The Path of Ascension Chapter 466

Chapter 466

When they arrived at their target world they were immediately accosted.

In rapid-fire Guild, the Tier 34 started barking at them, “The Deathly Due’s guild is in command of this world and its strange realms. We are charging anyone who wants to use one of the strange realms. We—”

Hearing the shakedown start to really get going, Matt tuned the man out, inspecting the two strange realms.

The first was the most popular, judging by the teams slowly following the near invisible cloud. It was well hidden as it drifted through the planet’s sky and ignored any and all weather patterns, but was obvious to spiritual perception.

The second strange realm, the bloodline one, was far more interesting visually in that it appeared to be the sun-bleached skull of a large monster.

Once Liz bartered with the occupying guild, they finally got full information packets on both of the strange realms.

Seeing how the bloodline strange realm tested its participants, Matt wasn’t too surprised that he’d not be able to enter with the four on their team who had a bloodline. He didn’t particularly like the idea of leading a pack of his bloodline though a cataclysmic event.

Unable to lie to himself, Matt cursed the skull. It could have still let him help.

He was, however, able to enter the spatial strange realm and he was quite happy with that.

Best of all, the rumors had only mildly exaggerated the reward being similar to a Domain-based [Inventory]. It was true, but only to those who reached a reportedly high threshold in the strange realm.

Having bought their ticket two and a half days later when the space strange realm cycled, they and almost a hundred others entered. Even the people waiting for the bloodline strange realm entered if they hadn’t already done so before wanting to try their luck.

They appeared inside a warehouse-sized room, unnecessarily jumbled and cramped together.

Taking to the air, Matt quickly found his group hovering near the floor in a corner, knowing the excitement was about to start and wanting no part of it.

In the center of the room, a fist-sized ball of light flickered to life near the ceiling.

A wisp.

It started out as a vibrant white but as it started to slowly drift to the floor, the color started to shift randomly through the visible spectrum and slightly beyond it.

The moment the wisp reached the halfway point, the color froze in an ultraviolet wavelength. At the same time, knowledge appeared in his mind. They had, collectively as a group, half an hour to catch the wisp before they were all ejected.

The first target set, everyone sprung into action.

Skills flashed, weapons cut, blood flowed, and absolutely no one caught the wisp. No one died— this strange realm was safe— but that only enabled people to fight without holding back.

The ultraviolet wisp floated through people’s grasping hands, nets, skills, and everything else utterly unimpeded. It caused havoc as teams fought to keep up with the ever moving target while trying different things.

Matt turned to their resident teleporter and looked to see if she had any ideas, but she was already shaking her head.

The answer turned out to be nothing he would have tried.

An attractive man in their opposite corner, clearly bored, started playing a stringed instrument. He’d only been quietly playing for a moment when, out of nowhere the ultraviolet wisp ceased its meandering to head straight for the man.

Seeing the answer, a surprising amount of people pulled instruments out of their own storage devices trying to attract it. The smart ones started singing and humming while getting as close as they could. The varied attempts caused the wisp to bounce around from target to target, going nowhere.

Watching as two singing teams slung spells at each other was almost amusing, but it proved to be the correct play as a burly man belting out the lyrics to a poem was within arm’s reach as the ultraviolet wisp targeted him.

Reaching out, the man succeeded in snatching at the wisp unlike so many others before him. When he touched it the ultraviolet wisp vanished into his arm not a remnant to be seen or felt.

Everyone paused but no one attacked the man. The wisp was gone and they couldn’t get it back.

And he didn’t matter any more as they now knew the method.

At the same moment as the man caught the ultraviolet wisp, the room they were confined in expanded. It didn’t quite double in size, but that increase would be the ultimate limit of how long they could stay in the strange realm.

A wisp had to be caught every thirty minutes or they would all be ejected. That was easy enough on its own, but every time a wisp was caught, the room nearly doubled in size, growing by even greater amounts the longer it went on. Eventually, the available space would become so large no one would be able to find, let alone catch, a wisp within the time limit.

In the center of the room two wisps started to fall from where the first one appeared.

One was an identical ultraviolet wisp, but the second was going through the color choosing process the first had gone through, and every team not planning to chase the known entity watched on in anticipation as it pulsed.

The room split, but it was uneven, with most people seeming to prefer trying their luck with the orange wisp.

Once more, people passed through the wisp instead of being able to capture it and the cycle started to repeat itself.

Smiling, Allie turned to them. “Good luck.”

Like a minnow in a group of sharks, no one seemed to notice Allie as she slipped between teams.

It wasn’t a magical effect, but rather her infiltration training being put to work.

Grinning at Liz, Matt looked towards the melee centered around the orange wisp that was slowly speeding up as it remained free and uncaught. Her expression told him all that he needed to know and he launched himself upward in the same moment she did.

Their departure caused their entire group to split up and go their own ways.

Matt noticed Aster, Susanne, and Gan Le going after the now third ultraviolet wisp, singing together as a red wisp was born.

Reaching the orange wisp’s fight, Matt and Liz both darted forward, trying to force themselves into the melee and get next to the wisp.

Their attempt proved futile as the orange wisp was captured by someone who still had the habit of closing their eyes before being struck in the face.

However shameful that may be, they were the first person to close their eyes and the moment they did so, the orange wisp pivoted to them.

With four colors figured out and several wisps caught, the room had grown to the size of a moon, even as wisps were forming faster as people learned the methods. The only thing slowing them down was the new colors people hadn’t figured how to capture yet.

As someone figured out and collected the sixth color of wisp, they collectively started blinking in and out of visibility in perfect unison.

That was the final hurdle for the strange realm. As if an ever growing room wasn’t enough of a challenge, the wisps became invisible to all senses for longer and longer periods. Thankfully, they were still catchable so long as you followed its condition.

Reaching a purple wisp no one had been able to identify yet, Matt covered one hand with mana and the other with a thin layer of ambient essence.

Neither worked, and he was kicked off to the side as three Tier 31s arrived and started fighting over the orb before it vanished.

A small, star-speckled hand, slipped in and grabbed at the wisp’s tail instead of its orb.

Seeing the light vanish, everyone felt their internal timers reset and the room continued its expansion.

Reacting a moment before him, Liz reached out and snagged an orange wisp as it reappeared between them.

Celebrating she was able to beat him, they both took off chasing a newly reappeared ultraviolet wisp with her tune quickly turning musical trying to entice it.

Whistling, he beat Liz there but was still a step too slow as a Tier 30 got there first and captured it.

As a purple wisp reappeared closeby, he used [Cracked Air Slide] to slip ahead of the competition, aiming for and grabbing the wisp’s tail and successfully capturing it.

Matt didn’t feel any reward beyond what his own brain provided, but he was still happy tying things up with Liz.

Seeing her forced to skirt around a music battle over an ultraviolet wisp, he bypassed the fight, giving him back a little bit of his lead.

Everyone paid attention as the next new wisp ended up blue. A new variable had been added to the available wisps, and four teams surrounded where it would start.

The blue wisp didn’t take off, instead it floated there for a heartbeat before it caused havoc by teleporting away when its descent ended. Standing there ineffectively, the teams scrambled to catch up.

If it hadn’t done so while remaining visible the entire time, letting them see it reappear, they might have thought its gimmick was that its invisibility was on a different cycle.

People who were nearest its new location tried to grab it before it could get away, but it seemed the moment someone got within a foot of the wisp it would automatically teleport away.

Matt was fairly confident despite not knowing where she was, that Allie would probably be the one to catch that wisp and as such didn’t even bother fighting her for it. Instead he went after an orange wisp he’d briefly seen a moment ago.

He failed to get that one, as another group arrived first, but as more and more wisps were caught and the room expanded, everyone started to spread out. Competition over the wisps diminished but once one was found fights were inevitable if a second group was close.

After the twenty fourth color of wisp was collected, they stopped visibly falling all together. A wisp would flash as it reached the bottom of its descent, but with them being invisible more often than not, everyone was starting to struggle.

New colors started to appear even less frequently as the latest color needed to not only be located, but puzzled out before it was caught. They still caused a commotion, but people had started to settle in.

It was also the best possible thing for Matt, as mobility had never been his limiter.

Seeing a flash of white light in the distance, he [Portal]ed next to it, already knowing how to ‘catch’ it.

Touching the wisp, he stepped back through his [Portal], waiting for his next target.

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Seeing a pink wisp appear directly behind where a group had been searching, he spent fifteen minutes chasing the wisp down. With his success, he collected both the white and pink wisps in one fell swoop.

Watching Aster, Gan Le, and Susanne pinning a gray wisp between three of them, he didn’t bother going to say hi, knowing he’d only ruin their efforts. The gray wisps were repulsive to cultivators. It took at least two people working in cooperation to capture one. Though three, as they proved, had a far better shot.

Spotting a red flash, Matt and a dozen others started running away from the orb.

When it pulsed back into visibility, everyone turned to drive off the woman it was chasing so she couldn’t slow down and let it catch up to her.

According to the information they’d gotten before entering from the guild watching over the strange realms, capturing twenty wisps was the absolute minimum requirement for getting the reward.

They were, of course, the main reason why everyone was entering, but the secondary rewards weren’t bad either.

With that in mind, once Matt reached his necessary quota, he [Portal]ed around to ensure everyone else had succeeded.

The trio of Aster, Gan Le, and Susanne were the only ones beyond the crew who hadn’t finished, but that was because they were specifically targeting the less popular gray wisps. While harder to catch, with so little competition, they were monopolizing the type and would be fine.

Instead, he found the rest of the crew, and along with help from Zack, Liz, and occasionally Allie when she didn’t have a teleporting wisp to hunt down, ensured the others reached their quotas. They’d already banded together and were making good progress, but with five of them, they were behind.

By funneling all the wisps they could, they ensured all of their group reached the threshold by the middle of the second day.

Having done their duties, Matt and Liz split off from the others. Half a dozen [Portal]’s later, they found themselves well and truly alone, with only the occasional twinkle to urge them forward.

They succeeded, but time started to punish them.

While in the beginning the largest challenge was solving the wisps’ unique catch methods, after the second day, finding the increasingly invisible wisps became the real struggle.

In the first few hours, the mental countdown was resetting constantly. But after the first day, they constantly saw the ten minute range as their thirty minutes ticked down further and further after every reset as people struggled to catch a new wisp.

As a disorganized group scrabbling over the final dregs, they stabilized in the single digits for another two days. On the third day, they didn’t have a single catch that didn’t see the timer reaching less than five minutes remaining and more often than not it was down to the last minute.

As the last seconds ticked down for the final time on the morning of the fourth day, Matt felt the thirty four wisps he’d accumulated start dissolving into a transformative energy waiting to be released.

Exiting the strange realm, their entire group was jubilant.

Matt couldn’t wait to share their close victories and complain about his narrow misses.