The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

14

Susanne raised her hand and stopped Luna. “Nope f**k that. I need to have a real fight with Matt. Then we can spar all together, but I was cheated out of a good fight in the Tier 10 tournament, and I won’t wait another minute.”

As she stood up, Matt did the same. He had been waiting just as long as she had for this fight.

They both had the last three years to grow. It was only a question if Queen had closed the distance, and by how much.

Matt remembered how much he grew with Luna’s guidance in the early years, and Queen experiencing that same growth excited him.

But this time, he had nothing to hide, and new skills to show.

Ideally, he wanted to beat her without his trump cards as Matt from the tournament. Without the handicaps he had worked under, it might just be possible.

That was his real goal for himself. Beating Queen in a battle of steel. Not magic.

Now that they had spatial rings, they didn’t even need to stop to put on their armor, and just summoned it on their bodies.

It was time for a fight.

3

Matt readied his sword and his buffs. [Mage’s Retreat] was the one he was most familiar with, having had outright decades to get used to the Tier 8 strength-boosting skill. It wasn’t the only channeled physical-cultivation skill, but all the others were Tier 14. For a normal Tier 11 delver that would make them fairly rare, but he’d been delving Tier 15 rifts for so long, he possessed Tier 14 skills by the bucketful.

Matt hadn’t gotten any of the others as drops himself, he had actually traded for them. Regardless, with the full suite of Tier 14 skills in his possession, his fights had become substantially more complex.

Gone were the days of throwing as much mana as possible into [Cracked Phantom Armor] for defense, a bit into [Endurance] for stamina, and the rest into [Mage’s Retreat] for strength… Well, mostly. It was still his favorite way to fight, for all that Luna kept pushing for him to expand his horizons. But for this fight he wanted to beat Queen as Matt the swordsman not Matt the mage.

Still, these days he needed to balance [Acrobat’s Finesse] for proprioception, [Ranger’s Sight] for his visual perception, [Barbarian’s Hide] for durability, [Sharp Mind] for mental acumen and reaction time, [Willow in the Wind] for flexibility, and [Lesser Regeneration] for healing.

All six scaled at the same basic rate as [Mage’s Retreat], but he’d never truly re-mapped how much of a boost he got per second with his well modified skill. His old chart didn’t account for his mana concentration or the armor he’d gotten that enhanced self-buffs, let alone all the changes he’d made to [Mage’s Retreat] to make it more efficient and powerful. But his estimates were accurate enough for the newer skills that he hadn’t been able to cycle into his core spirit and manipulate.2 25%

10 50%

50 75%

250 100%

1250 125%

These days, 50 MPS provided at least a 100% boost to his new skills thanks to his under armor, let alone to the well-loved and well-modified [Mage’s Retreat], but the table still served as an excellent base while he figured out what tactics he wanted to use in any given fight. As he was fighting Queen and wanted a good, fun, sword duel, he probably wouldn’t push too far from his normal role of a strength-based juggernaut. At 50 MPS across seven skills, he was spending a baseline of 350 mana each second, which would drain most mages of his tier completely dry two times over in less than a minute.

But for Matt?

He barely even noticed it next to the 2,560 mana that he generated every second.

Still, even after experiencing it so many times, the rush of power that washed over him as he activated his baseline buff was like the best drug, hitting him almost like a Tier-up.

Everything was so much clearer and sharper, and his body almost felt like it moved before he gave it a directive.

When Queen dropped from her en garde position to a s***h, he felt like he could see the mana build on her blade before it spat out in a crescent wave.

He slid to the side and dodged the first attack as he flooded his own blade with mana to return the [Mana s***h]. Queen didn’t let him attack without responding, and slashed her blade upward, sending her own spell into his.

Their skills exploded in a wave of energy.

Susanne flew out of the mass of energy like a loosed arrow, and Matt readied to block her thrust, but he noticed the mana building in her blade and activated [Cracked Phantom Armor] to block her [Mana Thrust]. Instantly, blue armor materialized and covered his entire body, with filigree building itself in seemingly decorative swirls and patterns. In truth, they were carefully designed to concentrate the armor’s second layer as much as possible, while still protecting his entire body. The more his original armor skill grew the simpler it became but at the same time the second layer grew even more ornate.

While the thin beam of energy that Queen shot at him didn’t look like much, it hit as hard as some of the Tier 15 monsters he’d gotten used to fighting. Still, he could and did dump a lot of his mana generation into his armor. He’d maxed the skill’s mana throughput with a bit above 2,400 MPS in total these days, half to the first layer and half to the mutable second layer, and it handled Queen’s attack without much trouble. It was second nature for him to flick his boosts down for a heartbeat to take the hit, then increase his physical buffs once again. He still made sure to block her actual sword with his own, though. He was far less confident at taking the woman’s full Concept-powered attacks than her standard skills. Their first impact showed Matt what he expected; he was physically stronger than Susanne. Between directing all of his cultivation to the physical side and getting an additional 75% boost on top of that, he didn’t really expect anything else. Especially now that he knew for a fact that her Talent didn’t help out in that regard. But it was impossible to truly know what other tricks she might have up her sleeve.