The Path of Ascension Chapter 443

Chapter 443

Tim grunted as his hands landed on the wooden pole in a steady pattern.

Each strike was accompanied by pings of pain, but the increases from five years of grinding his ‘skin hardness’ entry as he tried to puzzle through his Concept had pushed the masochistic training all the way to apprentice.

He didn’t have much time alone, but grinding up one of his hardest entries was one of the excuses no one ever called him out on, and it gave him time to think.

Tim had been restless for what felt like forever at this point. Being a peak Tier 4, he had been slamming his head against the wall of his elusive Concept entries for years. The researchers had expected him to unlock the entries with the explanation, but when that had failed after six months of coaching, they gave him the option of using a potion and seeing if it unlocked the related entries.

Tim should have accepted immediately. Or at any of the other numerous times they had reoffered the deal.

It would have been the smart thing to do. Nearly everyone at the academy used aura potions at first. They then either directed the already-desired element into a more fitting form, or broke it and made their own Concept when they were immortal at Tier 15.

It wasn’t even that most people who did that ended up making similar Concepts, as the ‘temporary’ Concept had tainted their spirits and slowly brought them in line with what they had originally seen as a stopgap measure.

No, Tim had been fine with all of those downsides.

With his Talent, he’d surely have made even the worst Concept robust, given some time, but he had still refused, leaving him stuck at Tier 4 as everyone else Tiered up. They were only Tier 6, but the distance was growing.

Tim wished he could say he had persisted for a noble reason, but he… didn’t want to be like everyone else. He wanted to be one of the special few to make their own Concept at Tier 4.

Like Ascenders Titan and Legion had managed.

He wanted the limelight, he wanted the applause, he wanted the recognition, even if just for a moment. Most of all, he wanted to live up to the Tim everyone said he could be ‘if he just applied himself’.

Except, that moment of bravery and determination had long faded, and it was simple pointless pride that was keeping him going, and even that pool was almost empty.

Despite all of his work, he hadn’t been able to figure out a Concept that was good enough to either form it or reveal an entry to create it.

Letting the small pin pricks of pain lull him back into a sense of calm, he focused on what he wanted his Concept to be and his mind couldn’t help but to make its way back to that imaginary Tim everyone else seemed to see except himself.

If he could attain that he’d be… He didn’t know, but he’d be better he was sure.

He… Tim felt a soft ping as he felt a new entry appear in his Talent.

Mentally bringing it up, expecting to once more be disappointed by other unlocks, he froze when he finally saw what he had been waiting for.

Beginner Concept Actualization: 0/100 Proficiency — Unlock Cost: 300 Billion Credits.

That wasn’t entirely out of his price range, being the cost of half a Tier 8 mana stone in raw credit value, but Tim simply didn’t have that many credits. His current savings, thanks to his various crafting pursuits, were quite healthy, but nowhere near even the billion mark.

Pivoting, he sent several messages to friends and the relevant authorities, all while hoping the school would let him take a loan out against the balance. They had done so before, and he was sure they would let him here. But as the secretary explained when he complained, ‘they made it annoying on purpose so people stop asking for loans they didn’t need.’

Tim was so happy, he didn’t even mind filling out the fifteen pages of questions and answers that he had long grown accustomed to zoning out and going on auto pilot for the process. It was amusing, but a few years ago, before he got stuck at Tier 4, he never could have imagined how his bank account could waffle from crippling debt to overabundance seemingly overnight.

Thankfully, the school didn’t charge interest unless the student was expelled with extreme prejudice. Usually, that only happened if someone did something incredibly illegal, and at that point, they had far worse things to think about than a small interest rate on a loan kicking in.

That, and the guild paid well, with his research having helped a few groups make minor breakthroughs on their projects, triggering small but impactful payouts. That, combined with the fact he would finally be able Tier up, would hopefully balloon his loan limit enough he could push through a few more loan applications as well. But Tim would wait and see how the reception was to this first large-scale purchase.

He foresaw no problems.

His idea seemed perfect. A Concept shaped the person, and if he saw himself as his own Concept, he could slowly become the best version of himself.

It was also apparently the right decision, as seen by his Talent picking up on the idea and finally giving him his entry.

After this push, he could finally settle down and focus on reaching immortality where he could relax a little.

***

After hitting the second world on their list, and with months of flying before they encountered another wave of worlds, Matt finally had some time to himself, which allowed him to consider the implications of what he had realized thanks to his and Allie’s little stunt.

He worked hard to ensure his skills kept up with his ever-doubling mana pool, and had thought he had done fairly well when it came to his combat or highly-used skills.

Not perfect; there were a few things that needed modifications still, but Matt was pretty proud of his efforts. The issue was simply his Talent’s scaling growing to insane levels as he neared Tier 30. Most of his skills were lower-Tier and struggled to handle millions of mana, let alone ten or a hundred times that. It was why he modified all of his skills to make them better suited to his new mana output.

For his channels, he usually raised the ceiling on where he started to hit diminishing returns. It wasn’t necessarily a difficult modification, but it was time consuming. He did the same for all of his skills and thought he did a good job, despite all of the other things demanding his time.

That was until Allie opened his mind up to the rest of his skills he was ignoring.

He cast [Portal] fairly often, at least once a month on average when they weren’t stuck on a chaotic space ship, more if he was actively travelling across the Empire. Despite that familiarity, he had never once challenged the fact that he never used the skill to its full capabilities. Or that he could potentially expand those capabilities.

He was apparently content with doing the skill really well, and better than most, but hadn’t considered the inherent limits.

Matt wanted to say that he shouldn’t have needed to consider that his portal’s theoretical range was much larger than his spiritual range, but as an Ascender, he should always be looking at how he could best improve.

Allie’s maneuver had opened his eyes to a new conundrum.

Normally, when he had trouble casting a spell, it was a consequence of him trying to send too much mana into it. Rarely did he have a problem with his Tier being what limited him, as in the case of his spiritual range, but apparently that was because his imagination was too limited.

Considering things and talking through it with the others, Matt came to a conclusion. He didn’t necessarily want to be able to cast things outside his spiritual range. While impressive, it simply wasn’t that useful most of the time. Rather, he wanted a way to make his casting of all of his spells unshackled from both his Tier and his spirit, to have them solely based on his mana generation.

However, that wasn’t possible. Spells were cast through the spirit and without a dedicated Talent, there wasn’t even a credible rumor of someone having that ability.

The next best thing was mimicking that effect.

Matt needed an scalable way to make it so his skills could better handle the amount of mana he generated. That wasn’t really possible in the way he wanted— inherently flexible spells that perfectly adapted to his mana generation— but a similar effect might be theoretically achievable.

Liz’s idea was physical refinement. She reasoned that if he could make his body so robust, he could just push through any issues he encountered. And if he got that effect on a growth item, he’d avoid a lot of the hassle going forward.

While that might be an interesting answer and something to look into, Aster gave a much more realistic suggestion.

Use the breach to find as many Natural Treasures as they could which could boost his spiritual strength. Such things were beyond rare and he already needed similar items for the craftsmen who could adjust material of his sword before he got one for himself.

That was actually Zack’s idea: Turn his sword into a casting implement. With his neutronium ingot’s increased weight came similar levels of durability. With Matt’s control over his sword, he could turn its various forms into spell amplifiers.

Matt had already been considering the durability increase but was leaning in the opposite direction. Enchant the sword and abuse [Sword Twin], turning his sword projections into very dangerous minions or missiles, depending on what he needed at the moment. If he did that right, he would also end up with a very strong sword that could rival the sword built for him by the Army when he was at Tier 25.

Rah, however, offered the most unique idea when Matt tentatively mentioned it around the one person in their inner circle who wasn’t aware of his Talent.

“What about a modifier spell like [Barrage]? Surely there has to be a skill that exists which can increase the mana a skill can handle, if [Barrage] exists.”

Matt hadn’t realized Rah missed those skills existence or didn’t realize Matt was already using them wherever and wherever he could and replied, “They do and I use them already. Sadly, they don’t work well enough in a unique situation like my own.”

Rah looked at him strangely before smiling and saying, “Apologies. I wasn’t clear. I was more inspired by the strange realm we just visited. We could find what you need on any of these planets. There is an appeal to that and why I think most people truly explore. Anything, no matter how wild, could be out there.”

It was a good idea, and one Matt spent a few idle hours picking at a skills-based solution with Rah. But given their location in deep chaotic space, they didn’t have much to go off of or do beyond theory craft, and they all eventually turned their attentions back to other projects.

Matt could only hope the Rasdale Breach would deliver him the items he might need, or at least give him inspiration on what direction he could go to solve an issue that would only get worse as he Tiered up.

The breach was his best, but far from only hope.

Usually during such events, it was a scramble to loot the surface worlds of the unexplored worlds before everyone else arrived. But once that was done, people started delving, and most importantly traveling, between strange realms.

Strange realms weren’t like rifts, they could only be used once by each person, furthermore they could only be delved until they eventually dissipated. Some strange realms were theorized to be as old as the Realm itself, usable any time its world was found by explorers, and others broke after the third use.

There were no publicly known strange realms in settled space, even with the constant influx of new worlds. Eventually, they all dissipated after use, no matter how carefully they were used or maintained.

Which was why breaches turned into races of who could enter the realms. Most strange realms didn’t allow concurrent use, leading to cycles of brawls as people fought to get inside.

Or that was what most elite fighters did, and exactly what his group intended to do once things settled down.

Still looking inward, Matt once more tried to get his Power’s second stage to activate, while also trying to help the others with their Powers at the same time. Most of them had gotten at least part of the way through the first stage, but as a whole, they were having even less success than he was with the second stage.

Matt couldn’t help but feel like he had been going about it the wrong way, despite doing what both seemed like the most logical approach and what everyone’s guidance said worked. As Aiden often proved, that didn’t necessarily make it right for the individual, but Matt couldn’t identify what he would do differently.

There was a reason that people often tried empowering smaller aspects of themselves. Smaller starts led to smaller collisions when things inevitably blew up upon a failure. He also liked his visual of braided cable enough that his other ideas inevitably shifted to the cables again.

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Despite the failures and both slower and smaller advancements than he would like, Matt was making progress. He could now boost his arms’ physical strength for a moment fairly reliably, and he improved that even further in the remaining months of travel.

Their seekers had found four worlds of high value mixed in a half dozen of more speculative fortune. In an ideal Realm, they could have slowed down and hit all of the worlds, but their time, more specifically their lead on other explorers, was running out.

The first world they decided to enter was a Tier 12 world and they grabbed everything they could before leaving as fast as possible to reach a Tier 23 world before anyone else could arrive.

Fast as possible wasn’t quite fast enough.

They had only been on the Tier 23 world for two hours when another ship arrived in the real space.

It was a Corporations ship that, upon seeing them, left after informing them more people were behind them aiming for this world.

Their message proved true. And the next ship decided to stay after seeing them.

It was, like the Unsparing, a Tier 30 ship registered to a small, one-ship adventuring crew from the Clans with a fairly notable reputation, according to Lila’s guildmates.

Merdrakes Marauders was suspected of taking out several Tier 30 ships as both the defenders and the aggressors in the last few centuries. With the Tier gap, they could possibly beat them, but it would take time, if they could win at all. It was more likely the two groups ended up fighting to a draw, unable to easily win but not in danger of losing themselves.

Exchanging spiritual perception fluctuations, Liz offered up sixty percent of the yet un-looted areas. That only amounted to thirty percent of the total loot, but it was generous for people who had arrived after them.

The Clans ship hesitated before they responded with a counteroffer that saw them taking ninety percent of the world’s remaining Natural Treasure, but nothing else.

Merdrakes Marauders were challenging them. They had three options: push back by standing firm, reduce their starting offer and continue negotiating, or back down and accept the counteroffer. That might or might not lead to further exploitation from the other exploration team, but it might not.

Liz didn’t hesitate, fluctuating her spiritual sense directly at the Clans ship invading their space. “Unacceptable. Why don’t you move along or wait until we are done? You can have the delves and share the scrap.”

The Clans ship’s reply was swift. “Do you think this is the Empire, or that we will play nice according to war rules, pups? We won’t let you play the lower Tier card here.”

When the bluster didn’t end there, and it was clear neither side was going to be able to come to an agreement, Matt stopped what he was doing and compressed space, stepping next to Liz. The other five of their inner circle joined them moments later, not letting the ship or its crew descend and start gathering resources before an agreement came to a head.

Thanks to the early warning, they were all ready for the fight.