The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

66

Shutting down and retreating from the training aid, he sat. With two hours of meditation, he moved [Mage’s Retreat] out of his core spirit and into his inner spirit, with [Endurance] and [Hail].

It was right at the edge, but he needed the free slot for [Fireball], which he was currently absorbing. When it reached his core spirit, he would quickly modify it to reduce the mana cost while it was still malleable.

He checked his AI’s timer, and found that [Fireball] had another three hours before it reached his core spirit. Then, he could perform his modifications to the skill.

It was enough time for a little more testing. He had practiced for the last week with the cube he and Liz had used to train for modifying [Endurance], and the time was nearly upon him.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to test the modification once more. He had the time.

Matt connected his AI and sent his spiritual sense into the cube and started to simulate the process.

In the last week, he had doubled down on his skill training. Normally, he spent an hour or so a day doing it in the morning or before bed. But with the abundance of free time, he had been focusing on pure meditation training, and adding in skills training while using them in sparring matches

He knew it was just another side effect of his Talent that he hadn’t appreciated. Annie, Emily, and Conor all commented on how his refilling their mana regularly let them use their skills more, and actively expand their capabilities.

They were usually forced to only meditate on the skill and try to eke out whatever increase they could get when fighting or sparring. Even then, they were normally only able to do that once a day, as it took them a day and a half to fully regenerate their mana naturally.

His keeping them topped off let them train much harder than normal.

It was still a weird thought for him, as some small part of himself still thought of his Talent as useless. Even though it gave him and people around him advantages he could never have dreamed of.

With a soft chime, he stopped his wandering thoughts and focused inward. [Fireball] was close to the edge of his core spirit.

The longer it took him to make the modifications, the longer the skill would have time to sink deeper into the spirit, and therefore increase the time it would take to move back into the inner spirit.

He wanted to be quick.

As the skill breached the dividing lines between the spirit layers, Matt started to shrink the entirety of the skill down as much as he could.

He condensed it along the x, y, and z axes, along with shrinking the inner tubing that made up the skill’s structure.

The first bit was easy, but as the skill shrank lower and lower, it was harder and harder to compress. Matt even felt some of his willpower going into the task. His task became increasingly more difficult as the skill continued to shrink.

As the skill stopped moving and its malleability diminished to normal, he inspected the skill. He hadn’t been as fast as he wanted, but the results looked good.

The skill was nearly half the normal size.

And at a base cost of 10 mana, he was hoping to get the skill to a mana cost of about 6 when it was removed from his core spirit.

Still, his modification had worked perfectly.

Standing, he went back to the training aid and turned on [Cracked Phantom Armor] at the lowest draw possible. He filled a mana crystal up before refueling his mana pool. He only had 80 mana for a second, as the 1 MPS of his armor and AI slowly drained his mana pool. His regen was next to nothing if his current mana was over ten percent of his maximum.

Still, he sent mana into the new skill in his spirit, and with giddy excitement, watched as a fist-sized ball of flame appeared, then launched in the direction he was thinking of.

He missed the training aid, and the [Fireball] splashed harmlessly over the back wall.

Not caring in the slightest, Matt launched half a dozen follow-up [Fireball]s and laughed his best evil laugh as the vents needed to pull the heat and smoke from the room.

After half an hour of testing his new skill, he checked his AI for the results.

In his core spirit, the skill cost 4.1 mana, more than the ideal 3 mana cost that would allow him to use the skill endlessly at Tier 8. Matt didn’t think an item could reduce the skill enough. He had learned from Kelley that mana reduction items were hard to make, and worked off a percentage. Essentially, he’d need an amazing item to get him under the cost of his one percent max. A thirty percent reduction wasn’t impossible, but it was rare.

At Tier 9, at one percent of his max mana, he would have 6 mana, which would make the skill perfect for his inner spirit. Skills in the core spirit were thirty percent cheaper and far easier to manipulate than the inner spirit, which was considered the baseline.

He decided to move the skill out of his core spirit until he was Tier 7, so he could continue to work on [Mage’s Retreat] some more. But he was going to commission Kelley for a Tier 8 mana reduction item. Matt winced for his bank account. Even with the Tier 15 mana stone from the sale of the growth item, it was going to be an expensive item. Tier 9 or 10 materials at least, to help the efficiency get to thirty percent.

It wasn’t a huge problem, considering the value of the Tier 15 mana stone that he had. But Matt really hated spending money, and it felt incredibly expensive as a Tier 6. In the end, he refused to take advantage of a friend, and that won out.

Still, the skill worked perfectly, even if it was at a little less than half power after his modifications. He could make up for quality with quantity.

Deciding to let large decisions be a problem for tomorrow, he cleaned up and headed out. Tonight, he would celebrate with everyone for the success of his new fire spell.

Matt paused. He should get some ice cream for Aster. She was going to hate his new spell. But he loved it.

16

Matt flew through the air with his team, interspersed throughout the standard guard team.

A month after their deaths, they were pulling secret escort missions. While neither glorious nor high earning, the missions were necessary. Nearly half of the kingdom’s resource shipments from the outlying forts were being stolen. The third city was being plucked at from all sides, and the thefts were costing the kingdom valuable resources. The prince had personally asked them to escort the shipment while hidden inside of it.

Matt was in forest drab armor, with a long staff at the ready. The prince’s espionage staffers excelled at disguises and his face was made up to the point that he didn’t even recognize himself. His cheeks were filled in, and his hair dyed brown, completely changing his appearance at first and even the glance.

Liz underwent the same treatment, and now had ink dark hair, which contrasted with her pale skin. He loved her red hair, but the black hair was new and exciting. It caused them to both to muss their disguises quite a bit before the mission. The espionage staffers who had to redo their makeup were less than enthused.

Liz was also in ‘heavy armor’ with a new spear. The former helped conceal how thick the backpack that she was wearing was. It was only necessary because Aster had flatly refused to dye her fur red. She’d rather die than take on the visage of a fire fox. After that horrible suggestion, she refused to change into a fox of any other element, while adamantly maintaining that ice was the best. They really shouldn’t have started with fire. Matt tucked that lesson away for future reference and ordered an illusion collar instead; it would turn her into a dog.

It wasn’t the dyeing that irritated the fox. No, they had been able to make that seem fun to her, and she dyed the tips of her ears purple. What set her off was the people thinking that she used fire. That was an indignity too severe, so she chose the backpack when they gave her the option between it or the dye.