The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

9

When he said that even Ascenders would be dangerous to the other cultivators, he paused his gaze on both Matt and Liz in their masks before tearing his eyes away.

The image on the screen changed and transformed into a list.

“First, ourselves and our allies. The Conglomerate of Guilds. If you can avoid it, don’t fight them. They are our only true friends in a large, dark, and scary realm. We won’t pursue any deaths at all that happen inside Minkalla, but any occasion of a fight between us and our friends would be… Disappointing. AI recordings don’t work down there, so proof and belief will be minimal, thus you are free to behave however you wish. The Guilds will send in around fifty million people. That’s about the minimum that any Power sends in.”

The man paused and sighed and went on a tangent. “Remember, only people below Tier 14 can enter, and the average is Tier 13, as are most of you. If you see a Tier 13 or Tier 14, the smart thing is to run away. They are probably stronger than you, but you should be able to escape. If you see a Tier 12 or, worse yet, a Tier 11, run faster and hope you haven’t caught their attention. If they’re strong enough to go in at that low of a Tier, you will be throwing away your lives to fight them. Individuals at those Tiers are monsters that us ordinary people can’t compare with. Equate them to the very best Pathers you see on the news, who have a good shot at making it to Tier 20 or Tier 23 on The Path, or even possibly completing it. Despite having a Tier advantage or two, you can’t beat them. If you see a Tier 11, you have no chance to beat them. They wouldn’t be here if they were too egotistical to know their strength, which only means that they are a true monster expected to complete The Path. Do you dare to risk your life on beating Duke Waters if he were only two Tiers weaker than you? If you think you could, you are wrong. If you believe yourself fortunate, and that the Tier 11 in front of you is simply delusional…you will not be lucky.”

The old man looked at them again, and Matt felt like he could see through them.

He knew he couldn’t, as he could feel Luna personally enhancing their Mask’s privacy enchantments to make them look like they were Tier 12. But the old man didn’t seem to need more than his eyes to see who they really were.

“We, the Empire, sadly send in around two hundred million youths, despite our best efforts. But our mortal population is much larger than that of the other Great Powers, so we send in a smaller percentage of our total population. We have quadrillions of citizens, after all. The Clans send in around one-fifty to two hundred million, depending on the cycle. Same with the Republic, The Monster Collective, and the Federation. The Corporations send about as many as the Guilds, around fifty million people. Sometimes more come, but the average stays pretty steady around that number. Finally, the Sects send in around four hundred million kids. That is a significant percentage of their youths in the proper Tier range, and each of them are ready and willing to cut your throats at first sight. Treat every interaction with the Sects as a life and death fight as they don’t need a reason to want to kill you. Remember, for most of you the masses of the other Great Powers are who you need to worry about. Not the rare, strong participants. Minkalla is large, but we are sending over a billion of you in at once, and the deeper you go, the less space there is, forcing you together.”

The image changed again. “These are the last few things I’ll be telling you. All of you should go to an information broker and get their full-day presentation and explanation package. The Empire even subsidizes them, so all you need to spend is your time. If you want to spend a bit of money, watch the one recording we have of the interior, courtesy of one lass whose Talent let her bypass the normal restrictions on AI recordings a couple centuries ago. But my point is, Minkalla, at the start of a cycle, has seven floors packed full of death. In addition, each floor has a rewards arena and a breakthrough point. If you’re lucky enough to get to one of them, take a good hard look at yourself and leave if you think you might not make it. Getting something is better than nothing, it’s not wasting your one shot. If you come out alive, let alone with even a minor prize, you’ve beaten the odds.” Behind him, the Sects name enlarged and showed a ninety percent fraction of a pie chart. “The Sects will lose about ninety percent of the people they send in. A horrific number. Most of them won’t die because they’re weak, but because they push too far, and get killed by a monster or enemy cultivator. But in the end, most of them won’t come back. Dead is dead and it doesn’t matter how you end up that way. Ourselves, the Guilds, the Republic, and the Clans all have about a forty percent return rate. Most of you will die for the same reasons as the kids from the Sects. The people with the best survival rating are the Corporations and the Federation, at around sixty percent. Historically speaking, they are more conservative in their delving, and have a much better survival rating bec Matt nodded while endless drills from Luna replayed in his head. Sixty, forty, ten. Don’t push too fast, don’t overcommit. They should be fine, but they still needed to not die as priority number one and had been told in no uncertain terms that they were to push to Tier 12 if they were too overwhelmed. Though, how they were supposed to do that without any ambient essence, he didn’t know. Presumably, it was linked to the planet’s rewards, being the one thing that they didn’t know. Luna hadn’t wanted to distract them from their preparations with ‘idle dreams,’ but they’d spent the last year learning about every possible floor theme that they might encounter, every challenge that had ever been recorded, and even the sorts of puzzles that had historically gated off reward rooms.