The Path of Ascension 8: A LitRPG Adventure

9

His manager usually had a wild air about her pale skin and dark hair, but today, it looked like she had gone through a weeklong bender, with bloodshot eyes and sallow skin. If that wasn’t enough, right before his eyes, he watched as the blood vessels in her eyes burst, and her nose started leaking blood like an artery had been cut.

Seeing her assistance was in no way easy or free, Matt tried to hurry along the process of the mana concentration potion and redoubled his efforts to slow down his spirit’s expansion.

Both were futile.

His spirit seemed to be already on the final stages of expansion, and the potion was beyond his control. Luna seemed to notice the same thing, and her skin turned translucent as her presence redoubled.

His inspiration seemed to halt for a moment, but that was when he saw Carol, Susanne’s manager, appear next to Luna before she almost instantly collapsed. Whatever she had done had earned Luna a moment of reprieve, and together, they resisted his spirit’s expansion for the few seconds needed for the mana potion to take effect and to attain his Tier 12 maximum mana again.

At first, he almost didn’t believe it when Luna’s power vanished, and his expanded spirit seemed to find harmony with the Realm around him. It was like he was a part of the Realm itself for a moment, like he was connected to everything.

That was when he understood.

White holes were real, and he was one of them.

During that moment of understanding, he felt everything snap into place. It was the heart of Minkalla. A place of impossible gifts, something which the Realm shaped itself around, the sort of thing which wars were fought over, a form of matter that could do the impossible and shaped the unthinkable.

And it was him.

He was it.

Words didn’t do it justice. It was just himself and the Realm…and everything was at peace. He couldn’t even properly process what he was experiencing, what he was thinking…nothing mattered, only the feeling that everything was profoundly right.

Then, the moment passed, and darkness claimed him once again.

Liz was dead on her feet, a very chaotic scene unfolding before her. Luna had vanished to places unknown along with Carol and Matt, leaving her, Susanne, and Aster unsteadily standing under the attention of countless high-Tier individuals, with only the resolute Tier 45 man standing next to them providing any form of solidarity.

She started opening her mouth to ask what was going on, then, their surroundings were different.

They were in the entryway to a hospital. A flicker of movement later, Matt was lying next to them on the floor.

Luna was floating next to him, and she looked almost worse off than them, with blood pouring from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, and with semi-translucent skin dripping off her face. Liz couldn’t even properly process what she was seeing before they were elsewhere once again.

They were in a private room with four beds. Aster was comically small for her bed, Susanne was just bewildered, and Matt was firmly unconscious in the bed next to hers. A healer in white robes was hooking him up to a series of tubes and wires connected to his bed and a rack of monitoring projections next to him, and Carol appeared in the middle of the four of them with drying streaks of blood running from her nose.

“Luna is fine. Recover first. We’ll talk in a day or two. You can trust the healers.”

With that, she vanished once more.

The healer finished connecting Matt to his bed and moved over to Liz. “I’m going to be casting some spells on you. Would you mind removing your mask? This room is well-warded and I need accurate readings.”

Liz hesitated for a moment, but with Carol already vouching for him, she reached up and started removing the amulet that shielded her spirit from inspection. It got caught in her hair and on her ears, and with only a single arm, she was struggling just to get it that far. Fortunately, the healer caught on and assisted her with gently pulling the chain over her.

A couple of spells later, he nodded and scratched down some observations on his notepad.

“You need rest. I’m going to cast a sleep spell on you, if you’re all right with that.”

She gave a jerky nod, the healer waved his wand, and she knew no more.

Matt groaned as he woke up, a paradoxical combination of intense pain, clouded thoughts, and incredible clarity and strength. He struggled to sit up, prompting a healer to appear in their room and consult a bank of machines next to his bed. The rest of his team was in the room with him, but only Aster and Liz were awake. Susanne was sleeping peacefully, for all that her face looked quite ghoulish. Most of the dried blood was gone from her face and his, giving Matt a clear but very unpleasant view of just how much of her skull was visible.

The last few seconds of consciousness he’d experienced came back to him, and a grin spread across his face.

Liz spoke up, mirroring his thoughts, “So, you think it’s fair you just get to skip Tier 12?”

Aster inspected his spirit through their bond and whined at him slightly in question, so Matt answered through shattered teeth, “You chnow ith. Bu’ I’m more confushed about what happened to Luna. She tyied to delay the Inshpirathion, why is she in shuch bad shape?”

The healer next to his bed provided an answer, tapping through a screen displaying Matt’s vitals. “Inspirations are a merging between someone and the Realm itself. The person undergoing the inspiration can slow it down or delay it on their side, but outsiders need to fight against the Realm in order to interfere, which can lead to straining or even broken Domains in extreme cases.”

Matt was feeling guilty at hearing that and asked, “Is she all right?”

The healer shook his head. “I’m not allowed to speak about patients, but if you have any further questions about general medical knowledge, I will be happy to provide what I can.”

Matt tried to compare the nosebleed he got when he pushed his Concept too far to the dismal state Luna pushed herself to before he lost consciousness, and shuddered as he realized how far his manager had pushed herself to ensure he didn’t ruin his future because of the inspiration. If she had simply stopped helping him when he had doubled his mana, that would have been more than anyone could have asked, but instead, she pushed herself beyond reason to give him time to take the mana concentration potion.