The Path of Ascension

Matt pondered Liz’s question. Which side did he want to fight on? He didn’t know off the top of his head.

The Kingdom had proven that it was corrupt and Tierest. They abused their power and oppressed their citizens. They didn’t care about the little people at all.

Matt flat out didn’t like the Kingdom, but he didn’t know if the queendom was any better. His first instinct was to say they couldn’t be worse, but he really didn’t know if that was true. They could be a million times worse for all he knew.

He looked to Liz, who was pacing back and forth.

“Any suggestions? I’m torn. Is the vassal we know worse than the one we don’t?”

She spoke from hands pressed together in front of her face. “I don’t know. I also would feel like shit if we had to fight against the people we took the ruin down with. It would be like a betrayal.”

Matt hunkered down and thought about the possibility. While he couldn’t name more than a dozen people by name, it would feel like a betrayal to swap sides. As much as he wouldn’t mind punching the Prince for his stunt with the flying fortress, he could understand trying to profit from the whole ordeal. Getting a prize that large would have made anyone greedy.

He just didn’t feel any sort of connection to the vassal Kingdom. He didn’t care which of two vassals got the Tier 20 planet. They were both subsidiaries of the Empire. In the end, the planet would belong to them.

If it wasn’t for their manager pushing them into this, he wouldn’t even consider staying. The question was, what would they even get from staying?

Matt checked the contribution point rewards for participating in the war and whistled out loud, catching Liz’s attention.

“There’s a ton of rewards teased in here with reduced prices just for participating. Nearly everything is half off for combatants.”

Seeing Liz’s interested look, he dropped the bad news. “The combatant part is the key though., They’re counting a separate contribution point system. You have to earn them in the war for the discount to apply.”

Liz kicked a rock and resumed her pacing.

As Matt continued to ponder the situation, he kept coming up blank. The queendom was the unknown here, regardless of his indifference towards the Kingdom. He wouldn’t be able to stomach fighting for people even worse than the Prince and his family. His searches didn’t come up with anything more than what they already knew. There was nothing that would have indicated they were a bunch of assholes.

The lack of information on the queendom gave him a bad feeling, especially compared to other vassal nations of the Empire, which usually had glowing reviews regarding their treatment of citizens under Tier 15. Granted, only about a third of the vassal states had such reviews. But if the ones with no information were anything like the Kingdom, he didn’t think the queendom would be any better than what they had experienced.

“I’m torn on what to do.”

Liz plopped down next to him and stretched out her legs until they quivered.

“Does it really matter? We have no dog in this fight. If the Kingdom wins, they keep the planet. If the queendom wins, they keep the planet. None of that matters to us. I was looking at the provided documentation and found a few interesting details.”

A message highlighting some of the text mirrored what Liz said. “We get points based on our contribution, so it seems like the winner of the war is irrelevant. If we want to maximize contribution points, we want to take the weaker side, so that anything we do makes up a larger percentage of the battlefield contribution. For what it’s worth, I think most people will see the Emperor allowing the war to happen as tacit support of the queendom, since he could’ve put a stop to the whole thing very quickly.”

That was a good point, and Matt did some searching to corroborate her line of thinking, but was disappointed when he saw that there was no counter for commitments to either side.

He did find a clause that stated everyone would be earning contribution points, not just the Pathers participating. It meant that the Kingdom and queendom would probably send everyone they had to the fight, especially if it meant getting benefits from the Empire.

Matt figured that it was all part of the plan. If he was reading the situation right, the Emperor was setting up an entire war just to season his Pathers. The decision to provide essence stones to all Pathers who fought only served to support Matt’s hypothesis. It meant no one would fall off The Path because of the fighting. In fact, some teams might be able to get an item or skill that would catapult them through the Tiers, or at least help them get ahead of the curve if they were close to falling off.

The thought that an entire planet-wide war was an excuse to sharpen The Path of Ascension was mind-boggling. The cost had to be enormous, but it was seemingly not a concern. Even just moving everyone to this planet, situated on the outskirts of the Empire’s territory, would mean thousands of rapid, off-schedule teleports.

It was way more than Matt would ever consider spending, just for a bunch of kids to fight in a mock war. Everything he was reading showed that it would be more like a giant game of capture the flag, rather than a real fight.

Zones and points of control were set up, along with designated areas of high-value resources and rift clusters. It was reminiscent of the golem battles, but with the army watching, there was nearly no chance of death.

His musing was interrupted by a message from Juni.

Idly, he opened it. ‘Can we talk?’

Matt looked at Liz and saw her looking at him with a questioning look.

“Do we answer him?”

“I don’t think we have a choice. Would be pretty dickish to ignore him, and it would set us up against the Kingdom if we didn’t.”

Matt paused at Liz’s implication. She was right. If they didn’t answer Juni, the Prince’s representative, they would be effectively choosing sides.

They both accepted the message and were quickly greeted with a video request.

Juni smiled at them when they answered in a group chat.

“I take it you’ve heard the declaration?”

Liz responded, “Yeah, we heard him. Kinda hard to miss.”

Juni grinned at that, “We were in a rift and missed it. Came out to a shit show. Everyone’s losing their minds. We don’t know much, but some word was sent with off-schedule teleports. The king is responding with force and sending as much as he can in both manpower and resources.”

Matt knew where this was going, and wasn’t surprised when Juni launched into his pitch.

“Will you be staying? We’d love to have fighters of your caliber participating. Fighting up a Tier seems to be worth quite a few contribution points from everything I read. We intend to assemble a company of everyone who participated in the fortress attack as the tip of our spear.”

Matt finally cut the exuberant man off. “We haven’t really decided which way we’re going to fall. Juni, you must understand, the Kingdom looks like shit to us. Everything we’ve seen so far has been negative. When we were on the capital planet, we were nearly set up and press-ganged into hard labor. We had to fight a golem war because the Tier 15’s kept the Tier 7’s from saving innocent people. Then the Prince sent our group to move early, therefore drawing more golems to us, and causing even more deaths. What reason do we have to fight for the Kingdom?”

Juni just nodded and waited for Matt to finish.

“Matt, you’re not wrong. The Kingdom needs to be fixed. That’s exactly what we want to do. I know you all had a hand in killing that idiot Zoey. If you hadn’t taken care of her, I was going to make a move, which was what the early movement was supposed to cover up. I don’t think you understand how the Kingdom works for inheritance. Let me explain, please.”

Matt paused at that accusation but kept his face steady. He doubted that Juni had firm proof; the prince's right hand was just speculating.

When their old squad leader had both of their nods, he launched into an explanation.

“There are nineteen contenders for the throne. Three of them are direct descendants of the current king. But the king knows that the Kingdom is going to be integrated into the Empire, and he doesn’t want to be the ruler at that point. He’d rather pass the Kingdom off to a successor, instead of ending his rule with a lesser title. There’s a lot of competition for that role. The king adopts anyone with a bit of drive or skill from the royal branch families. He’s always considered the talented ones as potential successors. But that leaves the three actual children at a severe disadvantage.”

“The Prince’s eldest sister, Cori, learned that the hard way. She was and still is a great fighter and a masterful dueler. But she made a mistake. She only worried about advancing, and had no support from the nobles, so she was squeezed out of the running from lack of political acumen. Now she’s a general with no hope of taking the throne. The nobles don’t want someone who can’t be influenced on the throne after the integration. They’ll still be considered upper class citizens of the Kingdom, just at a lower level of nobility. To keep their status, they’ll only give their support to someone they can work with.”

“The Prince learned from her failure, and gathered as much support as he could. As much as the last golem fight was tragic, it gave the Prince a massive boost in support. Despite being cut off from vital resources, he was able to tackle the invasion with little difficulty, and without the need for interference. It helped him massively expand his support base, and he’s now one the top three royals in contention for the throne. If he can do well in leading this defensive war, he can easily muster enough support to secure the throne and make meaningful changes. Even the king is seemingly lending his support to the Prince, as he’s sending Cori to defend the Tier 20 planet. Essentially, this mini-war is all on the Prince. It’s his chance to prove his ability to lead without the risk of anyone trying to steal his thunder.”

Matt looked to Liz. That was a nice breakdown of the Prince’s situation, but didn’t explain why they should help him.

He said as much, and Juni nodded. “The Prince is trying to make changes to bring the Kingdom more in line with the Empire as a whole. Even if he doesn’t personally believe that would be be a good thing, he’s not stupid. He knows that changes will happen when the integration happens, whether he agrees with them or not. He wants to make the transition easier by starting the shift earlier. The other top contenders are pushing agendas of trying to hold off the integration as long as possible. That was only a viable strategy before the Tier 20 planet was discovered. Now, it’s inevitable that the Prince’s platform gathers more support from all sides. Look up the records of the Prince meeting with his people. He’s always pushed an agenda of improving and changing laws to more reflect the Empire’s standards.”

Matt and Liz met each other’s eyes and silently communicated. Matt was swayed by Juni’s speech, but Liz seemed more reluctant to join the Prince.

He let her decide, and after a moment, she nodded.

“Sure, Juni, we’ll help. I hope the Prince will keep his promises if he wins the throne. I’ll be checking.”

Juni didn’t seem to recognize the severity of the threat, and just thanked them profusely.

“Ok, for now, we’re just preparing defensive embankments. We don’t know where the connection to whatever planets they’re linking up will equate to here. We expect a few weeks before the first push from the queendom. They need to gather their forces as much as we need to. The king doesn’t think they were given any more warning than us for the war, so they’ll also be scrambling to get their fighters in place. At least when it comes to this Tier 6 planet. The Tier 20 planet will be a much larger and more detailed fight, but that isn’t our problem. Try and Tier up in the meantime. With your combat prowess, you can fight the Tier 7’s and make a much larger difference.”

Once the conversation ended, Matt looked at Liz, who shrugged back.

“For better or worse, we have to fight. It’s better to fight for the side that we’re already familiar with. And now we won’t be hunted for the rest of our time on the planet. I don’t know if they could do that, but the Kingdom could still find ways to make the rest of our stay pretty shitty. Besides, I wouldn't put it past them to try and skirt the rules in the name of security.”

She popped up and brushed her pants off. “We might as well Tier up.”

Matt pulled her back down. “Hold up. First, we should take advantage of our remaining time at Tier 5. I wanted to gather more information from rifts before trying some of these ideas, but now we’re short on time.”

Liz cocked her head and poked him, “Oh, you have new ideas? Spill.”

“First, I want to try mixing every mana type we have and throwing in a growth item. See what we get out of it. We have three remaining, and I figure at least one of them is essentially useless to us. Then, I want to see if I can make a Tier 5 rift from the mana concentration herbs I bought. They’re Tier 5 too, so it’ll either mean running the rift at Tier 4 and hoping to get lucky with a Tier up rift reward, or just gamble on it being the same rift. It’s stupid that the mana concentration items are so rare. I’ve set up automatic notifications for the Empire Market, and I still can’t find any.”

Liz chuckled, “The people who sell them are people who already used them, and don’t have friends or family to help. The only reason we found one was that someone probably found a large patch of them, took what they needed, then sold the rest.”

She poked him playfully. “But let me play with the herbs from the Tier 4 rift. I can practice with them in case we get the Tier 5 one to work, and it’ll bring in quite a bit of money. Especially if we hold them until all the other Pathers come.”

Matt nodded along and asked, “Should we go get everything inspected? We still have the bucket and a bag of items.”

With that decided, they flew to the city and had a game of tag along the way. It was good flying practice, but mostly they did it for fun.

When they arrived at the city’s outskirts, it was bustling like a kicked-over ant hill. Where there were minimal defences on the outskirts before, there were now huge walls being built, with runes being inscribed on their surface.

They were clearly getting ready for sieges. Matt had read the information packet, but found little about how actual cities would be treated. He didn’t think the army would allow them to be burned down in a siege, but there wasn’t a detailed plan in the provided information. After seeing the rubble of the golem attack, he didn’t blame them for preparing more robust defences.

Walking through the city cemented the feeling of the impending attack. Faces were tense, and everyone walked with a purpose.

When they reached the auction house, they were met with a line to get in the door. A quick check showed that the auction house had opened an emergency auction, and the news had spread to all the people who were trying to prepare for the war. A new skill or weapon was just the thing they wanted.

Matt and Liz cut the line, receiving shouts of displeasure from the people who noticed. They ignored them, and when they reached the front, shouted to the security that they were there to sell while flashing their VIP credentials. It was enough to get them through the door and out of the madhouse.

A hurried attendant who Matt recognized came up to them and nearly pleaded, “Please tell me you have stuff to sell?”

“We have a lot.” Liz answered the woman’s plea with a thumbs up.

“Praise every ascender. We’re getting overrun here. Let me get you to a room.”

Not a minute later, they were seated in their usual room, waiting for their appraiser to come and greet them.

Instead of their usual appraiser, a younger-looking man came in and smiled. “Matthew, Elizabeth, good to meet you both. I’m Samuel, a Tier 19 appraiser assigned to you from The Path. I’ll always be near where you delve to ensure that you have a secure place to get things appraised. I’ll be attaching myself to the nearest auction house from now on.”

Matt paused and looked to Liz. “Well, that’s convenient. Are you able to get things on the Empire Market then?”

“Yes, I am. It will also keep most eyes off your activities, which will help you remain under the radar.”

Liz didn’t seem bothered, which reassured Matt. She just dropped her spatial bag onto the table and dumped out the mass of items. Most were weapons or armor from their testing of various combinations of starting items and mana types to seed rifts. These were just the most common variants, with effects they could mostly sense for themselves.

They had another pile of near equal size that consisted of items with stranger effects.

Samuel just grinned. “I love seekers. You always bring the best goodies.”

He quickly sorted everything and started inspecting them. It didn’t take long, as there was nothing too crazy in the current pile, and quickly everything was put away inside the man’s spatial ring. The next pile took longer, but they didn’t find anything they wanted to keep.

Finally, they came to the growth items. As Matt expected, two of them had some value, but the third was a dud. No one wanted a dagger that increased bludgeoning damage. It was perfect for Matt’s testing, so they kept it.

With the growth items appraised, Matt pulled out the bucket of skills they had. He had only put them there as a joke, but the absurdity of an entire bucket of skills was too much for either of them to resist, so they just kept adding to the pile.

Most were various non-combat skills, or crafting skills that they had no interest in. The others were the more common combat skills they already had, or had no use for. Still, they kept a few skills for themselves. Each of them kept a shard of [Mana Bolt]. Liz’s [Blood Bolt] wasn’t quite as good as the original, but it still kept some of its penetrating power. Liz kept a shard of [Ice Spear] that turned into [Blood Spear] which put out more damage for a higher cost, a tradeoff that Liz was fine with.

Liz and Aster had both gotten [Shatter], which was a skill that shattered targeted ice. Liz’s variant, [Hemorrhage], only seemed to work once Liz broke someone’s spiritual protection, which meant that she would have already won the fight at that point. But for Aster at least, it would still serve as a useful utility skill to fill out her arsenal. Lastly, Matt had kept [Jolt], a relatively cheap electricity skill, for future use.

Lastly, there were two skills they weren’t able to identify on their own. Matt and Liz were hopeful that they were Tier 14 skills, as they had the entire catalog of Tier 8 skill shards downloaded in their AI and couldn’t identify them.

It would be rare for a Tier 5 or Tier 6 rift to produce them, but not unheard of. With the number of fully-charged rifts they had delved, it wasn’t impossible for them to get that lucky.

Samuel quickly sorted out the skills, but paused over the two unidentified skills. He paused for a notable amount of time on one of them in particular. Matt got worried, but the appraiser eventually put it down and checked the second shard.

“This one -” The appraiser held up the second skill, “Is a Tier 14 [Heat]. It’s a forging skill that goes for quite a bit.” He picked up the first skill and shrugged his shoulders. “I have no clue what this one is. It’s Tier 8 for sure, but I’ve never seen it.”

Matt felt someone breathing down his neck, and swatted behind him to find nothing. He returned his attention to the Tier 19 after checking the room.

“So, what does that mean?” Liz’s question mirrored his own.

“Give me a minute. It feels like an armor skill, but other than that, I can’t really tell. It reminds me of [Iron Skin], but it's the wrong tier, and the… well, not exactly structural… let's call it the details in the cosmetic structure of the skill are completely different.”

Samuel shrugged. “We can put it in a scanner and let it work its way up the chain of AIs until it finds a database with the skill registered. I think it’s a rare skill.”

Putting actions to words, a small portable scanner plunked on the table, and Samuel set the skill on the scanner. It was similar to the one at Bennys, and the little device took Matt back to when he stole [Cracked Phantom Armor]. It felt so long ago, he barely recognized himself.

The little machine beeped, “Unknown skill. Contacting higher authority.”

A circle spun on its interface pad, and when it beeped next, Matt expected an answer. Instead the machine droned, “Higher authority needed. Opening portal to nearest planet to send request. Please standby.”

Nearly five minutes later, it beeped a third time, “Unknown skill detected. Higher authority needed. Opening portal to nearest planet to send request.”

Matt looked at Samuel, who was staring at the device and the skill shard sitting on the glass with naked desire.

“What does this mean?”

Without looking up, the appraiser said, “We could be looking at a super rare skill. It’s not common, but an incredibly rare skill is found every once and a while. So they aren’t always in the normal databases.”

Liz questioned, “What does that mean for us?”

“There’s a reward for any rare skills and the location of the rift that produced said skill. Normally, the reward is off the drop table and can be anything, but the Empire likes to note those rifts and make sure they’re watched.”

Three repetitions later, the scanner said something different. “Higher authority reached. New skill detected: [Copper Skin] Tier 8 variation of the Tier 14 skill [Iron Skin]. Reserve 100 or more mana to increase durability and take on slight properties of the metal in question. Full conversion to metal is possible with enough mana reserved. Please hold the skill for an Empire representative to perform a more thorough skill investigation. 20,000 Empire Market Contribution Points are awarded immediately. An equivalent price in mana stones can be exchanged.”

Matt shot a questioning look to the appraiser, only to find the man looking at the skill like it was his child. The skill would have been perfect for him if it wasn't for the fact it was a reserve skill and would cripple his mana generation when it locked a part of his mana pool down as it would act as if his max mana was whatever the reserve was lower. As it was, the skill held little value for him now.

“Um. That doesn’t seem like a rare skill.”

“No. No, it isn’t. This is a completely new skill. I don’t even know the last time that happened. Do you know which rift you got this skill shard out of? Whoever the Empire sends is going to want to know.”

Matt frowned. He did know where the skill came from. It was a rift he had dissipated when they hadn’t gotten a growth item out of it. Now he felt like a dumbass for doing that, but at least he knew the formula for the rift. In theory, he could make it again.

“No, the rift is gone.”

“Fuck all the ducks. That’s just our luck. Well, it’s still an amazingly monumental find. Wait, what the fuck!?”

Matt was startled, but the skill shard on the scanner was gone.

He panicked, and his reaction was met with similar reactions by Liz and Samuel. The latter he looked to with distrust.

“Did you store it in your spatial ring?”

The Tier 19 looked as panicked as Matt felt, and nearly screamed, “No! I didn’t! My AI can confirm it. Do you know how fucked we’ll be if we can’t find it? Oh no.”

The appraiser looked like he wanted to vomit, and with the AI backed guarantee, Matt believed him. It didn’t explain where the skill went.

The scanner beeped and caused them all to pause. “Congratulations, an Empire representative has confirmed receipt of skill, and rewards are now distributed.”

All three of them slumped to their seats.

Liz looked around and cursed. “Whoever picked the skill up, you’re a dick. You could have at least appeared in person and introduced yourself. No need to snatch the skill from across the planet and leave. You also didn’t have to wait so long to confirm receipt. Asshole.”

Matt felt Liz was understating it, but Samuel looked flustered. “We shouldn’t speak ill of someone who can take a skill shard away at that kind of range. Just bad practice to get on anyone that strong’s bad side.”

Liz shrugged and countered, “It’s the truth. They pulled a dick move and deserve to be called out. It’s also rude as fuck.”

After they all calmed down, they finished their transaction, and Liz brought up their second reason for visiting. “I need to exchange for growth item requirements from Tier 1 to Tier 7. Can we do that off our last sale?”

The now recovered Tier 19’s eyes flickered for a moment, and he nodded. “Yes, you will have some money left over with the Tier 14 skill shard, as long as you don’t need the absolute rarest materials. This local company also authorized you some credit, so don’t worry about it. Worse comes to worst. You just need to convert some Contribution Points to mana stones. I’ll have someone lead you to the room where they keep the tables.”

With that, the man quickly vanished around a corner, and Matt grinned at Liz. “Think he’s still happy to be assigned to us now?”

“Pshh, no. I bet he’s requesting a transfer immediately.”

They had a good laugh at the man’s reaction. Matt had been surprised as well, but after all the weird stuff that came with being around the daughter of two Tier 48’s, he was pretty used to this kind of thing.

Two hours later, Liz was rubbing her gloved hand and looking at it weirdly.

“I think I could handle the Tier 7 upgrade now. My spirit doesn’t feel stressed at all from the Tier 6 upgrade.”

“It’s still not worth it. Sure, we can Tier up if it proves too much for you to handle, but then we lose out on pulling more growth items. We have the Tier 7 upgrade material, so there’s no rush.”

“Yeah, I know that, but I kinda want to push it and see if I can handle the Tier 8 upgrade at Tier 6. The leaf really did help in ways I didn’t expect.”

Matt felt envious, even though he knew it was stupid. He had already gotten a massive boost from the root of the tree of perfection. Wishing for more was a fool’s errand, but he was still slightly jealous. He put the thought out of his mind and focused on his next tests.

Before they left, Matt purchased another set of mana stones with all the elemental aspects. If he was gonna do the testing, he figured he might as well go all out.

Samuel also came back to pay them a visit, and looked nearly gleeful when he asked, “Look for more unique goodies like that. While I don't like higher Tiers playing games. My being nearly right on the appraisal brought my credit up a ton. A few more like that and I can get a promotion, or five.”

When they arrived at the island, they did their testing. Liz went to test her upgraded glove, and Matt prepared for his two most important rift creations yet.

He decided to start with the rift to get mana concentration herbs. He used the same ratios as the rift he did to create Liz’s herb rift for her alchemy practice.

Before each Tier up, he closed his fingers and pleaded with his lucky stars to prevent the rift from devouring the herbs he seeded it with. He had two small plants, and didn’t want to be left with a single shot at the rift creation process if the rift ate the herbs.

Thankfully his luck was good, and he reached Tier 4 without anything going amiss. He carefully packed the test subject away with the other herb.

He queued up a message for Liz and hopped into the wooded rift. He quickly cleared it out and found a variety of herbs, but wasn’t able to identify them. Knowing how particular Liz was with the herbs she harvested, he just dug up the entire plant whenever he found something with a high essence or mana concentration.

The reward at the end was lackluster, as he expected with being over the rift’s Tier, but he was hoping they could brute force a good reward out of the rift. It could always dish out something over its Tier with a little luck and persistence.

Exiting the rift, he dropped off everything he collected near Liz’s alchemy table and went to set up his next experiment.

With the useless growth item and the aspected mana stones he just purchased, he created a rift with equal parts from every mana type he had. He even added in his own unaspected mana. The rift was strange, with golems that seemed to be made from giant crystals arranged in a roughly humanoid shape. Each had a different elemental attack, and it gave Matt hope for getting something unique from the rift when he got it to Tier 5. However, the Tier 1 version only gave a single mana stone.

Carefully, he Tiered up the rift and noticed that the monsters changed each time. But when he reached Tier 4, the rift swallowed up all the items he was using to influence the rift.

He spent the better part of a half hour cursing his luck, and debated running it as a Tier 4 rift, instead of chancing the upgrade. If the rift changed to an unaspected rift, he would lose the growth item for nothing.

With more bravery than common sense, he Tiered the rift up. To his relief, the same crystal elementals came out of the rift.

Matt whooped and hollered long enough for Aster to come and investigate. He ignored the rabbit blood covering her muzzle, and kissed her while spinning her around. To his consternation, it took Liz nearly an hour to come out of her rift so they could delve his latest creation.

The fighting was easy enough, as the monsters couldn’t stand up to either of their attacks, and they found a weirdly colored rechargeable mana stone. As best as they could tell, it produced water and wind attributed mana. Matt pocketed the stone, as he needed to do testing to see exactly how it functioned. The mix of aspected mana in a single stone might lead to different effects when used to make a rift, rather than the two elements as separate aspects.

For all the good luck Matt had with the aspected mana stone rift, he had the opposite luck with the mana concentration rift. None of the plants were mana concentration herbs, and he decided to reset the rift with Liz there, to check it at each Tier up.

They were lucky with regard to the fact that the rift never ate their materials, but it only produced mana affecting plants once. The Tier 3 rift produced some mana regeneration plants. They were useful for others, but not for them, so he left the rift and created a new one from scratch.

Nearly a week of delving and testing later, they finally had a Tier 4 rift that produced mana concentration herbs. It was better than anything else they had made, as it also produced mana regeneration and maximum mana herbs. For a Tier 4, it was a gold mine, and they debated endlessly about risking the Tier up.

Finally, as another week went by, they decided the time for the invasion was too close at hand, and they took the leap of faith.

Unable to seed the rift without Tier 5 materials, they had to roll the dice. All three of them held hands as the rift Tiered up, and they quickly entered to find that their gamble had paid off. They had successfully kept the rift correctly aspected, and it produced all three types of mana cultivation herbs. It was worth an absolute fortune, since the rift itself produced the herbs, and they weren’t dependent on rift rewards.

It took Liz’s full attention to learn how to create each potion, but she had unlimited attempts. After three days of trying, she had a potion for Matt, and the full trio of potions for herself and Aster.

Liz did some research on the potions as well while she was learning to make them, and she found an answer as to why someone couldn’t use multiple potions at the same Tier. Even if they came from different sources, the spirit could only handle one change per aspect of both physical and mana cultivation. This applied to a change in each of the aspects, like strength or mana regeneration. Afterwards the spirit resisted changes in the cultivation aspect for the rest of the Tier.

They were taking an incredibly dilute version of the concentration potion, as they couldn’t recover the lost maximum mana and mana regeneration like he could. They only took enough to counter the effects of the maximum mana and mana regeneration potions. They would net positive in overall mana cultivation, as they essentially got free mana concentration out of it. The bonus would increase the overall damage of their spells.

They sat around and downed the potions in a single swig. The others only twinged at the mana concentration potion, but Matt writhed on the ground as the full-strength potion reduced his maximum mana near zero, before the effects of the potion subsided. A quick check of his AI showed that his new mana concentration was 1.15. Not quite as good as the potions Aunt Helen gave him, but close enough. He wasn’t going to complain, as it was unfair to compare Liz to a woman millions of years old.

He sat up and used an empty mana stone to increase his maximum mana back up to 40, and waited for the mages to finish their own experience with the potions. He could feel Aster trying to adjust, and gave her soothing pats to help her through it.

The potions didn’t feel any better to them, as they forcefully changed their mana pool without their mana cultivation cores being changed. Where Matt’s was dark and not used, theirs were alive with pools of essence, which resisted the changes enough to make them painful for the women as well.

After that was a success, Liz continued to delve the rift to gather more herbs. She wanted to make mana cultivation potions and sell them to the soon to arrive Pathers. Meanwhile, Matt focused all of his attention on the mana aspect rift.

His gut told him it was worth it, and three weeks to the day after the war declaration was announced, he hit the jackpot.

It was a ring growth item that had dozens of little shards of what looked like mana stones in it. He wasn’t dumb enough to immediately bind it, but they went directly to the auction house to get it inspected.Samuel confirmed that it was exactly what Matt had hoped for.

The ring could remember the aspect of any mana it came into contact with, and could then convert any mana passed through it into a stored aspect. The ring started with an awful conversion rate, but Samuel told them that as he Tiered it up, the rate would slowly improve. It wasn’t a combat item, but it was perfect for his experiments. He could have asked for a better item to help with his rift creation method. Matt had to resist jumping for joy, and forced himself to play it casually for their appraiser.

His blade and Aster’s Winter Embrace arrived soon after their appraisal, and he upgraded the weapon to Tier 6. He made sure to acquire the material to upgrade his new weapon tier 7, and stored it in his bag. Unlike in Liz’s case, it was a strain for Matt to use the weapon, since it was a full Tier higher himself. But he was ok with the temporary inconvenience. The sword was physically heavy, and he found that he was able to add more metal to the weapon at each Tier, which would increase its weight slightly. He also learned that he had some slight ability to adjust the weapon's shape. He used that ability to make the blade a little slimmer, and more in line with his Tier 5 longsword. His old sword had only bordered on the size of a greatsword unlike this current, pure greatsword.

He didn’t trust himself to enchant the weapon himself, so he hired a Tier 7 Pather enchanter to plan out the enchantment’s layout. He made sure to incorporate his standard sharpness, durability, and repair runes, but he also took advantage of the growth item’s ability to hold more enchantments. He was able to get both [Mana Charge] and [Mana Slash] inlaid into the weapon’s structure.

Before he could get to the actual enchanting, the news came. The queendom was invading, and everyone was called to gather.

It was time to Tier up and prepare for the upcoming battles.