The Path of Ascension Chapter 425

Chapter 425

Matt and Liz threw themselves into paperwork as they returned to their duchy, and there were sadly several things they needed to address.

First and foremost was the counterfeiting problem.

Despite all of their efforts, another group of counterfeiters seemed to have sprung up and had been adding their false coins into circulation.

Digging deeper into it, Matt found that several of the most affected businesses were the various gambling halls, and he briefly considered if they were actually in cahoots with the counterfeiters.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone cried foul while punching themselves in the face, but if they truly were working together, there was no real evidence beyond his semi hopeful hunch. Even digging into their records and reviewing the reports, attempting to track the counterfeit money came up with little.

One man in particular had his steps traced by the investigation team going back weeks, following the man’s counterfeit credit, but he had picked it up as a tip from his sex work job. Given it had been a tip, no one had looked that closely with the main payment having come in the form of the much easier to trace and infinitely harder to counterfeit digital transaction.

Rather, the woman who had given the tip in question was also unlikely to be involved with the actual counterfeiting ring, having owned a low income laundromat on a former Corporations world.

That was basically a dead end to the investigation, as former Corporations and Republic worlds, veil and non-veiled alike, loved physical currency and were some of the slowest to convert to a mainly digital economy.

There were millions of reasons as to why they preferred it, but they were also the worlds that had the largest amounts of counterfeiting operations, as the operations were more easily able to slip their counterfeits into the economy.

Matt finally had to give up and sent an order to the local rulers prodding them to do their damn jobs, warning them that if he had to come and deal with it himself, they wouldn’t like the fines he’d levy at their personal accounts.

Then, because Liz was messing with him, his next case was on the production of physical currency.

All minted coins were made at the ducal level, and were officially under the purview of themselves as the duchy’s rulers. Most rulers just foisted the responsibility on their largest banks who printed the coins in their name and wiped their hands of the matter, at most checking in every once and a while.

Matt and Liz had originally done the same, but had retracted said rights when the counterfeiting started gaining a foothold in their duchy. It might have been an overreaction, but they were deliberately trying to limit the amount of physical currency in their lands to hurry up the planets who were dragging their feet to convert to digital currency was slowly removed.

Then, in return for Liz’s antics, he slipped a report about Soerilia into her pile.

It was a generally positive report, given that Baron Hastra had had time to both quell the unrest that their fumbled integration had caused, and the intervening time between their last meeting, but it was still nice to check in on their first world.

Things had been rough for a while, but they had turned around fairly well, with the world having a high Empire compatibility rating just a short hundred years later.

The world even had a small but notable cultivation supply industry that was making enough for Baron Hastra to consider exports if the trend continued.

Matt had already looked over his plans, and while it was a bit of a stretch given the level of the product, if it worked, it would give the otherwise unremarkable planet an export, even if only a local one.

That report inevitably made Matt think about the guild and the similar investigations he had authorized before leaving for the Clans.

Having already dropped off almost two decades of mana production, Matt made a mental note to talk to Frederic about his mana and where it was going at the upcoming millennia open court the Emperor was going to hold.

It was a few hundred years out, but he wasn’t in any particular rush. He was just hoping to hear some nice things during something he knew would be otherwise annoying, and a question now would hopefully prompt the newest Royal to prepare a list.

Or something. Matt wasn’t sure what he was expecting honestly. He wanted to know where his mana was going and knew he could just look it up, or if he really wanted to ask Frederic he could just ask Allie to teleport him. But he didn’t care that much, which he realized was weird, and he took a few minutes to ponder that feeling.

He didn’t have any great revelation, but came to the same conclusion. He wanted to know but didn’t care enough to actually look for the information.

That was interesting in and of itself, and he felt like his Truth should have some reaction to such a thought, but he felt nothing and eventually concluded that his reasoning was twofold.

Frederic wouldn’t do anything as dumb or obvious as steal the mana or let it slip, and secondly, most of his mana was probably being spent on general things like subsidies. Which was fine. Good even. Those things were important for life on higher-Tier worlds, given that on such worlds, most people used more mana than they produced in their daily lives, unlike on lower-Tier worlds. It was also boring, and unless he was going to audit where his mana was going, he just didn’t care that much, which put him in a weird spot.

And weird emotions were good. If he was lucky, feeling something strongly would let him discover another part of his Aspect.

Sadly there were no deeper insights, and seeing there was nothing important left on their docket, Matt let his train of thought return to Baron Hastra’s report on Soerilia’s possible export.

His guild had several teams who were all trying to improve or outright invent items that would make ambient cultivation more effective.

Unlike aperology, it was a well-developed branch of research, and Matt had little doubt that the lowest hanging fruit had long been picked, leaving hard work and lots of research as the only viable methods forward.

Or luck.

There was always someone trying to pull something interesting out of a rift and turn it into a viable product, and while more times than not they failed, the successes were usually notable.

And theirs was a guild about aperology.

Which was exactly why Matt had teams on both sides working on the problem. Though the aperology teams were more focused on trying to create a mythical garden rift that was more ideal for crop production.

According to their latest reports, the best they had gotten was a rift that seemed to mutate plants. It mainly did so to make them dangerous and produce diseases that infected the weirdly mutated rift-life, but it was still interesting, even if mostly useless.

The rift, of course, had been fully quarantined with strict protocols surrounding it, and Matt wasn’t entirely happy even with that, given the potential for harm if an outbreak happened. After a quick check with his spiritual sense, he gave the team five years to make some progress or to destroy the rift and make new attempts.

They were one of his better aperology teams, and he didn’t want them getting stuck on such a product when their goal was unlikely to be found inside such a rift.

Though Matt did agree with the team’s initial report in that their balance of earth and life mana types and sub-aspects was on the right track. Theoretically.

The teams working on the more mundane approaches of assisting ambient essence cultivation hadn’t made much, if any, progress, but Matt still read up on their works.

One team had what they thought might be a replacement for a secondary ingredient to a Tier 5 and below potion that made compressing ambient essence easier, which had the potential to open up a side patent to the already existing product. As it wasn’t one of the main ingredients, it couldn’t be considered its own product, and as such, would fall under the umbrella of the original patent. But it was still progress and he was more than happy with it.

The other team on the alchemical side was working on the ambient essence attraction aspect, which was normally handled by runes but supplemented by pills to speed up the process. Their theory had been trying to match runes with pill types for better effects. It had been done before to mild success, but their approach was deliberately using differing business’ products to achieve the same effects with minimal modification.

There was a third team working on trying to make a better rune for collecting essence that had had zero appreciable progress, but Matt had never expected that to be a quick project and so just skimmed their reports.

Not all of the teams had so little to report.

Three teams had finished their missions. One in success and the remaining two in failure.

The failures weren’t that unexpected, and Matt liked how the teams voluntarily ended their projects when it became clear they had truly hit a dead end. Agreeing with Kees’ proposed rewards, Matt happily approved them.

The success, however, was more interesting. A mechanical team had been working on a cheaper auto-harvester for automated crop production, but were struggling when trying to avoid using the existing, and therefore patented, harvesting manipulators. Through their tinkering, they accidentally created a new type of anti-fouling coating. They had been trying to create a slightly sticky but non-clingy coating which they spectacularly failed at, instead creating a coating that actively rejected anything resembling dirt; but the new invention had some theoretical uses.

After a series of tests, they had both confirmed the product’s safety and lack of existing patents for it, which was the largest shock. Discovering an already invented product was hardly a new outcome for such research and wouldn’t have been unexpected, but instead it was confirmed that no one had patented the product.

Given its peculiarities, it was unknown if it would find commercial application, as there were existing products that did the same thing with long track records. But Matt still agreed with Kees and approved one of the highest payout in Titan Torch’s short history.

He’d much rather support such developments than stick them in a closet somewhere.

A few other teams had made progress on their projects but nothing was prominent enough to catch his eye.

Though Matt did have something to do so he just couldn’t relax, and once he and Liz were done with their ducal work they teleported back to the Capitol, where Liz introduced her bloodline research facility’s new product to the Empire.

While more limited in scope given its much weaker effects, bloodline holders everywhere seemed excited at the prospect of a new product which could help them improve.

Liz was the lady of the hour, and Matt found that he quite enjoyed watching her get praise heaped on her until she begged Allie to get them. It served her right for all of her poking when he complained about his endless interviews.

He, however, was magnanimous and only teased her a little.

In what he wished he could have said was an unexpected move, several companies came forward and tried to get Liz to give them exclusive rights to produce the new potion, offering various promises.

Liz was nicer than he would have been, simply reminding them of the new ingredient list they would need to start growing if they wanted to start producing the potions.

She was even given an award from several beast bloodline groups who thanked her for allowing the non-wealthy to get anything at all.

Which was really where the potion shined. Similar to the mana potions they had made for Liz and Aster, the new bloodline potion would allow a cultivator to not use as much essence on deepening their bloodline every Tier.

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The rich would still use the original potions, which were ten times more effective, but for those who would have never been able to afford even one of those potions before they died of old age, Liz’s potions were their method of closing the gap.

That, more than anything, moved many to effusive thanks, which Liz struggled with, and Matt always enjoyed watching, given how many times she made fun of him in similar situations.

Matt mostly got to hang back, but he did pull a few strings and got a group of various fire bird type bloodlines children to mob Liz right after one of her presentations. He didn’t even get pecked for it, as Liz split into a dozen copies of herself as she happily gave each of them a little personal time.

While he was laughing, a small, chicken-like phoenix appeared in front of him just long enough to give him a feathery hug and a wink before vanishing once more.

It happened so fast, Matt didn’t know if it was a clone or the real Mara, but his question was answered when both of the elder Moores had clones waiting for them in their suite later that evening. They had gotten Manny to teleport their clones to the Capital for the evening so they could celebrate with their daughter on her and her research team’s achievement.

Seeing the ecstatic Liz made Matt’s century and gave him a better feeling than his own big announcements.

Returning to Palustris just a week before their return to delving, the six of them gathered around Susanne, wanting to see how her eye had developed as well as wanting to get their first Power lesson from Luis.