The Path of Ascension 5: A LitRPG Adventure

8

Mara was the first to speak. “Mana patty is just like normal patty cake. You create a ball of mana…” As she said that, a small orb of liquid flame appeared in her hands and hovered there. She then bounced it between her hands as she said, “then you work on bouncing it around while keeping it in a ball.”

The phoenix repeated that action for a few times before she said, “After you can do that, you start to play patty cake.”

Mara then bounced the ball of mana to Leon, who tapped it back, then created his own ball of mana that looked like a sphere of thunder clouds.

Back and forth they knocked the balls to each other until they doubled the number. Before long, they had increased the mana balls to two dozen, and their hands blurred to knock each back in time.

Luna nodded along, “This is an advanced application of mana that I was waiting for Matt to have enough mana to actually do. This will help you three learn how to now interrupt each other’s spells in combat. It also is a fantastic way to gain a modicum of mana control.”

Seeing his manager look at him, he knew that last bit was meant for him and nodded back to show he understood.

Kurt appeared and waved but was interrupted from writing by Leon appearing next to him.

“Ohh, Kurt, it’s so good to see you. You should serenade me!”

Mara was only a split second behind him and shoved her husband out of the way to clasp her hands and blink coquettishly at the mute man.

“No, serenade me! He’s just a dumb brute who casts spells.”

Leon jumped back to his feet and shoved his wife down before saying, “That’s rich coming from a mage!”

Matt watched the bickering duo while trying not to laugh. They were both mages and were unable to be serious for more than a minute, it seemed.

Luna waved her hands, and the four of them were suddenly in the training room, where she started to instruct them on how to condense their mana into more permanent forms.

“It’s about quantity and control. Throw at least a thousand mana into each ball and see what you can do. If you feel it start to disperse, try to recondense it, or draw the mana back into your core.”

Matt took out a series of mana stones and filled them before pulling all the mana back into his core.

Taking control of his full mana pool, he sent a thousand mana out of his hand and visually tried to create a ball of mana. His light blue mana condensed for a second before starting to bleed off like water vapor in the desert.

Cursing, Matt tried to pull his mana back under his control but struggled. When he finally completed the task, his ball was little more than a dot.

Looking up, he found Liz and Aster had both completed their own balls, and while they had had some mana loss before condensing the balls, they hadn’t lost even half of their mana.

Luna didn’t seem bothered and just nodded. “Now, try to move the mana ball to the other hand.”

Matt tried to bounce the ball, but it kept its position relative to his hand. He paused and reviewed what Mara and Leon had done.

They had treated the balls of mana as if they were separate entities, independent of their bodies, but he knew that wasn’t true. It was still his mana, and he realized that they already had manipulated their mana dozens of feet away from their bodies in countless instances. But now they needed to do it while also controlling their partner’s mana without losing control and letting the mana dissipate.

Concentrating, Matt was able to send his mana toward his other hand, but it dissipated before it moved more than an inch.

Looking up, he saw that both of his teammates had experienced the same thing, and he activated his Concept to refill their mana before trying again.

“Matt, you aren’t holding the mana firm enough.”

“Aster, you aren’t moving the mana so much as transferring where you’re projecting the mana ball. You want to move it as if it were a real ball with weight.”

“Liz, good job. You’re doing well. Reinforce what you’re doing.”

As they practiced, they all made progress, but even as they ended their two-hour training session, none of them were able to transfer the ball in a realistic way. Though, Liz was the closest.

Aster had the best control of her mana ball’s physical shape, but her ability to move it was abysmal.

Matt just struggled with everything, showing just how far his mana control had fallen when he doubled his mana capacity.

Mara and Leon finally came in to spectate, and he asked them how much mana they were using to create their mana balls.

Mara shrugged. “Only half a dozen mana or so.”

Thinking it might be easier to control if there was less mana, Matt tried to create a mana ball, but he found that his mana just blew away before he could even begin to control it. He then tried to take advantage of his mana regeneration rate to fill the mana ball but found that the ball didn’t accept any more mana once formed and outside of his core.

Leon grinned evilly. “Getting the skill needed to create the ball with less mana is a massive pain in the ass, but it’s good practice. Once you get below a hundred mana, you’ll be better than ninety-nine percent of mages, even in the higher Tiers. It’s really hard.”

Mara sat next to him and positively preened at the implication. Her hair feathers even stuck out and quivered a little, waiting for Matt to realize what that meant.

That feat was impressive enough that Matt had no problem feeding their egos. “Then, getting to six mana must be an incredible feat.”

Mara started to wiggle. Leon tried to play it cooler, but Matt didn’t miss the lightning bolts jumping from his eyes as he smiled. “Yes, quite difficult. Practically unheard of, as it were.”

With that inspiration, Matt refocused on his training and worked to get his mana to condense as Luna instructed them.

Eventually, they ended the training session, and Matt cooked a feast to wind down.

As they finished up, he moved to the library and started perusing the books. The room was deceptively large, more so than some training halls he had been in, but it was still cozy.

Eventually, he wandered into the depths to come back with a fantastic retelling of a Tier 45’s delves.

He was glancing through it to see if he could learn anything interesting about the higher Tiers when Leon came in and sat down next to him.

“Ah, that one’s a fun one. Sadly, the veracity of Gilbert’s stories is heavily suspect. Still, he’s a good storyteller.” The older man sounded wistful.

Matt asked, “What about it is wrong?”

Leon snorted and said, “First and foremost, he has the size of the rifts way off. Ultra and Adam are in a Tier 45 rift, but they fully clear it in just a few decades. That’s impossible.”

Matt flipped back a few pages and pointed out, “But they’re Tier 46. Seems fairly reasonable to complete it with that power difference.”

Leon nodded at that. “Sure, and I get what you’re saying, but it’s still impossible. Yes, the hierarchy of Tiers becomes massive where even being in the middle vs. high levels of the same Tier can be an unbeatable difference, but rifts are enormous at those Tiers.”

He looked around for a minute before giving up and waving his hand.

On the table, a planet of mana appeared and rotated. “Call this a standard planet with standard gravity. They’re generally within a few percentage points of each other in size. Rifts will reach this size at Tier 20. By Tier 25, rifts will be gas giant large, which means at least a thousand times larger in volume. By Tier 30, rifts will be as large as most suns.”

Leon paused to let that sink in, and Matt struggled to wrap his head around the sizes that implied.