The Path of Ascension Chapter 467

Chapter 467

 

Hearing that people might fight and ruin an aspected world only weeks after having seen what such fights resulted in, Matt’s still simmering anger blossomed into a steely determination.

The Tier 33 team tried to warn them off but didn’t look too surprised when they followed along.

Liz tried to get more information out of the group but they hardly knew anything additional, only repeating what they heard from the call to arms.

As they got closer, more cultivators started gathering on the sky bridges according to their Great Powers.

While a thin layer of connection, it was the only lifeline many had if they wanted a piece of the aspected planet.

Other groups immediately saw what was going on and turned the other way.

Personally, Matt considered them the smart ones.

If things turned bloody, no one could be sure they’d survive in the ensuing battle, but that was what he wanted to prevent in the first place.

Just because the Tier 50s weren’t there to enforce the accepted war rules didn’t suddenly invalidate the reason for the rules being created. For whatever reason, entering the breach, where planets weren’t inhabited, seemed to completely remove people’s inhibitions.

He wanted to prevent that from happening and there was only one way to do so.

Being the biggest fist.

And while at Tier 29, that was never going to happen, he did have the semblance of a plan.

They were three planets away when the fighting started.

Impacts rippled through the sky bridges, spurring everyone on all the more.

Several fights broke out among the dozens of teams moving along with them, but most people understood there was little use fighting before arriving at the crystal planet.

No one deliberately targeted them, but that probably had more to do with the fact that they were weaker than most of the people arriving, and no one wanted to be the person who started punching down. At least they didn’t want to risk it while there was the Tier 33 Empire team who had continually tried to shield them from the other groups’ gazes.

When they arrived on the neighboring planet, there were far more signs of fighting bleeding through the sky bridge.

Matt felt like he was stuck in an apartment and listening to a battle next door through the thinnest walls available.

A stronger pulse went through the sky bridge, powerful enough it caused everyone to eye each other warily.

The burst of power was clearly from a Tier 36.

Despite the shared looks of apprehension, most teams continued forward, though one group each from the Federation, Clans, and Corporations turned back.

Running through the final sky bridge felt like it took an eternity, but the two planets were closer together than most and it only took them an hour to cross it.

The moment reality righted itself and he got a good look at the ongoing devastation, Matt tossed out most of his plans.

The world was beautiful. Stunning in a way he’d never seen before.

A Crystal aspected world, and at Tier 36 no less.

It was a jewel of the Realm and should be treated as such.

Everything alive from the smallest bacteria to the apex predators had some level of crystallization. From turtle-like shells that gleamed like a cut gemstone, or the gleaming teeth of the predators meant to break through those shells, everything had been shaped by the planet.

It was amazing.

Except that was the farthest thing from the Great Powers’ minds as they had come to blows.

He saw nearly seventy teams battling across the planet’s surface. A small degree of stratification had occurred in the fighting, with the Tier 36s being the only ones actually fighting in space.

The lower Tiers, not wanting to get involved with the higher Tiers, spread across the planet and only sowed the destruction further.

Looking closer at the groups fighting, he was confident these people represented nearly all of the Tier 32 and higher groups in this region of the breach.

Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, and as such, were acting like ravenous dogs fighting over a bone, heedless of the damage they caused around them.

Matt shook his head, forcefully stopping his wandering thoughts.

The reasons why no longer mattered.

It was everything he’d seen in the previous world, only magnified by the rarity of the ecosystems they were destroying and the Tier of the combatants.

Thankfully the world was Tier 36. As such, a lot of its flora and fauna were higher Tiered, so the damage wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been but the surface level damage was the least of issues.

Seeing the groups around him starting to square off, he knew he needed to do something.

Empowered by his anger Matt tapped into his Meld. A fifth of his willpower, channeled through his manifested Anchor, and dedicated towards calling his white hole Concept and black hole Intent into reality in the same place at the same time.

The eclipse formed, a wave of harsh black and white sweeping out as the opposed forces struggled for dominance, making Matt the mediator of the challenge before him. Yet it stayed constrained around him as a mantle, coiling and waiting for his command.

Then, for the first time since he’d gotten access to his full second stage Power, Matt bent his willpower into the starscape representing his Domain.

Matt had a single goal: protect this planet.

He couldn’t do so on his own, not truly. He didn’t have the raw combat power to genuinely chase everyone off, not when he was starting at a three Tier disadvantage, but he didn’t need to beat everyone here. He just needed to make a statement, and let the reputation of himself and all Ascenders before him do the rest.

The mantle of his Meld rushed out, a flight of ravenous dragons eager to subjugate reality, and the world itself became black and white as portions of it aligned themselves to either his Concept or Intent.

Spells rushed forth undaunted, save for a few which proved incapable of adapting to the new reality, but Domains across the battlefield were utterly smothered, pushed back to their creators and denied all purchase within Matt’s world. Even those who managed to retain some color were dulled, muted, and lifeless.

Mana poured out of and into his spirit and body, grand coronal loops vividly blazing in every color, and making him seem the realest thing in all of reality.

The effort was staggering. The brief moment of suppressing people so far above him in Tier draining him more than he had been in a long, long time.

He didn’t let any of that show. He appeared unhurried and unworried as he rose into the air, speaking through his Domain with a quiet voice yet knowing that everyone would hear every word.

“Take your battles to the stars, where they belong.”

Nobody moved, either to comply or to challenge him.

Matt was grateful about the latter, because he was already pushed to his limits and simply did not have the capacity to smother everyone right now. Below him, he could feel his friends supporting him, each in their own way. Allie had done something and he could feel her slipping around his Meld, loosening his grasp on their team.

Liz was the first to move beyond that, and Matt felt golden light blossom within his veins as his wife supported him now as always. She was integrating herself as part of Matt’s group of one, treating this Meld as simply another instance of group-casting. Aster’s influence was a breath of fresh air, crisp and cold yet full of life.

Zack’s grasp flitted across Matt’s currents of mana, tightening up their infinite potential in small but meaningful ways. Susanne offered herself as a sword, and Rah was the sturdy stone beneath Matt’s feet.

When Matt pushed forth again, he did so with more than just his own strength.

Aster’s influence was especially noticeable, a wisp of color pushing on everyone and everything yet invisible to all except for him. She jolted their spirits, and that as much as Matt’s own suppression of their Domains, seemed to startle them. There were some holdouts, but he wasn’t done yet.

“This world is a jewel. Do not break it. Any whose actions could despoil this treasure, de-aspecting it through malice or callousness, shall earn my undying enmity as an Ascender. I vow here and now, in front of everyone, to hunt such people to the ends of the Realm. Take your battles elsewhere, accepting your victory or defeat with grace.”

Matt punctuated his statement with a final pulse of his Domain, then ‘graciously’ allowed it to drop. Inside, he was practically gasping for the last bits of willpower he had, trying desperately to not break, not run out of willpower. That would leave his entire Domain all but unusable for decades, and he didn’t want to deal with that right now.

For a long moment, no one moved and Matt was hopeful everyone would simply listen to both his threat and the logic behind it.

He wasn’t so lucky.

Remi, along with a gaggle of followers, had been fighting a Tier 32 team from the Empire but hearing Matt’s words they disengaged like everyone else.

Looking deeper Matt tried to puzzle out why they were one of the mixed Great Power teams. It seemed that by relying on their numbers, bolstered by the core of the wolf’s elites, they had been holding their own against the Empire team even if they didn’t seem to be winning.

The Republic elites were in decent shape, but the hangers on were far from their peak condition.

The question as to why such a diverse group would band together became obvious as Remi sneered in response to Matt’s demand.

Having already downed their much more limited army-supplied combat potions, along with the speed potions they’d bought from Olivier they didn’t hesitate to take the fight. Where most speed type potions had hard to control effects, their fellow Ascenders felt natural, as if Matt had simply cultivated more of the relevant areas of his core.

The pinnacle elite opened his mouth to say something, most likely to make a quip about how they were his defeated foes, but he never got the chance.

Allie teleported their combat group right beside the pinnacle elite’s team giving them minimum reaction time. Weapons were already moving and unerringly sought their targets’ vitals.

Unlike last time, where they were playing along with good etiquette not trying to kill anyone, this time they didn’t hold back in the slightest.

If they allowed Remi to question their authority, no one else would treat their threat seriously, ruining Matt’s earlier efforts of forcing them to stop fighting for a moment. Second, and most important of all, was that he simply wanted to kill after seeing the state of this world, and Remi had volunteered as a target.

Matt was happy to oblige.

Low on willpower, he only kept his Concept’s mana sharing ability active, planning on relying on his raw mana and strength in the upcoming fight.

Caught flat footed by their sudden arrival and lethal intent, Remi hardly had the chance to react as one of his lieutenant’s heads vanished. The body dropped to the ground lifelessly, their essence returned to the world as their lifesaving measures failed to adequately protect them from Allie.

The teleporter wasn’t the only one to strike without holding back, but she set the tone in that first exchange.

Zack wasn’t any kinder using as little mana as possible to slay his targets.

A silvery gold projectile curved as it left one of the non-Republic mages, its mana turning airy and light.

The now air-aspected spell slipped through the barrier of wind a peak elite tank had conjured around him. Once inside the barrier, the projectile turned a deep brown before it penetrated his helmet, causing his lifesaving item to trigger.

A purple light tried to isolate the tank’s head, but as the teleportation component began to activate, the barrier turned orange and the tank’s head was engulfed in flames, ending his life.

One of the peak elite mages tried to retaliate against Zack while he was occupied, but Aster pushed her spirit space to expand as fast as it could, instead of letting people react and flee. She had no intention of letting anyone escape her frigid grasp today.

Out of everyone, only she could feel his raw and unbridled anger.

As a ruler of a slightly lower-Tier aspected world, he knew how fragile they could be. Most of the time, fighting on an aspected world was fine, but widespread battles could disrupt the world’s vital mana flows and inject ruinous amounts of other mana types.

The other higher Tiers would know this as well as he did, but they didn’t care or considered the risk acceptable given the timelines involved.

Her calm acceptance and assistance was a good touchstone, as it made staying rational much easier.

The anger still affected them both, but where his anger burned hot, hers was predictably cold.

It was almost as cold as the blizzard she summoned as she imposed her spirit space on their surroundings.

Frost quickly formed over the weakest members of Remi’s group. It mainly gathered on those not in the original group, sealing their fates. While elites in their own rights, the people who had joined Remi’s little vengeance party were the dregs of those that were able to enter the Breach.

Any of them who couldn’t break Aster’s grip found themselves pulled inside her spirit space. There they were sapped of their various energies, fueling its further expansion, helping Aster defend against the other team’s mages.

Liz was a beautiful nightmare.

She used [Feather Armory] to summon thousands of feathers the moment she arrived. Some curled and formed themselves into a spear while others coalesced into a layer of armor. The remainder formed a set of ichor wings with a thirty foot wingspan.

Flapping her wings didn’t only give her a boost of speed as she threw herself at Remi, but golden droplets of ichor sprayed half a dozen of the closest fighters. Not content with her speed, Liz used the boost in momentum to further amplify [Blood Dash].

For a brief moment, she blurred even to the highest perception rate Matt could think at.

The blood her skill left behind was initially red, but as she subsumed control over the conjured liquid with her Talent, crimson turned golden as fire and lightning spread, turning it into ichor.

When she stopped moving, she’d impaled a lieutenant who couldn’t seem to understand how she’d bypassed all of his defensive mechanisms.

Originally, she’d considered [Analgesic] only good for spreading her plague spells, but since her transformation into ichor, Liz had learned a lot about both skill modification and its many applications, as well as the mana type itself.

Together with Allie and Rah, she’d learned to apply the spell to herself. That let her avoid a lot of reactive skill triggers.

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Triggers such as lifesaving devices.

And once she’d gotten in contact with their blood, they were done.

Ripping her spear out the man’s back, she threw herself at where Remi was surrounded by his peak elite defenders.

Behind her, another Liz burst forth from her first victory, beginning her own offensive.

Using the Master’s Dominion Natural Treasure, she transferred parts of her Domain between clones, carefully controlling the tempo of her battles so she’d always have an opportunity to strike out offensively at close to full power.

She was burning willpower doing so much, but it made her [Sanguine Legionnaire]s formidable and unpredictable threats.

Boosted by the speed potion, Matt threw himself forward with everyone else, letting his blade speak for him.

The runes were there to stabilize the solidified core of his longsword; it allowed him to further empower [Mana Slash], [Mana Charge], and [Tribulation Strike] past what his spirit alone could handle.

A shield bearer tried to deflect Matt’s blow upward, using both a spell and the natural shape of his shield.

It was a good idea.

Neither effort mattered.

Unleashing its power upon first contact, [Mana Charge] cracked the Tier 33 shield, compromising the top half’s structural integrity. [Tribulation Strike] did more than finish off the tank, it obliterated the man behind him as well.

Continuing with his swing, he unleashed his yet unused [Mana Slash].

The crescent of mana cut through four more people, though it didn’t kill them instantly, having not hit their heads. It did, however, pass through their fight and nearly struck a team who was, like everyone else, still loitering on the planet.

That got them and most other teams moving, but he didn’t have the spare attention to give to them as their momentum was blunted.

[Cracked Air Slide] flung Matt forward, getting him out of the way of an implosion aimed where his head had been. He led with his longsword once more, but this time, his opponents were far more wary, not wanting to take a blow head on.

Matt took a slash to his leg, but he ignored it as he barreled into two more melee cultivators, relying on his overwhelming physical power.

He focused on the Republic fighters, and for his efforts, he popped two lifesaving measures early. He took one woman’s life, but the other slipped away at the last moment, and he didn’t have enough time to focus on them as a talisman appeared on his back.

A slip of paper so thin it was nearly invisible flared to life with an inordinate amount of mana as it detonated.

Seeing the talisman and the core rune it was using, Matt swapped places with a Liz that was pincered between two of Remi’s lieutenants.

Better than average, they were trying to whittle the lone Liz down without letting her reform.

They were doing the right things, but they were too slow.

When Matt appeared, he deliberately tried to remove the talisman, activating the secondary trap hidden inside.

Now stuck to his left hand, he struck like a viper, grabbing the rapier-wielding man’s head in both of his hands.

The talisman detonated, creating a new crater.

Matt appeared out of the smoke as Liz swapped their places once more, and he felt three new rings form as Liz created more clones beneath the obscurement.

The moment he reappeared in his original fight, he saw that Liz had wounded one of the men but hadn’t been able to infect them.

Moving to assist, Matt immediately halted his movement as one of the remaining peak elites reached him.

The dagger-wielding man blurred with fire mana of all things, shimmering like a heat wave until he turned completely invisible.

The ice and wind Aster had coated the battlefield with didn’t stop him, but Matt wasn’t too surprised by that.

What did catch him off guard was how fast the blade slammed into his neck at an upward angle, trying to drive into his brain.

Matt didn’t reach behind him, instead throwing an elbow to his left while twisting his head right to dodge the follow-up strike.

A different dagger, one so red it almost appeared black, skittered across the second layer of [Cracked Phantom Armor]’s solidified shell.

The small amount of contact told Matt everything he needed to know. A fire assassin wasn’t exactly typical but he’d seen such before. However the blade being made with a Tier 33 flame trapped deep in its center was far more interesting.

And deadly if the warning his spiritual sense gave him wasn’t wrong.

Thrusting, Matt narrowly missed the shimmering appearance, even as two other cultivators tried to attack his rear. They aimed to trade his attention back and forth, but Matt had no time for such petty tricks while he was surrounded by enemies.

Darting forward, as if afraid to fall into their trap, Matt let [Cracked Mana Trap] deal with the two annoyances as they tried to keep up with him.

The first blade slammed into his chest, coming out of nowhere, but Matt ignored it even as it tried to hollow out his insides with its stored flames. Slashing out he tried to wound the assassin in return. His blow hit nothing, forcing him to slow down and listen to his senses as well as his instincts.