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1440 Words
She had expected paper tigers who relied on their items to fight, but the trio was as strong as her and her sister were, if their training duel was any indication.
So far, she was happy with how things were going in this little war. She and her sister had a little more than a year before they needed to advance to Tier 7 and stay on the Path. But with these four new teammates, gathering the points needed to slingshot themselves ahead of the Path seemed more of a certainty than a possibility.
They were doing fine as a duo, but they both saw this as an opportunity to gather skills and items that would normally be out of reach for the lower Tiers. The Empire was generous with the rewards for war contribution points. And they intended to leverage those rewards to reach the end of the Path of Ascension.
Matt gave up after the first two exchanges and simply charged up both [Mana s***h] and [Mana Charge]. He let the first strike out in a light blue crescent of mana, before following it up by releasing the stored mana in [Mana Charge] on the Tier 7’s gauntleted forearm.
Before he could see how much damage he had done, the man vanished, so Matt moved forward to help Conor once again. The man was still holding the entrance as the masses tried to push through him.
The fighting ended as Liz climbed up the tree tower and cut her way through the metal, and dropped down on their enemies as if she were a blood goddess.
Only a minute later, she called an all-clear, quickly echoed by everyone else. There were no more enemies remaining. They had won.
Not to be disappointed, Matt saw the notifications rain in.
Prior Total (last updated 0 days ago): 34 points.
TEAM MERITS:
(Calculated for Tier 6 Combatant).
· Enemy vassal killed, Tier 5. Worth 1 point. Performed 0 times.
· Enemy vassal killed, Tier 6. Worth 5 points. Performed 30 times.
· Enemy vassal killed, Tier 7. Worth 25 points. Performed 4 times.
· Enemy base captured. Worth 50 points. Performed 1 time.
PERSONAL MERITS:
(Calculated for Tier 6 Combatant).
· Enemy vassal killed, Tier 5. Worth 1 point. Performed 0 times.
· Enemy vassal killed, Tier 6. Worth 5 points. Performed 5 times.
· Enemy vassal killed, Tier 7. Worth 25 points. Performed 1 time.
ARMY MERITS:
· Various information gathered from enemy base. Worth 100 points.
· Items and equipment looted but returned. Worth 87 points.
UNACHIEVED MERITS: For reference purposes only.
· N/A
SUMMARY OF GAINS:
Team Merits:
· Raw Total: 300
· Team Multiplier: 1x
· Category Total: 300
Personal Merits:
· Raw Total: 50
· Personal Multiplier: 1x
· Category Total: 50
Combined Merits:
· Sub-Total: 350
· Total Multiplier: 1x
· Grand Total: 350
New Gains: 537 points.
New Total: 571 points.
Pather Team Ranking (Kingdom of Seven Suns): 12,312nd place.
Estimated Daily Stipend: N/A.
Matt smiled. Now that was what he called a haul. 537 points for the fight, 487 from the team, and 50 from the personal merit. The benefit of double dipping between team and individual points was on display again.
Not bad for half a day’s work.
5
Matt kicked his way through the debris while holding a tuckered-out Aster. His bond was exhausted from freezing half of the valley during the fight. He mentally reminded himself to thank Emily personally after this was done. She had protected Aster while a number of enemies tried to rush her.
Her protection lasted long enough for Winter’s Embrace to spread and capture a few more enemies, and for Aster to blast away the few that remained free of the ice’s grasp. Emily’s lightning was twice as strong as it should have been, according to his AI’s review of Aster’s recording of the fight. It also picked up that the mage always alternated between her water spells and her lightning spells.
It was an oddity, but nothing a Talent or cracked skill couldn’t account for.
Either way, he was grateful for her help.
He was currently walking through the hidden base with Liz and refilling their mana reserves with his Concept. When anyone else came too close, he turned it off, but he still had them almost full after ten minutes.
Liz was inspecting her handiwork from the battle when he asked, “Was there anything you didn’t wreck?”
She looked profoundly smug when she said, “I didn’t mess up the floor.”
Matt looked at her blankly while he kicked a fallen metal wall to the side. It revealed four scratch marks in a circle.
It made him pause while he questioned what they reminded him of.
When it hit him, he laughed and asked, “Are you getting a little flighty with your golem form?”
She looked confused, which made him laugh harder. “Do you not even realize what you’re doing?”
Liz still looked confused, which pushed him over the edge.
“Liz, your golem form has bird feet.”
She flushed hard as she stared between the floor and her feet.
Her spluttering made him laugh all the harder. “I d- d- do not! It’s ahh…uhh…someone else! Yeah, it’s someone else. It’s a good way to keep a grip on a slippery floor! Yeah, that’s it.”
She tried to stop his laughing by covering his mouth, but it was just too funny. For all the bitching she did about her bird-brained mother, she was slipping into the form unconsciously. He couldn’t wait until Tier 15, when she got her beast form. He was already preparing bird jokes to tease her with.
Half an hour later, there was a flurry of activity as forty people descended from the sky in a wave. Juni was one of the first to land. After he saw Matt, he walked over with a sardonic grin and shook Matt’s hand.
“You always surprise me, Matt. The oddest things happen around you.”
He scratched Aster’s head while shaking her paw before moving on to repeat his actions with the rest of Matt’s team. For all that Matt was ambivalent to the prince, Juni was charismatic, and knew how to integrate into a group.
Matt followed the man into the underground bunker and watched as the people that came with Juni started plugging into various banks of electronics.
Juni kicked a piece of the fake tree exterior over as he asked, “How did you even find this place?”
Liz took that as her cue and explained everything that happened.
When she was done, he asked, “Can you do an escort mission to the rest of the forts? We need them staffed sooner than later.”
Annie moved forward and spoke for the first time, asking, “What are our rewards looking like for this?”
Laughing lightly, Juni shrugged the question off, “We’ll see when we plunder this place. I have little doubt the teleporter formation will be next to useless. I’m sure they moved any bases this place was linked to, or at least the ones that we could’ve gotten intel from.”
“So, we should get credit for all of those things, right?” Conor’s question caught the prince’s right-hand man off guard for a moment.
“That’s a fair point. The problem is, we don’t know how much that’s worth. I can do 500 points but, in the end, it’s all speculation. Maybe you stopped the great threat that would have led to the collapse of our entire defenses. Maybe this was just an outpost meant for spies to get into our territory easier. I have limited funds that I can spend and giving your team 3,000 points is already pushing my authority. Once we review everything, maybe I can get you more. The prince has control of the kingdom’s wallet, not me.”
Matt shrugged; it was a good point. The information was hard to quantify, and they had already made a killing from the points they had earned so far.
Juni continued as he pried open a panel and started shining his light at the innards of the console. “These were your first points earned, right? You should check the marketplace. You should all have at least a thousand points. You can afford some of the cheaper things already, as you’re slightly ahead of the pack when it comes to earnings.”
“Wait, people have done better than us already? How?” Emily’s question mirrored Matt’s own thoughts.
- Writer
