The Path of Ascension 8: A LitRPG Adventure

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The city was a hub with one of the planet’s teleporters located in it, along with a spaceport on the outskirts, and was one of the largest on the already populated planet. But it was famous for one attraction above all.

The Immortal Arcade.

An entire amusement park built for immortals and others down to Tier 12.

And best of all, it was built on a pseudo flying island.

In actuality, the entire park was held up by the four largest skyscrapers, but it gave the illusion that the entire venue was floating. Having seen the price tag for a flying house, Matt knew all too well that a flying amusement park was a pipe dream. No one would pay for a floating island that large, and if they did buy it, they could never afford to keep it afloat while catering to Tier 15s.

Only the wealthiest of dukes could have one for good reason.

As they were brought up on the exterior elevator, they got a good look at the city and surrounding lands, which Matt was slightly surprised to see weren’t entirely built up. There were large swaths of forest and rolling hills that were riddled with a type of grain, according to [Telescope], which made him reconsider the population numbers he had seen.

The planet boasted a whopping 1.2 billion people, with a majority of them being mortal, but a sizable population was made up of the transient Tier 14 through Tier 17s who came for the easy access to delve slots of those Tiers.

But even a billion people wasn’t enough to fill a planet like he had seen on East Flower, Tur’stal, where the entire planet was covered in one large, interconnecting city. East Flower housed trillions of people, which was many magnitudes greater than this planet’s measly populace.

The amusement park was everything he had hoped it would be from the reviews.

The rides were fast and non-human friendly, so even Aster could ride on them without issue, and nearly caused all of them to lose their lunches more than once.

Matt almost got Aster to vomit on the spinning cups ride as he spun them faster and faster. She had at first demanded he spin them faster, but once she started feeling queasy, she begged him to stop, leading to her threatening him in various ways. He only acquiesced when she promised to freeze all of his underwear before he put them on if he didn’t stop.

After they recovered, they wandered to the games of skill, where they tested their reflexes and aim with the various games to collect a number of small plushies, along with a beaver almost as large as Aster that she won for winning a ring toss game. She had it floating next to her the rest of the trip, wanting to show off.

The best was hands down the bumper balls.

There were a hundred of them in bubbles of protective glass that sped up when you ran inside them, all arranged in a single cage that made for a great time. Everyone was clashing into each other and falling before being sent flying as they got hit by someone else.

At one time, Matt was even ganged up on by Aster and Liz, who coordinated together to send him flying off the wall and back at them half a dozen times.

All the previous negative interactions were washed away as they lounged on a boat floating in a pond while they were served dinner before the fireworks show.

Matt was almost asleep on his feet as they walked back to their hotel, and Aster had passed out, having to be carried back by Liz.

The next morning they were chipper as Luna and Kurt joined them for the hotel’s breakfast.

“Did you three have fun last night?”

Matt nodded with the others around a mouthful of pancake.

The chef was excellent, and the bread was fluffy without being airy, making it the perfect vessel for the butter and syrup he lathered it with.

Luna, having already finished an entire five-course breakfast, waved a paw at them.

“Good. So tell me what we are doing here and why I chose this place over any other.”

Aster spoke with her AI even as she devoured what was left of her own waffle. “We’re going to be delving into guild territory. Audrey’s Apples’ territory to be specific, which let me state for the record is a dumb guild name, as their guild leader isn’t even Audrey anymore. But they just won a guild war for some contested territory, and both participants took some casualties and will be out of fighting shape for a while. They’re a smaller guild than the place they took over can accommodate, so they have some room to spare.”

Liz, with a freshly-cleaned face, finished for Aster. “That means they have rift slots available and they need low Tier rifts for their new recruits.”

Liz nodded to Matt, and he finished, “Both of which we can use. We can help provide some normal Tier 1 through Tier 14 rifts with the enchantment formations without blowing our cover.”

Returning Liz’s nod with a gesture with his fork, he added, “And this gives us the perfect cover to try and make Liz another glove. So long as the Tier 5 rift just happens to be a blood rift, we can easily get first dibs on any growth item that may come out of it.”

Aperology wasn’t a widely explored field, but for Tier 1 through 5, there were a few individuals, corporations, and guilds that specialized in it enough that they weren’t too unusual for having the ability to make targeted rifts.

Not that Matt would be using the strategies he had created with Erwin. No, he had gotten a pack of information from Luna that he suspected she stole from a high Tier guild, based on some of the wording.

It was a detailed breakdown of how they created their low Tier training rifts to have the best chance at making a rift with a chance to drop a growth item, ten percent of the time.

The only exception to that rule was going to be the rift he made for Liz, since it would just so happen to be blood aspected.

It hadn’t been that hard to make her glove the first time, and they hoped with a guild full of new recruits funneling through the rift, they could recreate their early success.

Liz took back over as he shoved the last piece of pancake in his mouth. “And we can get access to their Tier 14 through Tier 16 rifts to train on while we’re there. We can also make new rifts, so long as they’re considered our private rifts, without anyone being the wiser.”

“And we don’t have to go to some remote, uninhabited planet that leaves us all alone,” Aster quickly tacked on.

Luna nodded before standing up and jumping from chair to chair. “Yes, but one thing you all are overlooking is that that guild is both new and has the brother of a Pather at the helm. That means they’re less likely to pry into our information, which is always good. Remember to look past the first degree of data.”

Everyone nodded to that as they finished up their food and moved to the train station, preparing for a two day trip to the nearby continent where the guild was located. After that, they needed to fly fifty miles from the nearest city to the guild’s land.