The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

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Still, it melted so quickly that they were forced to stop and dig themselves a hole in the side of a sand dune.

[Earth Manipulation] worked on sand but was inefficient and barely effective. Fortunately for the group, Matt had gotten [Sand Manipulation] alongside the other Tier 14 manipulation skills. He didn’t have that much practice shaping the level 2 mana type, and taking the efficiency penalty of an outer spirit skill was annoying, so he defaulted to using [Earth Manipulation].

That in itself was a sign of the heat exhaustion that they were already suffering from. He only fell back on his Tier 8 manipulation skills when he was mentally drained.

Thankfully the sand wasn’t impervious to manipulation like most of the other ground surfaces that they had encountered, and he was able to shape a little cave for them by compressing the sand into pseudo-sandstone.

There they all drank a lot of water before they started testing just how hot this ruin was.

Matt and Liz had gotten an orb that produced a bit of shade and lowered ambient temperature when they were Tier 5 and had little use for it most days. It actually took him a few minutes to find it in one of their old spatial backpacks.

The orb didn’t do a thing to block the heat in their round of testing outside their little cave. Aster’s ice melted just as fast as it had during their walk.

It was a Tier 5 item, but Matt still had hoped that it would work, as it would have saved them a large amount of time, but the item was useless. Even maxing out its mana capacity rate of 10 MPS did nothing to blunt the oppressive heat.

Ultimately, Matt ended up needing to pull out their house, after building a…good enough foundation for it to rest on. Once inside, he poured mana into the cottage’s mana storage, as it burned through an impressive amount while running the AC.

With the ruin being so hot all their normal items wouldn’t be able to counter the heat which meant Matt needed to make something new. So, while everyone hydrated and rested, Matt started to sketch out a small portable formation on his workbench. He spent enough time at it that he had a mana node at his feet, so even as he worked, he could keep their defenses against the heat running at full capacity. Not that it was likely to run out, but it wasn’t like he was using his mana for anything else.

It was a simple and dirty formation, as with his AI being limited by Minkalla, he was forced to make the array of enchantments by hand. A formation was simply that; a number of enchantments linked together like his talisman arrays, but not meant to be one-use items. Instead, they were usually carved into stone, metal, wood, or anything else more durable than parchment.

By the base material’s nature, they were more durable and longer lasting, but that came with its own limitations. Part of a talisman’s incredible power came from the fact that they weren’t expected to be multi-use items and could therefore disregard longevity for immediate power. When making something more permanent, Matt needed to limit the enchantment’s power to a degree that the material could handle.

That was no issue for him, though, except for the methodology. The actual enchanting was identical, and Matt had no problem making a talisman. After all, all enchanting used the same runes, so it wasn’t that hard for him to cobble something together as he had with the Mana Leeches in the marsh.

It took a few iterations and five hours, but Matt was able to make a formation that kept Aster’s ice sphere un-melted in the open air outside for nearly an hour. If they weren’t in Minkalla and on a one-month timeline for exiting the floor, he would have made something more elegant than a few shadow runes and water creation runes stacked and linked inside a small air shield rune. It worked, but he wouldn’t be winning any prizes for ingenuity or efficiency.

Still, the formation would get the job done, and that was all that mattered.

After that, he just had to miniaturize it onto something they could wear.

If he had his proper vision, he would have come up with something slimmer, like a thin steel band with proper sizing along with a hinge, so they could all wear them on their wrists. But with only his spiritual sense at his disposal, Matt went old school.

Instead of etching the runes into the spirit of the item to firmly anchor the runes into the metal, he opted to physically carve the runes into the face of a small disk of metal that he had forged with his skills from some Tier 14 iron.

He ruined more than a few of the disks while working blind, but they were well stocked, and he compensated by using his metal channel skills along with his proprioception skill to carve something good enough to work.

After making two for each of them and ensuring that they worked, Matt strung the disks and created small necklaces with a holder for the formation disks.

With that problem taken care of, they were able to continue their trek into the desert with less worry. They needed to pay the 10 mana a minute cost, but it was an easy ask with Matt there to use his Concept for a few seconds every once in a while to top them up.

Not wanting to spend more time than they had to in the desert, they all withdrew their flying devices and flew close to the ground, moving much faster than walking on the soft sand would allow.

A few dozen miles into the desert, they encountered their first enemy.

A flock of griffins descended and tore at them with talons and wings that generated blades of wind in front and alongside them in a sweeping arc. The attacks shined brightly in Matt’s spiritual perception from the sheer amount of power that the [Wind Blade]s had.