The Path of Ascension Chapter 420

Chapter 420

Wiping the streak of blood away from his face, Matt laughed as Allie had to be dragged away by Aster.

“Round four! Come on, you cowards. Now that we figured out how to beat you guys, you can’t just stop fighting!”

Seeing they were all done, Matt expanded his Concept to encompass everyone.

Brian’s sigh rattled his loose jaw. “Now that’s amazing. I don’t even need to chew on mana stones to refill.”

Krodag crawled over to them as he half shouted, “[Heal My Weary Bones]!”

Pulling himself into a sitting position, he gasped, “If anyone wants to heal, I’m out of commission. It’s time to drink something.”

Rummaging through a spatial ring on his finger, he sighed but perked up as Liz handed him a bottle.

Snapping the stem, he took two big swigs before spitting all of the liquid out and coughing. “Is this… Water? Why would you give this to me? Are you trying to kill me!”

Liz grinned, knowing exactly what she had done. “That’s potion-enriched water. It won’t fill your mana pool, but it soothes aches and pains as well as a minor spiritual soothing factor.”

“But why is it water?” Krodag looked genuinely confused.

Liz glanced to Matt as if looking for support, but he held up his hands, just watching. “Are you implying that your potions aren’t made with water?”

“Why would you make it with water!? That’s what goes in the toilets.”

Ellen’s snort gave away the game, but that only gave Allie time to complain more. She was still eager to fight again after she and Zack had lost the first two out of the three rounds they had fought.

It wasn’t so much that Allie and Zack were weaker than the others, but that their area of expertise was firmly countered by Brian and Ellen.

Moe and Krodag had gone down fairly fast in both of the fights, with Allie and Zack able to teleport next to them and deliver a single devastating attack from an unavoidable angle.

The other two were the real problems, and eventually caused them to lose each time. Ellen was just too slippery to go down by spell or dagger, even if they appeared right next to her. Her exquisite bodily control, along with all of the knowledge she had accumulated, gave her a better-than-most understanding of spatial magics, giving her just enough warning to stop Allie’s more simple shenanigans.

On the other hand, Brian wasn’t any single undead and Zack and Allie, unlike Matt, Liz, and Aster, didn’t specialize in wide scale attacks that could destroy all of his undead at once, allowing him to endlessly jump from undead to undead while summoning more and more.

Their sole win out of the three rounds they had fought was the final one, where they managed to actually hit the ‘real’ Brian in their first ambush. That left only Ellen who could seriously threaten them, but by herself even the Jack of All couldn’t handle two pin point accurate Ascenders.

Matt wouldn’t have minded going for a fourth round, but he also felt it was a good time to stop. They had also fought three rounds themselves, and the Clan Ascenders had similarly defeated them in their second match, with Moe keeping Matt and Liz away from Aster long enough for Ellen and Brian to land a death blow, which spelled their inevitable defeat. They had prevented that from happening in the third, which gave them the victory once more, but it had been a hard won fight with each side learning more about the others fighting styles.

“I think we should go and grab dinner.”

Everyone saw right through Matt, but Zack and Allie were the only two pushing to fight longer, and so his argument won out.

Returning to their house, the group of them chatted while Matt and Ellen cooked up a dinner for everyone, and Krodag cracked open his own alcohol collection, letting them taste the wonders that he had not only collected over the years, but distilled and brewed himself.

After passing around a delectable apricot brandy, he explained, “Ya can’t just rely on higher-Tiered ingredients to make good alcohol. That’s the sign of a bad brewmaster. Alcohol is a vessel to deliver complex flavors while also delivering unique effects.”

Zack nodded as he took a careful sip. “The aftertaste is quite rich. It makes me want to slow down instead of drinking faster.”

Liz wiggled her glass. “It’s good but apricot just isn’t a good base flavor. Why not something like a pear or apple?”

Krodag rolled his eyes. “Apple is far too overused. Besides, what type of apple? There are more varieties than I can count and not all of them make good alcohols, and the ones that do are already being used to make alcohols. Try this. It’s a blueberry infused mead. Tier 3 but a very good batch I made a few years ago. Sadly the color was off from the blue I envisioned when I started, so it was never sent to production.”

When Allie took a swig of the drink, she shrugged. “But what’s the point if it’s so low of a Tier? It won’t get me shit faced and if I’m drinking alcohol, I want to get shit faced. If I’m not getting drunk, or at least buzzed, I’d rather drink anything else.”

Moe raised his own smoothie up to Allie, losing his accent as he spoke. “‘Ere, ‘ere! ‘ohol, even good ‘ohol tastes like alcohol. Why drink it if not to get drunk? I don’t eat Falxen Mushrooms because I like the flavor. I do it to trip balls and see things only a drug-addled mind can produce.”

Allie perked up. “Oh, you have good psychedelics? It’s been a while since I imbibed and could go for some. Oh, let me see if any of the shops I buy from have something good.”

Having said that, she vanished and all five of the Clan Ascenders sighed in unison.

Wun groaned, “Any chance she’ll reach Tier 40 soon? I really want to be able to do that. I’d pay. I mean, bet for teleports.”

Brian’s bones rattled. “I thought I had the best Talent. I can be anywhere in the Realm, but I can’t bring objects like she can. It’s more of a projection, so I can’t even enjoy eating or drinking unless I have a specially made body present. The Realm really is unfair.”

As Allie reappeared, she held a bag of dried mushrooms joined a moment later by Moe who had gotten his own from his ring. Seconds later she and Moe happily downing their respective Tiers’ drug.

Moe said something, but he made the accent so thick Matt didn’t even try to parse it. Instead, he slid the chicken thighs to Ellen, who quickly sliced and breaded them. Chicken parmesan wasn’t the most high-effort dish but Wun, Ellen, and Krodag really liked pasta and red sauce dishes, and so, Matt was making a few different types. Chicken parmesan was one of Liz and Aster’s favorites, so he was making sure they were perfect.

Without her knife slowing, she sighed. “It really is a stupid power. I’ve learned how to do some spatial shenanigans, but none of them match up to that. Obviously. Does she do it when you guys delve? I remember when we forgot to take half our food rations into a rift once. Shit sucked. Months of breaks with nothing to eat.”

Matt shrugged. “Once or twice, but not that often. If we are delving in a group we are, more often than not, pushing hard as possible, and so we don’t really stop to eat inside a rift.”

Ellen looked at him weirdly. “What about regenerating ma… ah, fuck you guys. You need to hurry up and reach Tier 35 as well. I want to delve with you and see what it’s like. During a normal delve, even we consume mana faster than our mana pools regenerate or our converters can keep us topped off, let alone when we’re pushing hard. And that’s with Lug and Bottle able to fight with minimal mana expenditure. With how the faster speed mana converters are shit for efficiency, we mainly rely on banks of the slower ones to top off every few engagements, then with longer breaks to regenerate naturally when they get fully used. Why pay to delve ya know?”

Matt shrugged once more. “Not really. Sorry, but it’s true. With my Concept, I’ve never really had mana issues.”

“But what about when you were a low Tier and your Concept was weak, so you didn’t have the willpower to sustain it? You had to struggle then. Right? Or at least the others, as you just absorbed mana stones?”

Matt, not able to mention his Talent so directly but still wanting to answer, chose his words carefully. “It still wasn’t so bad that we needed to take breaks or anything. They just stored mana when we had down time and pulled directly from already aspected rechargeable mana stones. That, and even before we got a seventh floor Mind Over Matter, which made it effectively free, my Concept has always been large, giving me a good amount of Willpower and Willpower regeneration to keep them going. And at that Tier, we just didn’t have enough skills to really spend that much mana, and after Minkalla, when we did, my Concept gave enough, so it was never really an issue.”

Thinking back, Matt smiled. “I remember when I first formed my Concept. I used it for like half a second and fell over with a nosebleed.”

Ellen shared her own tidbit with a soft grin. “When we formed our Concepts over the course of Tier 5 and 6, all of us landed on our asses more than once. Brian nearly lost his head for real one time. Fell right in a doorway where the door was already closing. Moe had to kick him through the door to save his ass. It shouldn’t be that surprising to learn how good you are with your Domain, but it’s less obvious than it is with someone like Aiden, who has that as their main thing. You’re more similar to me in that respect. We are good at a lot of things, which makes people tend to forget how good we are at other things.”

Matt felt that down to his bones, but for a slightly different reason than she meant. “I like to think so. Still, I wouldn’t call myself a Domain expert with Aiden around. I’m good, I created a Meld and have my Truth already—”

He was interrupted by all five of the Clan Ascenders rushing over to him, asking questions.

As with Max, there was a moment of pause when they heard his Truth, but thankfully, after he said it in a few different languages, most of their apprehension vanished. From there, it turned into a pestering session where they simply asked dumber and dumber questions, trying to get a rise out of Matt or his Truth. It wasn’t without its benefits, but it wasn’t in any way a scientific or methodic questioning like with Max or Luna, instead just going for laughs.

Matt eventually put his foot down and kicked everyone out of the kitchen or their dinner would have become breakfast.

Finishing what he had started saying before the interruption, he continued, “But as I was saying before. Aiden, he’s on another level. I can still hardly believe that just two or three Tiers stronger than us, he created his Authority. We probably won’t have even finished our Aspects by that time. It’s crazy.”

Ellen’s blade slowed then stopped as she nodded along. “Don’t ever tell him I said this, I’ll deny everything. But yes. We all kind of hate him for that. A fucking Authority. Something a Tier 74 needs to break through to Tier 75. It’s actually insane. We’ve all been trying, but even I can’t make heads or tails of the mumbo jumbo shit Aiden says about it. Legends are supposed to be the best, but it’s rare for one of us to show up the others like that. It’s a good thing he’s only decent without it. Imagine if he had an applicable Talent-and-or bloodline.”

Matt shuddered. “I’d like to say that he’d never have pushed himself hard enough to make one, but honestly, I just don’t want to consider what that would look like.”

Liz wrapped an arm around him, using him as a post to steady herself as another arm snaked around and snatched a just cooked strip of chicken. “It would be terrible. But you know what wouldn’t be terrible?”

Suspecting the answer, Matt asked, “What is that?”

“Dinner.”

Chuckling, Matt looked at their piles of food. “We should be ready in te—” pausing, he reached out and grabbed a phoenix who was stretching to grab another slice of chicken. “Out! No thieves in my kitchen.”

Laughing, Liz grabbed a carrot and sauntered away before he could protect it.

The dinner turned out fantastic, and was only made better as Allie and Moe’s mushrooms started to really take effect on the two of them. As they started to fall deeper into their high they ended up giving everyone else live entertainment.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

While everyone else moved into the living room to watch a movie, with Brian and Wun both demanded they watch the movie whose memorial they had bet, Moe and Allie wandered out onto the flying island to play in the grass and enjoy the various passing worlds as they slid by underneath them.

The next day, it was time to start the real reason they had come.

Delving cool and rare rifts.

***