The Path of Ascension 8: A LitRPG Adventure

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The moment the fight started, he burst into flames with [Flame Body], becoming a vaguely bird-shaped being of blue flames. Every flap of the phoenix’s wings sent waves of blue flame through the air, and Matt could feel the increase in ambient heat even through [Cracked Phantom Armor].

Liz thrust with her spear, a second copy of the weapon materializing for a moment before flames swallowed it, leaving no trace. The wave of flames met Liz’s new shield, recently arrived and raised to Tier 14, and broke against the black metal.

From Aster’s tail, a light blue ray shot toward Travis. While he was in his elemental form he was especially vulnerable to other elemental attacks, especially ones of counter elements, but he didn’t even move as a wall of fire rose and destroyed the [Polar Ray].

Matt teleported in front of Aster to block a massive attack with [Bulwark], then cast [Sword Twin] to fight off Keith attempting to circle him, meeting hammer with sword once again.

Their fight lasted almost half an hour but, eventually, their numbers advantage wasn’t enough to let them win and they went down after Matt took a hit from Travis he wasn’t able to fully block.

After that, they reset, but having learned more about each other, the next fight turned into a brutal slug fest. Matt went after Travis and had to deal with his Concept-powered blue flames, strong enough to eat through even max-MPS [Cracked Phantom Armor] if he didn’t reinforce the spell with his Concept.

A flame mage going for pure damage wasn’t anything unusual or new, but Travis had the bloodline of his mother’s form and the resulting Talent that increased his fire capabilities. From what Matt remembered of Travis’ Talent, it wasn’t even that crazy, with just a flat increase in control over flames for his Tier 1, and a small but growing increase in fire damage from his Tier 3.

Even as Matt ran the mage down with [Bulwark] and [Cracked Phantom Armor] taking the brunt of the damage, he was mentally aghast at the beating his armor was taking. Without a Talent or dedicated fire defense effect, most people near their Tier would find themselves burnt to a crisp under Travis’ flames in short order.

The second fight once more went to the older couple, after they managed to eliminate Aster early on. Without her assistance in closing the power gap, Matt and Liz quickly found themselves overwhelmed.

The final fight almost went to the older couple when Travis transformed into his phoenix form fully, but Matt and Aster teamed up to freeze the bird in place, battered in high winds and unable to use any skills, long enough for Matt to grab Travis’ claw and slam him into the ground like an oversized pillow. After he was pulled from the fight, Keith put up a valiant effort but ultimately stood no chance.

By then, Travis and Keith were exhausted, both magically and physically, and declined a fourth round. Matt and Liz, meanwhile, were ready to go after just a few minutes to recover, especially after they tracked down Melinda to Overheal their bruises away, and that led to an entirely new set of spars with the Unbroken and the other half of Team Bucket.

They even tried fighting with suppressed cultivation, and Matt grew a newfound respect for how difficult it was to truly act as though he were a lower Tier. He couldn’t even imagine what it would be like, trying to compensate for an Intent or Tier 25 talent, it was hard enough limiting himself to a half or quarter of his current mana regeneration. He’d shifted his tactics to account for the higher MPS, after all, and his skills didn’t rearrange themselves, or lower their expanded but less efficient throughput, to accommodate a temporarily lowered power source.

Travis and Keith even took it upon themselves to spar with the others though they were more practice dummies that pushed their opponents’ weak points than proper opponents.

Hours later, when everyone was sore, Luna sat everyone down in the sparring room and started talking about Domains. Even Keith and Travis joined them, as they hadn’t fully created their own Intents even after all this time.

“Domains are our connection with reality. Concepts, as the first step, serve to establish your relationship with the realm, your place in existence. An Intent, meanwhile, is the declaration of how you will affect reality. Just as with a Concept, you will need a phrase for direction and an image of where you fit into reality, but so too will you need an anchor to connect your domain to material existence.”

Luna’s hand stretched out, and a small, scalpel-like blade appeared in it. To all of Matt’s senses, it looked completely ordinary and mundane despite the fact that the damage across its dark, wooden handle and gleaming silver blade should have left it in fragments. “This is a penknife, and it is my Intent’s anchor. It is utilized to trim quill nibs to ensure they stay perfectly sharp, and I pulled it into my Domain countless years ago,” she explained. “Much as Concepts have internal and external variants, Intents are what we refer to as either claimed or created. Claimed intents utilize an anchor that was once a fully real, fully physical object. Created intents, meanwhile, are the result of taking a portion of the domain and permanently manifesting it as a part of reality. Both forms of anchors result in approximately the same output, an item which is fully real and yet comprised wholly of willpower. This is why my penknife appears so damaged at the moment. It is a reflection of my as-of-yet unhealed Domain. It retains full functionality, however; the damage is merely a cosmetic reflection of said damage.”

Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the penknife vanished, leaving no trace it had ever existed.

“Created intents are usually focused more upon the created item itself as a tool for enacting one’s Intent upon the realm, whereas claimed Intents serve as more of a lens into reality, and more easily have an impact upon reality other than the anchor. In this way, some draw a parallel between created Intents and internal Concepts and claimed Intents and external Concepts. Yet any trick which either internal or external Concepts are capable of managing may be accomplished with any form of Intent the most obvious of which is flight.”

“What happens to a claimed item?” Aster asked. “Does it stay at your Tier, or does it stay at the Tier it was at when you first created it? And what happens if it breaks later?”

Luna nodded. “The answer is somewhere in the middle. The material itself grows in strength corresponding to your willpower, in such a way as to keep approximately on-pace with Tier advancement, but any enchantments will not grow. There are many a Tier 40 or above whose Intent anchor is a functionally-mundane weapon, as the material grew in strength but the enchantments faded into irrelevancy. And no, most claimed anchors are no better at serving as a skill channel than any other object.”

Matt winced lightly. At higher Tiers, enchantments grew all the more important for combat relevancy, and having a wholly mundane weapon that didn’t have the skill magnification abilities of a Concept manifestation would be about as useful as a pool noodle against properly-enchanted armor.