The Path of Ascension Chapter 391

Chapter 391

 

Having settled on an initial method of settling the ownership of the planet, Matt did something he didn’t think he’d ever end up actually doing.

Leaning into his Ascender status.

They needed a lot of people to contend with the masses of Corporations mercenaries and the few tens of thousands that had gathered at Duke Plessi’s call weren’t nearly enough.

At least not for the type of competition they had settled on.

Mass exploration and exploitation methods weren’t rare, but they were definitely less favored than a straightforward combat method, usually a tournament of some kind, if for no reason other than the people participating in such events were entitled to keep what they extracted from the world. It greatly lowered the initial surplus the winning Great Power got out of the planet and no one wanted that.

Things got interesting when the actual make up of the participants was considered. The Corporations had easy access to a number of mercenary corps who were at least soldier-level combatants with a decent sprinkling of low- to mid-level elites in their ranks. The Empire, unless it was allowed to use its own standing armies, didn’t have such ready access to elites who could stack the metaphorical deck in a tournament.

Still, the Empire had its own advantages.

First, the Empire’s population, especially their Tier 15 population, ensured they had a much deeper pool to pull from even if they weren’t all local. Quantity had its own advantages, especially when it came to things like exploring a planet-wide ruin, which was why Matt had been so willing to use that method when Clyde suggested it.

Second was their pull as Ascenders.

The Corporations might be able to bring up mercenary corps, but they, like all of Corporations society, were primarily driven by profit. Which meant unless Clyde wanted to fund the expedition personally, it would be harder to bring in as many people as their fame could. Even if the potential numbers of each side were even, which they most certainly weren’t, with each new mercenary corps that arrived, the pie got smaller, making joining a less attractive proposition, which explained why no extra mercenary corps had shown up in the last few months.

As if thinking about him summoned him, Clyde appeared next to the area the Empire had set up in and Matt directed more attention to the Tier 40 as Liz moved to speak with him.

He quickly lost interest when it became clear he just wanted to try and get them to budge on their originally agreed upon timeline as he saw the numbers flocking to the world compared to the lack of numbers showing up to his own side.

Matt instead returned to his own work.

As the only person who had any understanding of rifts beyond the basic ‘go in, kill things’, Matt was excavating pathways into the ruins below.

Clyde had originally wanted to just drill down to a few dozen spots across the planet and call it good enough, but Matt had put a stop to that immediately.

They needed to be careful as to not break the ruin, a task which was made harder by the ever-shifting rooms the ruin consisted of.

It could have been an impossible task, but after questioning the original Corporation exploration team, he learned that the ruin would never shift a room that had people inside of it and a connection to the outside. A fact which had been the main hindering force in their own investigation as they didn’t want to risk getting whisked off deeper into the ever shuffling maze.

With some exploration, Matt found a spot where the ruin was exposed to the outside, thanks to a cave system that touched the ruin, and discovered there was a naturally formed safe room similar to a rift’s entrance. Or at least something close enough to only be an academic difference.

A little testing showed that the rift could and would form new safe areas, but the process was slow, or at least limited, as each new entrance took longer for the ruin to create a safe room and instead just allowed the monsters to pour out like a leaky bucket until the room was finished converting.

The easy solution that the ruin just needed more mana to make the change wasn’t the case, which left them with a theoretical ten entrances for a stable setup.

Not really enough for proper coverage of a ruin so large but more than enough for deciding who got to keep the planet.

Stepping over to the gathered people, Matt reported his findings to everyone.

“Ten locations. I propose we choose where they are distributed in an array that will best serve the planet as a whole in a long term capacity.”

Clyde huffed. “Ascender Titan, don’t think to pull the wool over my eyes. I noticed that the ruin entrance moved to be farther away from each entrance you made during its resets.”

Matt turned and met the Tier 40’s gaze before continuing as if he hadn’t spoken. “A distribution as I have shared, would maximize land usage around each entrance and likely move the ruin’s reward under the deepest ocean. That should, if my preliminary understanding the of the ruin is correct, lead to the largest ratio of rooms from the entrances which will lead to faster reshuffling of the deepest rooms. The rooms farthest away from the boss room and therefore closer to the tunnels might struggle with the respawns of their monsters, but I believe that should be solvable by simply shunting more mana underground. Here are the [AI] models I’m using and everyone is free to play around with other distributions, but I believe this is the best layout.”

Clyde huffed and puffed his annoyance but eventually gave his assent to the distribution of locations after pushing one location a few miles away from a wetlands, which Matt was happy enough to do.

With the ten spots selected, Matt chose not to put them directly where cities should have formed. He wasn’t sure if a city’s worth of people living above the entrances could be dangerous, either to the people or the ruin itself, but it was best to treat it like a particularly dangerous rift and keep it close but not directly inside city limits.

City limits that didn’t exist thanks to the world being unsettled. Still, it wasn’t too difficult to estimate where cities would naturally settle based on historical figures.

That, and Matt knew anywhere the ruin entrances were, the cities would form around them. That was even true for the Corporations and their insistence on living in space as much as possible. Rifts would require ground-side construction if only for the teams delving the ruin, let alone the planet’s rifts, and those locations should mostly correspond with the locations Matt chose.

Digging the tunnels down was more fun than it could have been, as it gave Matt a chance to flex his creative side, something he rarely got to do when using his manipulation skills since leaving Luna’s clutches.

Matt started each location by digging a large spiral shaft down the distance between the surface and the ruin, creating a pathway which would hopefully initialize whatever process the ruin had for making safe rooms, then he started getting it ready for what a heavily-utilized ruin would need in its entrances. Mainly a stairway wide enough for five or six people to walk abreast and tall enough that even the largest Tier 15 animal forms could walk up or down comfortably.

He also turned the central shaft the stairs spiraled around into a hollow tube that an elevator could be installed into when the planet was settled.

Together, they would allow both higher Tiers to move quickly via the stairs and groups to move either wounded comrades out of the ruin without jostling them too much, or large loot that wouldn’t otherwise fit into a low-level spatial item.

To ensure everything was stable and could handle the weight of teams that might be carrying things in spatially-expanded backpacks that didn’t perfectly isolate the weight of the objects inside, Matt compressed the ground into the tightest form he could while also threading a lattice of Tier 25 steel through everything.

And Aster made fun of him for carrying large amounts of raw materials in a spatial ring just in case they needed them.

He even took the extra few minutes to create murals running down the entire length of the stairwells.

He intentionally kept them fairly generic and without any political aim or slant, just chronicling the repeated rises and falls of the Realm, continuing to raise its peaks as time advanced.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t sneak in a few hidden things for the close observer to discover.

A small scene of himself, Aster, and Liz when they had first met was tucked into the corner of two other murals, as well as slightly higher than average concentration of phoenixes and foxes in general. And one small, extremely grumpy-looking black cat hidden in a corner just in case Luna ever passed by this world and inspected his handy work.

By the time he finished, he found that everything else was pretty much ready for the final batch of Tier 15s to arrive. Of which he saw a gratifying amount of Empire Tier 15s. They might have genuinely cleared out almost the entire sector’s Tier 15 population, leaving only those who couldn’t leave their jobs.

Had they made the rewards too valuable?

Well, his [AI] hadn’t yelled at him and neither did Cato, so even if they were slightly too generous, it couldn’t be that bad.

He really wanted to keep looking at the ruin and see if he could glean any more things out of its history, but that would be pushing the rules until the planet’s ownership was settled.

If worse came to worst, he could always just get the Corporations to let him study the planet. It would cost him, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Liz joined him on top of a mountain to enjoy the sunrise. “I like what you did with the tunnels.”

“Thanks. I think they will hold up well.”

“That’s not what I meant, doofus.”

“I know.” Matt winked at her, and they sat there, just having a moment with each other.

Once the sun had fully risen, Matt sighed. “Whoever gets the world is going to need to adjust that.”

This time it was Liz’s turn to groan. “Maybe we can just get Clyde to do it now? Or him and Alice? Together the two of them should be able to speed up the rotation safely. Someone will have to do it, so it’s not like he can say it’s not his job. It might be if he wins after all. Doing it now is… I don’t have a good excuse at hand, but I’d like someone to fix it. It’s only off by a few minutes, but it’s really messing with me.”

Matt proffered a hand and pulled Liz to her feet and helped her brush the dirt off her clothes, earning himself a wink for his efforts even as they lightly heartily complained about the planet’s rotation.

The moment they arrived at the central camp, the two of them were greeted by Clyde. “I wanted to talk about the distribution of the Tier 15s. Are we going to do a back and forth draft, or something more interesting?”

“I assume you ask because you have something in mind?” Matt asked.

Clyde’s smile was filled with hidden meaning, but Matt didn’t mind spicing things up if his idea was actually good.

“One side picks two sets of starting locations while the other side gets to pick which of the two sets they want. Force both sides to think about the other’s perspective.”

That was interesting enough Matt was willing to consider it, so, after a quick check with Aster, he and Liz agreed to the suggestion.

After some back and forth, and not quite liking Clyde’s proposed locations, they ended up offering their own selections which put one side slightly more centralized, with all three of their starting stairs together in a cluster, or a set slightly farther apart but with a slightly better shot to the ruin’s final room.

Clyde accepted their layout and chose the three closer together locations, which was what the three of them expected him to do.

With his mercenary corps’ more limited numbers, his people linking up was a good bet to consolidate their strength, while the Empire and their larger number of people would hopefully be able to take advantage of their better starting locations to find the final room first.

Still, with their own agreed upon limited interference, it would ultimately come down to those that chase to participate.

***

Alice Everdon was not easily swayed.

It just wasn’t in her nature.

Her peripheral friends called it determination, but her closest friends called it what it was: stubbornness.

She had been stubborn enough to pursue a career in delving when her parents had warned her not to. She had been stubborn enough to continue despite not vibing with any of the pick-up groups that had been looking for another person when she wanted to get started. When that proved impossible, she worked two part time jobs while actively recruiting for her own team. When she had inevitably lost an arm because she and her ragtag team were woefully unprepared to delve actual rifts, she hadn’t given up, but instead learned to fight with her off hand until they earned enough to get her arm regrown.

When her team had wanted to scale back, she had been stubborn enough to demand they not sell the slot, but let her delve solo, paying them back for their shares in the slot little by little. It had slowed her down, but she had managed, despite all of the troubles.

When she reached Tier 5 and learned about Concepts, after having taken a bottled Concept, she had proclaimed she would create her own before she needed another bottle at Tier 10.

She had done it, too.

The fact that her Concept was about her being stubborn wasn’t exactly flattering, but it was true, and that gave her power over people who settled on Concepts that were just ‘good enough’ but more flattering.

So when Alice saw the message putting out a recruitment for volunteers that would see her gallivanting off into unknown space for a fool’s errand, she had ignored it.

She had just bought a new delve slot in a low Tier 16 rift, and she intended to delve it, not be dragged off with the promise of riches that had no guarantee of profit or benefit.

No, it didn’t matter that her rift slot had a year and six month waiting period before she could actually enter it, she wanted to be close in case there was an opening and she could get in sooner, and if anyone left, she’d get her chance.

There was no reason to go careening off into the unknown for unknown riches.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Until the second announcement.

That swayed her.

Maybe.

Ascenders Titan, Legion, and Wraith had put out an announcement calling for all Tier 15s to come to a possible new world and fight for the Empire to claim it over the Corporations. Those details didn’t bother or entice her, but the rewards the Ascenders promised were… generous.

Not extravagant, but well above average and enough to pull most fence sitters onto a ship.

A Tier 18 mana stone per person who showed up and participated as a baseline would already cover most of her loan, as well as give her a comfortable nest egg, but that wasn’t it.

There was a scaling reward system based on contribution that could go as high as a rare Tier 20 skill shard for those who did exceptionally well. Based on the attached document, it didn’t even seem that hard to earn enough to reach that metric.

The announcement also said they would be preventing deaths, so it was actually less dangerous than a typical delve, even if it was against other people.

The offer seemed far too good to pass up, but doing so would mean she lost her chance at the rift slot.

That in and of itself wouldn’t be too bad, but with the influx of Tier 15s from nearby worlds responding to the Ascenders’ call to arms, combined with everyone already local flocking to the call, it might take a substantial amount of time to get another slot once everyone returned.

Rift slots weren’t allowed to sit open after all, and someone would buy them while everyone else was gone.

The question came down to if she wanted to be one of the people who went or one of those who stayed.

In the end, despite all of Alice’s stubbornness, the promised rewards were just too tempting to pass up and she decided to take the chance.

She would never admit it, but the fact she might get to see Ascenders in person tipped her over the edge. If she managed to talk to them it would be the best story to tell in the future, hands down. No one she knew could top that, meaning she’d win every drinking grandstanding forever.

The first bit of good news was that the Ascenders had sprung for the good transport ships as, instead of all of the traveling Tier 15s being shoved in empty airless holds, they were provided with actual rooms aboard the carriers, free of charge.

Sure, the rooms were small, but it was at least some modicum of privacy and more than she would have been willing to pay for if she had been traveling on her own mana stone.

Alice wanted to be unimpressed when they arrived at the world in question, but it was hard. It was a typical Tier 15 world, as far as she could tell, but completely untouched. There were probably Tier 20 mana stones worth of materials just ripe for the taking on the planet below. Ignoring those untouched riches, she tried to look cool unlike the gawking crowds around her, but her indifference was tested when Ascender Legion appeared standing before the exit of the ship.

Looking at the Ascender felt like staring at a star, making her eyes want to water and blink.

She carried herself with a confidence that Alice felt jealous of, but didn’t know how to copy without looking like a pale imitation, like a child putting on her mother’s dress.

The comparison was unflattering, and Alice shoved it down and mentally stomped on it a few times.

“Thank you all for coming. You all are the last group to arrive before we begin, so I’ll be transporting you to the staging area myself so we can get started.”

Everyone around her started to murmur, but before they could say much, a wave of golden flame engulfed the group for a brief instant and they found themselves somewhere else.

On the planet was obvious, but whether it was dusk or dawn was hard to tell without a few minutes of movement from the local star, but they were surrounded by a lot of others loitering around the cleared-out valley they had been deposited in.

Ascenders Titan and Wraith floated midair next to a man her AI only registered as ‘Corporations Leader’. He was strong enough that Alice couldn’t feel anything from him, but that only meant he was higher than Tier 20. It was a large range, but it was also irrelevant to her situation.

Seeing their arrival, Ascender Wraith turned and waved which pulled up a few cheers and whoops from some of the gathered Tier 15s, but they at least had good sense to keep things appropriate.

Watching someone commit suicide by Ascender might have been amusing, but Alice’s nerves were way too high strung at the moment to enjoy such a show.

Instead of admiring the trio of Ascenders, Alice took the opportunity to look at their competitors.

Across the valley, Corporations mercenaries were arrayed in neat and orderly groups.

Not quite military formations, but close enough she couldn’t pinpoint the differences beyond different.

They looked competent, which was possibly a good thing as it meant hard fighting, which would mean a higher chance to showcase her abilities. That meant a higher chance at earning a Tier 20 skill shard. On the other hand, it might mean ‘dying’ early and earning nothing beyond a month-long timeout in the worst case scenario that it was a quick wipe.

As a man next to her pointed out to his nervous looking friend, “Look at the number disparity. Even if every one of those mercenaries is an elite, which is outright impossible, their arms would fall off before they managed to cut through everyone on our side, even if we didn’t fight back.”

That was a bit of an exaggeration, but Alice couldn’t help but admit there was a kernel of truth in it.

As she inspected them, a murmur caught her attention and she honed in on the conversation.