The Path of Ascension Chapter 385

Chapter 385

Matt stood amongst the flames of another burned out thieves guild and pondered just what exactly he had been finding.

This was his tenth raid on those who had hit the cargo ships, but so far, each of them had only been fed details on one of the aura potion shipments, with no information about the supplier or that multiple shipments’ information had been sold. Any thief with a brain would naturally think twice before stealing something that could be considered the property of an Ascender, but even those fools willing to take the risk for a one-off shipment wouldn’t risk being part of a larger organization that would surely incite their retaliation.

The thieves were fools baited into action. Matt was considering cutting his losses and not wasting his time chasing down the last few groups, but he felt obligated to do exactly that.

First, one of the remaining groups might know something the others didn’t. Unlikely at this point, but none of the thieves guilds as a whole liked being used in such power games. They knew they would be the ones to get squashed first, so they often took precautions when getting such juicy information. Tidbits about the sellers might not save them but it could turn a thrashing into a slightly less awful beating.

Second, Matt was hesitant to let anyone get the impression they could hit his and Liz’s duchy’s goods without swift and thorough retaliation. Being seen as easy targets was a quick way to make sure no shipping corporations wanted to move their goods in the future. That shouldn’t have been a problem given their status, but considering the strings that were being pulled on his guild and their business partners, it wasn’t unlikely that people would put pressure on the duchy’s partners. If too many of them left, he and Liz would be in serious trouble.

Duchies isolated like that were easy pickings for every malcontent in the Empire, and he liked his peace and quiet.

Third, Matt just didn’t like these organizations and didn’t mind cleaning them up.

On the other hand, he felt like he was wasting one of his most precious resources: time.

He may be immortal, but he had a thousand and one things to do at any given moment and this was interrupting all of them, leaving Liz, Cato, and a dozen others to pick up the slack as they could. Sure, he did what he could while traveling around and pushing data dumps through the EmpireNet when he stopped at planets, but that was only a fraction of his typical work speed, as his need for concentration hadn’t changed. It wasn’t fair to them, and that weighed on his conscience.

Ultimately, he decided to continue. His desires were ultimately outweighed by the responsibilities he had to not just his aura production workers, but the duchy as a whole. This incident would hurt, but if it happened again, they would have serious revenue problems, which meant he needed to draw a line in the sand here and now.

As he arrived at the planet where he suspected the eleventh team had retreated, he found a Tier 35 woman waiting for him. She floated over the Tier 21 planet and immediately wrapped Matt with their spiritual perception the moment he tore his way into real space.

“We need to talk.”

Matt shoved her spiritual perception away and she didn’t try to keep him enclosed. He did notice she spread her spiritual perception around him, searching for any possible hidden protectors.

As far as he knew, he didn’t actually have any hidden protector as he did once upon a time, but if they were Tier 45, he wouldn’t be able to sense them any more than the Tier 35 could.

Not that he felt any threat from the Tier 35. Oh, she could attack and kill him, but she would have to be stupid to even consider doing so in such an open manner. Even ignoring all of his allies who would avenge him, what if he survived? Ascenders were known for such things after all.

Once Matt floated over he crossed his arms, mirroring her. “What?”

He ensured his spiritual fluctuation carried every bit of his indignation at her interruption and his disregard of her cultivation.

“I’m the local sub guild leader of the Aluca Thieves Guild and two of my location’s people hit your shipments. I’ve already captured the individuals responsible and am willing to turn them over to you.”

Matt wasn’t that surprised. In fact, he had expected something similar to happen earlier, but none of that changed his response.

He just stared at the Tier 35.

If that was all she had, he was going through her.

She broke before he did. “I have information about the people who sold us the information and I will trade it for you leaving.”

Matt smiled.

Finally, the break he had been looking for.

“If that’s the case and it’s good enough, I won’t make things too hard for you.”

She flicked a finger at him, and Matt reviewed the file.

Ostensibly, two different people had sold the guild the information in each location, but both had recorded they were little more than mana constructs. High-Tier ones, as the Tier 20 scanners paired with local spiritual perception scans couldn’t identify the mana makeup or the spiritual perception that was controlling the mana construct. But they were able to get enough to know the Tier of the mana and type of veils were identical, which spoke volumes.

Mana constructs were similar to clones in the same way that a butter knife was similar to a longsword. They could take on the facsimile of a person well enough to pass a visual inspection, but they were little more than blobs of mana with a shell wrapped around them. That made them easy to make, but it was like controlling a puppet and didn’t pass back any sensory input, meaning whoever was selling the information had been on the world at the time they made the sale.

In and of itself that wasn’t a lot to go off of, but it was a solid start. Matt had already taken a copy of the planet’s records of everyone on the world and their general telemetry from the time of the information sales, when the goods were sold, as well as when he hit the planets just in case.

It might be useless, as it was possible that whoever had been selling the information had the ability to mask themselves from the planetary AI, but Matt doubted it.

He also doubted all of the information had been sold by the same person since the timelines didn’t work out, unless they were one of the fastest travelers in the Empire. Not on Allie’s level, but to move across that much of the Empire that quickly, they would need to be damn good.

Still, knowing one of the operatives’ modus operandi, he was able to look for similar oddities.

Millions of mana churned through his spirit and he activated his [AI], boosting it with his Back to Basics Minkalla floor reward to amplify its processing power even further. That drained his willpower, but he had far more now than he had when he was a tiny Tier 11, and he freely spent it, pushing his [AI] to its limit.

There were no sudden revelations which revealed the perpetrators’ identities, but his [AI] did narrow things down to around fifty possible unidentified individuals, as well as firmly pegging a minimum of four perpetrators. Not amazing, but a good start.

Looking at the Tier 35 whose name he still didn’t know, he nodded. “Accepted. Have them turn themselves in after paying for the other goods they took. As for the aura potions, ensure they are sold at cost.”

Pointing a finger, he shot a [Mana Beam] down at the guild hidden on the planet below and destroyed its shields, but not its structure, before tearing his way out of real space. He flew a while into chaotic space before he pulled his ship out and moved to his next location.

He didn’t intend to hit the next guild location, but he would go and grab their planetary AI’s information before moving on. He felt he was generous by simply revealing their location and forcing them to move instead of leveling the place.

He wanted to make sure people wouldn’t attack him, but he also didn’t want potential enemies fighting to the death instead of surrendering like they had.

He had just gone through another two worlds when he got a message from Liz through the Ascender chat.

“The mana engine was waylaid enroute to the review panel.”

Growling, he punched out and let loose a multi-million burst of mana, turning the surrounding chaotic space a light blue.

They had suspected there would be a second attack and the engine was an obvious target, so even before he had left, Kees had told Matt of his plan to move it early. Beyond those plans, his vice guild leader sent it with a very strong escort team composed only of trusted guild security on a non-direct route.

Despite all of their precautions, none of that had been enough, and the ship had been waylaid. Not taken over, destroyed, or stolen but just slowed down, which told him they were more worried about the time rather than the product itself.

That, combined with the near perfect locating of the ship at all, which he knew Kees would have taken precautions to hide, meant it was likely someone on the team or higher up in the guild had turned into mole.

It was always possible they were a spy who had only now been activated, but Matt found that unlikely. While Harper’s people and Tholly were mainly there to keep out the other Great Powers’ spies, they didn’t just ignore Empire grown spies, and it was typically easier to get someone who was already part of an organization to turn traitor than it was to get a spy through their defenses.

That, or someone had bugged one of his workers.

Tholly and his spies did scan for such tactics, but mental compulsions weren’t very noticeable by their very nature.

Matt wanted to say it didn’t matter anymore now that the damage was done, but with a spy, witting or otherwise, there was a knife ready to be planted in their back the moment they tried to retaliate.

Calculating his position, Matt debated calling Allie to get him, but he was sure it was already too late, and he knew how much she hated being treated as a taxi, even if she would come get him given the circumstances.

He had another way, however, and a brief message to Lila, who he knew was at the Capital, proved his fears correct.

“Sorry kid. Falker Industries submitted their own similar mana engine for the patent review a few minutes ago. I can go eat that Falker guy if you want?”

“No, but I appreciate the offer. Thank you, Lila.”

“Sure kid. I’m just napping on the Capital’s star, so tell me if you need anything.”

Matt genuinely appreciated the offer, but didn’t dwell on petty thoughts of an easy victory, and instead started digging.

An otherwise unnotable Tier 35 guild based on researching at-Tier products, usually but not always centered around luxury personal vehicles that more resembled spaceships than cars had, submitted an almost identical engine for patent review. Just hours before their ship was going to arrive without the untimely delay. It was incredibly suspicious, and any judge would see that, but Matt suspected that was his enemies’ goal.

By arriving first, they gained a glimmer of legitimacy that was enough to force Matt onto the offensive and sue them instead of them trying to sue him and his guild.

Pressing his hands into his eyes, Matt forced his boiling anger down.

It was like forcing a pressure valve shut, and he knew he’d need to let it go, but right now he needed to think.

His first reaction was to just go and kill Falker in a very public manner, but that would be stupid for a million reasons, and he was greater than his base instincts. He was also too high Tier for him to be able to do so at the moment, but that felt secondary to all the other reasons

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The question was, how did he want to play this?

It was very clear he was in the opening sequence of someone’s grand plan, but the most important question was how many more steps did this play have?

If this was the end of the opening act, that was fine, as now both sides would be operating with similar information. But his gut told him anyone who was willing to go this far was willing to go all the way, and they would have far more prepared.

Even if they magically solved this engine issue tomorrow, he was confident there was another issue ready to hit them wherever they were least protected.

That meant they had two ways to play this: play along or flip the board.

Matt’s instincts told him to flip the board and break the table over his opponent’s head, but that was an obvious Ascender play, and they would surely be prepared for that. Not that it was even possible at the moment, as he didn’t know who his enemies were beyond the target they had dangled before him.

That didn’t mean he liked dancing to someone else’s tune.

Was there a third option?

Not really.

He could go run to some combination of Mara, Leon, or Manny, but his parents, despite all of their protectiveness, weren’t the type to solve every issue for their children. They were much more likely to let everything crumble around him before intervening. Not to mention that Manny had specifically warned him about doing what he wanted when challenged almost a century ago.

It was that last one that settled it for Matt.

Manny had seen this, and hadn’t seen fit to warn Matt beyond telling him he should believe in himself. Knowing what he knew of future sight Talents, he suspected the cabal arrayed against him was already forming at that time. If that was true, they would be well prepared for his possible responses to their opening moves.

And ultimately, this was a test. Or at least as safe an environment to fail in this sort of soft power game as was possible.

Matt might lose, he and his guild might fail to live up to expectations, inventions meant to help people might get held up in patents, but none of that was the end of the Realm. The inventions would get out there even if in limited form for a while, unlike what he would have released.

He also wanted to prove to himself and everyone else he was more than a battle junky who only knew how to fight.

Those realizations didn’t stop him from being mad, but it did temper his will.

If they wanted to play, he’d play. But his enemies should expect nothing less than what they dished out returned to them, and Matt was already tallying up the score.

Still burning hot, Matt backtracked to the nearest world and entered real space long enough to send a series of messages via micro portals. It wasn’t as fast as the Ascender chat, but it was at least marginally more private.

Sure, there might only be a dozen people in the Ascender chat, but security was more a suggestion than a rule when it came to half of the Ascenders, and he didn’t need them seeing more of his guild’s plans than necessary. He would also have felt bad if Liz had to act as a go-between for all of his plans.

She was busy not only running the duchy in his absence, but also trying to learn Ra’thala’s method of safely creating skills in skill shards. According to her last message, only a handful of the scientists who were trying had succeeded at all, and while she was making progress, she hadn’t picked it up yet.

None of that stopped her from offering to rush over to the Capital, but Matt didn’t think that was a good idea.

They needed her there in case these attacks against him spread to the duchy in a more practical way.

These enemies could very well be hoping Liz left Palustris to strike there while both of them were distracted. It was what he’d do if he was trying to attack himself.