The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

3

The man looked incredibly awkward as he finished. “The prince tried to play it off as a joke, but she bet him that if she won the war he would have to go on at least a dozen dates with her. To the prince’s dismay, both sides’ parents agreed to the condition. I believe the king wants to pressure the prince to not lose, and it’s working. The problem is, for as much of a physical monster as Princess Sara is, she’s unexpectedly crafty as well.”

“She’s already gotten packages into the prince’s bedroom twice and crashed meetings like this with extravagant gifts four times in the last week. In fact, just this morning the prince woke up to find his room filled to the brim with roses.” The man was looking more frazzled the longer he talked. “We still haven’t a clue how she did it.”

Matt had to give credit where it was due. “That’s impressive.”

“It is, but it’s also a sore spot for the prince, so we’ve been moving meeting locations to random rooms, and it seems to have worked. So far, at least. Just don’t mention her, please. Especially around the prince when you see him later.”

Moving the conversation along, Matt pointed at the map and asked, “What are the little castles?”

Taking advantage of the change of topic, Juni smiled. “So, while the Empire hasn’t released any information officially yet, we know a few things. The army is busy building locations that have strategic value, or at least simulated strategic value. However, they’re still finishing with a few locations. It will be reminiscent of a game of capture the flag, where the longer one holds the location, the more points that side accrues. It’s technically a secondary objective, but not to the king. In fact, it’s his highest priority. The war ends when one side controls the entire planet for a full month. But from a few rumors, some of the prizes are allegedly worth more than the Tier 20 planet to the kingdom, so it’s of vital importance to hold the positions. The king has even said that he’d rather lose the war if we got him enough points.”

“Is there not a bonus for winning?” Juni nodded in response.

“Of course, but the problem is that no one knows how much it’s worth. It could be worth millions or five mana stones. That’s too far above us, though. As long as you’re okay with it, you will be back with the team that assaulted the golem fortress. We’ll be filling out the group to about five hundred over the next few months, with the best of both Pathers and kingdom fighters. We’ll be acting as the quick reaction force and doing a lot of the hard work when it comes to taking and holding important locations. I suggested to the prince that we take the fighters from the golem war and make them our team leads for the best fighters. So we want you three to lead one team.”

Matt shrugged. It seemed like a good opportunity to earn more points. He said, “We don’t mind taking a team leader role.” He looked at Liz, who nodded at his unspoken question. “This just feels wrong. I get that this is a curated war, but it feels a little too much like a game. The queendom is already here. Why wouldn’t they just attack?”

Juni looked tired and sighed at the question. “Yeah, but we can’t do anything about it. When the countdown ends tomorrow, we believe the war will officially start. The queendom will appear in the city that correlates with their teleport location, and they will start moving in. We don’t know exactly where that is yet, though. And we’re unable to preemptively take control of any of the valuable points. We’ve been limited to the areas near our cities, but that leaves nearly two-thirds of the planet uncontested. Once the war starts, we’ll be scrambling to try and block the queendom off, and it won’t be easy. They can appear anywhere and attack a single location with their full force, but at least our defending advantage won’t be completely nullified with the Empire’s restrictions in place.”

Matt took a look at the map and noticed that the cities with the teleporters were surrounded by blue forts, while the rest of the map was gray. There were also larger, city-like structures strewn about. There was one on each of the five continents, and one near an isolated archipelago chain on the other side of the planet

“What are they? Fake cities?”

Juni shook his head. “No, they’re cities that the army made like this one, only a lot smaller. They also have teleportation formations in them that will allow the cities to reinforce themselves. We expect that the queendoms’ teleport location from their planet string will drop them in one. Sadly, they can only be teleported to when the war starts, and they’ve already been captured by one side.”

Matt tried to take it all in but was distracted by the sheer scale of it all. Twenty million people were being brought in for the first wave, and that didn’t even account for the Pathers that the Empire would be literally shipping in.

To his surprise, he was actually excited and itching for a fight. Unlike with the golem fighting, lives weren’t on the line here, and there were goals to fight for. He didn’t miss the forts situated around rift clusters and natural resources. If his guess was right, there were a few artificial resource nodes in areas that would otherwise be unimportant.

His competitive blood boiled, and he wanted to get out and take the fight to worthy opponents. Matt had no doubt that there would be strong people in both the vassal forces and among the exceptional Pathers.

Juni kept telling them about what to expect, but it all amounted to not much of anything. They would have to wait until tomorrow for the truth of the situation, when the war would officially start.

“What should we do now?” Liz’s question re-focused him once Juni excused himself to make more preparations.

“Well, we don’t have any responsibilities until the war starts, and our team isn’t assembled yet, so I doubt we’ll do anything tomorrow. This all seems to be progressing much slower than I would’ve expected. We have a room set up, but I’d like to visit one of the enchanters around the building. I want to get a second opinion on the pattern I made for my sword, so I can enchant it before the fighting starts tomorrow.”

“Whelp, let’s go. Our room doesn’t seem to be in a dorm-style, so at least we can enjoy our off time in between fights.”

She stretched, showing a bit of her midriff where her shirt rose. “That is, if we have much down time. Somehow, I expect this will be more like the golem war, and we’ll be running from place to place to put out fires.”

Matt laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, but without the risk of death, this should be pretty fun. There’s gonna be plenty of other Pathers to fight, and lots of vassal people to round out the numbers.”

Liz shrugged, and they wound their way out of the building to find one of the Tier 7 enchanter locations. Unable to find one near them, they wandered in the direction of the crafter’s district, until Aster leapt out of Matt’s arms and scampered off into the packed crowd.