The Path of Ascension 8: A LitRPG Adventure

21

She then got lucky and found a vendor specializing in ice-aspected skills. Why someone would specialize in a specific element for selling, let alone selling said skills for below-market rate, escaped her. But she intended to capitalize on her find. Thanks to the oddly-dressed person clad in full arctic gear that also had ice clinging to its edges, [Glacial Spear], [Meadows of Rime], [Floating Snow], [Polar Beam], [Glacial Strike] and [Sheer Cold] all came off her list. And though the last of those wasn’t strictly on Luna’s list for Aster, it was too perfect a skill to not get for Matt. If it was too perfect for Luna to allow him to use, well, she could live with that; it was a damn good skill not usually seen in the Empire.

Like [Breach], a skill she knew Matt had been eying, [Sheer Cold] was sometimes called a channeled-charge skill, where after an initial cast it could accept more and more mana to strengthen the eventual effect. In [Sheer Cold]’s case, the initial cast created a sphere of ice over the caster, and channeling mana into it caused it to get colder. Once released, it would snap-freeze a wide area, with the initial casting cost determining how large of an area it affected, and the amount of mana channeled in afterwards increasing just how cold it got.

[Glacial Spear] was largely a supersized [Ice Spear], and while its exceptionally long cast time made it impractical to utilize on anything but massive or especially tough targets, it would make an excellent finisher for Aster. Even unmodified, it summoned train-sized chunks of ice and slammed them onto its targets, crushing them and freezing them if its jagged tip didn’t impale them from the start.

[Meadows of Rime] was usually only found in the Clans, Federation, and Republic, but it was still for sale here. The skill wasn’t a terribly popular one due to its lack of protection for allies, but for as long as it was sustained, it would spread a creeping frost centered on the caster, slowing down anyone in the area and freezing the ground and air into razor-sharp points that would cut any inside of it. The slowing effect could be modified to exclude certain targets, but the cutting edges couldn’t. Its resulting lack of popularity mostly balanced out the premium inherent to any Power-restricted skill.

The same couldn’t be said for [Self Movement IC20-TX], also known as [Snowdash] or [Floating Snow On A Windy Frozen Night]. [Floating Snow], as the Empire had named it—which got the idea across just as well in far fewer words, in April’s opinion—was an excellent escape skill. It turned the caster into a flurry of snowflakes, allowing them to drift to a nearby spot before reconstituting back into themselves. The only real downside was the inability to cast any other skills during the five-second transformation, but it was still an invaluable protection against many physical attacks.

[Polar Beam], [Freeze Ray], or [Ranged Attack IC14-EB] was a favorite in both the Corporations and Guilds, with a price to match. The attack bore a few similarities with [Ice Spear], but it didn’t use a physical projectile. Instead, it was a freezing ray that froze a single target solid. Most conventional armor did nothing against the ray, and only those which specifically protected the wearer against cold could stop the attack.

[Glacial Strike] was the last ice skill on her list, an ice meta-skill that would coat the target of whatever skill it was cast alongside with a coat of ice, weighing and slowing them down substantially.

As she was wandering through the crowds, a notification pinged her AI that a set of fire-based natural treasures had sold at auction, helping her recoup some of her losses with the ice skills. She noticed a caped Guild man yelling at a bored-looking teen about skill exchange rates as she wove through an open spot in the crowd, but didn’t stay to watch the debacle, as a pair of armored guards were already on their way to break up the altercation.

Most likely, the brightly-clad man would get a fine and either a warning or an ejection from the trade hall that might last for a few weeks at minimum. The Corporations had very little tolerance for abuse of any sort from either side, especially when it made them look bad, as this current commotion did.

She made it to the first auction that held any promise just as a leaf-bladed growth dagger was sold to a Federation woman with silver lines tracing her cheekbones, and just before the bidding for a ring with a massive diamond set on it began. According to the itinerary and the announcer, the Tier 5 item could store a single spell from either the wearer or another person and release it later. She’d considered it for Liz, but her mild interest quickly fell off as the price rose beyond her discretionary budget for the moment.

That same discretionary budget rose as a notification informed her the kids’ Dew of the Last Dawn natural treasure sold at a separate auction room, but the ring still wasn’t worth the price tag as it swiftly rose through the megacredits. Two Empire shoppers were locked in a bidding war, and it didn’t look like either were about to back down as the price rose beyond anything reasonable.

Eventually, it sold for a truly ridiculous sum, and a pair of clawed gloves with an armor-piercing effect were up next. Again, it was potentially decent for Liz, but not worth joining the bidding war between a bearded Sect man in their ridiculously baggy robes and an anthropomorphic fox only wearing a kilt that confirmed their allegiance to the Monster Collective.

As a Void Blackberry sold in the interim, April set out once again on her quest for new skills. The auctions were ongoing and she had the itinerary up on her [AI], so she could see if anything that might be useful for her team came up.

[Mist Manipulation] and [Steam Manipulation] were some of the final Tier 14 elemental manipulations that Matt didn’t have yet, and they were about as expensive as April had expected. Still, she was a bit annoyed that she’d gotten the former when she did, as the skill dropped a whole two kilocredits in price just a day after her purchase.

She did manage to intercept an ongoing trade between a Federation man with vividly green eyes and a skill vendor, after she overheard the former list [Weapon Empowerment NM14-ES] as one of the shards he was trying to sell. [Heart-Piercing Stab], as she knew it, was a slight improvement to a simple [Mana Thrust], in that it could be directed in other directions after it was cast. And as a skill without an innate mana aspect, it stood a decent chance of surviving the conversion to Liz’s inner spirit. In any case, she managed to buy the skill off the Federation man at market rate, making it a better deal for both of them.