The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

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After a few more hours of trekking through the jungle in their spiritual perception, they all noticed the trees ahead of them shaking. Seeing that, they threw themselves into the oversized brush next to the tree they were moving around and waited.

A massive monkey, like the one they had seen being eaten by the ants earlier, swung by their hiding spot.

It seemed like it wouldn’t notice them as it swung on the branch that extended over them and continued on, but it circled around, still in their limited spiritual perception. It was clearly ‘looking’ for them. As it moved in a searching pattern through the area they were in, the four of them knew they were as good as found and would be forced to fight the oversized ape.

Not ones to run away from a challenge, no matter how large the opponent, they exited their camouflage and immediately unleashed their best attacks.

Or most of their best attacks. Matt didn’t use [Cracked Mana Spear], but he did set up a few [Cracked Mana Trap]s while [Sword Twin] empowered his own blade and produced a second copy floating around them.

Susanne unleashed a [Wind Cutter] that he could see was empowered with [Hypersonic Edge], and he activated his Concept on his friends to keep them full.

Liz and Aster used more normal attacks and peppered the twenty-foot-tall monkey as it landed near them and silently roared.

Except, it wasn’t a roar, and all of them felt a ball of mana form then rapidly grow in its expanded mouth. As they scattered and the ball hit a critical mass, it formed a beam of energy not dissimilar to Matt’s [Cracked Mana Spear] and cut a deep furrow in the forest floor.

Thankfully, the attack seemed to take a lot out of the monkey, as it fell to its hands and knees for a few seconds to ostensibly recover.

That didn’t last long though, and even as they were landed another round of attacks, the monkey was getting back to its feet. Once standing, it jumped to get into the air, but Susanne lashed out and bent space to send a [Mana s***h] right into its path. The impact caused a spray of blood to explode from its face, and instead of falling as it normally should, the blood turned into a net and started to grapple with the monkey as the monster dropped back to the ground.

An aura Matt knew to be chilling cold washed out from Aster, and Matt felt himself grow slightly stronger and faster. [Winter’s Harvest] was a support type skill they had gotten for Aster after her upgrade to her bloodline. It empowered anyone she considered friendly while slowing and draining power from anyone she considered hostile.

It was a strong skill, but the boost in power wasn’t multiplicative with Matt’s physical boosting skills, as they tried to do the same thing and boost his already allocated faux essence. Liz’s potions, on the other hand, worked by empowering the physical body and worked wonders with Aster’s buff.

Even as the monkey reached up and pulled the blood net off its face, Matt and Susanne had closed the distance and were on it.

Matt funneled mana into a [Mana Charge] and unleashed the stored power on the beast’s fur-covered leg, while his [Sword Twin] rose up and started to attack the monkey’s face.

As he was forced to roll from a giant leg stomping down, he felt Susanne’s manifestation blade vibrating as she channeled [Hypersonic Edge] and focused her Concept down.

Even only able to see with his spiritual perception, he knew that the world around them was growing sharper and more real as she took command of reality.

Just as Liz slapped a blood-encased shard of ice into the monkey’s open mouth, Susanne cut clean through the beast’s leg where he destroyed its protective fur, sending it stumbling.

Matt was ready, and as he came out of his roll, he threw out a Tier 14 explosion talisman where the monster’s head was going to land.

Just as it hit the ground, the talisman went off, and the monster’s head vaporized.

The rush of Genesis Energy they got from the kill was nearly as much as they had put into the challenge room pillar and told them that the monkey was dead and gone.

As the monster vanished, a skill shard appeared in its place, and they grabbed it before they left the area. While the floor theme Eternal Darkness was in place, they couldn’t be sure and were unwilling to risk the monkeys having a way of communicating.

After all, it had known their general location.

When they were a good mile away, they stopped to scout their surroundings, finding a deep pit that sunk into the ground well past the distance their spiritual perception could reach under Minkalla’s restrictions.

Seeing it, Liz asked, “Explore that once we have a break?”

With unanimous agreement, they turned and started looking for a good place to set up their portable house.

Eventually, they settled on a dead toppled tree, and Matt hollowed out a hole in the root structure of a fallen tree to hide in. Deploying or recalling the house felt like a kick to the gut at the best of times, and Matt’s spirit, not recovered quite as well as he had thought, protested mightily at the treatment. It got to the point where Liz took pity on him, scooping him up and setting him in his favorite chair by the window.

Matt kicked off his shoes, pressing a toe to one of the embedded mana-charging ports in the floor and sending even more mana to the house’s reserves, giving them a chance to properly relax as some of the comfort enchantments activated. Cool air washed over them even though they couldn’t feel it, and a very light healing field based off Matt’s study of [Ranged Heal] helped ease their stressed bodies. He hadn’t gotten the spirit-soothing enchantments working yet—those were Tier 16 for even the simplest versions—but a relaxed body meant a relaxed mind, and a relaxed mind led to a relaxed spirit.