The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

11

Matt turned to Susanne, as she also had a stake in this house, so he couldn’t just let his own house absorb it without her approval.

He didn’t even need to say anything before she gestured for him to continue.

With her go-ahead, he thought of their house absorbing the new house, and it did exactly that.

Their houses seemed to stretch slightly before its edge merged with the smaller house, and then it started to absorb the smaller house like slime eating its prey.

It was slightly horrifying to watch, but Matt was more occupied with the feedback that the house was giving him.

He found it interesting that he could expand the individual rooms of the house or add entirely new rooms with the additional material from the house being consumed, but he immediately rejected that option.

Their house was already as large as it could be with their current spatial ring, and if it got any larger, they wouldn’t be able to take it with them but thankfully, he was able to guide the upgrade.

Instead of enlarging the house itself, he was able to send the materials into their own house and improve various functions.

Their old shower and bathroom was replaced with the smaller house’s full tub and better enchantment suite, even though he was forced to expand the room slightly into their bedroom closet. They really didn’t need the closet space anymore because they had more spatial rings than they knew what to do with. He likely would have moved the walls around anyway, after getting out of Minkalla, so doing it now with no effort was a minor but welcome boon.

After inspecting the kitchen, he kept his own appliances. The other house had much better appliances, but they weren’t built to the same standard sizing as he was used to. He would have had to spend a lot of effort to directly incorporate them to his original house, while also giving up some countertop space.

Instead, he was able to direct his house to improve the existing kitchen with the cannibalized materials of the other house, adding in better self-cleaning functions and spots on the countertop that would keep plates placed on them warm. All the appliances were improved to varying degrees and effects. Though, he always thought it was a bit of a waste every time he saw that something became more mana efficient.

Matt then felt prompted to make a decision about the emptied armory in the smaller house, but as he couldn’t just add the room to their house, he was forced to sacrifice it as well.

That turned out to be the right decision, as he felt his house’s shield generators become more efficient and adaptive to outside attacks. There was some slight feeling from consuming the armory that the house would be able to attack back, if fed a few more similar houses.

Even better, he felt their mana storage crystal absorb the other house’s, letting it store even more mana in the same volume.

That, more than anything else, was a boon sent by Minkalla itself. It nearly ensured that he would never have an issue with finding ways to increase his own mana pool as he Tiered up, if his read on how much additional capacity it had gained was right.

It wouldn’t have been his first option to convert into a growth item, but Matt was content with how things turned out. He did love his house and knew himself well enough that he would have pushed them to continue living in it long after they could have afforded something better.

But this was a good solution, even if he would have preferred to bond with…well, pretty much any of his other commonly used items over it.

He just wished they weren’t constrained by spatial ring size, and that he could add more rooms. Some of the other teams they had killed and looted had also had houses that they could absorb, if only their rings had the space to hold the upgrades.

As they entered back into the house, Matt started showing off the new abilities, and even learned that he could grant people permission to change things like he could.

He seemed to have greater rights and could lock things down so others couldn’t change it, but it made it convenient for Liz so she could change her workshop and allowed Susanne to rearrange her room with a thought.

They spent half a day recovering before they finally put the house away and continued their slaughter of the horse lizards.

Even injured and limited on spells, the Tier 14 monsters were no direct threat to them so long as they were careful and didn’t pull too many teams at once.

As fun as the new items were, they needed to try and pull as far ahead as they could to avoid having to fight over Genesis Energy with other teams.

3

Slipping to the side, Matt avoided the rake of a lizard monster’s claw and punched the air, casting [Fist Blast] with his short jab.

While too weak to do serious damage, it was enough to knock the lizardman off balance, causing its follow-up tail swipe to narrowly miss him. With the opening, Matt chopped down with his longsword and cut a deep furrow into the lizard’s shoulder.

The creature tried to scuttle away, but he pinned it to the ground with his Tier 14 sword’s weight and hacked its head off with a few brutal strikes.

This floor had turned into a slog, and even fighting the normal monsters was becoming a struggle, as they were slowly forced to use their skills more and more. Minkalla had finally decided that they had used his talismans enough to discount the challenge and weakened their effects to the point of near-uselessness. That, in turn, forced them to rely on their own skills more than they would have preferred, which only increased their mana costs after repeated usage.