The Path of Ascension Chapter 74

Chapter 74

Matt carried a pouting Aster to the enchanter shop, and found that the building was spatially expanded to at least three times its normal size. It was so large he couldn’t see the opposite wall of the building, even though it should have only been a dozen feet away. It shouldn’t have surprised him, given it was a Tier 10 enchanters shop, but it seemed excessive.

While he started walking towards the back to speak with a salesman, Matt got distracted by the rows of enchanted items. All of them were in protective glass, and some cases blocked his spiritual sense while others he could feel through. After scanning one of the items that was protected, his AI told him that it was a special item made by the owner of the shop.

Matt didn’t know if that meant the proprietor designed the enchantment from scratch, or if they had just modified something existing, but it was interesting.

The item in question was a flying hairpin that had an armor-piercing enchantment. The hairpin was displayed using a wigged mannequin head. It secured the hair in a bun, leaving the mannequin’s long neck exposed. With a sudden thought, Matt popped up and peered over the rows of shelving. He caught a glimpse of his redhead bobbing in and out of view two isles over, so he called out to Liz.

“Hey, come look at this. I think you’d like it.”

Liz meandered around on her way to the container and half nodded, and half shook her head.

“They’re pretty, but it’s not practical. I have armor on when we fight, which covers my head.”

“I was thinking about when we aren’t preparing for a fight. I at least have my sword in a spatial ring. This would give you something to defend yourself with around the city or wherever we are.”

Matt kept a straight face. The argument wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t his primary motive. Liz typically kept her red hair in a long braid that fell to the side of her head. She rarely tied her hair up, which was a shame, because she had a long elegant neck that he couldn’t resist. Liz was a weapon in and of herself and didn’t need any further protection, but if she bought his excuse and got the hairpin, he’d get to enjoy the view of her seldom seen neck.

Liz ran a finger over the glass, then started to play with her hair, raising it and spinning it into a bun before she shrugged.

“Yeah, I can make it work. It’s not a bad idea. It just seems kind of expensive. It’s a Tier 7 mana stone for a Tier 6 item.”

“I don’t see us advancing that quickly in the next few months, so it’s a good investment.”

Matt didn’t say they weren’t lacking money, but they really weren’t. Now that they were Tier 6, it was no longer economical for them to delve Tier 5 rifts for growth items. However, they still had made more than most guilds could have earned in a comparable time. So, they were insanely wealthy for their Tier in both mana stones and contribution points.

With a mental fist pump, Matt watched as Liz picked up the little slip by the glass container and slipped it into her hand cart.

As they wandered the store together, Matt made a few mental notes for things to try and recreate. A bracelet that created a bubble that blocked rain while flying seemed easy enough, while also being useful, so he set his AI to research the design. With his extra mana regeneration of 80 MPS, he had mana to spare. He figured while he wasn’t fighting, it was a good way to stay productive.

He reached the clerk, put on his best smile, and asked, “Hi, is the enchanter in?”

The man seemed unimpressed and stared at Matt blankly for a moment before asking, “Why?”

Not used to the curt attitude, Matt cocked an eyebrow but answered truthfully, “Well, your LocalNet listing said there was a Tier 10 enchanter here that was on The Path. I wanted to get his help and look over an enchantment for a weapon I bought.”

“So you want a weapon enchanted,” the clerk replied in a bored, monotone voice. “Put it in the bin over there, and Kelley will get to it in the next few weeks. For an additional Tier 6 mana stone, you can be bumped up to a higher priority.”

Seeing where the misunderstanding came from, Matt smiled at the man. “No. I need to enchant the weapon myself, but I want to see if there is anything else I can get out of the weapon, and possibly have the enchanter watch me lay the enchantment.”

“So you want a lesson?”

Seeing as how the man seemed incapable of understanding what he wanted, or at least didn’t care to, Matt just nodded. “Sure. When can I meet with him?”

The man lazily swiped at the pad in front of him for what felt like a year and finally said, “He can do an hour lesson now for a Tier 7 mana stone. Standard disclaimer applies. He’ll teach you what he wants, no matter how much or little that is. Though he’ll target your wants or desires.”

Just wanting to end this pointless discussion, Matt nodded and sent the payment over with his AI. He didn’t carry that much money on hand; they kept it stored in their team’s bank account for safety reasons.

The clerk looked disinterested to the extreme as he led Matt back behind the counter and to a room with a metal banded wooden door. With a loud rap, he waited. When nothing happened, he started to pound and kick on the door until it opened abruptly.

The clerk only said, “Lesson.” Before he walked away.

The man, Kelley, Matt assumed, looked wild with his beard and hair spiking in every direction.

“You here for a lesson?”

“Not really, but that was the best way to get past your receptionist.”

Kelley glared at the wall and growled, “Sorry, he’s my sister’s kid. So what do you want, if not a lesson?”

Matt cut to the chase and summoned his weapon from its ring, holding it parallel to the ground so the enchanter could inspect it.

“I have a growth sword that only I can enchant, but it’s got a few advantages.”

He didn’t get any farther before the Tier 10 man snatched the weapon and turned back into his room, shouting, “Shut the door when you come in!”

Matt did as he was told, sending Liz a message to keep her in the loop.

Aster, who was still in his arms, stopped pouting and started sniffing around while still being held.

The enchanter had his sword on a table with a light so bright, Matt had to squint. He pulled out his and Aster’s sunglasses to spare their eyes.

Kelley hummed over his blade for a while, and without looking up, asked, “It’s a Tier higher than you? Is that intentional?”

“Yeah, I can handle the physical weight, and I figured the spiritual weight isn’t a huge problem if I just keep the enchantments at my own Tier.”

Kelley tapped at the blade then ran his finger down the flat, as if he was inspecting something through feel.

“You can remove the enchantments, right? Hmm. Yeah, I can feel that. I can also feel that only its owner can do the work.”

He looked up at Matt and shugged, “While this whole thing is interesting, what do you want?”

“I have a blueprint here bought from the Empire Market, and wanted to get it inspected. It was done by a lower Tier enchanter than yourself. If I had known this city was going to be here, I wouldn’t have wasted the contribution points.”

Kelley looked at Matt in a new light. “You already have access to the Empire Market? Huh, must be a seeker.”

“Something like that, yeah. Can you help?”

The Tier 10 glanced at a pile of armor and then firmly nodded. “As long as you aren’t total garbage at enchanting, I think I can walk you through the process. I have some scrap iron you can practice on. And I don’t want to work on that armor anymore, so you’re a useful distraction.”

Kelley asked for the blueprint and inspected it, finally asking, “Can you afford these enchantments? They’re pretty standard, but this sword doesn’t have a slot for a mana stone like a crafted one would, so it’s unable to have its own reserves.”

Matt carefully said, “Mana isn’t a problem for me. Act as if I had an unlimited supply of it for the purposes of the sword’s enhancements and skills.”

That earned him another odd look, but the man was a part of The Path, so he knew that everyone had their own secrets. Matt didn’t expect him to ask anything more, but when he did, it was a question he hadn’t thought of.

“When you say unlimited supply, do you mean as a stream? Or as a pool? I can do some interesting things depending on each answer.”

“As a stream. Think regeneration, not capacity.”

It was more than he wanted to share, but Matt was intrigued by the enchanter. Besides, he had already accepted that the man would get a pretty good guess of his Talent when he watched Matt enchant. It was a price he was willing to accept for his new sword, and he was ok with it since the enchanter was a Pather. Kelley wouldn’t be under any actual restriction, but Matt felt that anyone who made it to Tier 10 as a crafter would know how to keep their mouth shut.

If he had to, Matt would ask Liz to throw her parents’ names around if Kelley tried to blackmail him.

“Oh, that’s interesting. You want the standard runes for repair durability and sharpness. This has them all as major runes. I’d drop the repair one to a minor one and save the space.”

Seeing Matt’s skeptical look, the enchanter explained, “All growth items can repair themselves to a degree. As long as they’re mostly intact, they can fix themselves. I’ve seen swords be shattered, then fix themselves with a little time and metal, if most of the pieces are gathered back up. The point is, we can free up some space and add either another rune or a skill. You have a second advantage with this being a growth item. It doesn’t need the rune to take in your personal mana, which gives us just enough room to fit something else.”

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The man pushed things around until he uncovered a pad of paper that served as a desk mat. Ripping off the top and stained sheet, he started sketching with a pencil he pulled from nowhere.

Catching Matt’s puzzled look, the man smiled cheekily. “At Tier 10, you can handle a small, specially made spatial ring. If you know a Tier 30 enchanter, they can make a cubic foot of space into a ring if they’re good. But be prepared to pay out the ass in contribution points. The only reason they do it is so that lower Tiers buy things for them.”

“Wait, what?”

The man looked at Matt’s cores and asked, “Did you just Tier up?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Go and look at something at Tier 5 that you’ve seen the price of.”

Matt checked his AI and found a growth item that he knew was seven thousand contribution points. He was shocked when he saw that the price had doubled in its value.

“Why the fuck is it fourteen thousand contribution points?”

Kelley grinned evilly at him. “When buying an item under your Tier in the Empire Market, you take a penalty to the cost. Double the price for the item for each Tier it is under your own. It prevents higher Tiers from monopolizing the market. But it also means that some things can get incredibly expensive for higher Tiers. At least for low Tier things, like growth items that only sell on the market. Most of the time, you can buy things with mana stones. But when you need a particular item, it can be worth it to offer services in exchange for an item, when dealing with a lower Tier person. I had to spend around forty thousand for a Tier 8 rare item to trade for this ring. Its original price was only ten thousand, but it was two Tiers lower than me. The Tier 30 who also wanted it would’ve had to spend almost one hundred sixty-eight billion contribution points.”

Matt’s jaw dropped, “That’s an impossible number.”

“Yeah, it’s absurd, but that’s why he traded for an item. This little beauty is worth around a hundred thousand contribution points, but no one makes them. They’re incredibly hard to make, and it needs a Tier 30 or higher. But who’s gonna spend that much for an item that they’ll only use for five Tiers at most? I was lucky to come across someone offering to make one in exchange for an item.”