The Path of Ascension Chapter 418

Chapter 418

Five years passed in the blink of an eye, with Susanne, Zack, and Allie each reaching Tier 27 and all six of them pushing deeper into that Tier.

They had been pushing themselves to the limits. They didn’t delve for fun, for profit, or even to gain combat experience but instead for efficiency, which meant they just rushed from the entrances to the exits, only deviating for any mini bosses they found along the way which were better sources of essence per time spent.

Given that they were delving Tier 30 rifts, being three Tiers lower meant brutal fights.

Still, it worked well enough as it got them together and used to fighting as a group again, which would help them as they went to visit the Clans to delve their rifts for a few decades.

Personally, Matt was fairly happy to be leaving the Empire for a bit.

Things had settled down slightly, especially on the Duke Innes and Eirene front. With Duke Innes truly not reacting whatsoever, Eirene had been free to ply her trade for the last few years. While low in Tier, she had been making money hand over fist as she signed a contract with a potion manufacturer that made low-Tier but specialty products where her efficiency was able to truly shine.

With her income, she was reportedly living quite well and able to take care of her parents and a non-bloodline trio of ferrets she adopted.

According to Cato, there were already a dozen other companies and corporations lining up to buy her contract out as she advanced in Tier. On that front, she was a little slower after taking at least some of Matt’s advice to heart.

Having been fully carried through rifts, she had a lot to catch up on in the ways of combat, but following the typical carry build of a support mage, she started learning how to fight. Or what passed for fighting as someone who typically got escorted in a rift, but it was an improvement and one that at least had a path forward, which was good enough for Matt.

The second positive thing was that Luis Westermen had arrived and was assisting the teams assigned to his rifts and had indicated he was also open to consultation for their Power training.

Matt had expected Qin Jiang himself to come but apparently he had considered his time better spent managing the guild for at least the next dozen or so years given his long absences to forge the circlets.

Luis admitted that while he was no expert in Powers, he had one and was happy to help them while he was there. They intended to take him up on the offer, but the six of them were too occupied with their delving to really give the lessons the time they deserved and so only got a few things to think on, such as what they thought a comprehensive combination of their Talents, Domains, and if they had them, bloodlines would be.

After their final delve, they split off for a month to take care of everything they needed to do before they left the Empire and to relax a little.

Just as they were about to leave, Matt got a message through the Ascender chat from Wun Miloan, which stumped him.

Turning to Liz, he asked, “Do you know why Wun is asking us to bring the house?”

Liz shrugged as she inspected her helmet for issues. “I have no idea. Maybe because the accommodations are sized for dwarves and the others are going to play a trick on us by giving us them instead of human-sized stuff?”

Matt considered it and decided not to care. “Seems as likely as anything else I can think of.”

That made getting ready far easier, as if they were taking the house it meant packing was as easy as putting the house away.

Before he did so, Matt created two new rooms for Zack and Susanne, and Allie respectively. While it would be funny to see the other three struggle to live in such short accommodations, they all had the power to just make their own houses if it really came down to it, so he wasn’t really sure why they needed to bring the house.

Still, he wasn’t going to complain. It was always nice to be able to bring home with them, given they hadn’t seen it once since they had started delving.

Allie arrived snacking on a delicious smelling cantaloupe which she only shared with Aster just to piss everyone else off.

A teleport later, they arrived at Galmor’s Rest, the home of the Clans’ Ascenders.

Unlike the Empire that let their Ascenders spread out, the Clans had a specific planet made for their Ascenders to live on.

The Ascenders weren’t the only ones who could live there— that would have left the place empty— but it was officially their planet and all Ascenders jointly owned it.

The first thing Matt noticed as they appeared in the local real space was just how jarring it was. He knew the quilt effect was deliberate but it was even stranger to see it in real life with all of his senses.

Perfectly square forests bordered similarly shaped seas which pressed up against a desert which neighbored tightly packed cities. Each square was perfectly laid out but not with obvious formations or anything that would have made sense or been practical. No, instead the world wasn’t just a single world, it was instead a dozen or more worlds superimposed on each other with specific sections being allowed to phase into the real world, making the grid system.

Matt had heard of the Clans’ Ascender world in his lessons with Luna and had seen pictures but feeling the world with his spiritual sense gave a whole new picture he hadn’t really expected.

“Pretty, ain’t she?”

Wun leaned over Matt’s shoulder, peering up at him.

Not bothering to brush the man off, he just nodded. “It’s genuinely impressive. I really don’t get how the planets are being safely overlapped like that. Sadly, I fear it’s Talent work, isn’t it?”

“Sure is!” Wun didn’t seem as bothered by it being unreproducible as Matt was but he seemed satisfied and vaulted off Matt’s shoulder and landed in front of the six of them.

“Welcome one, welcome all. It is I—” Wun blinked several times, his arms still thrown into the air. “It is I—. I forgot my own stage name. Fuck. Whatever. It is I Wun Miloan, the greatest showman. Let me present to you all the Clans’ Coolest Example of Cool Shit: A Planet— The Second Attempt!”

Aster snorted with a grin. “That can’t really be the name?”

A purple-skinned woman popped up next to them. Mastermind, AKA Jack, AKA Ellen Noivah, grinned manically as she answered. “It actually is! We renamed it officially and everything. Really pissed a lot of people off, but it’s not wrong. They don’t share it around, but the first attempt at making a Patchwork World resulted in an asteroid field the size of a dozen planets when they tried to share the same physical location. Crazy how the math maths out.”

Liz and Zack winced in unison even as Allie clapped. “Anyone got a recording of that? Honestly, it seems fun to try. Telefragging can be tricky and messy, but I’ve never done it with anything that big before. I love bad ideas!”

Moe Greathammer lumbered out of the folded space a moment later, the dwarf’s voice rumbling in agreement, “Ah keep askin’ if I cen punch a decently-tiered world as hard as ah cen. Not even wit’ mah hammer, tha untiered ones always break so easily. Bu’ they’ll never let me.”

Krodag was the next out, a golden-bearded dwarf lightly bickering with Brian, currently inhabiting the body of a semi-humanoid skeleton with black bones.

Letting his voice spread to all of them, Brian stage whispered, “Krodag the redrunkless walks forward, each step making bottles tremble in fear that he will find them—”

“Shut it! I swear I’m going to twist your head off, Boney!”

Brian pulled his head off and tried to hand it to the dwarf but messed something up in the attempt and started clutching at his throat as if he was choking.

Ellen started cackling as she pointed at his struggling form. “And that’s what you get for trying to raid my music collection. I put a silence curse on your neck so if you tried to take off your head, you can’t speak. Talk shit about my tastes again and see where it gets you.”

All the while Wun held his pose until in a delayed explosion, cheese rained over them all. “No, wrong ring! Not my good cheeses!”

As Wun scrambled to collect his spatial ring’s contents, Zack raised a finger requesting permission to speak.

When Krodag nodded to him, he asked, “I think your… someone, isn’t too happy. They are turning purple.”

The Tier 45 dwarf man was in fact turning purple, seemingly stressed at the group’s antics as if they were aimed at pissing him off instead of their Empire guests.

Ellen just waved behind her. “Meh. Whatever his name is, he can deal with himself.”

That seemed to finally piss the man off enough that he started moving. Waving a hand, he bundled the four Tier 35 Ascenders together and physically tossed them down to the world as if he was throwing them into the trash.

Reaching out, he proffered his hand to shake with a forced smile. “My name is Ugnud and I’m very sadly the four idiots’ wrangler. I will also be your liaison while you are here in the Clans. Please, if you have any needs, just let me know and I can take care of them. Personally, I’m excited to meet you. I’ve heard reports you all sometimes actually listen.”

Allie waggled the hand that wasn’t being shook. “We can act up if you’d feel more comfortable with that.”

When Ugnud looked like he was going to have a heart attack and die on the spot, she backtracked. “Joking. Just joking. Mostly. Are you ok?”

Pulling out a lightly glowing canteen, he took a quick swig before waving the question off. “Those four are incredibly stressful and with the upcoming war with the Republic, they are intractable and are taking it out on me. I’m hoping that with your arrival, you’ll bleed off some of their energy and make it easier for me to deal with them.”

Aster pulled out a cup of ice cream and proffered it as he moved to shake her hand. “Have some ice cream. And thank you for having us. We’ll try to not make that large of a mess.”

Taking the ice cream and tentatively trying it, Ugnud went back in for a second larger scoop. “This is actually quite good. Thank you. And we understand that Legends can be… Can make waves as they pass through but we can handle that. Given that you didn’t cause an inter-Great Power incident in the Sects of all places, I believe you will be fine here.”

After they had all shaken the man’s hand and made introductions, they were led down to a floating island that looked eerily familiar.

Wun whistled as he floated over on a cloud. “Yes, that is an Empire ducal floating island. Some old Legend or another grabbed it in some war or something. I don’t remember exactly. Ancient history and the present is far more interesting than the past. Honestly, all of the worlds here are prizes from some war or another. We’ve cycled them in and out as things get stale but really it all gets stale, given there are only so many naturally occurring biomes that mesh well together.”

Ugnud really looked like he wanted to say something but instead just disappeared into a small house on the edge of the island, closing his door with a bang.

“Rubbing his hands together, Wun patiently waited for Matt to bring out his house. Wun looked back at the foreign Legends as they looked at him strangely, almost as if they could hear his inner monologue.” Reaching out and tapping the air, Wun stage whispered, “Test. Test. I’m speaking out loud, aren’t I? Sorry, it’s kinda funny and after mocking Krodag with it, it kind of becomes second nature.”

The other four popped out of the ground where they had been hiding at the mention of the house.

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With all eyes on him, Matt held up a hand. “Hold on for a minute here. What is so interesting about my house? I don’t want it damaged. It’s a house and not cheap to fix if it needs special materials.”

Moe blew a raspberry, “We ‘on’t break anythin’ intentionally.”

Matt narrowed his eyes at the other Ascender. “Yeah, it’s the stress on that last word that has me worried. I don’t want my house broken at all.”

Ellen gestured for him to get on with it. “We have a bet, and it’s not about breaking the house. Come on, stop teasing us. Show us! Pleassssseeee!”

With a thought, Matt plopped the house down on a clear patch of the flying island just to hear curses.

“I ‘an’t believe he ‘idn’t lie.” Moe looked like he had been poleaxed.

Krodag instead looked at Matt, trying to see through the veil he always kept up. “Maybe it’s a fake growth item?”

Brian shook his head, trying to speak but was still unable to get sound out. Finally he resorted to an army of skeletal rats that crawled out of a building and started spelling his words in real time. “No way. The bond is obvious on the house’s side. He’s actually got a growth house. Son of a bitch didn’t lie.”

“Hey, my mom wasn’t a dog!”

“No, she just got up to a bunch of monkey business.” Ellen snapped right back, causing the older Ascender to clutch at his chest.

Moe sauntered up to Matt and looked up to him. “‘An we go inside? Pleaseeee.”

Matt still didn’t really get it but just nodded. “Sure, everyone’s welcome. Come on in.”

As Ellen walked in, she hopped up to what Matt would consider a normal height and looked around. “This place is swanky as fuck.”

Brian tutted his way, inspecting the foyer, “And here I thought Aiden got the best growth item out of Minkalla with his boots but this has it beat hands down.”