are covered with runic tattoos, but they're way more flexible than the tattoos I’ve seen. They slither and try to connect to the armor.”

Liz shook her head. “I can't see it. My mana sight isn't as good as yours.”

Matt took a recording of what he was sensing and sent it to Liz. “Ok, that is interesting. Let's bag a few of the goblins for testing later. I have a few ideas which might help my blood alchemy. One of my Minkalla lives used runes in a similar way to this.”

After testing whether storing the goblins in a spatial item would ruin the runes or not, the two of them headed deeper into the caves while fighting off ambush teams made of at least a dozen goblins.

This time they were more careful and kept to the edges of the ambush, but even that didn’t stop Liz taking an arrow to the thigh as the goblin that shot her melted into the darkness with [Shadow Body].

Matt cast [Bolt] the moment two of the goblins tried to dart at him from the shadows, which locked them up long enough for his blade to cut through their bodies. Now that he knew what to look for, he even saw the rune tattoos trying to pull the bodies together, but a thought and repulsion field quickly solved that by crushing their heads.

He was in a readied position, prepared to dodge an arrow when he blinked at the retreating form of the team's archer.

Highlighting it for Liz, her spear raced forward and skewered the monster, but he was surprised that any rift monster had tried to retreat.

“Good catch. I don’t think letting the monster get away would have ended well for us.” Liz looked at the monster still impaled on her spear before checking the arrows. “These also have the same paralytic.”

Matt nodded. “That's good to know. Let's make sure none of them get away from now on.”

As Liz bent down to whisk the goblin away into spatial storage, Matt saw the magic tattoos slither dangerously and convulse with mana. Reacting quickly, he threw his mana into his armor and activated the rarely used swapping ability of their teleportation rings.

A fraction of a second later, the goblin exploded into gore and shrapnel, knocking him back but ultimately causing him no harm, with Liz safely outside of the blast radius.

Matt picked himself up slowly, wondering what they had thrown themselves into with this rift. “Post death bombers. The first goblins die and show you that the armor is valuable, the next group explode when you try to grab the corpses. I kinda like it.”

They fought their way through another five squads in the tunnels without too much issue after that, but the darkness and tight corridors made each fight risky when dealing with monsters who could dissolve into the shadows around them.

The obvious answer was to use spells to light the place up, but neither of them suggested it. They half expected light activated traps in the tunnel, or something equally ridiculous, but the stealth advantage alone paid some dividends.

Matt was getting a good workout with his blade, which he hadn't been able to do in a while due to being Quill most of the time. There was just something therapeutic about cutting down monsters with his blade that a spell didn’t quite offer.

Before too long, they came up on a giant cavern covered in luminescent blue moss that gave just enough light for the two of them to see with their normal vision.

Liz whistled through their chat. “That is a big ass spider.”

Matt nodded. “Big ass crystal spider. I’d bet every mana stone I have it’s near immune to magic.”

“I’m not taking that bet. I don't have a record of it, but it's close to crystal elementals and they’re highly resistant to raw magic. How do we want to hit this group? I’m seeing ten platoons of soldiers, a mixed composition of shield bearers, pikemen, and archers. We shouldn’t discount the possibility of scouts hidden in the surrounding area too.”

Matt highlighted five other goblins. “That's not all. Look here, there are shamans. They’re going to be an issue. Think you can assassinate them?”

Liz spun her spear as she thought. “One most certainly, but all five? Not a chance. They are too far from each other.”

Matt pondered as he let his [AI] chew through the possibilities, but disregarded most of its more radical options.“I think it's best if we start with artillery and sniping, try to take out the shamans, and hopefully cripple some platoons before they move in too close. After that, I’ll tie them down while you mop up stragglers, then we can turn and burn.”

With the idea set up, Matt used [Earth Manipulation] to create some obstructions in front of the cave entrance, while Liz took out the talisman-javelins Matt had made for her and started calculating angles.

Once they were in position and ready to start the fight, Matt started charging mana into [Arcane Powershot]. The spell quickly turned from a thin bow that was only two feet long into a massive, six foot tall bow that grew thicker before all the excess energy went into the arrow. Matt collapsed the wall right before letting his arrow fly, and Liz launched her [Skewer] shot with a crack of thunder. His magic arrow curved to follow the shaman that tried to dodge out the way, and successfully blew its armored torso away from the rest of its limbs and head. Liz’s javelin couldn’t curve quite so quickly, not at this relatively short ten mile range, but she was close enough for it to count. The javelin struck the ground a few feet away from the shaman like an orbital strike, obliterating the goblin and seriously wounding a few members of the nearby platoon in a burst of fire.

He started flaring his mana granting immediately, as Liz had used over a quarter of her mana pool on that one spell, and they both started preparing another strike. As they anticipated, a scout appeared from the shadows near them, but Liz had her [Lesser Blood Clone] intercept it before it could interrupt them. Matt hit the third shaman, this time with an added [Piercing Shot] to break through the ball of shadow it had thrown up to block him, and Liz cored a platoon like an apple with her javelin, just before they could raise their shields against it.

Dispatching the scout with a casual rip of her spear, Liz paired up with her clone, a flock of newly summoned [Blood Sprites], and blood lampreys created by [Summon Blood Monster]. Together, they surged in the direction of the crippled platoon, occasionally diverting to execute a nearby scout that broke stealth. Matt continued peppering the shamans and foot soldiers with [Arcane Powershot] and the occasional [Bolt], but they were prepared for him now and he only did minimal damage.

Seeing their comrade die despite its protection, the remaining two shamans retreated to the giant spider, and with beams of shadow, pulled themselves into the monster where they were encased by its crystal form.

Shooting forward on [Cracked Air Slide], he unleashed a torrent of energy through [Cracked Mana Spear] at the nearest wall of shields. The beam was as thick as his arm now, and broke through goblin shields with a deeply satisfying thrum of raw power. Once the shields fell, a hail of [Bolt]s and [Shatter Shot]s tore through the goblins behind, scattering them, and he finished the group off with [Flamethrower].

In the distance, he saw Liz fighting in the thick of the platoon she had crippled, her spear darting like a snake to spill blood and further empower her. He had a chance to watch her as he hunkered behind a wall of earth, waiting for the arrow storm around him to end. Seconds later, Liz had dispatched the majority of the melee fighters, and was now hunting down the archers that tried to run, with [Blood Chakram]s and various other flavors of blood explosions taking them out piecemeal.

Once the arrows had abated, Matt shot forward again and unleashed another [Cracked Mana Spear], but this time he was disappointed. The platoons were enshrouded in a dark mist that sought to unweave his spell, and their shields overflowed with shadow to distribute the damage across the whole shield wall. Between the two effects, he wasn’t accomplishing much with his spell, and it wasn’t worth the spiritual strain.

Knowing mage time was over, Matt ran forward with a grin on his face, even as he was being rushed by hundreds of monsters.

This was where he felt most alive.

As the center of the fight, drawing everyone's attention.

Forcing everything to revolve around him.

That allowed Liz to flit around the edges and take out the stragglers who had broken formation, or the stray archers who tried to pepper him with arrows.

Dodging a spear thrust, Matt caught a sword blade wreathed in flames with his left hand, pulling on it and forcing the wielder off his feet. He used that opening to spin and cleave three of the monsters in half, then darted into the opening he had made as a shaman hidden among the archers created a beam of darkness and carved a line through the floor where he had been.

Not wanting to take that attack head on, Matt dodged a coordinated attack by three of the goblins who threw themselves on him, but one still managed to grab his left arm and started trying to bite him.

Matt grabbed the goblin by its throat, squeezed hard enough to break its jaw, then threw the monster at the shaman, knocking them both down and giving Matt some room to breathe.

Still, that slight pause caused him to take three attacks on his back, disturbing his next strike. He cut through the three goblins who had struck him, but three dozen more were ready to take their place.

As he finished off the rest of that group, he found himself surrounded by a wall of raised shields glowing with shadow mana.

Bands of shadow tried to grab his legs and slow him down, but Matt flexed his repulsion to keep them off him. The shamans were throwing a lot of mana into the spell and it was chipping away at his Concept.

Matt twisted using his physical strength to crack the ground under him and then dove forward like a thrown spear, letting his left hand collide with the shields that tried to eat away at him.

Gripping the shield, Matt pulled one of the goblins out of line and caved away at the second line of troops with a [Mana Slash].

Entirely sick of being surrounded, Matt cast [Flamethrower] and shot it directly at the closest goblins, who recoiled like they had met their greatest foe. To his surprise, the goblins that caught fire exploded in a burst of shadow particles that attacked the fire, trying to extinguish it.

Dropping the flame spell, Matt cast [Bulwark] behind him to cover his back as he felt another bolt of darkness racing to cut him in half. Not willing to trust just the spell to defend him, he added [Diffusion Shield] as well. That weakened the spell enough that [Bulwark] was able to block the darkness spell as it splashed on his blue shield like water.

[Dispelling Edge] gave his blade a blue glow as he cut deep into the goblin formation and massacred his way through to their backline.

They tried to fix their formation, but Liz had finished with her own task and started hammering the backline of the platoon from the rear with her clone and summons, tearing through archers like she had a grudge. Within moments, she had cleared out the surrounding goblins and exploded the annoying shaman’s head with [Embolism], before draining the fallen of their blood and diverting it to her summons.

With the two of them together, they skirted the crystal spider that was still trying to catch up, darting between platoons and dismantling them with prejudice. Minutes later, they had the clear space to take the spider on, Liz dashing between its legs to unbalance it, and Matt hammering it with earth magic.

The rush of essence they received when they finally downed it made everything worthwhile.

They both had a few wounds they needed to take care of, but after half an hour, they were ready to head back into the tunnels to find another cave.

The test would then be to take their newest foes out faster, with less injuries.

Improve themselves.

And that was the name of the game.

Improvement. Pushing themselves to the limit to find what else they could really do when under pressure.

Make themselves into monsters.

It took them almost a week to clear out the network of tunnels, but they managed it, and their reward was a bag of valuable herbs used for refining the bloodline of Magma Carp, which they threw in their pile of loot to sell.

After their goblin rift, the two of them went back to missions. Some of it was just busy work, like when the two of them filled in for a local official without letting anyone know.

They even got an update from Eleanor and Ethan, whose Tier 3 Talents were better than he and Liz expected. Eleanor got an additional die every other Tier, with the result of her attacks being decided by the highest roll, drastically improving her safety. Ethan, on the other hand, got a better feel for the things his Talent could merge and their outcome. There was a slight increase in his merging chances, and while it was still low, they had earned a good bit of money with his Talent. The profits allowed the kids to buy a [Fireball] for Eleanor, which the girl was loving. She’d only had it blow up in her face once.

Other missions were of more importance, like their latest one where they needed to punish those who believed themselves above the law. But as the decade of their separation with Aster neared its end, the two of them moved to their rendezvous point a little early, filled with excitement to finally get the team back together.

Matt couldn't wait, and periodically entered chaotic space to check how weak the connection with Aster was. He was gratified every time that it was just that little bit closer.

He and Liz were sitting at a tea shop that catered to immortals and long waits when he felt her arrive.

Aster was finally back with them.

Their family was whole once more.