The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

33

[Alarm] would wake the caster if anything passed over a set area. It was a niche skill with a function that could be handled by technology but being too careful never killed anyone. He didn’t think it was a bad skill to eventually get. [Perk Up] was a skill he had never heard of, but after reading its description, he made a note to get it. It was apparently like caffeine, but without any of the side effects. It was much cheaper than [Endurance] and could last for hours.

[Cook] and [Chill] were a pair of food-related skills that he had heard about, but no prideful chef was allowed near them. [Cook] simply heated food until it was safe to eat for the caster’s biology while killing any parasites or viruses in the meat. No finesse or care for taste. [Chill] had its usage for preserving food or cooling down drinks, but most used it with [Cook], giving it a bad reputation.

Matt’s cooking instructor had spent nearly an entire class lecturing why the skills were a mockery to the culinary art, and not to be used. He didn’t have any use for those skills, but the rest were useful enough to warrant picking up.

They wouldn’t know the results of the raffle until the end of the week, so they ended their walk around after finding one of the smaller auctions and sitting down to enjoy the bidding. They were selling various small arms, but Annie said that her dagger was fine for her Tier. So, they only lingered long enough to watch a few items get sold before they moved on to the nearby duel arenas. There various people fought in what appeared to be some entertaining bouts, judging by the crowd.

It only took a quick search to see that the prize for any duel was a flat 100 war points for the winner, and 25 for the losers. Also, winners would get thirty percent of all points bets, while losers would get ten percent. It was profitable enough. Matt looked to his teammates and asked if they wanted to try their luck.

Emily looked interested enough but shook her head. “No. I want to keep what I can do under wraps for as long as possible. The early points are nice, I’m sure. But I don’t think the vassals are dumb enough not to have people watching the fights to compile builds and such.”

Conor nodded and agreed. “Shame, though. I could always use more points.”

They did stay to watch a few more fights, but only one caught Matt’s eye. There was a massively overweight man who slung spell after spell as he gradually grew thinner and thinner. Eventually, he ended the fight with some type of AOE skill. It sent his opponent flying into a barrier that encompassed the fighting arena. The payout for his fight was massive, as he had been given horrible odds by the watching crowds. Being that overweight usually meant that they were sedentary, but it was clearly a skill or Talent. If Matt had to guess, the man stored mana as extra weight. It was interesting, and from the number of skills he used during the fight, pretty effective.

The prize of nearly four thousand war points was almost enough to make Matt take the stage, but he kept walking with his friends as they moved to finally leave. They had wandered through most of the bubbles that they wanted to see.

With no points to spend, and not willing to give up more information about themselves by dueling, they boarded a platform and exited the underground leisure land. As they left, there was a banner that offered special Tier 5 and Tier 6 rifts to delve for 1,000 war points apiece. Matt didn’t put two and two together until the banner changed, and an ad for a newly discovered Tier 7 was advertised for 4,000 points a delve slot.

He and Liz met each other’s gaze and smiled. They knew that the rifts they left would be of great interest, but he hadn’t expected the army to camp on them and control their access. It made sense when he thought it over. A rift a Tier higher than the planet was an asset for the faster Tiering up of the world. While he wasn’t upset that they were selling access, he wished he could get his hands on a list of the rewards that people got from them.

They tried to delve the rifts a good bit, but they were nowhere close to completing a true rift drop table by the time they had left.

Matt rode the platform back through the sea and to the city with a busy mind. After a day of sparring and high emotions followed by a long night, Matt was exhausted. By the time they arrived back home, he flopped into bed with Liz and Aster. None of them even bothered to undress, and they just fell asleep in a pile.

He woke up the next morning with a dry mouth. Seeing that everyone else was still asleep, he started cooking. He still had some monster meat from their time spent delving, and it was going to go bad sooner rather than later, as he only had a basic mana powered fridge in his spatial bag.

Going all out, he cooked a massive breakfast and moved around the little kitchen like a man possessed, determined to wow with his breakfast feast. Annie and Emily came out of their rooms at nearly the same time, just to argue who would use the bathroom first. They ended it with a round of rock paper scissors, which left Annie bouncing from foot to foot as her sister took her time in the bathroom.

Liz and Aster were the last to arrive, after Conor, Annie, Emily, and he had already finished their plates and then seconds.

Now that Aster was awake, he pushed laughter at her as she was experiencing her first hangover. She was not enjoying it. She yowled at him until it exacerbated her headache, causing her to curl into a miserable ball. Picking up his bond, he fed her a pain killer and waved bacon under her nose until she ate it, before setting her down in her personal freezer bed.

Liz wasn’t in nearly as much pain since she used [Endurance], but she was eating slowly at breakfast. While she finished eating, Matt went to the gym with Conor. The two of them only lifted weights and avoided sparring. They were only there to do some strength training.

Their rewards for the selling of Liz’s potions arrived, along with Emily’s skill shard. They earned a whopping 5,603 war points after the auction house’s cut. Matt rubbed his hands together at the influx of points, and immediately put up a bounty for anyone with mana aspects that he didn’t already have, or different variants.

He posted it as a crafter looking to aspect rechargeable mana stones. It was true enough, even though he wanted to use his growth item instead.

With a look at Conor, he asked, “Hey, is your mana aspected?”.

Conor looked confused for a second and responded, “No. I’ve thought about getting mine metal or earth aspected, but I couldn’t afford the potion. Why? Are you thinking about getting yours aspected?”

Matt didn’t want to lie but didn’t want to give away his Talent or growth item either, so he told him part of the truth. “No, I dabble in enchanting. My sword requires me to do the enchanting work myself, and for other work, the books recommend getting as many mana aspects as possible to create synergies.”

With a casual shrug, he added, “The aspected mana stones cost an arm and a leg for even the common aspects. With how many millions of people are here, someone with a rarer variant has to be here, and it costs them nothing to inject a little mana for me.”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a gauntlet that I saw up for sale at a shop. I was wondering if you could give it a look. I don’t know enough to know if it’s a good deal.”

“Happy to help. What’s the item?”

“A bracer that acts as a kinetic energy storage, which can be blasted out as a short-range attack.”

Matt was surprised and said as much. “I expected you to want a longer range spell. I know I did.”