The Path of Ascension 4: A LitRPG Adventure

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The rush of darkness didn’t leave to the surrounding city as Matt expected but rushed into the flag the lead orc had on his armor. As he fought on, he saw the armor’s colors brighten. That was accompanied by the leader growing stronger and faster.

It was bad timing that Liz and Aster hit the other side of the formation and killed two of the orcs, which only increased the speed of the leader. The monster was now faster than the zombie rift boss when they had killed the fifteenth wave, and it took all of Matt’s concentration to deflect the blows as they rained down.

If he hadn’t spent so much time sparring against Liz and her spear, he was pretty sure he would have fumbled a parry and taken the glowing spear through the chest.

He had no faith in [Cracked Phantom Armor] resisting the orange light that destroyed other spells.

As Liz and Aster killed the remaining orcs, the leader turned into a blur that quickly battered through Matt’s defenses and left ragged wounds on his arms and torso.

Thankfully, Liz had enough blood on the ground. She was able to grab the monster’s leg for an instant and cause it to stumble. Aster used that opportunity to turn it into a pincushion with all the ice Matt had created with [Hail] that was scattered around.

With an absolutely massive rush of essence, they all knew the fight was truly over.

Panting, Matt spat out a mouthful of blood as he activated [Endurance] and asked, “Did you catch the darkness absorbing? f*****g thing got way too strong.”

Liz nodded. “Sorry, yeah. Only after we took out the first one.”

That was when Matt noticed Liz was missing her left arm at the shoulder.

“What happened?” Despite having seen her go through worse in their training, he was worried. Protecting Liz was his job, and he had clearly failed.

Liz shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I needed to finish the monsters off quick, and an arm was the price. Let’s get out of here, though.”

Having encountered the second type of monster, then what Matt expected was one of the sub-bosses Luna mentioned, he was more than happy to oblige her.

They needed to heal and strategize for their next attempt.

8

They got out of the rift and were debriefed by Luna while Melinda healed them, and the three of them received quite the shock.

“That wasn’t a sub-boss. It was just a stronger variant of the normal monster. If you weren’t delving the rift at full mana, I don’t think they would appear.” Their trainer sounded smug as she finished.

For a second, Matt wondered if he could get away with not charging the rift to full before they delved but didn’t want to waste the experience. The rift was pushing them to grow.

Liz flexed her new arm and used it to pull Melinda into a quick hug before saying, “So, where are the sub-bosses? I assume they should have been close.”

Luna pondered her answer for a minute, but then said, “One is in the city, yes, but you weren’t that close.” She seemed to debate saying more for a second before adding, “Anything else you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”

Matt did want to know one thing, though. “You said these rifts are bigger. How far did we make it into this one?”

His instructor grinned. “About twenty percent.”

Matt wanted to curse at that, but he didn’t have the energy.

Aster did, though, and started yipping and yowling in protest. Just getting that far had taken them hours, and they hadn’t even reached the one-quarter mark.

Matt had wanted to avoid using his flying sword to map out the labyrinth of a city, but he started planning on how to take advantage of their vertical capabilities. He would just need to plan for dealing with any flying monster they might encounter.

After that revelation, they doubled down on their training.

Liz and Sam pestered Erwin into giving them alchemy lessons. His only condition was that they buy the herbs themselves, instead of letting Matt create new rifts with the herbs they needed.

He was adamant that they were too far from that goal with their current setup and didn’t want to skip any steps. As they were mostly focusing on Tier 6 and Tier 7 potions, the cost was negligible.

He and Liz also got everyone to agree that they needed better armor, and after arguing their point, Luna and Kurt jumped to the central planet and its larger cities. There, they found a married armorer and enchanter who were happy to work on a large order of Tier 8 equipment.

Matt decided to change up his setup and ditched his lighter armor in favor of something a little heavier and tougher. The armor slowed him down a fraction, but it didn’t impact his flexibility in the slightest, since he requested the joints to prioritize flexibility rather than defense. After all, he had [Cracked Phantom Armor] and its second layer to protect his joints.

The purpose of this armor was more to protect his limbs and chest from the Tier 9 monsters than anything else. From this rift alone, he had already experienced a variety of weapons, spells, and abilities breaking through his armor. His body and spirit weren’t strong enough to keep up with where he was and where he wished to go.

At least, not yet.

The armor being two Tiers higher than himself meant that it was heavy on both his physical body and spirit. The physical weight was the lesser of the two problems, but the spiritual weight meant that he could only use the armor’s enchantment for a few seconds. Otherwise, it started to hurt badly enough to force him to drop the power.

His growth sword was also upgraded to Tier 9, and he hoped that it wouldn’t get so damaged in his subsequent fights.

Finding the item that the sword required to Tier up led them on a chase across every auction house the planet had. Eventually, Matt took a recommendation from Liz, and they visited the local noble house.

Count Petros was a cheerful enough man and hosted the nine of them while taking Matt into his personal vault to find the item that resonated with his sword.

Eventually, they found it.

His sword wanted to go against the grain for a change. Instead of a metal or other monster part, it desired Tier 9 Tears of a Weeping Willow. They were an extremely rare ingredient that was the secondary byproduct of the natural treasure Weeping Willows of Watery Widows. They grew as a grove of trees and had the nasty habit of killing anyone that was below their Tier who entered their domain. When cut down and harvested, the actual trees were incredibly valuable for mages’ staves, as they could channel far more mana than most other woods without degradation. Their capacity for enchantments was nothing more than average, but a mage wouldn’t need to get their items reenchanted if they used them for a long time.