The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

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Channeling [Endurance] and [Lesser Regeneration], he stood and tried to readjust to the suppression of his senses. It felt even more oppressive now that he had just gotten his sight back, but the pillar in front of him took most of his attention. Neither of the skills did anything for his spiritual strain, but they helped mute the physical side effects, which was all he could do until he had time to rest.

He just wished that Eternal Darkness worked on spiritual strain.

Liz asked him something, and he stared at the AI message for a good second before he properly was able to parse it.

“Think we got it?”

Ah, of course. She was asking whether they’d managed to kill all the ants before he finished off the elephant.

“I don’t know,” he responded. “You tell me. I killed the big guy in time, so it’s whether you managed to clean up the ants in time.”

“I think we did, but I don’t know if we missed one or two there at the end. I was definitely squishing them all the way up to the last second.”

“Would we even know if we missed any?” Queen added.

“I have no clue, but we probably did well enough for…something good. We killed it in way less than five minutes when the generally accepted max time is ten.” Matt shook his head, and added [Sharp Mind] to his roster of active ‘recovery’ skills. He really should be running his buff spells more and circulating his Genesis Energy to try and get his armor bonded to him. That was a worry for another time though, as the challenge room finally seemed to settle on a reward.

The Genesis Energy they had put into the crystal started to bubble and churn before it turned into a roiling mass, and then seemed to overflow the crystal and rush into them. More than double the Genesis Energy he put into it crashed into Matt, and he rejoiced as the energy inside the crystal kept swirling around and started to form items.

As they got their reward, Matt calculated that the Genesis Energy he got back was roughly 220% what they had put in. A nice return, if not as high as he had hoped for completing the challenge so quickly, but the energy in the crystal hadn’t stopped churning, which meant that they had more rewards coming their way.

After a second or two, four rings materialized on the surface of the crystal, but the Genesis Energy kept churning, signifying it had more rewards to give.

The rings, each sized for them, were simple brass with little mechanical pressure gauges that would show how much Genesis Energy they had stored. It was an incredibly common reward from Minkalla and was used to help people trade their Genesis Energy and hide just how much they had collected, making it harder to detect by enemies.

Now that they had gotten the reward, they wouldn’t get another during their trip in Minkalla unless they lost theirs, which was just one of the many oddities of the planet that no one had figured out. It implied that there was a degree of consciousness with the planet, unlike in rifts, but just how aware of things the mass of ruins was remained a mystery.

Matt slipped his ring on next to his mana aspecting ring and helped Aster snap her larger one on her forearm like a bracelet.

Just as the Genesis Energy in the crystal reached a boil once again, a single, larger bracelet popped out of the crystal. Matt picked it up and carefully inspected it without physically touching it, just in case it was a cursed item.

Unlikely, given it was a challenge room reward, but it was always a possibility.

After a few minutes of trying to read the runes, Matt gave his report. “I think it’s a summoning bracelet of some kind. I can’t tell you what it summons, but it reserves a portion of mana to create something. It might be armor, or it might be a monster. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think it’s a trap. I’d guess you need to reserve four to five hundred mana for its effect.”

He was slightly sad about the fact it was a reserved item, as it meant that he couldn’t use it at all. Reserve skill took from his max mana pool and lowered his regeneration. When he had millions of mana, losing a few thousand MPS to reserve a skill would mean nothing, but for now, losing even five hundred mana each second would cripple his current fighting style.

Liz ended up taking it. As a warrior, Susanne didn’t focus on her mana cultivation, and she didn’t have enough mana to reserve a large portion of it either, even with Matt keeping them full with his Concept.

Aster would have been the best choice, but unlike the brass ring meant for holding Genesis Energy, Minkalla didn’t see fit to have the item built around a non-human form, so she couldn’t wear it.

That left Liz, who slipped it on and channeled mana into the metal.

A shoulder-high mana elephant appeared and silently trumped its creation as it formed.

At least, that was what Matt interpreted it opening its mouth and extending its trunk to mean.

It had the same armored hide as the elephant in the challenge room, but was made entirely out of mana. Its armor plates were thick and seemed strong enough to turn away a blow or two.

“Well, I didn’t expect this.” Liz shrugged and tapped her helmeted chin. “We might as well test it.”

While Matt focused on recovering from his overstrained spirit and empty willpower, Liz and Susanne tested the new elephant summons.

They found it was just about as strong as they suspected it would be.

Like the elephant they had fought in the challenge room, it possessed no skills, but had an incredible defensive ability that was formidable even for peak Tier 14’s.

Sadly, that was all it had, but it was still useful as a front liner to take damage for them. With it, they could scout out any paths they traversed with just a five-minute cooldown to resummon the monster after it was destroyed. It also had no healing ability, but with its great defenses, it either was killed outright or ignored most attacks, so that was a minor problem at worst.