The Path of Ascension 4: A LitRPG Adventure

15

Sam made herself a Concept centered around her Phrase, ‘the dose makes the poison.’ It let her extend her poison control to nearly anything, at varying degrees of willpower expended, as long as she could control a toxic level of the material.

Tara’s Concept was focused on being a storm of blades that always hit their targets. With her mastery over all ranged weapons, it made her an even deadlier opponent to deal with. Her prowess was expanded by the slightly honed properties that her attacks possessed when empowered with her Concept.

Kyle, in the same vein, created himself a greatsword Concept. It let him control his massive blade with grace that was present even when he wasn’t actively flexing his Concept. Something about the breakthrough had given him the insight necessary to handle a normally unwieldy weapon expertly. The proficiency was akin to those individuals whose Concepts centered around that particular weapon. This would be an interesting thing to become an Aspect, but the boy had to develop his Intent before that.

Vinnie was the only one who went with an internal Concept, defined as him being one with the earth. While it currently did little, Luna said that it would pair well with [Earth Body] and its advanced versions once they started appearing at Tier 20.

Their training also quickly started to incorporate mana control exercises. It was one thing to send the tiny orb through a glass obstacle course while sitting down and watching it move. But doing so while dodging projectiles in the dark was an entirely different matter altogether. It was more a matter of feeling where the ball couldn’t go and creating a mental map of walls than of actually figuring out the maze.

Matt was the worst at it among the mages, but leagues better than the other melee fighters, who had never needed to do more than send mana into a skill. Vinnie, Liz, Aster, and Melinda all had the easiest time practicing their manipulation skills, and in the healer’s case, her directed healing spells.

They managed to adapt to the various simultaneous training methods involving mana control much faster than Matt and the other melee fighters. Luna took the time to instruct each of them when they ran into a wall that they couldn’t overcome themselves. It was another facet of the woman that Matt was impressed with.

He understood that she was older than the dirt on some planets, but the depth and breadth of the woman’s skills repeatedly shocked him.

When it came to magical training, he didn’t know enough to judge her, except that she helped everyone equally, and always seemed to be able to identify their problem in a single glance. Her knowledge of melee fighting was what shocked him the most, after she casually gave a pointer to him, Kyle, and Mathew in a single breath.

When he asked what weapon she used, she simply shrugged and said she wasn’t much of a fighter, but preferred range to melee.

He still struggled with the mana control she demanded of him, but when she explained it to him, he redoubled his efforts.

“You aren’t like other mages. Your mana doesn’t increase at a slow and steady rate. When you gain a million mana in an hour, you will struggle to control it. The better your skills are now, the better you can recover them later. Though, I believe that until you finish The Path, or leave it and have a chance to pause in your advancement, you will struggle with your mana control.”

She then gave him a pointed look, and Matt was able to extrapolate the rest of the information from those few clues.

The problem would only get worse, as his doubling would be earning him billions of mana a Tier. He might be unable to adequately control his mana for years after a Tier up, and that would be a problem that was only exacerbated as he advanced.

Now was the time to create a strong foundation, when he didn’t have too much mana to throw around.

Even with months of training, he was unable to match the mages and their own improvements, but he was at least as good as they had been before they started the training themselves.

It did have a tangible benefit to his usage of his element manipulation skills, and the precise control it took to use them.

An interesting tidbit that Matt learned with everyone else was when Melinda complained that her mana kept trying to aspect into a death mana.

Luna just shrugged and asked, “Why are you trying to remove something so useful?”

“It will interfere with my healing! I’m a healer at the forefront. I can’t have my own mana trying to damage my patients.”

Luna actually swatted the girl over the head. “Don’t be a dumbass. Split your mana pool, then. Baxter said you’ve seen it before in patients. If you split it, you can direct all that into a smaller pool.”

Melinda shrugged. “I’d rather just not have it at all.”

When the shorter woman just glared at her, she wilted and added, “I don’t know how to do it.”

That was when Matt, who was only half-listening, perked up. That would be perfect for him. He’d have more mana than anyone and being able to sling around perfectly attuned mana for every type of spell seemed useful.

Luna explained why she hadn’t mentioned it to him or his team before. “You can’t do it if your mana is already aspected, and the way to do it is to mentally section off an area of your mana core. Once you do that, you’ll find a portion of your mana pool is split off. It’s not easy, but it isn’t particularly dangerous. You can also then merge the mana to form higher-level mana, if you have more than one split pool.”

Seeing everyone’s excitement, she raised a finger. “Now that is particularly dangerous. If you f**k that up, you’ll be lucky if you only taint your entire mana pool. It’ll turn into a mess that will take decades to clear out. But if done successfully, this is the first step to making permanent, high-level mana, like storm mana. When your control is great enough, you purposefully merge your mana pools back into one. But again, if you f**k that up, you’ll be fortunate to avoid cracking your spirit.”

Melinda now looked more hesitant as she asked, “But just making a partition isn’t hard or dangerous?”

Luna glared at Liz. “Not unless you’re like her dumbass father, who decided that he didn’t want to wait to let things settle before making a higher-level combination. The stupid truly are lucky, as the i***t created it in his first attempt.”

The dark-haired woman shook herself and added, “In theory, it can be dangerous, but the worst thing that can happen with a single partition is that you lose control and taint the rest of your mana pool. If you catch that quickly, it’s just a few months of busy work separating them out again. If you want to make a second one, that’s when you need to start worrying.”