The Path of Ascension Chapter 479

Chapter 479

 

“Can I assume he’s providing said mana against his will?”

JR nodded without hesitation. “Most definitely.”

Hearing that caused the kernel of fear to blossom into a nugget of red hot rage as another bit of information suddenly made a lot more sense. The first time he’d gone to the Corporations without Manny’s protection, Carissa had warned him about going to the capital system. At the time he’d discounted the warning as one to be wary of JR, but now…

Looking to Manny, who simply nodded, caused a slew of emotions to race through Matt. He wanted Manny to say something. To explain… anything.

Was JR threatening him? Was Manny?

Neither seemed likely, especially when Manny was the one to force the issue. That meant Manny wanted Matt to know, but either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak of the information in advance.

Unable to figure things out himself, Matt did the only thing he could do. Ask.

“Why?”

He wasn’t entirely sure who he was asking, JR, Manny, or even Rosemarie, who still waited off to the side, but JR was the one to reply.

“Why what?” Fluttering back to his work bench, JR started going through drawers, but his indifference only made Matt angrier.

“Why do you have a mana font? One that I’ve never heard of before, which actually confirms that they aren’t a willing participant. Who is Icliz the Mad?”

JR cocked his head as if he never considered the question before shrugging his wings. “You not knowing about Icliz is a failure on your history lessons. Just because it happened a million years ago and in another Great Power is no reason not to have heard of him, Chosen Titan. His life and ‘death’ are well documented, but let’s not talk about that. You won’t believe anything I say, but Icliz the Mad didn’t earn that name overnight. So while his particular ending along with a few of the details may have been altered and obscured, his rise and fall were all on him.”

Looking over to Manny for some guidance, Matt finally got what he wanted. A smidgen of the truth via a data packet. Left questioning everything thanks to the sudden information, Matt hoped for easy answers but found none.

Icliz the Mad wasn’t someone JR had made up out of nowhere, nor had he been recalcitrant about using his Talent and Domain.

At least according to the information Manny had sent him, which seemed like everything and forced Matt to use his [AI] to help sort through it all in a reasonable timeframe. A lot of the information wasn’t compiled reports, but rather first hand accounts from employers, early mercenary leaders, news stations, employees or anyone who interacted with the man during his life.

With only a few such records, Matt might have tried to cling to the hope that it was a cover up for his own reasons, but the overwhelming amount of dated media made it clear Icliz had been a man held back by his Tier and station and little else. Born only a few hundred years after the Ascendency of the Sun had been annihilated by the other Great Powers for their Tier 50 killing Ascender Daedalus, Icliz hadn’t been given the best starting hand. But he’d still managed to become a cultivator though the exact method had been lost to time and rumors.

From there, he’d never stopped until he got himself ‘killed’.

Checking the reported Talent and Domain, Matt still managed to be surprised by what he saw.

Tier 1 Talent: Produce an aura that doubles the mana generation of all creatures in its range.

Tier 3 Talent: Increased aura range. (See Appendix 2.2A for estimated ranged calculations)

Tier 25 Talent: Icliz gains mana generation equal to (estimated) 50% of all mana regenerated by creatures in his aura.

Concept: Boosts/(lowers) the morale of those affected by his aura.

Intent: Most details are unknown, besides allowing him to permanently take a portion of anyone’s mana regeneration if Icliz killed them. (See Appendix 3.0A for full speculative breakdown of Icliz’s Intent)

Aspect: Unknown(See Appendix 4.2A for theories).

It was a very powerful Talent combined with a vicious Domain, and Matt felt his stomach drop as he made assumptions about Icliz and his past. However, his worst fears were proven wrong, which made him all the more confused as emotions clashed without an outlet.

Matt almost felt dumb at the realization the grand creation, the Ascendancy Cage, was a hoax to hide Icliz. It was such an accepted fact that Minton’s grand working before he left was what made their capital world unique he’d have never questioned it. They collected fees from everyone living in the system for maintenance of the giga structure.

It was all beginning to feel like a gigantic cover up. How many older immortals remembered these details? How many people looked back far enough in history to realize Icliz’s Talent was a little too close to the Cage?

How censored had history become? A million years was a long time even for immortals. According to his general statistics about immortal life spans, less than a fraction of the population was estimated to be around. Most either ascended or eventually died but as Aunt Helen proved, that meant little.

How many of them kept quiet about the conspiracy?

Matt didn’t know and while he intended to find out later, he appreciated Manny having so much first hand information ready for him given JR’s comment about obscuration.

Despite being born in one of the most turbulent eras, Icliz hadn’t been captured and thrown into a box. In fact Icliz got his start selling his mana font service to various low Tier crafters who were willing to spend money in exchange for more mana.

Not believing an unaffiliated Tier 1 could openly sell his services in such an era, Matt checked one of the more detailed reports and found his answer. For all its problems, the early Corporations was founded by the survivors of the Ascendancy of the Sun. Legally speaking, everyone spared had been slaves. That was why they’d been relegated to orbit, and the origin of why the Great Power kept most of its population in space, even to this day.

Having been enslaved themselves, the remaining immortals had only been able to agree on a single law: complete bodily autonomy for everyone; mortal or immortal.

Icliz’s Tier 1 Talent was good, but not so much as to tempt the few people who could have bent that inviolable law. The unique environment he found himself in protected him as much as it enabled him to become a monster.

Once he could afford a full set of armor, Icliz started joining combat teams as a mobile mana font and support going into rifts. Not fighting himself, Icliz delved ten hours a day minimum, bouncing from party to party, absorbing as much essence as he could before only charging a small fee for his services. When he wasn’t in a rift, he sold his time and aura at higher Tier crafting services as his name slowly spread.

Icliz even personally advertised his Talent in those early years, as he slowly crawled his way out of the faceless trillions he’d been born to.

Seeing that, Matt’s emotions roiled further, but it only added to his discomfort. Icliz seemed to have had everything Matt hadn’t, yet his end…

Forcing himself to continue reading, Matt needed to see. See what went wrong and where. It may be too late to change anything, but as he began to accept the truth, he needed to know.

Like most in the era before Bottled Concepts, let alone aura potions, Icliz was forced to rely on his own efforts when it came to his Domain. Rather than wasting away, he proved his worth by spending only twenty years at the peek of Tier 4 before he broke through to Tier 5 and escaped his original low Tier star system.

Matt half expected Icliz to go on his rampage then, but he only traveled a few systems over to a Tier 9 world where he started selling his services, once more repeating the process.

However, the Tier 9 world wasn’t the same as the lower Tier ones, and with immortals and their descendants being plentiful, Icliz’s clientele shifted to the super wealthy and the true controllers of the disparate star systems.

Selling his services, Icliz slowly advanced one Tier at a time, moving on before any single group ever got too many ideas, while having an impeccable reputation as a well rounded support. Sure, Icliz wasn’t throwing fireballs, but he was throwing up shields and debuffing the enemies while letting everyone fight harder.

Closing his eyes, Matt found it all too easy to insert himself into the reports he was reading, but forced himself to stop. Icliz wasn’t a good person.

While his reputation at the time had been impeccable, two teams vanished with him being the only survivor. In retrospect, it was easy to dig up the conflicts the teams or their backers had with Icliz. But at the time, only losing two teams made him exceptional among freelancers who were known to run at the first sign of danger.

Even with his stellar reputation, Icliz still managed to shock everyone when, at 15, he decided to join one of the many former slave armies being used by local rulers as hired muscle. As precursors to the mercenary corps in the Corporation, the slave armies had been similarly lent out to other Great Powers, but the first Tier 50 in the wake of the Ascendancy hadn’t wanted to pay for the armies and let them do as they willed. Thus leading to the eventual formation of the mercenary corps.

Icliz spent ten Tiers and twenty thousand years as a mercenary, with his reputation in a steady but slow decline as he moved to the less and less reputable units as his casualty rate increased. At the same time, his role changed from pure support to a more offensive position as he expanded his repertoire and skills.

From Tier 22 to Tier 25, when he retired from mercenary life, Icliz had a ‘sudden change’ where he killed any time he had any excuse, leading to the first use of his title ‘the Mad’. Though, it didn’t stick at the time. Most assumed the constant battles were wearing on him, but able to see the whole timeline, it was obvious that Icliz’s descent into depravity had started well before Tier 20.

Matt suspected he was only seeing Icliz reach a position where he could finally let loose, and when the reaction wasn’t positive, he retracted his claws. Checking the consolidated reports he was far from the only one to come to that conclusion. Few people stumble into an Intent like that, and Matt had little doubt such a specific power as mana theft had been anything but accidental.

If that had been all, Matt wouldn’t have had too many things to say. After all, while using a Domain to take a portion of someone’s mana regeneration was rare, its effects usually weren’t that big of a deal when the trigger requirement was their death. Few people would argue about someone using such an ability in battle. That would have been fine, but Icliz was greedy. He got impatient.

By the time he’d reached Tier 25, Icliz had been blacklisted from all but the most suicidal mercenary corps who were happy to have a quarter of their teams return from any given mission. Instead of following that trend and dying on a battlefield somewhere, Icliz used his Tier 25 Talent as an excuse to reinvent himself, citing most people’s assumption that he needed time away from the battlefield.

After vanishing for a few decades, he returned with a much calmer but more calculating attitude as he began selling his mana to various groups once more. Except now, he was able to gain a portion of everyone’s mana generation, and Icliz became a lot more valuable. Thanks to his time on the battlefields, he was that much harder to deal with quietly, which he used to his advantage while openly marketing his new Talent.

At Tier 30, Icliz seemed to hit a tipping point when he could spread his aura to an entire planet and its satellite stations. He started working with the slowly establishing but ultimately failed, central government that the Corporations’ second Tier 50 created. Using its legendary corruption, he started requesting the right to perform any executions under their purview, and few saw any reason to deny him.

The worst part of it all for Matt was how many leaders welcomed Icliz with open arms. They openly bid against each other for the man to spend his time in this system, but soon enough, the small trickle of deaths was too slow. By the time he reached Tier 35, he’d started pushing local leaders to mandate the death penalty for lesser and lesser crimes.

The higher Icliz’s Tier rose, the greater his appetite grew, as did his demands.

That was how he earned his name, until it was cemented with his final act.

As a Tier 46, Icliz launched a bid to become the Corporations’ third Tier 50, answering the call to pick an heir. He ultimately failed, but that didn’t undo his actions on the way to the Corporations’ capital.

Confident he would be the next Tier 50, Icliz had annihilated all life from the dozen systems he traversed on his journey, looking for a last minute power up. He didn’t even destroy that much, preferring to kill with his Domain rather than ruin the very expensive space stations, but he had no such compunctions when people fought back.

Matt wanted to vomit seeing the overwhelming first hand evidence of Icliz’s cruelty, but he pressed on.

However, for the first time, the records seemed to end with only a few mentions of Icliz’s death at the hands of who would eventually become the Corporations’ third Tier 50. Even Matt knew of Milton Walker, the man who finally managed to stabilize the Corporations and reform it into a unified Great Power, rather than a collection of fractured states barely under control.

According to Manny’s information, Milton claimed to have killed Icliz, but the other Tier 50’s hadn’t believed him and verified on their own, eventually learning of his ultimate fate of being captured and enslaved.

Matt hated what he’d read, and knew he’d need to verify everything himself when they left, but he had one final looming question that he couldn’t comprehend.

Turning to Manny, Matt asked, “How did he not start a true war? That’s what you and everyone else has said about my Talent. It’s been over and over about a true war, but now I learn the Corporations have their own mana font. I don’t get it.”

However, instead of Manny answering, JR spoke as he fluttered into an open space, making a triangle between the three of them. “That is a good question, but one you’d have picked up on if you’d been paying better attention when your Talent was being described. Maybe a practical demonstration would be better. I had to shift the schedules aggressively for you, Chosen Titan, but the easiest way to lower Icliz’s mana generation is to get people out of his area of influence. And for ease of access, that means rifts. Just so you are aware, I had to send nearly all of our higher Tier mana equalizers away to free up enough of Icliz’s mana generation to run our little test, which is costing me massively in interruption fees. But I should have bought us a two minute window where you can go all-out. That show you promised, if you would be so kind.”

Getting a nod from Manny, Matt didn’t argue with the raven, who was waving a wing impatiently, and emptied out his mana pool. He’d already tried to share once before so there was no reason to hold back now. Standing glaring he produced mana. However, instead of making 1,342,177,280 mana every second, thanks to the doubling from Icliz’s Talent, he made 2,684,354,560 which marked the first time his mana generation was affected upward marking a new moment he couldn’t enjoy.

After a full minute, the raven breathed out a small sigh. “Fascinating, and more than enough proof to continue. Not even a single sign of spiritual strain. I’m thoroughly impressed by your mana generation, Chosen Titan. On an individual level you must know that most Mana Positive Talents– a loose definition to be sure, but such Talents are hard to shove into boxes– have flaws. Most people who have a mana related Talent either don’t generate that much extra mana, or they are incredibly specific in how or when they generate it. Or are very limited in how they can spend it. But maybe we should let the Talent collector speak about this?”

Manny shot a glare at JR before he took up the thread of conversation with a sigh. “JR is correct; I’ve collected enough applicable Talents that I can confirm it. Like with most Talents, the average mana Talent doesn’t generate that much extra mana outside of an individual scale, and most don’t even push the needle on that metric either. However, there are always exceptions, with some Talents being better than others. Most cause spiritual strain, but that’s less of a side effect of the Talent and more a consequence of a spirit making so much mana. In fact, Icliz has one of the best mana font Talents because it isn’t simply converting other energy like food, essence, or other exotics into mana, like the majority of other mana Talents. Even then, Icliz is limited by two factors your’s isn’t.”

“Three.” JR pretended to cough the last words out, but Manny didn’t argue and instead corrected himself.

“Three. First of all, he doesn’t make that much mana himself, all things considered, especially minus his Domain. His Talent, as best as I understand without having access to it myself, lets him boost then copy people’s mana generation. That means he can’t make extra mana if he’s alone. Second, and the largest one by far, is spiritual strain. When he was conscious, Icliz had a plethora of ways to mitigate a lot of the resulting spiritual strain, but even then, he limited how much total mana he made a day. Now that he’s unconscious, they need to limit how much mana he actually makes, lest he either ‘wake up’ or die. Thirdly, Icliz is a monster and has ‘woken up’ twice. Both times, the first thing he does is use his connection to everyone’s mana pools to kill the lower Tiers and expand his personal mana pool. On the other hand, Matt, your Talent…”

Matt shook his head. “But my Talent does have a downside. I can’t even cultivate my mana core, and it was really hard at the early Tiers. How is that without downside? I— wait, I don’t even care about defending how hard I had it. Why not just kill Icliz and be done with it? He’s a monster, but by keeping him locked up, you aren’t much better.”

JR cocked his head as he inspected Matt. “First, I take umbrage with your assertion that your Talent has downsides. Come now, let’s not be silly. No mana cultivation? Who cares in comparison oceans of mana you can create. Also, you are projecting quite a lot into a man who doesn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.”

“How many other people have been captured under the same justification?”

Instead of responding, JR shared a look with Manny.

Turning back to Matt, JR ignored his previous question. “What your Tier 50 failed to mention was the sheer amount of mana you can make, young Matthew. Icliz… Icliz is fine. Until very recently, I was even quite impressed by him, thoroughly enamored. He still is one of the Corporations’ crown jewels, but here’s the thing,”

Leaning in, the raven whispered, “Icliz can only make a hundred or so quadrillion extra mana a day before he’s tapped out. Sure, that’s a lot of mana, but I can do math, Matthew. I can count! Quite high actually, if you ever feel so inclined as to want to test my numerical capabilities. What does trash like him matter when you can match Icliz’s generation at Tier 39? By Tier 43, you’ll have dwarfed Icliz by an order of magnitude, and things will only grow more out of control as you advance those final few steps.”

Pacing towards him over open air, JR used his words like daggers, “Do you now understand why everyone is so certain you will cause a true war, Matthew? There is exceptional, and then there is too exceptional.”

Looking between the floor where Manny earlier glanced at, Matt had no doubt of who the raven meant with each ‘exceptional’.

Balling up his fist, Matt made his stance clear. “But you keep him chained up all the same hiding behind a false grand creation.”

Instead of arguing, JR shrugged a wing. “More like constantly lobotomized to ensure he remains passive. Cheaper and easier than restraints that can actually hold him back. He’s got upgraded [Regeneration] running, so we’ve reached a parity that works for us. As for the Ascendancy Cage, well now that’s a secret you’d have to pay for.”

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Hearing that, the rage left Matt, only to be replaced with a frigid iciness as the raven toyed with him.

“Then kill him. I won’t work with you if you have a mana slave. Call it what you want, but it’s unacceptable. If he’s as ruthless as you say, then just end him.”

JR started shaking his head even before Matt finished. “I will not destroy one of my greatest assets for no good reason. Especially when you just told me I need to start preparing for a true war.”

Matt didn’t back down drawing his line in the sand. “Then I will not work with you.”

JR seemed unbothered and waved a wing at him. “Settle down. I said I won’t destroy something for no good reason. Like everything else in the Corporations, Icliz is for sale.”

Finally having enough, Matt snapped back, “People aren’t for sale! Just because you allow it doesn’t make it acceptable.”

The raven barked a laugh right back at Matt, unruffled by his anger. “I’ll note there is a near zero rate of enslavement in the Corporations, whereas the Empire would need to quantify that metric with a percentage over the same time period and definition. Don’t delude yourself, everyone sells themselves, we only draw the line at permanent ownership of other people. Everything else is up for sale. The Empire may dress it up in fancy words and gilded frames, but ultimately, the only thing that anyone in this realm truly owns is themselves. It’s up to the individual to decide how to sell. Whether it be their time at a job or their bodies in a rift, it all amounts to the same thing. The only currency we have in this realm is ourselves, and Icliz sealed his fate when he took any future choices away from so many other people. In the Corporations, we have simply removed a veneer of civility that you are used to, but do not fool yourself into thinking the math has changed. If you wish to change something, then become strong enough that I can’t stop you, or pay the price I set and do it yourself.”

Feeling his anger solidify into something hard Matt growled, “It’s unacceptable!”

Breathing hard, Matt felt everyone’s gaze on him, but he didn’t care.

Making it worse, JR only smiled pleasantly at him. “There are exactly eight people in this Realm who dictate what is and isn’t acceptable, Matthew, and you aren’t one of them, so don’t try that angle. Would you like to try a different one?”

Seeing he couldn’t force the raven, Matt felt an overwhelming surge of helplessness and couldn’t help but glaring at Manny.

“You knew I’d hate this.”

Instead of arguing, Manny nodded right back. “I also know that you’d be angrier if I hadn’t mentioned it, but I swore oaths about mentioning Icliz’s existence on my own. When I said we’d all need to put our cards on the table, I wasn’t lying. I did try to mention it before the armor talk but… Would you like some advice?”

Nodding, Matt sighed out a quiet, “What?”

“We can’t change everything. Trying to overreach now might make reaching tomorrow impossible. I know it might feel hollow, but Icliz wasn’t a good person taken advantage of. He’s a monster who saw other people as resources, and while JR isn’t willing to kill him, he isn’t lying about being willing to sell him.”

Matt felt sick, but logically, he knew that even if Manny fought JR to a standstill, allowing him to find wherever Icliz was being kept, he couldn’t damage the Tier 46, let alone kill him. That didn’t change the fact that he hated being a part of something so close to him.

Firming his resolve, Matt shook his head. “Then no deal.”

That seemed to shock everyone in the room, including Manny, but Matt didn’t let himself second guess. “I won’t be a part of this. I don’t want my armor made from slave mana. I refuse.”

JR looked around in confusion, even checking under his wings, but eventually looked up to Matt. “You are strange, Chosen Titan, very strange.”

Holding up a wing, he prevented Matt from interrupting. “However, I can agree to what I believe you might consider an acceptable alternative.”