The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

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Luna smiled as she looked at each of their faces. “Yes, going in at Tier 12 is good, but Tier 11 gives you a level of versatility nothing can match.” She nodded to Aster. “No, it won’t convert your Talent given Innate skill slot to be moveable. People sometimes wonder, but it doesn’t actually interact with your Talent at all. Not even Minkalla can affect a Talent. Circumvent them, yes. But never modify or block them.”

Carol spoke up, “Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves, though. Minkalla is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. And while the rewards are impressive, you need to keep in mind, what matters first and foremost is that you survive. You’ll definitely be finding essence stones almost constantly, and if you find yourself pushed too far? Use them. Hitting the Core at Tier 11 is something of a dream, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’ll be easy. It may not even be possible. Getting a flexible Innate skill slot is perhaps the best reward you can get, but a static one is still very strong. We don’t know who all will be in there, but they’ll all have a full Tier on you or more. If you have to break through to Tier 12 to get to the core, do it. We almost expect it. Getting deeper at a higher Tier is better than leaving early at Tier 11. It happens a lot, and it’s not required to actually complete the Path. Duke Waters didn’t even enter Minkalla before Tier 12, and The Cosmos—Lila Worldwaker’s predecessors, that is—had to push to Tier 12 to survive the last few floors.”

Luna added after Carol finished. “They made the right call, as should you. Don’t mistake me being willing to send you in at Tier 11 as an expectation you’ll complete Minkalla at that Tier, just that I expect you to survive. The deeper you can get before you have to advance to Tier 12, the better. Emerging from Minkalla alive and at Tier 12 is the extent of the perfection I will demand from you, because I do not want you to die pushing yourselves too hard. The four of you together might actually manage to make it to the core working together.”

“What about Light and Shadow? Did they do Minkalla at Tier 11?” Matt asked.

“I don’t know,” Luna flatly replied. “I’m not their manager, and I don’t even know who is. If I had them, I would have sent them in at Tier 11, but whether they completed Minkalla at that Tier, I don’t know. I’ve sent in many groups at Tier 11, very, very few hit the core without needing to break through to Tier 12.”

That put a bit of a wet blanket on their enthusiasm, but Matt was still determined to succeed. A part of him wondered how hard it could really be, as there was nothing of Tier 15 or higher inside, but that was the wrong way of thinking about it and he knew it. He was going to be fighting at a full Tier disadvantage against people as strong as anyone he’d ever fought at his own Tier, and they would still be able to Tier up if they were pushed too far. He wouldn’t be able to beat Queen if she were two Tiers above him, and his fights against Eric and Dena also came to mind.

Minkalla would not be a walk in the park.Luna got everyone’s attention with a clap. “Okay, I won’t go over all the challenge rooms and their rewards right now, because they’re far too numerous to cover in time, and you get a good idea as to what they’ll be when you approach the entrance, but the floor themes and their corresponding rewards are definitely worth memorizing.”

With that, the slide changed once again, showing a collection of diagrams and images depicting a series of corridors, paired with two main blocks of text.

Essential Dysfunction: Turns natural essence powered attributes, like allocated strength or flexibility, into depletable resources. As you lifted things or ran around, strength would effectively de-Tier until the essence provided no benefit. Regenerating mana would slowly be less effective, and mana pools would shrink. All aspects of cultivation are affected by this and only once you finish the floor are your attributes returned to normal. This theme possesses the most direct traps, such as pits, spikes, and rolling boulders, with a large array of monsters.

Reward: Mana and stamina regeneration is increased. On the first floor, this is about a fifteen percent increase separate from essence, which slowly falls off with advancement. This scales until at the seventh floor, where it’s approximately a four times multiplier if spread evenly between physical and magical regeneration. Alternately, specializing the floor reward into different avenues of regeneration is possible, such as increasing the rate of healing cooldown recovery. “Wait,” Matt frowned, “Will that affect my mana regeneration?”

“We don’t know,” Kurt wrote in response. “We don’t have any records of a Talent affecting regeneration quite like yours, let alone getting this theme on Minkalla. It doesn’t work in the same way as the mana-concentration potions you’ve been taking, there’s no actual essence involved. That means it might actually work even though your Talent directly overrides your normal mana regeneration and capacity. But at the same time, Minkalla doesn’t change Talents, so it’s really anyone’s guess. Erwin spent a bit of time trying to simulate it, but he didn’t come to any real conclusions. This could either be the very best floor for you to encounter or do functionally nothing for you, we don’t know.”

“Huh,” Matt wrote a big question mark on his notes for that floor.

“Wait, who’s Erwin?” Susanne asked.

“He’s a researcher we’ve worked with in the past,” Liz explained, “And I think the only researcher who’s actually read in on Matt’s true talent.”

“Ah, okay.” She nodded back to Liz before they went back to the slideshow.