The Path of Ascension Chapter 419

Chapter 419

 

The group of them moved out of the house and onto the flying island before Wun put his staff down. “Nope, no fighting on the island. Let’s move to somewhere else. One of the hidden areas.”

The four younger Clan Ascenders chanted in unison, “Mysteries, mysteries, hidden in a sock. Mysteries, mysteries, find ‘em in a clock.”

Jumping off the island, they devolved into more bad rhymes before they reached the edge of where two of the quilt like areas of the world met.

There was a spatial layering effect that Matt could feel but didn’t fully comprehend how to bypass; at least not in a non-destructive manner.

Allie, however, took one look at it and cut a hole for them all to travel through, letting them get under the surface layer world to the mishmash of worlds beneath.

Krodag gave her the middle finger. “You’re no fun. Didn’t even slow you down at all.”

Allie grinned as she brandished her dagger. “If you want to see fun, I can dismantle the whole thing. Nifty thing here, but it’s got a flaw.”

Wun narrowed his eyes. “Bullshit.”

On the other hand, Ellen and Krodag each called out, “Noooo wayyyy!” Seeming to think Allie was just messing with them.

Brian, however, just looked interested while Moe egged Allie on. “No way. Ifna ya ‘id find it, do it to ‘rove it.”

Aster thankfully swatted Allie with her tail. “Don’t be rude. Share just enough to prove it’s real and then dangle the rest so we can watch ‘em squirm.”

Allie rubbed her thigh before shrugging. “I really did find something, but I wasn’t going to actually destroy it.” Instead she grinned. “But I did just find the best thing to bet. How to destroy this whole place with a single attack. I promise it’s real, doesn’t take a specific Talent to do, and wasn’t caused by me and if tampered with, will result in all of the planets trying to enter the same real space at the same time.”

Getting an [AI] verification sent all five of the Clans Ascenders onto rummaging around the seam in reality like ants looking for a crumb.

While they did that, Matt instead let himself look around at the absolute weirdness that was being inside the merged portions of the planets that most people were never supposed to see. It was not nearly as clean and organized as the outside layer of the merged worlds were.

Through his Domain, he could see that space was somehow layered on top of itself but not intersecting, though it wasn’t done so in any fashion he was used to. He would have normally interpreted that meaning the planet was Talent-made but, given what Allie had said, he looked deeper.

Or rather, less deep.

The world they had entered through was a desert, with hills of sand and hot winds whipping around, and so Matt had expected them to enter into an area of similar design, but they hadn’t. Instead, they were in a slightly murky area more like a tropical swamp than any desert.

Except the swamp only traveled for a distance of a few hundred feet before it gave way to a weird looking ocean.

Matt narrowed his spiritual perception and realized his mistake. It wasn’t just an ocean, it was actually a lake and a sea overlapping onto each other, which gave the game away.

The planets really were all occupying the same space, and like holograms overlaid onto each other, they were all layered on top of each other and fighting for prominence.

Taking a step to the side, the world changed as his position did and the swamp was replaced by a lush field of orange-tipped grasses. Even the sky was murky as the dozens of slightly different atmospheres layered over top of each other, making the day dimmer than it otherwise should have been.

On instinct, Matt reached out with his Domain, his meld specifically, and smoothed the areas around them like trying to remove the wrinkles from a blanket.

As he did so, the worlds’ oddities vanished as the competing worlds were shuffled under the desert they had entered from.

Everyone looked to Matt, who just whistled as if he hadn’t done anything.

Ellen snorted. “That’s no fun. You aren’t allowed to figure that out so easily. It would have been way more interesting to see you guys walk into a tree that appeared out of nowhere. Gets a laugh every time.”

Matt just buffed his nails on his shirt, going for his best pretentious noble impersonation. “It was as natural as breathing. Didn’t take but a moment of my time. I’m happy to give lessons.”

A moment later, the area around Zack smoothed out, but Matt felt mana fluctuations from him, indicating that he had figured out a magical way instead of a Domain-based one, which caused another round of cursing.

“You guys suck.” Brian looked almost as sad as the skeletal horse he was riding.

Ellen cracked her neck with a pop before brandishing a sword that was almost identical to Susanne’s.

“Okay, surprises ruined, let’s fight. I’m going to suppress all of my greatsword fighting knowledge and show you what an accelerated version of my Talent looks like. When I was a Tier 5 or so, this would have taken decades, but I’ll fake it and just unlock as I go until I’m fighting at my true level. Let’s stick to Tier 25 strength to keep things safe.”

Brandishing her own greatsword, she stood at roughly a head height for Susanne and waited in a sloppy ready stance.

Susanne thrust forward; it seemed like a slow and casual strike, but arrived in the blink of an eye.

Ellen tried to deflect with a circular motion that would have brought Susanne’s thrust alongside and past her, opening Susanne up to a devastating counter, but her timing was off and the manifested greatsword poked Ellen in the chest right over her heart.

“Again.”

Ellen called out and once more she was quickly defeated. While Susanne had copied her original thrust, and the second time Ellen’s parry’s timing was better, she was still defeated. Instead of allowing her blade to just be directed off to the side, Susanne redirected the energy to move her blade upward and then back down in a slash that would have cut Ellen’s head in two.

Undaunted, Ellen called out, “Again.”

In the sixth round of combat, the quick finishers Susanne was using failed, and the two of them exchanged three blows before Susanne incorporated footwork into her fighting, which literally tripped Ellen up as she crossed her feet and fell, opening herself up to an easy finish.

Even as an observer, Matt found the fights riveting as he watched Ellen learn in real time. She never made a mistake twice, and it was clear that her ability to infer was working overtime as she extrapolated and made logical leaps.

Not all of them were correct. It seemed Ellen had truly blocked not just all knowledge of greatsword fighting, but of melee fighting in general from her own mind, as she made mistakes that she otherwise wouldn’t have if she had any knowledge of how to fight in close range at all. Even with that handicap, the more information she learned, the faster and better her improvement was.

Matt suspected it was like watching her progress through the Path in real time. She learned, made mistakes, and came back with a counter.

At first it seemed like she’d never be able to match Susanne, but after the thirty-fifth fight, she was able to drag the fights out for minutes at a time, and by the fortieth fight, she was dueling Susanne to a draw.

After that, as the fights were able to go on longer, they were able to watch her improvements happen mid fight.

In an interesting twist, they also saw as her style evolved to counter Susanne and her personal fighting style.

Once she started to get the upper hand in their fight, Ellen called out, “Let’s spice things up. Use your Talent, Susie!”

As if a flip was switched, Susanne blurred.

She didn’t speed up; rather each of her moves became far more fluid as her Talent for writing applied itself to her blade. It wasn’t a night and day difference, but it was there and unmistakable.

Once more, Ellen started to lose, but within three rounds, she was once again fighting equally to Susanne. And two rounds after that, she started beating Susanne and their roles switched.

Susanne went from the teacher to the student, as her fighting style was picked apart and analyzed within an inch of its life, which was pretty normal from Ellen, given everything Matt had heard of her. She was considered one of the finest melee fighters in the Realm for a reason.

Not that Susanne just rolled over and gave up having lost her upper hand. Despite not having a Talent for learning, she improved with every exchange of blades, learning from the flaws Ellen had revealed and tightening her own style accordingly.

After a few minutes of that, Ellen jumped back signaling the end of the fight. “Tada!”

Matt clapped politely. That had been an impressive showing and encapsulated exactly why Ellen was so scary. She could pick apart someone else’s personal fighting style and learn it, perfect it, and then dismantle the original fighter with it. And that was when she was using a mirror match up. Her own personal weapon was a sword and shield, and any defeat would come even faster with the weapon she had truly mastered, and she usually just used the flaws she found to dismantle her opponents in short order.

Matt stepped forward and smiled. “Care to go for a second round?”

He truly wanted to see how he stacked up and what he could learn from someone who could dissect his own style, but his dreams were dashed when Ellen shook her head.

“Naaa, you aren’t a good example. I can copy physical things. I can’t copy shitting out massive mana attacks. Instead, why don’t we spar as a group?”

Liz joined Matt, with only Aster a moment behind.

Matt smiled. “Any rules or restrictions?”

Moe shrugged, speaking without his typical accent again, “No killing each other. Keeping things to Tier 25 should do that. Why bother with anything else? Let’s just beat each other until one side comes out on top.”

That was good enough for them, and after giving themselves some distance, Matt raised a hand. “If we really want to go all out, should we be doing so inside this folded space or on a planet at all?”

Wun waved that concern away. “I’ll protect the area. I—. Actually that’s boring, let’s move into a rift.”

They found a nearby Tier 30 rift and Wun rushed in. By the time Matt entered the rift, just a step behind Wun, the entire place was a lifeless wasteland with trees still falling and dirt still raining down.

A moment later, Wun came back with his namesake, his golden staff steaming as liquids of all kinds evaporated off of it. “Okay, rift cleared. We can go wild now. No reason to hold back.” Sauntering over to where Allie, Zack, and Susanne floated, he reached out and said, “Snacks.”

Vanishing for a moment, Allie came back, having raided someone’s pantry with several of the bags being half empty.

Lining up across from each other, Matt quickly worked out a general plan with Liz and Aster.

Seeing both sides ready, Wun picked up a chip and tossed it into the air lightly.

The moment it touched the ground, Matt sprang forward, activating all of his buffs. He was aiming for Moe, but Ellen intercepted him half way, moving incredibly fast for the Tier 25 limit they had set.

Matt slashed out at her, but instead of blocking or deflecting, she launched herself up with a tap of her toes, trying to get over him and to Aster, who was busy countering the debuffing spells and buffing spells Brian and Krodag were casting respectively.

While Krodag was a healer, his buffs were second to none, and he was a deft hand at counter magic, which meant Aster had her work cut out for her. If they let Ellen get in close, she would be done for.

Activating his Intent, Matt made Ellen the center of the Realm, and for a moment, she froze. She was incredibly fast at pushing through his working, but that momentary pause was more than enough for Matt to land a blow.

Instead of trying to continue advancing towards Aster, Ellen made the right choice and got her shield between them, blocking the combination of [Tribulation Strike], [Mana Slash], and [Mana Charge].

The explosion of mixed powers sent her flying away from his bond, her shield slightly deformed from the impact. She was, however, able to bleed off most of the damage with a spell Matt couldn’t quite follow. All he knew was that it somehow connected her shield with the space around her without actually hampering her own movement, letting her shift a lot of the force of his attack off her.

Before Matt could follow up, half a dozen skeletal knights appeared, racing at him, Aster having dispelled the illusion they were hiding under.

Ducking the arrow of black mana that was aimed for his head, Matt flexed his repulsion ability from his Concept, sending the knights skidding back just in time for Ellen to step out of a beam of light behind Matt.

She drove her short sword into his back just over his hip, her blade piercing [Cracked Phantom Armor] after only a moment of resistance. Through the feedback of the spell, Matt felt she had a localized spell disruptor built into the weapon, which was further bolstered by three spells layered on top of each other.

Matt ignored it.

He also ignored the necrotic poison that tried to kill his cells and allow Brian to command his very flesh, which was a very interesting combination, just one that had no chance of working on him.

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Instead of fighting back against Ellen, he used [Telekinesis] and grabbed for Brian, who was also summoning a skeletal dragon. Krodag sensed the nearly invisible spell just in time and shouted, “[Shield of My Ancestor’s Light]!”

The spell that covered Brian looked like a typical [Dome of Light] shielding spell, but instead of being the normal half globe filled with protective and healing energies, it was made of dwarves forming a shield… sphere.

Matt didn’t let the empowered spell stop him and clamped down with half of his Tier 25 mana generation. The shield looked like it would hold, but that was only for a moment, and he could see Krodag start to smile before it was wiped off his face as cracks started to appear. An instant later, the dome exploded in a wave of golden fragments that vanished into nothing.

Brian had already swapped places with one of his undead knights, which was pulverized, but Matt didn’t have the capacity to track him down and left him to Liz, who had cast a curse spell that was using her incredible life energy from Ichor to rot away the undead he kept summoning.

Ellen hadn’t been sitting on her hands either, and had driven three more blades into Matt’s back, each pumping massive amounts of different poisons as well as strange foreign mana into his body. His Millennium Willow Lifespan let him dump mana directly into his flesh and that, combined with both [Regeneration], and [Barbarian’s Hide], neutralized everything one and all.

Matt brought his sword around while casting [Sword Twin], keeping all three copies of the weapon inside his sword, empowering it while hopefully setting up for a trap.

Ellen rushed at him and Matt used his greater reach to lash out with a simple flourish, hoping to limit her movement, but she never even slowed as she deflected his blade down and blocked the [Mana Charge] explosion with her shield.

With a flick of her wrist, Matt lost control of his blade and the hand that had been holding it. He noticed as she did that, she seemed to have perfectly understood how [Cracked Phantom Armor] worked and was then able to pierce through it in the most efficient way. Considering that the mana patterns of the spell changed constantly as he varied the amount of mana pouring into it, as well given how he was using the second layer which deliberately operated on a different pattern, that was the most impressive thing he had seen so far, and he made a note to pick her brain after the fight so he could better address that.

Missing his right hand, Matt didn’t let that change his plan and brought his knee up, trying to catch Ellen mid-jump, while also grabbing all of the air with [Air Manipulation] to prevent her from using that medium to redirect herself. He even pulsed his Meld to prevent her from using her own Domain to move.

Still, none of that was enough to stop her from dodging the knee. She managed to kick off a drop of his blood that was still hanging mid-air, hardened in place with [Water Manipulation], aiming to drive a blade into his neck.

Except, Matt wasn’t trying to hit her with his knee. At least that wasn’t his true goal.

His blade, controlled by [Sword Twin], raced towards her from behind, intending to skewer her less-defended back.

Ellen bent like her bones were made out of elastic, and given her smaller relative size, she managed to only take a wound to her side, which was quickly healed by a shouted, “[Healing Alms]!”