The Path of Ascension 2: A LitRPG Adventure

43

Matt paced back and forth with scenarios racing through his mind.

There was a chance that fully powering up this space they were stuck in would deactivate the ruin’s defenses.

It wasn’t a good chance, but it could work. It entirely depended on the default state of the shields. Matt didn’t think they would all be on by default. He assumed that they would normally be deactivated, and only turn on when encountering an enemy capable of triggering something.

Charging the ruin up could end up being disastrous, but Matt held out hope that it wouldn’t be that bad. It was only a Tier 6 rift that had inverted after all. That would limit its power after all.

According to some quick analysis from his AI, they had a shot at getting out if Matt directed all of his 40 MPS into a single area. It wasn’t something he had thought of with Keith and Travis, but Matt’s mana output was far beyond the capacity of any conduit of his Tier. Even a Tier 6 mana conduit could only handle that much sustained throughput for so long. After a point, his mana would essentially start melting the more delicate power channels.

Matt walked up to the vault door and tried to pull the handle.

Nothing.

He tried to push through the thick metal with his spiritual sense. He couldn’t see more than a few inches past the vault’s walls, but he discovered that it would be impossible to gain access without copious amounts of mana.

He turned to the other three and said, “So, we have three problems.”

Camilla cut him off. “No s**t! We’re trapped.”

Nodding, he continued, “Excellent assessment.” The snark in his voice didn’t seem to reach Camilla, “We are trapped, but that’s not the end of the world. I’m fairly confident that we can get out of here by frying the power conduits in the area. That’s the first problem, but we have a solution for it. Our second problem is that the vault is using splitting runes to stay shut. They—”

“What’s a splitting rune?” Camilla interjected again.

This time, Matt gave her a flat look in response.

“You know, I was getting to that. The splitting runes are a pretty standard method for making anything you want to lock up, stay that way. On any side or face of the object or room you’re storing the valuable in, you put the splitting runes along the outline of your desired opening. You use the runes to make the shape of a door or hatch, and when mana is run through the storage space and runes, the material splits along those lines, as if it was cut. When no mana is present, it returns to a solid wall or face of whatever is being used for storage.”

“We’d have to power this whole place up…” Matt trailed off, lost in thought. “If we’re lucky, this ruin functions exactly like a rift. If it does, there should be an item or something that will help us attune the mana to unlock and open this door. There’s even a notch in the door for something to fit. So, if we find it, we should be able to run mana through it, and it’ll be converted. There also could be some item like that already built in. If that’s the case, just giving this place power should open the door up. I can’t see much through the higher Tier materials, so it’s hard to be sure.”

Liz looked up from teasing Aster and asked, “What’s problem three?”

“Problem three is that this shield was powered by the unstable core, which had a lot of mana.”

Camilla jumped in again with, “And it reacted to the vault.” She paused before adding, “Or maybe something in the vault.”

Matt pointed at her. “Exactly. If we do open the door, we’re pretty screwed if something strong is in there guarding its contents. The core reacted to something. The question is, did it power that something up?”

Everyone looked around, and Matt sat down to ponder that last question. Aster came over to curl up in his lap.

With one hand idly stroking his fluffy fox friend, Matt waited for one of the other two to speak up.

Camilla rolled to her back and said, “Well, the whole point of delving is to explore the unknown, right?”

“Ehhh. Not normally. Most rifts in developed areas have been delved at least once, and you can almost always get some general info. These unexplored worlds are different, but that lack of knowledge usually means better rewards. The problem is the risk that comes with it, which is why we’re stuck in this shitty situation.” Liz didn’t seem very interested in the conversation from her tone.

Camilla asked, “So, we should just try and leave then?”

That was the million-mana stone question.

Matt presented another problem he had been thinking of.

“We’ve been here for a couple of days now, and we really haven’t gotten any good loot. It might be better to leave and explore more of the planet as a whole. But I’m somewhat partial to the idea of powering this place up and seeing what happens. This is a Tier 6 ruin. It should be bursting at the seams with loot.”

“We already struggle against one of these golems. If they get to full power, how will we fight off masses of them? We’ll run out of mana and get killed. Speaking of running out of mana, wouldn’t it take weeks to fill this place? If we just sat here for as long as it would take to fill, the barriers would run out of juice, and we could just waltz out.” Camilla didn’t seem vehemently opposed to Matt’s idea, but she wanted to test his thinking.

If he was going to tell her, now was the time.

“I can fill this place up in a few hours.”

Her response was a single raised eyebrow.

“My Talent basically allows me to put out a lot of mana.”

Camilla didn’t say anything, and Matt gave her time to chew on the revelation.

After nearly five, long minutes of silence, she asked, “It really depends on the vault, I guess. You don’t put unimportant things behind a locked door. The question is, is the prize behind the door worth the risk? Our lack of information here doesn’t exactly put my mind at ease.”

He was pretty happy that she seemed to be ignoring the comment about his Talent and moved past it without comment.

Matt offered a possible answer. “We may not know what’s behind that door, but we should be able to escape from anything that a Tier 6 ruin could throw at us. Even if powering up the door means that everything else is powered up, too, we all hit above our Tier. We should be able to handle it.”

Camilla chewed that over, and finally nodded.

Liz asked from her back, “Can we fry this shield and try to power this place up?”

Matt liked the suggestion, and after getting everyone’s approval, he moved to the still glowing barrier.

“How long do you think it’ll take for Malcolm to get out of here?”

His question made Liz sit up and rub her chin.

“I don’t know. Maybe a couple of hours? A week or two?”

With that, they sat and waited. The fool didn’t have much of a chance with fully powered golems running around, so they decided to extend him one final courtesy.

Matt did some more math with his AI.

He was guessing that this place held reserves for two million mana at most. That would only take him about twelve hours to fill. He also didn’t believe that he would need to completely fill the ruin’s mana reserves to start everything up. It would be ideal if they only needed to put a quarter of the power in. That would put the monsters at peak Tier 5, which would be easy prey for the four of them.