The Path of Ascension 4: A LitRPG Adventure

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Kurt used that lack to push him during the training as well but didn’t force Matt into the same variety of weapons he did with Liz, just increasing Matt’s ability with blunt weapons.

Where Liz did excel was swapping weapon forms in a fluid manner. With her true weapon and its shape-shifting function, Liz was able to rapidly change between styles, and was able to create an unpredictable fighting style. One second her enemies were blocking a spear thrust, and the next, they were dodging a heavy chop from a halberd. If anyone then tried to get in close, she switched to the great axe or hammer forms. The only reason Luna and Kurt allowed her to use it instead of a normal halberd was that Liz usually used a medium length spear, not a weapon as long as the halberd usually was. A weapon that long had problems in a lot of rifts and no one wanted to create problems for themselves.

Liz only really struggled when she was forced to use a single weapon form for longer than a blow or two. She fell back on her spear too easily, which led to her defeat on more than one occasion. Still, she was improving massively between each fight.

In addition to their training with Kurt, Luna also had them practicing their Concepts every day. She led them through both their general applications, and the abilities granted by their specific Concepts.

They spent a minimum of two hours a night, right before they went to bed, exhausting their willpower on Luna’s Concept training.

Matt was quite proficient in stepping on hardened air and could even climb a few Concept created stairs to get an approximation of flight. But he was still struggling to raise himself in the air without the platform. He also had a difficult time using his Concept to zipper the air around himself, to help him move just a bit faster than he normally could. Luna had explained that he needed to start training now because, once he reached T-15, he’d be breaking the sound-barrier. If he was still interacting normally with the air, then, he’d be too easy to track, and it would slow him down. Sometimes, he was able to get it, but other times, he ended up creating walls in his own way. More often than not, it led to a sudden and painful stop.

He also was completely unable to lock down space to prevent teleportation. He wasn’t sure why, but Luna was growing more and more frustrated while he struggled with it. She never said anything, but he had spent enough time with her to recognize the look of impatience in her eye growing with each failure.

Liz, with her internal Concept, struggled with all the physical applications except moving air. Kurt said that was mostly normal for internal Concepts and had her doing exercises to practice influencing things outside of her body without using blood to interact with everything but there was little progress on that front.

Aster actually had the least issues among the trio. Locking a space down was a breeze for her, with her absolute zero Concept. It was second nature to the fox for things to ‘freeze in place.’ Matt wasn’t sure he understood the logical leap that she was making but realized that was probably why he was struggling with the training himself.

Aster also succeeded in using her Concept to warp the light around herself to a degree. As of now, she could only blur colors, but it was far more than Matt or Liz could do. It wasn’t practical for stealth against anyone with their own Concept, as Aster’s control of her own power was tenuous at best. When she used the ability, it was like she was screaming her presence to anyone with their own Concept.

Luna did say that was normal, but technically fixable. Normally, if she or Kurt wanted to remain invisible, they used one of the invisibility skills, or their own Intents or Aspects. All had their flaws, but against people weaker than themselves, they were easily dealt with.

Aster struggled with flying and air zippering as much as Liz did. Which was to say, she couldn’t even manage to touch on the requisite skills.

There were also more traditional magic lessons, which were as fascinating as they were interesting. Luna claimed to not be an expert on skill modifications, but she had also been incredibly knowledgeable about nearly every skill that he’d asked her about, and her lessons had been even more informative than even Madam Delver in terms of helping him direct his latest project.

[Fireball] was a fairly trivial spell to modify, as it only possessed two proper components, which Matt thought of as the ‘fire’ and the ‘ball.’ The ‘ball’ was the explosion itself, a relatively undirected conflagration of fire mana with just a touch of force to make it actually pack a punch. The ‘fire,’ meanwhile, was the projectile itself, which bore a striking resemblance to the skill structure of a [Mana Bolt]. It was the ‘fire’ half of [Fireball] he was currently working on, trying to lessen the amount of mana it attempted to dump into the explosion, even though it would weaken the overall damage, he just needed to get it to six mana and then…

A cry from the other side of the training area distracted Matt from his meditation.

“You okay there?”

Liz glanced over toward him, and he saw what she’d reacted to- a small sliver of flame hovered over her palm, held in place courtesy of the [Fire Manipulation] Luna had insisted Liz get, as having only blood-aspected attack skills was “a complete disgrace” according to her. Never mind that between having the skill in her outer spirit and having blood-aspected mana, the only thing keeping Liz from being a categorically less capable pyromancer than Aster was her bloodline.

“Yeah!” she nodded enthusiastically, if a little unsteadily, “Yeah. Yes. Everything is great. I’ve just been working on this for a long time.”

Matt watched her for a few more seconds as under Luna’s tutelage the redhead gently blew on the fire and expanded the flickering flame into a burning string weaving around her hand. Then, violet eyes locked onto him, and he hastily jerked his head back and got back to modifying [Fireball] before Luna noticed he was slacking.

He was too slow.