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That was the best way to ensure that they bonded well in the short amount of time.
Luna looked up and to the planet that loomed over them.
Minkalla seemed to be on track, but even her cultivation was unable to pass the barrier that surrounded the planet. If she tried to enter, she would just appear on the other side, as if it didn’t exist.
But the walls between them were easy to see through, and she could see the Minkalla tracking station and their readouts. Everything was right on time.
Two weeks left.
Next week, she would stop drilling the kids beyond two hours a day and start beating all the rewards she had hidden from them so far into their heads. She would let that excitement drive them forward with their team-building exercises.
She just hoped they would all come out alive.
It would be even better if they came out at Tier 11.
Susanne enjoyed her time with Matt, Liz, and especially Aster. They were good people and were fun to be around.
Having unlimited mana to spar with competent fighters and practice her skills had also been a boon she had never expected.
The last few weeks would have been perfect… Would have been.
But the fact was, while she could fight Matt to a standstill in melee, and even win sometimes, she lost as soon as he transitioned to a mage style. She did win against his mage style sometimes, but her victories were few and far between. Each time it happened, she learned how to counter him just a little bit better, but it was irritating, nonetheless.
Liz, she fared better against. It still stung every time she lost, but the woman seemed to have a bag of tricks as deep as her ocean of blood, and couldn’t be simply overpowered or outlasted, which were the normal ways to beat mages.
Beating Aster just felt like bullying with her more support-oriented style, but the fox had caught her off guard and stolen a few wins against her. But that hardly counted and didn’t serve to bolster her mood at all.
The three of them never rubbed it in and were happy to help her learn how to counter their tricks, which was dramatically different from most of her training partners. But it still only showed the difference between them. It wasn’t like they weren’t getting better against her, after all, and it felt almost like as soon as she made any progress, they’d move even further away.
Currently, she was still trying to counter Matt when he used [Create Water] to flood the area, a talisman to flash freeze the ice, and finally [Ice Manipulation] to entomb and crush her.
Susanne’s spatial abilities had gotten a workout, but they weren’t a natural part of her Concept, so her growth in that area was slow, which forced her to think about other options.
Nothing in life was fair, but with Matt’s Talent, they had earned themselves more items, growth items, and even skills for themselves and that helped keep them ahead of her.
Thankfully, Carol and Luna both mentioned that Minkalla would be a blessing for her. At least they had indirectly hinted at it.
They said if she really wanted to win, challenge the trio after Minkalla.
So that was her goal.
Minkalla.
The Forge. Her forge.
Matt kicked his feet up and watched as people rushed to and fro from his spot near the bay window in their portable house. He’d finished tidying up the place already, and they had a nice view from Luna’s front yard. Tomorrow, he’d keep expanding the enchantments to enable hanging paintings on the walls with no fasteners, but right now, he just enjoyed some of the most enjoyable people-watching he’d ever experienced.
Liz was more interested in the pad she was reviewing news in, but Susanne was also watching the crowds along with himself and Aster.
As if reading his mind, Aster said aloud what he’d been thinking. “So many old people…”
And she was right. Around fifteen percent of the cultivators who had arrived on the moon were old. White and gray hair abounded, all of them peak Tier 14 cultivators pushing to enter the planet.
They had managed to overhear a conversation that Luna hadn’t blocked, which gave them their only hint about a reward from Minkalla.
If the old cultivators reached the fourth floor, they would almost certainly be able to form a Concept.
A cultivator at the peak of Tier 14 was able to live for a little more than a thousand years, but after that, if they weren’t able to form their Concept and reach Tier 15, they would eventually die. Physical immortality only truly started at Tier 15, when the body was able to wholly run on essence, regardless of food, water, air, or age.
But the problem was, the bottled Concepts which so many people used to reach Tier 5 and Tier 10, only existed at those Tiers. They were perfectly useful at that point in a cultivator’s life, but eventually, they would find themselves lacking a T15 potion that just didn’t exist. So, the cultivators who hadn’t formed their own Concepts beforehand had no other choice but to do it the hard way. Overly long-term reliance on the bottled versions tended to make that even harder than normal, but it bought them so much more time that it was generally a net benefit. Still, there were always those that just couldn’t figure it out for themselves, no matter how much they worked.
If they knew where an Ascension was going to happen, they could go and use that to kickstart their own Concept, but they were rare, and usually came with so little warning that most people couldn’t reach the planet in time.
That left a sizable portion of cultivators just one step from reaching Tier 15, and Minkalla seemed to have its version of an Ascension buried in its depths.
Considering that was the reward for floor four out of seven… Matt was giddy to learn exactly what was in store for them beyond that
- Writer
