The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

4

Matt fully agreed. He was decidedly not having fun with this ruin.

It seemed that Aster had jinxed them, as not long after she said that, a horde of Tier 14 kobolds came bursting out of the wall and attacked them.

Seeing them, Matt cursed the other portion of this floor theme and how it changed their encounters. Monsters would come in packs to push them toward using spells in their engagements.

Matt cast three [Fireball]s with his sword before he swapped the form over into his old melee enchantments.

Cutting downward, he cursed the fact he hadn’t left either [Mana s***h] or [Mana Charge] in the melee form, as he was reduced to using his sword as a mundane blade while casting [Mana Bolt]s with the bracelet on his left wrist.

Thankfully, he and Susanne were able to fight the monsters with assistance from Liz and Aster as they cast basic spells from behind.

The kobolds had spells of their own, but Matt and Susanne both had plenty of experience fighting the little monsters. Despite them being Tier 14 inside Minkalla, they didn’t have any new tricks, just their normal arsenal of [Mana Claw], [Bite], and [Fire Breath]. With that small collection of spells, so long as they were on their toes and ready to dodge, they were able to retreat and avoid every attack.

Which was exactly how they handled the two dozen little monsters. With Liz and Aster watching their retreat to prevent ambushes and keeping them out of the flame runes, they were as safe as possible while also not using any spells that would increase in cost.

Matt did use his gauntlets twice to prevent attacks from landing on Susanne, and his own repulsive field once when he was too slow in dodging, but they still made it out of the fight without taking a single hit, which he considered a win.

As they cleaned up the battlefield, Matt smiled as they got four essence stones, two items, specifically a spear and a ring, and a skill. For being nearly swarm level, the monsters were generous with their deaths.

Aster chortled as she used the mirror to inspect the area the monsters had come from, where a hissing, mechanical room expanded from the labyrinth’s normal tight corridors and a decently large metal box sat conspicuously in the center.

Inside sat a greataxe enchanted with [Mana s***h] and [Acrobat’s Finesse], which Liz tossed into her ring, alongside what the kobolds themselves dropped, for later depositing into their loot vault.

After about a day of maze-hunting, Liz called their attention to her compass, which flickered between two different directions as though it couldn’t decide which was more valuable.

Matt wasn’t surprised that they’d run into another group—floor 5 was small, usually about the size of an average moon—but that they had both appeared in the same ruin as them was a bit unusual.

Carefully, they crept up to the intersection and checked for traps, not wanting to use the elephant in the hopes of not giving away their presence.

They didn’t find any, but Matt used a small mirror to check around the corner. A few hundred feet down the corridor, there was a team of Monster Collective delvers.

Two were beasts, a very obvious lion and a deer, while the two humans with them were basic as those things went.

Pulling back, they had a whispered conversation and decided to announce themselves in the hope of avoiding a fight, which was likely to happen if they kept this close to the other team.

Liz directed her elephant to audibly approach the intersection, its footfalls preceding its entry to the intersection of the two corridors. Once it actually entered into the open space, a voice called out in the beast language, “Who is there?”

Liz responded in the Empire standard, “Empire delvers.”

There was a long silence but, eventually, the same voice called out, and Liz translated for them, “We don’t want a fight. Who moves first?”

“You can go ahead, and we’ll move back into our corridor farther so there’s no suspicion,” Liz called back, directing her elephant to return to them.

It took a few seconds, but the other voice called out, “Okay, that works.”

After the lion checked that they had in fact moved back with a quick peek around the corner, the team moved across the hall after checking the ground for traps.

The four of them waited until they couldn’t hear the group moving forward anymore.

Matt used his pole to stretch the mirror around the corner, where they met eyes with the four delvers who had decided to wait in ambush.

Matt wanted to curse but there was no time for that.

With their trap exposed, Matt opened the fight with a pair of talismans, bathing the corridor in flames as he cast [Fireball] through his sword. The deer’s antlers sucked in the fire and came alive, flickering like they themselves were red-gold tongues of flame.

Then, the fire rebounded, and a wall of red-gold fire flew down the corridor at them.

Matt gritted his teeth and cast [Bulwark], blocking the attack in exchange for functionally weakening the skill for the rest of the floor.

Then, he let the barrier fall, and he and Susanne rushed forward, using their physical boosts to close the distance. Susanne pushed past him with a burst of wind, her sword aimed at the lion. It dodged the attack and pounced on Matt with a single movement, claws glowing, but Matt sidestepped the attack with a flickered teleport and brought his sword down on the lion’s head.

Flesh and bone split under his blow even as he flicked both layers of [Cracked Phantom Armor] for half a second, blocking the knife the second human drove into his ribs. The second layer of his spell blocked the attack, and his gauntleted fist hit the man in the face, crumpling his helmet and sending him tumbling into the wall.

Susanne engaged the deer, blocking a pair of attacks before swinging her sword in an odd way that seemed to obscure Matt’s view of her, vanishing into thin air.

A [Blood Bullet] from Liz whizzed by him and struck the deer on the flank. It didn’t react, preoccupied as it was with looking for Susanne and bathing everything in front of it with golden flames, but it still met its end a moment later as she appeared behind it, grabbed a hind leg, and hacked it in half with a few brutal chops with her sword.

The final man tried to run, but Matt made a quick calculation and shot him with a [Cracked Mana Spear].

There was no retreat after trying to kill his people.

After the man fell, he got back up to his knees, but a [Mana Bolt] from Aster caught him in the heart and through his spine, ending his life.

Kicking the lion’s body, Matt asked, “Why be greedy? We were nicer than most. f*****g idiots.”

He knew why, but he was still angry.

The Monster Collective wasn’t hostile to the Empire, which didn’t even give them the excuse that the Republic, Sects, or Federation cultivators had. They were just greedy, and confident in their combat prowess.

Too confident, as it turned out.