The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

64

Kelley was interested, so Matt explained how the army was selling the rifts.

“It’s a good idea, and it’s worth a shot. I doubt I’ll get a growth item like that, but there’s a one in a few trillion chance I get lucky and get something similar.”

With that, they went back to creating various applications of the ice mana. Matt wanted to make an addition to Aster’s collar to get her more cold damage from her own mana aspect, and the ability to slow things down with the other mana aspect.

If it worked as intended, he’d see about making one for himself.

After three hectic days, Matt finally saw an exhausted Liz for more than five minutes. She had been working twenty-hour days trying to set everything up, and had finally finished most of her preparations.

He had been bringing her food three times a day after he noticed that she had been skipping breakfast and dinner.

She was so busy, he hadn’t seen her with a free moment at all when he brought her the meals. He offered to help, but while she asked him to run an errand or two, it wasn’t much more than her trying to make him feel better. So, he just gave her an open offer and left it at that, while trying to make sure she ate regularly.

After those three days, she was able to cut down her responsibilities with managing the Pather side of things to about half a day’s work. She said she expected it to be even less as time went on, but she was still effectively running the show.

While the trickle of points was quite nice, it wasn’t crazy. As a top fifty team, they earned about a thousand points a day. Unfortunately, as their ranking fell, so did their points. It got to the point where, a week after their death, they were only earning a measly seventy points a day.

It was still something, so no one complained. Well, nearly no one. Liz had ranted about how someone had called to complain about the new point system, and how it would let other people buy things faster, and therefore make acquiring the limited goods even more competitive. That, and people were mad over others getting points while doing nothing, even though it scaled to contribution. At least they had expected that complaint.

As dumb as it was, that particular gripe reinforced the reason why everyone was here. To earn gear or skills beyond their normal means.

Just mentioning it was enough to piss Liz off, though, so it was a topic avoided by everyone.

Now that it was a week after their deaths, they could safely train with light sparring. Matt, Liz, and Aster were still intent on helping their teammates get their own Concepts.

It would have been safe for them after three days, when Matt had Melinda come by and give everyone a ‘checkup’ with her Talent. But he couldn’t explain that to Annie, Emily, and Conor, so he settled for knowing that they were properly healed.

They all faced off against Annie, who blocked blows from both Conor and Liz while he and Aster tried to force the assassin to stillness with their Concepts. It was like fighting through molasses for her, and while they all pulled their punches, it was a losing battle.

That was the point, and as her desperation grew, the hope was that she could start to resist, and therefore find her own Concept.

They were an hour into things, and the training wasn’t going as well as Matt had hoped. He knew that he was overestimating how effective standard training would be, but a part of him believed that it would be as fast as training with the reality shard had been for Melinda’s team.

Objectively, he knew the idea was stupid and unrealistic. If it was as easy as fighting someone with a Concept for a few hours, everyone would have Concepts. But his new friends were strong and competent, so he felt that they should click with it.

Kelley had been Tier 10 without his own Concept, and was not only successful, but also considered well ahead of his peers. It was just another indicator of the truth. Concepts were hard to create, and some people never managed to form them. There was a reason that the Empire restricted knowledge until people hit Tier 10, and had already used the two bottled Concepts. It was for their own good.

Even at Tier 10, a cultivator would have a lifespan of seven hundred and twenty years. At Tier 14, it was double that. Compared to Tier 4, with a lifespan of around one hundred and thirty years, it was a massive difference. Without the bottled concepts, the average lifespan of a cultivator would be drastically reduced.

As Matt commanded Annie to halt with his will, he thought about what it must have been like before the bottled Concepts. He tried to imagine what it would be like if Annie, Emily, and Conor grew old and died while sitting at the peak of Tier 4. Unable to advance as they grew older and older, with Tiers ahead of them to reach immortality.

He thought of Melinda, Mathew, Vinnie, Kyle, Sam, and Tara. Even with the help of the reality shard, they were still stuck at their phrases, and only slowly progressing.

Annie panted out, “Break.” and he and Aster released their hold on her. Aster was panting slightly, and Matt understood. It was hard work on their end, even if they were sitting on their butts while the others fought.

Liz flopped to the ground as Matt stood. Emily stood and glared at Liz, who was manipulating her blood to cover the twin in a thin film. They had quickly realized that Liz couldn’t exactly recreate what he and Aster did with their Concepts.

She could resist them trying to slow or stop her easily enough, as her Concept was internal. But she didn’t actually have the ability to project her Concept without her blood. Because of that, she needed to cover the person in blood to hold them.

On the bright side, she was able to fully lock down a person on her own, letting Matt and Aster get a break, but it wasn’t pleasant for the one resisting.

As Liz sat with her eyes closed, Matt repeated her mantra. “Find what you are and what you want to become. Find what resonates with you.”

He sidestepped a bolt of mana that was tinged yellow-brown and felt like an earth element. With a stick, he slapped Emily’s side and rotated around her.

“Think about how you see yourself, and how others see you. Find where you want to go from there.”

A strike from Emily was less than half speed, but Matt blocked it with a raised forearm. “Find an idea that represents yourself, or some aspect of your fighting style. Find it and visualize it.”

Emily kept a fierce expression as she shot another [Cracked Mana Bolt] at him. Matt had tried to absorb the mana from her attack into his ring to get free aspected mana but hadn’t found a way to efficiently absorb it. The skill simply dissipated on contact after expending its energy in the initial hit.

It was incredibly disappointing, as her skill could create any elemental type. They were still working on the numbers, but it seemed like fifty percent of the time it was a basic aspect like wind, water, fire, or earth. Thirty five percent of the time, it was a higher level of aspect like ice, lightning, wood, or metal. The remaining fifteen percent was broken into weirder elements and effects that they weren’t able to document very well.