The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

34

Linking his AI with his friends’, he found the connection was also restricted in the same way his spiritual perception had been. It was incredibly muted, allowing for basic communication but little more.

Liz was the first to speak through their AI. “Everyone okay?”

They all responded in the positive, and she continued, “So we got Eternal Darkness as our first floor. Not great as a first-floor reward, but it’s not a super valuable one to get later, so it could have been worse. Definitely annoying to try and speed through, but at least we don’t have to worry too much about getting the theme reward, so we don’t need to be thorough. If we have enough Genesis Energy, great. But if not, it’s nothing to cry about. Matt, start the recon.”

Matt immediately cast [Air Manipulation], spent 1,000 MPS to boost its range, and set his control of the air to feel out everywhere around them. Unfortunately, it didn’t end up being one of the rare times where Eternal Darkness allowed spell feedback, so without confirming that he was casting something by looking at his mana with his spiritual perception, he would have no idea if he was pouring mana into literally nothing.

Minkalla had locked down that version of a sense just as much as it had his sense of touch. Cycling through all his other elemental manipulations, he found the same was true for each of them, even the more esoteric ones.

Changing back to [Earth Manipulation], Matt threw all 2,560 MPS into the skill and tried to manipulate Minkalla itself, but he found that he could only interact with a foot or so of the surroundings before he hit a wall of material that completely ignored any of his control.

Sadly. this was exactly as Luna said it would be, so he just reported, “Nothing unexpected.”

He saw Liz nod through his spiritual perception and chew her lip for a second before she made her decision. “Matt takes the lead with full armor up. These monsters should be well hidden here, but their offense should be dead average for Tier 14s.”

That meant it would still tear through him if he wasn’t careful, but with [Cracked Phantom Armor] taking 2,000 MPS between both layers, he should be able to take a hit or two before being injured.

“Queen, take up the spot behind Matt and kill anything that attacks him. Aster, backpack time. I’ll keep up a film of blood behind us to help prevent ambushes.”

Without saying anything else, they all started moving, and Matt fell into their formation as they had practiced. With both her Talent and Concept connecting her to her blood, Liz had substantially more feedback from her spells, making her something of the de facto scout. Now, ‘substantially more’ amounted to ‘literally any’ feedback, but that still made her the least-blind of them all.

Using his spiritual sense, Matt narrowed it down from a sphere spanning as far as it could all around him, to just the hall they were in. He was able to discern more about their current surroundings with less background noise to filter through. The natural-looking cave was fairly straight but had a few twists and turns that seemed to lead them nowhere.

Every dozen or so steps, Matt used [Earth Manipulation] and [Air Manipulation] but found nothing out of the usual.

The worst part of Eternal Darkness, he came to find, was walking. Without the feedback that his body usually gave him, each step had to be deliberate, and a portion of his spiritual perception needed to simply confirm that his feet were striking the ground when he meant for them to, as he could accidentally step farther than he meant to without feeling his foot hitting the ground.

They were just about to start climbing up a slight incline when something flickered in Matt’s spiritual perception for a heartbeat. It was distinctly not human, and as soon as it stopped moving, it vanished from his senses once again.

“Something with camouflage ahead. Right side of the tunnel. Marking in our AI map.”

Their AI had been making a map from what they sensed with their spiritual senses, but it was still crude, as they only had a single tunnel to base it off of.

As they crept up to within striking distance of the hostile entity, Matt slashed out with his sword after charging a [Mana s***h]. He couldn’t feel the weight of his sword or the heft of his swing, but he had used his blade for close to three decades and was intimately familiar with it. He didn’t need the proprioceptive feedback at this point.

The crescent of mana forced the monster to move, and it became visible to their spiritual perception as a six-limbed humanoid insect. Two of the arms slashed out at Matt, who sidestepped before bringing his blade down on one of the monster’s spindly arms.

He felt none of the feedback he should have, but he could sense that the first arm he hit snapped like a twig under his attack.

Susanne wasn’t any slower, and a second [Mana s***h] struck out where the monster was and cut off one of its legs directly.

Aster was ready with the finishing blow, and an [Ice Spear] slammed into the monster’s chest.

As it died, there was a rush of what almost seemed like golden essence pouring into them. Genesis Energy. It swirled around in Matt’s core, and even without an essence distribution bracelet for the energy, it evenly split itself between the four of them.

Genesis Energy felt like water when compared to the mist that was essence, and slowly spun itself into a ball in his spirit where unallocated essence usually sat.

After a second of inspection, Matt also noticed that he could feel the Genesis Energy that the others had gathered. They were like small pricks of light that called to his own reserve of the stuff.

“Aster, test please,” Liz asked as soon as they had all settled themselves.

Instantly, Aster responded, “Already done! It swirls like essence does but is a bit easier to manage and will rotate on its own for a second or five after you stop, so it takes very little attention to manipulate.”

Matt kept his blade at the ready as Liz and Susanne started their own test, and once Susanne moved up to replace him as the vanguard, he focused inward and started cycling the drops of Genesis Energy in his spirit.

It responded to his lightest touch, and just like Aster had said, kept swirling for a few seconds each time, seemingly pulled along by his rotating cores. All that was required was a bit of a spiritual ‘kick’ every so often, which was easy enough to maintain during all but the most strenuous of combat.