The Path of Ascension Chapter 394

Chapter 394

They had been gone for a little more than a year and work had piled up, all of which needed to be cleared out before they could dive back into delving. The moment they arrived home, they all split up, having decided to dedicate a month to catching up before going back to advancing.

The first thing he and Liz did was visit their capital island, which was still floating in the ocean.

Isabella and Cato both immediately went to check in on their respective people, while Matt and Liz went and talked with the nobles who had been waiting for them. Thankfully, none of the meetings were urgent, and it was mostly a few of their nobles trying to petition them to move against their rivals or the like.

Only one, an initiative by one of their Viscounts, caught their eye.

Viscount Mathias Harte had been encouraging a yearly competition of crafters in a few of his larger cities, and had seen great results as the various people pushed their skills to new heights. In turn, his actions had made their crafted goods more valuable, giving his otherwise unremarkable world an export. These were all fantastic things, but he, or rather his crafters, were running into the end of the publicly available crafting and enchanting methods.

He was asking for Matt and Liz to assist in the negotiations for the licenses that he was looking at purchasing. Interestingly, it wasn’t a question of money, or at least not directly. The companies he was looking at didn’t like their methods being so open or easy to spread without certain guaranties. They wanted their standard contracts to apply to anyone who selected one of their products as a reward, which would have, at most, allowed masters to teach their journeymen and apprentices, and would incur burdensome costs for all parties involved.

Viscount Harte was willing to pay a higher upfront premium to remove that clause, but the companies in question wanted what could only be considered an extortionate amount of money. Their stance was clear: they didn’t want to accept, but were unwilling to directly refuse, whether for his own status or fear of Matt and Liz’s backing.

Both Matt and Liz liked the program and the results Viscount Harte was seeing, and so agreed to assist in the next round of negotiations, but also offered their own alternative licenses for him to consider.

What he was trying to do wasn’t unheard of, but was rare thanks to the expenses involved, and most nobles instead entered into partnership agreements with the licensing companies. That route was cheaper, but it also came with the downside of effectively locking the entire planet into a single company’s crafting methodology. That could limit their upward potential due to incompatibilities and other companies’ unwillingness to sell to known practitioners of another method, which was something none of them wanted.

One of their primary ducal initiatives was to prevent limiting their people like that, so they were willing to go to bat for him.

If the program was successful in the long term, they might even consider expanding it, but that was unlikely.

Most similar programs ended up self-destructing, as the competition, instead of being a method to push oneself forward, became a limit to the potential of the crafters as they sought to become better competitors instead of better crafters. The entire purpose was to make his world’s practical crafters better, not to make people good at taking tests.

Still, Viscount Harte had put in a few good safeguards they were hopeful would show results. And if worse came to worst, and they didn’t work, then the Viscount could just end the experiment when the cracks started to show and little would be lost.

Once that was handled, Matt and Liz both took off and flew to the guild’s moon, where Rah was, as well as Luna and Ciceron.

When they landed in the compound set aside for Rah, they heard a whispered snort. “A pitiful display. Shameful even. I know I taught you two better. And Aster is avoiding me? How unsurprising.”

Matt grinned and looked at the familiar face of their former manager. “It’s nice to see you too, Luna. How have you been?”

At the same time, Liz blew her a raspberry. “You know you missed us.”

Her facade cracked with a smile. “I’ve been worse. Rumor has it you secured us a new world with a unique ruin.”

Liz shot right back the moment she saw an opening. “Is that what you are calling Ciceron now? That doesn’t seem nice.”

Matt couldn’t help but chuckle at the narrowed, slitted purple eyes. “Someone is feeling feisty. Do we need to see how far you have slipped since leaving my claws, Elizabeth?”

Liz grinned. “I’d love to prove you wrong, but sadly, we are due for more advancement in just a month, so we hardly have time to play.”

“Indeed.”

Matt threw his own brag into the pot. “Tier 29 rifts. Peak mostly, if that wasn’t obvious.”

Luna’s predatory grin turned into a real smile, and she nodded. “Acceptable, but I’m sure you can do better. Tier 30 at bottom Tier 27 would be quite the feather in your hats. At the peak of Tier 26 would be even better. Show improvement rather than just treading water even if at the Ascender level.”

Phoenix Liz patted herself as if looking for a hat, which caught Luna’s attention. “You won’t be wearing the hat, little bird. We’ll need to source the feathers from somewhere.”

Phoenix Liz flew into Matt’s arms where, once she felt safe, she started chirping at the older cat, much to his amusement.

“Speaking of feathers in our caps, how is Rah progressing?”

Luna gestured to the side, where they took their seats and Matt called for drinks to be brought. “Quite the fascinating project, that one. Not quite a blank slate, but having learned under a completely different methodology his actions, reactions, and skills are wholly unique. Interesting thing about the skills as well. I’m curious to see what becomes of the methodology once you release the information. Personally made skills being incorporated into people’s journeys will most certainly have side effects on the skill modification side. I postulate we might see more Sect-like specific modifications pop up as it takes correspondingly less effort to learn such methods.”

“Have you tried your hand at it yet?”

Luna denied his question with a shake of the head. “Not yet. I will, but I’m in the process of moving two skills out of my core spirit to make room, and that will take a while longer. I don’t actually need any of the proposed skills, but I do need to learn how to do it if I am to teach others.”

Liz agreed with their mentor. “Same issue for us, really. We can’t justify moving things out of our core or innate spirit slots while delving. Still, it’s quite fascinating when you think about it. Instead of not having skills and so developing more technology to compensate, Rah’s realm instead started developing their own skills, bypassing the issue.”

Luna tapped the table to emphasize her point. “It’s quite interesting, but doesn’t exactly follow what we know of the higher realms. Or rather, thought we knew. Did you know that we actually don’t know if the higher realms follow the standard skill distribution? Ciceron had to go looking, but none of the data dumps we have records of actually states a skill’s Tier. Oh, they talk about skills; we know for a fact at least two of the three Tier 100 realms our people commonly end up in use [Fireball] as a common beginner skill. But none of the data dumps rely on a Corporation-like organizational system, so we only have their commonplace names to go by. We had just assumed things were the same, but Ra’thala’s presence brings many things into question.”

Matt was stumped by that, as he had never considered that a possibility. But there was no reason to assume the realms operated under exactly the same rules, even if they were generally similar.

That devolved into a conversation about the realm itself that went on until Ciceron and Rah came out of the estate’s library, where they had been working on trying to make a cultivation method that used rift monster essence. Matt didn’t even have to ask to know that it had been a failure.

Ciceron wore his emotions on his face and wasn’t jumping around.

That turned into a small melee egged on by Luna, who proceeded to ruthlessly criticize all parties involved.

When they had a minute, Matt patted Rah on the back. “It’s not so bad. She’s good at what she does. I can see serious improvement in your style already. Just the two Natural Treasures you already absorbed are making a noticeable impact, and you are using their effects well.”

Rah sighed but nodded, wiping the sweat and blood out of his eyes as his scalp knit itself back together. “She is a good teacher. I would have to be blind to not see that, but she is…” he looked over to Luna who was staring them down before finishing, “Abrasive.”

Matt just laughed. “Ahh, Luna is a big softie, don’t let her exterior fool you. Also don’t bother to whisper. She can hear your cells dividing, let alone your whispers. She doesn’t take offense to speaking ill of her, and no matter how she plays it, as long as you genuinely give it your best she’s willing to explain something a million times.”

Liz made a note of disagreement, causing them both to look away from the glowering Luna to her. “Don’t forget about that time she tried to teach Aster math. She threw the calculator at her.”

Matt laughed. “I had forgotten about that. True. Still, poor Aster was only at like three or four word sentences at that point. Feels more on Luna for rushing the process.”

Luna finally caved and walked over tutting. “She was at seven or eight word sentences at that point. Besides, I was trying to prepare her for success, but she didn’t want to get ahead of her education, and instead was content with just meeting the standards. Shameful really. Maybe I should bring her some textbooks and see if she’s been slipping on her more esoteric disciplines.”

Knowing Aster would hate it, Matt nodded. “You definitely should do exactly that. Just record it, please.”

That earned a smirk from Luna but she waved them up. “Ok, let’s start round two. Ra’thala you keep favoring your right side. I know you are mainly used to fighting swordsmen, but you’re going to get your head cut off if you can’t adapt. Liz, I want you using a longer spear. Punish his weak side. Matt, I want you to use a large warhammer. Something of that size should mess with his perceived timing. Once you get used to fighting against these types and learn their basic fighting styles, we’ll have you start learning each of those same weapons yourself. That will widen your horizons and ensure you are better prepared when encountering such opponents.”

Clapping, she got them up and moving.

It was quite fun.

Though, he and Liz did play up some mistakes to give her someone else to yell at every once and a while, as poor Rah was getting a truly undiluted Luna experience. Luna was very good at what she did, but they could also see that the constant critiques were getting to Rah.

Not that Luna couldn’t, but like boiling a frog, she seemed to be trying to see just how far she could push the ascender before he snapped.

Matt half wanted to see just how far that was, but Ciceron eventually ran into a problem on his models and interrupted the sparring to have Rah test one theory or another.

“What about cycling the essence through one of these corkscrew cycles? Didn’t you say it bolstered the effect of the essence in the Tier 15 layer? Why can’t a variation work here?”

Ciceron shook his head before nodding. “We tried that, but while it works, it clashes with his Tier 25 cultivation. There isn’t an easy way to cycle up the essence between layers with that structure, which is critical to bolstering the technique’s power.”

Matt shrugged and Liz threw up her hands. “Rah I say this in the nicest way possible, but this shit is insane. I have no idea how your people developed these methods.”

Instead of looking offended, Rah smiled. “Time and lots of failures.”

Liz snorted. “And people smarter than us and I say that deliberately. Ciceron is a hoarder of knowledge and therefore one of the smartest people in the realm, and Luna is one of the best trainers in the realm. She’s just sitting there quietly! She never does that!”

Luna snorted right back at Liz. “If one has nothing constructive to add, it’s worth keeping quiet.”

Ciceron killed whatever weight her argument had when he said, “If we truly followed that we’d be sitting here in silence. Speculation is all we have and fresh sets of eyes can’t be worse than us at this point. We are going to need decades to sketch out a working model at this pace.”

His eyes seemed to shine even as he said that though.

“It’s such an interesting problem. Rah can you tell me the story about Yh’ull the creator again? I feel like there might be an answer in his story. Something with his methodology.”

Matt and Liz really wanted to help, but they would need decades of research before they understood enough of Rah’s realm’s method to comment on making an entirely new Tier of cultivation for him. Let alone one that used rift monster essence rather than ambient essence, which was the ultimate goal.

And they just didn’t have that much time on their hands.

Once they finished chatting with Luna, Ciceron, and Rah, they separated. Liz went to go relax, since the Palustris Planetary Relaxation Resort For Fire Bloodlines had opened a new lava spa, and Erin and Leah had invited her to a private suite they were renting out. But Matt stayed at the guild, even if he would have liked to join them. There were too many things he wanted to get done in the remaining two and a half weeks before they got back to delving.

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First was checking in on the aperology department, and personally sharing the news.

Everyone who wasn’t in a project they physically couldn’t leave arrived to go over the scans and readings of the planetary ruin, and they spent an exhilarating two days debating the possible formations of the ruin and how they might best recreate said conditions.

It came to a head just before Matt finally caved, and he agreed to buy a planet that they might try their more dangerous experiments on.

He was also able to deliver the good news that the ruin world would be stopping by Palustris for five or so years, while the chaotic space currents shifted. They would only have that long before it would take its final travel to deeper in the Empire, where it would fill in a gap for one of Tur’stal’s duchies.

Matt didn’t quite understand the logic with it going there, and not to either Zack or Allie, whose duchies were still forming, but he also didn’t care since they didn’t care. He had already worked out a deal with the duchess who was getting the world to allow a research and monitoring team to reside on the world for the first century or three, in return for a minor favor.

The guild’s aperologists doubted they would learn anything immediately useful, but it did bring up questions about the nature of ruins; mainly how and why they inverted. Rifts were seemingly perfect in most aspects; their energy to energy conversion, as well as their matter to energy conversion, were as close to perfect as was measurable, and could seemingly operate forever with apparently unlimited instances all inside the same small slice of reality.