The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

2

As Matt was looking for more information, he received a message from Juni with a location to meet at. If he was reading the message right, the kingdom and queendom had set up buildings across the street from each other.

It screamed of creating conflict and trying to ensure that people fought, but Matt assumed the Empire knew what it was doing. It couldn’t be the first time they had done this, after all.

The location they needed to reach was so deep into the city, they decided to take a cab. The price of a Tier 6 mana stone to go anywhere in the city made Matt’s inner poor kid cringe, but he still paid it. It let them escape the mob of people, instead of trying to move through the street or waiting for public transportation. Once they were in the air, he was able to see how the crowd quickly dispersed into the massive city as the area surrounding the gate was cleared. As they flew through the high-rises, the true scope of the city came into perspective, and Matt disregarded the expense.

The city was gorgeous. There were flying islands that looked like parks and meditation areas. Some even seemed to be elementally aligned, and he made a note to find one for Aster to play in. Even if the aura wasn’t any good for refining her mana, she would still enjoy spending time with other ice aspected people.

As they flew, he saw massive floating platforms that were clear combat arenas. Unlike the normal standard arenas he had seen, these were scenario-based ones. From the few he saw, he could tell there was a variety of combat arenas from false cityscapes to elemental battlefields. Each one was hundreds of feet wide, and several of them held people actively fighting. He tried to get a better look, but the cab moved too quickly, and the buildings cut off his view as they sped along.

The use of all available space was impressive, and Matt couldn’t help but stare.

When they started to descend, Matt noticed what he thought was a massive teleportation area. But instead of having runes, it was a clear area that was nearly a mile wide in the middle. No teleportation platform could be that big. The larger they were, the greater the cost, and that was thousands of times bigger than the ones that jumped between planets. It would bankrupt even the Emperor if it was a teleport formation.

He nudged Liz to ask what it was, and she looked at him oddly. “It’s a spaceport. Oh, right. You probably wouldn’t have seen much of them. Teleportation platforms fall off in usage pretty hard after Tier 15, when people can more readily navigate chaotic space, something that’s impossible without a Concept. You can’t even really see properly without a Concept, so you need someone high enough Tier to fly a passenger ship through chaotic space without a teleport set up, and they usually have better things to do with their time than spend day in and out ferrying people around.

Teleportation platforms are great for small volumes of people, but they’re way too expensive for long distances or moving in a hundred thousand people at once. If they’re bringing Pathers in from all over the Empire, it makes sense they’ll fly them in rather than push them through the teleportation network. It’s actually… Ask me later. Looks like we’ve arrived.”

The building they were meant to enter was obvious when he saw it. It was a mirror to the building on the other side of the cleared area and colored in the Seven Suns Kingdom’s colors of gold and dark red, while the queendom’s building was colored in silver and light purple.

There were also guards in each of the factions’ respective colors, which Matt assumed were from the respective kingdoms. The fact that there were people manning the queendom’s side was slightly alarming. Had the invasion already started, or were they an advanced party sent as an emissary?

Matt was constantly thrown off by the fact that this wasn’t a true invasion. If it was a real war, they would break through at the teleport location and build a teleporter of their own, so that more troops could be quickly funneled into the planet.

Or wait, with what Liz had said about ships, would they use ships instead of making a teleporter? Or would they just travel through chaotic space directly? He knew the higher Tiers could do things like that, so why even bother with ships? Or…

Matt shook himself out of his pointless musings and climbed out of the cab to march up to the Seven Suns building. It wasn’t like the Empire would publicize how they attacked people in a real war, so it was pointless to check.

They were stopped at the stairs by the guards and told to wait until someone could vouch for them. After a message to Juni, they were immediately let through with an apology.

They were given directions to a room in the middle of the massive building that was so awkwardly located, Matt wondered if Juni had a falling out with the prince. To his surprise, they found a massive topographical table map of the planet, with hundreds of fortifications of different designs and colors, with a dozen or more small groups inspecting various parts of the map.

Matt and Liz walked around the set-piece while Aster curled up in the backpack, uninterested in the boring human goings on. Juni quickly came over and shook both of their hands.

“Thanks for getting here early. Things are a little crazy right now.”

“Yeah, we noticed with the out of the way location.”

Juni flinched hard and said, “Don’t mention that. Even though the prince isn’t here, he’s a little touchy about that. We’ve also had a few…” he paused, “incidents. Princess Sara, the queendom’s leader, is Tier 7 like the prince.”

Matt was shocked by that and checked Juni. He found that the prince’s right hand was now Tier 7.

He interrupted by asking, “Sorry, but you advanced? I thought you both had quite a bit more to go.”

Juni laughed at that, “The king is giving us everything we can think to ask for, and the army said we couldn’t bring more Tier 7s to the planet. They said nothing about making them here with essence stones. Apparently, the Empire is reimbursing everything they spend on this, and the better the battles and war, the more the kingdom will be rewarded. If the rumors are true, that extends to both personal rewards for the king, and rewards for the entire kingdom. He’s sparing no expense and giving everything he can and plans to advance a lot of people. Last I heard, the king intends to move up something like twenty million Tier 5s and 6s.”

Liz whistled. “That’s a lot of people. What are they all going to do?”

“Fight, I suppose, I’m sure the king would send more, but that’s the limit for the kingdom to send. Anyone else will need to be recruited from the Pathers. Speaking of Tier, I see you all worked hard. From mid-Tier 5 to Tier 6 means you were busting ass.”

Juni looked around and then pulled them to the side. “But back to my point, the queendom’s leader is a Tier 7, Princess Sara. They had a meeting last week where she instantly and very publicly declared she would marry the prince.”