The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

7

Kelley paused in his drawing for a heartbeat before shaking his head. “Nope. I know of a rune for it, but it’s at least Tier 20, as that was the weapon I saw with it. None of the databases I own have a bleed rune in them either.”

“That’s what I expected. Can we make the two skills more efficient then?”

“Maybe. But that would mean putting a higher Tier skill on it, then crippling the skill. It will be better than the Tier 6 skill pattern, since it would technically still be a Tier 7 skill. That’s only possible because the weapon is already Tier 7, by the way. But sure, we can manage.”

“Let’s do that then.”

With that, Kelley showed Matt a page with a drawing of his blade, along with the runes and their approximate locations. He was messaged with a much more detailed version of the design that showed the runes interacting in three dimensions.

It was more complicated than anything he had done before by a mile.

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

Kelley looked surprised at that. “I thought you said you’ve enchanted before?”

“Yeah, a few things that my AI created, but nothing this complicated.”

“Can I see?”

Matt didn’t see why not, so he sent the man a recording of his few tests, including his weapons enchanted from the golems’ fortress.

“Huh. This is an interesting light rune. Tell me more about it?”

They went off on a tangent about how AIs tested and tried to create their own runes.

They became fully sidetracked once Kelley tried to quickly remake Matt’s light rune.

“It’s not very efficient, but it’s very simple. It also produces a bit more light than the one we use.”

Matt’s rune was lighting up the entire room in a blinding fashion. Even when Kelley threw a blanket over the rune, it still illuminated the surroundings.

Kelley was an amazingly knowledgeable person, but Aster quickly grew bored of his talk, so Matt let her out and told Liz he would be here a while. They had already blown over the hour the lesson was supposed to last, and had no sign of slowing.

He and Kelley talked about runes for another three hours, until they started testing Matt’s ability to enchant.

Matt didn’t think he was that bad, but Kelley nearly laughed him out of his shop when he saw Matt’s mana control. It was embarrassing, as he had been working on it during their breaks. But, apparently, he was woefully behind what a normal crafter at Tier 6 would have.

It took five attempts on blanks for Kelley to allow him to try. The first two failed and destroyed the slab of metal, but the final three succeeded. The last two were even passable, according to Kelley.

Matt was nervous when he enchanted his blade, and botched the first attempt almost immediately. Unlike the standard items, it didn’t fall apart when its spirit was damaged. Instead, the blade refused to allow him to modify its spirit until he fed it a few thousand mana. It was like watching a crack in a wall expand, but in reverse. The crack slowly closed and smoothed out. It was as if it never happened.

In his second attempt, Matt finished the entire enchantment in a single go. It took nearly forty minutes, and almost 200,000 mana to enchant the blade. He half-expected Kelley to say something about the absurd amount of mana directed into the blade, especially without tapping into the city’s reserves. But the man pretended like nothing was amiss, which relieved Matt.

When the weapon was finished, he squashed the idea of testing the skills, and settled for testing the runes. When they held mana, to his and Kelley’s satisfaction, he sent some mana into the skills, but just enough to see that the mana flowed through the proper channels. He let it dissipate instead of releasing the skills.

Shaking the man’s hand, Matt asked, “What do I owe you for the enchantment work and help?”

Kelley looked slightly insulted when he waved Matt off. “Don’t worry about it. It was a fun distraction, and I learned something new with that light rune, which is worth way more. Let’s just call it that Tier 7 mana stone my nephew charged you. Don’t be a stranger, though. When you want to talk shop, swing by, or message me.”

Matt smiled at the Tier 10 man. They had only known each other for a short time, but he felt as if he was friends with the man already.

It wasn’t hard to agree, and he hurried to find Liz.

To his dismay, she was across the city, and had just sat down for dinner with Aster.

Giving up on joining them and telling them to enjoy themselves, he grabbed food at a food cart, and went back to their room in the Seven Suns building.

Along the way, he was intercepted by Juni, who carried a bag with him. “Everyone is to wear Seven Sun colors apparently, so do you want a full suit made? Or get your armor colored?” Seeing Matt’s disinterest, he added, “We also have arm- or headbands.”

That made the choice easy, but Juni looked disappointed with Matt’s decision.

The gold and dark red armbands were simple enough, and seemed large enough to tie onto Aster’s armor as well. He wondered if he could get her to wear it as a headband and laughed at the mental image.

If he played his cards right, he figured she might even go for it. A little flattery worked wonders. Besides, he really did think she would look cute in it.

He quickly changed before finding a training room to test out his new sword.

Matt stood with nearly four hundred other people in a field, across from an equal number of people from the queendom. They weren’t here of their own free will, but because they had been called here as the counter neared zero. Matt was just happy he had enchanted his sword yesterday, and hadn’t decided to wait.

This was an assembly called by the Empire’s army, and Colonel Thorne was addressing everyone while he hovered ten feet above the crowd. “Today is the day that the queendom’s main force is entering the planet, which nearly coincides with the first wave of Pathers. There will be five waves of Pathers joining us from across the Empire, who will arrive in the next three months. There will be about fifteen million Pathers joining us here over that time. But since the war is starting when the queendom breaks into real space, I want to cover a few things.”