The Path of Ascension Chapter 441

Chapter 441

With a grab, the skill orb appeared in Allie’s hand and they all couldn’t help but stare at it. Even as an Ascender, Matt had only seen the rare skill shard variants a few times.

Sending a wave of spiritual perception into the orb, Matt felt at the skill and tried to identify what it was.

Skill orbs were rare versions of skills that could be used hundreds, thousands, theoretically millions of times. For a Tier 8 skill like [Fireball], that was good but not too useful, as most skill shards of that Tier and type were plentiful. However on Tier 26 and higher skills, or truly rare and or powerful skills, a skill orb was worth a fortune.

For Tier 14 and 20 skills, it was more questionable. A skill of either of those Tiers in a skill orb could be worth anywhere from a piddly sum to a blank cheque to, which put them in a weird middle zone.

What they never were was useless. A skill orb wasn’t just a thousand skill shards bundled up. They were special and could be modified inside the orb to a degree, which massively amplified their worth as groups could have a higher-Tier or more skilled member modify the skill and then give out that post modified version, saving a lot of work.

Matt would have been ready for either outcome given how they had found this skill, however he wasn’t sure what they had found.

The skill structure was… weird.

It was almost similar to Rah’s Realm’s skill structures in that it was a tad more simplistic in the shapes of the conduits and bends than the current day skill shards. Rather the skill’s structure looked like spaghetti with zero cohesion to how things were put together, making the skill a tangled mess that was hard to parse.

Allie poked it, asking while trying not to snatch the orb, “What does it do?”

Susanne looked at Matt, “What does the story this guy wrote say? He’s got to explain it right? Easier than parsing this mess.”

Matt skimmed the summary until he found it. “Yeah I got it. The unfortunate person was given a skill that let them return home safely in some manner but they hadn’t gotten what they expected. Hold on for a moment. I’m trying to parse the context. My [AI] is telling me there is a lot of sub-text about a way to make it safer for explorers to return home. Their language seems to really revolve around naming new ideas around people directly, and this idea of a safer way to return home has a lot of names attached to it so my [AI] is assuming this was a really big deal for this person.”

Matt paused as he read the best raw translations. “I’m not entirely sure how much of this we can trust. It’s all written in a very elaborate way to say the least. It’s utterly consistent so I and my [AI] are assuming this is just the normal style of writing but it’s… unique. Listen to this translation. I’m using as direct a quotation as possible. ‘I pressed my hand to my Ninth Char and proclaim I am the one to fulfill’ and then he goes on to list a dozen names ’I proclaim my valor according to the Farl Fes tradition’. When they describe escaping the ship they ‘leap through walls as when Sisre escaped capture’— Sisre is clearly a name to give context, but without that additional information, I’m afraid we aren’t really understanding what they are trying to say. It’s entirely possible things happened how they literally describe them, but this culture seems like a very context-heavy society and language so I’m hesitant to trust too much of what this guy says.”

Zack, still inspecting the orb, pointed out, “Some information is better than nothing.”

As best as Matt could glean, according to the narrator’s speculation, someone must have seen them leave the strange area and sold the information to a rival immortal who ambushed and captured them. Through a series of not-quite-trustworthy tales of high heroics, the person fought free and boarded one of the escape pods, launching them all at the most distant dots of lights on the screens.

However, having never flown on one of the ships, the person in question didn’t know that escape pods initially chose the most distant objects they could and expected the pilots to disengage when safe.

That might have been fine but, with the ships being such mana drains, the person didn’t realize they would keep coasting forever at their speed until they were deep in space where there was no mana except what they themselves generated.

Correctly assuming it would take far more mana than they would be able to produce to stop and turn around the ship, the person hoped to reach another star where they could start looking for connected worlds drifting through chaotic space. The person incorrectly assumed that being a nearby world, it must also have connections to passing worlds, not understanding the greater mystery that was chaotic space.

Matt couldn’t help but wince as he read that final passage to the group.

The person in question had then been trapped in his rudimentary equipment which even when fully built out into the more advanced mother ship, couldn’t be sure which distant star he had come from. In the end he didn’t want to spend hundreds of years flying through space at an even slower speed to arrive at the wrong world.

Skipping ahead, Matt found his suspicions confirmed. The person had waited on the most normal world he could find and poured all of his mana into it for thousands of years until it finally awakened a core and started making connections with chaotic space.

Matt also realized why the [AI] had struggled to settle on a name or even gender for the narrator.

It was because part way through his story, the narrator started calling the orb his own name’s folly when he realized how the skill worked.

Sadly, the man never directly talked about what made the skill so bad, leaving them questioning its effects.

Allie, still cackling at her luck, ushered everyone off the asteroid. “Let’s scan this place and pack it up. I only have about three more minutes before I can’t recall to the other system. Let’s move, people!”

Her words spurred not only them on but the others, who quickly grabbed everything of value they could from both the rudimentary space platform as well as the planet below.

Instead of agreeing and moving along with the others, Matt said, knowing the captain would hear and start preparing for it, “Might as well see where we are as well. This might be a lucky real space crossing deeper into the Breach.”

After the resource gathering crew was done in their limited time frame, the Unsparing tore through reality, their shields fully activated. They needed to be ready in case the worst happened and they dropped into the third or possibly fourth layer of chaotic space, prepared to dart back inside at a moment’s notice.

Thankfully, they weren’t in the third layer of chaotic space. Rather, they were in a much calmer region. Allie, able to feel her relative position to her teleportation waypoints, tentatively placed them on the far side of the great powers from the Breach.

Returning back to real space where it was easier for Allie able to teleport them back to the original star system than if she had had to do so from outside the universe’s barrier. She could have done so but it would have caused additional, unnecessary spiritual strain, when she would already need to push herself to make a waypoint as quickly as possible so they could return to this world again.

Aster, who was celebrating with Allie, slapped the teleporter with her tail. “Are you going to make a waypoint? Lila might want to come check this place out. In fact, a lot of people might want to come check this universe out. Might be worth our time.”

Their still-crowing teleporter calmed down slightly and mulled the idea over. “There is an argument for it, but I’m not sure we can spend months sitting on our asses like that. If I force a waypoint to form as quickly as possible, I need at least three months at an absolute minimum. I don’t have the Boss here to help and heal me, so that’s going to put me on my ass for at least a few years afterward. More realistically, it would take closer to five or six months if I don’t want to take myself out of commission for a while.”

Liz offered her own suggestion: “What about we check the skill, then make a decision. If it’s valuable enough and we think people will care, we spend the time to make the waypoint. If it’s not, we move on.”

With no one arguing, they quickly moved deeper into the ship.

Everyone was grinning or laughing with each other, excited for the prize they had found.

After testing the skill orb in the nearest scanner and getting an error, Matt quickly went through the ship’s log and found the crew member who was an accredited appraiser. The woman in question was already standing just a few feet away eagerly looking at the skill as if expecting the machine to fail.

It was almost nostalgic for him. On the Path, they had had one such man assigned to them for all of five minutes before Luna took over collecting their loot and giving them what she deemed it was worth if they wanted to sell something.

“Oh this is a beauty. Most certainly a strange realm skill. Unlike Minkalla which makes nice and pretty skills, the products of strange realms or even the rare ruin that allows for a similar choice over the final skill usually look like this. Strange and bent out of shape. We aren’t sure why it happens but it’s harmless. Makes modifying a bitch until you untangle it first, but there isn’t anything inherently wrong with the skill or the orb.”

Allie made grabby hands. “If it’s safe, I want to absorb it. We’ll figure out what it does when I absorb it.”

The appraiser didn’t try to stop Allie but Liz did, holding out a hand to block her. “Hold on, Allie. Let’s see what skill this is. If it’s not useful, you are wasting a lot of money if we decide to sell it. Less usage makes it more valuable.”

Allie grabbed Aster and moved her face in front of her own, letting Aster put on her best puppy eyes. “But I want my prize.”

The teleporter didn’t however reach out again.

Seeing she was good to continue, the appraiser looked back at the skill and helpfully added, “I can puzzle it out but it will take a little while. Give me a few minutes to parse through everything and get the skill into a readable state.”

Matt set his [AI] to do the same but couldn’t determine what the untangled skill was meant to do given how unusual its structure was.

The appraiser had little such issue.

With a nearly identical untangled skill, she uploaded the final form.

“Given what we know from the story I think this works by marking a location similar to [Recall] or [Tether]. It’s using… I want to say older, but that’s only because I know this is old, because these structures are kind rudimentary, and for some reasons it’s not just putting down one marker but half a dozen, each with its own variation. There is another node here. I have no idea what it’s doing. Even my [AI]’s skill testing module hasn’t really seen this type of cluster before. It looks like a dozen things stapled together instead of any coherent spell effect.”

Liz leaned forward, grinning, looking at the skill orb like it had just given her a foot massage. “Any chance those dozen variations make sure the node is noticeable from anywhere in the Realm and not just the local real space like the story suggests?”

The appraiser’s eyes were wide with excitement but she shook her head. “We’d have to test it to make sure, but that’s what I suspect.”

That got Matt excited.

Another way to guarantee someone can find their way home? One that didn’t rely on a seeker and the vagaries of their methods? Any such skill would be worth a monarch’s ransom to anyone who regularly left settled space. Nobody would rely on it, but every extra safeguard was an extra chance to make it back alive should things go badly.

The crew reacted with similar fervor hearing the appraisal, as anybody who had the skill could use it to negotiate for a larger share of their explorations similar to a seeker even if to a lesser percent.

Hearing all she needed to, Allie immediately pressed a finger to the skill orb.

Unlike skill shards, skill orbs imparted their skill instantaneously into the spirit at whatever depth the cultivator wished.

Allie eagerly cast the spell before saying, “I can feel this location. Now let’s test it.”

She vanished the next instant.

A minute later she reappeared already talking. “I can feel this location from outside the other chaotic space node. It’s actually interesting how the skill works. Once I cast it, I set the location I was standing at. Then when I teleported away, I could feel the location I set. Pretty normal if really cool that it still worked when I went out the other node into chaotic space again. But what’s really interesting is that I can activate a secondary ability of the skill and it gives me a general idea of the shortest path between the two points. It even pointed me back through the world node so we know it accounts for real world speed and isn’t just looking at the nearest world node.”

Pumping her fist, Allie shouted as she started to celebrate. “This thing is worth a fortune! I’m the fucking best! None of you believed in me but I believed in me! When I—”

The rest of the crew who were watching started rapidly talking about the find and debating the merits of taking the skill or the value.

The same went for all of them, except for the teleporter in question who stopped mid-celebration to pout at Aster. “But I already can feel my waypoints. This is useless to me. Aster nooooooo. Do something! Why didn’t you test the spell? Why didn’t you stop me? My money. Nooooo!”

With long historical precedent, skill orbs found in an exploration were usable by the crew members and they could choose not to for an extra payout from the buyer. Such came about because it was impossible for the buyer to be sure someone hadn’t absorbed a copy of the skill in transit without checking. Instead of forcing the issue, they offered additional payouts of eighty percent of the fair market for the skill to anyone who could prove they didn’t absorb the skill in-transit via spiritual inspection.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

For rare and valuable skills, or ones that didn’t have a skill shard equivalent, that value could be astronomical.

For the crew, the problem was the skill they had found was quite possibly an explorer’s single most-wished-for ability.

Accidents happened and in fights the winning side’s seekers could die, leaving a vessel to navigate blindly with only general energy levels to guide them. It didn’t happen often but it happened.

Few such teams safely made it back to settled space and the ones that did were often traumatized by the experience.

With an ability to know where a set point was, any exploration team would pay handsomely just for that added sense of security.

The issue arose in that while more than one person with the skill in a crew was useful, the usefulness was greatly reduced. Guild’s contracts weren’t ironclad, so any of the crew members could take their newfound skill and start their own team or join someone else’s. But Lila’s guild was one of the best, a guild they had fought to get into, and if they took the skill, they might get put into new teams and ships, breaking up long standing groups to maximize their newfound value.

Matt’s thoughts went along similar lines.

He didn’t intend to sell; rather, he’d prefer they use it as a betting tool with the other Ascenders.

They all explored chaotic space somewhat regularly, and would bet handsomely against them for the opportunity at the skill. Not to mention its sheer exclusivity, they could get a lot out of it if they played their cards right and made smart bets.

That was if Lila didn’t just take it from them. Her dragonnic nature to hoard meant she had really interesting items they might not be able to resist. The skill would be perfect for her guild and in that case, it might be worth not taking the skill himself for the additional payout.

Probably not, but he considered it.

Ultimately the allure of a new spell intrigued him too much and he, like everyone else in their group of seven, pressed his finger to the skill and directed it into his inner spirit, near his core.

The sensation of absorbing the skill was strange.

Normally, when a skill entered a cultivator’s spirit, they were doing exactly that. Taking the very skill structure from the skill shard and bringing it into their spirit.

The skill orb didn’t do that at all.

Rather, the skill appeared in his spirit as if it had always been there.

It wasn’t Matt’s first time absorbing a skill from a skill orb but it always felt strange and he liked to try and glean more information about the process.

Beside him, Liz pulled back her finger and said dramatically, “I chickened out and put it in my outer spirit. Once everyone who wants the skill takes it, I’ll maybe go for a second and see how it gets converted.”

Matt, unbothered by his own failure, shrugged. “I’m just going to play with my new skill and not talk about the chance that any use of the orb is its last.”

That earned him a glare from pretty much everyone until Matt warded away the superstition with a gesture.

Along with everyone else, Matt cast the spell he was tentatively calling [Home].

Ignoring its stretched and distorted appearance, the spell was of a different design philosophy and that became clear when he sent mana into it. Instead of a quick and snappy response as his mana entered the skill structure to let him aim or interact with the spell, Matt had to wait for the entire skill to be flooded for it to activate at all.

When it did, he was surprised to find he didn’t have intent controls at all like modern skills.