The Path of Ascension 5: A LitRPG Adventure

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“So, we also know that the tournament will have a few multi-team battles to tackle some of the larger challenges they’ve set up. Are you guys already spoken for?” He had intended to gather Melinda’s team and Conor, Emily, and Annie for those challenges, but considered the offer.

“Why us?”

The twins came back into the conversation at that point and shot them a matching pair of knowing smiles.

From the AI nametag Matt had placed on him, he saw that Harvie was the one to answer.

“We aren’t dumb. We did our research shortly after we started hanging out with Liz. Imagine our surprise when we found out that you two were the stars of that vassal war a while back. No one expected you two to participate in this tourney. Young’uns as you are, everyone assumed you’d be in the next one. While we would have been happy to drink and make friends with anyone, we’re even more happy to make a connection with a strong team.”

Sighing internally that they had been caught already, Matt shrugged, “Well, we’re also weaker than average, being young’uns and all. We really didn’t want to sacrifice our age lead, which kinda bites us in the ass. But it begs the question, do you want to risk it?”

James tagged in for his brother. “Oh, while we expect you to get beat out in raw power in the top one hundred, we also expect you two to hit far harder than your advancement would suggest. And we aren’t expecting to win everything ourselves. We just want to do well enough to earn some nice rewards. We’re good, but not quite ‘win the whole thing’ good either. Even a top thousandth placing would be fantastic.”

Matt met Liz’s eyes, and she answered for them, “We’re happy to join up, though we would want to bring our team from that vassal war with us. And a second team of friends. Both are strong, though. And, of course, you can vet them yourselves.”

That seemed to settle that, but Felix jumped in, “Color me interested, too. I’m a solo delver and had written the entire venture off before this.”

He then looked at Matt and had the decency to color slightly, “And, yeah, I noticed the same thing. I recognized you from the reports on your friends in the vassal war. Sorry.”

Matt just shrugged, letting that go, so Kevin asked, “What’s your specialty?”

Felix nibbled his lip for a second before saying, “While I’d prefer not to say too much before we have an agreement, I’m a dagger user, but not the standard assassin type. Suffice it to say that I can delve any Tier 12 rift on my own, if I’m slow and careful about it. If I counter the rift well, I can even fight a single Tier 13 monster, but that gets dangerous enough that I’ve only done it twice.”

That was impressive.

Enough so that Matt wondered if Felix had also qualified for a management team early.

Luna had made it clear that while she wouldn’t tell him anything about other contestants, there were always a few in every tournament. And even the claim that Felix could delve two Tiers up solo was impressive enough, especially as a dagger user. Matt had to consider the possibility.

That, or he had a gimmick that worked on monsters, but not the more intelligent people he would be encountering. If they could figure out how said gimmick worked, he might be screwed.

The twins pleaded and, after a second, Kevin and Kacy acquiesced, “We want to test everyone beforehand anyway, so it’s not a big deal. That would be five teams, but we can always find a few other solo delvers to fill out any gaps we have.”

With that settled, they dispensed with the important talk and started commenting on the challenges that were going on between various Pathers.

Challenges were rampant, with people trying to show their power off.

All of them felt it was dumb to show off any kind of hidden trump cards this early, but they were glad enough for the entertainment.

Backseat commentary was always a fun pastime, after all.

And making new friends was even better.

5

When Matt and Liz returned to their rooms that evening, Luna and Kurt briefed them on what their other personas had been up to.

Which amounted to…not much.

Their managers had enjoyed a very casual walk around the city. The only interesting thing that had happened was when they were invited to a ‘mask wearers only’ gathering in two days.

From what they put together, it was billed as an exclusive and elite event, put on during every Tier 10 tournament. The next gathering was actually the sixth one held so far this year, as the organizers sought to round up all the Pathers that had arrived in the last month. Or at least, all the masked contestants.