The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

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The next arrow was aimed at Liz, prompting Matt to block the shot with a massive [Bulwark] behind them. His shield virtually exploded as it stopped the blinding arrow from getting any closer to his team, and he heard the splinters of the arrow ping harmlessly off his armor. The skill was thoroughly shattered in his spirit, more than he had felt in years, and it would take a few minutes for it to reform enough to be usable. Minutes he didn’t have.

The four of them passed through a narrower portion of the ruin with large stone walls that they had chased Long Zhiyuan through not a dozen minutes before. Matt used [Earth Manipulation] to collapse the walls, but that barely slowed their pursuers, who simply blew through the barriers and sent rubble flying.

Of course, that meant they hadn’t seen the minefield of talismans that Matt had dropped when they barreled ahead with the force of a rampaging dragon.

Elemental explosions triggered all around them—clouds of acid, mountains of stone and ice, hurricane-force winds, raw kinetic force, chains of lightning, and flashbangs that rapidly alternated between casting darkness and light. He’d been forced to use nearly all his remaining proximity-triggered talismans in the maneuver, but it managed to further the gap between them all the more. Most of the group was stopped, and only two of them—the spear warrior and the fire mage—kept pace.

Liz dropped a [Blood Chakram] behind her, paired with a small barrage of [Blood Bullets].

A burst of flame evaporated most of the projectiles, but it critically slowed them down.

Before they were able to capitalize on it, the spear wielder once more threw, and then teleported to his weapon, despite Matt and Aster’s spatial lockdown. But, this time, he arrived next to Matt, who met the man’s thrust with a flare of his repulsion field and a burst of [Cracked Mana Spear] directed at his face.

The man vanished before the attack could land, but Matt didn’t pause in his desperate sprint.

He left a few more [Cracked Mana Trap]s in his wake and was forced to sweep [Cracked Mana Spear] a couple more times to preserve their lead, but they eventually managed to make it to the blizzard ruin. Susanne fell to her knees and Liz moved to check on her, but Matt and Aster couldn’t afford the luxury of pausing. The two of them worked to create a massive dome of ice around themselves, compacting it and strengthening it as much as possible.

It took what felt like forever for the team to reappear, with all ten having regrouped and unerringly following his own team. Matt tried to resist as the fire mage burned through their icy shelter but lost the battle within seconds.

Still, that wasn’t his main aim. He’d directed enough mana into the ever-raging blizzard around them that each snowflake was more like a sharpened needle, and they dug at and picked into the group’s skin and eyes.

They staggered back, trying to defend against a hundred thousand insect-sized attackers, and Liz finally managed to drape Susanne’s arm over her shoulders, the two of them continuing the flight deeper into the blizzard ruin.

Matt didn’t relent, instead redoubling the amount of effort he was putting into attacking the team of ten. They struck out at him, but he was never where they expected. He was the Herald of Winter, and that meant something. From needles to mana stones, then mana stones to daggers, the shards of ice kept growing and getting stronger. Aster threw in her own contributions, directing actual skill attacks and her own Concept to further empower the ruin itself.

Eventually, between the ruin’s natural blizzard, Matt and Aster making it so much worse, and a group of reflections that attacked them, the ten broke off their pursuit. After waiting for a few moments to ensure that it wasn’t just a trick, Matt and Aster took off to rejoin the others

Thankfully, they were able to quickly find where the ladies had wound up and used [Ice Manipulation] to avoid any reflections that might have attacked them.

It took them a little while, but they eventually found their way out of the wintery area, and after running through another two ruins, they found a safe cave to hide in. As an extra precaution, Matt covered the entrance over with [Earth Manipulation].

Dropping their house, Matt and the others could finally relax, and they all collectively dropped.

Aster looked absolutely awful. Half of her fur had been burned off, and her tail had been fully incinerated, but she was still the first to speak. “What was that team? Were they secretly Tier 14s?”

No one had an answer, but Matt crawled to his knees and over to Susanne, who his AI said was in the worst shape. She wasn’t dying, but it seemed like she’d spent most of her [Cracked Second Wind] healing trying to get her back into running shape. The skill could return her to prime health…if she had enough mana reserved in it, and the wounds she’d taken had clearly outstripped it by a large margin.

Most critically, her armor had been damaged enough that it was tearing into her body with every movement. Beyond that, half of her face had been burned off. Her eye was in surprisingly good condition—probably restored by [Cracked Second Wind]—but her ear was a charred, shriveled lump of flesh, most of her hair was gone, and her mask was flickering and nearly failing. It looked like she’d taken a [Flamethrower] to her face while Aster had been on her shoulder. Still, while the burn was perhaps the most visual injury, the fragments of metal cutting into Susanne’s body with every passing second were a higher priority.

Not bothering to get her onto the table, Matt started pulling off her armor and said, “Bwe beed bo⁠—”

Pausing as he ran his tongue over his now shattered teeth, he concentrated and carefully enunciated. “We need. To. Get the metal. Out of her wound. Every. Time. Shaeeah- she moves, it ish mahking it worse.”