The Path of Ascension Chapter 442

Chapter 442

 

The seekers did another round of divinations after they repaired the Unsparing in the closest world. From there, they reoriented themselves before heading deeper into the stronger energy regions, trying to find the core of the Breach.

Both of their seekers had identified valuable worlds, but neither of their predictions had too much overlap, leaving them with more hard choices.

Ultimately, they aimed to maximize the amount of worlds they could explore and hit two worlds in rapid succession. The first Tier 29 world had given Lura a strange feeling, but wanting to press their luck once more, that divination only made the world all the more attractive. Especially since it was perfect for their Tier and could potentially lead to something valuable.

Edging into the world, they were ready for a fight if they encountered another exploration team.

The moment they entered real space, they got it, but not in the form any of them expected.

Thousands of creatures pressed up against the shielding and immediately started flailing at them ineffectively.

No one attacked as spiritual perceptions and scanners alike tried to figure out what was going on.

Matt did his own scan and paused at what he was seeing.

They looked like shadowy star fish. Or rather, the shadow of a star fish. Five limbed, the shadow-like creature snaked its arms out and slapped at the shield mindlessly.

No matter how much it looked like a creature or a monster, it wasn’t.

There was no cultivation core. There was no life to the creature. It was as much alive as a rock or a hunk of metal was. Less so than even a plant.

The majority of the creatures around them were Tier 1, but there were a few Tier 2s swimming towards them at a rapid pace.

Matt called out through the command chat, “Has anyone figured out what these things are?”

Zack responded almost immediately. “No, but I do know they are absorbing our shields’ energies. Or rather, they are absorbing the light emitted by the impacts.”

With no one else having ever seen them before, they could only start their own testing.

Spiritual control then showed, they didn’t seem to feel pain, not recoiling away when even near-crushing pressure was put on them.

Left with little other recourse, they tried killing one with a Concept. It died, but didn’t provide any essence to the slayer at all, only further more proving they weren’t alive.

They did, however, leave behind tiny black shards that looked like slivers of tinted glass.

Collecting one from the other side of the mana barrier was as simple as Allie plucking it out of the air and showing it off to their resource team.

When the man looked at it, he smiled. “Oh, now these are nice. It’s a small spiritual catalyst. A low-power but valuable ingredient in spiritual strengthening items. There might be more beyond it, but the energy patterns are exactly the same as I’d expect.”

Matt didn’t mind hearing they had a seemingly unlimited mass of harvestable spiritual ores.

This was, after all, a Tier 29 world, and if the shadowy things were taking up nearly all the space around them, Matt could only imagine what the rest of the world— maybe even the system— looked like.

At first, they tried to be careful, flying forward slowly. But when it was clear the shadows weren’t alive, nor dangerous, they flew down until they neared the main world’s gravity well.

Exiting the ship, they were now surrounded by Tier 10 or Tier 11 shadows. They weren’t necessarily harder to kill, but the increased Tier did give them some level of innate resistance. However, it was minimal.

Still on high alert, they were ready for a reaction, any reaction. But as they exited the ship, nothing happened. The shadow creatures seemed content to simply exist, bumping into each other without care.

That was until Liz exited the Unsparing. The moment she did so, the shadows began throwing themselves at the shields trying to get to her in a frenzy.

Ready for a fight, Matt started to cast a spell but stopped when he realized they were only trying to get to her because the slight glow Liz naturally gave off was attracting them.

When Liz controlled her illumination, the creatures quieted down almost immediately, ignoring them once more.

Not quite wanting to go on a slaughter quite yet, the seven of them slowly flew down until they were surrounded by Tier 20 creatures.

Near the planet’s barren and rocky surface, which hadn’t known a sun’s illumination in who knew how long, they found tens of millions of Tier 29 shadow creatures huddling around any light source they could find. Mainly lava vents, the creatures pressed themselves fearlessly against the light source and absorbed its energy, slowly empowering themselves.

Once any light was made visible, the other shadow things piled in, trying to tear the other shadow off the light source. Those that weren’t torn apart grew stronger until the other creatures gave up and settled back down.

Allie shrugged. “Should we kill them and get some of the spirit thingies? I’d hate to just leave with nothing, and sadly, these beasties aren’t conducive to a robust ecosystem that gives birth to Natural Treasures.”

Aster looked out even as she added, “Could be plenty of mineral-based ones since these things aren’t alive and shouldn’t inhibit the formation of a Natural Treasure innately. Don’t be so negative miss ‘I already found my perfect item’.”

Allie cursed back at Aster before she cut through one of the nearby creatures casually, all of them waiting to see the reaction.

The surrounding shadow creatures didn’t react at all, nor did they resist letting them harvest the fallen shadow crystal that fell.

With there being seemingly no resistance, they split up, each going their own way. It was there that Matt found the creatures seemingly couldn’t enter a rift space.

That made sense, given they weren’t alive, and only living things were able to activate a rift and pass through its entrance. That also meant rift breaks built up piles of crystals among the corpses of the monsters.

These creatures had formed in some way, and taken over this world. Not alive and seemingly immune to pain, but with a hunger for energy, the creatures out-multiplied everything else, eventually filling up the entire star system.

In theory, they could have gone further and swallowed the entire real space universe, but their scanners weren’t good enough to tell.

They had already identified one distant star light source and multiplied out of the planet, so there was no reason to think they couldn’t have done so continuously.

Given that the ship, with its more powerful and sensitive scanners, said they were surrounded by endless shadow creatures for as far as it could see, Matt assumed they were correct and that they truly had spread throughout the star system fully.

Checking out a rift, Matt found it was a fairly ordinary cavern rift with normal monsters and so he turned back around, not wanting to spend too much time.

As he was exiting, he received a message from Aster, who was broadcasting until he responded.

Compressing space as he stepped, Matt found everyone near what should have been a shoreline.

The once-liquid oceans were already sterile long before they were left without the heat of the local star. With Aster leading the way, it was easy enough to force their way deeper.

Not that they needed to; the frozen ocean had already long split, a massive canyon exposing the strange realm to the world at large full of shadow creatures.

“You may have found what caused this. A strange realm shouldn’t be surprising, but somehow I’m still surprised.” Matt gestured through the masses of shadows near the anomaly at the bottom.

Aster replied with a sigh. “Probably. Sadly, the lack of sunlight has killed everything else interesting in the ocean. Now I’m negative like Allie.”

Liz arrived a moment after Matt, and as she arrived, Matt found out why as she sent him two different snippets of the rifts she had checked.

After gathering and sending information back to the ship, the seven of them stepped inside the strange realm.

Matt found himself isolated, but only for a moment. As he was still in a transitional state, a shadow version of himself appeared, seeming to reverse melt out of the ground.

What interested Matt most was that the other version of himself wasn’t hostile.

Instead, once it was fully formed, it cracked its neck and smiled at him. “So there we are. How lovely to meet. I’m not sure you can complete this. Show me your greatest power and then I can empower you inside.”

Matt just stared at his shadow, waiting for it to explain more. He was getting a strange vibe from the creature and didn’t trust it, so he did nothing, not even responding to its words lest that trigger another trap.

The best course of action for any strange realm was to treat it as if he had entered a floor reward in Minkalla. The place might not work the same way as any of them, but it was still a careful mindset that would serve him well.

When he didn’t reply or attack, his copy frowned.

Finally, his mirror’s face twisted into reality and the resulting creature frowned.

“Pity you didn’t attack. Fine then. It’s your funeral. Good luck. With no starting skill… I’ll be seeing you soon enough.”

Matt found himself standing next to everyone else as if he had imagined the entire thing, but knew far too well it wasn’t any such dream.

Seeing the others seemed okay, he reached for his external senses but found himself powerless.

No essence-born strength fueled his limbs nor did his spirit have a mana core to be empty.

Matt found himself as ordinary as any other Tier 0 unawakened mortal, even his Talent given mana generation sealed.

Clenching his fist, Matt inspected himself as Zack grumbled, “Anyone not find themselves faced with themselves who was telling them to attack with their greatest strength?”

Allie sighed when no one called out the opposite. “I didn’t actually miss Minkalla, you know. I liked it, but I didn’t have it scheduled to revisit any time.”

Aster looked around. “Look at the positives. We’re all together and this doesn’t seem to be a fight to the death, so that’s nice!”

Rah looked up at the perfectly normal sky and asked, “Does this incident mean this world was fairly standard when the strange area was formed and it ruined the entire world? This area looks like any world I could have passed by on my travels. Maybe there were once people who lived here?”

Zack shook his head. “Possibly, but what we know about strange realms formations is next to nothing. They are almost unheard of in settled space, but far more common in the second and third layer of chaotic space. The explorer guilds believe that it is the greater chaotic energies outside the world, which enables them, but we have no idea if that’s true at all.”

Rah took in a deep breath and smiled. “I can happily report I have been in a few then. The way you guys talked about them, I assumed they were something different. Most worlds that drifted through my realm had at least one or two until they inevitably shattered after a usage. It was always a rush for who would explore them first when they passed by.”

Matt tried not to get distracted about what more common strange realms implied and instead looked around him.

Still completely powerless, Matt checked his clothes to find all of his belongings had been removed. He was, in fact, in coarse linen cloth that hung tight across his chest.

The others were in identical outfits, their other items missing as well.

Liz looked at her hands with a sigh. “I can feel this is an illusion. Possibly a mental realm, but I can’t connect with my real body enough to break through the barrier.”

Allie had little different to report, her teleportation entirely blocked.

Matt scrounged around and found two sturdy sticks under a nearby tree. He kept one and gave the other to Susanne, and with that, the seven of them started following the trail.

Being professional delves and Tier 28, their bodies were in the best possible shape, and even with the strange realm suppressing not only their cultivation, but their bodies’ special modifications, they were still able to make good time.

Nothing faster than a loping jog, ready to fight at any moment, but something they could all keep up for hours should the need arise even without cultivation.

As it turned out, their efforts were probably futile.

No matter how fast they ran or how much ground they covered, the path they followed seemed endless. They traveled a considerable distance, the scenery changing multiple times throughout the day, but they never ran into anyone or anything that might give them a clue as to how they might progress.

It was only when the sun that had started high in the sky began to set, that they finally encountered a town.

That was their first oddity.

The town was a mishmash of styles.

Most buildings were simple, but sturdy log cabins with thick shutters that were the homes of the villagers, if Matt had to guess, but those buildings weren’t alone. Shoved in the middle of the village were all of the houses the seven of them had grown up in.

Matt found his and Aster’s childhood apartment sitting next to Liz’s childhood room, both looking utterly foreign and out of place given that they weren’t standalone structures.

A villager that almost looked like a normal human, except they were clearly a combination of Zack, Rah, and Matt’s facial features the rift had created trying to mimic other people, approached them.

The false human looked askance at them before surprising all of them by speaking.

“Is you heroes sent by the Manny?”

Rifts rarely had speaking creatures, but given the word choice, the person was clearly an agglomerate of their thoughts and memories, just like the houses.

Instead of waiting for one of them to reply, the person continued, “Need get inside. Fast. Get fire. Protect yourselves. Light banishes the shadows! Protector! Seven nights!”

Just as quickly as the ‘person’ started speaking, they turned and fled into one of the houses, carefully locking the door.

The scene repeated itself as all fifty of the villagers returned home from wherever they were just to sit there silently.

With little other recourse, each of the seven went to their houses and inspected them.

Rah’s was exactly like he explained it in his retelling, with his building being little more than a clay and wood shack, but clearly well-maintained and clean.

Seeing the tassel hanging from the open doorway, Rah sighed as he inspected it.

“Shame. I had been hoping this was doing more than pulling from my memory. Sadly, it’s unlikely. I could never remember the third word of Bfa’Sula and our proposed family’s motto. I forgot it one day. It took a long time for me to forgive myself for that, but it’s still empty here.”

Turning the braided grain-like rope, Rah showed them two painted on characters and a messy third, completely illegible one.

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Susanne exited her house carrying a weapon, a nearly perfect copy of her sword. The only reason it wasn’t a perfect copy was the fact it was made out of real metal instead of her Concept made manifest.

Inside their house, Matt and Aster walked around memory lane for a few short moments.

What Matt found interesting was how the strange area had taken his Minkalla’s alternative life’s apartment, rather than his real life’s parents’ apartment. Given this was his shared life with Aster, and the one that he considered real, that only mildly surprised Matt.

He had never forgotten the truth, but the life with Aster had been everything he ever wanted and he wished it were true. Or, he wished the early childhood they experienced was true.

There were two things, however, that didn’t belong.

Inside on the table was a slightly-too-big longsword and a tiara.

Handing the tiara to Aster, Matt picked up his blade and tested its weight.

There was no magical effect and Aster shook her now crown laden head. “No magic yet. Give me that stick.”

Having claimed his stick, Aster walked back outside to join the others and he followed her out.

The moment they did so, they found the path they had followed to the village swallowed by shadows.

Not just any shadows, but humanoid shadows which tried to grasp at them but were restrained by the sun overhead preventing them from fully manifesting.

Matt really hoped he was wrong, but he suspected they truly had found the source of the creatures swarming the world and system.

Allie, returning with her own dagger, grumbled, “Even my dad’s stash of old weapons was gone.”

Her complaint was cut off a moment later when she was attacked by a shadow creature that tried to grab her from a building’s shadow she strayed a little too close to.

Her blade cut through the shadow, dissipating it, but more importantly sending a stream of darkness into her.

Perking up, Allie exclaimed, “Ohhhh, so that’s how it is!”

Liz, who was exiting her own childhood home, came out in time to see Allie toss her blade into the back of one of the shadows that was still forming.

“Hurry up and kill as many as you can. They strengthen your spirit when killed and return a little of your power. Seems random what skills you unlock, though, if you don’t direct it. I got nothing back-to-back so don’t bother, guide it where you need it. It’s not that hard.”

If that was truly the case, it meant it was a simple enough strange realm.

Not being severely out-Tiered, the seven of them quickly killed their first creatures.

Aster, the cheater that she was, summoned an ice golem from her tiara after she bashed the first monster to death with her stick, redirecting her energy to the crown instead of herself. Her giant ice golem then lumbered off and started smashing the newly forming shadow monsters, further empowering Aster, who followed behind.