The Path of Ascension Chapter 430

Chapter 430

Matt looked at the readout and smiled.

His expression wasn’t exactly unique, with nearly all of the scientists he had allowed into the testing room having some variation of the same excited expression.

Tim’s Talent was weird.

Or at least, it wasn’t what they had expected. Which they probably should have expected.

As Tim moved through the small kata he had been doing for the last few minutes, they could all see as his Talent pulsed.

Having worked closely with the teams inside— they were mainly the researchers who had worked with the skill modifications for the Tier 0 spells— he could tell they were equally interested and bemused in what they were seeing as he was.

They had studied the spirit in the skill-making procedure extensively, looking for potential pitfalls in Rah’s Realm’s teachings. They hadn’t found any, but during that search, they had learned a lot about how people’s spirits react to carving skills inside of them.

Looking to the man in question, Matt saw the now peak Tier 27 Rah looking just as puzzled as everyone else.

He might not have had the scientists’ official credentials in the various fields at the start, but he had all of the practical experience, which was why he had been originally included. A hundred or so years later, he now had several diplomas from some of the Empire’s best colleges. Rah’s advancement looked vastly different for himself than anyone else, given the development of his cultivation technique to take him to Tier 30, which demanded he still use ambient essence.

His cultivation creation hadn’t been simple, but he and Ciceron had eventually figured things out enough to let them both move onto other topics. According to Rah, the cultivation technique was far better than what he had had before, but still not quite as good as he wanted it to be.

Matt interpreted that as: not as much raw power as their simpler crunch method.

His assumption was nearly confirmed when Rah started talking about the possibility of an expedition into chaotic space to find some of the rare resources that might be able to fully reset and backfill his cultivation with compressed monster essence.

Not that they expected him to make the jump any time soon, as Rah was still trying to create his next Tiers of cultivation technique; he just wasn’t in so much of a rush and was happy to cultivate.

Which meant being on a higher-Tier world and just sitting around. At Rah’s level of ability, he didn’t need to truly meditate any longer to cultivate. So long as he wasn’t fighting, he could do other things at the same time.

Rah decided to get accredited in several of the things he had learned in his former Realm, which had been a shock to those who knew where he Ascended from.

When he tested as a formation and enchanting Grandmaster all the way up to Tier 30, after only a decade of dedicated study, they had learned the hard way that Rah downplayed a lot of his own achievements.

The man was a gifted enchanter who specialized in large-scale formations and weapon enchanting, but was competent in most fields. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t learned in a set institution in his lower Realm, but that what he had learned came from several schools of thought mixed and matched together, thanks to his adventures and travels. According to him, he hadn’t really realized just how good he was in his Realm, given the general difficulty most people had complained about and what he experienced being somewhat equal.

So when Rah reached the Empire, with its compiled and compartmented schools of thought which had been iterated upon for millions of years, he took to the lessons easily.

His other specialty was in skill manipulation. That same free time when cultivating was spent on one of the hottest academic topics: low-Tier skill creation.

Being from the Realm which had developed the technique, as well as having more experience than most, Rah was easily able to get his Hidden Master’s qualifications, making him the first to reach such a degree. That had outed him as the inventor, but by that point, Rah was settled in and established well enough to fend off the numerous requests from every high Tier organization, large and small, including other Great Powers.

Which meant Rah had more of a right to be there than Matt did, which was why he’d invited the man back to the guild for this first test.

They had expected Tim’s Talent to be in some way preparing himself for the flood of knowledge that would come once he reached his proficiency threshold. And in some capacity, they were correct, but that was far from the whole truth.

As far as they could tell, Tim’s Talent was distilling all of their lessons, preparing to make a skill into four discrete movements of his body and spirit. The moves should have been far beyond the skill level of even what someone who had made all five skills could do at the same time.

Everyone had turned to Rah to see his reaction who said, “Those movements are incredibly advanced because of the layering, but I believe that his Talent is also customising the movements for him personally. While I could probably do the combined movements with a little study, it would take years for me to get comfortable with merging so much; as well as modifying the movements to fit myself; that I wouldn’t have considered it worth it before seeing him. Still, it is fascinating to see the lessons distilled to their core components in such a manner.”

Even more interesting was how his physical body was incorporated into the movements. Their current methodology used the physical moments as a sort of training wheels before moving to more mental manipulations. That was brought into question as they watched. They could see that his physical movements weren’t just guiding the process, but rather were an integral part of it.

Which was incredible all on its own, and Matt could hear two teams forming up behind him and working on a proposal for a team to see if they could use these more advanced movements to redefine what a typical Tier 0 could do. The other team wanted to create more advanced preparatory movements for those who wished to move beyond the Tier 0 or Tier 8 levels of strength.

He’d greenlight both ideas after the first month of observation, when they learned the first bits from Tim’s Talent.

They also realized that his Talent was preparing itself for more information.

Tim’s spirit wasn’t outside of any normal bounds, but it was well above average for a Tier 3 of his age and experience, which they believed was a result of his Talent repeatedly straining his spirit. Seeing that, Matt immediately ordered several sets of spirit-strengthening potions and Natural Treasures.

Awda, one of the Tier 30 spirit specialists, leaned closer to Matt. “Guild leader, given Timothy’s ability to learn from what he sees or what he has access to, I believe we should start with temporary spiritually strengthening potions, then move onto strengthening exercises. If he can get an ‘entry’ as he calls them for spiritual strengthening, we might be able to learn more about how to improve one’s spirit without outside elixirs.”

Matt nodded even as several others looked like they wanted to say something, but Matt just said, “Put it on the list. It’s certainly an interesting proposition.”

Another woman, Lisa, copied Awda and added, “It brings up the question of missing entries. I postulate that the more obvious entries are available, but limited by a combination of his spiritual strength and baseline knowledge. We will need to see if his spirit growing expands his repertoire of available options or if there is another mechanism at play, such as raw Tier.”

Matt continued to nod. “That, and see if outside additional training can lower the costs.”

Sadly, their test subject was growing tired, and having just recovered from getting his AI implanted, Matt wasn’t going to push the kid any further than he needed to on the first day.

Matt grinned and clapped Tim on the shoulder as he stepped down and out of the machine as it was winding down.

“How do you feel? Any strain or the like?”

Tim shook his head even as he wiped his sweat off with a provided towel.

“No, I feel pretty good actually. Just a little tired from the repeated movements. My Talent really wanted me to be strict with those movements, and I’m not really used to moving my spirit around like that.”

That last statement got everyone’s attention, but they returned their gazes away from the mortal before he could notice the oddity.

Instead, Matt just nodded along. “So it’s giving you guidance on the movements? How much flexibility is there?”

Tim was busy downing an entire bottle of water, and Matt was pretty sure some of the scientists were about to need to regrow teeth if he panted any longer before answering, but that was exactly why Matt had lowered his perception to a Tier 3’s speed.

His reasoning wasn’t just politeness.

“There is definitely some wiggle room for getting the proficiency, but my gut tells me it will be less efficient per movement.”

Matt started guiding Tim through the guild while still speaking. “We’ll test those limits tomorrow while things are fresh and you are still at the beginner level.”

At the teleporter, Matt smiled as Tim vanished to be replaced with Stew.

Grinning, Matt led the even younger man down the hall to an alchemy lab.

Stew’s Talent was incredibly simple. At least in theory. Like most Talents, it had incredible depths, and it was his appearance that made them start the program so quickly.

Stewart absorbed one hundred percent of what entered his body, along with what seemed like perfect excess storage.

He originally used that to great effect, and quickly started delving up at only Tier 2, which caught Mathew and Vinnie’s attention, who brought Stew to Palustris where Matt and Liz met with him.

They originally wanted to sponsor Stewart on the Path, believing that with his drive and Talent, he could easily go far. But he declined, instead wanting to develop without such restrictions.

It wasn’t that crazy of a request, though it definitely surprised them, given who they were. Still, there was a reason Mathew and Vinnie had brought Stewart to their attention, as they intended to open their own training program. With their plans, it was easy enough to push things forward and start the school a few years early, and so they started recruiting.

Their total goal was two hundred or so people for the first few decades. But they were building facilities for ten times that, complete with expansion routes, making it easy to go all the way up to fifty thousand students should things progress that far.

Liz was already in the alchemy lab set aside for his testing, along with the members of Titan’s Torch who signed up for Stew’s project.

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It was less than Tim’s had been, but that was mostly because the applications of Stewart’s research had little chance of being mass marketable. There was the slim chance they might learn how to make a person’s body absorb more of a potion’s effect from Stewart’s Talent. But it was unlikely, given its nearly wholly spiritual origin instead of being a biological mutation.

Still, it was very interesting to watch, and Stew always seemed to like Matt’s more combat-oriented input, which was why he hung around when he had the free time.

They started Stew off with their usual rounds of permanent potions.

Three physical strengthening potions each targeting different parts of the body, two magical boosting ones— one boosted his mana regeneration by a slight amount and the second expanded his mana pool by a percent or two— and finally, a single spiritual strengthening potion.

All but one of the potions were things that were available in nearly any alchemy store that specialized in delvers, but that was what they were testing in Stew.

When he had first been identified by Mathew and Vinnie, Stewart’s Talent had already allowed him to take potions that, for others, were one-time use. His efficiency wasn’t perfect, it was far from perfect in fact, but even now dozens of doses in, he was still getting small but minor effects.

Most interesting of all was that his Talent was still growing as he pushed it, showing no signs of slowing down.

That, in combination with Stewart’s Tier 3 Talent, which allowed him to convert any excess stored energy into other forms of energy, allowed the kid to work for days on end, even at Tier 3.

They had been forced to step in after he went three days without sleep, as all of the immortals had started to note the buildup of beta-amyloids and forced the kid to sleep for at least four hours.

That didn’t make it any less interesting to see Stew down enough calories to feed a school and then hit the gym or sparring yard, his Talent burning the energy to make both mana for his spells and stamina for his body.

So far, his Talent hadn’t been able to regenerate on the level of a undirected Tier 14 healing spell like [Ranged Heal]. The pinky finger they had cut off had simply healed faster instead of regenerating, but they were hopeful if he kept pushing his Talent, he might be able to turn healing into full-on regeneration.

Even if it didn’t work, they had backup avenues, such as Stewart teaching his Talent so that it could recognize that a healing potion wasn’t needed. So instead of using the energy to restore his body, his Talent should shift that into his magical reserves, but that was a long way off.

First, they needed to finish the test for how long his Talent could preserve food. Or rather, how long could he go off the energy stored in food before the expected negative side effects started appearing.

It was a test they were failing.

So far, the longest Stew had managed to go without eating a meal was about ten hours, and four of those were because he had been asleep, and another four where he had been sparring with Matt.

The moment the kid got any amount of free time, he just wanted to eat.

They were still debating if it was a side effect of the Talent or just a personality quirk, but it was becoming a recurring theme that even Stewart couldn’t explain.