The Path of Ascension 4: A LitRPG Adventure

17

His girlfriend was a whirlwind of blood and death in her armored golem form. She looked glorious as her [Blood Crystal Armor] reacted to the Blood Iron and created golden armor. Every punch or stomp killed, and he watched as she single-handedly eliminated two of the Tier 9 beetles before running out of mana.

Luna, for all her criticism, was equally willing to praise them when they did well, and only had a few pointers where they could have done better.

Hearing how well they had done was a shot of pride for all of them. They had fought for hours against monsters as strong as them, and nearly as long against ones that were stronger. Liz had even killed two monsters three Tiers above her. That was impressive, and Matt could see that Liz could barely stand still through Luna’s debriefing with her excitement.

She ended her speech with a pointed look at Matt, saying, “When you all start delving Tier 8 rifts, you’ll be able to round out your skills more to fix that.”

That perked everyone else. Matt, Liz, and Aster had been sitting at Tier 6 for nearly two years at this point. Liz was nearing twenty-one, while Matt had just turned twenty a few months ago. They had until they turned twenty-seven before they needed to advance to Tier 7.

Melinda and her team were older, but only slightly, and were in no rush either. They were nearly at peak Tier 6 and could Tier up in a matter of weeks. But Melinda had told them of the deal her team made with Baxter. So long as they didn’t Tier up, they could remain with Matt, and use his mana to delve fresh and unlimited rifts.

Luna nodded. “Yes. The next person that we’re meeting will help you experiment with rift-making, and you with your healing Melinda. I think you will find that Erwin is a good wall to bounce ideas off of.”

Melinda rocked forward. “Where and when do we meet him?”

Matt had the same question, and brought up a planet chart of the sector of the Empire that they were in.

Luna sent everyone a data packet. “Two months travel into the border region. Erwin is on a Tier 11 planet which was just subjugated. It will be the perfect place to do some testing. One of the smaller continents was guaranteed for our use, so we’ll be free of prying eyes should we stumble into something…of interest.”

Matt rubbed his hands together. He was ready for this training to start.

He had so many ideas to test.

But first, he needed to spend the next week charging Wrangle’s mana crystal stores, to pay the man back for all his help in the last nine months.

4

The next week was spent sleeping and charging Wrangle’s personal mana stone reserves.

The stones were different from what Matt was used to seeing. The shape was the same, but these stones had a greater weight. Not physically. Or at least, not when they were empty. It was more like a spiritual weight, combined with a sense that the massive crystal was more real than the surrounding materials.

That didn’t stop Matt from dumping mana into the ten-foot-tall mana stone. It devoured his mana just fine.

Creating just one unit of the Tier 24’s personal mana consumed nearly a hundred of his own. That revelation was slightly disheartening and showcased the gap between Tiers all too clearly.

Still, he just had to sit there, feeding a constant stream of mana into the boulder of a mana stone. Boredom would have overtaken him if Luna didn’t repeatedly send his friends in to get their mana topped off by his Concept and have him do mana manipulation exercises. That at least gave him people to talk with until he ran out of Willpower, at which point, they’d be recalled to continue lighter training with their Concepts.

Matt expected to get a break when they boarded their train after jumping planets, but Luna broke that feeble hope as she gathered everyone together to continue working on their mana manipulation skills.

As Luna pushed them to work through increasingly difficult exercises, Matt was reminded how much utility his Concept and Talent offered him, and by extension, the people around him. Without the need to rest and regenerate mana between exercises, they squeezed weeks of intense practice into mere days.

Luna had finally sent them off to their rooms, with orders for Matt to fill more of the mana stones she had provided for him. Like the ones he had filled for Wrangle, these were a higher Tier version than the ones he was used to. Luna’s personal stone, though, gobbled up thousands of his mana to produce even one unit of hers, and he was unable to even put a dent into the void of the stone during his breaks.

Having done the math, Matt stopped to ask Vinnie, who was eating next to him, what their normal training routines looked like before this.

That earned him glares from everyone in Melinda’s team. Tara even pelted him dead center on his forehead with the crust of her roll.

Vinnie just squinted at him before saying, “Matt… f**k you… Just f**k you, dude.”

The grin he shot Matt before he dug back into his soup took any sting out of the words.

Melinda added, “I have to agree with him, Matt. This is your fault. We would only be able to do a few hours of this training every few days unless we wanted to burn through mana stones. We’re only able to push this hard because of you.” She added with a false whine, “I just want a break.”