The Path of Ascension Chapter 405

Chapter 405

Quarantining sucked just as badly this time as it did the others, but there was a bright spot. A few actually.

The painting of Aiden was easy to lose hours of time looking at, as one constantly found new details they had missed before.

Normally he and Aster would analyze such art based on their shared Folded Reflection lives as siblings but she was entirely entranced with Winter Hornet’s exit technique of turning into mist and trying to recreate it herself.

More interesting, at least for Matt, was checking out the cultivation methods Rah had been given and traded for.

There were three entirely intact cultivation systems and over a dozen fractured systems of this Realm’s older methods, but they also shared similarities in their designs. Similar to what he knew from Rah’s methods, there were Realms of cultivation with every ten Tiers being a major Realm, and every fifth Tier being a minor breakpoint. That was similar to their current methods, with every five Tiers needing more essence to advance past. But while their current methods just needed more essence, the older methods had actual bottlenecks that were challenges to break through.

Rah had talked about them, how they could completely prevent a cultivator’s advancement and how past mistakes in cultivation methods could increase the difficulty of bottlenecks. He had also mentioned how an inspiration, with its ability to fix one’s cultivation, generally made it easy to break through the next few.

In the methods Rah had been given, Matt could see the bottlenecks. They were built into the techniques.

Beyond following this five and ten Tier structure, the techniques were vastly different from the many techniques of Rah’s Realm. Instead of the stars and eddies of Rah’s cultivation, these techniques seemed to work on layering essence in slabs and then carving channels into the structure. It was almost like a skill structure, which is where Matt figured they had gotten the idea in the first place. Instead of building essence up in nodes like Rah’s to boost that aspect of cultivation, the methods instead used the runes carved into the essence as a way to direct power between the layers.

It was also where the bottlenecks came from.

Matt wasn’t sure it was deliberate, but it was a consequence of their design choices. From what he could tell, and extrapolate from Rah’s explanations, the way the runes stacked and moved essence around it was a way to passively boost the power of allocated essence that would be further amplified by surging one’s cultivation.

It was that same boost in power that made the tenth Tiers, and to a lesser degree the fifth, a much harder breakthrough beyond demanding more essence like every method needed. The way the runes interacted with each other made it harder to break through the Tiers in a way Matt found difficult to put to words.

Where Matt just needed to compress his essence to advance to the next Tier, in these techniques there was significant spiritual pressure that needed to be overcome, that was entirely a result of the way the method pushed power between Tiers. That wasn’t because of the runes themselves, though their rudimentary designs didn’t help. It was how jagged the energy flows were between layers.

Matt couldn’t tell from just these examples, but the accompanying notes restated what Winter Hornet implied when he said time, more than malice, saw to the destruction of the better techniques. These were common methods that anyone could get their hands on and were correspondingly worse for it.

With his experience, Matt could see half a dozen ways to smooth out the runes, which he believed would lessen the turbulence. But he suspected that it would also be that much harder to carve into the essence, given his study with skill creation.

What he did find interesting was that out of the three techniques, one of them used even less essence than Rah’s methods to advance to the next Tier. And that was the weakest of the techniques, not even reaching immortality until late Tier 15, if not mid Tier 16, as there just wasn’t enough essence to reach the critical mass where one’s own core made enough essence to fuel their bodily functions.

It was also paradoxically the most complicated of the three methods, with runes that tried to do their best at amplifying what little essence they did have.

On the other hand, Nahla of Waves Rise’s cultivation method was entirely different and almost seemed like a half step between an ambient essence method and their compacted rift essence ones. By her time, her people in her lower Realm hadn’t taken the step of using rift monster essence to allocate to their cultivation bases, but they did compact ambient essence, which made them unique out of the three types of methods he had seen so far. It was a rudimentary method that didn’t create that great of a product, but it was a step in a direction Matt suspected would lead them to ditching the whole method for a simple crunch method, given enough time.

What was more interesting were her cultivation notes.

Nahla of Waves Rise was a commonborn woman who had risen through the masses after an invasion of ‘otherworldly beasts’ decimated the seaboard her city had resided on. As one of five remaining cities, there had been a need for adventurers who braved the dangers of the unsettled lands beyond the walls. Through a self-admitted series of lucky breaks, she had discovered a fallen noble’s estate and uncovered their cultivation technique, which was better than the one that was passed around to commoners.

That explained the intricate weave of her cultivation method, which as Rah described was like building a tower. Instead of discrete layers, like their Realm’s methods, or the eddies and swirls of Rah’s Realm’s methods, Nahla’s Realm’s technique seemed to work in two alternating patterns.

The first pattern started at Tier 1, laying a foundation that was designed to be dug into by the Tier 2 method, which dug down and then reached up into the nonexistent Tier 3 region of the core. Once they reached Tier 3, the cultivator would then create another foundation layer which then linked the Tier 2 and 4 layers, creating an interlocking structure.

According to her notes, her people struggled in making the layers and often failed, causing them to lose years or decades of progress as the essence leaked out of the resulting spiritual damage. They, however, didn’t seem to struggle with breaking through. Once they finished a layer, advancing to the next layer was as simple as starting to work on the next.

Still, similar to both their Realm’s and Rah’s, her people channeled looser ambient essence through specially made channels to amplify the power of the less dense essence. Though, in her case, the essence was actually aspected essence used like mana pathways in an otherwise compact foundation, which was an interesting twist on the idea. It also explained her affinity with elemental spells, despite not actually being an elementally aspected cultivator, as her cultivation let her fake it due to the types of aspected essence she had laid into her cores.

That raised one vital question Matt really wished he had an answer for: How did she get access to seven different types of aspected essence on reportedly a handful of planets? What did her people know about making aspected rifts, or more likely what uniqueness did their planets have that made their creation seemingly so abundant they had become a staple of people’s cultivation?

The notes after Nahla arrived in their Realm and discovered their much simpler method were… Amusing felt like the wrong word, but Matt couldn’t help but feel a little pride at his Realm having simplified something so complex into something truly universal, that was also stronger.

Nahla had been shocked to arrive and thought she would reign supreme with her ‘superior’ cultivation method, only to learn in raw power she was one of the weakest cultivators of her Tier.

According to her notes, it was only her rich battle experience, honed skills, and ascension bonus that let her dominate the majority of her foes in the early years, as she learned to adapt to the Sects and the Realm itself.

It was there in her notes where she had an interesting thought that she seemed to spend decades agonizing over.

Should she convert to their Realm’s method? She had even devised a seemingly plausible way via a few natural treasure combinations that would allow her to compress her cores and backfill the missing essence. It wouldn’t be quite as good as an inspiration, but it would close the gap infinitely. And when combined with the rest of her advantages, it would let her truly shine.

She eventually chose not to, due to fear of the risks of the untested methodology and fact that some of the natural treasures were only rumored or had only been found deep in chaotic space. But it did give her a few things which she used to great effect. Mainly using some of those same natural treasures to further compress and backfill her previous method to something closer to rift monster essence density.

Nahla had also dedicated a lot of time to figure out how she could directly use monster essence as more than the uncarved foundations of her techniques, but according to her notes, she had never figured it out and still had to rely mainly on ambient essence compacted down.

Through it all, Matt couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that all of this was just a waste of time and effort, and Rah would be better served by going through with Nahla’s idea of crunching her cultivation down.

He didn’t voice those thoughts out loud, Rah was simply too excited pouring over every page and diagram for Matt to rain on his parade like that. But he made a mental note to bring up the suggestion to Rah if he wasn’t able to make any progress in a decade or three.

And who knew? Maybe Rah would be the one who could figure out how to truly use monster essence and have the best of both worlds. Even the possibility was enough for Matt to fund a team with the idea, and funding a friend made it an even easier answer.

At worst, a little time and money would be wasted.

It at least made the three months they needed to spend in quarantine, after having been in contact with a Tier 50 without another Tier 50 to back them up, bearable.

When they finally got the all clear, Allie teleported them all back to Rah’s estate in Titan’s Torch headquarters, before she and Aster flickered in and out of existence half a dozen times over the next few minutes.

When their forms stilled, they were loaded down with bags of snacks and other assorted foods from the group’s favorite restaurants and other eateries.

Allie plopped it all down on an icy table Aster must have had stored in her spirit space with a dramatic sigh.

“Rah, I demand you try everything! Quarantining deserves a good reward, and the best rewards are edible.”

Ciceron, somehow looking even more disheveled than he had been a few months ago, stumbled over to press his head into the ice cold table with a sizzle.

“You okay there?”

Zack tried to stir Ciceron, but the only response was a long groan before he finally spoke into the table.

“I’m so close to an answer, but I can’t figure it out. It’s killing me.”

Luna, still in cat form, sauntered over and smacked the head librarian with her tail. “Clean yourself up. It’s unbecoming.”

Ciceron finally pulled his head off the now defrosted table, and barely flickered to Matt’s senses before he was spotless and in fresh clothes.

Rah bowed to Ciceron and held out the boxes of cultivation techniques. “These are from Grand Elder Winter Hornet and might prove enlightening to you as it did for us. I have many new ideas to try.”

Ciceron went to reach for the boxes but a paw swiped them out of Rah’s hand just before the head librarian got to them.

“You can look after you spend some time doing normal things. Eat, and stop thinking so much.” Luna’s purple eyes were magnetic as she stared the other Tier 40 down.

Matt half expected Ciceron to complain, but instead he winced. “How many warnings did I ignore?”

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“Only four.”

“Oh good!” Ciceron actually perked up at that and dug in with everyone else.

Matt should have known things were going a little too well, because after the salad Allie got for Luna was devoured, she turned her gaze on him.

That would have been fine, but in her cat form, it felt like she was glaring at him the entire time. No, he was pretty sure she was actually glaring at him.

Having lost his appetite, he set down his fork. “What?”

“What did you do to your spirit, Matthew?”

“Matt doesn’t know what you’re talking about.” Luna just blinked at him and he caved. “On a completely unrelated topic, I wanted to talk to you about Truths. I may ha—”

His voice trailed off as Luna’s claws extended and dug through the table.

Standing, she padded over to look at him from just inches away. “How curious. I’m looking at an idiot.”

That caused snickers from most of the rest of the table, but Liz’s laugh got caught in her throat as Luna turned her glare onto her.

“You could have stopped him.”

Liz threw up her hands, showing her innocence. “I tried, but he didn’t want to listen. Aster egged him on, not me!”

“You could have used your feminine wiles. Threatened to kick him out of bed.”

Liz dropped her hands. “Why punish myself?”

That actually broke Luna, and she chuckled quietly as she turned around to face Matt. “What precisely did you do? Speak.”

Matt tried to skip to the actual incident, but Luna made him start from the very beginning. “It was during the skill reveal, and I was talking to Eyria de Solis. She pissed me off, and I had the thought that I helped because I chose to. Not because of the expectations of others. I did so because ‘I am the Master of my own Destiny’. And I felt my Truth sort of form. It’s—”