The Path of Ascension

Matt paced back and forth, with scenarios racing through his mind.

There was a chance that fully powering up this space they were stuck in would deactivate the ruin’s defenses.

It wasn’t a good chance, but it could work. It entirely depended on the default state of the shields. Matt didn’t think they would all be on by default. He assumed that they would normally be deactivated, and only turn on when encountering an enemy capable of triggering something.

Charging the ruin up could end up being disastrous, but Matt held out hope that it wouldn’t be that bad. It was only a Tier 6 rift that had inverted after all. That would limit its power after all.

According to some quick analysis from his AI, they had a shot at getting out if Matt directed all of his 40 MPS into a single area. It wasn’t something he had thought of with Keith and Travis, but Matt’s mana output was far beyond the capacity of any conduit of his Tier. Even a Tier 6 mana conduit could only handle that much sustained throughput for so long. After a point, his mana would essentially start melting the more delicate power channels.

Matt walked up to the vault door and tried to pull the handle.

Nothing.

He tried to push through the thick metal with his spiritual sense. He couldn’t see more than a few inches past the vault’s walls, but he discovered that it would be impossible to gain access without copious amounts of mana.

He turned to the other three and said, “So we have three problems.”

Camilla cut him off. “No shit! We’re trapped.”

Nodding, he continued, “Excellent assessment.” The snark in his voice didn't seem to reach Camilla, “We are trapped, but that’s not the end of the world. I’m fairly confident that we can get out of here by frying the power conduits in the area. That’s the first problem, but we have a solution for it. Our second problem is that the vault is using splitting runes to stay shut. They...”

“What’s a splitting rune?” Camilla interjected again.

This time, Matt gave her a flat look in response.

“You know, I was getting to that. The splitting runes are a pretty standard method for making anything you want to lock up, stay that way. On any side or face of the object or room you’re storing the valuable in, you put the splitting runes along the outline of your desired opening. You use the runes to make the shape of a door or hatch, and when mana is run through the storage space and runes, the material splits along those lines, as if it was cut. When no mana is present, it returns to a solid wall or face of whatever is being used for storage.”

“We’d have to power this whole place up...” Matt trailed off, lost in thought. “If we’re lucky, this ruin functions exactly like a rift. If it does, there should be an item or something that will help us attune the mana to unlock and open this door. There’s even a notch in the door for something to fit. So if we find it, we should be able to run mana through it, and it’ll be converted. There also could be some item like that already built-in. If that’s the case, just giving this place power should open the door up. I can’t see much through the higher Tier materials, so it’s hard to be sure.”

Liz looked up from teasing Aster and asked, “What’s problem three?”

“Problem three is that this shield was powered by the unstable core, which had a lot of mana.”

Camilla jumped in again with, “And it reacted to the vault.” She paused before adding, “Or maybe something in the vault.”

Matt pointed at her. “Exactly. If we do open the door, we’re pretty screwed if something strong is in there guarding its contents. The core reacted to something. The question is, did it power that something up?”

Everyone looked around, and Matt sat down to ponder that last question. Aster came over to curl up in his lap.

With one hand idly stroking his fluffy fox friend, Matt waited for one of the other two to speak up.

Camilla rolled to her back and said, “Well, the whole point of delving is to explore the unknown, right?”

“Ehh. Not normally. Most rifts in developed areas have been delved at least once, and you can almost always get some general info. These unexplored worlds are different, but that lack of knowledge usually means better rewards. The problem is the risk that comes with it, which is why we’re stuck in this shitty situation.” Liz didn’t seem very interested in the conversation from her tone.

Camilla asked, “So we should just try and leave then?”

That was the million mana stone question.

Matt presented another problem he had been thinking of.

“We’ve been here for a couple of days now, and we really haven’t gotten any good loot. It might be better to leave and explore more of the planet as a whole. But I’m somewhat partial to the idea of powering this place up and seeing what happens. This is a Tier 6 ruin. It should be bursting at the seams with loot.”

“We already struggle against one of these golems. If they get to full power, how will we fight off masses of them? We’ll run out of mana and get killed. Speaking of running out of mana, wouldn’t it take weeks to fill this place? If we just sat here for as long as it would take to fill, the barriers would run out of juice, and we could just waltz out.” Camilla didn't seem vehemently opposed to Matt’s idea, but she wanted to test his thinking.

If he was going to tell her, now was the time.

“I can fill this place up in a few hours.”

Her response was a single raised eyebrow.

“My Talent basically allows me to put out a lot of mana.”

Camilla didn’t say anything, and Matt gave her time to chew on the revelation.

After nearly five, long minutes of silence, she asked, “It really depends on the vault, I guess. You don’t put unimportant things behind a locked door. The question is, is the prize behind the door worth the risk? Our lack of information here doesn’t exactly put my mind at ease.”

He was pretty happy that she seemed to be ignoring the comment about his Talent, and moved past it without comment.

Matt offered a possible answer. “We may not know what’s behind that door, but we should be able to escape from anything that a Tier 6 ruin could throw at us. Even if powering up the door means that everything else is powered up too, we all hit above our Tier. We should be able to handle it.”

Camilla chewed that over, and finally nodded.

Liz asked from her back, “Can we fry this shield and try to power this place up?”

Matt liked the suggestion, and after getting everyone’s approval, he moved to the still glowing barrier.

“How long do you think it’ll take for Malcolm to get out of here?”

His question made Liz sit up and rub her chin.

“I don’t know. Maybe a couple of hours? A week or two?”

With that, they sat and waited. The fool didn’t have much of a chance with fully powered golems running around, so they decided to extend him one final courtesy.

Matt did some more math with his AI.

He was guessing that this place held reserves for two million mana at most. That would only take him about twelve hours to fill. He also didn’t believe that he would need to completely fill the ruin’s mana reserves to start everything up. It would be ideal if they only needed to put a quarter of the power in. That would put the monsters at peak Tier 5, which would be easy prey for the four of them.

After giving Malcolm some time to exit the ruin, Matt started dumping mana into one of the runes responsible for projecting the shield across the wall.

It only took ten minutes and around 24,000 mana for the rune to give out, and the shield flickered and dimmed.

Camilla, whose jaw was essentially on the floor at this point, asked, “How much mana can you make? That’s not normal. I don’t enchant, but melting a rune shouldn’t take a few minutes.”

Matt grinned. He could tell it came off as cocky, but her reaction was satisfying. His Talent gave him an advantage that few, if any, could even dream of. He might not hit as hard as others, but he would always be able to take those hits and keep going.

He was endless.

“Let’s just say that I can put out a lot of mana over time.”

She didn’t press, and Matt repeated his actions on the far wall, where the other rune was embedded.

Ten minutes later, their whole section of the hall was brightly lit, and the barrier was down.

Matt turned and said to his party, “Now’s the time to decide. Do we leave? Or do we stay for the larger prize?”

Liz got up, and with a grin, asked, “What are the chances that a certain scepter is the item that would fit that hole?”

Matt returned her grin. He just had the same thought.

Everything they came to this ruin for was so close. They just needed to put the puzzle pieces together.

As everyone prepared to move on, he reactivated [Cracked Phantom Armor], and they retraced their steps back to the two golems working on the specter. Matt carefully watched the golems and the surroundings as he stepped up to the platform.

Ready to dodge at any moment, he slipped the scepter out of the golems’ hands, after checking for traps.

When nothing happened, he jogged back to his friends.

Liz had her blood and spear at the ready, prepared for anything to spring to life. Despite no enemies presenting themselves, she didn’t lower her guard. She said, “Well, that was easy. Almost feels too easy.”

It did, and they all nodded in agreement. But with nothing else to be done, they made their way back to the hall containing the vault.

After checking the vault, they found that the hole in the door was a perfect fit for the gem embedded in the head of the scepter.

Not wanting to fall into a trap, Matt used his spiritual sense to scan the scepter. It was a complex piece of rune work, but it didn’t seem to be a cursed item or trap. He could tell what most of the runes did.

“Here goes nothing...”

He put a bit of mana into the scepter, and the tip started to glow.

With a press, the scepter clicked into the vault door, and after a moment, the runes embedded deep inside the door activated. The edges of the door began to glow with a dim light, but it didn’t budge. There just wasn’t enough mana in the system for the scepter to complete the separation. Not by a long shot.

Liz, Aster, and Camilla had been watching the door with him, and felt the same thing.

Liz turned with a huff and asked, “We’re gonna have to fill this place up, aren’t we?”

Matt shrugged. “If this was a rift, I’m sure the place would start with full mana reserves. We can keep checking the door every so often. I’m up for a risk. Even a more risky risk than the ones we usually take. But we should at least try and mitigate the odds of us dying as much as we can.”

In an effort to be as cautious as possible, they hopped on Matt’s flying sword. They flew close to the ceiling, and mapped out the floor from above.

The vault was near the elevator, which seemed to be a central shaft that branched out to the rest of the ruin. They found refineries and other smelting equipment, along with stacks of metal that blocked off some halls.

Their exploration flight took them down various twists and turns, until they finally found what they were looking for.

An exit.

It was at the outer wall of the ruin, and seemed to be a larger version of the hangar that they had seen a few floors up. Unlike last time, the roll-up door was buried from some sort of cave in. Whether it was already there, or was caused by them in some way, the group wasn’t sure.

After digging for a few minutes, they found themselves outside, and in a copse of trees. Before they returned to the ruin, they moved a few bushes to hide the hole they dug out.

It wasn’t perfect camouflage, as they had made the hole large enough for them to fly through, in case they needed a quick escape. But hopefully it would stop any casual observers.

Returning to the vault, they quickly discovered that things didn’t go as they hoped.

Every fifteen minutes and 36,000 mana, they tried the door. Unfortunately, the result was always the same, even as more and more of the nearby halls started to brighten.

Matt couldn’t just dump his mana in one single place, and they didn’t want to risk overloading the runes near the vault. To prevent that, he rotated to a different part of the wall every five minutes.

As the time and mana he put into the ruin increased, so did the sense of worry among them.

Down the other halls, they could hear heavy sounds of activated golems, but nothing came to their corner of the ruin.

They were close to the one million mana mark, and a little over seven hours, when the scepter made an audible click, and the solid door swung open towards them. The seams of the door glowed with the power of the runes that had split the metal.

As the doors of the vault opened, Matt’s eyes widened, as did everyone else’s.

The vault was full of valuables, and they scrambled to stuff as much as they could in their bags, leaving the scepter in the door. The first section had various small bits of metals that felt strong in essence. They were at least peak Tier 6, or possibly low Tier 7. The second shelf had crumbled dust patterns that looked like old herbs, or other organic materials.

Liz paused long enough to pout. “How long does it take for herbs to turn to dust?”

As the one who practiced alchemy, seeing all of the materials wasted by the passage of time had to irritate her.

They moved past the decayed cloth and dried bottles of potions, and found a small rack of finished items and weapons.

After they shoved them into their spatial bags, they passed the last rack and saw a glowing core. It was exactly like the one from the utility golem, only hundreds of times more massive. It was in a container that looked like clear crystal of some kind, but from the essence it radiated, the material was something far stronger and higher Tiered than them. There were also arm thick cables running from it to various walls, floors, and ceilings.

This core was only glowing slightly, and was spinning ever so slowly.

Matt paused and looked at everyone else.

None of them wanted to charge that thing up.

“Do we break it?”

Camilla withdrew her mace, and brought it down on the crystal. Not a single spark or scratch appeared from the impact. Seeing that they couldn't damage the core, they started to back out without needing to speak.

All was for naught.

With his spiritual sense, Matt could feel the slight draw of the core pulling in ambient mana. With a bit more checking, he found the conduits that were feeding mana to the core.

The increase in light and spin was visible, but slow. The problem was that both were increasing. After a few seconds, the rate of increase became somewhat concerning.

Matt’s AI raced with the calculations, and the output was bad. Warnings from his AI started covering his vision.

“Oh, shit. Run!”

Matt's shout jolted them out of their stupor, and they ran back to the vault door. Pulling out his flying sword, they jumped on and flew through the ruin, towards their dug out exit.

This time, Matt didn’t worry about being subtle and flying near the tall ceilings. No, he flew as fast as he could, while braking hard to take the corners.

As they passed the various golems and factories, they watched as the denizens of the ruin slowly came to life, and all of the mana within the ruin was being sucked to its center.

Matt watched his HUD as it calculated the mana drain, and while his regeneration was being sucked away.

The drain on his mana hit 5 MPS when the air was practically drained of all mana, and it began rushing in from the outside to fill the void.

Not slowing down, Matt flew them out and through their dug out exit.

As they passed the hangar, he had enough time to spot dozens of golems with what seemed like skeletal wings.

They were arranged in neat and orderly rows, standing at the hanger doors.

Waiting.

As they reached the outside, Matt pulled them up, and increased their speed as much as he could. The mana drain was getting worse as they flew through the ruin, and they were unable to increase the distance faster than the mana was being drawn in.

Once he was outside and able to open the throttle up, Matt put the remaining 25 MPS he had into the sword, with a paltry 5 MPS going into [Cracked Phantom Armor]. But as the distance increased, the mana drain from the ruin lessened. When the drain was back to nothing, Matt stopped the flying sword and hovered.

He thought he would need his AI to point out the mountain that the ruin was hiding in, but it was visible from their position.

Matt could see the ambient mana rushing into the mountain, which seemed to be growing in size.

Liz figured it out before he did.

“The damn ruin is flying.”

As they watched in shock and horror, the entire mountain rose into the sky. Eventually, a landslide occurred, and it revealed the ruin in all of its glory.

Before their eyes, the entire ruin was exposed and ascending. To make matters worse, small figures swarmed out, as if the floating mountain was a kicked over anthill.

The collector spider drones were the first out, and they swarmed in dark clouds. Trees, rocks, and seemingly random objects were collected by the swarms, and brought back to the newly activated fortress.

Matt quickly checked his bag, but the two drones he had snatched were still dormant.

The next golems to exit were the humanoid golems that they had seen in formation as they left. They seemed to be slightly smaller than the melee golems, and their skeletal wings were now glowing with mana. They took flight in squadrons, patrolling the ruin’s airspace in tight formations.

As the three of them watched, Matt whispered, “What have we done?”

With its winged guard in tow, the ruin was still floating higher and higher into the sky, while draining all of the mana in the surrounding area.

Even Matt couldn’t fathom how much mana it was absorbing.

His AI unhelpfully spat out a number for him. If the volume was a near-perfect sphere, and it had a Tier 6 planet’s normal ambient mana density, the ruin would have absorbed nearly two million mana thus far. That number was only increasing as the ruin’s area of effect grew in size.

Ambient mana and ambient essence tried to equalize themselves across a planet. The only exceptions were rifts that pulled in ambient mana and expelled essence. Ambient mana was created when anyone cast a skill, or was at their maximum mana. Any mana regeneration that would put an individual over their cap was expelled into the surroundings.

All of that mana, built up for however many years that the planet sat unexplored and Tiering up, was being dragged into the ruin. As the predicted mana consumption crossed the five million mark, the draw began to slow. The planet’s ambient mana stopped rushing towards the area near the ruin to fill the void it had created.

Matt and Camilla let out audible sighs.

“Well fuck.”

Liz’s curse summed up Matt’s feelings perfectly.

Then, the ruin started to move.

It wasn’t moving directly at them, but near enough that Matt didn’t feel comfortable. So, he flew to the side. As they watched the ruin move through the air like a castle given wings, several groups of the humanoid golems broke off from their patrol perimeter.

They were heading directly towards them.

“What do the golems want with us?”

Matt started to fly, but Liz, who was turning her head over her shoulder, shouted, “Go faster! They’re gaining on us!”

Aster started yipping over the heavy winds, and Matt felt the added cold of her launching [Ice Spear]s at their pursuers.

From his HUD, Matt watched the red dots grow closer.

How are they faster than us? This is a Tier 7 flying device. They’re only Tier 6. They should be slower by my calculations! What did we awaken?

The terror was building in Matt’s stomach, and he was starting to fear that they had set something in motion that they couldn’t undo.

A flash of light brightened the entire area, and while checking Liz’s perspective, he saw a beam of light lance straight into the sky. The beam from the ruin burned a hole through the sparse cloud cover. It had to be an attack at something above the sky. Three more shots of the beam brightened the sky in the next few moments, and the sinking feeling in Matt’s stomach grew deeper.

There was only one thing he could think of that would be that high in the sky.

He corrected himself. Not the sky, the atmosphere.

The ruin was taking down the satellite coverage.

That was a declaration of war if he had ever heard of one. The ruin was proclaiming that it was the master of this planet, and dared anything to challenge it.

I hope a Tier 25 comes and makes a move. There has to be one here, right? I saw Driver fight. He was so fast, even if they needed to come from the city, they should be here already.

Wait, what about all the Tier 20’s going to the world next to us? Can’t one of them slap this thing out of the air?

There was only one answer that Matt felt explained why no one was reacting. This was within their expected limits.

The ruin was only Tier 6, so they would have to deal with it.

Before he could think any further, he felt a jolt, and a cry of pain escaped his mouth.

The flying golems had caught up, and they had crossbows. One of them had landed a shot in his lower back, and it was everything that Matt could do to not collapse from the pain.

His HUD flashed. The bolt had punched through both his physical armor and [Cracked Phantom Armor], and was lodged in his small intestines. Going into evasive maneuvers, Matt tried to make them a harder target to hit.

Being able to see from Liz’s perspective was helpful, but the golems were fully charged with mana, and were using the crossbows to great effect at their maximum range.

With the two teams of six golems each steadily gaining on them, Matt let their altitude slip, aiming for a hole in the canopy of the forest. They didn’t have a speed advantage, but Matt hoped that all of his time playing tag with Travis would give him an edge in flying through a dense forest.

Another bolt missed him and slammed into Camilla, who took it much better than he had, and barely let out a whimper.

If he wasn’t mistaken, he thought he saw a grin on the woman’s face.

Just before they sunk down into the trees, Aster let loose a barrage of ice. Matt watched as two of the golems on their left went down.

Camilla called out, “Cave ahead! We can hold them off there.”

Matt noticed the area and weaved between the trees. As they made a turn, Matt felt a bolt skitter across his back, and cut a deep furrow along a line of ribs. Even Liz called out in pain, and his AI’s status reading for her indicated that she had a bolt in her upper thigh.

As they crossed the threshold of the cave, another bolt bounced into Matt’s side. Unlike the crossbow bolts that bounced well in the ruin itself, this one had no power left, and didn’t penetrate his armor. He breathed a sigh of relief when the wave of pain he anticipated didn’t come. He didn't need to add a second bolt to the budding collection of wounds on his torso.

With shaky movements, Matt landed the flying sword, and pulled out his longsword. These enemies were already fully powered, and he wanted to be ready to blast them.

The four of them followed the tunnel, stopping just after a bend that would prevent the golems from pelting them with their crossbows.

They waited with heavy breaths, and Matt channeled [Endurance]. He needed as much healing as he could get before the fight began.

The problem was, he needed to charge his blade with more mana to get [Mana Charge] to 1000 mana. So, he stopped sending mana through [Endurance] and directed it to his longsword. Those thirty seconds were long and painful. But it had to be done to survive, so he pushed through.

Moments later, they heard the sounds of metal feet approaching, and Matt’s hand tightened on the hilt of his blade. This was a wide cave, and he would be able to use that to his advantage. He just needed to avoid getting hit with another crossbow bolt. He wasn't sure if he could fight through many more direct hits.

As the sounds grew closer, Liz whipped a large sphere of blood around the corner, and two bolts slammed into the far wall. Camilla followed that up with her extended mace head, and used its range to attack around the corner.

Matt ignored the pain and AI warnings that he would catch another crossbow bolt in the side, and turned the corner with his longsword fully charged with mana. He swung with all the might [Mage’s Retreat] could empower him with.

As he turned the corner, Matt saw a golem being tossed around while encased in blood. From the way the blood appeared more real than the surroundings, Matt gathered that Liz was using her Concept to empower her blood.

Matt's sword took a second, uninjured golem in the chest, and he unleashed his [Mana Charge] with a giant flash of blue light. It didn't get absorbed as he feared, but instead blew the entire top half of the golem into scrap metal.

Not taking the time to think, Matt pressed forward and engaged the third and fourth golems.

He saw that a crossbow was raised and pointed at him, but he didn't deviate from his attack. The bolt grazed across his shoulder while he chopped down on the golem’s exposed arm.

These flight models sacrificed the thick armor and heavy construction for their enhanced flight capabilities, and his Tier 5 sword had no problem cutting through them. There was a strain on his sword's durability rune, but it wasn’t bad enough to worry about the blade's integrity. He could always use the repair rune if they made it out of this mess.

Shoulder checking the fourth golem, Matt lifted it and used it as a shield while charging the next line of golems. Two more bolts slammed into his newly acquired shield, but they were unable to punch through his repurposed golem and armor.

Matt cut into the next squad of golems with heavy swings of his blade, ignoring the pain from his many injuries, while doing what he did best.

He swung his sword and challenged the world to take him down.

More teams must have arrived, because there seemed to be no end to the golems.

After the first two rows, the next line of golems had mana blades that he had to contend with. As was the case inside the ruin, [Cracked Phantom Armor] absorbed the strikes from the mana blades without struggle. Matt made them pay dearly for each swing.

The cave filled with more and more dismembered metal limbs as Matt cut down the opposition. Camilla joined him after the archers were taken care of, and her mace struck out with his blade, crumpling golem after golem with each swing.

Matt stepped left, in between the shaft of the weapon and the extended head, and struck out at a golem that was trying to tackle Camilla.

Ice and blood dispatched any and every golem that tried to flank the melee fighters.

Soon, the momentum of their push through the golem ranks slowed, and it eventually turned into a standstill. Liz and Aster came closer to the front, and took any opportunity to use their magic. Liz even sent her spear over to harry the backline.

They were making progress while pressing forward as four, and eventually reached the front of the cave. There, they found another line of golems with crossbows, which took the chance to unleash their volley.

A part of him wanted to complain that the golems shouldn't have been smart enough to set an ambush like this, but instead, Matt's world slowed. Thoughts didn't matter. They didn't even happen. All that mattered to him was action. The instinct to protect his friends guided him, and he reacted without any thought or hesitation.

Reaching down into his Concept, he used its repulsion effect, and spread it out to cover everyone.

Unlike last time, he didn't need to slow a mana crystal. He needed to stop half a dozen crossbow bolts that could punch through [Cracked Phantom Armor] and his under armor. The rest of his team would be dead if something didn't change.

With the world turning white, the bolts slowed and then stopped, before reversing their direction and rotating to have their tips face the direction of their owners.

Reaching down for a final burst of power, Matt pushed the last bit of his will harder than he ever had before, and the bolts accelerated. He expected them to pierce and kill the golems, but they weren’t aimed, and only one had the desired effect.

His team wasn’t slow to press the advantage, and as his world went dim, Matt saw them tearing apart their remaining pursuers.