The Path of Ascension 8: A LitRPG Adventure

44

Luna watched as her charges planned how to protect Matt long enough for his [Arcane Powershot] to gather enough mana to do enough damage to deal with the largest tentacles and then slowly move in.

She knew the plan would work because she had already inspected the moon creature when they first entered the rift. It was big and looked scary, but those larger tentacles were mostly mana constructs and wouldn’t be able to stand up to a single fully charged [Arcane Powershot].

Once they learned that, they would easily be able to clear out the remaining tentacles and then waltz in and kill the writhing mess of stone and silvery blood that was the boss of this rift.

Even though she was separating herself and Kurt from the rift in a bubble, so it didn’t affect their rewards, she still controlled her [Air Manipulation] so only he could hear.

“A Tier 18 rift at Tier 13. Not the hardest Tier 18 rift, but they went in blind and will come out alive.”

Kurt silently sighed before writing. “I’m impressed. Where do we go from here?”

Luna knew what he was asking, and it was only long experience that gave her that answer.

The normal answer for pushing a team was to make them delve higher, or delve with restrictions, but her team was at the point where they wouldn’t get anything out of facing more power. If they went any higher, their strongest attacks wouldn’t even be able to harm even weak points, and death would be practically inevitable. There was room for that sort of training, of course, but only in moderation.

It was only true Ascender teams who pushed a manager this far, and while Kurt was her protege, he had only started working with her after Lila, her last Ascender, so he hadn’t learned her methods.

“We’ve forged their blade, Kurt, now we just need to sharpen it.”

9

Matt sat at the table of their house and stretched while waiting for Aster to finish getting ready.

Luna had given them a full three days off after their Tier 18 rift delve as she and Kurt set up their next phase of testing.

April, on the other hand, planned to accompany them to the city and help them set up their transport to The Citadel, Rusty’s capital planet, where an Ascension would be taking place in another three years.

Even as disconnected as they had been, the news that Yellow would be ascending had reached even their ears, both through the guild members they talked to and in the nearby town.

With five years of warning, Yellow had created an Empire-wide rush to The Citadel for those who were stuck at Tier 14 without their Concept, and those like them who wanted an advantage to creating their Intents. The former were desperate for any reason not to have to enter Minkalla, and everyone else was happy to get some additional progress on furthering their Domains.

At the same time, the Empire was massive, and it would take a full decade to reach The Citadel if they were to only travel through teleporters, but that wasn’t the only way to travel in the Empire.

Nearly the same day the news reached them, the local noble from the Adair family notified everyone that he was commissioning a transport vessel to take himself and anyone else who wanted to join the journey to The Citadel.

The optimistic portion of Matt saw it as a nice way for the noble to ensure everyone else was able to reach The Citadel in time, but his cynical side said it was either a way to reduce his own cost, or he was getting a kickback from each ticket sale.

That same side said it could be, and probably was, both.

Information about chaotic ships wasn’t hidden, but they were both expensive to buy and expensive to run. The ship that would be stopping to get them was a Tier 25 cargo ship that took shipments of higher Tier foodstuffs between outer Empire worlds and the more populous inner Empire worlds normally but had willingly allowed their contract to be bought out and redirected to The Citadel.

Matt was sure they would even be able to sell off their foodstuffs to the plethora of vendors in the six-planet system that would soon be flooded with people even if they weren’t some of the more exotic food stuffs that usually went to capital worlds.

Immortals might not need to eat, but few chose to neglect their food intake. It was a good way to keep your body running smoothly, helped with biological processes such as recovering from healing cooldown, could serve as a cultivation aid when prepared by a professional chef, and ultimately just tasted good.

As one of the few Tier 45 planets, there was a sizable immortal population in the The Citadel system at all times. With an ascension given so much lead time, there would be even more, but Yellow had timed his ascension to coincide with the end of the Tier 10 Pather tournament, which would have already drawn in a large number of people.

They would be cramped even in the enormous cargo ship they would be aboard, and the ticket price wouldn’t be cheap.

Aster had asked why Luna couldn’t just fly them with her own ship, or if she wasn’t healed enough by Kurt, but that had been disregarded. She only said that they needed to pay their own way on The Path, which made sense, even if it would be annoying.

As Aster finished getting ready to visit the largest city on this planet, the three of them prepared to spend a full two days relaxing.

April was waiting for them, and the first thing they noticed was that her once golden blonde hair now had a silver-green sheen to it and was cut much shorter.

“Decided to change things up?” His question was met with a grin.

“Basically. I’ve been blonde for nearly twenty years, and it’s just time to move on. Don’t be too surprised if I go a bit wild over the next few years. I’m not planning to have kids any time soon, so I can do some very fun things.”

Aster asked the question on his mind. “Kids? Why would that matter?”

April gestured to her hair. “Basic cosmetic stuff like hair color, eye color, skin color, and general size aren’t controlled factors in the Empire, but it is generally expected you stay close to baseline human if you’re going to have kids. That goes double for low-Tier worlds, where social custom is to change your appearance to fit in with the locals before having children, mostly for the kid’s sake. Better to blend in, after all.”

April explained some of the social conventions of higher Tiers, which Matt mused over as they flew up and nearly past the atmosphere, where they could take full advantage of his mana output to fly at max speed.

It overall made sense and explained why higher-Tier worlds had so much more diversity than he was accustomed to growing up. Lilly had been predominantly inhabited by people with khaki to sepia-colored skin, whereas the next world over had much darker skin tones on average, with a faint bluish sheen. It wasn’t really something he’d thought about, but immortals being able to customize their genetics could pass down an infinite variety of skin, hair, and eye colors to their descendants.

It also explained why the general populations didn’t vary so much. Mortals had more kids, and those kids would marry amongst themselves, quickly outnumbering any single variation that an immortal might breed into a local population. When that was combined with the fact most people never left the city they were born in let alone the continent or planet, populations started to look homogeneous in comparison to the more populated systems.