The Path of Ascension 2: A LitRPG Adventure

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Basil gave Matt a hard look but, after searching his face, nodded.

They sat around for a few more minutes. Liz gripped his hand hard, while Aster pushed thoughts of confusion at Matt. She wasn’t quite clear on why they had to be secretive about the killing. They did it all the time, after all. But after a few exchanges of thoughts, she mostly understood.

Matt hardened his heart and mind in preparation for what he had to do. He couldn’t let something like this go on under his nose.

He didn’t like it, but he knew he would never be able to look himself in the mirror if he did nothing. Especially when he had the power to stop such abuse of power.

15

Matt watched the crowd around the table. They had been bickering for the last fifteen minutes, talking in circles that led to nowhere.

The leader of the noncombatants, or as Matt preferred to call them, the less-combatants, was Kline. He kept pushing back on almost every measure brought up. Sure, most of them were fighters, but they were only peak Tier 4 or weak Tier 5s. They had decided to try their luck with the subjugation, but they hadn’t signed up for anything like this.

He couldn’t blame them, but he did hate that they complained about essentially everything. The original plan had been to set them up with two months of food. It would be enough time for the war with the ruins to be decided either way. If they won, they could leave the rift that the weaker survivors were safely held up inside. If they lost, the Tier 15 would be forced to act, and the weak would still be able to leave the rifts safely. But that wasn’t enough for Kline. He was demanding more food, more materials, and more defenders.

It was ridiculous, really. All of the combatants would be escorting them into the rift and would hold the line for the fifteen minutes that it would take to create an instance. But Kline was asking for a permanent station of guards. His logic was that when they left the rift, they would need more help. But no matter how many times people reiterated that it was pointless, as they wouldn’t know what was going on outside the rift until they left, he refused to back down.

Matt was out of patience and just wanted the meeting to end.

The rest of it had been fast enough. Juni had simply relayed the plan that the prince decided on, and they moved to complete it.

Food had been gathered and prepared, and a rift was chosen. Kline even managed to complain about the rift they had chosen. Everyone had submitted their ideas for the rift according to the surroundings, and they had found a Tier 4 wooded rift with deer as the inhabitants.

It even had a stream for fresh water, but no, that wasn’t good enough. Kline wanted a stronger rift so he and the other Tier 6s could get some essence.

Tuning out the irritating man, Matt scanned the crowd. He and the other combatants were here to offer their opinions about what they could do in regard to protecting nearly two hundred and fifty people. It would be a challenge, as they expected to face all sorts of ambushes and traps set by the golems.

The current plan was simply to keep the Tier 4s and the weaker Tier 5s in the center, while moving to their chosen rift. It, like most rifts in the area, was being guarded and delved by the golems. From the reconnaissance they had done, the golems seemed to be delving for raw materials, more than rewards or anything else.

That meant that both of the rescue teams had to be on the offensive. They needed to get to the rift and hit it hard and fast. Breaking through the defenders would be the easy part, but they had no way of knowing how many golems waited inside.

The twenty of them had the simplest job on paper, but in practice, they were the linchpin that the entire operation depended on. If they couldn’t secure the rift entrance, the mass of people following them would be sitting targets. They were taking the anti-air weapon with them as insurance, but the weaker group expected to be harried by the enemy at least somewhat. The prince had decided to strike out from all of the bases at once, to split the response of the golems and the strain on the fighters.

The worst-case scenario was the golems focused all their forces on one or two of the bases and overwhelmed them. Still, it was a chance they had to take.

As Kline continued to argue, the uncomfortable shifting among the members of the meeting increased, until even he noticed the atmosphere, and gave up. Everyone moved out of the area as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Matt followed Zoey, using views from the rest of his team’s AIs.

He moved to his tent with Liz, then crawled in and right out of the back that they already had unzipped. Once he was outside, he moved deeper into the mass of tents, with a nondescript blanket thrown over his shoulders to ward off the chill. With it covering his form, he looked no different than the others who sat out or moved between fires.

Finding his planned vantage point, Matt withdrew his flying sword, and found some branches and leaves to cover it while he sat on it. The foliage made the sword look like any other hill. Sitting down, Matt pulled the blanket over his head, and pulled his scarf up higher on his face. It was suspicious, but he didn’t want to be seen by Zoey’s AI before he acted.

As he waited, Matt thought hard about what he was getting ready to do. He was going to willingly assassinate someone, only because they had different morals and laws in their land.

He couldn’t hide that from himself.

At first, he tried to rationalize that it had to be done. But while that was true, he was doing it in a way that avoided the law. His mind tried to use the excuse that it was the local laws at fault, but that didn’t help stay his guilt. The vassal kingdoms were given leeway for a reason. Matt was sure that the Emperor could enforce laws uniformly but chose not to. He didn’t pretend to know the thoughts and motives of a Tier 50, nor the inner workings of an Empire that spanned thousands of planets.

He still was agonizing over whether this was the right thing to do. He was stopping someone from abusing their power on the weak, but he still felt dirty for even considering the means to that end.

As he sat under the stars, with the cold seeping in through his blanket, Matt wondered why he had never seen such corruption in the Empire. He knew it existed, but all the examples he could think of were instances of corruption being quickly rooted out, like when Duke Water’s killed Duke Cumulus for vile acts against low Tiers.

Does that make me Duke Waters in this situation?