The Path of Ascension Chapter 382

Chapter 382

Ra’thala couldn’t help but look to where Ascender Shadow, Allie, had vanished. He and Ascender Titan, Matt, were dozens, if not hundreds of planets away at the Ascender’s own fiefdom and traveling to his guild, but none of that was at the front of his mind.

Like a specter of the night that sought to take his life, the information he had spent his last few days learning refused to reconcile itself with everything he thought he knew.

Hearing Ascenders were the strongest people of their Tier in this Realm was one thing, but learning that to earn that title they needed to reach Tier 25 in less than two hundred of their years was beyond shocking. Their years weren’t exactly the same length— his Realm didn’t have standardized years across planets— but they were easy to convert. Once he had done the conversion, he realized these people had gone from unawakened mortals to the peak of his Realm in less than a Divines’ lifespan.

And they did it with minimal help.

Sure, they had some support and trainers, but that didn’t change the fact that they earned their power by entering Monster Dens and killing the monsters inside, instead of just killing the spill off that escaped from full rifts.

Their cultivation was different; certainly that could account for some of their speed, as they weren’t limited by the ambient essence and others cultivating near them. But the fact remained they had effectively raced through his entire former Realm in a little longer than an early Divines’— a Tier 5’s— total lifespan.

It had taken Ra’thala almost an entire day to actually believe that, and even then, he had needed to go over the insurmountable amount of media surrounding each Ascender’s Ascension before it really sank in.

It was only after he truly understood what made one an Ascender that he could appreciate his new acquaintances and Yun Me, who had reached their level through grit and effort.

Even Susanne, who acted like Ascender was a nigh impossible goal, had only failed at the final hurdle, and from the media reports, could have completed The Path of Ascension if she had been just a dozen years faster.

From his perspective, the difference between two hundred and two hundred and twelve years was nothing.

He knew immortal cultivators who had been in seclusion longer than that, trying to work their way through a bottleneck in their cultivation, and these people had gone from nothing to the peak of his old Realm in that time.

It made him wary of even being near them.

Sure, they had defeated him in combat, and this new information didn’t inherently change his relative power, but it did put things into a new frame of reference.

These weren’t pampered children raised to their position and given everything they could need or want, they were the most brutal, efficient killers who could be sourced out of countless quadrillions.

Even more shocking was learning they were still pushing themselves to become stronger. Not just in advancing in Tier, but they were constantly honing their spells, their abilities with their weapons of choice, and formulating new tactics to make themselves stronger in their Tier despite only having rivals among themselves.

All of that made him feel like that small boy who had cheated his way into being a Celestial. Small and unworthy of interacting with such prodigies.

He knew it wasn’t logical, but that didn’t stop him from feeling that way.

Matt floated into the air and opened his arms. “Our capital planet. Palustris. It’s a fire-aspected world, and a prize at its Tier.”

Ra’thala wrenched his mind to the present and looked around with all of his senses.

Eyes widening, he took in a deep breath and cycled some of the ambient essence through his spirit. Having not yet created a cultivation method that would let him form his twenty sixth layer of cultivation, he couldn’t keep this uniquely fiery essence but his cycling let him get a feel for it nonetheless.

“A worthy world.”

An understatement to be sure. Anyone from his Realm who practiced a fire cultivation method would love to get their hands on this essence. It danced like it was alive and ready to burn any of his enemies to a crisp.

Wanting to share a little, Ra’thala continued, “I never found such a world myself, but I heard a tale of a similar world, except this one was filled with seemingly endless oceans. A dozen families fought over the world, but it was all for naught, as one of the defeated parties, angry at their loss, destroyed the Sky Bridge, sending the world adrift. We didn’t know that Chaotic Space was traversable, and so the world and its people were lost.”

That was another thing he hadn’t known of before his ascension, and something that seemed obvious in hindsight.

They had known that people too strong for a world could tear through reality and pull in destructive energies, but no one had thought to send themselves into that area to explore, as these people had learned to do.

Or if there were people or families who had learned of that secret, they hadn’t shared.

He suspected there were. He personally knew of at least three families who had consistently sold treasures not found on the connected worlds who he now believed had discovered how to traverse the dangers of Chaotic Space, and were raiding passing planets for their treasures before Sky Bridges naturally formed. Possibly even ones far enough out they wouldn’t form bridges.

Matt nodded at his words but indicated a cluster of rifts to the side that didn’t look naturally formed. Too uniformly spaced. “I have something of a hobby of creating rifts to study and also to keep delving from getting repetitive. You said you wanted to check them out. We can do that before or after the visit to the guild, but I’m happy to walk you through them.”

Ra’thala didn’t know him that well, but he believed he read reluctance in Matt’s body language, and so shook his head. “Let us go to the guild first. Work then play as they say.”

Matt grinned and flew out of the planet.

Letting his sixth sense stretch out, Ra’thala searched around them to find both of the planet’s moons were not just inhabited, but terraformed, and had their own essence cores.

That wasn’t entirely new to him, but it was rare that people bothered to go through the effort if the moons weren’t inherently inhabitable, and he doubted they were given what he could feel.

It was also a reminder just how powerful and influential these Ascenders were.

An entire moon was dedicated to one of their personal projects.

A Tier 25 doing so in his Realm wouldn’t have been that unusual, but Matt wasn’t at the peak of the Realm— just halfway there. No one would have allowed a Tier 12 to have such wealth in his Realm. People would have descended upon them to plunder the accumulated wealth like a pack of ravenous wolves.

Surely a benefit of having such a large and interconnected government, but not without its downsides. The wars these Ascenders were founded for dwarfed anything he had even heard tales of in his Realm, and he kept that in mind even as he saw the grandeur of this place.

Still, it was impressive, and he let himself bask in the feeling of the new and unusual before it became commonplace.

Buildings were spread out to make what he would call courtyards or estates, and people moved between them along carefully placed walkways. Laboratories staffed with dozens of people all working in unison on whatever tasks they had.

It felt like the Royal Academy of Isha’tl he had visited when he was a Deity and on his path of vengeance.

He hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to really appreciate it at the time, but he had learned several spells there and earned himself a good bit of resources from treasures of the stars he had traded with the academics there.

Sadly, the academy had been leveled when the royal family had been defeated by a neighboring world, who themselves had been kicked out of their own world after losing their Almighty— their Tier 15— in a battle.

Ra’thala set his new [AI] to correct him anytime he used his old Realm’s terminology and once more marveled at the skill.

Having absorbed it, he was shocked at how delicate and intricate the skill’s structure was, but while that was impressive, it was dwarfed by what the [AI] allowed him to do. So much was just a thought away, and it was easy to get lost in the amount of information available.

Before he could get distracted once again, they landed at a large central building and stepped inside, where Matt walked him through connecting his [AI] to the LocalNet, giving him permissions to be on the world and access to the research ongoing at the facility.

Deliberately not looking through the list, Ra’thala looked to Matt and blinked at him to lead on, then corrected himself to a small hand gesture his [AI] said did what he wanted.

Leading the way, Matt guided him through the halls as he spoke. “I sent a message here as early as I could about looking for people who had a special interest in skill making, or rather skill modifying. There aren’t too many who bother to make skills here, but there are a few. I even know one. A summoner who helped train me when I was Tier 6 but he’s still a few months out. Thankfully, the guild has a few people who have both dabbled in the subject and are eager to listen to you talk about it.”

As they arrived at the room set aside for them, Ra’thala didn’t miss that it was spatially expanded, though to a smaller degree than he had seen at the Capital, where space was at a premium.

His attention was drawn away from that to the people waiting for them. Almost all of them were stronger than him, and Ra’thala felt a small twinge of unease at the thought of teaching these people until he realized they weren’t the people he was projecting onto them.

They weren’t old hands who long since would have mastered anything he had to share, but instead like fresh Celestials who needed guiding, and he had done that a time or two even if he had never been anyone’s master.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

That settled him into a place he was more familiar with, and Ra’thala went over the basics of skill creation using the simplest physical boosting skill as a starting point.

Being of a higher Tier than himself, they learned quickly, and he never needed to repeat anything more than twice. And half of those instances were because of translation issues, as his [AI] was seemingly still finetuning his language conversion just as he was learning Empire Standard.

One of the men, Erwin, raised a finger in question. “The size is a bit of a problem. It’s larger than our standard size by almost half. Is that reducible?”

Ra’thala thought over the question for a moment before shrugging. “The size is larger than some. In fact, it’s a touch larger than what I would call average, but it’s larger for two main reasons. One, it’s a foundational skill that is like a block of marble ready to be carved. Many of the skills that build off of this will trim away pieces, which bring its size down. Not to the degree your peoples have seemed to create skills in, but something closer. Second, the skill is easier to make if it’s a little larger. More margin for error. Additionally, we just don’t really run out of skill space, so having slightly larger skills isn’t really that big of a deal. I never met anyone who wasn’t an immortal skill collector that needed to use what you call the outer layer of skills.”

Realizing he hadn’t really answered the man’s question, Ra’thala added, “As to if it can be reduced? I’m sure it’s possible, but I don’t know if it will be worth the results.”

Erwin started murmuring to himself, but Matt nodded as if he had expected Ra’thala’s answer and held out a hand. Another person appeared long enough to drop a small bag into it before vanishing once more.

Tossing the bag to Ra’thala, Matt said, “A collection of blank skill shards of various Tiers. They let us transfer skills to other people and are the perfect way to test a lot of our theories about skill size and what Tier each skill is considered as its impossible to put a higher Tier skill into a lower Tier skill shard.”