The Path of Ascension 4: A LitRPG Adventure

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Two months into the new training regime, the three of them tackled the Tier 8 wave rift. With their upgraded weapons and armor, they were able to reach the twentieth wave, which they learned was the final one. The boss had been the only monster to come back to life, and it took the combined efforts of all three of them over half an hour to finally take it down. They estimated that the monster was at the peak of Tier 9 in power. They only won the fight because they outnumbered it, and the monster wasn’t all that good with its blade.

None of the zombies returned to life and the mist didn’t rise again. When they finished checking their surroundings and entered the house, they discovered that a trap door had opened in front of the stairs.

Matt carefully led the way down the stairs into the darkness, where they found what appeared to be a room of ritual sacrifices.

There were no enemies, but they did find a skill shard nestled in a book that seemed to be made from poorly stitched together human flesh.

Liz used a tendril of blood to grab the skill from a distance, but nothing happened, and they returned to the second floor. There, they received a second skill shard and exited the rift.

Luna and Kurt were both standing there as they exited.

Kurt clapped for them as Luna pulled the two skills to herself.

Kurt wrote, “Well done. I didn’t expect you to beat that big guy this time. Good teamwork.”

Luna tossed both skills back to Matt and Liz, saying, “Well, that rift is now on the keep list. Two Tier 14 skills. Hmmm. We’ll need to notify the local noble that they need extra security for an undead rift.” She tapped her chin while looking at the distortion. “The boss was Tier 9 in strength at the end, but that’s still incredibly rare. It probably has something to do with the rift being full as well.”

Matt had to agree. At Tier 8, rifts normally dropped only Tier 8 skills. From Tier 9 to Tier 13, rifts dropped Tier 8 skills at the same twenty-five percent chance, but that wasn’t the whole story. Just as rifts below Tier 8 could drop skills, Tier 9 through Tier 13 rifts had an increasing chance to drop Tier 14 skills. At Tier 13, there was an even chance between Tier 8 and Tier 14 skills. It was incredibly rare for a Tier 8 rift to drop not one, but two Tier 14 skills.

Luna wanting to save it made complete sense.

“The one from the sacrifice room is [Lesser Sacrifice]. If you use it and kill an enemy, the essence is consumed by the skill for a mana boost, along with a pretty hefty, but temporary, boost to all of your cultivation stats. Both magical and physical. The conversion rate is pretty bad, but…”

All three of them looked impressed and were excited to see what Liz’s Talent would turn the skill into. There were a ton of possibilities, and most of them were good.

Liz took the skill and immediately slipped it into the skill locking band, then clamped it to her wrist. It was too perfect for them to consider giving the skill to anyone else.

Luna held up the other skill shard. “This is the armor skill that the boss used. [Shadow Armor]. It’s a fairly rare Tier 14 skill.”

Seeing Matt’s hopeful gaze, she shook her head. “Sorry, Matt. It’s worse than your skill. It’s a reserve skill, with the advantage that it can heal itself, yes. The problem is, it’s weak to melee attack while excelling at magical defense. It’s also useless against void, which it has no ability to resist.”

Matt sighed. That was a straight-up downgrade to [Cracked Phantom Armor]. It wasn’t like his armor needed to be recast every time its damage threshold was breached like normal armor skills. It just reformed once the object no longer blocked its plane as long as he kept the skill active.

Still, it could be useful for Liz or Aster. Liz already had an armor skill, but her Talent meant that this could transform into something unique.

Aster, on the other hand, could use it as it was, which was still an improvement to her nonexistent armor skills.

They talked it over and decided to give the skill to Aster. His bond wasn’t super happy with the drab color but accepted it without much more than a grumble or two. She was quite proud that her armor, while quadrupedal, was a nearly identical copy of Matt’s armor when he used the more ornate second layer of [Cracked Phantom Armor].

Liz’s Talent was beyond powerful. The skill [Lesser Blood Sacrifice] did everything they hoped for and more. It didn’t take essence to power itself, but blood. And while the conversion rate was worse for both mana and the power boost, Liz didn’t lack for blood, and the buff stacked. It sadly had a soft cap in the available boost because summoned blood couldn’t be used to empower the skill, and each buff had a separate cooldown. Still, it was still an incredible power spike for Liz, and partially solved Luna’s critique about Liz being too dependent on Matt’s concept. It would let her use the enemies’ blood she created in a fight to kill faster and sacrifice more blood, snowballing her damage to an insane degree.

They intended to delve the Tier 8 rift to get three more copies of the skill, so they could all have an original version of it, as they weren’t able to use the essence anyway. But they decided to attempt the Tier 9 rift first. The mana wasn’t needed, and the boost to their cultivation wasn’t necessary for their plans.

Together, they stepped through the rift entrance and appeared on the familiar, wooded mountainside.

They quickly cleared the rift’s first portion of shadow assassins. Through experimentation, they learned that the method the shadows used to materialize wasn’t perfect. As Aster had noticed before, the smell of the monster was apparent before anything else. Then, there was a slight noise of displaced air as one appeared. At the same time, the visual aspect of the object changed right before the monster appeared.

That was a part of Luna’s anti assassination training. Low Tier invisibility or camouflage techniques all had flaws. This one was the smell of the monster appearing first, then in rapid succession, the rest of the illusion faded.

With their theory confirmed, they were able to slowly but safely clear the rest of the path to the city entrance.

There Matt boarded his flying sword and rose into the air to survey the city.

He was mentally untangling the maze-like city, when a massive building in the center of the city started to glow a fiery red. The building was nearly as wide as it was tall, with the same slanted shingled roofs that had ornamentation on every flat surface.

The fire grew brighter, and Matt started to worry. It wasn’t natural and had only started when he took to the air. Getting [Fire Manipulation] ready, Matt started to descend to his teammates.