The Path of Ascension Chapter 388

Chapter 388

When Matt arrived back at Palustris he was immediately greeted by Liz, who hugged him before they shared a long kiss just enjoying being back near each other.

They didn’t give themselves the time they would have liked to enjoy each other’s presence, however, and Liz got right to business just a moment later. “Anything you didn’t mention in the Ascender chat?”

“Not really, but I have been thinking about everything as I flew back. Something that Rhea said stood out to me about these mystery enemies. They haven’t shown themselves, which makes it impossible to strike out at them but it also ensures they can strike out at us with far more impunity. On the surface that makes sense, but if they were just trying to prevent me from taking some of their profits they would have probably made entreaties. Or at least historically the ones who attacked Lila and Aiden did so, many times in fact. For obvious reasons, directly confronting an Ascender is a last resort, but we didn’t get a threatening anonymous letter to back down.”

Liz’s expression told him she understood where he was going as he finished with a grimace. “My gut tells me that’s because we already stepped over their bottom line and they are willing to fight to the death.”

“That, or they wanted to probe us with a way for them to slink back into the dark. That said, I agree with your assessment, and we should prepare for the long haul.”

Matt snapped his fingers and said, “That reminds me, I told your people at the research station that they should increase their security measures and to go into pseudo lockdown if we go out of communications for any length of time.”

He had swung by when he checked in on his guild and the lawyers who were battling it out. Even with the mortal clause, the actual case could take upwards of a decade as the cogs of bureaucracy churned, but Matt wasn’t too worried about the outcome.

They had enough proof to ensure at a minimum a very short patent, and this was an opportunity to dig into Falker’s guild’s information. It was doubtful that anything pointing to who was pulling their strings would be easy to find, but it was information all the same, and more than they had now.

As he took Liz’s hand, a phoenix formed on her shoulder and hopped over to her customary perch on his.

Together, they flew down to where their floating island sat in the ocean.

It was pretty and if one didn’t know its true nature, they might mistake it for a well built up, but otherwise ordinary, island.

They only stopped long enough to grab the house and inform all of their local staff they were going to be delving for the next few years.

Just as they were leaving, Liz cursed and flew up, calling out, “We said we’d take Ra’thala to the rift, and he asked about it when you were gone. Might as well make the first rift a Tier 26 as we ease back into delving.”

Matt agreed with her reasoning and so changed his direction to the rift he had initially wanted to take Ra’thala to, as he thought the man might like it.

He was standing next to the rift by the time Liz and Ra’thala returned and he met the ascender with a grin and a handshake.

“Good to see you, Ascender Titan.”

“Matt, I insist.”

Ra’thala cocked his head and his eyes flicked, indicating he was checking in with his [AI] before nodding.

“Then you should call me Rah. Or Thala. Either way, it’s less formal and you all are the closest thing I have to friends in this Realm, so it feels fitting.”

Matt was touched and said so. “Thank you and—”

Liz slipped in next to him and poked him. “Don’t get too much of a big head there buckaroo, he already made the offer to me first. You’re just second best, it seems.”

Rah seemed a little taken aback, but Matt knew Liz was teasing and played into it clutching his chest. “The lady wounds me. However shall I recover?”

Liz didn’t reply with the flirty response Matt expected and instead said, “Deal with all the paperwork you owe me for being gone so long.”

Matt tsked. “Ouch, but fair. How about instead of either of us doing paperwork we delve?”

Liz tapped her chin as if thinking. “Hmm. I think I can accept that. Mayyybeee. Fine but only because I’m the kindest, most understanding wife.”

“Prettiest too.”

“Damn right.”

Having enticed Liz into a kiss Matt enjoyed the moment until they needed to get going.

As they were about to enter the rift Matt had a thought and pinged his seneschal, Cato, that he wanted to see a number of his people in the coming years as they moved in and out of delves.

A few were to just follow up with things that had been missed in his last year of absence, but most were parts of the plans he had created while traveling between.

Countess Walsh was a part of that list and the only one of the people he requested to arrive in their next estimated break. Being in their duchy, she was only a month’s travel away, but he and Liz intended to go head-down and delve as fast as possible until they reached Tier 27 at a minimum, which meant minutes outside of rifts at best.

Delving for advancement at their Tier was an endeavor which could take centuries, and he wanted to get one of his plans in motion sooner than later, while also not risking any information leaks that might exist in the public networks.

Beyond that, most of the messages were to friends and close personal acquaintances they had made over the years. To be safe, they extended it to anyone they had any level of connection to, offering a place on Palustris for as long as this spat lasted, wanting to be safe rather than sorry.

That taken care of, Matt, Liz, and Rah entered the rift.

It wouldn’t be winning any kind of unique rift awards, but it was one that Matt had enjoyed delving thanks to its layout.

Inside the rift they found themselves standing on a perfectly flat plain stretching out farther than even their Tier 26 vision could see, which was far.

It made for a stunning sight, and Matt hoped that went double for someone who had mainly lived on planets and didn’t delve.

“Welcome to a rift.” Matt gestured around them with a flourish.

Rah spun on a toe and made a whistle-like sound Matt interpreted as awe.

Sticking his tongue out at Liz, he returned her sure to be coming mockery of the rift.

Liz gave him a little shove. “You only like this rift because you perfectly counter it.”

Matt gave her rebuttal as much dignity as it required and blew a raspberry at her.

Rah gave them a questioning look, so Matt explained. “I do perfectly counter this rift. We can show that after you get a taste of delving. Rifts generally have a safe area near the entrance and exits. Move about ten feet away, and you’ll be eligible to be attacked.”

Rah immediately asked the correct question. “What’s going to attack me?”

Not that Matt would spoil anything. “A great question, and one a lot of people like to research about rifts before they enter, but that’s boring. Safer, but boring. It’s not like real life enemies have walkthroughs of how to best beat them.”

Phoenix Liz on his shoulder warbled a disagreement, and Matt conceded to her point. “We did know about most people’s abilities in the war, so fair enough. We can tell you bu—”

Rah stepped out of the safe area and the rift that was a perfect grassland that stretched for millions of miles in all directions started to boil.

It wasn’t a rising tide, but a wave of corpses that started crawling out of the ground.

Zombies of all types, fast ones, slow ones, tanky ones, boney ones, wights, liches, golems of all types started to appear. Normally, undead rifts were destroyed due to the diseases they tended to carry, but this was one of the rare ones spared of that plague, and Matt was hardly the only person to love nice clean sightlines like this, so it was left alone.

Neither Matt nor Liz moved from their starting locations, nor bothered to ready any weapons. The rift safe zone wouldn’t stop them from being overwhelmed, but they had delved into this rift a few times and knew how it would play out.

Best to let Rah play with the zombies first.

Matt enjoyed watching the ascender spin around them, clearing their immediate vicinity of the rising horde. His moves were clean, fast, and decisive.

Interestingly enough, he clearly knew the weakness of most of the zombie types, showing he had either downloaded information about them and was getting updated via his [AI], or he had encountered things similar in his home Realm. But if he was being updated by his [AI], that was all it was doing, as he didn’t have any of the telltale signs of someone blindingly following an AI’s predictive algorithm. Then again, considering his old home didn’t even have [AI], even having a predictive [AI] would be novel and he might want to play with it.

Matt thought it was more likely that he had encountered similar monster types that spilled onto planets from rift breaks before. Rah was well traveled according to his stories.

The first enemy that did more than slow him down was a thirty foot tall bone golem that didn’t particularly care if its head was destroyed, which led his initial method to take it down to fail and nearly cost him an arm.

Rah danced around with it while letting his area of effect slash spell take care of the weaker zombies that rushed him, trying to overwhelm him with sheer numbers.

“I really need to buy one of those little area of effect spells when he gets around to making the one for Susanne.”

“It is cool. Think I could get it working with a spear?”

“Probably? It does work when he thrusts. Speaking of, how has the creating skills in blank skill shards been progressing?”

“Pretty good, actually. I’ve got the knack of how to do the creation down now. It’s still fiendishly difficult to manipulate a skill that is so far away from the core of my spirit, but I can test all kinds of weird stuff now. Sadly, the idea of shoving a spell into the blank skill shard and then manipulating that didn’t work. Same with merging spells inside them.”

Matt rubbed her shoulder in solidarity, just to get nipped by phoenix Liz for not giving her enough attention. “We figured they wouldn’t work, but it’s good to test. And really it might just need another trick. Did anyone try doubling the Tier of the skills for the blank shard? If it’s a space issue that might fix it.”

Liz shot his idea down with a shake of her head. “Rah tried it himself but couldn’t figure anything out, and no one wanted to do more than a few tests given how rare and therefore expensive Tier 20 skill shards are, especially blank ones.”

“Shame. That would have been very useful. Prices of the skill shards should see a decent uptick now, though. Good for those few who didn’t just destroy blank skill shard rifts.”

Liz bit her lip and phoenix Liz looked away from Matt and he felt a sinking feeling worm its way into his stomach.

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“What?”

“So since you weren’t here and we, the guild and myself I mean, blew through the few blank skill shards on the surrounding planets, I may have placed an order to buy blank skill shards.”

Matt sighed. “I still think we shouldn’t be benefiting from an early movers’ advantage like that, as now people will feel they were ripped off, but that shouldn’t be the biggest impact to the market.”

Both Lizzes dug their toes into the ground, phoenix Liz having to settle into dulling its claw on his armor, and Matt felt the sinking weight grow heavier.

“Just pull the band aid off. How bad is it?”

“So, Aster had been visiting at the time. Came to check in on us and Rah.”

“Oh, how is she doing? Last I talked to her was before the guild stuff. Anything new with her in the last year? I don’t like the implications of that, though.”

Matt had a pretty good idea of where Liz was headed, but hoped he was wrong.

“No, she’s fine. Or at least nothing compared to our issues, and she said she had the rifts we wanted to delve picked out and waiting for you to return. The issue however is exactly as you were imagining.”

Matt couldn’t stand the suspense anymore and asked as he watched Rah finally figure out the golem’s weakness was the stupidly hard bone heart beating inside its chest.

“Allie?”

“Yup. Allie came to grab Aster for lunch and when I mentioned my problem, she offered to pick up all of my orders.”

Matt facepalmed. “She’s going to buy every blank skill shard she can, isn’t she?”

Both Lizzes still wouldn’t look at him, and he poked the bird on her chest trying to get her to look down at him.

“Spill or I’m going to ‘accidentally’ dump honey in your feathers again.”

Both Lizzes pointed at him. “Ha! So you admit it! That wasn’t an accident. Vindication!”

Matt immediately backpedaled. “I admit no such things about past events, that was purely a threat about future events.”

“Nope, you admitted it.”