The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

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While scouting for more loot, Matt saw five strangely symmetrical asteroids, roughly arranged in a ‘K’-shape around a barely noticeable, distorted ring of light. He might not have even noticed them if his Concept didn’t increasingly signal that the world was wrong in that direction. What started as an equivalent to slight white noise became a rather insistent spiritual tinnitus, before finally turning into someone raking their nails on a chalkboard as they got closer.

He was forced to look away and think about it for a few seconds, but then it clicked. The lensing effect was familiar to Matt, and he would have recognized it earlier, but the bright accretion disk usually associated with this object was missing.

“Is that a black hole?”

Aster jumped onto his shoulder, and after some inspecting, nodded. “Sure is.”

“And we’re drifting directly at it?”

“Yup!”

Matt and everyone else panicked. It also explained why they had to push their asteroid so hard to go to the most valuable thing in the ruin. They had been effectively stalling their rotational momentum, which sent them plummeting right toward the black hole.

Liz immediately suggested, “We need to change our direction and slingshot around this thing.”

Matt and Aster both shook their heads, and he responded, “Nope, can’t do that. That’s the prize, I’m sure of it. Haven’t you heard of the Heart of a Black Hole?”

Liz and Susanne shook their heads while Matt explained. “It’s the cultivation core of the black hole, and it’s incredibly valuable, mostly for its use as a crafting material. Even a low Tier core of a normal planet can make Tier 20 items stronger.” Seeing both Liz and Susanne look unimpressed, he added, “We could even absorb its cultivation to speed up our own progress, but that would be a waste. It’s better to make an amazing item out of it.”

Liz shook her head. “I also know that only higher Tier people can get the cores of planets and such. On top of that, it happens to be illegal.” She paused for a second before adding, “Well, illegal in the Empire, which we aren’t in, but my point still stands. How can we get it out? As far as I know, it takes a Tier 40 to take the core out of a Tier 25 sun because of how hard it is to even reach.”

Matt shrugged. “I have no idea, but it’s got to be possible.”

Susanne shook her head. “Not necessarily. The compass points to something valuable, not something valuable that we can get.”

Matt nodded at the distinction, as it was a valid one he had overlooked in his excitement, and the four of them pushed their asteroid into as close an orbit as they deemed safe.

After that, they inspected and thought of a way to destroy the black hole without destroying its cultivation core.

He and Aster chatted about everything they knew about black holes and their cores, but neither of them had an answer beyond throwing the weight of their Concepts against it until it broke.

In real space, that would have been impossible, as even the smallest black hole was far stronger than any Tier 11, but they were in Minkalla, where everything was a challenge to overcome for a Tier 14, and they both had Concepts that were counters to a black hole.

Matt was the inverse of a black hole, while Aster’s Concept embodied the true death of the universe, when even black holes had died.

From their little asteroid, they threw their Concepts against the Tier 14 black hole and were immediately rebuffed.

Rubbing his head, Matt said, “Okay, let’s try and slowly grind it away. Going up against it directly wasn’t the best decision.”

With that lesson learned, they summoned their Concepts and slowly edged them into the black hole’s space.

Aster was manifesting her Concept behind her as she focused on breaking down the black hole. With his spiritual sense, Matt could see his eyes glowing more brightly over time as he focused too, which was decidedly less dramatic.

Almost instantly, Matt understood that they weren’t completing whatever challenge Minkalla had designed for this ruin. It was the same feeling as when he stole the gloves from the first floor, but as they were challenging themselves, Minkalla didn’t deem it necessary to intervene.

It didn’t mean that what they were doing was particularly easy. Not by any means.

If Matt had connected with his Concept during his little excursion into space with Aster, he was now honing and refining his Concept as he held it against the grinding wheel that was the black hole in front of him.

In a battle of pure strength, his Concept was far, far weaker, but his Concept was also alive and growing in a way that the black hole’s wasn’t. When his white hole took damage, he was there to repair it and make it grow stronger, while the black hole was slowly whittled away and began dissipating under their combined pressure.

Little by little, Aster and Matt slowly ground the seemingly implacable black hole down, until it was little more than a pinprick of a deeper blackness in the emptiness of space.

During the battle of wills, Matt noticed that when his Concept reformed, it grew stronger with each encounter, as did Aster’s. It wasn’t just them attacking a greater entity than themselves, but rather them engaging with and overcoming something that their Concepts didn’t align with.

The back and forth felt as long as weeks and as short as seconds at the same time but, eventually, the black hole collapsed in on itself, and a single, grape-sized orb of darkness floated in the void. All the asteroids started flying off in straight lines once the gravity well holding them in orbit vanished.

Matt fell to his knees, and Aster passed out entirely.

Susanne thankfully reacted in time and used her Concept to cut space in order to appear next to the orb, grab it, and quickly return to their asteroid.

Aster woke up quickly, and other than a splitting headache, she was fine.

With the core in hand, the four of them inspected it while they drifted toward a small strip of light that more than likely signified an adjoining ruin.

The core was tiny, radiated power like an insanely powerful natural treasure, and was clearly more valuable than that would imply. Matt could tell that it was stuffed with essence from how it felt to his spiritual sense. Considering that the item was literally the essence core of the black hole, it wasn’t all that surprising.