The Path of Ascension Chapter 369

Chapter 369

Leon split into two and took Matt a short distance away from Liz.

At first, Matt felt profoundly awkward about talking to Leon about the Soerilia incident. If he hadn’t come in spells blazing, Matt might have felt a little better about talking to his father-in-law as an understanding ear. But the serious King Leon was someone he wasn’t used to, and he didn’t want to explain a massive failure to him.

Still, he did it.

“I fucked up. It’s as simple as that. I made assumptions, didn’t look deep enough, and then flew off the handle like a typical Ascender.”

Leon grinned at that, but shook his head. “You know, while you did fuck up, that’s probably one of the most Ascender things you’ve done? I’m teasing, but it’s true. But in the end… yeah, you fucked up, but that’s not the end of the world. Soerilia’s boat might have been rocked, but you didn’t just leave them to pick up the pieces. Yo—”

Leon shook his head, stopping Matt from interrupting him. “You didn’t. I’m not trying to say you didn’t create a mess, but you stayed until the baron arrived and you did your best to keep things under control and moving along. That said, your issue isn’t that you acted like an Ascender, it’s that you acted like a mortal. That’s a problem a lot of young Ascenders have, which is part of the reason they all have bad reputations.”

Matt’s disbelief must have been obvious, because Leon nodded. “Seriously, go look at some Ascenders’ histories. Most of the incidents where they are known for flying off the handle are from before they were a thousand years old. Not all of them– Ascenders are known for punching first– but the main issue is with just how fast you all advance. You never have a chance to just sit still and watch a century or five pass by. Soerilia might have been slow, but did that really matter?”

Matt considered his words, but rejected Leon’s statement. “It did for the people who were being denied the Empire standard of living. The poor and the destitute. Th—” Seeing Leon’s look, Matt stopped and asked testily, “What?”

“Did things get better when the world was unveiled?”

Matt was about to respond that things obviously had, or at least would as Empire standards were put in place, but started second guessing himself.

“I’d say so. I can’t speak for how the people of Soerilia feel, but by most metrics, their lives will be better than before the unveiling, even if just from magical healing being made available.”

When Matt paused, Leon gestured for him to continue, but Matt just shrugged, trying to hide his frustration. “I don’t know what you want me to say. We had to unveil the world. Whether it was slow or fast, we would have gotten to this point. Even if it wasn’t better, it is. I—” Matt stopped as he thought he understood Leon’s point. “It just is, so what does it matter if it takes a few mortal lifetimes?”

At Leon’s nod, Matt shook his head. “That’s bullshit. I refuse to just let issues slip by because I can just outwait some issues. That’s… I don’t have a word, but it’s bullshit. Maybe we shouldn’t have tried to be nice. Maybe we should have flattened a mountain to show how strong we are. There are a dozen ways we could have played it and didn’t. But by waiting, we ensured that people had no chance to rise up and become immortal. We were deciding hundreds of millions didn’t deserve a chance that they would have with an on track integration or an immediate unveiling. Letting the world’s leaders drag their feet was the worst of the three options.”

Sighing, Matt felt his energy leave his body, but when Leon didn’t say anything, Matt said what was truly weighing on him. “Am I scary? Am I so scary that people won’t tell me that I’m both too involved and not involved enough, and hampering their efforts to do the very job I asked them to do? That hurts. I have done a lot of things, killed a lot of people in the war, but I never felt scary. I feel like I’m a pretty approachable guy. Understanding, considerate, and hopefully kind and helpful. Is that all in my head? Did you know that Kees, my vice guild leader, pulled me aside and told me that some of the guild members feel uncomfortable with my informality? I was doing that to make people feel comfortable! I was hoping that a more approachable attitude would make people feel more at ease. Why is all of this so hard? Combat comes so easy. It’s a dance, and I’m in charge. Or I can at least direct it, and when there’s an issue, I can just punch it into submission. Am I meant to only be a killer? Is that my singular purpose?”

Leon didn’t respond verbally, he just opened up his arms and Matt took the offered hug, sinking into it letting it take his anger and frustration away.

They floated like that for a few minutes before Leon said, “I know it might not feel like it, but you can only do your best.” Before Matt could refute, Leon continued. “No one can be perfect. Even the best administrators can’t always be perfect. They might do better on paper, but people are not rational or cooperative when it comes to collective interests. At least not on a large enough scale. Even just one asshole who’s only worried about what’s best for him will ruin any chance at delegating rule to an administrative type. Showing that you can and will punch those selfish people if they get out of line is a valuable service. This Realm is one of power. Might makes right because it’s the will of the strong that dictates things to everyone below them. That doesn’t make it nice or morally right, but it is what it is.”

Pushing him to arms length, Leon looked Matt in the eye. “You fucked up at Soerilia, but you cleaned up and learned something. You’re a smart and good kid, so I imagine that you are already taking steps to prevent that from happening again. That’s all anyone can ask of you, as that effort will stop another dozen incidents. But Matt, believe me when I say, there will be another incident that slips through. Even Manny, with a zillion and one Talents, still has issues he either didn’t see coming or couldn’t avoid without larger issues. And while you might not like it, being able to take the long game into account is useful. It doesn’t make us cruel or anything like that, it’s just a reality that is. The lesser evil is still an evil; it’s just, you know, less evil. Give it another few centuries, and you’ll better understand. If you want my advice, take this fuck up on the chin, learn from it, and try to do better next time. Having empathy is a good thing Matt, but having too much will paralyze you.”

Matt looked into the swirling entropy of chaotic space. “I don’t like it. I want to help people, but I made Soerilia’s situation worse. And despite throwing credits at the issue to help, they are going to spend the next century unfucking our half-assed unveiling.”

The silence lingered until Matt’s mind focused on something that Leon had mentioned earlier that was bothering him.

Was what he said about being young and wanting to enact change the reason the Great Powers changed their rulers every thirty thousand years? He had never really questioned why the Tier 50s didn’t linger in the realm forever, but it made little sense when he thought about it from the point of view of costs. It costs tons of resources to get a Tier 48 to Tier 50 without Tier 50 rifts.

It wasn’t outright stated in any histories he had read, but going over the annals, there seemed to be an unspoken rule after the shattering. The Kingdoms rulers had lingered for however long they desired, or until they were forced to Ascend by a potent descendant, but usually their reigns lasted more than fifty thousand years.

It was undeniably a good thing, as Matt couldn’t imagine living in a realm with the shattering Tier 50s. He wouldn’t have just been boxed up, but he would have probably been turned into an outright slave akin to a living artifact.

Immortals might be willing to wait out mortal problems and they might be willing to slow or outright cultural divergence from mortals, but they weren’t willing to allow themselves to suffer endlessly.

No Great Power ruler that he knew of had tried to linger, but that might have been because the other seven Great Powers would force them out. Though, it also might be because their own people would revolt if they didn’t have someone who they felt represented the new immortal generations interests.

Which was exactly how the mortals must have felt when they had taken over Soerilia, and Matt felt a blackness threaten to over take him. Instead of succumbing, he let the feelings pass over him and tried to process them while keeping enough objective distance that they didn’t overwhelm him.

Leon didn’t say anything, just letting him think. Together, they stood there for a few minutes just watching chaotic space swirl past them.

For all that he didn’t find absolution in Leon’s arms, Matt did feel better. His chat had gotten a weight off his heart, even if he had possibly replaced it with an even more bleak realization.

Wanting to change the topic, Matt asked, “So what did you mean by picking a fight with Faith? Is that an actual fight or just talk?”

Leon wiggled his hand. “Maybe? It might very well devolve into that, but I’m hoping it won’t. I’m going to demand a new world to replace that one, she’ll refuse, and then we’ll see. Manny just wants me to send a message that we won’t take such incidents lying down. At that point, they will probably just pay us a nominal fee and everyone will just move on while we are allowed to grab a world or two out of chaotic space despite the restriction on colonizing new worlds.”

Matt didn’t really like that, it felt like a pointless waste of time, but that was a description of a lot of politics. Most politics, really.

“Thanks for letting me vent.”

Leon grinned. “It’s what I’m here for. Speaking of being here, Freddy mentioned that he wanted to speak with you in the next few decades. No rush, but if you are near his capital you should pop in.”

“Any idea what it’s about?”

Leon dramatically rolled his eyes. “Not a clue. He mentioned it, but didn’t go into detail, and I didn’t ask. That’s between you two.”

He must have gotten a bit of information from his other self, because they flew back to meet up with the other Leon and Liz after he finished speaking.

Liz entwined her hand into his and Matt took comfort in their connection, even as Leon told them that a new world would be delivered to fill in the gap. Then, after saying goodbye, Leon vanished in a swirling mass of storm mana.

He hadn’t been there long, maybe fifteen minutes, but Matt felt better.

As they boarded their ship and continued to the next nearest world they wanted to visit, Matt didn’t dive back into work, but instead just spent the time in transit being present with Liz.

They talked about everything, even Soerilia; both of them had messed up and talking it through was exactly what they needed. They had just needed a little prod from Leon to get started was all.

At the next planet, Matt wanted to turn around and leave the moment he realized what they were walking into, but he didn’t let that show.

Arbor Felix was, or had been slated to become, a Veiled world. It had only been first settled a mere decade before the end of the war, and many of the inhabitants were not taking the transfer well. It had only been a few months since they’d arrived, yes, but Baroness Fatiha Bennani had been dealing with quite a fair amount of pushback from the nomadic residents as she brought Empire law and customs to their planet.

Most of the planet was uninhabited, left open for later waves of settlers who, for whatever reason, wanted to leave the greater realm. However, there were two primary areas which did have human population centers, which had less than seventy million residents each.

The first was on the planet’s largest continent, an old and massive, yet mostly flat grassland. There weren’t many mountains, forests, or even deserts. It was, if Matt was honest, rather boring, and he didn’t see why people would want to live in such a non-interesting area. The second was a temperate archipelago composed of thousands of islands teeming with low-Tier sealife, which was a beloved settlement location for all worlds due to rifts not forming thanks to all the islands.

Matt skimmed the planetary charter to get a sense of what their goals had been with the founding of their planet. They’d elected to have their starting mechanical tech levels at preindustrial levels, and all mana tech was limited to multi-person rituals instead of outright banned. Veil partings were mostly centered around an intense drive to explore, with vast tracts of wilderness set aside as permanently untamable, with cultivators living at the center of the continent’s only rainforest and a perpetual whirlpool adjacent to the archipelago. Anyone who intentionally made it to either location would be eligible for sponsorship in accordance with…

Matt skipped ahead as all of that nuance was irrelevant.

Learning solo-cast magic or developing proper industrialization in the first five hundred years were also Veil partings, interestingly enough. Their interim planetary representative was just defined as whoever had met the most individual people-groups on friendly terms, but anyone who lived in a single location for more than one year in a row was disqualified… Oh, and anyone who lived in a group that had waged war against another group within the past twenty years was also disqualified. That would only last until a single individual could be said to represent more than ten percent of the global population, of course, at which point normal Republic rules would have taken over.

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Overall, it seemed to him like the people who had moved to Arbor Felix were a bunch of troublemakers who detested the idea of anyone having meaningful power over another. That would be a fine stance, but from what he could see, they’d taken no meaningful steps within their own groups to prevent warlords from forming. He translated that to mean they were mad that they didn’t have power, and in doing so, sought to stop anyone else from having power. It was childish, and sadly, it was now Baroness Bennani’s and thereby his problem to deal with.

The real sticking points were the mandatory education, healthcare, and awakening laws. Their chosen level of technological development fell well below Imperial standards for sanitation, and without a centralized education system, they also fell afoul of that. Plus, the idea of Awakening seemed to outright offend a bunch of the elders who wholeheartedly wanted to be free of cultivation.

Liz asked a question Matt hadn’t considered. “Why didn’t they just stay in the Republic if they hadn’t even passed the first generation?”

“I’ve talked to the local elders about that. Some of them did. They originally had closer to two hundred million settlers, with close to fifty million or so pulling back. The remainder are seeming to hope that they can just do what they wanted to do anyway with the Empire. They are also the poorest of the settlers, the ones who had sold everything to come here. If they had gone back to the Republic, they would have been in an even worse place than they were before they got the chance to settle Arbor Felix.”

Matt contemplated that while he scanned the world around him more thoroughly this time. Like most veil worlds, it was a low-Tier planet. Tier 2 in this case. That was an incredibly low Tier which would struggle to self-sustain a cultivator population, and even with the Empire’s investment into such low-Tier worlds, it would take thousands of years before it reached Tier 5 at the slow pace those resources were allocated.

It was, in fact, barely Tier 2. It must have naturally Tiered up fairly recently in the planet’s history, and Matt wondered just how such a world had developed essence.

From everything they knew, worlds simply needed to reach a concentration of mana created from unawakened life until essence was formed. Most worlds had rich ecosystems with abundant, even if non-human, life. Arbor Felix seemed an oddity in that that didn’t seem to be the case.

Or, it hadn’t been the case before the world was settled.

Matt could see where the animals the settlers had seeded the world with were out competing the local fauna, but that was typical of any settling of a new world. Even the non settled continents didn’t have very much biomass, all together.

For all the things Arbor Felix wasn’t, it was one thing above all: peaceful.

Even the forests seemed to lack any substantial predator populations, with nothing large enough to readily hunt humans.

None of that helped the world, but it did give Matt a few ideas.