The Path of Ascension Chapter 450

Chapter 450

 

Matt hardly looked up from the mana stones he was creating as he felt a Tier 32 team appear and vanish upon seeing them. What had started as him trying to understand the trick of the previous strange realm’s storage gems had also become a very good mana control exercise.

Such probes had happened fairly often, with the teams willing to challenge them being surprisingly rare, despite the Tier 30 world below them still full of mana for longer-term exploitation.

So far, they had only fought other teams a dozen times in the previous nine years. Some fights were harder than others, but most saw they had already looted the world and moved on. They expected more resistance once the largest exploration teams arrived, but they would probably have left before then.

Those who did fight were mostly those trying to make a name for themselves, but given that all of them were under Tier 33, the fights weren’t that interesting. Fun and good practice, but not generally hard, given that most elite teams were still scrambling for the worlds that hadn’t been looted yet.

Even the Unsparing’s crew had grown bored of delving for profit and not advancement, having long-since filled the non-Natural Treasures storage the ship had three times over, thanks to Allie having moved most of their loot back to the Empire already since there was little else to do while they waited.

Matt was still amused when he thought back on how weirded out the crew was by getting message updates this deep into the breach.

The only news Allie hadn’t been willing to share with anyone, not even a pestering and begging Aster, was what she did with the loot.

All the teleporter would say was on the topic was an oft repeated, “We’ll all find out together when we return.”

Matt wasn’t bothered and neither was most of the rest of the crew, having not expected any information, but it twisted Aster into an amusing mess.

To her credit, Allie used the trips to refill their supplies, which had improved morale substantially even while they were mostly cooling their heels.

It did let them learn more about Allie’s Talent. She could, in fact, teleport all the way from the Empire to where they were in the first layer of chaotic space, but the amount of chaotic space energies between locations made the spiritual strain of the teleport that much higher.

Or, that was their conclusion, as Allie, using the first world they stopped at to set a waypoint down on, was easily able to teleport to the Empire from there instead of being exhausted as she was when she covered the distance in one cast.

Alone, she could manage the distance without too much effort, but carrying additional things ballooned the cost substantially.

Seeing the other exploration team did, in fact, leave, Matt went back to his testing while exercising.

It was beyond difficult to make mana in a solidified form want to form anything beyond the standard rift mana stone crystalline structure.

Raw mana, if left untouched and cut off from circulating through a rift or the planet’s core, would naturally form into mana crystals that had the same crystalline structure. The difference between naturally formed mana crystals and rift ones was rifts shoving more mana into a uniform size depending on the rift’s Tier.

No one was really sure how. The best synthetic and rechargeable mana stones scaled terribly, and they used a similar core crystalline structure based on the natural and rift mana stones.

Matt, having researched the topic thoroughly during and after the war, knew the synthetic mana stones, the ones given to officially registered healers, had a better mana coefficient than naturally formed mana crystals.

Despite that, it was all based off of what solidified mana wanted to do.

Matt had never seen mana act in the ways the gems had.

So, he had been attempting to force his mana into new structures.

What started as an idle test had turned into determined exercise, as Matt used his mana control to force his forming mana stones into other structures.

He was a long way off from the complexity of the storage gem, but he also didn’t think that was what he wanted to recreate.

Did Matt want the ability to store items inside of mana crystals? Undoubtedly.

The issue was that after playing with the previously observable structure, he was fairly sure the strange realm’s gems’ storage effect was accidental. Or rather, his intuition told him the product was incomplete.

A truly perfect version might have allowed perfect Natural Treasure storage with no degradation, where these one had only slowed the process down. Additionally, if perfected, the gem shouldn’t have collapsed when the last item was taken out of it.

Matt had no way to prove any of his speculation, but he was fairly confident the gem was ultimately a flawed product.

Not that he necessarily wanted to replicate the gem in the first place; he had passed on his speculations to the guild through Kees, and to Erwin, Aisha, and Theodore specifically. According to the initial update on the project, they were having even less success, being forced to use mechanical assistance to condense mana stones in his absence, which already hampered control. He would much rather limit the application further to only mana if that would make it simpler.

Sadly, while the new crystalline structure wasn’t entirely new according to all of the mana stone manufacturers the guild had reached out to. Strange realms that used such gems had been identified before but even with their heritage even the best mana stone manufacturers struggled to make minor stable adjustments to a forming mana stone.

Matt was no exception.

He could make the mana stones himself, but he couldn’t easily force the structure into any new form with raw mana control.

What little he could do was hard.

Matt struggled, more relying on his Tier and intimate connection with the mana, but he had already started to learn easier methods with each attempt.

All of his attempts had resulted in failures, but they were continuously more complex failures, and that actually helped Matt regain his mana control. He still found himself limited by how much raw mana he could shove through a spell before the spell structure fell apart, his spirit’s strength unable to force it to remain stable any longer, or the outward manifestations of his spell becoming too unwieldy and destroying itself with conflicting energies.

The guild was looking into his other ideas to see if they were at all viable, but Matt thought he might have found a secondary solution with the mana stone.

First, though, he had to get his control over his forming mana high enough that he could even begin testing towards the complexity of the strange realm’s gem structure.

It was the perfect project between fights, so he worked on it most of the time while they waited.

From friendly groups passing through, they knew most of the initial wave of explorers had settled down. In another few months, people would start to go around and explore solely for the purpose of strange realms, using them before they fell apart while they waited for the bubble of third level chaotic space energies to dissipate, now that the fastest loot had been collected.

If history repeated itself, the safest strange realms would survive the shortest amount of time, with people willing to hang around the strange realm until they got to use it. Some groups would defend their strange realms, but most would allow others to enter for a cut of the rewards.

Enforcing such reward distribution led to conflict left, right, and center, but more often than not, it was peaceful until then.

Strange realms that demanded separate groups enter together would last correspondingly longer, as people were always wary of teaming up. Not every strange realm had life-saving measures in place, even when they were cooperative instead of competitive, and deaths happened.

Competitive realms would stay around the longest, as people were justifiably wary of risking their lives. Strange realms had been known to let only the victor leave, forcing friends who risked it to turn on each other, and few others willingly allowed others such control over their lives if they could help it.

They would be used— there were always those willing to risk it— but they’d stick around for decades if they were dangerous enough.

Days later, their next opponents appeared and it surprised Matt, who had arrived to challenge them, because it was immediately clear this was a retaliatory strike.

Two mercenary-style ships, one from the Corporations, and one from the Republic, arrived with shields raised to their maximum. The emblems emblazoned on the side of each ship explained exactly who they were.

Pinnacle elite army teams.

When they exited their ships, Matt saw each Tier 31 pinnacle elite team had a contingent of army fighters with them.

He wasn’t sure if the full pinnacle squads had explicitly stayed together in case of running into them and being able to get revenge for their fallen pinnacle elite Tier 25 comrades, but Matt knew a confrontation was inevitable.

The Republic pinnacle elite team was centered around Remi’s Raiders, the core seven additional peak elite members, last seen as Tier 30s in their war with the Clans. If they were arriving so soon, given the war, and having broken through at that, despite having sat at Tier 30 for tens of thousands of years, Matt knew both Great Powers must have put away their arms and redirected personnel.

What was more interesting to him was their Tier. It was obvious they weren’t fresh Tier 31s, having made about ten percent progress through the Tier. That implied they had either defied orders together immediately, or that they had been ordered to break through and advance as much as possible with the breach.

It also implied they might run into Maya or On The Last Line. If pinnacle elites were allowed to roam around, surely their fellow Ascenders would have ventured out. The major question was if they had come to this breach, or gone deeper to the remnants in the second layer.

Remi, a many times descendant of a founding wolf clan in the Republic, had an exceptional bloodline. Combined with his own prodigious combat ability, honed in the army for over a hundred thousand years, he was a formidable opponent. The seven members of his team were all close to comparable.

And they hadn’t arrived alone.

With a Corporations designation no one in the Empire used, Patricia’s Pincushions had gotten the name when during her first real battle, Patricia, an already famous crossbowman, shot one of her frontliners in the ass instead of hitting the enemies with her very first attack.

The rest of the fight hadn’t been so funny, as she quickly proved what a fluke that shot was, but the moniker had stuck in foreign Great Powers, even as she rose all the way to become a pinnacle elite and was cultivated by the Corporations.

Unlike Remi’s team, who were all comparable in strength, Patricia’s team was centered around protecting her. Her five other teammates were all firmly peak elites, but hadn’t managed to push through that ephemeral barrier to become pinnacle, which was why they were put on her team instead of given their own.

That didn’t mean they were weak, but they were slightly weaker than Remi’s combined team, even with Patricia herself factored in. She had accounted for that well, as her escort troops were a cut above Remi’s mere low-level elites.

At Tier 31, Matt would be wary of either group, but with both of them, he knew this was about to be their hardest fight yet. Such pinnacle elite teams could fight Ascenders on a mostly even footing when they were the same Tier, let alone with a two Tier difference.

Matt saw that Liz had ordered all of their crew back into the ship and to prepare for an immediate extraction, but they weren’t going to slink away.

The moment Remi stepped out of the ship, his large canines were put on prominent display via his falsely pleasant smile. “Good day there, Gladiators. Fancy running into you here. Sadly, you guys are sitting on our world. We can smell riches, and we won’t be sharing.”

Matt could see that he was looking for a fight, and everyone else could see it as well, but that wasn’t the angle he had expected them to use.

Why hadn’t he claimed revenge for their fallen comrades?

Matt didn’t know, and neither did anyone else, but Liz didn’t back down in the slightest. “I think you should recalibrate your nose if it’s telling you that. I’m willing to lend my spear to the effort if you need the assistance.”

Remi smiled at Liz’s comment, the rest of his team of elites behind him ready to spring into action, even as their boss egged on the fight. “In fact, I could use your help. Why don’t you hand over this world’s loot so I can make sure you didn’t take anything I care about.”

Matt still didn’t understand why the wolf was bothering with this angle, but Remi continued with a self-satisfied smirk, showing his metal-covered rear teeth, exposing how inevitable the fight was.

“If we capture you all, I’m sure your Tier 50 would piss himself in anger. We might be able to get some of the rewards from in the deeper layers. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

The wolf turned his head as if asking his team, or possibly Patricia, but he never took their eyes off the seven of them, where they stayed in their orbital fortress. “What about you guys? Are you itching for an extra juicy reward? Let’s say we take half of their gathered materials after a very thorough search.”

Their hold was actually nearly empty, but Matt wasn’t about to let Remi find out. It was much better for other groups to speculate on Allie’s Talent rather than have anything confirmed, not that their enemies didn’t already assume its power was near omnipotent.

Despite the teammates not making a sound or moving at all, Remi laughed as if he had heard the funniest joke before his expression went blank and he started to growl.

“Give me a reason, Ascenders. Give it to me. Stay and fight over this world with me. Do it.”

Matt saw deep hatred in the Tier 31’s eyes that he couldn’t quite place.

He also thought he saw desperation. Not in Remi’s eyes, but in his teammates’. It wasn’t much, but they seemed determined. If they had come into the fight claiming vengeance for the Day of Long Shadow, that might make sense. But as far as the army intelligence reports knew, their attack hadn’t deeply affected Remi, Patricia, or anyone they should have known to explain the hostility.

They had been briefed on enemies they had made that day, and he knew neither of these two were on those lists. In fact, Patricia’s presence didn’t make any sense, as the Corporations hadn’t been heavily targeted that day.

Treasures and loot could explain a lot of conflict, but the level of determination he saw almost seemed personal, given there were only a few months until most worlds were fully looted and people would start moving around to find strange realms.

Before Matt could psychoanalyze the enemy any more, the fight started.

Remi howled.

Unlike a normal growl, the Domain-assisted rumble Remi let out traveled through the vacuum of space without any obstacle. As it passed over his side’s troops and Patricia’s, the sound bolstered them, a small pulsating aura forming over them while it tried to sap the seven of them.

Aster, having expected the spell, dispelled the wave of power before it could affect them, but their enemies didn’t waste the opportunity the howl had bought them.

That did nothing to remove the buff both teams got, but she and Zack were already fighting both groups’ mages and their support teams’ mages, trying to gain dominance over their surroundings as the frontline fighters approached the shield in perfect unison.

Remi’s ship, or more likely one of his teammates, had a very strong anti-teleportation ward raised, preventing Matt from swapping places with Liz and making it harder for Aster to use her spirit space.

Not impossible, the attacking groups didn’t seem to have gear specifically made to counter them, just spatial magic in general.

Those types of defenses were good, but they could only hamper, not stop, Allie.

She appeared next to Remi’s team healer, only to nearly lose her head in return as the man next to the healer was already bringing his glowing staff up and around. Her teleport had only been slowed down a tiny bit by the wards, but that made it readable by the well-trained Tier 31.

With Allie’s ambush failed, she teleported out, leaving the healer to fully reattach their head. Remi’s team charged along with all of Patricia’s general soldiers and half of her elite defenders, the rest protecting her from Allie.

Matt cast [Hail] for a brief moment to give Aster some more ice to work with, but he was forced to cut the spell off as the one of the backup troops’ support mages interrupted the cast with a purple dart of metal.

The additional troops were only Tier 31 and low-level elites, so Matt wasn’t too worried about their tricks in a vacuum, but he wasn’t going to be dumb and risk taking the hit.

He had no idea if his dropping of the spell was correct, as the orbital bunker came under fire.

Checking the shield reserves, he immediately understood they weren’t going to last long. The items both pinnacle elite teams were using, while only Tier 31, were the best their Great Powers could give them.

Each of Patricia’s bolts caused their shield to wobble and distort, forcing the shields to expend more mana to restabilize.

Others had similar enchantments on their weapons, carefully attacking from cover, not exposing themselves, as they battered the shield. While clearly unfamiliar with each other, both pinnacle elite teams seamlessly worked to chip their way through the barrier.

Find this and other great novels on the author’s preferred platform. Support original creators!

The only positive Matt could see in the situation was the fact the ships hadn’t tried to gang up on the Unsparing, instead flying away from the planet and possible conflict.

Matt pointed a finger and cast a short but energy-intensive [Mana Beam], cutting out to cross both enemy teams.

Having worked so much on his mana control in the last few years, even when cast at a hundred million mana, the bar of mana hardly wavered, outwardly only looking like the radiance of the spell had increased.

He was already doing his best to condense the bar of mana into an appropriately thin laser that would best penetrate armor, but that much mana was hard to keep smaller than his thigh.

The average Tier 29 was not meant to be throwing around millions of mana through a spell, and at Tier 29, Matt had a lot of mana. 671 million mana available every second gave him more mana to throw around in a blink of an eye than Tier 40 mages had for an entire battle.

Shields turned red then white, enchantments flaring, as both groups’ defenses tried to shed the energy [Mana Beam] imparted to them. People swapped places and no one panicked, but their siege against the barrier increased as their squad leaders urged them on.

Matt wasn’t alone.

All seven of them used their best mid-range spells to try and wear through their attacker’s defenses before they inevitably broke through into the fortress itself.

Frontliners swapped constantly, but they only managed to inflict semi-serious wounds onto the non-pinnacle elites, not defeating more than the occasional unlucky elite.

When Matt had no better options, he turned [Mana Beam] onto them, but both enemy teams’ elites fearlessly persisted, only surrendering when it was clear he would have killed them otherwise.

A momentarily exposed helm was all Matt or any of the others needed to defeat the comparatively weaker fighters, but the peak and pinnacle elites moved to their support the moment any of them tried to wipe out a large portion of the weaker elites. Forcing the seven of them to redirect their attention elsewhere gave the weaker elites time to recover, replace gear, and start attacking the barrier once more.

The stalemate held for what felt like days, before the shield cracked and shattered under the relentlessly and well-coordinated assault.

At that moment, a deceptively fast red and blue spell left Zack’s hands. Before anyone on either side knew it, the spell had already covered the distance and slammed into their enemies’ own shields, taking down the linkages they were using to spread the damage.

Everyone’s spells started doing serious damage, with Matt’s [Mana Beam] cutting through five lesser elites before being intercepted and blocked by one of Patricia’s guards. All of the elites grabbed their bodies and fled the battlefield, signaling their acknowledgement of the possible kill.

Shields down, Patricia made her presence known.

A rain of crossbow bolts, each a different color, fell and exploded on the battlement around them.

The varying elemental effects did a surprisingly good job of damaging [Cracked Phantom Armor], the armor trying and failing to match aspects as the elemental damage types rapidly changed.

That single area attack, effective as it was, wasn’t enough to penetrate [Cracked Phantom Armor].

The following bolt that slammed into Matt’s chest, carried along by force mana, however, was successful.

It was filled to the brim with poisons and toxins, each lethal all on their own, but even as his flesh melted, it was repaired just as quickly.

With a small use of [Telekinesis], Matt yanked the bolt out of his chest, along with most of his heart.

The next bolt was aimed for Zack’s head, but when he dodged it and every following shot, thanks to his recent Natural Treasure acquisition, Patricia changed from a medium-range approach to a close-range one, closing in and seeming intent on fighting Matt.

Unlike most who used her weapon, Morgan being the last Matt had fought alongside, Patricia was perfectly comfortable in melee combat as a crossbowman.

Her move signaled Remi, who launched himself forward with a howl, this time trying to intimidate them with a fear spell.

Seeing the approaching enemies were in the best spot that hopefully wasn’t lethal for the lowest elites, Matt activated the talismans he had built into the outer face of the orbital station.

The world exploded as a wave of mana slapped the approaching shield wall.

If Matt had waited too much longer, the battle-hardened elites might have identified the blocks of mana stone as not being part of the wall, but more importantly, he would have risked outright killing the weaker elites and escalating things.