The Path of Ascension Chapter 362

Chapter 362

Once their meal drew to a close, Sien brought them to a world three links away for their next rift. It would have been pretty typical if she hadn’t literally brought them, no ship involved. Instead, she’d used some kind of smoke-cloud skill to cart them directly through Chaotic Space with barely a bump. Allie complained it was too slow and not luxurious, but it was still faster than any comparable Tier ship would have been.

When they asked about the method she was using, they only got intentionally cryptic answers about the realm of dreams and its unlimited reach.

Unlike her favorite rift, the rift they were about to delve was famous.

Well. Relatively. He knew about it, and a number of non-aperology hobbyists would be familiar with it, but none of the other Empire Ascenders had heard about it before he mentioned it. It was known as the Rift of Challenging Heavens, and pushed the limits of what was thought to be possible in a rift.

The simple entrance to the rift was already incredibly elaborate, with white marble and gold trim found in abundance, thanks to the sect that owned it adopting some of its visual motifs.

There were a few groups on standby that seemed ready to delve the rift should a team not show up, but their slightly irritated expressions were replaced with servile smiles the moment they saw who was escorting them to the rift.

Matt almost wished that Sien wasn’t there. He would have loved to see the Tier 28’s expressions once they realized the weak Tier 26’s could kick their asses to the local star and back without breaking too much of a sweat.

Or maybe they would be the ones to get their asses kicked. One of the women in the second group gave Matt a dangerous feeling, and he returned her stare with one of his own. Her right arm was ghostly and had an ethereal aura which caught all of their attention.

“I wonder if she’d let me borrow that arm?” Allie’s comment surprisingly pulled a laugh out of Matt, which broke the tension he had been feeling.

According to legend, this rift dated all the way back to the Glorious Everlasting Kingdom of Prosperity. It was one of the few places that had survived the Shattering and provided a peek into ancient, ancient history. If that were true, it was basically a time capsule, a final, tenuous connection to something that everyone had long forgotten.

It made Matt wonder. Would the Empire one day be in a similar situation? A scant few rifts and ruins dotted about the Realm, preserved as a final memory of that which had once been abundant? If they lost their eventual true war, would places like this be the only sign they had once existed?

No.

He refused to let that ever come to pass. So long as he lived, he would keep the Empire alive.

If he was strong enough, he could dictate the rules and prevent this from happening to the Empire.

That thought rang true, and he felt his spirit stirring in a way he’d never forget. There was the potential for an inspiration if he delved down that thought far enough, but if he tried to force it now, he would lose whatever tenuous resonance made that very inspiration possible. So he let it pass. It could sit in his subconscious until he was in a better place to finish it.

There were a lot of things Matt could do, far more than the average person, let alone the average Tier 26. But at the same time, there were a lot of things he couldn’t do, and that was ok.

As they neared the rift, they had to wait for two teams to cycle into the rift, which surprised Matt yet again. Low Tier rifts might be delved on cooldown, but it was extremely rare for a Tier 28 rift to be so heavily delved.

Doubly so were the mana crystals the delving teams needed to present as proof they had enough mana to pay for their cycle of the rift.

A quick probe of the rift told Matt that they were delving the rift at as close to full capacity as was possible.

Though, not quite.

Looking to Sien, Matt asked, “Can we burn a second instance to make sure the rift is actually full?”

“The rift is well tended-to, fear not. Thy rewards shall be plentiful.”

Matt shook his head. “It’s close to full, but not actually full. The rewards will be good, but not full good.”

Sien turned her red eyes to the guards watching the rift, who visibly swallowed. “Mistress, I’ve informed the curator and he is rushing over immediately.”

It took ten minutes, but the frightened man apologized profusely for the actions of his predecessor, who had allowed the rift to dip slightly below full. They immediately had one of the tenders dip inside with a bag full of mana crystals, then leave the bag inside as the instance cycled fifteen minutes later.

Once that happened, there was a noticeable increase in the presence of the rift and they were ready to delve.

Matt smiled as they entered the rift.

Even as he went through his extensive buffing routine, he scanned the rift around them.

They were standing on a floating island in a pristine blue sky, with a few dozen other islands floating around them.

The air was slightly cool, but in a refreshing way, thanks to the light from the false star of the rift beating down on them.

It was, on the surface, absolutely idyllic.

Matt saw the rift monster on the nearby island and took a moment to inspect it.

A single humanoid close to seven feet tall with alabaster skin, golden eyes, golden hair, and massive white wings. Its face was distinctly masculine, but with all the features that most people considered attractive. The ink-black lines that seemed like tears running down its cheeks might ruin the aesthetic for some people, but with Liz’s penchant for blood tattoos, Matt didn’t mind. The monster was almost attractive, if not for the scowl of rift rage that was carved on the statuesque face.

The moment they moved off the safe platform, the monster reminded them that it was, in fact, a monster made by a rift rather than anything to ogle.

The wings turned gold as light mana infused them, and each wing turned into a giant array that bolstered the [Light Beam] it shot out of its eyes.

Matt intercepted the attack with his own [Mana Beam], letting the two titanic beam spells slam into each other. He could have overwhelmed the beam by dumping more mana into the spell, but he was interrupted as the angel exploded in a spray of light mana.

Turning to Zack, he shook his head. “Come on, man. I was having fun.”

To his surprise, Zack actually looked sheepish. “Apologies. I anticipated that the array would be more stable than it was.”

Aster laughed at Matt’s expression, but Allie floated upside down by his left hand and asked, “How much mana was that angel throwing out, roughly? That was a pretty beefy [Mana Beam].”

“About 5 million MPS, yeah.”

Liz whistled. “Ok, so the information about their power isn’t exaggerated. Kinda hard to believe the rumors.”

Their musings were cut off as a patrol of three angels started flying over to inspect the disturbance, which was where the rift’s most famous peculiarity came into play.

The lead figure, a female angel, started yelling something incomprehensible. It was, so far as anyone knew, roughly as meaningless as the false-generated text in Rift made books. But considering the angels were one of the closest things there was to an ‘intelligent’ rift monster that anyone had seen, there were always doubts and rumors to the contrary. Some people claimed that with a linguistic Talent, or some special modification to [Comprehend Languages], you could understand what they were saying. Of course, those reports were split between those saying the angels yelled generic-sounding judgements about them being impure, and them leading to a hidden route through the rift. So Matt was skeptical that any of them were true.

Either way, none of their group were able to understand what was being said, and even if they could respond, the angels would still attack anyway.

The woman’s massive wings spread and a golden spear appeared clenched between her hands as she channeled a titanic amount of mana through her wings and staff to cast a zone of control spell.

Matt felt all non-light spells weaken, while light spells were bolstered to a corresponding degree.

By the time the woman finished her spell, her companions were clad in golden armor and wielding swords and shields.

The female angel flew backwards with a flap of her wings and pointed her staff at them, but Aster intercepted the chains of light with a counter spell.

Matt flew forward and engaged with one of the male angels while Liz took her place as a frontline fighter next to him. Together, they entangled the monsters and prevented them from rushing down Aster and Zack. Allie was somewhere, but where exactly was a mystery to Matt, as he couldn’t feel her presence anywhere in the few dozen miles around them.

Not that they needed her help. As Zack had proven, the angels had a critical flaw in their wings, but taking advantage of it again would have ruined the fun. Instead, they were fighting the monsters the way they were intended to.

The fact that [Cracked Phantom Armor] got progressively better at defending against the attacks as it attuned itself to light mana, and that attack specifically, wasn’t cheating at all. Sure, it made his armor glow way brighter and gain a minor blinding effect, but even that was absolutely just a valid part of Matt’s core kit, no matter what Aster said.

To not circumvent the entire challenge, he focused on his sword fundamentals and worked to defeat his opponent that way. The angel wasn’t on his level, but its Tier advantage still meant it was beating him. Not by much, but the slight advantage had him working to hold his ground.

With her similar match up and longer range weapon, Liz was doing slightly better with her spear, but she still wasn’t choosing to overwhelm her opponents with numbers. Like Matt, she was slowly whittling down the frontline fighter engaging her.

Zack and Aster had it far easier as they took the time to either pick apart the mage angel’s spells, or in Aster’s case, counter any of the support spells it cast.

It took almost five minutes, but Matt had finally hacked through the shield. And without the defensive wall, the angel before him quickly fell, letting him fall onto the mage.

She tried to conjure a wall of light to block him, but with [Cracked Phantom Armor] aspected to light mana, he slipped right through with only a spray of sparking light mana to signify his passage.

One swing of his sword bisected the monster and ended that portion of the fight.

He did, however, notice that even as her body started to dissolve into light, a single feather remained in its place.

That was incredibly lucky, and as Matt reached to snag it, he found a starry hand already grabbing it.

“Got it!” Allie’s appearance wasn’t surprising, and neither was her snatching the prize.

Loot in hand, she sauntered over to Aster and stuffed the golden feather into his bond’s tail. “Ta da!”

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Liz finally pierced the last angel’s shield with a skill empowered thrust and joined them, looking at their small collection.

“One down, seven hundred and seventy six to go.”

Liz finished draining the male angel before letting the body drop into the emptiness, and a second phoenix took its place on Aster’s shoulder.

“I doubt things will be quite so easy after this.”

“Oh, definitely not. There are three groups rushing this way now.”

Matt cursed Allie for not telling them that immediately, but she didn’t vanish this time, even as the three groups’ mages worked together to cast an even larger zone of light buffs.

Aster dispelled their effort, which had a significant backlash and caused one of the male monsters to lose an arm as the mana they were channeling through it spiraled out of control.

Matt had his hands full on his end as three angels, two women and a man, tried to circle around him to get to Zack and Aster.

Allie appeared next to one, her daggers already pressing into its throat, but the moment she tried to drive the blade home, the damage was transferred onto her own neck.

Teleporting away, she clutched at her throat. “Not this variant! Come on.”

A bolt of silver metal pierced one of the melee angel’s defenses and sent it staggering back.

Zack didn’t suddenly have a hole in his chest, which showed that he had identified the correct monsters.

It was annoying that they had gotten this variation, but it wasn’t the end of the world. This instance of the rift wasn’t without its limitations. Because they got reflect monsters, they couldn’t also get the regenerating monsters, which was considered the most annoying variation. Healers meant that you needed to kill every monster twice as their bodies reconstituted from critical damage, but it wasn’t as ideal as getting the swarm variation, which just had more monsters than normal.