The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

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The next slide’s illustrations predominantly featured a few vague sketches of treacherous walkways and sudden drop-offs.

Eternal Darkness: All physical senses are completely blocked, rendering everyone on the floor blind, deaf, and with physical touch and even proprioception sharply muted. The only sense that isn’t blocked is spiritual perception. There are many dangerous areas on the floor, not hidden by anything more than the floor’s natural theme, and simply walking in a straight line can be dangerous. Monsters largely favor ambush tactics, making it even harder to detect danger.

Reward: Spiritual perception is improved. On the first floor, it slightly increases resolution and adds faint additional feedback, such as color perception. By the seventh floor, it returns almost perfect, detailed feedback on everything within its range and is substantially better at bypassing any blocks.

“Doesn’t spiritual sense already naturally increase with Tier? Won’t this eventually become useless?” Susanne asked.

“Yes and no. Most of the more ephemeral rewards Minkalla provides are eventually eclipsed in some form or another by simple advancement,” Carol explained, “But Eternal Darkness definitely scales quite well into the higher Tiers. Even at Tier 40, the spiritual senses of people who got a floor four or deeper Eternal Darkness on their Minkalla run are notably sharper.”

The next slide was…unnerving. Strangely organic-looking metal banisters, water animated in ways that looked all wrong for elementals, and precariously balanced blocks of stone all loomed in ways that just looked wrong.

The Hills Have Eyes: Everything is alive, aware, and trying to kill you. Everything. Anything not spiritually bound to you gains a faint motive spirit and begins trying to kill anything alive. Air will avoid lungs, stone will deliberately fall with the intent to crush, water actively attempts to drown. It’s best to avoid having to eat or drink while on this floor.

Reward: A growth item gains its own motive spirit. On the first floor, it becomes able to automatically activate itself in accordance to some stimuli, akin to a very basic [AI], but by floor seven it is as intelligent as whoever it’s bonded to, and is even able to absorb and utilize skill shards of its own.

“That’s…still oh so disturbing,” Susanne noted, watching a simulation of living steam condensing itself inside a person’s lungs before tearing its way out.

“How do the skill slots of the item work?” Liz asked, clearly interested in a potential workaround to her Talent locking her into blood skills.

Luna nodded to the question and said, “On floor seven, it has roughly half as many skill slots of each type as a person of its Tier, and they’re independently absorbed by the item. On the shallower floors, the item’s intelligence can be used to control spells cast through the item, alongside a host of more minor benefits. By the fifth floor, the item can use the spells of the wielder as if they were enchanted into it, it has its own mana pool, and can absorb a limited selection of Natural Treasures. The intelligence will always be loyal to you, as well, and may or may not actually express a distinct personality, so there’s not really a meaningful distinction between using the skill yourself and having the item use it, other than a minuscule loss of efficiency. If you get that it would be an excellent workaround to your Talent’s limitations Liz.”

“Are there any limits to the kinds of skill that the item can absorb?” Matt asked as he wrote that down.

“No, but there are some practical limits on the kinds of skills it can use. Any skills which must be channeled through an item, like [Mana s***h] will only manifest through the item. That can have some weird results if it’s a ring, or armor. There’s a few more nuances, but they aren’t that important unless you actually get this theme on floor six or seven, and we can cover them afterwards if you do. Just don’t have it absorb any skills until after you leave.”

The next slide was fairly generic but featured a lot of monsters known for their powerful presence, like Warp-Spasms and their fear aura.

Conceptual Lock: Concepts are affected as though by a very strong concept suppression, making them very difficult to utilize. Monsters lean strongly toward those with powerful Concepts or presence abilities of their own and have no suppression from the floor.

Reward: Any ability which a Concept possessed prior to entering Minkalla become stronger and more resistant to being suppressed, scaling to twice as strong at floor seven.

“Now, the ‘pre-existing abilities’ which this strengthens doesn’t include any generic uses of a Concept, like flight or locking down space, it’s just the direct abilities which the Concept provides innately. So, for you, Matt, that would be your mana-granting and repulsion. Liz and Aster, everything your Concept does for your elements would be enhanced, and Susanne, your sword would be about twice as tough or half as hard to maintain. It’s called pre-existing because it doesn’t interact with any other Concept-enhancing rewards you may find on Minkalla, like Folded Reflections.”

That sounded quite useful, and Matt hoped they encountered it. Doubling the rate at which he could provide mana would make a huge difference in any fight and making it more resistant to suppression was always welcome. It wasn’t nearly as fancy as some of the other rewards, but Matt knew firsthand just how valuable a flat doubling to something could be.

And if his repulsion effect grew twice as strong, he had dozens of ideas for using it.

The next slide was covered in abstract symbology and depicted several groups of regal-looking humanoids in elaborate gear.

Courtly Warfare: Instead of directly fighting monsters, find and join a faction known as a ‘Court,’ and do whatever is required to ensure they win their floor-wide war. The Courts are unusually sapient for a rift or ruin monster, and centralize themselves around a seemingly random theme, with a variable number of factions thematically related to that theme. Previous common appearances have featured the four seasons, the four level 1 elements, Day and Night, Mages and Warriors, Stars, Moon, and Sun, and more. Generally, the sooner the floor appears, the more sides there are, but it has also appeared on floor one as Ocean versus Land versus Sky and on floor six as a massive web of alliances with every known mana aspect having a representative court.

Reward: A growth item gains a new effect. For the first floor, this is primarily minor additional abilities which nonetheless keep growing. By floor four, it is a new major ability akin to the one typically gained at Tier 25. By floor seven, this is a new set of major abilities just as powerful and comprehensive as the item’s original abilities and unlocks new powers as the item continues to grow. Additionally, boons are available to the victorious side.