The Path of Ascension 4: A LitRPG Adventure

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As they did, there was a rush of essence that made them all stagger, as seemingly all the essence they hadn’t earned from the rift streamed to them in a never-ending torrent. It was wasted since they were peak Tier 6, not that Luna would have allowed them to absorb it anyway.

They had to climb one set of stairs, but they found the rift reward and exit rift next to each other. There was no final boss, or even a single monster guarding the area at all.

Aster hopped out of her backpack and dispelled the reward rift. A skill shard clattered to the floor, and Aster scooped it up with her mouth, then jumped into Liz’s arms.

Together, they exited the rift to get healed.

Luna stood next to them and went through everything they did in the rift. Right and wrong.

“You actually kept the restrictions up longer than I expected. I thought you would have abandoned them by the third wave. You should have changed who was fighting the boss at the sixth wave, when you started to struggle with damaging it, Matt.” Her intense glare of reproach went from him to his tired partner. “Liz, you could have done a lot with your blood, like flooding the battleground to give everyone a safer area to fight in. Aster, you should have at least tried Winter’s Embrace.”

Aster growled at that. “We never had time, and the ground felt bad.”

Luna nodded to that. “Yes, getting low to the ground was dangerous, but you could have relieved a lot of the pressure off Liz with an attempt.”

Her suggestions and critiques lasted for another five minutes or so, but Matt was pretty happy with the result of the rift. That was not a normal rift, and they had gone in blind.

It only took a glance at Liz to see the same desire in her eyes. None of them had missed the fact that the monsters had been ready to go for another wave after the door had opened. Like most wave rifts, the longer you lasted the better the rewards.

Their rewarded skill was a simple [Mana Charge], which Liz was going to attempt to absorb and turn into [Blood Charge].

They both wanted a second crack at the rift.

When they were fully healed and had practiced some tactics they thought would counter the rift’s monsters, they were determined to delve it for a second time.

They still took a few days to settle themselves and ensure that they were in the best possible shape.

Matt approached Luna during one of Liz’ solo delves of a Tier 6 rift. “Liz said you could get me good potions for way longer than what you implied. What’s my actual cutoff point? When would I have to drop off The Path to avoid losses regarding mana concentration?”

Luna tapped her fingers. “Tier 11, if we don’t take into account the potions you got from Helen and are willing to create some specialized rifts for a guild or two. If you’re also willing to use the potions, Tier 15. Give or take a tier, provided your mana growth doesn’t do something unexpected. If you don’t want to create rifts, and are only willing to use the potions? Tier 11, maybe Tier 12 if you get truly lucky. Depends on whether or not some of my ideas work. Liz wasn’t necessarily wrong, but we will run into issues sooner, rather than later. You only get one chance per Tier to increase your mana concentration. If we lose a chance, it’s gone forever, and that will seriously cut into how dangerous you could be. As I said last time, the value of mana stones twice your Tier scales far faster than even your prodigious regeneration.”

It was a lot to take in and account for, but for now it was good enough to affirm that they’d be leaving The Path at that stage.

Or at least he would. He really didn’t like that idea, and he didn’t want to separate from Liz,’ but the disadvantages were only growing more obvious. He just didn’t want to pressure Liz into doing something she didn’t want to. Still, the knowledge that he couldn’t cripple himself either tore at him. He couldn’t ask Liz to give up her own goals for his needs any more than he believed she would ask that of him.

Eventually, he just tamped it down and refocused on the goals in front of them, as he had no answer he liked.

After ensuring that the rift was fully charged, Matt, Liz, and Aster fought through fifteen waves before they needed to retreat into the house. The rush of essence was proportionally greater for their fighting stronger enemies, and their reward was just as large, if less exciting. Over three hundred Tier 8 mana stones tumbled out. They would have rather had a skill, but the reward was generous by normal cultivator standards.

It was just that Matt didn’t need mana stones by the bucket full.

Three months after their first attempt at the nearly-Path-ending Tier 9 rift, they geared up and moved in for another attempt after a lot of training with Luna to hone their skills.

The rift was nearly identical, and they repeated the same actions of scouting the rift, to again find nothing. Matt even paid special attention to the boulders but found every rock in his reach to be normal stones. He even went as far as to bury all of them, just in case they were traps again, but nothing jumped out at them.

It didn’t help.

This time, one of the trees changed into a humanoid shape. With a glowing blade, it lunged at Matt.

Liz sliced the monster in half with a tendril of blood, causing the weapon and black rags to fall to the ground as the mist that the monster seemed to be made from disappeared.

Matt cursed and said, “I can’t tell the difference. The tree was just a normal tree, until it wasn’t. Did either of you pick anything up?”

Liz shook her head, but Aster said, “The smell changed right before the change. Smelled like darkness and damp.”

Liz pointed at the path ahead of them. “Do we keep following the path, or do we push through the forest?”

They had discussed this before, and their decision would depend on what they found inside the rift. The forest was new growth and had little room between the trunks for them to swing their weapons. If they didn’t have to, they didn’t want to risk the forest.

Matt shook his head. “Let’s push on farther. We know there will be ambushes along this path and can be mostly ready for them.”

With that decided, they carefully moved forward. Matt kept [Air Manipulation] and [Earth Manipulation] active, holding their respective elements still around them.

As his [Earth Manipulation] washed over a boulder, he felt nothing amiss. But as he neared it, he could feel the stone turn into another assassin.

With that early warning, Matt was able to cast a burst of [Flamethrower] as the monster lunged at them. To his surprise, this one stepped off the air as if it was solid and tried to get above the torrent of flames. It didn’t matter, as Aster shot it through the chest with an arm-length shard of ice.

During the entire fight, Liz kept a tendril of blood moving around herself and Aster while watching their rear.

After having explained what he noticed, they moved forward carefully. They crept along cautiously until they reached what looked like a deserted, walled-in city, built in an architectural style that Matt hadn’t seen before. There were many circular open spaces and flourishes adorning the buildings, for what he could only think were for ornamentation purposes more than practical ones.

The gate through the ten-foot walls was unguarded, but Matt and Liz still thoroughly inspected it before they decided to enter.