The Path of Ascension

Matt roused with a groan as Liz gently shook him awake.

Everything hurt, so he immediately channeled [Endurance] to help alleviate the aches and pains.

But where the skill normally washed away soreness like this, it did little more than mute the injuries thanks to the healing cooldown his body was accruing.

It didn’t do anything for the spiritual strain he was feeling either, and after pushing the time accelerator, he was feeling like a worn dish rag.

Getting up, he found Susanne eating a small breakfast of savory oatmeal with a battered-looking Aster. Bowls for himself and Liz were already set out.

Sitting down with Liz, they quietly ate until Aster finished and asked, “What did you do to your gloves?”

Matt didn’t need to look down to see what everyone else was looking at. And he couldn’t really argue that it was an odd sight to behold.

Embedded into a spare set of armor, he had carved a hole in the center of the chest to place the cultivation core of the black hole.

It was then linked to his gravity gauntlets through a bundle of conduit running down his arms. Considering the work was both rushed and intentionally temporary for both the gauntlets and the core, it looked sloppy.

But it worked, and that was all that really mattered.

“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 itshould 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.

None of them managed to fully heal over the week. Liz’s arm still was waxy, and Susanne’s face was still a mess of scabs and half-healed burns. Aster’s burns were hardly any better, and Matt still had holes in his chest that threatened to tear back open if he took another hit because of his healing cooldown. However, none of their wounds would slow them down at this point, and that would hopefully be enough along with their final cheat.

Talismans and potions.

Matt divvied up most of his no-skill talismans between his teammates. Much of his arsenal as Quill had been made with him in mind, but there were still enough talismans usable by the others that would make a difference. And when paired with Liz’s potions, they would be able to buff themselves to the limit of what a Tier 11 could handle.

If worse came to worst, they could Tier up and just hope they still had enough Genesis Energy to take the theme challenge.

After they were freshly rested from a good night’s sleep, they set out to the boss room. If you knew what to look for, it was just as obvious as the ones with an enormous troll waiting in the center. The rooms consisted of crystal caverns comprised of gems that reflected everything, blindingly bright lights that turned everything into a white haze, and thick banks of fog blanketing winding mazes of tunnels that would force people to separate.

The one they found was set in a cavern ruin littered with drooping vines and a number of stalagmites and stalactites. Minkalla didn’t recognize ‘teams’ so much, but this room was perfect for them all, thanks to the silver fog enveloping the area. They all knew what would happen once they entered.

Matt downed his potions, activated his talismans, and drew his swords. To his left and right, the others made their own preparations, with him helping Aster. He took a long look at each of his teammates, then nodded farewell as he stepped into the mists. No sooner had he lost sight of the others than a new figure emerged from the fog across from him.

Their surroundings cleared, giving Matt a clear look at… himself.

They were almost identical. The identical part went without saying, but the almost was only because Matt felt way more tired than his duplicate looked, in a way that [Endurance] couldn’t touch.

Neither of them moved quite yet, preferring to stare in silent contemplation. Matt couldn’t help but wonder what the other was thinking.

Was it aware that it was just a copy of himself?

He had thought of the question before, but Luna didn’t have an answer.

From what he had seen, the copies so far weren’t rage fueled monsters like the beasts found in ruins and rifts, but neither did they talk or act like real people. They seemed intelligent, or at least enough to present a facsimile, but not truly sapient. But this final copy was different. Nobody knew just how different, but Matt felt his double with his spiritual sense. Its spirit felt complete, not like a shallow shell stretched over Matt’s body.

It left Matt and everyone else who cared to think about it with a massive question mark of what Minkalla was actually doing on this floor.

If people hadn't been verifiably killed in this fight by never exiting the mists, he'd wonder if they were simply replaced if they happened to lose.Even as seconds turned to minutes, neither of them stopped inspecting each other. Or rather, he inspected the copy while it stood there. He still had no idea what, if anything, was running through its mind.

Its armor had the same scratches and dents as his own had when he first entered the floor, but it was missing the damage that had been done during his encounters thus far. But that also meant it lacked the repairs and modifications he had done to it as well.

Thankfully, Matt wasn’t the same Matt he had been two weeks ago.

Each fight had changed him and forced him to grow.

Through victories and losses, he had improved. He was tired, yes, but he was experienced against fighting himself now. He’d strategized, prepared, and dug out a very particular set of gear from the bottom of the loot pile. He’d picked out and exploited his own weaknesses relentlessly, blocked [Cracked Mana Spear] with his own sword, and come to grips with his new skills and Boon in a way that the Matt in front of him simply never could.

Never would.

He was ready.

A sound like a thousand books being flipped through echoed throughout the arena, and Matt was surrounded by a veritable storm of talismans. A good quarter of them unleashed their payload simultaneously, and a hail of elemental attacks barreled down on his copy. He felt the copy ripple through space, bringing up a matching set of defensive talismans that caused an explosion as the spells collided. When the air cleared, Matt’s clone was standing unharmed, ten feet away from where he’d started and with a shimmering [Bulwark] slowly fading as the parchment of its talismans started to burn away.

Honestly, Matt was glad that he couldn’t be taken down so easily. To prevent retaliation in kind, he flexed his Concept to lock space down, and felt with some amusement as his reflection did the same. Neither of them wanted to deal with talismans at the moment. Fair enough, he supposed.

They mirrored each other, raising their swords in a faux salute before blurring into motion.

Except, the swords they raised were vastly different.

Matt didn't wield his growth weapon.

While he loved that blade, it was currently in his left hand, ready to be attached to a mount on his back while he wielded the void sword, that the vampire boss had dropped, as his primary weapon in this fight.

Minkalla had seemingly created it specifically to counter [Cracked Phantom Armor], and Matt wasn’t going to pass that advantage up when fighting a copy of himself.

Matt knew it was a good thing that they had chucked it inside the house after getting it, which meant his copy wouldn’t have access to it. It wasn’t like Matt would allow his mirror to drop the house and rummage around inside for one of the only weapons they had that could reliably cut through his armor.

Twin charged twin, with magic flaring around them identically as their body and minds were empowered. Magic flared around their swords, turning two into four, and four into six, but with that, the mirror broke.

Matt’s blade first split into two copies of the fighter set of enchantments, then he switched it to his new mage set, while its copy simply made two copies of the fighter set. Then, while his double left both [Twin]s floating as flanking partners, Matt reabsorbed the fighter blade into his main sword, superimposing a portion of its associated enchantments with the mage set. He wasn’t entirely sure why it worked, but it meant that he was able to lightly split the difference between his enchantment suites.

Dual wielding with two similar sized weapons that were larger than a short sword was nearly impossible. Matt wasn’t intending on using both at the same time.

He had made a modification to his armor just for this.

With a flick of his wrist, the void sword snapped to his back as he swung his growth blade and sent a pair of [Mana Slash]es arcing out, just as his double cast three with its extra floating twin. Two sets detonated as they collided in midair, and Matt quickly swapped swords and sliced through the spare crescent of mana with his void sword before quickly returning it to his back.

He brought [Cracked Phantom Armor] up as he crossed blades with his twin, but while his copy gave the skill a wintry appearance, Matt left his in its normal form. The extra sword his copy had was met by a small dagger that he pulled off his waist with his offhand.

The resulting explosion of the dagger overloading had worked as he hoped. It destroyed the extra sword twin, and his reinforced left arm blocked most of the damage from the explosion caused by the dagger lacking a repair rune to support its durability runes.

That gave him a lead, and he pressed it.

In theory, he and his clone should be perfectly matched. After all, they had identical cultivation and buffs, and Matt didn’t even have the option of spending more mana than his duplicate to burn hotter and shorter.

And yet, everywhere they met, Matt’s clone gave way.

Strength rushed through his veins as potions empowered his body while talismans strengthened his mind and spirit.

His growth sword bore down on that of his clone’s, with the extra weight from the Heavy Iron weighing it down. The clone slowly gave way, but his twin taking the fight slowly was a trap, and he knew it.

His potions and talismans would wear off eventually, and with them, so would his main advantage over his duplicate.

The problem was that Matt, and by extension, his mirror copy, was really, really good at dragging things into endurance contests.

Matt easily had mana to spare as he pushed his clone back, and he dedicated it to his gloves. The black hole pulsed in his chest and his enchantments flared. His copy wasn’t prepared, and it stumbled backwards as Matt struck forth with a full-power blow, flaring [Mage’s Retreat] to the peak of its strength.

His sword crashed into a [Bulwark], but that just locked up the skill’s use, so Matt quickly put his growth blade away on his back while pulling and stabbing out with his void blade in his off-hand.

Its black and purple point sought blood as it pierced through [Bulwark] and [Cracked Phantom Armor]. At the same time, he separated the growth sword on his back into its constituent [Sword Twin]s, sending all three blades to close in on his copy.

Reacting with admirable speed, it dropped [Bulwark] and spun to the side, dodging most of the void blade. Despite that, Matt pressed his advantage with the confidence of knowing exactly how his copy would react… probably.

He’d practiced against the lesser copies earlier in the floor, but there was no guarantee that this reflection would act the exact same way.

Still it was a gamble that he knew he needed to take.

Just as Matt had hoped, his copy cast [Flamethrower] and directed the torrent of fire at Matt’s head.

Matt could have diverted the oncoming rush of flame with [Fire Manipulation], overpowering his copy’s own use of the spell, but his instincts said there would be a trick there that he couldn’t recognize from his previous fights with his clones. Thankfully, he didn’t intend to engage in a battle of [Fire Manipulation] with his twin. Instead of doing the predictable thing, he cast [Hail] while using his boon to direct it into something like an icy mirror of the fire spell.

It didn’t put out the flames, but it did allow him to use [Ice Manipulation] and the empowerment from his boon to cut at his copy with a rain of icy arrows.

That forced his copy to drop the fire, but Matt instantly found himself in a struggle to maintain control over his own [Hail], a reversed situation that saw him at a disadvantage when the ice got nearer to the clone than himself.

If he hadn’t anticipated exactly that, he might have been in trouble. Instead, he pulsed his Concept and [Ice Manipulation] to spread what snow had accumulated over the entire foggy battlefield.

His clone wasn’t prepared for Matt’s instant abandonment over the skill, and that gave him enough of an opportunity to throw an off-hand [Crescent Sweep] arcing towards his copy. The copy performed admirably, with a brief halo illuminating its head before it took a quarter-step to the left, taking it just barely out of reach of the void blade that would have cut it in half.

However, the maneuver took the clone directly into the barrage of [Fireball]s that was hiding in the wake of [Crescent Sweep]. Most of them were stopped by pinpoint second-layer defenses of [Cracked Phantom Armor], but a single one managed to detonate on a comparatively undefended portion of the armor.

Only to do absolutely nothing against the implacable defense, of course. It still distracted his copy enough for the void sword to come back and cut right through [Cracked Phantom Armor] in its entirety, leaving a large, jagged cut along his copy’s upper arm.

On anyone else, it would have cut their arm clean off at least, but Matt was a touch more durable than the average Tier 11.

Fighting yourself was a pain.

It wasn’t like he enjoyed utilizing such complex chains of skills just to land a solid hit on a single target, but at the same time, it was about the only strategy he wouldn’t expect himself to use, because he’d only come up with it while fighting himself recently.

Thinking about fighting yourself was also a pain.

Taking advantage of his copy finally being wounded, Matt channeled a [Wind Cutter] through his growth sword after catching and returning the void sword to his back, allowing his new enchantments to shine. The past weeks had been spent fruitfully, and with a full set of skills to work with, Matt had added three new features to his sword.

The first was a boost in cast speed to wind spells. It was sloppy, and far, far from his best work, but the four percent extra speed, and three percent extra power it gave was that much more of a boost that his copy wouldn’t have, and wouldn’t expect. It would also give Matt an edge any time they clashed with [Air Manipulation], which he suspected he would seriously need.

Though three percent extra power wasn’t enough to break through his copy’s [Bulwark]. Before he could enact his next plan, Matt’s eyes went wide as mana flared around his copy’s arm in a very familiar pattern.

He didn’t usually cast [Cracked Mana Spear] this early in a fight, but perhaps his copy didn’t want to wait until Matt ground him down, incremental improvement by incremental improvement.

Of course, his copy couldn’t know that Matt had prepared for that exact eventuality. He certainly wouldn’t have any idea how to reliably stop his strongest trump card, if not for that fateful second encounter with Long Zhiyuan.

He and his AI had spent a couple of sleepless nights dissecting Matt’s haphazard battlefield [Analyze] of the Young Master’s lifesaving robe, and his hard work had paid off. The robe had an unusual form of elemental resistance, if ‘neutral mana’ could be called an element.

It blocked skills like [Mana Slash], [Mana Bolt], and [Mana Spear], making it uniquely good against Matt. It was also insanely mana-intensive to run, but while that meant Matt now knew how to overwhelm Long Zhiyuan the next time they fought, it was good news for him, as massive amounts of mana were Matt’s forte.

His version was imperfect. Not quite so shoddy as his wind enchantments, but shoddy nonetheless. Still, he was confident in his ability to block enough of [Cracked Mana Spear] to take any remaining on his armor directly. Now that he thought about it, the enchantment might also be a good way to break through his clone’s [Cracked Phantom Armor], similar to the vampire’s former sword. The tradeoff for it was that he inherently couldn’t use any neutral-mana attacks channeled through his sword while the enchantment was active, but that was workable.

[Cracked Mana Spear] screamed through the air, the raw power of it making the hairs on the back of Matt’s neck rise up, and was met by Matt’s sword. The beam parted around his blade, fragmenting into a diffused beam of energy that splashed harmlessly against his armor.

He wasn’t about to just stand and take the attack like an idiot. He ducked and weaved as he drew closer, keeping his sword interposed with the beam as he tried to dodge it. Matt was far slower than most of the enemies he fought, and his copy had no issues keeping the attack trained on him, even as it danced out of Matt’s reach, keeping the armor-piercing sword far away from his armor.

Before his copy hit its spiritual strain limit, it cut the spell off and cast its own flurry of [Fireball]s at him.

Recasting [Bulwark] and rushing forward while swapping weapons, Matt tanked the spells and got in close.

Once there, he cast [Fire Weapon] on the void sword and activated his gravity gauntlets.

He quickly diverted as much power as possible to the item, pushing past their previous limits with his added enchantment, and focused it all through his Heart of the Black Hole.

From the center of his chest, a wave of gravitational force started attracting everything except himself with far more power than the gauntlets themselves could normally put out. He even enhanced the effect with several force-based talismans that he’d integrated with his glove-enhancement creation for this very purpose.

Sloppy work, but it would increase the pulling force of his gauntlets for a short while.

His copy tried to block the power with its Concept repulsion, but Matt threw his own Concept at the mirror’s.

While the boost he’d gotten to his Concept’s strength from being in space and facing down a black hole was minor, his copy needed to fight not only Matt’s Concept, but the enhanced gravity gauntlets as well. When coupled with the strain from using [Cracked Mana Spear] so early, enough minor differences made a major one.

His copy’s Concept working shattered, and Matt took advantage of the suddenly-unlocked space to pull a set of talismans from his storage. He stopped his repulsion and channeled more power through his gauntlets, meeting his copy with the tips of his blade and void blade, along with a half-dozen talismans aimed at the center of its chest.

His sword met [Cracked Phantom Armor], and the void mana from the vampire longsword and talismans came together into a devastatingly strong attack. Combined, his mirror’s armor never stood a chance, and it shattered. The successful strike left the copy with one seriously bleeding gash along its thigh, and a dozen smaller wounds from the spells that landed.

His copy was blown backwards with the force of the talismans, and Matt nearly lost his grip on his sword as it reverberated with the explosion. His reflection, meanwhile, broke through Matt’s spatial lock even as he flew backwards, activating a talisman array of his own and several self-buffing talismans to match Matt’s own preparations.

A familiar pattern of swords began to rain from the sky as space was locked once more.

The twin jumped forward, and Matt was forced to redirect his mana to his self-buffs to escape. He danced to the side, slipping through a small gap in the swords around him to avoid a [Mana Charge] from his copy, and followed up with a [Fire Bolt]. The copy grabbed one of the falling swords and jerked it into the path of the skill, weakening the projectile enough that it splashed harmlessly off of its target’s armor.

By the way the reflection was acting, Matt could tell that it was directing a fair bit of mana to regeneration, trying to recover from the wounds he’d inflicted.

He wanted to pull out his Aurora Lance and blast his clone to bits, and he was certain that his reflection had the same thought. However, that particular attack was firmly not an option for this battle. There were too many ways its activation could go catastrophically wrong for the caster, and while unlikely to happen over the course of a normal battle, both Matt and his copy intimately knew all of the ways it could fail, and how exactly to trigger them.

He was fortunate, really, that his copy wasn’t willing to sacrifice itself just to kill him.

Matt shot a carefully-timed [Cracked Mana Spear] at his reflection, forcing it to dodge directly into the path of a sword as it fell from the sky. It clanged off of the copy’s armor, but still threw the reflection off of its rhythm, which Matt eagerly capitalized on with his void sword. He concentrated his gravity gauntlets and Concept entirely in the blade to make it truly inescapable.

Mana flared as his copy brought up a [Bulwark] lengthwise, deflecting the blade to the side. Matt dropped the sword, then shifted his gravity to his glove, and what started as a sword slice ended as a punch. The reflection’s head cracked back, and Matt imbalanced his Concept and gravity to apply a powerful rotation to his copy. It practically backflipped, recovering with a bit of wobbly [Air Manipulation] to lift itself into the air, and [Cracked Phantom Armor] grew even more ornate as mirror Matt put a solid two-thirds of his regeneration into the skill. The [Sword Rain] wasn’t quite done yet, but his copy was able to reinforce its armor wherever the last few blades were striking, just as Matt was able to.

Matt wrenched control over the air his copy was using to fly, throwing most of his regeneration into the skill, and pulled. He watched as his copy was forced to redirect nearly all of its mana to not being tossed around like a ragdoll, while [Cracked Phantom Armor] instantly lost its decoration and dimmed in a way only Matt could spot, which told him the copy had dropped the second layer of the spell.

His copy had two things working against it as they struggled for the winds. The first was that Matt had more practice with his boon-enhanced [Air Manipulation], and knew if not all, then at least more ways he could leverage its added finesse to great effect. The second was the three percent extra power provided from his enchantments.

Three percent, in all honesty, wasn’t much. But even when dealing with thousands of mana per second, sixty mana a second was a lot. Enough to tip the scales for anyone.

Even as Matt’s copy grounded itself and diverted more mana to controlling the air around him, Matt responded with his own [Cracked Mana Spear].

The copy tried to move and tried to block, but taking mana from [Air Manipulation] meant that Matt would buffet him around, and the reflection wasn’t able to block with Matt’s Concept bearing down on him. In the end, he abandoned defense in favor of offense, and responded with a [Cracked Mana Spear] of his own.

Matt’s own beam struck his copy in its wounded shoulder, and the return attack lanced through Matt’s calf with a bolt of pain. His AI helpfully informed him that his leg was now missing most of its muscle tissue, and was practically useless.

There were no good injuries, but fighting yourself was basically about damage control, and he would take the exchange of his copy’s right arm for a little mobility.

The copy silently withdrew, shifted its longsword to his left hand, and started slinging spells.

A smart move.

While Matt had trained to be able to use his sword in his off hand, he wasn’t ambidextrous by any means, and the copy clearly knew that.

Still, Matt wasn’t afraid of a fight with spells.

While [Cracked Mana Spear] was strong, it had its limitations. Namely its spiritual strain. And with the condition his spirit had been in when they first entered the floor, Matt suspected that his copy had about fifteen to twenty more seconds of spell usage left.

Matt smiled as he cast [Ice Manipulation] to grab the nearby ice and send it back at his copy.

Minkalla might be a forge, but he was good, tempered steel thanks to Luna’s decades of training.

Despite the danger, he was having fun.