The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

63

There was a rippling in the air that Matt didn’t dare disturb, and after what felt like a year, “f**k! It explains so much! Concepts do the same thing. They can change your mana to better reflect your understanding. Someone with an ice Concept could use it to aspect their neutral mana into ice aspected mana, but that would just be the main aspect, the same as if they used an ice natural treasure.”

Kelley paused for a moment, grabbing one of the gauntlets. “Unless their Concept isn’t found in nature, but as long as the person’s Concept is the same as the natural treasure, it’s no different. The inverse applies as well. Unique aspects could appear from peoples’ Concepts. They would need to use their ice Concept to introduce the slowing secondary property. It would let their mana reflect the abilities of ice as they understand them.”

Kelley started to chew his lower lip as a faint strum rippled through the air.

“If you understand the Concept well enough, you can add that secondary property. The right…” the enchanter seemed to search for the word, “sub-aspect to the main mana aspect. You multiply the effects greatly. That must be one of Ascendent Crafters’ guild secrets, it explains how their products always out perform with the same runes and materials. They must have huge libraries of aspected mana. I can do the same.”

Kelley uttered, “I make the rune. I can find the best aspect and sub-aspect for the rune. I can change…”

Matt felt the air and surroundings vibrate like a bell was struck. Matt’s Concept and his cores of essence vibrated to a frequency that was not his own. But it still sounded discordant.

Kelley was rapidly thinking his way through forming his Concept, but there was something more happening. Matt had felt when his and others’ Concepts formed during the ascension, but he had never felt the essence responding like this before.

“I can change the aspect. I can choose the rune. I decide its properties. I can change. I am the sculptor and the stone.”

With each phrase that Kelley uttered, the vibrations were brought closer and closer to harmony. Matt’s Concept vibrated in what felt like sympathetic resonance, but before the sensation settled down, Kelley said, “I am change.”

It was like a bomb went off, as everything fell into place and a smooth harmony rang out in a melodic fanfare. Essence started to rush into the room as if there was a vacuum pumping it in. And now, Kelley was absorbing the ambient essence at an absurd rate. Like a starving man at a banquet, he kept pulling more and more in.

The pressure built until Matt felt like he was underwater from the sheer volume of essence that was being pulled in. As the quantity increased, a resonance started to expand out through the essence as more and more rushed inward, condensing within the enchanter.

Once the entire room was vibrating from the resonance between man and essence, there was a moment where the torrent stilled. His enchanter friend was no longer Tier 10, but Tier 11.

Kelley’s first word was, “Huh.”

Matt kicked the man. “Huh!? Is all you have to say for yourself!? That was an inspiration! You just had an inspiration! By every Ascender.”

He had no idea how to react, honestly. It wasn’t just mind-boggling. It was beyond that. Inspirations were rare, and Matt had no idea how rare it was for a crafter to create their Concept at the same time.

Matt had no idea why it had taken so long. The movies he had seen depicted an inspiration as lasting only a minute at most, but this experience had lasted five already. The real oddity was that this planet was only Tier 6, while Kelley was Tier 10. The essence shouldn’t be useful for the man, but he still felt the essence condensing as it neared the enchanter.

Or at least, that was the feeling he got from his spiritual sense. It would explain why the man was pulling in so much essence. Quality had to be created from quantity.

Kelley hardly rocked from Matt’s kick, and just started laughing until he had to wipe his eyes from the excitement.

“I can’t believe it either. f**k! It’s kinda hard to believe. I-I don’t know.”

The newly-minted Tier 11 vibrated with excitement before he broke out into an awful dance.

“I need to test…everything!”

Matt wholeheartedly agreed. He didn’t ask about the man’s revelation. From the little he knew about inspirations, which was solely based on a movie or two, asking was considered incredibly rude.

So, he asked about the man’s Concept instead. “What about your Concept? What did you make? What do you think it can do?”

Instead of answering, Kelley picked up a scrap of metal and looked at it. Matt felt out with his own Concept and felt nothing. After a few minutes, Kelley looked up and said, “I have no idea. How did you tell?”

Matt felt flabbergasted, but half shrugged. He had just flexed his Concept, and it had worked.

“I don’t know. It just worked for me when I interacted with it. I felt there were two things it could do, and it was pretty easy. If I had to guess, try something related to the image. I assume it’s crafting related, so try that.”

The Tier 11s stylus appeared in his hand, and he started carving into the metal bar in his hand. The rune was familiar to Matt, as they had just been working on it. After a minute, the outline of the slowing rune appeared, and Kelley started to imbue the rune with his own mana.

Matt was about to offer to do that when Kelley grunted out, “Mana. Please.”

Throwing his Concept onto the man, Matt watched as the enchanter imbued his rune and then inspected it with a grunt.

He waved off Matt, who was still refilling the man. “I’m good now, you can stop.”

Matt didn’t and just asked, “You figured something out. What was it?”

Kelley looked happier than a kid on his birthday as he said, “I got myself the ability to somewhat influence my own mana with different properties. It’s almost like copying what I learned from the cold. But it seems that I need to know how the aspect and sub-aspect work.”

He tapped Matt with the bar, then from Matt’s perspective, rapidly cleared the workbench up. By his AI count, the effect had lasted one and a quarter seconds, but it had felt more like fifteen.

Matt nodded to the man. “It worked, but not as well as the slowing ice aspected mana.”

Kelley nodded. “It also burned a lot of my own mana to convert it to both the aspect and sub-aspect, while also eating a ton of my willpower. I have a headache like you wouldn’t believe, but I think that if I practice this, the mana conversion will get a lot better. Something feels off right now, but I’m not sure.”

“So, what are you gonna do now?”

Kelley looked at Matt like he was dumb. “I’m going to keep testing! At the minimum, I’m going to copy your idea with normal converting mana stones. It will cost me an arm and a leg, but I’ll need to at least test with them. I bet the large guilds have pre-made libraries already, but I don’t. It will just take some time and searching.”

Matt offered, “Why not try and hire a few Tier 5 teams to run the rift I got this from? It was dropping dual typed mana stones until I got this.”