The Path of Ascension 8: A LitRPG Adventure

11

Their Manager hadn’t had her Domain break, but it had been seriously strained. “I still can’t believe she was actually hurt, let alone so badly,” Matt mused, to general agreement from the others.

The woman had always seemed like an implacable mountain. Untouchable and unbreakable.

With orders to stay inside the hospital, the four of them relaxed.

Even as Tier 12 to 13s, they were still exhausted after nearly a full year of constant fighting, in addition to the insane pace they’d set beforehand to prepare for it, and the rest was absolute bliss.

Matt wasn’t sure about the others, but he spent at least fourteen hours a day asleep for the first week, waking up only long enough to wheel to the bathroom and then back to his bed. Fortunately, his Concept was in good enough shape, thanks to the Inspiration, that he could handle moving between his bed, wheelchair, and bed again without assistance.

The only notable news they got was that Bradley and Jill, the lava mage and his archer wife they met inside, made it out of Minkalla with both the floor and exit reward at Tier 12. The now Tier 13s were more than happy with their progress inside the Forge and invited the four of them to a dinner once everyone was out of the hospital, though their conflicting schedules threatened to force the date back some. All four of them easily agreed but did let the pair know that they were so badly injured, they probably wouldn’t be released for a while. At worse they would see them in the Empire proper at some point.

The days seemed to pass quickly as they recovered, and by the start of the second week, Matt and the others were conscious enough to start getting news from the moon base around them.

The news reports had no right to be as interesting as they were, but they mainly listened to the interviews with the Tier 14s who hadn’t been able to create their own Concept and needed to rely on Minkalla for the process.

Some of the stories were long, others short, but it gave Matt a new appreciation about how easily he had created his own Concept. Even without Aunt Helen pointing the three of them to Liz’s brother’s house to experience the Ascension, he had already had his phrase and a decent idea about his image. In theory, he could have made a Concept at any point, so hearing about the other side of the coin, he gained some insight on what many people had to go through.

How it felt to spend centuries searching for how you fit into the realm as a whole without the certainty Matt had felt since he was fifteen.

Part of it was the pure emotion that the people in question had during their interviews, but Matt and the others found it entrancing, and had the station on nearly constantly in the room.

After nearly two weeks of their recovery, Matt was growing irritated after being unable to get any of the hospital staff or Carol to tell him how Luna was doing, beyond just ‘recovering.’ He was about to start demanding to see Carol in person to get some answers in a way she couldn’t just ignore, when a black cat walked in through the door opened by one of the nurses.

Even knowing their manager was a cat, it took Matt’s brain a long moment to put the human manager who haunted a good number of his dreams to the normal sized black housecat. The only similarities were cat Luna’s fur was the same ink-black shade as human Luna’s hair, and the identical purple eyes.

As the cat jumped to the wheeled table the healers used for their tools, she spoke, “While this was delayed, it’s time we debriefed the four of you.”

Matt was about to ask how she was doing, but Aster was faster with her AI to send the message.

“How can you speak human language in your animal form? I want to be able to do that!”

Cat Luna just glared at Aster, or rather cat Luna looked at Aster, but with how cats always looked like they were glaring, he couldn’t read her expression to be sure which she was doing.

After a deep sigh that didn’t fit her form at all, Luna answered, “There are a few different methods, but I’m vibrating the air manually with [Air Manipulation]. Yes, it’s quite convenient, but not the topic I wish to speak on at any length, as you flatly can’t do it yet. Once you have a few centuries to spare, we can revisit the subject.”

Matt took the opportunity to interject, “Are you okay? You looked, um, rough.”

Luna turned her glare onto him, but getting the full brunt of it, Matt suspected she was just tired. Her eyes, while almost luminescent, had a slight sheen to them, like cataracts were starting to form.

“If I said I was fine, I’d be lying, but I’ll live. My human body is little more than a pile of flesh, and holding it together is more effort than it’s worth, so you get to deal with my beast side, which is smaller and easier to manage.”

As she looked like she was going to continue, Matt spoke first. “Thank you, Luna. Just thank you. I would have been screwed if you didn’t wake me up. Beyond that, thank you for giving me enough time to get the mana concentration potion down. If I can repay you somehow in the future, I will.”

Luna just blinked at him before yawning. He noticed the teeth seemed sharp enough to cut even the light landing on them, but it didn’t seem hostile at all.

“Matt, the only thing I desire from any of my students is their best, and I accept nothing less from them or myself. I am doing what I see as my job, nothing more and nothing less. And besides, it’s really not that bad. I didn’t even crack my Domain. Just exhausted myself.”

Matt wasn’t sure her body falling apart could be described as ‘not that bad’ by anyone but Luna, but he felt he understood.

Standing up and stretching, she jumped down onto the floor before padding over to a table, where she picked up a cup with her mouth and jumped over to the sink, where she put it down and filled it.

Matt didn’t miss the fact she didn’t use her Domain to just lift or manipulate the object, just her mouth and paws, and knew how bad that meant things were.