The Path of Ascension Chapter 279

Chapter 279

Matt had to resist moaning as he scraped the last remnants of the tiramisu off his plate and plopped the fork into his mouth, even as Liz did the same for her cheesecake. Aster had already devoured her warm brownie with ice cream, and was sitting there trying to coax more food out of Aunt Helen, who seemed immune to her charms.

Despite the deliciousness of the meal, they all knew that they needed to get to work. There was a war raging, and they needed to enter it.

To that end, after thanking Aunt Helen and after getting a warm set of hugs, they left with an escort and boxed lunches to go.

They wandered through the twisting halls of the palace until they arrived at a shuttle which would take them to the Tier 37 planet that neighbored the Capital. That was where the central Empire military base was located, and it housed most of the non-combat personnel who did the planning and logistics for the army.

An army they were now a part of.

The shuttle retrieving them was sleek, with chromed highlights on a dark blue hull, and somewhat unusually, both armed and with no visible thrusters. Generally, thruster-less craft were short-range only with underpowered flight, and low-power short-range ships rarely needed weapons.

As they left the ecumenopolis of the Capital, soaring-past a half-constructed ring, Matt watched a dozen flyers surrounding and guarding the shuttle on its brief transit. They were some combination of overkill and a simple honor guard, but he didn’t know which was most important.

He briefly caught sight of the orbiting infrastructure of the Capital as they flew past, the deep storage bays, the innumerable telescopes, even a few of the hotels and apartments that housed some of the cheaper living space within proximity of the center of imperial government.

It was when they were getting close to The Docks, the center of military might in the Empire, that Matt became seriously impressed. From quite a distance away, Matt could see the orbiting weapons platforms with guns the size of rivers, hundreds of mile-long battleships, attendant auxiliary ships, and glittering swarms of fighter craft going through drills, all circling above the continent-spanning factories and shipyards that made up large portions of the planet. Even as they approached, he saw a newly-minted ship, bristling with gun turrets, lift off from the surface to join its sisters in the void.

Far too quickly, their ship landed in the more administrative area of the planet. He was almost sad that their retinue and ship had sped them along through what must otherwise have been an hours-long clearance to enter. The weaponry he could see even now wasn’t just for show, and security didn’t typically mix with speed and convenience.

The moment the doors opened, Matt felt a wave of dry heat hit him, but more than that, he saw one single man standing there. At Tier 22, his [AI] identified him as General Darrow and their direct reporting officer. The man himself was simply but cleanly dressed in loose fitting fatigues, with dark skin and close cropped black hair. But most notably, he had a third eye in the center of his forehead which never stopped swiveling around its socket. It briefly paused to inspect each of them in turn, and Matt felt a slight chill run down his spine as it fell on him. Before more than a second had passed, the purple eye went back to examining the rest of the surroundings, the blue pupil sometimes disappearing from view as it turned into Darrow’s skull.

The three of them walked down the ramp to stand in front of General Darrow and went to attention, where they saluted him in unison. Luna had beaten proper military etiquette into their heads long ago.

Instead of immediately returning the salute, he looked them up and down before circling around them until he returned to his place in front of them, where he went to attention himself and returned their salute, thereby freeing them.

Nodding, he gestured to the side. “Follow me. We’re secure here, but not secure enough for my liking.”

The four of them walked into the nearest building where General Darrow said, “Take a few moments to change into fatigues. It will help you stand out a little less.”

When the three of them changed into the black and gray combat uniforms that soldiers wore when not in armor, General Darrow seemed almost surprised.

Matt wasn’t sure why, but General Darrow must have read the question on their faces as he volunteered the information. “Two minutes in, and you have already surpassed the average Ascender in my command. I suspect you will understand more shortly.”

Matt had no idea what to say, but Liz nodded. “You can thank Luna for that, General. Speaking of the other Ascenders, when will we be meeting up with them?”

General Darrow turned and spoke over his shoulder, trusting them to follow. “Soon enough. If you would follow me?”

Darrow led them through a dozen checkpoints, each manned by serious looking guards, with force fields over each door and scanners to check over every item they had in their rings and every cell in their body. Even that was the cursory version, and Matt saw them pass by several security checks uncontested, with the personnel saluting them as they approached. To his surprise, they came to a halt not in some grand meeting hall, but a rift.

Matt opened his mouth, but General Darrow pre-empted his questions. “Our base of operations is indeed a Tier 35 rift. In addition to the security benefits it provides, the time acceleration is a tremendous aid for inter-mission recovery and practice. And to answer your next question, Captain Quill, it is possible to access a closed rift instance at this high of a Tier. You just need a particular kind of Domain or Talent to manage it. Sergeant Astul is one of our personnel capable of the feat, and here she is now.”

Sergeant Astul was a Tier 35 woman in a military uniform, with light purple skin and glowing red eyes. She entered the room from a different door and saluted the four of them, her gaze unwavering. As she looked at Matt, he got the distinct sense of being hunted, but her posture was nothing less than perfectly respectful.

“Well-timed, Sergeant. If you would?”

Astul gave a curt nod. “Yes, General.” She rubbed a small scrap of fabric between her fingers while taking a long slow breath, then turned to face the rift instance. “After me.”

Violet smoke wafted off the woman as they approached the rift, and as she stepped into the tear in the world, the smoke intensified, coiling around their little group and wrapping them in a bubble of swirling violet. Past the thin bubble was nothing but an endless inky void, with occasional flashes of color. They walked through the nothingness for a little while, until Astul paused at one of the flashes of color. A moment later, they were inside the rift.

Or at least, Matt assumed it was the rift. The space they’d appeared in was entirely enclosed by a domed ceiling of featureless dark metal, illuminated only by a single white light floating just below the ceiling.

A moment later, the entire dome simply vanished, leaving them on a stone pad

General Darrow turned to them and said, “Welcome to Fort Lightfoot, home of Project Breach. Thank you, Sergeant. You may complete your hunt.”

The woman saluted them, then vanished with a blur towards what looked like a bustling town in the distance.

Matt turned his head around on a swivel as he took in the area around him. Instead of a military base with regimented buildings and simple designs, the place looked more like a resort. If it wasn’t for the squad of guards watching the rift entrance, he would have thought they had arrived at the wrong place.

Everything was incredibly tamed, and while Matt couldn’t prove that it was artificial, everything had the familiar sense of ‘guided wilderness,’ wherein all the grasses and shrubs and trees looked like they were perfectly natural, but it was all just so perfectly aesthetic, it couldn’t be attributed to anything but human intervention. Grasses formed paths through flower bushes wide enough for a tank to drive through, hills kept the local landscape from being too flat, and a brilliant blue sky with neither sun nor moon lit the entire rift like something out of a storybook.

To their left, planet-sized mountains loomed just a few thousand miles away, their foothills already larger than any non-rift peaks Matt had ever seen. A hundred miles to their right, a rich turquoise ocean stretched almost to infinity, but Matt could see nearly normal-looking mountains past them. Behind them, a forest slowly thickened and grew until each tree was thousands of miles tall and hundreds of miles thick. And in front of them, an idyllic meadow held host to a large town rife with signs of life. A small handful of ships were being repaired in a small hangar, a forge billowed red smoke into the sky, and an enormous field and orchard was loaded down with food and alchemical ingredients alike. Tiny people raced down wide streets, and even from where he stood, Matt could detect the faintly musky smell of enchanting materials.

Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw a flicker of movement, but when he turned, it was replaced with a dark spot out of the corner of his other eye. His spiritual perception didn’t agree, but he was certain he could see a shadow darting around the edges of his vision. Then, it vanished altogether.

Darrow motioned for them to follow him, and Matt put the shadow mostly out of his mind as they followed the path Astul had taken. “Project Breach is the culmination of a half-dozen projects, all intent on assembling the very best of the best from the Empire for a single purpose, supporting no less than two Tier 25 Ascender groups. You three will be a part of Team Zero, alongside Captains Light and Shadow, and lead by me. I’ll determine the rest of the team, based on overall team synergy, ensuring all roles are covered and that the Team may operate as an optimal unit.

“Now, to that end, we have assembled five other Teams, each fulfilling a single purpose and headed by the very best of the best. We have Academy graduates, near-Ascenders, army veterans, various super-soldiers, and elite delvers on call, each the very best in their field. Some operations will see you corresponding with one or more other Teams, so I advise you look to familiarize yourselves with them.

“We’ve been in communication with your former Management team, and are fairly certain we have all the special resources you require on-hand, but if there is anything else you need, speak with quartermaster Ir’ba. But first, we have some administrative duties to attend to.”

Matt took note of that and wondered what they could possibly need to do.

As it turned out, a lot.

Their first stop was the supply depot called Group Scroll, staffed by a cheerful-looking Tier 22 lieutenant, where they picked up a set of new storage rings. “Quill! Torch! Scoop! Man, this is so great. Anyway, I’ll try to stay focused! So, these will bind tightly to your spirits, and act as an additional form of ID. The raw storage isn’t the greatest, only about a thousand cubic feet, but you should really only be using them for unscheduled trips in and out of here. They’ve got all the usual security features, self-annihilation in the case of theft, a thousand and one defenses against intrusion, and they’re tough. Shadow herself couldn’t break one, and she’s probably the only person in the Realm who can break into one.

“Now, before you use them, check in with Colonel Galanodel with Group Firmament to bind them correctly. They’ll explode rather vigorously if you don’t do it just right. Any other spatial rings you have should be brought in to be checked out, and if you have any personal storage abilities, please come by at some point so we can get some measurements. Some of our Rift Breachers have issues with excessive or unusual spatial storages, and we don’t want to send them to the medics if we can help it.”

“What about our new arms and armor?” Liz asked, “When should we expect to get those?”

Stolen story; please report.

The lieutenant paused at that. “So that’s a bit tricky,” she looked to Darrow, who indicated for her to continue. “We hope to get you almost everything you’ll need within just a couple decades. Um, in-rift time, that is. But, and I know from working with Allie and Light that you guys might not be used to it, but we don’t actually have items made for you yet. But we do have some meetings lined up to take care of that! Though… we don’t even know what you’ll actually need. We have a lot of skill shards for your consideration, and an allotment of upgrade orbs for you… where is it? I don’t want to get this wrong… there we go! So, you’re each pre-approved for ten Tier 14 upgrade orbs, but if you want more, there’s just a really easy form to fill out. Then you have twenty-four Tier 26 upgrade orbs, that one would be tricker to get raised higher, and three Tier 38 upgrade orbs for each of you. That last one will be real hard to increase the number for, because they’re pretty much always snapped up the moment we get any. They are rare and everyone wants them.”

She shrank back slightly, as though worried that Matt, Liz, or Aster would react badly, then squeaked out an explanation. “It’s not that we don’t value you or anything, it’s just that, well, we have a lot of really high-priority requests for the orbs! And like, Command needs to make sure that they’re all going to good use. Not that you’re ever a bad use, it’s just that uh, we can’t really waste them on upgrading non combat spells or spells you only use once a decade? It’s uh, kinda a small miracle we were even able to track down nine, because well… they’re never not in high demand, but you should have seen my boss when he was told we’d need to equip three more Ascenders, and keep some on hand for other Ascenders or near-Ascenders that join up. Or not. Or maybe? Do you guys find high-Tier people getting mad and swearing a lot scary? Probably not, right? You must deal with crazier stuff than that all the time. But it’s kinda scary for me.”

As if sensing she made things a little awkward, she added, “Anyway! We have most of those orbs basically on-hand. But, we only have two Tier 38 upgrade orbs in stock at the moment, though we have another one coming in next week, two more in about a month and a half after that, and the final four… with no expected delivery yet.”

Three Tier 38 upgrade orbs. It was objectively so many, yet at the same time it was so few. Most people never even got one, but Matt already knew he’d be using one on [Cracked Phantom Armor], and one on [Regeneration], leaving only one more for him to figure out just what he would do with it… That would be a tough decision.

“Is there a form to request more Tier 38 orbs as well?” Aster piped up, “Like there are for the 14 and 26?”

“Teeechniiicaaallyyy yeeeees….” the lieutenant carefully teased out, “But it’s more of a really involved application, than a form to fill out. You need to explain what you want to use it on and what you hope to gain from it, and convince a bunch of the grumpy guys upstairs of all that, and then that gets put on a waiting list, and then you need to wait for a new orb to come in, so that can take a few decades to centuries, depending on how many show up.

“Really? So long? Even though we’re Ascenders?”