The Path of Ascension Chapter 436

Chapter 436

Their pilot immediately pushed the Unsparing’s shields to their maximum the moment the enemy ship started charging its cannons, getting ready for a fight. Matt was also ready to cast his own shield in case their enemies were as clever as they thought they were.

The moment the ship revealed itself, it started giving off the signals of a Corporations vessel. Such codes were fairly easy to change and many teams would change not only their virtual identity’s Great Power of origin but personal identities. That step more often than not required a change to the ship itself, as visual identifiers such as shape or engine types were also used whenever possible. But any Tier 15 explorers who wanted to do that were capable enough they could dip into a passing node and exit as an entirely new ship given a few uninterrupted weeks.

So long as they returned their virtual identity back to their original one before they reentered settled space, there wasn’t really any danger in doing so.

The Unsparing was in fact doing exactly that, which was probably why they had been attacked.

There was no way anyone would actually attack them if they broadcasted there were two Ascender teams running around together or if this was Lila’s old ship.

Sadly, the fish didn’t take the bait and the moment they saw their attack splash upon their fully powered shields, the other ship turned and fled deeper into chaotic space.

Allie slapped the table in front of her. “What cowards!”

Rah instead pointed at the Tier 12 world which the rest of the crew had never taken their eyes off. “That they may be, but we have the spoils.”

Wanting to inspect their prize, Matt and the others immediately moved to the nearest hatch and got ready to exit the ship the moment they entered real space, along with the harvesting crew members, who had their storage containers prepared and waiting.

Having had the thought, Matt instead opened the door and canceled the ship’s tearing into real space.

The phoenix Liz on his shoulder squawked at him quietly in question, but Matt understood it all the same.

“We might need to fight in this level of chaotic space. Might as well dip our feet into the pool where we have both the ship and a world to escape into should we need them.”

Allie slipped by him, flying out to the edge of the mana shields which were semi-opaque from the constant beating they were taking.

Even outside the ship, Matt’s spiritual perception was limited to a degree that felt suffocating.

Not letting that bother him, he stepped forward next to the others who had followed Allie out of the ship.

Their tests weren’t that involved; they were in fact as simple as sticking their hands through the shielding and coming in direct contact with chaotic space.

Almost uniformly, their flesh slowly started to mottle and wither but most of them were strong enough to survive even direct exposure to the first layer of chaotic space for a few minutes with just their physical bodies.

If they needed to fight, things would change, but the first layer near a planet wasn’t that dangerous.

Pretty much any magical armor they had access to was enough to let them fight unimpeded until they ran low of mana.

Once they were all finished with their testing, they moved to the world that was right nearby.

It was only Tier 12, so none of them were expecting much but they were pleasantly surprised when they inspected the world.

There wasn’t a beacon.

They were the first explorers to find this world in the last few million years, and possibly the first ever.

That got the rest of the crew to exit the ship as well, in anticipation of it being a record haul.

Still, despite their excitement, none of the crew moved, waiting on one of them to give the go ahead.

Instead, Zack signaled one of the maintenance people to set up the real space beacon. It wasn’t anything complicated, the beacons were run off tiny amounts of mana and they were normally placed in a safe orbit around the central planet; or inside the nearest moon if there was too much debris or some other hazard that prevented a free orbit.

Made out of the simplest of Tier 3 materials, the beacons were practically disposable. However, what they lacked in raw durability, they made up for in efficiency and longevity.

A beacon could harvest ambient mana to not only run itself but make minor repairs, should they be needed. It wasn’t enough to fix any major damage but it ensured the beacon’s hull could survive low level impacts from small asteroid impacts that might sweep through a system.

When left behind, the beacon could passively record mana fluctuations, which would give a rudimentary history of the world it orbited with its records . It wasn’t a dedicated scanner but, upon finding an older beacon, a lot could be learned about the world from previous records.

This world being Tier 12 meant they couldn’t just let the beacon orbit the highest-Tier planet, the one that originated life in the star system, or it would be destroyed in a matter of years. Instead, they shoved the beacon a half mile into the smaller and closest of the moons that orbited the planet.

That would protect its lower-Tier materials from harm but ruin most of secondary sensory data it could provide. Still, that was a small price to pay to not have to bring out more valuable beacons for every Tier of world.

Looking out from where they arrived, Matt was more interested in the world itself rather than its two barren moons. Both were littered with the bones of rift breaks but the few ruins he found hadn’t been able to terraform the moons on their own, leaving the non-immortal creatures to suffocate or get blasted by the local star’s radiation until they inevitably mutated and died.

The planet, however, was damn near picture perfect.

It was a perfect distance away from its local star, had a near perfect twenty five hour day-night cycle, and was only a few percent off of the air percentages the Great Powers considered standard. There weren’t even any horrific insect swarms or ravenous monsters beyond the typical rift creatures in the world.

Even the plants and wildlife wouldn’t find themselves too out of place in any Empire region. Meaning the world didn’t need to be sterilized before it was inhabited, which was sometimes a necessity.

It was without a doubt a world that would have been settled the moment it even got close to the core layer where the Great Power’s lived, even if they needed to daisy chain several other nodes to reach it.

Flying down to the planet, the six of them, sans Allie who had already teleported ahead, swept their spiritual perception across the world, looking for interesting or unique sites.

They found several and immediately set out, as the resource gatherers went to work.

Matt and Aster both found a ruin buried in a snow drift that had icicles which were pulsating with a soft blue energy.

They weren’t Natural Treasures, they were too simple for that, they instead felt more like an herb, something to grow and then use in a later production like alchemy, or possibly enchanting.

Aster leaned in and sniffed the icicle, her ears wiggling. “Oh, these have an innate slowing ability. I bet these would make some fantastic wands. If they were a higher Tier, I’d be tempted to try and incorporate them. Actually. Allie! Come here.”

Aster’s final shout had the teleporter appear even as she was snacking on a vine of purple fruit that were the size of large grapes. Said fruit were also a Natural Treasure.

Allie proffered one of the fruits to Aster and Matt. “Want some? They are really tasty. Oh, look at that. What’s it do?”

“I want you to go and put this at the center of my Talent space. I wanna see if I can grow some of these, and that’s the best environment I can think of for it.”

Allie looked at the icicle before swapping it with the grapes.

Matt snagged a grape and popped it into his mouth. It was a waste of a Natural Treasure but Matt assumed Allie already analyzed it and deemed it a better snack than something worth bringing all the way back to the Empire.

More likely the crew had done the analyzing part, but the damage was done, so he might as well have a taste.

The initial flavor was incredibly sour but once that passed, there was a subtle taste that was delicious. It was almost a citrus flavor, but it wasn’t.

As Matt expected, the effect was minor, an enhancement to his teeth of all things.

It still felt more than a little wasteful to eat the treasure but he could already sense the power draining from the severed vine.

A moment later Allie returned and grabbed her snack back, looking with dismay at the few remaining fruits.

From there, the three of them looked deeper into the ruin but, beyond the icicles, it wasn’t that interesting. A fairly standard snow-based rift had inverted and created a pocket region of deep snow and ice elementals.

They didn’t destroy the ruin in case another lower-Tier team might eventually find this ruin, which was why they also left half of the icicles in case they could regrow after Aster’s harvesting.

From there, the three of them joined Rah, Susanne and a crew member, who were all looking at a tree deep in a lake filled with silt. If Matt wasn’t wrong, the tree had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time when a nearby river broke its bank and filled the small valley it was in.

Instead of being choked out by the lack of light or numerous algae like its brethren, the tree had instead evolved into a Natural Treasure which thrived in its new conditions.

Rah gestured down at the roots. “Do we just uproot it and shove it into one of the storage boxes? I’ve never seen a Natural Treasure this large.”

The crew member immediately turned pale at the idea.

Matt inspected the tree and offered his own idea before they could figure out what they wanted to say. “Maybe we can throw it into Liz’s terrarium?”

As if summoned by the mention of her name, Liz appeared next to them; the water kept off her skin with an effort of will, unlike the rest of them, who weren’t bothered.

“I think it’s a good idea if it works but if it doesn’t, we are going to ruin the tree. What are the effects?”

Matt had no idea, having not been able to identify the effect through the tree’s complex nature but neither did anyone else, including the harvesters; both the one with them and the others also exploring the planet.

Zack tentatively identified the leaves of the tree having an energy absorption effect from the surroundings, which would probably be passed onto anyone who absorbed a leaf, an assessment Matt agreed with. They had no idea what its bark, wood, or roots did beyond them all having something to do with water.

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Them being more than ten Tiers higher than the tree meant that, while they could use the treasure, the resulting power difference meant they would get little to no appreciable effect, making the easiest method of identification incredibly wasteful. A lot of Natural Treasures like Allie’s grapes would lose their efficacy if picked, harvested the wrong way, or could only be used by one person.

Given that it was a tree and the leaves also felt like Natural Treasures, there was a better-than-even chance the tree wasn’t any of those types. But none of them wanted to risk it when the value could be much higher if they brought the item back to the Empire.

Finally, after some testing, the resource harvesters decided to use one of the environment boxes to grab the entire lake.

Having learned his lesson the hard way and taken a course on the subject, Matt even managed to help rebuild the lake, including carefully transplanted wildlife while also ensuring he didn’t create an ecological collapse with his efforts. The more experienced harvesters did most of the detailed work but it wasn’t right to leave a massive crater in the world where something special once was, simply because they wanted to take the valuable thing back.

Not all teams followed that principal but Matt was happy to see the various teams defaulting to such actions where they could.

From there, everyone grabbed every Natural Treasures or pseudo Natural Treasures they could find.

And there were a lot.

One hundred and thirty identified and known Natural Treasures of varying value, with another fifteen which were entirely unique or weren’t in any of their or the ship’s lists of known Natural Treasures.