The Path of Ascension 5: A LitRPG Adventure

59

Even Mara, usually a fount of information, refused to say anything. Liz, keeping quiet about it as well, told Matt to keep his questions to himself, so he gave up on the topic. It irked him, but he trusted that those around him had their own reasons.

Fen didn’t explain more, but he offered, “I know what our deal was, but this is massive to us. I’m willing to pay you both twenty points. I’d offer more, but that’s more than half of what I have.”

Torch said a short, “Deal’s a deal.”

Quill patted the man on his shoulder and turned to leave. “We’ll wait outside for you. I assume you want to make it to the Tier 13 rift to leave as well?”

Fen gave the masked duo a smile and agreed. “Give us half an hour to prepare to move this. I don’t want to f**k anything up, and I can’t fit it in my bag.”

A little more than twenty minutes later, Garnet and Ruby had the giant skull hovering next to them on a moving wave of earth.

The maneuver seemed to take all their concentration to maintain, leaving everyone else to protect them as they moved forward.

They ended up crossing two full areas before they found the Tier 13 rift and the corresponding teleport formation.

After seeing Fen and his bonds through the formation and promising to meet up again, they turned to the rift.

They couldn’t leave without going in, after all.

Tur’stal watched a replay of the giant [Fireball] array once again with all the other royals.

As the attack descended and Liz took control of it, Mara once again gloated, “She takes after her mother, after all!”

The bird poked her husband and started to wiggle an uncoordinated dance of mockery.

Tur’stal turned to Emmanuel, just like everyone else not yet aware of the children’s ability.

Harper was the first to speak in their androgynous voice. “Array or not, that level of power is far beyond most Tier 10s. Elaborate.”

Rusty leaned forward and knocked on the table; it sounded like hammers striking an anvil.

“I agree with the telekinetic. That isn’t normal.” Even his voice was like thunder.

The Emperor was unruffled at the united display of royals.

He took a long drink before placing his empty glass down and saying, “I told you, they’re strong for a reason.” His grin turned feral as he said, “And that’s with their arsenal being restricted.”

Frederic smiled broadly. “Then I must congratulate you, and all of us.” He raised his glass in a toast.

Tur’stal joined him in the gesture, as did everyone else. This was a tradition as old as The Path of Ascension itself.

“To another pair of children who will shoulder the burden of war for everyone else.”

The royals all responded in unison, “To those who do what we can no longer.”

With that somber statement, they downed their drinks before Tur’stal turned to Mara and asked, “What else can they do?”

The phoenix was always the easiest to get to spill information, and this time was no different.

“Oh, they’re actually swapping their normal roles. Matt is usually the melee fighter and Liz the mage.”

Tur’stal sucked in a deep breath. After that showing, she had assumed their real identities were only faking their roles. But now, she needed to adjust her estimation of their power levels.

Liz, as she well knew, was only able to use fire skills if she had them in her outer spirit where they took a significant penalty to their efficiency. Most never fought with skills in their outer spirit for good reason but anyone not in the know would assume Liz was a true fire user.

Rusty laughed, “I’m going to need to spar with the two of them! Feel them out myself. Good hybrids are hard to find!”

Emmanuel finally cut in, “The briefing for those two will be made available, but the largest secret will have to wait until after I’ve talked to them, and I get their permission.”

He looked down to the side for a moment before saying, “Their little stunt has already shot up to the top of the news stations. Damn showoffs. Couldn’t wait a single day before making a splash.”

Rusty laughed harder than before. “Good for them! The brighter their star the better. It will give everyone else something to strive for and set a fire under the weaker kids’ asses.”

Tur’stal nodded to her noble ally. She knew he put on a front of muscles over brains, but it was just that. An act. He was as smart as anyone else with the acumen to rise to the top of the political pile of snakes that were the noble circles.

As the Emperor handed them out paper information packets, Tur’stal started reading. It only took her seconds before she had memorized the information and destroyed the documents, but she was shocked at the level of power the children had shown.

With Luna as a trainer, she expected great things to come from those two in this tournament. The woman’s track record was slim but extraordinary.

Still, it was the things not said in the packets of information that she really wanted to know. Entire years were redacted, even from them, which spoke of massive secrets. Even the most rudimentary thoughts on their Talents spoke volumes because the boy’s Talent clearly wasn’t with talismans. It only made his display with the disposable items all the more impressive.

Tur’stal shivered in anticipation of meeting the children properly.

Then, everything would be made clear.

Watching the giant [Fireball] fall once again on the screen, she smiled and allocated another portion of her attention to the kids who were about to enter the rift.

She didn’t miss the five other spiritual senses of her fellow royals also on them.

As cultivators higher than Tier 45, they had more than enough power to view what happened inside a single Tier 13 rift instance. They all had a front row seat to the newest Ascenders’ next challenge.

14

Quill walked up to the Tier 25 gardener after Fen left with his prize and asked, “So what’s the gimmick this time around?”

The woman smirked right back at him. “Completing it is the gimmick, as you say. It’s a rift three Tiers higher than you. The monsters in there are going to turn you into a chew toy.”

Quill laughed and made his mask wink. “While playing the chew toy can be good fun, we’re in the mood for a more of a stabby-stabby and burny-burny time. Though I wouldn’t say no to experimenting with some stabby-burny. Or mayhaps even a bit of burny-stabby. You need to change things up sometimes, you know?”

The Tier 25 snorted at his quip and gestured to the side at the usual board displaying the rift’s current delve records. “I expect you’ll both come out well nibbled, but there actually is a specific challenge assigned to this rift, if you’re up to it. We know the general number of monsters spawned in each possible version of this rift’s instances. Extra points are awarded based on the percentage of them killed. Completing the rift nets you fifteen points, plus another point for every ten percent of monsters cleared. Be happy this isn’t a swarm rift. The monsters here are a bit tougher than average, but there’s fewer of them to hunt down overall.”

She forestalled Quill’s next question with a raised hand. “For scoring purposes, we consider a ninety-eight percent as a full clear, so no reason to start prying up floor tiles looking for stragglers. If you explore properly and murder anything that moves, you’ll easily kill enough to count as a full clear. For the end of month rankings, ties among the full clears will be broken by completion speed divide.”

Having heard everything they needed, Torch moved up to stand next to him, and together, they entered the rend in reality.

For the second time that day, they found themselves in a nighttime rift with an oversized moon hanging in the sky. This time, the moon was less exaggerated, and was situated at a more normal distance in the false sky. The blue hue of the moonlight suggested that the planet orbited a blue supergiant star, a rare occurrence among populated solar systems in real life but common enough in a rift.

It still provided more than enough light to illuminate the sparse forest around them.

The rift kicked them out into a small clearing that seemed to have been cut recently, if the fresh stumps still weeping sap were any indication.

After probing the direction of the exit to get her bearings, Torch rose in the air high enough to see over the tree line and get a view of the surroundings.

From the ground, Quill watched on through their shared view from his AI.

The forest they were in extended behind them for quite some distance, with the trees growing denser and taller as they moved away from the rift’s exit.

In the direction of the rift exit, there was what looked like a primitive city made of stone and wood construction only a few miles away. That would have been unusual in a rift if it wasn’t for its rundown condition, and the pattern of destruction that seemed to have been unleashed upon the town.