The Path of Ascension

Their remaining time on the training planet passed without any hiccups. They delved five rifts a day, made possible by Matt refilling the girls’ mana pools. The increased rate of delving allowed them to rush through Tier 4. In just five short month's their spirits were nearly at the peak of what they could handle.

This being their second to last week on the training planet, they searched the list of weak Tier 5 rifts, looking for a rift they could counter. After some browsing through reports, they found only one option they were confident in delving. In a poetic turn of events, in Matt’s opinion, the Tier 5 rift they decided on was a rift full of goblins.

The rift monsters that he had battled to begin his journey were the same he would be finishing the final steps of Tier 4 against. It was fitting. As they entered the rift, Matt saw the same cave system he was so used to seeing at the PlayPen. He had pushed through tunnels like these so many times.

Then he was alone, but here, he had Aster and Liz by his side.

Pushing the nostalgia away, Matt analyzed his surroundings. This cave system was much more dank than the one he was thinking of. The rock was also much darker, a deep brown that bordered on black.

"You sure we're ready for this?" Matt asked but was only trying to give his partner a way out. He was ready for this, he wanted this.

Liz's armored head nodded, "Now's the time. If we don't do it now we wont get the chance. We've grown a lot from the pyramid rift and its Tier 5 boss."

He agreed, "If we never push forward we'll never advance along The Path."

With a shrug he tacked on, "Nothing is reported to have a Concept. This is one of the weakest Tier 5 rifts on the planet."

Liz glared, "If you jinxed it I'm going to beat you."

Matt led the way. Each step was cautious, this was the strongest rift they had delved, and he didn’t have much confidence in [Cracked Phantom Armor] ’s ability to protect him fully. He had it active, but he wasn’t relying on it. The last months of training had gotten the skill to accept 10 MPS. But while that was enough to be invulnerable to Tier 4 rift monsters, Tier 5 monsters would be much stronger than even Tier 4 bosses. The skill would prevent death, but he could easily lose a limb again if he wasn’t careful.

The rift wasn’t set up as a straight tunnel like it had been in the Tier 1 version. No, this entrance was in the center of a long tunnel that branched off to each side.

The exit rift was parallel to the tunnel they appeared in. Matt looked to Liz, and they both shrugged, then looked to Aster. The fox sniffed and turned around, heading behind them.

Matt quickly stepped back into the lead position, with his sword at the ready. They followed the tunnel for a minute, before they found a small glow around a gentle bend of the tunnel.

They snuck up and found a group of three goblins huddled around a mushroom fire. The glow of the flames overpowered the luminous lichen growing along the walls.

Matt analyzed the goblins, and found they wore only simple loincloths. They carried metal shards with cloth wrapped around one end, forming crude daggers. With a nod from Aster and Liz, he rounded the corner at a run, with [Mage’s Retreat] active at 2 MPS for the twenty five percent boost. That put his near peak Tier 4 strength at lower Tier 5 strength.

His long strides ate up the ground between the curve that hid them and the alcove the goblins sat in. The first two steps produced no reaction, but as he was halfway there, they jumped up and brandished their daggers. Matt let loose a sweeping arc with his longsword that would kill two of the three, if they didn’t dodge.

They did. The front two jumped over his blade. The third dove just out of reach of the tip of his blade. Unlike his brethren, who focused on dodging, this goblin struck back with its dagger. The crude weapon was on a trajectory to slice into Matt’s face and neck.

Matt met the monster with his off hand, grabbing the monster’s fist, and twisting to hip throw it into the near wall. There was a crunching sound from the impact that implied a few broken bones. Matt couldn’t finish it off, as the remaining two had gathered themselves, and both sliced out at his lower half.

They chose their timing well. He would be forced to take a hit from at least one dagger, regardless of any countermeasures he took. Matt stepped right, and let the shard of metal scrape along [Cracked Phantom Armor]. The makeshift dagger sent stress through the skill, but he was able to stabilize its structure quickly.

The results of the last few months worth of training were starting to show.

Matt focused on the closest goblin and kicked out. The little monster was lacking in comparison to other larger monsters, but it was still Tier 5. While Matt was stronger, the goblin was slippery, and managed to worm its way away from his kick.

From the corner of his eye, Matt saw a shard of ice sticking out of a goblin staggering along the wall to his side. It was the first goblin that he had thrown into the wall. Aster had finished it off as the goblin tried to attack him from behind.

The third goblin’s dagger slammed into his hamstring. It was unable to break his armor, but its second stab struck the back of his knee.

Knowing the blow to a pressure point would buckle his knee, Matt dropped his longsword and twisted into his fall. He would have strength and weight advantages in a grapple.

He trusted Liz to keep the last monster engaged, and put his full attention on the goblin beneath him. Its dagger was being driven into his armor over and over. The constant pressure was starting to destabilize the skill faster than he was able to fix its structure.

With his right hand, he gripped the goblin’s fist holding the dagger, and yanked its arm up over its head. With his left hand, he drove two heavy punches into the monster’s face. The second shattered its skull, and the monster went limp.

Rolling off the monster, Matt twisted into a crouch and readied his fist. He only saw an empty tunnel.

Standing, he went and retrieved his sword, and inspected the corpses of the goblins. Their bodies were similar to the ones in the Tier 1 rift, short with thin bones and sinewy muscles. But now, their small stature granted them some formidable agility to go along with the increased essence. Their slim builds used to break easily, like the neck of a bird. But now, they were equal to a normal human in strength.

It meant little to the Tier 4 humans, but these were still a different breed of goblins than the ones he knew. Even their attack patterns were more refined than those of their weaker brothers.

He looked to Liz, while Aster used her skill to consume their hearts. “Well, this is definitely an improvement from the Tier 1 rift.”

“I told you it would be. Now let’s push forward and see what else this rift can throw at us.”

Matt patted at his armor, "Their weapons are shit but the metal is strong enough that even with their relatively weak strength they can nearly get through. If they were larger, I'd be in serious trouble."

The trio advanced and passed a few more nooks without finding any more goblins. It was a long enough lull that Aster’s buff had faded away, but they continued to follow the tunnel. They ran into another two goblin groups. With the previous experience, their AIs refined their predictions of the monsters’ attack patterns. Liz and Aster were able to kill the goblins after boxing them in with their ranged attacks.

Matt’s role was just to keep the monsters off them, and punish any reckless charges.

They had just killed the second group of goblins, when a patrol came around the nearest bend. These goblins were larger, at least an inch taller and more muscular. They also were armed with proper swords and spears. The group of five didn’t rush them, but instead advanced in a formation. The spear welders were in the back, using the length of their weapons to cover the sword users in the front.

If Matt was alone, it would have been a pain to cut through the formation, and get to a spot where he could hack and slash to his heart’s content.

Liz sent a whip of blood that knocked up the spears, and Matt used the opening to dash forward and drive his sword into green flesh.

With Matt in close, Liz used her blood whips to disrupt the goblins’ footing, and Aster launched glistening shards of ice into the group monsters.

After a few moments, only silence and blood remained. Matt’s Tier 5 weapon cut through the unarmored monsters with ease. Once he had broken into the heart of the formation, he had been undodgeable. Each swing of his blade ended the life of a monster around him.

Aster only elected to eat two of the hearts before they moved forward. After a few more bends of the tunnel, another group of shoddily equipped goblins were killed. After the small tussle, Liz spoke up.

“Hey let’s pause and cultivate.”

Matt agreed and stood watch.

When Liz had finished distributing her essence, he sat and did the same. This essence was like honey compared to the water of Tier 4 essence he had cultivated before. When he cultivated, it settled down and slightly compressed his core of essence. It wasn’t the same as a true compression, but the extra weight had a similar effect.

This pseudo compression would allow the group to make the most out of their Tier 4 strength. The advantage wouldn’t be huge, but it would add up if they were able to do this every Tier.

Standing up, Matt checked down each tunnel and said to the mages, “Let’s take this time to top off your mana pools.”

The girls agreed, and he dropped his skills and quickly filled their mana stones. It took him almost seven minutes of charging the stones to fill them completely.

They repeated the process four more times to get the mages back to full mana capacity. Then, he filled the stones once more, to ensure they had a reserve of mana ready to be drawn upon.

Aster sat in his lap during the process, as her mana stone was socketed into her collar. She took the opportunity to distribute her own essence as well. It was more of an automatic process for the beast, but she still needed to spend the time to cultivate.

The white fox was going for a seventy thirty split, with her mana cultivation getting the lion’s share of her essence. The ratio would let her take advantage of her main advantage, her ice affinity. The fox was still small compared to the monsters they faced, and she would never have the mass to fight in melee range. So focusing on her mana capacity and ranged attacks made the most sense.

With the mages at full mana and their mana stones full, the group advanced down the tunnel again.

Another squad of goblins on patrol turned a hard corner at the same time they did, and the fight started brutally.

Matt lashed out and knocked two of the spears up, and with a step in, he tried to get to the middle of the formation once again. This time he was rebuffed, as the sword-wielding goblins started hacking at him.

He was able to retreat, but he had a cut in his side where a blow had landed before he was able to restabilize [Cracked Phantom Armor]. The goblin’s slash didn’t have much momentum behind it, and the skill hadn’t completely failed. It quickly sprang back up, so Matt took minimal damage, but he was forced back. But a wave of ice shards was there to quickly replace him.

To the surprise of the trio, a large wolf-like monster with an oversized head and torso leapt around the goblins, and snapped glowing teeth at Matt. Unwilling to let the blow land, or allow the monster to get close to his teammates, he pushed his longsword forward with the blade in his grip.

He shoved his sword in between the monster’s skill empowered jaws, and they struggled back and forth for a while. The warg was a true Tier 5 monster, with the strength to match, but Matt had the mechanical advantage. He was able to twist his blade, using leverage to either force the monster to roll over and expose its belly, or let go.

It chose to release its clamped jaws, and Matt wasted no time in driving his blade into the warg’s chest. Its thick fur cushioned the blow, and a goblin ran up to try and assist the beast. Matt decided to finish off the stronger opponent, and lunged after the warg with his blade. His full weight was behind the tip of his weapon.

The attack punched through the warg, killing it. But it allowed the goblin to repeatedly shank Matt in the side. This dagger was better made than the hunk of metal that the other goblins used, but the patrol goblin was too weak to punch through his skill.

If the monster was smarter, it would’ve realized applying constant pressure would allow it to break through Matt’s armor. He didn’t give it the chance, as he was already turning to the goblin, and lashing out with his fists.

The smaller monster tried to retreat, but Liz and Aster had already cleaned up the rest of the squad of goblins. Matt took a large step forward, crushing the monster’s foot under his own. The stomp was enough to break the goblin’s ankle and crumple it, and Matt kept it pinned to the ground with his foot.

A whip of blood lashed out at the creature’s neck and ended its life. Matt retrieved his sword, and turned to see Aster already padding over to where he knew she was headed.

The arctic fox went over to the warg and used [Heart of Power] on the wolf-like creature. When the heart ripped itself out of the monster’s chest, the fox ate it without anything out of the ordinary occurring. But unlike the normal buff she got, there was a much larger reaction with the skill. The fox plopped down on her haunches, then started twisting to look at her flank where her core was.

Matt used his bond to reach out to her, and felt that there was an extra bit of essence on her physical cultivation side. There was an extra piece of essence attaching to her core. It felt like essence directed to strength, but it integrated seamlessly with her own power.

It was enough that it should have pushed the fox over the edge into Tier 5, but it seemed to do no such thing.

It was an additional boost that didn’t count as part of her cultivation allotment to reach the next Tier.

Liz and Matt spoke over each other.

“I’m the blood user, that rift should have given me a copy of that skill.”

“That’s such bullshit.”

The fox in question seemed completely unimpressed, while the two humans fumed at the cheating fox.

She could advance without ever needing to cultivate. Or she could at least become way stronger than normal. Sure, the second effect is rare; it’s only happened once in the almost four months she’s had the skill. But still... Fuck I’m jealous.

Matt smacked his palm with his sword, debating how hard it would be to get a skill like that.

The fact that the skill was upgraded and not cracked meant that it was possible for anyone to get it, so the higher Tiers might all use something similar. But still, Aster would get a much larger benefit from having the skill this early. The upgrade orbs only dropped rarely after Tier 25.

With the cheating fox finished eating her hearts for the buff, they went down the passageway and came to a fork in the tunnel. They didn’t need to speak to head in the direction of the rift exit.

Three patrol groups later, they encountered a group with a shaman. The goblin mage got a skill off that entangled Matt. The skill made it so that he was unable to move faster than a crawl. Matt pushed out with his Concept phrase, and was able to lessen the effect of the skill. It had much less to do with his particular Concept phrase, than Concepts in general making it harder for outside skills to affect your body.

If the shaman had a Concept of its own, the skill could be empowered, but it didn’t push back with one. That lack of an opposing Concept allowed Matt to hold his own, while Liz and Aster shredded the monsters.

Whatever skill the enemy mage used was a channeled skill, because as it died, the restrictions on Matt’s movement stopped. Once released, he was able to help finish off the remaining goblins.

“So that’s the last of the standard goblins.” Matt puffed out. He was grateful that [Cracked Phantom Armor] didn’t restrict his breathing at all like a normal helmet would. That last skill was exhausting to move in.

They had read up about this rift, and they were familiar with the varieties the patrols consisted of. Now, they just needed to make their way through the twisting tunnels. They were never the same, and it made trekking through the rift a pain.

The worst fight they had was an encounter with two groups of guards. The first group wouldn’t have been much trouble on their own, but the second group came down an adjoining tunnel and attacked their rear. Liz and Aster turned to wipe out the new threats, leaving Matt to fend for himself. The only positive was that they had just stopped for the third time to spread their essence and recharge mana.

Busy with his own melee, Matt caught only glimpses of Liz using her spear and streams of blood. It was all he could do to dodge and kill the goblins near him. He sidestepped a sword slash to catch a spear in the side. [Cracked Phantom Armor] was still destabilized from a preceding blow, and he felt the spear penetrate. It wasn’t deep, as his skill still was able to stop its momentum, and when Matt flinched away, it slipped back out.

The bleeding was staunched by the skill, but he used the pain racing through his side as fuel to chop down the goblins around him. The pain translated into adrenaline, and that into speed and power. With wide sweeps of his blade, he killed the remaining two goblins, and turned to help his friends. As he arrived at their side, he found them finishing off a warg.

He checked his HUD, and saw that they each had small wounds. He slung his backpack off his shoulder, and fished out a clotting potion. His side wound wasn’t deep enough to interfere with his movements, as long as he got the bleeding to stop.

Dousing the wound in a few splashes of the potion, he felt a soothing numbing sensation. The bleeding stopped, and the pain lessened.

It’s so weird that I can let a potion through [Cracked Phantom Armor], but it can also stop blood from leaving.

The fight over, he splashed the left over potion on Liz’s wounds and the scratch Aster had on her flank. The blade had cut through the weaker joints of Liz’s armor.

“Do we pull out now, or keep going to the end?” He was torn. They were close to the end, and the rewards would be great if they could kill the boss.

Liz was looking around and finally said, “Let’s at least push forward til we can see what the deal is with the boss. We’re near the exit.”

They reached the final stretch of the rift and found a central cavern. There were dozens of huts lining the cavern, with heavily armored hobgoblins goblins populating the makeshift village. One monster was sitting on a massive warg. It felt stronger than the rest, and Matt concluded that it was the boss. The feathered headdress gave his theory some legitimacy.

Matt sent to Liz, ‘Test it or no?’

She shook her head, ‘Seems risky. We should pull back.’

He agreed, and they started to leave. Matt kept his front to the cavern, but he was stopped in his tracks by a soft “fuck” from Liz.

Turning, he saw a patrol had rounded the corner. Matt rushed the group, charging his sword. He wasn’t fast enough. The patrol of goblins called out, and Matt knew the group in the camp would be rushing here quickly.

The patrol was dispatched quickly, but he heard the clattering of feet behind them.

“Turn and burn them!”

Matt took his own advice and turned, running at the approaching group. The heavily armored goblins and hobgoblins were in an unorganized mass, and he saw the warg rider bobbing and weaving between the monsters. When the warg rider jumped over the line of his subordinates, Matt was ready.

He caught the boss with [Mana Charge], and killed the warg midair. He felt the essence from the kill. The goblin was sent tumbling, but he was sure that Liz and Aster could kill it, if he could hold off the backup.

Matt had to use every bit of his skill as a swordsman to hold his ground. He used wide sweeping blows that forced the monsters to either take the same hit that killed the warg, or dodge to save their limbs and lives. They didn’t know Matt was unable to use the skill again for a while after casting it. That fear kept them from advancing.

A moment later, A wave of ice and blood washed around him, and gave him the opportunity to push forward and put his sword to work. Large, heavy strikes cut deeply into the goblins’ armor, and with the runes empowering the skill, he could wreak havoc without worry for his blade. The crowned hobgoblin wasn’t much of a challenge without its mount, and quickly fell victim to Matt’s deadly rhythm, along with the rest of the camp’s denizens.

When the carnage came to an end a few moments later, he looked to Liz. She was rubbing her armored head. [Blood Manipulation] was more taxing the more complex the manipulation and the more sustained the combat. She had been throwing a lot of blood around, and that burnt mana as well as mental energy.

“Well, that was unfortunate. But we did it. Let’s get the loot.”

Liz shook her head. “That wasn’t the boss. It was a mini-boss.”

Matt kicked the corpse next to him. That meant this was either the variation two, with just two mini-bosses, or variation three, with a boss and mini-bosses. “Fuck. Let’s at least check it out. Hopefully, it’s three.”

Liz started walking, and she murmured, “Cause that worked out soo well last time?”

They carefully crept up the tunnel and found the small village empty.

When they reached the other edge, they found another village a short tunnel away. Without approaching too closely, it seemed like a mirror to this one.

He was about to suggest they leave when Liz said, “Let’s hide in the village and recharge. If I can rest for an hour or so, I’ll be good to go on. And since there are mini-bosses, there might not be a full boss. Let’s at least push through a few more. We proved that we can handle the mini boss encounter.”

From their research and what he could tell, Matt figured she’d be right. So, they found a nicer shack, and waited for Liz to recover to the point that she could cast without worry. When they had recharged the girls’ mana and Liz had recovered from her headache, they moved on.

The next village was a repeat of the first. This time, they prepared a trap by using the shacks to narrow the hall even further. Making some noise, they attracted the attention of the village, and fought off the heavily armored foes. The fight was a mirror of the first, the camp attacked en masse, and was funneled to their slaughter by the trap set up for them. The warg rider had nowhere to go, and was again finished off without much of a challenge

After the village, they found more tunnels, but none left in the direction of the rift exit.

“Do we turn around, or keep wandering the halls?” Liz sounded unsure, and Matt didn’t know either. Their AIs had mapped the route they had taken thus far, so they didn’t have to worry about getting lost, but they had been in the rift for nearly three hours.

Matt thought it over, but the mini-boss fights weren’t that hard. The allure of greater rewards was hard to resist.

Making up his mind, Matt said, “Let’s at least push on for now.”

Entering the smaller tunnels, they walked without encountering anyone for nearly half an hour, constantly wandering in what felt like circles. Matt had the lead position, and he felt the ground shift slightly, before a spike of wood lashed out of the wall and slammed into his side. It didn’t have much weight behind the blow, so it simply skittered off his armor and only destabilized his skill. It lacked the power to destroy or even penetrate it.

“Fuck. Traps?”

Matt brushed his side while Liz took the lead, using a small portion of blood to sweep the floor for more traps. They only found two more in the remainder of the tunnel. Each was a crude and ineffective contraption, but Matt was still glad not to be tanking the traps personally.

At the end of the tunnel, they found another village, but this one didn’t have the heavily armored mix of hobs and standard goblins. This village only had goblins, and they all had minimal clothing, and daggers that gleamed with the light of active skills.

Not wanting to make noise, Matt used his AI to send a message to Liz. ‘Want to push this? Looks to be enhanced blades, possibly a passive buff or some long-lasting skill.’

She nodded twice as she read his message, and he received, ‘Yeah, I think we can handle this one. I just need you to keep them off Aster and me. My blood will make quick work of them.’

She led the way, and her blender form started up. The blood started whirling around her, and as it picked up speed, it seemed to grow sharper. A dagger-wielding goblin tried to get close, but while it jumped over one blood whip and ducked another, it was caught by a third and fourth in quick succession. The blood shredded through its victim, and the goblin’s blood added to the whips and blades of the sphere that shredded its brethren.

Matt watched the woman and kept his sword at the ready. Not every goblin was dumb enough to attack her, but most did. The ones that did attack him were a hassle to kill. Aster would have helped, but she was in the ball of blood with Liz, protecting her back if someone got in.

If Matt entered, it would make the ball much larger, and the added difficulty would increase the strain that the technique put on Liz.

As he followed her path of destruction, he was attacked by a goblin. The first blow he parried, and to his horror, he found that the blade had scratched his weapon. Quickly he fed the repair rune, and while the rune was doing its work, he finished the goblin off. He followed his AIs prediction of the goblin’s jump, and cut it in half while it tried to flip away out of his reach.

By the time he dispatched his assailant, Liz had reached the center of the village, and the majority of the goblins were trying to kill the woman destroying their ‘homes’.

Do they even consider these things homes? Or are they just rage enhanced by the rift?

Matt had time to ponder the idea, as the goblins didn’t bother with the human who wasn’t wrecking everything.

When he saw no more goblins remaining, he messaged Liz, who let the technique drop.

She turned and looked at him. “Did you see the mini-boss?”

“Nope. Did you feel it die?”

“No. Watch out. It’s still around then.”

Matt scanned around, and his AI noticed the anomaly before he did.

“Under the rubble.” Matt rushed towards it and tried to intercept, but was too late. The larger goblin was in clothes that seemed to blend in with the surroundings. It sprang out from its hiding place and somersaulted over Liz’s blood. As the dagger swooped down to the mage’s barely armored neck, Aster blasted out a wave of ice shards from her perch in Liz’s backpack. The ice was so thick that Matt completely lost sight of the mini boss. When he arrived, the monster was a perforated, half-frozen mess.

Liz reached back and scratched the fox’s head. “Thanks for the save, hun.”

Aster wasn’t impressed and just hopped out, using her skill to eat the hearts.

Liz just picked up the dagger and tested it. Nothing happened, and the now inert dagger lost the glow created by the skill. After looking at it for a few minutes, Liz dropped it.

“Nope, not made for anyone. What a shit show.”

Matt was more interested in his core. Matt could sense that this fight gave him enough essence to fill his physical core. He suspected that Liz was already there, or at least close to it.

“If we hit one more village, I’ll be at the peak of Tier 4. Then it’s just filling my spirit from there, so I have enough to crunch down when I break through.”

“I wouldn’t even bother, unless you are about to break through right now. It’ll dissipate within a day or two.”

Matt scoffed at her. “I know that, but I’m hopeful.”

After Aster finished eating the hearts she wanted, they rested once more. The exit of this cavern led directly to where they felt the power of the rift exit.

Once they were fully recovered, they pushed carefully to the exit. Matt just needed a tiny amount of essence to reach the peak of Tier 4, and Aster only needed slightly more. One more village would do it.

Carefully checking for traps, they only found three. They were all close to the village they had just massacred. Seeing a flickering light, they carefully crept around the shallow corner, and saw a larger cavern that held another village. This one wasn’t like the others they had seen. This one had a massive warg the size of a horse, and a hobgoblin in heavy plate armor. The duo could be seen over the roofs of the village.

Matt actually felt fairly confident. ‘Can you blood golem and fight that thing?’

Liz’s armored head tilted one way then the other, before nodding. ‘Probably.’

With that, they headed back to the last village. Liz controlled a mass of blood and pushed it in front of her as she walked.

Reaching the new village, she didn’t waste any time as she simply walked into the blood and had the golem form around her. It was a very impressive showing of what a manipulation skill could do with practice and familiarity.

This golem wasn’t as large as the one used to fight standing salamander monster they fought the first time. This one was smaller, and just about the same size of the mounted hob.

They entered at a run, with Liz leading. Matt immediately noticed a group of armored goblins, and split off to stop them from interfering in Liz’s fight.

He knew when their fight started, as he heard a yowl from the warg. He assumed it was from the mage’s spear being driven into its side. With the weight of all that blood, she would hit like a train.

Matt and Aster focused on the subordinate goblins, also in heavy armor, and started slaughtering them. There seemed to be an unending number of them, as each one they killed was quickly replaced. They were finally settling into a groove, when Matt was struck with the same slowing skill from before. All of his movements were reduced to the speed of a crawl.

Aster immediately understood what happened, and scampered ahead through the legs of the monsters. She snuck up on the goblin mage while Matt was struggling to deflect as many blows as he could. Several got through and left deep slices in his flesh.

Each line of fire drove him harder, and slowly, he began overpowering the skill. With a flash of white, the debuffing skill suddenly ended, and Matt was free to return the abuse in kind.

With a roar, he cut his way to Aster, and found a circle of frozen corpses surrounding a panting fox. She was trying to summon for more ice to defend herself, but was clearly exhausted. His HUD flashed that the mage was out of mana, and that her reserve mana shard was empty as well. She had used everything she had to kill the mage and its guards.

She saw Matt, and hopped into the backpack he had taken from Liz before the fight.

With hate driving every blow, he cut into the monsters. He became lost in the killing, and when he found that there were no goblins left, he hurried over to where Liz was fighting the boss and his mount.

The massive warg was gushing blood from a deep cut that ran down its flank, from its front legs to its rear ones. With the special effect on the weapon, the flow of blood showed no signs of stopping. Each beat of the monster’s heart drained its life a little faster. It seemed to understand its plight, as each bite and swipe of its claws were recklessly offensive.

With quick steps, he upped [Mage’s Retreat] to a nearly fifty percent boost. His thrusting sword struck the boss hobgoblin in the side and skittered off its heavy armor.

He tumbled to the ground with the boss, and felt Aster jumping out of the backpack as they reached the ground.

The monster’s spear shaft was in between them, and the boss was trying to push him off itself with the shaft of wood. Matt shifted around and, when the hob overextended a bit, gripped the spear and twisted.

The motion sent them rolling, and Matt’s maneuver knocked the weapon away, putting him on top of the boss.

He transitioned to a full mount, and started raining fist on the monster’s head. With an effort of will, he used the improvement to [Cracked Phantom Armor] he had made with Liz’s tutelage of skill structure manipulation.

Spikes grew out from his knuckles, each two inches long and made from the skill. They weren’t as sharp as a blade, but they were hard and made good weapons. It had the downside of weakening the protection capabilities of the skill, but with the spikes, he was able to punch through the monster’s armored helmet.

With each blow, more and more blood came from the newly made holes until the helmet completely dented. The monster became a corpse with a final spasm.

Heavy breaths hurt him. According to his AI, three ribs were cracked in the final struggle. The monster had landed crushing blows to his ribs, the same way he had done to its head. As Matt stood, he saw the head of the warg land next to him. It had an icicle protruding from its eye, and he noticed that the head was no longer attached to the rest of the warg’s body.

“Fuckkk.”

Matt agreed with Liz’s statement. That had been a bit of a shit show.

“I don’t think we were in danger, really, but it had some scary moments.” He tried to lighten the mood. They had just killed a group of Tier 5’s while only being Tier 4’s. Peak Tier 4’s, but the breakthrough to Tier 5 was a huge power boost.

With Liz trying to retrieve her spear, he walked to grab his own weapon. The blade had gone farther than it should have.

What is this thing, a pencil?

Grumbling Matt walked over and dispelled the rift reward.

A veritable waterfall of mana stones appeared. Scooping them up, he counted. It took three handfuls to get the final number. Forty two Tier 5 mana stones.

“Ha! Almost a Tier 6 mana stone from this one rift!”

Liz limped over, with Aster next to her. Together they exited the rift.