The Path of Ascension 5: A LitRPG Adventure

26

He knew that he eventually would. People never did anything without a reason, even a dumb one. Zack would find it. Eventually.

So far, the team, which Allie had dubbed the Math Club, had only shown off pretty standard skills. They had yet to reveal any of their Concepts. However, he pegged them as having hidden depths and being unlikely to ever be knocked out of the top ten from a personal loss. No, so far, they had only slipped from their chosen position due to a higher-ranked team being beaten, knocking everyone else down a rank with them.

Their team would have been more inconspicuous had they not repeatedly moved back into exactly tenth place. Anytime someone new entered the running above them, and shifted them into eleventh, they would immediately challenge the new tenth place team and reclaim their old spot. The Math Club always won handily, and they never advertised any new abilities, which ultimately highlighted both their strong capabilities and their poor sense for subterfuge.

As he continued to the ninth-placed team, Allie rippled into being via a spatial distortion, loudly munching on what smelled like salted roasted peanuts.

Taking a second sniff, he noted a faint aroma of honey as well and cringed at his friend’s crude palette.

“Zack Attack! Anything new or interesting?” Allie leaned over his shoulder.

Zack maneuvered his chair seven and a half inches to the left, giving his colleague enough room to see the screen without forfeiting his own designated space.

He refused to venture into the disaster zone that was Allie’s section of the hideout.

“Yes, hello to you, Allie. Why yes, I was happy to work late for you while you goofed off and got roasted peanuts.” He tried to keep the snark out of his voice. He didn’t try very hard, though.

Still, Allie grinned as she popped another peanut into her mouth, completely unbothered by his lack of restraint.

Zack zeroed in on the crumbs that sprinkled to the floor, and with a strand of air mana and effort, swept the offending debris into a pile. He then incinerated them with a puff of fire mana. The smell of smoke even helped to cover up that hint of sweetness desecrating her peanuts.

Allie still peered at the screen and quizzed, “Anybody new?”

Knowing from long experience that it was better to simply humor her, he started his report with the relevant details.

“The authorities still haven’t caught on to our hacking of the spatial orbs, so we’re still getting full recordings of the actual battles. Here are the latest challenges.”

In a compressed video, streamed at a rate that he knew his partner could comprehend, the latest fights raced by.

Allie just chewed and bobbed her head as everything flashed past.

Finally, she broke the silence. “Ooh! I like Quill. His eyes are gorgeous! And he’s got good quips.”

Zack fought the urge to roll his eyes. He failed. Of course, that was the first thing his partner would address.

Personally, Zack found the boy’s partner Torch far more intriguing. But that could wait.

Before he could mention those oddities, Allie asked, “Oh! Didya find anything in the teleports yet? That would make this job a cakewalk.”

Shaking his head in the negative, he said, “I tried, but Tur’stal set the network up herself, and I simply cannot match her prowess. If I so much as look at it wrong, we’ll alert her to our presence. Then, we’re done for.”

Even at Tier 23, and with their Talents, they had a zero percent chance of escaping if the Tier 47 caught wind of their espionage. The Tier 35 responsible for crafting the dueling arena orbs had overlooked a small vulnerability in the spatial enchantment that they had been able to exploit. However, the orbs were mainly intended to hinder espionage between competitors before the tournament.

Comparatively, the teleportation beacons were in place to keep all the masked Pather identities secret, to help protect them from assassination and harassment. Thus, the royalty took measures to ensure it was vastly more secure than the orbs. But not even the highest Tiers were infallible, and the duo had hoped to find a loose thread to pull somewhere.

Allie chewed her lip as she nodded.

As they were talking about security, Zack inquired, “On that note, have you set up the next set of burn rooms? We need to abandon this one in the next few days.”

Allie brushed a lock of silver hair away from her eyes. “Three are all ready to go, except for the snacks, and I got some space set aside for a few hidey holes on the planet itself.”

Zack nodded. The small tournament planet was far out in the distant reaches of the star system, and under constant surveillance by Tur’stal’s personal guards. At Tier 35, they would normally sense a Tier 23 like Allie, but she had far too much practice infiltrating places where she wasn’t meant to be for them to notice anything amiss. Combined with their focus on the rifts and critical equipment, an extra worker slyly fashioning their tiny little hideaways would simply escape their notice, especially when a wetworker like Allie was the one making them.

If she even suspected someone noticed her, she would have already enacted a complete burning of their operation, after all.

For all her faults, Allie could be…adequately competent when the situation demanded it. If she could just be more serious the rest of the time, Zack could relax more.

Even as he mentally complimented his partner, the menace seized his collection of markers. In the process of plucking out the purple one, she jumbled all the other colors from their careful arrangement of descending wavelength.

Allie strutted over to the whiteboard and started listing what they knew about the Pathers, as he turned and carefully laid out his poor markers. Then, one by one, he returned them to their proper positions in the cup.

Even while doing so, he was still listening to Allie.

“So, we have a talisman user mage and a fire specialized melee fighter.” She drew a line under them after writing their new position on the board, bumping everyone else down a slot.

“The Math Club also managed to get back to tenth place after being pushed down to eleventh. Again.”

Allie perked up, “Oh! Did those geeks finally use any new skills?”

Zack just shook his head, to Allie’s disappointment.

She frowned. “Whatever. They’ll have to bring out more power and tip their hand eventually. Back to the new duo. Quill’s a talisman flinger, but with some skill at real spellwork as well. Good sense of battlefield awareness and positioning too. That rounds him out much better than the stereotypical ‘paper cannon’. Do we have any real leads on his prospective Talent?”

She twirled around, and he saw that his marker’s cap was being chewed on. Immediately, he set an AI reminder to go buy another few packets of markers. That whole pack was ruined now.

Still, Zack hesitated with his next conjecture. Eventually, he relented and voiced what he had learned. “Yes. Quill told a crafter he challenged that he has the ability to take others’ mana types and store them. Considering he knows about mana sub-aspects and uses them in his talismans at this Tier, I’m inclined to believe it’s at least partially true, but we’ll discuss why I remain skeptical in a minute.”

Allie shot him a familiar look, and he slumped, knowing where this was going. To his surprise, she didn’t ask what he expected. “And he’s actually able to use different sub-aspects? Effectively?”