The Path of Ascension Chapter 197

Chapter 197

 

Matt’s spiritual sense didn’t even have enough time to properly register what was in the safe room before he rolled to the right. At the same time, Susanne’s and Aster’s AI linked with his own, giving him a wealth of information.

He came out of his initial dodge and kept sprinting to the right while arrows and spells peppered his newly-resummoned [Cracked Phantom Armor].

He appeared next to the Clan’s gathering point, so while the attacks weren’t absent, they weren’t full-on either.

Thankfully, once he neared the Empire’s portion of the safe area, he was able to slow to a walk and join his Power’s side.

This wasn’t a surprise, and it was exactly why they set up this contingency before they left.

The first people into the safe room would be those that weren’t going for the theme reward. While that population predominantly featured Tier 14s, it also included a fair number of Tier 12s and 13s from the other seasons that just wanted out, whether or not they had enough for the exit reward.

With the exception of the Sects, each Great Power had managed to convince enough of the people that were exiting to stick around for three hours in their own ‘territory’. If only to give additional protection to those taking the theme challenge as they reoriented themselves to their real bodies.

There would be no repeats of the previous floor’s safe room if Matt could help it.

Three hours, translating to three months in-challenge, should be plenty for most people to get their upgrades and move on.

Anyone who took longer than that was on their own.

Matt noted that Liz wasn’t here yet, which implied that she ran into some difficulty, but he wasn’t overly worried.

Jill wasn’t out yet either, while Bradley was chatting with the first-place solo winner of his own Tier 10 tournament, Statue.

The woman was a metal mage as well, but had gotten a [Metal Body] ability far earlier than Bradley, and had used the impressive amount of control she had over the nigh-invincible state to great effect.

Statue saw Matt appear, and after inspecting him and nodding, she turned her attention back to the surrounding Great Powers.

Aster exuded smugness at her growth item’s upgrade, but as they had decided to lean into the idea that she was Susanne’s bond, didn’t jump into his arms.

All of them wanted to show off their new abilities, of course, but by prior agreement, they would hold off until all four of them were together.

He did feel out the Boon settled into his spirit, familiarizing himself with it. It felt like… well, like a new limb. Something that hadn’t been there before but was wholly one with him.

Its effects surprised him though. He had gotten a far stronger reward than what they had recorded. He’d expected a better than average reward but something this good was beyond his expectations even after single-handedly powering the faction to victory but there were harsh diminishing returns on the favor to final Boon conversion so he hadn’t expected anything quite so impactful.

Matt had heard that very rarely, an upgraded [Manipulation] skill could gain a truly incredible amount of finesse and feedback while becoming almost free to use, and he was reminded of that as he tried out his new abilities.

[Ice Manipulation], [Air Manipulation], and [Shadow Manipulation] still cost the normal amount to use, but they were responsive in a way he’d never felt before.

As a quick test to check the changes he could fell, he made himself an finger sized ice sculpture of a songbird, and found that not only was he able to effortlessly imbue it with detailing on each feather, but he could make the ice flex and flow in a way that it could flap its wings and fly like a real bird without cracking and shattering like normal ice.

There was more to it as well, but before he could experiment and find out how else the Boon had impacted his skills, Liz appeared right outside the Federation’s territory and was bombarded by attacks. Fortunately, when people were put into the spatially expandable safe area, it was a good distance away from other people, so no one would appear inside anyone’s formations. Thanks to the degree of separation, Liz was easily able to escape the attacks and join the Empire’s group. With her there, the four of them wasted no time in racing to the pillar leading them to the next floor, and were quickly whisked away in a swirl of motion.

***

Luna was watching a woman celebrate exiting Minkalla after an inspiration to Tier 15 when she felt the ripples of space fluctuate around all eight Great Powers’ moons, and ripped a hole through reality at the same time.

She and every other high Tier were caught off guard at the sudden influx that implied that the fourth floor had been conquered. Normally, that took at least six months when there were only two courts. A two-court fourth floor was… unlikely. And even then, it had only been three months.

Something had happened, and she had a good inkling of what exactly it was.

She and Carol moved, appearing in the midst of a small crowd of incoming cultivators and diverting more teams to the space she had chosen, until she had about a hundred in total. She gave her chosen mouthpieces a few moments to orient themselves to being outside of Minkalla before she spoke, with her Domain leaving no room for misinterpretation or delay.

“Explain exactly what happened. All at once and leave nothing out.” To ensure there wouldn’t be any complaints, she pulled a Tier 20 mana stone out of one of her spatial rings for each of them, and placed her bribe in front of each respective ‘volunteer’.

It only took a second for all of them to start rambling over each other.

At Tier 43, she had no issues hearing and dissecting each and every one of the delvers’ stammering, cutting out the wasteful information, and gathering the pertinent bits she wanted.

She felt a smile creep over her face as she got a jist of the situation.

The children had gotten a four seasons theme for Courtly Warfare, beyond perfect for Aster.

As more people chattered, she started to paint a better picture.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Winter had attacked Spring and took the city in a surprise ambush.

They thought it was a fluke, but the season had a general before anyone else, and then turned and attacked Fall.

While it had been a harder fight, they had defeated a General in a great battle that wrecked a sizable portion of the city.

That information caught her attention, and an eyebrow rose as she heard of the General’s prowess.

The pinnacle fighters having most of an Intent was stronger than usual, but nothing she hadn’t seen before in a Courtly Warfare floor. Minkalla never made any monster stronger than Tier 14, which meant if it wanted to make a real challenge, it was limited in its ability to do so.

It also couldn’t, or at least had never, made a monster with a full Intent, but making monsters with some combination of Phrase, Image, and Anchor wasn’t unusual. Though a monster of that ilk appearing at floor four was rare indeed and a monster with a strong pseudo Intent was unheard of on the fourth floor.

Still, from the babbling of the cultivators who exited, she was able to determine that her charges were part of the team that defeated the General, and that they hadn’t taken any casualties.

Susanne and her Queen identity had been identified and targeted, but she was alive and well. While unfortunate, her cover being compromised was entirely expected. She would’ve been hard pressed to kill everyone who saw her Concept manifestation.

She kept an ear out for anyone talking about a blood mage, but no one mentioned it, which meant that Liz had managed to remain hidden thus far, which was good.

It would’ve been better if she had stuck to fire skills, but with the talk of a water mage fighting the general, she suspected that the girl needed to bring out her real skills, even if hidden. Though she couldn’t be certain of that as water mages were all too common of an archetype to identify one of them as Liz from the third or fourth hand descriptions.

There were rumors that Quill had been in the fight as a massive ice spell she recognized was used to battle the General but that seemed more rumor than fact and she had fully expected the children to be pegged for their masked identities.

That was their purpose after all.

With her curiosity sated, she provided each of them with their promised mana stone and allowed them to go on their way. They could now go Tier up and enjoy their immortality. The smart ones would buckle down and progress as fast as possible, but that wasn’t any of her concern.

The children were.

And things were going well on that front. Now they just needed to see what the latter half of Minkalla would throw at them.

She chuckled as she thought of the fact that Kurt and April might miss them coming out because of the incredibly fast fourth floor.

With a flex of her Domain, she returned to her house and her vigil, Carol joining her a moment later.

This time, she was in a much better mood. Her little monsters were growing up and showing their fangs.

Killing a peak Tier 14 with most of an Intent?

Winning Courtly Warfare in a fraction of the normal time?

Her smile only grew as she thought over the debrief she would get when they came out.

She could not be more pleased.

***

When they landed, Matt cast [Cracked Phantom Armor] and [Bulwark], preparing for any attacks, but none came.

He noticed what was wrong at the same time as everyone else.

Their skills were slowly, but noticeably becoming more expensive.

Dropping his active skills, Matt cursed, but Aster said it first with a sad whine. “Taxing Skills confirmed.”

That reminded him to drop his AI and he knew he wouldn’t be able to understand his bond for the foreseeable future.

Taxing Skills would increase the cost of their skills the more they used them, and Minkalla had the habit of throwing huge groups of monsters at people to force skill usage. Fortunately, none of them were completely dependent on skills, like a pure mage would be, though Aster was the worst off. Bloodlines and Concepts weren’t affected, which, in their case, just lowered the burden that Aster and Liz would need to put on their mana for their skills.

Still, the reward would be very useful. Especially for Matt.

At this depth and Tier, Matt expected to get three extra Core skill slots, fifteen Inner ones, and forty Outer slots from the reward, and not a second too soon. Constantly delving fully-charged rifts meant that they were flush with skills, and Luna expected him in particular to be proficient with so many of them. Most of his Manipulation skills were in his Outer Spirit, and if he could just bring a handful of those into his Inner Spirit, he’d already be much better off.

There were only a few other floors that Matt would rather have gotten over Taxing Skills for its reward. Its floor restriction on the other hand was going to pose a serious challenge.

Liz tapped her leg and asked, “Chances Minkalla shuts down our talismans again?”

Matt thought for a moment as he scanned their surroundings. “Not sure. I think a total shutdown is unlikely, but they might get less effective if we overuse the same ones.”

They were in a narrow corridor with brass walls covered in tubing boxing them in on each side, but it was open to a dull, violet sky above. Matt flexed his Concept, trying to get airborne, but his feet stayed planted on the ground.

“Can’t fly with my Concept. Cover me as I try a flying device.”

As Matt spoke, the other three changed positions to cover him, but it turned out to be useless.

The instant he brought his flying sword out, it clattered to the ground.

Liz looked back and cursed. “A labyrinth? Fuck me sideways. Well, this is quite the pickle.”

Matt couldn’t help but agree. Labyrinth rifts and ruins were annoying at the best of times, let alone in Minkalla, when time was of the essence.

Susanne shrugged. “It could be worse. At minimum, we shouldn’t need too many skills for a maze, and at best, we might be able to totally bypass it.”

Liz was already one step ahead of them, feeding an essence stone into their seeker-compass and waiting for it to settle. Matt, meanwhile, pulled out the key they’d found at the same time, seeing if it had any resonance with their surroundings. It didn’t, so it returned to his ring a moment later.

Aster pointed out the problem with their compass even though Liz had to translate, “How much could it really help? Pointing to the most valuable thing may almost be bad, because of how many treasures would be in the middle of this place. And even then, it won’t tell us the correct path.”

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Liz sighed as she put down the compass and asked, “Well, how did everyone do with their upgrades and Boons? Everyone get something good?”

As they went around and explained their upgrades, Matt inspected his own sword. As the old man Jeffrey said, he was able to change his weapon’s enchantments with a thought. Or rather, it was like the blade in his hand had two different spirits that he could swap out at will.

It was something like flipping a switch, and when he did, the melee-focused abilities that he had enchanted the blade with vanished to show his longsword clean and pristine.

A little poking around the weapon’s enchantment capacity also revealed that he had more room to enchant his weapon than he had before, even if it was relatively minor in comparison to the ability to swap enchantment sets all together.

“I’m going to need a little bit of time to enchant my weapon once more. I can store two forms now, but the second one is blank. I got more room with the upgrade too, so I’ll need to re-enchant the first form anyway.”

Liz looked around at the gleaming walls. “How long do you need?”

Matt thought for a second before saying, “Give me five hours. I want to fix the blade up half decently, since it can help counter spells getting more expensive. But I don’t want to take the half a day that it would normally take to really plan everything out correctly.” Thinking about it some more, he changed his mind. “Actually, I don’t want to change the current enchantments with the floor theme. So, for now, I’ll just add spells to the other side.”

Before he got too far into it, he pulled out a stack of talismans and handed them out, saying, “Attack talismans.” He pulled out some of the items he had prepared for Minkalla in case they got this floor and continued, “And attack items. The bracelets have simple [Mana Bolt] enchantments, but if we play it slow, it should be enough to not rely on our skills at all. I have staves with more varied skills. Let me know if you want them instead.”

Liz mirrored his action with a few potions. She didn’t have that many universally applicable ones, but not many still wasn’t none, and they could use all the versatility they could get.

He wasn’t willing to use his AI on this when it could be such a decisive advantage against other delvers in the very near future, but Luna had seen to it that he could make something worthwhile without it. A few additional spells added to his suite could help out immensely here, and it wasn’t like they hadn’t prepared for this floor beforehand.

For the time being, Matt applied a few temporary enchantments to his blade, free handing the runes required by copying them straight off of a spare staff. They weren’t his best work, not by a long shot, but they’d serve him well enough for the time being as a backup, just in case they ran into any more spatial locks.