The Path of Ascension 2: A LitRPG Adventure

33

At his nod, Matt didn’t press. The man had f****d up pretty badly by launching a mana skill, after knowing that the enemy was a mana absorber. Most of them used mana to empower their fighting style, and if he hadn’t missed, it would have made the fight that much harder. But he was an amateur and clearly didn’t have any combat experience, so Matt tried to not hold a grudge.

Liz pointed at the wall and asked, “Any reason we don’t test all of our skills on the walls? Maybe we’ll get lucky, and it’ll turn out to be unable to take the mana out of me and Aster’s spells.”

Matt wasn’t hopeful, but they tested it anyway. While the mages cast their skills at the wall, Matt retrieved his longsword and swapped it out for his mace and shield.

Turning his attention back to the mages, they received some pretty terrible news. Aster and Liz couldn’t use their manipulation skills at all. When they touched the walls, and presumably the golems, their mana was ripped out of the skills, and they lost control of their elements.

Skills like [Ice Spear] and [Blood Bullet] performed slightly better since they relied on the momentum of the moving elements to do damage. But they still increased the glow from the wall as it absorbed the damage from the skills, so using those particular skills was determined to be a last resort.

Camilla’s [Bolt] was entirely useless, as it was mana created energy, and performed no better than Malcolm’s [Mana Bolt] or Matt’s sword’s [Mana Charge].

Matt raised the question that he knew everyone was thinking. “This is a shitshow of a counter. Do we pull out and leave?”

Malcolm, who Matt expected to be the one who wanted to stay, looked at the hall and stairwell behind them with longing.

Liz shook her armored head, and in the blue, mana-powered lights of the now bright hall said, “No. I think we push on. This is still a ruin. I have my spear’s butt and a backup mace that I can use. Aster can still use ice to block areas off or disrupt footing. This is bad, but not that bad. We can still do damage with our skills as well, it’s just a last resort.”

Camilla nodded. She was mainly a melee blunt damage fighter, so she was less affected by the ruin than Matt was. She couldn’t use her whip, but that was only half of her usual arsenal. Matt would be unable to use his primary weapon.

As they were about to continue, Matt’s AI flashed, and he called a halt.

Going through the readout, he returned to the wall and watched its brightness, then inspected the runes that were used to light the halls. They were a better version of light runes and should be dimming faster than they were.

After sharing the findings with the others, they all looked at the walls and at the golem they could make out in the distance.

Malcolm asked, “Why isn’t this place just draining the ambient mana to power itself?”

Matt opened his mouth and paused. That was a good question. In his spiritual sense, he could feel the ambient mana. Most mana absorbing rifts were mana dead zones. At least, that was according to the information about common rifts in the Tier 5 through Tier 10 zone.

“I don’t know. But let’s not give this place any more mana.”

No one wanted to find out what the walls were powering the hard way.

With their intention to continue confirmed, they pushed deeper, and Matt continued to check his steps with his stick. It paid off again when a giant cleaver suddenly sliced out of the wall at waist high and cut the stick in half. It slammed into the wall so hard, Matt was surprised that the blade didn’t end up cracking the wall or shattering against it.

Matt didn’t think he could survive that kind of blow, and somberly inspected the two halves of the stick. They were less cut, and more crushed in half. Pulling a second stick out, he called to Liz and the others, who gawked at the now sprung cleaver trap.

“Did any of you bring any sticks? I only have this one and one more.”

At the shaking of heads, Matt cursed under his breath.

“If this stick gets broken, we’re going back out for more sticks. I’m not checking without them.”

No one dared to argue, and they continued down the hall. The next golem they found wasn’t far behind a second trap that Matt saw and triggered early.

As they fought with this particular golem, they had Malcolm start shooting [Mana Bolts] at it slowly. They wanted to observe the abilities of the golems. They were strong but slow when running on only ambient mana, so they wanted to test how much of a threat they would be as they charged up.

It was better to learn while they had control of the situation, rather than when s**t hit the fan.

The results were…not good. When the golem was running on ambient mana, they operated at about mid-Tier 5 strength. Not that strong for a Tier 6 ruin. But as they absorbed more mana for fuel, their attacks started to increase in speed and complexity.

Once it reached early Tier 6 in power, the golem created a mana shield around its arm. At the middle of Tier 6, it produced a mana blade, and at the peak of Tier 6, it produced a layer of mana armor that was hard to break through.

The increased arsenal was accompanied by an increase in combat ability that rendered the golem truly terrifying.

The fight was long, and only possible because [Cracked Phantom Armor] was so effective against magical attacks. Matt was able to handle blows that he would never have dared to take against physical weapons.

It also helped that the golem wasn’t using [Mana Blade], but instead runes to mimic the effect, according to his AI. The hits lacked the weight that perfectly distributed mana from a skill would have. Matt had to rely on Camilla to deal most of the damage while he distracted the golem and kept its attention.

He still hit hard with his mace, but Camilla was able to strike at the vulnerable parts, while Matt just concentrated on hitting the shield and sword. His responsibility was to drain as much mana from the monster as he could.

Nearly twenty minutes later, they finally killed the golem, and the rush of essence caused them all to breathe a sigh of relief. Camilla was off to the side, struggling to catch her breath.