The Path of Ascension 5: A LitRPG Adventure

9

Liz’s father eventually continued, “By Tier 35, rifts are around the size of a solar system. By Tier 40, they’re a few dozen times that size. By Tier 45, they are as large as a standard galaxy. Rifts become massive, Matt. Mara and I are Tier 48, and with a full Tier over the highest Tier rifts in the Empire, it takes us a little over a year of flying to just reach the final bosses of a Tier 47 rift. We can fly really fast, but they’re just that large. And the gap between a Tier 48 and Tier 47 is massively larger than a Tier 46 and Tier 45. There’s no way Ultra and Adam fully cleared the rift that quickly.”

That seemed unrealistic, but he knew better than to doubt the man. “How do you get anything done, then? It seems like you would go into a rift and take forever to advance. And how many rifts do you even need to clear at that point?”

Leon grinned, and Matt realized that this was the most serious he had seen the man.

“At Tier 47, it took us over a thousand rifts, with just me and Mara, to reach Tier 48. And that was with us fully clearing out each rift personally, killing literally every single thing inside them. Most higher Tier rifts work in two ways. Single team delves and mass delves.”

He waved at his chest. “Mara and I are Tier 48, and not looking to advance with lesser essence, so we don’t take any of the essence from our kills. But we also don’t run a lot of rifts anymore and donate our rewards, which is the only reason we even delve them at all. That means we enter a rift with a few dozen Tier 46s who are looking to advance and let them have free rein as we go and kill the boss. The others pay for a slot in the rift and help the rifts handle more rapid delving.

“On the capital, it takes about two decades for a rift slot to be cycled because of how much mana they need to run and how long it takes to recharge naturally. The cycle time for an instance is still fifteen minutes, but the rifts need far more than that to not dissipate. Selling a ton of slots lets the Empire farm more rift rewards, but that isn’t the only way it works. You can also fully fund the rift yourself and earn the right to fully clear it yourself. We did that to advance. After learning how the rift works, you can get quick at clearing them, but it still takes decades.”

Matt paused and did some math. Mara and Leon weren’t nearly old enough to have spent centuries in rifts. Or maybe they were, and he was missing something.

“But you guys aren’t that old.”

Leon winked at Matt. “Good catch. After Tier 25, rifts start to have a slight time dilation that grows with their Tier. We’re a lot older than we seem. You can expect a higher Tier rift to take a few decades to clear out, but you’ll only take a few years of real-time. Otherwise, no one would even see the higher Tiers. When I said it takes us about a year to fly to the rift boss, I meant in real time. In subjective time, that’s closer to a hundred years.” He paused, “And while there are ways to speed that up, they are expensive and not worth it unless you are trying to advance quickly like when a new Emperor is raised up. Then, you can get to and kill the boss, while clearing a decent portion of the rift in less than two weeks real time being at Tier 47. If you are Tier 49, you can cut that down to days.”

Matt digested that, and it brought up one of his problems with the Empire in general. “Why isn’t that public knowledge? This feels like important information.”

Leon sighed but answered, “In subjective time, I’m well over a hundred thousand years old, Matt. It’s not easy to remain connected to humanity after so long. Mara and I goof around because it keeps us centered. We go out on dates and enjoy time spent with normal mortals because that’s how we keep our humanity. More than one old bastard has turned into little more than an AI piloting a meat suit. They become so distant from what it means to be human that the general population has incredibly adverse reactions to learning about it. It’s been tried and seen.

“The mortals are better served to have limited information until they reach Tier 15, and they earn their own immortality. Even then, from Tier 15 to Tier 35, you’re treated as a second-class of citizen. The only truly important people are those who have passed the barrier, and are past the mundane wars, stepping upon the final stage of this realm.”

Leon looked off into the distance and, for the first time, Matt imagined what it would be like to live for millions of years. He wasn’t sure that he even had a frame of reference to begin to understand the man’s experiences.

“I know it’s frustrating. I felt the same way but, with age and experience, I can honestly say that a lot of information is restricted because it’s good for normal people to only learn it when it truly affects them.”

Matt looked at Leon and asked, “So the goofball personality is just how you deal with being super old?”

Leon grinned. “It’s also fun, but as you spend time with immortals, you will learn that we all have our quirks. Do you know the number of people to make it to just Tier 15?”

Matt didn’t and shook his head.

“It’s something like six percent of the population that’s expected to reach immortality.”

Leon’s statement shocked Matt. He had expected it to be far larger.

Seeing his skepticism, Leon continued, “Really. A large portion of the population don’t want to advance, Matt. They don’t have the drive or the mindset. They want to live their lives, and that’s it. Immorality is one massive draw that makes quite a few people push until Tier 15. But even to do that, you need the ability to fight and kill monsters or earn enough to pay for someone else to fight for you. That’s a full-time commitment. Not a lot of people can do it. Now, what portion of those that reach Tier 15 do you think hit even just Tier 25?”

Matt tried to analyze what Leon had told him and finally guessed, “Half?”

Leon shook his head. “Not quite. It’s around ten percent. Now, of that ten percent, do you know how many hit Tier 45?”

That was beyond Matt, and he just shrugged.

Leon didn’t make him wait and filled him in, “Many stall out well before then, but about sixty percent of people eventually make it, ignoring the portion that die along the way.”

“Why the large difference?” As Matt asked the question, he realized the answer and hurriedly added, “Because those who reach that far have the drive.