The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

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When they landed, Matt cast [Cracked Phantom Armor] and [Bulwark], preparing for any attacks, but none came.

He noticed what was wrong the same time as everyone else.

Their skills were slowly, but noticeably becoming more expensive.

Dropping his active skills, Matt cursed, but Aster said it first with a sad whine. “Taxing Skills confirmed.”

That reminded him to drop his AI, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to understand his bond for the foreseeable future.

Taxing Skills would increase the cost of their skills the more they used them, and Minkalla had the habit of throwing huge groups of monsters at people to force skill usage. Fortunately, none of them were completely dependent on skills like a pure mage would be, though Aster was the worst off. Bloodlines and Concepts weren’t affected which, in their case, just lowered the burden that Aster and Liz would need to put on their mana for their skills.

Still, the reward would be very useful. Especially for Matt.

At this depth and Tier, Matt expected to get three extra Core skill slots, fifteen Inner ones, and forty Outer slots from the reward, and not a second too soon. Constantly delving fully charged rifts meant that they were flush with skills, and Luna expected him to be proficient with so many of them. Most of his Manipulation skills were in his Outer Spirit, and if he could just bring a handful of those into his Inner Spirit, he’d already be much better off.

There were only a few other floors that Matt would rather have gotten over Taxing Skills for its reward. Its floor restriction on the other hand was going to pose a serious challenge.

Liz tapped her leg and asked, “Chances Minkalla shuts down our talismans again?”

Matt thought for a moment as he scanned their surroundings. “Not sure. I think a total shutdown is unlikely, but they might get less effective if we overuse the same ones.”

They were in a narrow corridor with brass walls covered in tubing boxing them in on each side, but it was open to a dull, violet sky above. Matt flexed his Concept, trying to get airborne, but his feet stayed planted on the ground.

“Can’t fly with my Concept. Cover me as I try a flying device.”

As Matt spoke, the other three changed positions to cover him, but it turned out to be useless.

The instant he brought his flying sword out, it clattered to the ground.

Liz looked back and cursed. “A labyrinth? f**k me sideways. Well, this is quite the pickle.”

Matt couldn’t help but agree. Labyrinth rifts and ruins were annoying at the best of times, let alone in Minkalla, when time was of the essence.

Susanne shrugged. “It could be worse. At minimum, we shouldn’t need too many skills for a maze, and at best, we might be able to totally bypass it.”

Liz was already one step ahead of them, feeding an essence stone into their seeker-compass and waiting for it to settle. Matt, meanwhile, pulled out the key they’d found at the same time, seeing if it had any resonance with their surroundings. It didn’t, so it returned to his ring a moment later.

Aster pointed out the problem with their compass even though Liz had to translate, “How much could it really help? Pointing to the most valuable thing may almost be bad because of how many treasures would be in the middle of this place. Even then, it won’t tell us the correct path.”

Liz’s voice was rough as she put down the compass with a raspy sigh, “Well, how did everyone do with their upgrades and Boons? Everyone get something good?”

As they went around and explained their upgrades, Matt inspected his sword. As the old man Jeffrey said, he was able to change his weapon’s enchantments with a thought. Or rather, it was like the blade in his hand had two different spirits he could swap out at will.

It was something like flipping a switch, and when he did, the melee-focused abilities that he had enchanted the blade with vanished to show his longsword clean and pristine.

A little poking around the weapon’s enchantment capacity also revealed that he had more room to enchant his weapon than he had before, even if it was relatively minor in comparison to the ability to swap enchantment sets all together.

“I’m going to need a little bit of time to enchant my weapon once more. I can store two forms now, but the second one is blank. I got more room with the upgrade, too, so I’ll need to re-enchant the first form anyway.”

Liz looked around at the gleaming walls. “How long do you need?”

Matt thought for a second before saying, “Give me five hours. I want to fix the blade up half-decently since it can help counter spells getting more expensive. But I don’t want to take the half a day that it would normally take to really plan everything out correctly.” Thinking about it more, he changed his mind. “Actually, I don’t want to change the current enchantments with the floor theme. So, for now, I’ll just add spells to the other side.”

Before he got too far into it, he pulled out a stack of talismans and handed them out, saying, “Attack talismans.” He pulled out some of the items he had prepared for Minkalla in case they got this floor and continued, “And attack items. The bracelets have simple [Mana Bolt] enchantments, but if we play it slow, it should be enough to not rely on our skills at all. I have staves with more varied skills. Let me know if you want them instead.”

Liz mirrored his action with a few potions. She didn’t have that many universally applicable ones, but not many still wasn’t none, and they could use all the versatility they could get.

He wasn’t willing to use his AI on this when it could be such a decisive advantage against other delvers in the very near future, but Luna had seen to it that he could make something worthwhile without it. A few additional spells added to his suite could help out immensely here, and it wasn’t like they hadn’t prepared for this floor beforehand.

For the time being, Matt applied a few temporary enchantments to his blade, free handing the runes required by copying them straight off a spare staff. They weren’t his best work, not by a long shot, but they’d serve him well enough for the time being as a backup, just in case they ran into any more spatial locks.

His first choice was [Fireball]. It was a simple spell that had endless uses, and he actually knew the rune form of the skill without the assistance of his AI, since he used it more than a few times with his talismans.

His other choice was [Mana Barrier]. It wasn’t a flashy spell, but he wanted a defensive spell in case Minkalla decided that his use of talismans was cheating once more. As far as he knew, items were never hit with the same restrictions as consumables and were the main way people dealt with the floor.

Matt finished up with a bit of a grimace. It was far from his best work, and half the runework had a decent shot of blowing out, even if Minkalla didn’t impose any restrictions on them. But he didn’t want to hold them up any longer. His crafting skills were already taking up a truly obscene amount of mana with each cast as Minkalla began exacting its toll. The others had spent the time familiarizing themselves with their Boons and new growth item features as well, but none of them could really afford to waste skill casts at the moment.

Further unfortunately, none of them had gotten any Boons or growth item upgrades that would help them in this situation. Liz’s Boon gave her skills something of a mental effect, which made it harder for people to notice they were bleeding or feel the wounds that her blood inflicted on them, Aster got the ability to affect more kinds of ice with [Ice Manipulation] in a way that Matt didn’t fully understand but was assured was quite important, and Susanne gained the ability to ‘cut’ light with her Concept sword, making herself invisible for brief periods of time.

Matt still hadn’t figured out what his Boon did beyond the upgrades to his Manipulation skills, but he could feel it was there.

Still, they would make do. It was a slow trek, as labyrinths and traps were nearly synonymous, and none of them were crazy enough to walk forward without checking for danger.

Liz took point, using her elephant summon to lead the way in the hopes it would trigger any weight-based traps. Matt, meanwhile, used a fifteen-foot pole to probe suspicious-looking spots while Susanne and Aster watched their rear, keeping an eye out for illusions.

It didn’t take them long to encounter their first trap.

As the elephant walked over a seemingly normal spot of floor, there was a loud crack in the air as a flurry of spikes appeared embedded in the wall. Metal chips pinged against Matt’s armor, causing the elephant to dissipate in a burst of mana. The holes they had flown out of definitely hadn’t been there a second ago.

Considering that Matt couldn’t even scratch the wall with [Metal Manipulation], those spikes weren’t normal, and neither was the trap.

Carefully, he tried to use the holes they created to get a grip on the walls of the labyrinth but, once more, his spell slipped off as if it wasn’t metal at all.

Susanne whistled. “Well, f**k that. How quick was that attack? A millionth of a second? No way to react to that at our Tier.”

Matt shrugged. He simply didn’t have an answer for her. None of them kept their AI running, as even reserve AI would slowly increase in cost, so wasting that build up time would be stupid this early.

After checking the area for even more traps, they found nothing, and they stopped to look at the trap’s mechanism.

Even after checking the holes in the wall with a mirror and seeing they were empty, Matt felt incredibly uncomfortable being in front of them. Thankfully, they weren’t attacked when they removed the spikes or when they passed the holes in the wall.

To their surprise, when they passed the danger zone, they actually felt a small stream of Genesis Energy flow into them from the walls of the labyrinth.

Being rewarded for passing the trap successfully wasn’t unheard of, but it was surprising.

It also caused their wariness to increase a hundredfold. The mirror that had broken every illusion they encountered beforehand didn’t even react, which meant that the traps weren’t hidden with magic. Either that, or they were simply stronger than the mirror. Matt added on a possibility after a little thought; Minkalla could just be suppressing the mirror to ensure that its challenge was completed without their bypassing the true nature of the test.

Matt shifted his grip on his stick and moved forward, checking each step until they had walked hundreds of feet forward in the plain, concrete hall.

It felt like an eternity, but they eventually found themselves at a crossroad as the path they were walking ended suddenly, prompting Aster to hop up and make a mark on the wall with a bit of chalk.

Everyone looked at Liz as she consulted her spherical compass. “It’s pointing in a sort of right direction.”

She hadn’t sent her elephant more than half a dozen feet down the new corridor when a stream of flame came out from the floor, scorching and burning the elephant half to death before it managed to escape.

They shared a glance as Liz dismissed and re-conjured her summon, and Matt tapped the newly revealed rune with his pole, prompting another plume of fire.

Liz retrieved a few handfuls of dirt from her spatial garden and tossed it onto the ground. With a pulse of his Concept, Matt sent the loose soil skittering across the ground, unveiling a checkered pattern of runes across the floor.

Liz took the lead, with her phoenix bloodline giving her the best chance of skill-less fire resistance. She tiptoed across the safe zones with a [Water Bubble] talisman clenched in her hand, reaching the other side after only a few hair-raising moments.

Before the others followed, they double-checked that the runes hadn’t moved, which they were happy to see had not. With Matt and Susanne’s superior physical cultivation, jumping between safe zones was eminently doable.

Once they had reached the far side, Aster whined and tapped her paw twice on the floor, indicating that she had something she wanted to say. Susanne pulsed her AI on to receive the message, and smiled as she translated, “All this stress is bad for my fur. Can we go back to killing monsters?”