The Path of Ascension Chapter 415

Chapter 415

Matt reached out and grabbed Liz. “Before we both go nose down into our work, it’s time for a date. We haven’t done so in too long.”

Liz tried to play it straight, but phoenix Liz gave the game away by cooing and jumping over to his shoulder instead.

They kept it simple, just going on a small walk around a newly constructed park in a Tier 20 refuge, part of an otherwise flame-filled desert. They even tried a local specialty made from a tiny deer-like creature that fed off the ambient flames that sputtered to life just above the sand in the morning and evenings.

They kept things light as they just enjoyed each other’s company; but the saying ‘all good things must come to an end’ proved true as they watched the sun dip below the horizon.

“What are you thinking about?”

Matt sighed as Liz bumped his shoulder when he didn’t respond after a long minute. “Too many things, really. But mainly if we are taking too much on.”

Liz nodded even as she leaned into him and Matt decided to fall back, sending them both to the ground.

He earned an annoyed peck from phoenix Liz, who didn’t appreciate her perch vanishing, but it was in good fun and he didn’t mind.

Liz didn’t say anything for a long time as she played with his hair, but eventually she agreed. “My initial thought is I just wish people would leave us alone, but realistically, that’s like half, maybe a quarter of the problem. The old dynasty was always lingering in the shadows, and the blood research organization was only stopped because they got caught. But even still, we haven’t yet found the true culprits behind them, meaning they can spring back up in a few centuries and it will be like they were never stopped in the first place. I understand we can’t fix everything, but it feels like for every problem we solve, another three spring up in their place. Why can’t the Realm just be better?”

A part of Matt intellectually knew that the Realm was a better place, not just for what they had done but for what generations before them had done, but that just seemed so insignificant at the moment. So he just nodded and they laid there together, just listening as the desert came to life in the relatively cooler night time.

“So what do we do?”

Liz asked the question to the air, but Matt didn’t have an answer.

A few minutes later, he shrugged. “We do what we can. To that end, one of our main priorities needs to be Tiering up. Currently, we’re just not strong enough to fight our enemies directly, and our guards can only go so far.”

Liz actually perked up at that. “We have a standing invite from the Clans for the next twenty years or so. Once the Clans war with the Republic starts we won’t be able to delve there, but it could be fun to go visit them if we can get a hold on things around here in time. Otherwise, we can always visit the Monster Collective or the Corporations for delving.”

Matt pondered the idea for a little before agreeing. “That could be fun. The Sects visit was a blast. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I got us lessons with Qin Jiang for Power training in return for the guild making them a justice rift.”

Liz rolled into him slightly so she could get a better look at him. “That reminds me, how did that deal work out?”

Matt explained the deals he had struck and his reasoning behind each one as Liz slowly started smiling. “Look at you. Mister I hate politicking, but here you are killing it.”

Grinning, he replied, “Well, I am the best.”

Returning his smile, Liz hooked a leg into his. “Are you now?”

With a grin, Matt created a [Portal] underneath them, letting them fall through back into their house.

The next morning, the two of them separated. Matt went to the guild while Liz went and fulfilled their ducal duties. Normally, Matt would have helped her but she insisted, with him having dealt with the last several large backlog of ducal duties, it was her turn.

Given free reign to play in the guild, Matt wasn’t going to say no. After talking with Kees and hammering out their future path, he gathered every single guild member who was on the moon together for his announcement of a new branch of Titan Torch’s operation: bespoke rifts.

While the aperology research teams were ecstatic, as the commissions meant more money, which meant more funding, everyone else was still quite happy. The other branches, like the alchemy and rune department, were even more so, as the now unused funding would be redirected to them. But the ones who were truly most relieved at the news were the staff. Those like Cameron, who were the most at risk of losing their jobs if the guild stopped making miracles.

There were some concerns that the guild was turning away from its roots as a nonprofit dedicated to helping the lower Tiers, but Matt fielded those questions like any other. He even went as far as showing the contracts that clearly stated that any widely applicable aura types developed in the pursuit of a client’s desired type would be free to share after the client’s aura type was finished, or a millennium after it was deemed impossible.

From there, he went into researcher mode, and together with Erwin, Aisha, and Theodore, they started playing with the Domain samples they had been given.

They only had thirty, but they were fairly confident that would last long enough for the guild representative to arrive at Titan’s Torch, who could then tap into their shared Domain pool to get them more.

Erwin immediately popped one of the vials open and downed the Domain sample like it was a shot of alcohol. Smacking his lips, he grimaced. “Weird flavor. Haven’t eaten many Domain-related things, but it’s both sweet and sour at the same time.”

Theodore raised an eyebrow at the word choice. “Does that imply there might be an inherent contradiction to this Justice Domain?”

Erwin seemed to seriously consider the question before shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so. Sweet and sour aren’t opposed as much as widely different. Let me test something. Domain samples please.”

Holding out his hand, he waited as everyone produced a small bit of their Domain and solidified it. It was nothing more than a bit of their Willpower actualized, and without proper containment, it would vanish in seconds after it left their control. But Erwin didn’t even need that long to taste each sample.

After going through them all, he blanched. “Nope I can unconfidently confirm the sweetness is more about it being Willpower based. The other flavor seems to be more specific.”

Aisha, however, asked the question Matt was thinking. “What does this mean for an aura rift, or a rift in general? I don’t think any of our teams have done tests with any part of a Domain as the anchor item. At least, no such tests are logged.”

“Does it have to be an anchor item?” Theodore brought up a good point and everyone looked to Matt.

Blinking, he checked behind him. “I know you guys aren’t looking at me. I have no idea. You guys get to play with rifts way more than I do.”

Erwin raised a finger. “I don’t see what else it can be. It might not have to be an anchor item. In fact, I’m not sure how it can be an anchor item, given how short its stable duration is. If we put the whole vial as the anchor item, it will add so much variability we’d never get anywhere. And that’s ignoring the ruinous cost of losing even one vial, and we all know we very rarely lose just one anchor item in developing a rift. It’s usually all or nothing.”

Matt nodded as he summoned another wisp of his Domain before letting it free from his control.

It lingered on his palm for a few seconds longer than the one Aisha summoned, but it was still a short amount of time.

It might be possible to create a rift in the time both Domain samples lingered, but it would be hard.

Creating a mana stone out of neutral mana, Matt carved a few simple containment runes into it before creating a wisp of his Domain inside.

Counting down, he grinned as he nearly doubled the time the sample lasted.

That joy vanished as Theodore tried to use the same cube to contain his Domain. It was immediately twisted apart as Matt’s mana interacted with the foreign Domain, destroying it even faster.

A few more tests showed they had the beginnings of an idea, that a containment field might be possible, but it would need a lot more refinement. And so, after handing the problem off to the formation department, the four of them started throwing things at the metaphorical wall, seeing what would stick.

The first thing they tested was just creating a rift around a quickly placed domain sample in an otherwise ordinary rift formation.

It had, as far as all of their testing and equipment could tell, absolutely zero effect on the otherwise ordinary wolf rift.

They still kept the rift intact at Tier 1, just so they could continue testing, but they also adopted a two pronged approach.

Erwin and Theodore started testing mana types they believed might result in some kind of Justice aura. While concrete science was good, they were simply trying to find the right path in the jungle, and ultimately, the Crowned didn’t need or particularly want mass producibility. A single aura rift that met their specification running for a year or two could make enough aura potions that they would run out of crowns well before they needed more potions.

The Knightly Orders sort of fell into the same boat, but as they were limited by their descendants and the availability of Natural Treasures instead of items, they could theoretically use more mass production. Still, they would probably be fine with a single rift, and that was something Matt was okay with.

Unless they got stupendously lucky, part of even reaching the desired rifts would mean an increase in reproducibility.

That, and for a Tier 4 rift, it wasn’t that expensive to run the tests, given how they weren’t using any anchor items and just playing with raw mana types cut out the main cost of creating aura rifts.

Matt and Aisha instead started playing with Domain-based rifts.

They couldn’t use the limited Justice Domain samples before they had some semblance of a working model, so they simply used their own Domains.

Matt’s Domain being partly based around being endless was their first choice, as it simply gave them more time to do tests with.

The first tests produced nothing of note, so they changed their testing method each time, trying to improve the speed of the rift forming as well as the speed which the Domain dissipated.

After days of failures, they took a step back and questioned if Domains could be used as a rift base at all. And, if they could, whether Matt’s Domain was different enough to result in any noticeable oddities.

Rerunning all of their tests with Aisha’s Domain, they similarly had no results, but that only confirmed that it wasn’t just Matt’s Domain that wasn’t working.

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Reaching out to the other members of Titan’s Torch, they got samples from a lot of people in the guild who didn’t mind burning a little Willpower.

There were no obvious changes, but they did start to see a trend in some of the rifts.

It wasn’t in the monsters or even the rift scenarios, but instead in the rifts’ layouts. While there were numerous rift variations possible, they were a seemingly finite amount of layouts the rifts preferred to use.

But with the Domains, that usual logic was turned on its head and they had different and sometimes strange layouts.

One particularly weird outcome had a rift that consisted solely of left hand turns. It wasn’t a maze or a labyrinth rift that might have explained the oddities, but instead the rift was a single stone hallway that simply had endless left turns until they reached the boss room.

The actual mechanics behind the rift doing so were dead simple, it was just a spiral. What was weirder was the rift came from a man with a simple Determination Domain with no real elemental affinity.

It was one of the oddest results, but hardly the only one.

Going back to Matt’s Domain rifts and looking at them with a new light, they came to the same conclusion that there wasn’t any appreciable effect which seemed strange. Matt would have expected to see some level of variation of longer rifts or tougher enemies, but even when they replicated one of their successful rift attempts, they never got a repeat success.

Not that the find dissuaded them in any way, but instead, they started looking at the rifts that had ended up different.

Seeing the first dozen Domain types which had produced appreciable effects were all elemental neutral rifts gave them hope to see a trend. But those hopes were dashed almost as soon as they formed a rift with a lightning Domain, giving them a rift that didn’t have a single sharp turn in its layout.

Instead of continuing, they went to the bi-yearly meeting of the various aperology teams and various research departments.

It was half party, half work retreat, but it mainly served as an informal way for various teams to share information they were still in the process of discovering while also being a place to relax.

No one there had any brilliant ideas that solved their issue, but everyone was interested in the new avenue of manipulating rifts and discussion abounded, with pretty much every team interested in trying their hand at Domain anchored rifts.