The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

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After half an hour of resting, Matt felt good enough to cast a few spells again, and they resumed their trek deeper into the tunnel, but with the elephant summon leading the way. Not long after they left the hidden room that had concealed the challenge room, they started encountering more ants and resumed killing their way through the nest.

It took them nearly six hours to make their way into the queen’s chamber, where they were faced with thirty bulkier soldier ants and half as many of the ranged spitting ants.

Liz summoned out a wall of blood from her glove and blocked the initial barrage as Matt, while functional, didn’t want to strain his already overstressed spirit by using the Tier 20 [Bulwark], as he would have usually done.

What he did do was cast [Flamethrower] and use [Fire Manipulation] to spread the flames around the side of the room that he was guarding, using the flames to fry the ranged ants.

Aster used ice spells to do the same on the other side of the room, while Susanne kept right behind the elephant, who took the initial charge of ants on its mana tusks and armored hide.

Standing to the side of it and taking the other side of the tunnel, she lashed out with her manifestation blade swinging as if the wall to her side wasn’t an impediment, as it would be to a physical blade.

By the time the summoned elephant was starting to go down, Matt had taken care of the ranged opponents on his side, and smoothly stepped forward to take its spot. He fought off two of the soldier ants that tried to press into them as he cast [Sword Twin].

As they were fighting, Aster turned and started attacking behind them, but she said that she had it handled, as there were only two of the soldier ants there, and she could take them down without any issues.

Matt used all his physical buffs and grabbed one of the ants as its pincers that glowed with mana that tried to latch onto his leg, and instead of forcing them apart, he let them close in open air and then kept pushing until he felt the snap of chitin, as the ant retreated.

The other ant he was fighting tried to bite down on him as well, but he let his magical [Sword Twin] that had been distracting the monster retreat, and he planted his foot on the ant’s head then drove his real blade through it with a heavy downward thrust.

The chitin exploded, and ant blood flew as he hacked down on the next one that took its place.

They defended their tunnel for another ten minutes until the colony seemed to run out of ants, and no more reinforcements came to defend the queen ant, who just sat there guarding a nest full of eggs.

Matt didn’t feel even a twinge of remorse as Liz drowned the helpless queen and finished off the threat. The rush of Genesis Energy was like a tidal wave when compared to the standard amount they got from killing the soldier ants.

As the queen’s massive body disappeared, a dagger materialized in its place, and each of the now crushed eggs dropped an essence stone. Even as they ‘watched,’ they sensed Minkalla begin to drain the new essence stone, so they quickly scooped them up and stashed them in their rings. While they didn’t need or really have a use for the dozen Tier 14 essence stones currently, they would be useful outside Minkalla, when they could Tier up. Or at the very least, they could be sold off for a hefty profit. They would be useful in an emergency as well, in case they needed to hit Tier 12 in desperation.

To their surprise, that wasn’t the leader of the ruin, and no exit appeared to take them to the next sub-level. It was, at best, a sub-boss of the ruin.

After Matt repeated his examination of the dagger, he believed that it had a simple but powerful armor penetrative passive effect. Interestingly enough, the dagger wasn’t enchanted; its power was a side effect of the material it was made of, whatever that may be.

He suspected that it was a chitin based alloy but couldn’t be sure until they could see with more than their spiritual perception.

If his conjecture was correct, once he figured out a plan to enchant the item, they would have a powerful backup weapon for any of the humans. They all kept daggers as backup weapons for close-range fights, but none of them relied on it as a main weapon, so it was really just a matter of who wanted it.

Stowing the dagger with the other items they had gotten from Minkalla so far, they exited the ant tunnels and started moving through the jungle.

After the challenge room and the ruin both produced the area’s oversized ants, Matt was getting tired of the motif, but they pushed on, thankfully not encountering any more ants until they were well away from the old nest.

Fifteen miles away, they started to find more ants, but they only killed the ones that they encountered, and didn’t go delving into the tunnels once again.

They needed to move fast, and while clearing the ants gave them Genesis Energy; they couldn’t afford to kill the ant colonies that took so long to kill once again.

The initial run through Minkalla, while not a full speedrun, couldn’t be slow either, or they would fall behind and find it difficult to catch up to the front runners who would start monopolizing drops and monsters. So, they refused to be sidetracked and pushed forward. If they felt like they needed more Genesis Energy they would rather move vertically on the third subfloor of the first layer, instead of the first subfloor.

Liz even gave him a little surprise—a Tier 14 basil plant, growing next to the exotic Grasping Vines that she’d been harvesting. Well technically, she’d transplanted them both into her greenhouse herb garden orb, but it was still nice of her to grab the mundane herb for him. Minkalla was full of opportunities, and that apparently extended into the mundane. He had no clue how the domesticated plant was growing wild inside a lightless, oversized jungle within the mostly mechanical world, but he wasn’t going to complain about fresh herbs.