The Path of Ascension 8: A LitRPG Adventure

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After Luna once more indicated for him to continue, he then shaped the pyramids into spirals that reached for the sky with strands of stone that thinned out as they rose. Once he felt he could no longer shape the stone any thinner while still keeping it stable, he stopped and then started to etch a tessellation of a triangular weave as small as he could manage while keeping the lines clear.

The lines weren’t nearly as clean as he would have preferred, but not as bad as he feared. Small, detailed work like this had never been his forte, and it looked even worse when compared to the masterful details that Liz and Aster could craft with their elements of choice.

Together they walked through the rows of spiral columns and Luna pointed out details. Most of them were imperfections, and more importantly, variations on the columns. For this test, having a mistake repeated in the pattern was better than variation, as it showed a lapse in his split control.

“9.2% more variation than before, but only 1.1% more mistakes in the general pattern.”

Having said that, the pillars sunk back into the ground before becoming mirror smooth under Luna’s expert control, after which, she had him run through a similar test with the other three level 1 mana types, water, wind, and fire.

The results were similar to his [Earth Manipulation], with his power increasing but his control decreasing across the board.

Then they deliberately made things worse.

Using two Tier 14 mana stones, he once more doubled his mana from 5,120 to 10,240 using his slow mana converter. It was inefficient and wasteful, but they had been delving Tier 14 rifts before they had even entered Minkalla and had a surplus. And this way, he didn’t have to leave the instance they were in. Waiting in line for this rift again would be more annoying than spending the mana stones to convert to his mana. Liz was currently using the house for an alchemy experiment, which meant he couldn’t just take it from under her, forcing him to his back up.

After his mana was once more doubled, they repeated their test to abysmal results.

Matt could feel the decrease in his control over his mana the instant he activated [Earth Manipulation], and that decline was proven through all the subsequent tests.

His results were, on average, twenty percent lower than they had been when he had 5,000 mana, and even worse in the fine control tests.

When he finished and let the last spell drop, Luna swatted him—gently, this time.

“Stop pitying yourself. This was expected, and your self-recriminating won’t make your later doublings any better when you’re gaining billions of mana at once. It’s a trainable skill, so there will be plenty of time to excise all of your foibles, especially once you’re off The Path.”

Together, they left the rift and went back to where they had rented a plot of land to plop down their houses.

There, he tested his mana patty skills and saw an even greater reduction of his hard won abilities. From needing only 850 mana to control the skill, he now needed 1,300 just to prevent mana from leaking, showing just how far his control fell. He wasn’t even able to move the ball of raw mana without the entire construct falling apart once more, making him feel even worse. Sure, Liz and Aster could only just barely move the balls at 1,000 mana, but they could move them. The balls broke after a few exchanges, sure, but he couldn’t do that at all.

The only one worse than him at the skill was Susanne, but she had never really practiced the technique, even if she had heard about it from Jeremiah.

Now that they were healed, they moved closer to the city for convenience of access to its shops and rifts while they waited for April and Jeremiah to come back from Minkalla with their skills.

It should be soon, but they were healed, and Luna had started all their training once more.

Carol was preparing to leave after having given all of them training plans for their Concepts and the new Concept powers they had gotten inside Minkalla. Both how to strengthen their current powers and how to grow them for the future. That wasn’t all she taught though; she spent some one on one time with Matt, Liz, and Aster, giving them various tips and tricks even as Kurt and Luna gave Susanne some focused training in return.

But even all that training only delayed Carol’s eventual departure. She, unlike Luna, was responsible for a number of Pathers, and mostly relied on her team’s liaison and half a dozen trainers, like Kurt, to cycle in and train the teams under her.

According to her, most of her time was spent traveling from team to team to periodically check up on them when she would then give more one on one training and coaching, all while being updated and tweaking the training plans for her other teams from the information her charges sent her along with the trainers and liaisons.

Other than when she first took a new Pather team, or had a particularly promising one in Minkalla, she rarely spent more than a month out of every few years with any of her teams. She just didn’t have the time to do what Luna and Kurt generally did for Matt’s team, spending all day, every day, helping them.

From what Carol and Kurt said, Luna only got away with it because of her stellar track record of improving even the most mediocre teams into powerhouses. If the tribunal could, they would love to give each Pather their own management team, but with how large The Path was, that just wasn’t feasible.

Luna even grinned slightly as Kurt wrote about how the tribunal had tried to demand she take more teams once she decided on focusing on just one.

There was a joke about herding cats there, with her circumvention of their authority, but Matt just wasn’t brave enough to make it.

Fortunately, Aster was brave enough, so she had to deal with all her bath water turning hot every time she went to clean for three full days before Luna relented.

She insisted it was worth it though.

It was just a little more than three months from when the liaisons left that they came back bearing gifts.

Or rather, the fruits from their efforts in the Minkalla system’s auction houses.

Matt whistled as he saw the spread of skill shards, natural treasures, and one single item.

A staff that Luna immediately started inspecting.

She rolled it around before sniffing it a few times. Then, with a flick of her paw, the staff flew at Liz, and April explained the functions of it.

“So it’s not perfect, but I think it’s a damn good growth item. If you don’t want it, Aster could use it once she’s got hands, or you could sell it on the Empire Market to afford almost anything else. But, I think it’s good for you.”