The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

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“Bah linging dhegmn… By linking. The Heart. Of the Black Hole. Wish da… With the gravity gauntlets. I wash able to ingereashe… Ingresh…whuckin Boosht…” Forcing himself to slow down, he carefully continued, “Boost the power of the gauntlets an’ selectively change where da…the center of the pull is. It’s not perfect. But…it works, and it should be pre-pretty strong. Still locks me down when I’m using them. Becaushe when it comes down to it. All I’m really doing is using a rune. Modeled off [Throw Voice] to shift the origin point. But, hey, it’s a thing.”

He’d gotten the idea thanks to Liz, actually. [Throw Voice] was predominantly used by entertainers and infiltrators, but it had been one of the skills she’d gotten for her tournament rewards. Apparently, the skill worked via a variant of object teleportation, and Liz’s [Throw Bleed] allowed her to teleport small masses of blood short distances. She didn’t use it much, but it worked wonders whenever they faced an enemy with a completely sealed bubble shield.

He started to explain as much in more technical details, but Susanne waved him off, saying it was too early in the morning for her to learn enchanting, especially with Matt’s speech being the way it was. The other three wholeheartedly agreed. Still, it got everyone talking, and while Aster and Liz eventually split off to focus on how to counter the team from before, Susanne turned to Matt and asked, “I saw that you worked on my armor. Thank you for that, by the way, but what’s the prognosis?”

Hearing that, he shook his head. “Not great. You could shtill— still use it, but that hole was just the start of it. It’sh covered in fractures, past what I can fix, and any hit it might take to save your life is liable to break it past the point of repair. My advishe… Advishe… My shuggeshtion is, pull out a backup set of armor and don’ risk the growth item.”

Susanne sighed, an action that cracked the charred skin along her neck and chin, leaving it oozing pus. She ignored it totally, giving him a shallow nod. “Not what I wanted to hear, but good to know.”

They loitered around the house a little longer, but before long, they left the house and got moving, not wanting to lose any more of their lead than they already had.

It was unusual, not charging headlong into fights and taking everything down with extreme prejudice, but none of them wanted to risk a fight with another delver at the moment. So, they picked their targets carefully, taking out ruins that their skill sets countered and rarely attacking any of the monsters or delver copies directly. Instead, they crept around and engaged only when they were confident in a quick victory.

From Luna’s reports of this floor, that wasn’t exactly an outlandish strategy; most other teams were doing the same thing. Everyone wanted to be in their best shape for the final fight of the floor.

Fighting their duplicates always complicated that, but at least those were good practice. Never mind that Matt nearly lost half his hand when taking down one of Susanne’s reflections, and Aster’s burned ear was shot the rest of the way off by Matt’s reflection. They still won, and that was what mattered. They even scored an extra [Blood Manipulation] from one of Liz’s reflections, not that any of them needed it.

They were getting tired, but at least Matt’s presence meant that none of them needed to worry about running low on mana stones, and they were able to practice their newest skills extensively, further enhancing their chances when fighting themselves from the time they entered the floor.

They also ended up fighting several other delvers, though fortunately, none of them were anywhere close to as strong as the squad of ten that had almost killed them. They were all exceptionally grateful that being Tier 11 meant they needed a fraction of the Genesis Energy that even Tier 12s would require, and that they were able to get enough for the theme challenge halfway through the second layer. With no small amount of cheer, they redoubled their efforts and made a speedrun for the end of the floor. Any treasures they might find paled in comparison to getting out before they needed to Tier up, after all.

If they could leave quickly, they could, in theory, have an almost free final floor as everyone else rested and recovered their strength from the previous fights. No one was unscathed this deep into Minkalla, and most teams were stuck waiting for healing, healing cooldowns, or absorbing skills to give themselves an advantage over their final fight copy.

After what felt like nowhere close to long enough and far too long at the same time, they made it to the end of the floor, finding an out-of-the-way ruin with stone that Matt could actually shape, so they could dig out a cavern for themselves. Being at the end of the floor meant that once they decided to challenge the final boss, they could do so refreshed and ready. The reflections that attacked them were predominantly their own and were close enough to full strength that they could get good practice.

And so, they prepared.

Matt dropped his house and charged the shields as far as he could manage, and the four of them got to work. Folded Reflections wasn’t like a lot of other floors, where the bosses were static and obvious. Rushing through the floor would be a death sentence if they hadn’t improved adequately, and that required work. Liz brewed potions, Matt tinkered with his sword and other equipment, Susanne spent time meditating on her sword, and Aster got practice with her Boon and new spells. All of them absorbed at least a few new skills and spent time working on tactics that their clones wouldn’t anticipate.

Most importantly, they rested.

Taxing Skills had been exhausting for them, and they’d only had a day of rest between it and Folded Reflections. Since then, they’d been run all the more ragged, but a week was about the best balance they could strike between resting and preparing, and not letting the rest of the delvers catch up. Floor 7 was small enough, and the costs intense enough, that if any of them needed to Tier up to beat their copy, they stood a strong chance of struggling to get enough Genesis Energy to afford both the theme challenge and exit reward. Especially if they weren’t the first ones to the floor.