The Path of Ascension 4: A LitRPG Adventure

45

Creating a rift with a growth item increased the chance of the Tier 5 rift producing one to a decent rate. The problem was, the rifts were incredibly hard to stabilize, and frequently deaspected or absorbed the seed item when Tiering up.

It was only because of the insane number of delves that the guilder teams had been undergoing that they had a decent supply of growth items to use as test subjects.

As a part of the agreement between Erwin and the guild, any growth item that didn’t appear useful to any guilder was kept for their seeding of rifts.

With a little more than fifty unclaimed growth items, they had ample supplies to test some of their theories, just not as extensively as they would have liked.

A rift seeded with a growth item, if charged to Tier 5, had a better than twenty percent chance to create a growth item when it was delved at full mana. If it wasn’t fully charged at Tier 5, that percentage dropped like a rock, but that was in line with all Tier 5 rifts.

It was just getting the rift to Tier up without deaspecting that they had issues with.

If the rift was diametrically opposed on mana aspects to the growth item, they learned that there was a near-zero chance for the rift to successfully Tier up without deaspecting. After learning that, they expected rifts that mirrored the mana types of the item would always Tier up. But they actually had a harder time Tiering those up than the rifts with growth items and mana types that were adjacently aligned.

With that knowledge, they started creating rifts by the hundreds. So long as a rift didn’t absorb the seed item, it could be used seemingly endlessly, which made no sense to either of them. The seed item should have been doing something to influence the rift, and they expected it had to do with the essence of the item, but they were unable to prove it. Eventually, all the items got absorbed.

They just couldn’t prove if something in the item’s spirit was being used, leading to the seed item being eaten by the rift, or some other underlying method. Even with their precautions, the items rarely lasted more than half a dozen rift creations before they were absorbed. Even Erwin and his higher Tier senses were unable to find any degradation in the items before the rift absorbed them on Tier up.

They were still able to produce four other rifts that created growth items at a success rate of over fifteen percent despite an approach that was more artistic than Erwin, ever the scientist, preferred. They called it a success and packed their bags, receiving more thanks from the guild as they removed the rest of their testing rifts.

As they drove off in Erwin’s flying car, Luna appeared next to Matt, curled up in a seat.

The instant she appeared, she asked, “So, what did you learn?”

Matt knew that she had been watching but answered anyway. It would help cement the knowledge in his own brain.

“Creating a rift can be controlled, but it’s more akin to an art than a science right now. We know that there are variables, but we haven’t identified enough to make any true headway. That only leads us to frustration and dead ends.” Matt checked his AI while ignoring Luna’s dangerous squint. “We’re at phase one of scientific discovery of riftology.”

Seeing Luna smirk at the name and Matt grinned back. “No one else seems to have named the field before, so I made one up.”

Luna burst his bubble. “While Erwin might not have remembered to tell you, and the EmpireNet might not have the knowledge, the field is called aperology. Aper as in aperture, an opening, hole, or gap.”

Matt frowned at that. It was far too pretentious, but he didn’t argue. His idea wasn’t any better if he was being honest.

“In phase one of the process of scientific change and study of a field, it is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories. We have no existing framework that explains even a fraction of the phenomenon we see in our testing. We are touching upon the second phase, but we are only at the beginning, where normal science has begun. Where puzzles are being solved within the context of the dominant paradigm, which is spotty at best. We aren’t even close to the point of refining our framework and creating more precise methodologies, which is the basis of phase three.”

Luna, seeing Matt had stopped, snarked, “That would have been much more impressive if you weren’t reading off your AI.”

Matt returned her attitude with his own. “I’m not going to memorize obscure facts about the philosophy of scientific discovery.” Channeling Aster and adding a smirk, he said, “AI good.”

Seeing the woman get a dangerous look in her eyes, Matt swiftly continued, “What we learned was, we can get the results we want with massive costs. If we’re willing to throw millions of mana at the project, and an equal number of material resources, we can eventually get a rift close enough to our desires. Honestly, I think with a better and more robust mana-type catalog, we could solve a lot of these issues. My gut tells me that it’s not the actual answer, but I think it’s a large portion of the answer. I’m pretty confident that I can create rifts as payment, if that was your tactic to get me the items I need.”

Luna sighed. “Are you not willing to leave The Path? Even with the math shown to you?”

Matt shook his head. He and Liz had decided on that already. “After the tournament, we’ll reconsider.”

Pausing, he added, “I do recognize the issue of currency that I will encounter.”

Luna settled back and nodded for him to continue.

“Personal mana is sold at a loss after Tier 25. Though, I couldn’t find a hard reason for that. I only have speculation.” He looked at her for an actual answer.

His trainer raised an eyebrow, not about to let him get an answer that easily. So, he said, “I assume it has to do with mana stone sizes, but at my Tier that’s not really an issue. Personal mana stones aren’t our limiting factor yet, with 200 mana per stone. I don’t even have 100 mana yet.”

Luna shook her head slightly. “Correct. It really depends on mana concentration and the aspect of your mana. The easier it is to convert into neutral, the more it’s worth for general applications. It also is about the size of mana stones. A rift mana stone is the same size from Tier 1 to Tier 50. To hold a million mana, you need a personal mana stone bigger than my house. You can’t draw mana out of the stone while it’s in a storage ring, so the size is the most valuable part of a rift mana stone during a fight, not how much mana it holds. That’s why most people just use the less efficient rapid converters to drain a rift mana stone in the middle of a fight.”

She sighed. “So, yes, trying to jump Tiers will require converting your mana into someone else’s, who has a closer mana concentration to the Tier you want to buy at. Otherwise, the mana will be worth a lot less unit per unit, so it will take you more time to create enough mana to equal the standard concentration expected at Tier 20. It will only increase as whatever Tier you want to buy at advances, which leads us back to the original problem. You need to get every drop of concentration out of the potions while you can. Each Tier matters.”

Matt nodded at the confirmation of his theory. “And that will only make it harder to hide what I’m doing. That, as I see it, is the real issue. Even with the best we can do, I assume it’s hard to hide that much mana. I just want to help Liz as much as I can. She means more to me than a few years of easier resource gain. I know she won’t let me run into any true issues, but I want to support her dreams until I can’t stay on The Path anymore. It was always a means to an end anyway.”