The Path of Ascension 5: A LitRPG Adventure

56

Normally, he wouldn’t have to worry about burrowing such a depth. But with this entire place being spatially expanded, he worried there were spatial anchors buried in the ground nearby, and he didn’t want to risk hitting one.

Seeing that Torch was whittling her monster down and didn’t need his help, he called out, “A bud needs assistance!”

As if the woman had already been standing next to him, a gardener appeared and was looking at the hole in the ground with pursed lips.

She clenched her fist, and the light coming out of the hole vanished before she turned to look at him. “Don’t use that spell outside of a rift, please.”

Before he could respond, she was gone, and he moved to wait for Torch to end her fight.

After seeing just how the attack worried the woman, he didn’t intend to. The spell was a brainchild of Matt and Erwin from when they had created the array staff.

One of the largest weaknesses of a mage was the inability to pierce heavy armor, and they wanted to have a counter to that weakness.

The fire orb was their answer. It collected all the fire mana and heat energy it could in the surroundings, while guzzling mana from Quill at a fantastic rate, to create an incredibly hot but stable orb of fire.

Not much could stop that level of heat concentrated into such a small area, and it was able to deliver massive damage.

It needed to be precisely aimed, as its attack radius was so small, but that wasn’t a problem for Quill.

As Torch had finally cut a hole in her bear’s side, her spear was able to puncture the monster’s heart.

She turned, and after seeing his monster with a clean-cut hole in its head, said, “Cheater.”

“Always!” he said with a small bow, flourishing an imaginary cape and making his mask wink.

The two of them sat down to pretend to absorb mana stones and refill themselves before they kept moving through the forest, fighting pairs of bears as they encountered them.

Eventually, they came to a part of the forest where it seemed like someone with a map of the landscape had changed the topography with a hard line of delineation instead of a natural gradual change.

As this was their fourth area, they weren’t surprised when they entered rockier terrain. If their estimates were right, the beacon which signified a Tier 13 rift was only two or three areas away.

Once again, they tried to fly, only to be thwarted by anti-flying formations when they crossed the boundary into the new area.

So far, only the second area didn’t have the formation, so they weren’t too surprised by the restriction.

They were only feet into the area when a stone-covered snake struck out at Torch, who was in the lead. She blocked the attack with her spear shaft but was pushed back a few feet over the rocky ground.

As the monster was only Tier 12, Quill readied a talisman while looking around for others.

So far, in all the areas they had been in, the lower the Tier of the monster, the more of them there were.

A slight shifting of rocks gave the next snake away, and before it lunged, he activated the [Ice Spear] talisman that he had readied.

The spell met the snake’s lunging head and exploded in a shower of ice, while carving a ravine into the monster’s hide that drew only the smallest lines of blood.

The attack was enough to distract the monster, and it coiled back up as it shook its head in pain.

With a moment to actually think, Quill brought out two of his water talismans and sent a [Water Jet] at the monster.

With the elemental advantage, the attack cut the snake in half at the midpoint of its body. Even bisected, the monster tried to attack while bleeding out. But with half of its body gone, the lunge was uncoordinated, and his second [Water Jet] vertically sliced the lunging half in two.

The two new snake fillets fell to the ground in a heap.

Torch had finally given up burning through the hide of the monster and shoved her spear through her snake’s mouth. Meanwhile Quill used the limited range of his flying devices to scout their surroundings.

A third and fourth snake were quickly dispatched by a few talismans, and they moved deeper into the crags of the new area.

The rock snakes were soon accompanied by Tier 13 water snakes, who could only be killed by siphoning off all the water that comprised their second layer of scales before being able to damage the flesh underneath.

Torch was finishing off two of the stone snakes when Quill heard barking and howling.

The sound was obviously not a snake, so they decided to rush to the top of a small hill, where they could get a better view.

There, they found a familiar friend.

Fen, from the golem war, with his two wolf bonds, Bow and Arrow.

Seeing an old friend, Matt asked Liz through their AI, “I want to go say hi. How do we not blow our cover?”

Her message back was nearly instant, “Bow and Arrow shouldn’t be able to smell us with the two layers of masks, which is the real worry. Let’s just go over and offer a hand. They aren’t struggling, but they’re moving pretty slow with all the monsters.”

Matt checked the direction Fen seemed to be going and added, “Seems like he’s going for the center of the area.”

The unsaid addition was that they had found Tier 14 monsters in most of the centers of the areas they had passed so far. That was a level of challenge they weren’t willing to fight for no reason.

Still, it gave them an excuse to move over to Fen and offer their assistance.

With that decided, the two of them slipped back into their masked personas and moved over to the group of man and beast.

Keeping their distance, as they didn’t want the man to think they were an ambush, Quill raised his hand in a wave.

“Well, good day, and fancy seeing someone else out here on the Wild Side!”

Fen paused and looked to Bow, then Arrow before returning the wave. “Yes, kinda suspicious that you come up upon us, though. You wouldn’t have bad intentions, would you?”

All three of them seemed to prepare for a fight, but Quill laughed as he took the initiative to slide down the rocky hill.

Walking forward with his hands out, he let both bonds sniff him. “Not at all. More curious than anything. You seemed to want to push into the center of this place, and Torch and I have been wanting to peek behind whatever the Tier 14s are hiding, but we also want to reach that Tier 13 rift.”

Matt pointed along the direction Fen was heading and the pillar of light behind it.

Fen understood what he meant and said, “I can offer 10 points for each of you if you help us take the Tier 14 out and leave the treasure to me.”

Torch, having joined them, just shook her head silently.

Quill made his mask smile and said, “We don’t want your points, but we do want to handle the Tier 14 ourselves. The rewards are your own.”

Bow moved forward and started sniffing Quill and Torch before Arrow followed up and did the same.

Having spent time with the beasts before, neither of them were bothered and gave them a quick scratch behind the ears.

That seemed to win Fen over, and he nodded. “I can take that deal, even though I don’t understand what you’re getting out of it.”

Really, he just wanted to help a friend. But knowing he was acting suspiciously, and needing to allay Fen’s concerns, Quill said, “Fighting a Tier 14 will make for a fantastic showing. Doing so for no reason is just stupid, though. This way, you get the rewards hidden behind the monster, while we get to show our skills and earn the points from killing the beast.”