The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

13

That was when he noticed that her irises weren’t just purple. Rather, they were like chiseled amethyst. As he looked closer, he swore that he could see facets in them.

She smiled at him before turning her attention to Liz.

Liz introduced herself and her own abilities, to which Queen nodded along. “I’m Elizabeth, but definitely just call me Liz or Torch if you want. Never Beth. Anyway, I’m a blood mage, but primarily fight like a water mage. I’ve got a Talent that converts most of my skills into blood-aspected versions, and an internal concept that empowers my blood, and they combine into giving me a broad range of concept-powered blood skills, but very little outside that. Overall, I’m a close-to midrange mage, and while I can play the role of a melee warrior, it’s not where I shine.”

“You can only use blood skills? Really? How did you do the whole Torch thing? There’s no way that was all blood,” Susanne questioned Liz.

“I’ve got a phoenix bloodline.” Liz shrugged, “And skills in my outer spirit aren’t transformed into blood variants. After that, it’s just a lot of practice with [Fire Manipulation] and learning to work around the inefficiency. Um, what else? Oh yeah, my glove acts as a spatial storage for blood, so I don’t need to cut myself open or bleed any enemies to get started.”

Liz paused, and Matt saw Queen’s eyes widen as the fact that Torch fought with only skills in her outer spirit really sank in. “Oh yeah, and I’m a bit of an amateur alchemist, so I can use my own blood to make boosting potions. I have variants for everyone else to use as well, but they aren’t quite as good as my [Blood Copy] versions. That’s really it I think.”

Finally, it was Matt’s turn. He took a deep breath and started.

“I’m Matthew, but I usually go by Matt, and I have a Talent that changes the way my mana regenerates, so the closer I am to empty, the more mana I generate. At Tier 11, I have 2,560 mana, and when I have less than 25.6 current mana, I generate 2,560 mana per second. It only takes me about ten minutes to reach 256 mana, but beyond that, it’s days and years, so I’ll never naturally reach full.

“Overall, I use a lot of channel skills. I have a [Cracked Phantom Armor] that works as a channel, [Endurance], [Mage’s Retreat], [Acrobat’s Finesse], [Barbarian’s Hide], and the other cultivation-enhancing channel skills. And because my Talent prevents me from putting any essence in my magical core, I have a 100% essence distribution to my physical core. They combine to give me a physique well above my own Tier, and I couple it with an [Endurance] modified for healing. [Lesser Regeneration] allows me to self-heal easily without having to use [Ranged Heal]. If I need to use a skill that takes more than 25 mana, I’ve got a set of rechargeable mana stones I drain and refill mid-fight.

“Outside of combat, having lots of mana is great for crafting, but especially the talismans I use as Quill. They’re not easier for me to make or anything, I just don’t need to spend mana stones to have enough mana to make it work. But I do have a ring that lets me mimic mana types that I’ve stored within it, which helps me make some enchantments which normally only guilds produce. If you have a crafting hobby that eats mana, I’m happy to assist while we’re together. The mana costs me nothing to make, and sometimes I’ll throw a few hundred million mana at my AI to, for example, make a new type of rune. Which yeah, that was what I did at the tournament. I’m a pretty good enchanter, but not good enough to create a dozen new runes out of nowhere. But with enough mana to throw at the problem…”

Having said that, Matt paused to see Susanne’s reaction, but she only seemed interested when he said that he had more physical fighting capabilities. She almost completely ignored the mention of spells and enchantments.

Carol’s eyes had widened to nearly comical sizes as he explained, only for her to narrow th He didn’t feel any new power press through Luna’s own and, considering the caliber of the glare the manager leveled at the void cat, he assumed she had failed.

“My Concept is a white hole, and it lets me give endless mana to anyone around me. It’s technically limited by my willpower, but I have a lot of it, and have learned to use it well. That lets me keep my team filled to the brim with mana during a fight, while I can use my Talent between fights to fill them up with rechargeable mana stones. Between fights, it gives us basically limitless mana to practice with, which means we’ve gotten more familiar with some of our more niche skills. Like with Liz and her [Fire Manipulation], she has more practice with the skill then most non-immortal fire mages probably do.

“I recently managed to create a general whitelist for my Concept, which means I only include people I want to. It’s not perfect and can be tricked by a skilled illusionist or other impersonator, but it generally works well enough that I’m able to keep my team going and not helping the enemy even during a fight. Other than that, it gives me the ability to repel attacks both magical and mundane, but that’s still hard for me, and drains my willpower to stop more than medium attacks.”

As he remembered he and Liz forgot about their teleportation rings he added, “Oh, and Liz and I have a pair of bonded teleportation rings that let us swap places and short-range teleport.”

Matt thought it over and nodded. “That’s the important part, at least.” He looked from Susanne to Carol. “I very much would appreciate my Talent not spreading. I hide it behind my cracked armor skill and the talismans, but I really don’t want others to know how much I can do. The Royals know, of course, and I’m pretty sure the upper levels of Path management do as well, but the fewer people who know, the better.”

Once Matt was done, Luna pulled out a pile of papers. “We need to get the four of you comfortable fighting with each other. First, we will⁠—”em and try to stare through his body.