The Path of Ascension 8: A LitRPG Adventure

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With shop talk pushed aside, the growing group of them spent most of the evening chatting before the mortals amongst them crawled into bed, tired from the long day after getting their spirits strained to their limits.

When they woke up in the morning, the house was surprisingly empty, which allowed them a quiet moment as they made breakfast.

Though, even that wasn’t without drama. Just as they were sitting down, the front door was kicked in with enough force to shake the room.

Spinning, Matt feared they were under attack, only to relax as Leon marched into the apartment with exaggerated steps, all while Mara was trying to squeeze around him but was getting stuck on the door frame.

That changed once the couple saw they were sitting at the table.

Mara shouted, “Oh, you’re here!” before knocking Leon to the floor, where he bounced like a ball back to his feet before grabbing her leg and being pulled to the three of them. There, the two royals pulled the three of them into group hugs, only possible by copies of them appearing.

“It’s good to see you three! How are you doing?”

The Leon who was hugging Matt licked his thumb and scrubbed at Matt’s forehead. “You have a mark right there.”

Matt flinched back at the sudden pain, reaching up to touch the bruise. “How did I get a bruise on my forehead?”

While he pondered that question, the three of them were let go, and the Maras and Leons merged back into one before sitting down at the table with them.

Matt got up and brought up the still-warm plates of eggs, pancakes, and various meats to serve them plates of food, Mara looked from the large amount of food to the three of them. “Why did you cook so much? Did you know we were coming?”

Liz immediately understood and threw her siblings into the train’s path. “Sam, Annie, Travis, and Keith are all here, but they’re hiding from you two.”

Mara’s feathers stood on its ends before she and Leon vanished for a fraction of a second.

When they reappeared, the absent siblings were each held in one of their hands like naughty children. Even Annie and Keith, as those who married into the family, weren’t spared, and dangled there like kittens.

As Matt enjoyed their mopey expressions, Sam surprised him. “The fact you can overpower us as [Clone]s is just unfair.”

Aster asked the question he was thinking. “You guys are clones?”

Mara nodded as Leon explained. “We don’t have enough time to come to everything in person, unfortunately. Emmanuel and Rusty are the only royalty here in person. But we’ll still remember everything when we rejoin with our originals.”

Matt frowned, then shrugged. Well, they were close enough to Mara and Leon. He was curious about one thing, though. “How useful is [Clone] in a fight? I know lesser and normal [Mana Clone] have their tricks, but what’s the final version like?”

That was apparently amusing to Keith, who chuckled and whispered something too quiet for Matt to hear to Travis, the two men sharing a private joke of some form.

Annie was the one to answer, her mouth temporarily free of food. “It’s got its uses. By default, they are by definition as good as the original body at almost everything. But at the same time, no [Clone]-type skill includes mana regeneration, so while [Clone] can actually use the skills of the original, it’s limited to whatever mana is included in its original casting. They technically can’t use Domains, but in practice, most people enhance them like they’re a Domain clone when close by, so that limit only really applies when acting solo, like they are right now.

“Then let’s see…some Talents don’t transfer over, though by [Clone] it can be tricky to predict which, and I think that’s its limits. Vulnerability to attacks that you usually resist with your Domain means they’re not the best fighters, but they do make excellent scouts, given they have all your skills and your exact thoughts about everything. Even if they die and can’t return everything they learned, you can tell because the reserved mana for the skill suddenly becomes freed up.”

Matt nodded along and asked a few more questions, even as the conversations splintered around the table.

Almost an hour later, when everyone was done eating and they had finished their conversations, they were all dragged along to the various activities Mara and Leon planned for them.

Over the next week, the planet as a whole became notably more crowded and excited, with the upcoming start of the Tier 10 tournament, and more importantly, the Ascension.

The Tier 10 tournament, while interesting for the locals, was something they had just hosted last time, and while it brought in a boom to the local economy, it wasn’t nearly as important as the Ascension for most of the visitors. The majority of the influx of visitors were just there for the chance to advance their Domains.

Matt thought it was interesting that Rusty would be hosting the Tournament twice in a row, but Leon explained that it was a fairly standard practice when someone wanted to ascend on one of the capital worlds.

While the Empire would prefer to have people ascend in low Tier systems, they never forced anything, and ascending in the capital systems had the advantage of being useful for far more people, as the local populations were more numerous and they had the infrastructure to deal with the massive influx of people.

Meanwhile, the rest of the extended family came in, which included Leah, Alice and her husband, Daniel, and finally, Erin with four of her lovers. The entire time, the suite felt bustling but never crowded, with the rooms expanding to accommodate the larger crowd so smoothly, Matt barely even realized what was going on at first.

That was a trick Matt tried to figure out, but when he actually found one of the runes hidden in the walls, he was knocked on his ass for half a day, as the headache was both thorough and all-encompassing. He should have known such a variable rune would be high Tier and well beyond his comprehension, but he could really use a version of that for their house. Especially now that it was a growth item.

Alice laughed at him for nearly ten minutes when he explained why he had been looking at the runes, but eventually gave him some information.

Variable spatial expansion runes were at a minimum Tier 30 and were both hard to enchant and harder to make function as one wanted without an entire array dedicated to it. If he wanted his house to eat such a rune to gain the ability, he needed to wait until his spirit could handle it or find another rift-made house that already had that ability innately.