The Path of Ascension Chapter 406

Chapter 406

Matt didn’t dawdle in leaving for the Corporations, even though he felt like he should be helping Liz and Aster instead of leaving to deal with a personal endeavor. It just felt selfish, even though that wasn’t true at all and they wanted him to go.

Liz had cajoled Allie into the two of them helping Melinda track down the remaining blood research facilities, but Matt could tell Allie was eager to do something ‘real’, having been removed from future wars.

Aster, with Susanne’s help, started combing through her own and Matt and Liz’s duchies looking for abnormalities. Her recent issue with the interference of the winter bloodline resources just showed they needed to look deeper at any issues.

Matt popped over to Aster’s capital long enough to say goodbye, but the moment he got to his ship, he found Allie spinning in the pilot’s seat.

“I’m jealous Lila gave you this. Kinda bullshit. Where is my super cool unique ship?”

“Could you even run a ship like this?”

Allie scoffed. “That’s besides the point. It’s the thought that counts.”

“Didn’t Lila give you a dagger made out of one of her claws? That means more than a ship.”

“Meh, she just cut off a finger. Not a lot of effort went into that. And besides, I can’t even use the dagger yet, so it kinda doesn’t count.”

Matt shook his head as he hooked a finger over his shoulder. “Your logic is bad, get out of my seat. I don’t want to spend more time than I have to on this trip.”

Allie gestured at herself like he was stupid, but Matt shook his head. “I think it’s better that I actually do the flight. This is personal, and I don’t want to bother you. I do know you hate people treating you like a taxi.”

Allie rolled her eyes and twisted out of the chair. “I’m offering. Also, I don’t guarantee a return trip soooo… I actually guarantee the opposite because I’m not quarantining again so soon after I just did it.”

Not wanting to argue against a year of travel saved, Matt got ready and promised to make Allie a batch of treats when he got back.

His musings were cut off when Allie jerked instead of teleporting them. “Huh.”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me. What’s wrong?” Matt had never seen Allie abort a teleport like that and instantly readied himself for combat.

Flicking a finger at him, she said, “An automated message from the boss.”

Instead of a message from Allie, the packet of information unlocked a hidden and encoded message in his inbox from Manny.

Opening the short video, he saw Manny working at his desk. “If you’re receiving this, it’s because you’re about to enter Corporations space ahead of schedule, likely with Allison. I won’t stop you. However, I must caution you from visiting their capital system. If visiting it is unavoidable, I would ask that you speak to one of the Royals or my wife first, and that you use as little mana as possible while visiting. Regardless, I would ask that you do not visit their capital at all until we have the opportunity to speak on the matter in person.”

Matt was thoroughly confused and shared the video with Allie, who flickered out of existence just to appear a moment later.

“Carissa said it really is fine if you aren’t going to the capital.” Matt opened his mouth to ask the next obvious question, but she shook her head. “No, she didn’t tell me where the Boss is and I checked the capitals of the other Royals and none of them were there. My guess is he’s in his secret Tier 47 rift instance.”

Matt knew he was being distracted, but the thread was too juicy to ignore. “Secret rift?”

“Yeah, fucker thinks he’s slick. Well, he kinda is, but every time he gets a new copy of my Talent, he makes sure I’ve got a return point inside his rift, then kicks me out before I can turn it into a full waypoint and jump in on him.”

Matt nodded and couldn’t disagree with Manny creating a private space for himself. Though he didn’t agree that Manny was hiding out in a rift. Carissa and Melinda had both said Manny implied there was something he needed to do, which was why he was unreachable. At the same time, Carissa implied he was contactable if something truly important came up. From what Matt understood about rift breakers, there were few, if any, who could break into a Tier 47 rift, because none of the Royals were rift breakers, leaving Allie herself as the only method inside a high-Tier rift.

That meant it was more likely than not Manny was doing something else in real space.

Unless they had some way to send messages into rift instances without a rift breaker, and then everything Matt knew went out the window.

Still, it was mostly a moot point, since Max didn’t want to meet at the Corporations’ capital but instead at a hub trade world on the far side of the Great Power.

It was in fact closer to the Clans’ border, which was why Allie had a waypoint nearby, though he didn’t know when she would have had time to sneak into Clans territory to lock the waypoint in.

All things told, her help saved him just over a year of travel, which he was grateful for.

The moment Allie vanished, Matt tore his way into chaotic space and flew into Corporations territory, ignoring the hails from the various craft that tried to flag him down.

Entering Corporations space, and real space at that, was always a strange experience.

Instead of being a planet-based civilization, their preference for space-based mega structures immediately made their worlds feel different, especially with Tumaini being a kingdom-level transit hub for the Clans and the slightly farther away Sects border.

Tumaini being a Tier 37 world made the area a hub of traffic as, similar to other worlds higher Tiers wanted to live near, the high-Tier world and everyone of a lower Tier followed the money the higher Tiers inherently brought with them.

Even in the Corporations, with their weird currency system, higher-Tier items still were generally more expensive, and so higher-Tier people had more money to spend, which was readily apparent in the massive space stations before him.

The largest was the orbital ring that circled the main world and was ‘only’ a little larger than a mile wide; but that was deceptive. The ring was actually five layers deep, multiplying the livable area substantially.

It was also something of a garden world in Matt’s opinion, with there being no rifts on the habitat.

There were ways to make rifts in space. Anywhere with essence could form a rift, but without the gravity well of the planet and the planet’s core making the circulation of essence automatic, it was often considered more effort than it was worth to create such rifts.

That entire subject was on a list of things Titan’s Torch was meant to investigate, but it had been repeatedly pushed down in priority in the last century.

Opposite the main world’s moon was a more traditional space station surrounded by docking ships.

It was also his destination, and Matt flew over as he inspected the last of the space-based infrastructure in the system. Namely, the Oneil cylinders which were growing the system’s crops in massive automated cylinders. Some housed people, but they seemed to be a rarity.

Despite the impracticality of the system, when a rift could be converted to a farm rift with a little effort and without really costing any resources, Matt loved the space-based cylinders. They just spoke to the primal part of his brain that liked to see people advance. To rise above their roots and grow.

Though even if none of that existed, Matt would have made the trip the slow way, just for the absolute beauty a few light years away from the Tumaini star system.

A black hole that had at some point in this universe’s history absorbed some essence and started the process of essence cultivation.

According to the records from when Tumaini was settled, an era well before The Shattering, the black hole had been locked at stable but safe distance from the inhabited world by a cultivator with a related Domain before they ascended. The story might have been false, but the black hole was undeniably in a stable orbit around the center of this galaxy, which meant it never strayed too far from Tumaini.

Matt could hardly take his eyes off the celestial object once he let himself look at it and stared until he reached the space station Max said she would be meeting him at.

She was thankfully there, and Matt used her to get access to the station while bypassing the normal restrictions and checks a foreigner would have normally had to go through.

Max’s suite overlooked a garden atrium with a hidden balcony Matt used to reach her.

He didn’t even need to go inside, as she was drinking a glass of wine while watching the people below.

“Words cannot describe how jealous I am of Allie’s teleportation ability. Once she’s strong enough to offer it as a favor, she’ll basically have a free stake for every wager. And it’ll be excellent.”

Matt took a seat and gestured at the wine, to which Max nodded and he took a small sip. As a Tier 40 drink, even that small amount was enough to make him slightly lightheaded and he needed to boost the mana he was sending to [Regeneration] to counter the effects.

“That tastes awful. It’s like rotten sewage fermented with bodies.”

Max nodded. “Pretty close actually. It was a wager from Wun, and I’ll be damned if I let him get one over on me by admitting the wine is shit. It’s also funny when I get other people to drink it by drinking it myself.”

Her grin was contagious and Matt laughed along.

“So what brings you to me after being so reluctant to accept help for so long? Come on, spill.”

Matt hadn’t intended to hide it and admitted, “I discovered my Truth and I’m not entirely happy with it having an effect on my mind, let alone my mentality. Felt like now was a good time to understand such things.”

Max leaned forward and whistled. “A Truth at Tier 27. That’s damn impressive. Spill. I wanna see how close my bet is to the truth. Heh get it? I’m clever.”

“That’s like the third time I’ve heard that joke, and every instance has been just as unwitty”

Max pointed at him and winked. “Third time so far. It’s something of a tradition as those things go. But seriously, spill. I can memory-lock it if you want, but for our projects, I’ll need to know.”

“A memory-lock is overkill,” Matt waved the suggestion off. “Currently, the description I’m going with is ‘I am the Master of My Own Destiny’. I— What?”

Max was usually absolutely unflappable, but at his words, she may as well have become a different person. The relaxed smile vanished, and she instantly repositioned herself to be staring straight at him, her wineglass relocated to a distant windowsill. Her calculating blue eyes were fixed on him, staring through him and making him feel properly uncomfortable around the Chosen for the first time since he’d met her. “Repeat that. Three times, each time considering a different nuance to the underlying Truth. After that, say it in a Sect dialect, I don’t care which one.”

Her voice was hard and unyielding, and Matt warily regarded the woman as he complied. “I am the Master of My Own Destiny. I am the Master of My Own Destiny. I am the Master of My Own Destiny. I am the Master of My Own Destiny. Or maybe Fate? Future? Destiny is the transliteration…. Are you okay?”

Max sighed and relaxed to her usual posture, a colorful strand of energy extending from her fingers to retrieve her wine. She took a deep sip that turned into her upturning the glass and emptying it before she let out a shuddering sigh. “Whew. Okay. It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m okay. That triggered all the wrong alarms, sorry for startling you. That first impression was just way too similar to Charl. Man, Eclavorn is not gonna be happy when he hears that.”

The last part was said muttered into her glass as she glared at the empty cup.

Matt shook his head, trying to parse everything that had just happened. “Sorry. I’m still really lost. Charl is the Master of All, right? I know you uh…”