The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

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The sphinx’s sandstorm had a magical component, and each little impact cut through any exposed skin. Aster got the worst of it, with her much smaller armor that mostly only covered her back and sides, and she needed a few minutes of dedicated self-healing to recover.

Even as she did that, they could feel the sand above their heads whipping itself into a raging fury, scouring anything on the surface to dust.

Just as the wind was dying down, Matt jerked along with everyone else.

The reward distortion of the ruin that they could feel, despite Minkalla and its floor themes restriction, vanished.

Before he could descend into a full-blown panic, they all felt the exit appear far away and what they presumed was deeper into the ruin.

Susanne kicked at the wall next to her, sending a crack up its length. “It moves around? How is that fair?”

Matt agreed fully. A teleporting ruin just seemed unfair. It was also the first of its kind he knew about; he just wasn’t sure if it was a thing that higher Realm ruins could do, or if it was a product of Minkalla.

Either way, it added at least another day of travel to their prospects.

When the remnants of the sandstorm ended, the four of them crawled out of the sand to continue their trek through the desert.

In the next six hours, they fought their way through the griffins, but as soon as they neared the ruin exit once again, the griffins flocked up and summoned the sphinx to create another sandstorm that teleported the exit once again.

It was at that point the four of them were forced to stop and reevaluate their actions.

“I think the griffins are alerting the stupid cat.” Aster yipped as they hunkered down for the second time.

Matt backed her up. “It would seem so. But what can we do about it?”

He was formulating an idea when Liz asked, “Remember that rift Gregor, the investigator sent us into? When we were there, there were birds that only attacked us when we flew. Maybe that’s happening again.”

Matt nodded as she jogged his memory. It seemed likely enough, and they decided to try it.

When the second sandstorm ended, they started a much slower walk through the desert.

Walking on sand was difficult at the best of times, but when you couldn’t see with your eyes, it was a million times worse. Each step was an entire mental thought process, and it quickly drained the four of them.

Or rather, three of them. With the environment as hot as they knew it to be, they didn’t want to risk Aster burning her paws on the hot sand, and she refused to put on her shoes, so they decided to backpack her. They would have liked to ride on Liz’s elephant, but as badly as they were doing on the sand, it was far worse. The summon was simply not nimble enough to keep up with sand slides, and it tended to throw its rider off while trying to recover. After the third attempt, Liz just dismissed it.

They had been hiking through the desert for nearly an hour and were starting to believe that their plan was actually working, when the sand started to quake from under their feet.

Matt was ready to take to the air when a number of nearly invisible lizardmen crawled out of the sand with spears and shields.

Matt responded with a [Mana s***h] almost perfectly in sync with Susanne’s [Wind Cutter].

Their attacks took two of the lizardmen out of the fight before they could even properly stand up, but there were at least a dozen others emerging from the sand.

Liz and Aster took two out just a heartbeat after, but they were still surrounded. The opposing spears and shields were either enchanted, or the lizardmen had spear and shield skills, as each glowed with mana and felt dangerous.

Matt slapped away the first thrust and bent to dodge a second from the nearest lizardman’s compatriot.

A third attacker tried to jab at him, but Matt caught the weapon’s shaft and pulled hard.

The lizardman tried to come with the blow and shield bash him with its glowing shield, but Matt drove the point of his blade through the shield and the lizardman, yanking it out to the side in a spray of blood.

Even as he did so, he was shocked at the amount of power he had needed to break through the shield. At the level of physical boost he was running, he should be able to cut through anything below Tier 15 with ease, but he barely managed to pierce the shield.

Before he could analyze the situation more, a third and fourth lizardman charged at him, and their blades punctured [Cracked Phantom Armor] but skittered off his under armor. Noting that he needed to use the second layer of [Cracked Phantom Armor], Matt kicked out at the nearest lizardman’s knee while casting [Fire Bolt] with his free hand. As he broke free of the group and used his Concept to part the air around them, while also activating its repelling effect to deflect a spear thrust, he moved behind the group of monsters in a burst of speed. Chopping down with his blade, he cut one, then two lizardmen down, hitting a third with another [Fire Bolt], blowing a hole straight through its torso.

Now that he was free of the encirclement, Matt had little issue swinging his blade and slinging his spells to take out ten lizardmen that kept bubbling out of the sand like waves of locusts.

The others had also taken care of their opponents, and when there were at least three dozen dead lizardmen, the waves of enemies stopped coming.

They all needed healing after the ambush, but after looting more skills and two essence orbs, they continued their march through the desert.

As they trekked toward the ruin exit, they encountered ambush after ambush, but they persisted. Once they were accustomed to their enemies’ attack pattern, they only took a few small wounds during each encounter.

Still, they were met with a circling of griffins at the precipice of the ruin exit, along with a sphinx that created a sandstorm to teleport the exit away.

Back in a hole in the ground, Matt thought about what they could do and offered, “If walking and flying don’t work, there needs to be an answer. My question is, where are the lizardmen coming from?”

Liz asked, “Dig down then?”

“That’s my idea.” Matt nodded.

“Can’t hurt…” Susanne shrugged as she leaned against the wall.

Aster just gurgled from the ice bath she had created. Even if she couldn’t directly feel the hot temperatures, the heat was getting to her and wearing her down.

When the sandstorm vanished they all continued, but they stopped short of where they expected the next ambush to come from.