The Path of Ascension

Matt and Kelley were sitting around two pairs of gauntlets, one with a cold rune etched into the back of the hand, the other with a slowing rune.

They just sat there and stared at them together. Their half a day of testing had finally paid off.

The same mana aspect could be subtly different, which led to subtly different results. With some manipulation of the standard cold rune, they had created a rune that, when cold-based skills were cast through, created a slowing effect. The effect wasn't minor either, with a near thirty percent effect.

All from creating the rune with the cold aspected mana.

The second pair of gauntlets with a slowing rune were designed to slow anyone struck with them. With the slowing cold mana, it was nearly twice as effective as the base, though it was still limited to melee attacks.

“Hit me again.”

Matt did as instructed and lightly backhanded the Tier 10 enchanter.

The man dropped an apple with his off-hand and drove to catch it with his other hand. It was like he was moving through honey for about half a second, then the effect stopped, and his hand shot forward like a snake, catching the apple.

It would have lasted longer if the man's Tier wasn't so much higher than the rune.

Inspecting the apple, Kelley repeated himself for the sixth or seventh time. “I can’t believe we got it to work.”

Matt looked at the floor covered in ice from their test with [Hail], the only cold skill between the pair, and the cold slow enchanted gauntlet. He repeated himself as well. “Neither can I.”

Kelley kicked his way through the ice, over to his workbench, and pulled out a bottle and two glasses.

“Careful with this. It's Tier 10 liquor and will put you on your ass before you know it.”

He poured them each a drink. Matt’s was noticeably smaller, more so a shot compared to Kelley’s nearly full glass. The enchanter raised his drink and said, “To learning something new.”

“To getting an edge on the competition.” Matt knew what Kelley really cared about, and couldn’t resist teasing the man. He would work for free if everything was provided for him. Selling his wares was just a means to buy more things and fund his projects.

They both downed their glasses. Matt nearly died as the potent alcohol kicked him so hard, his teeth hurt. He had to brace himself against the table while the fire burnt its way down.

Kelley’s two fingers of liquor went down much easier than Matt’s, if his lack of reaction was to judge.

“Shit, this changes everything. I mean, I knew using aspected mana can improve certain runes, every crafter worth a damn figures it out, but…”

He was about to curse the man out a little for not warning him more when he noticed the man staring at his glass with a thousand-yard stare.

Matt’s Tier 10 friend started rolling his glass around idly. “Aspected mana comes from five places. Innate bloodlines, Talents, carefully cycling ambient mana, special techniques involving cycling essence and mana through materials, and finally, natural treasures. The main aspects are easy to find: air, water, ice, fire and so on. It's that secondary property that's hard to capture. It's more unique to how each person views their aspected mana. An abstract idea like ‘slow’ doesn’t exist outside of Talents as a full aspect of mana. These extra layers are essentially ‘understanding’ made real. It's like a concept. No, a Concept...”

There was a rippling in the air that Matt didn't dare disturb, and after what felt like a year, “Fuck! It explains so much! Concepts do the same thing. They can change your mana to better reflect your understanding. Someone with an ice Concept could use it to aspect their neutral mana into ice aspected mana, but that would just be the main aspect, the same as if they used an ice natural treasure.”

Kelley paused for a moment, grabbing one of the gauntlets. “Unless their Concept isn’t found in nature, but as long as the person’s Concept is the same as the natural treasure, it's no different. The inverse applies as well. Unique aspects could appear from peoples' Concepts. They would need to use their ice Concept to introduce the slowing secondary property. It would let their mana reflect the abilities of ice as they understand them.”

Kelley started to chew his lower lip as a faint strum rippled through the air.

“If you understand the Concept well enough, you can add that secondary property. The right...” The enchanter seemed to search for the word, “Sub-aspect to the main mana aspect. You multiply the effects greatly. That must be one of Ascendent Crafters' guild secrets, it explains how their products always out perform with the same runes and materials. They must have huge libraries of aspected mana. I can do the same.”

Kelley uttered, “I make the rune. I can find the best aspect and sub-aspect for the rune. I can change…”

Matt felt the air and surroundings vibrate like a bell was struck. Matt's Concept and his cores of essence vibrated to a frequency that was not his own. But it still sounded discordant.

Kelley was rapidly thinking his way through forming his Concept, but there was something more happening. Matt had felt when his and others’ Concepts formed during the ascension, but he had never felt the essence responding like this before.

“I can change the aspect. I can choose the rune. I decide its properties. I can change. I am the sculptor and the stone.”

With each phrase that Kelley uttered, the vibrations were brought closer and closer to harmony. Matt’s Concept vibrated in what felt like sympathetic resonance, but before the sensation settled down, Kelley said, “I am change.”

It was like a bomb went off, as everything fell into place and a smooth harmony rang out in a melodic fanfare. Essence started to rush into the room as if there was a vacuum pumping it in. And now, Kelley was absorbing the ambient essence at an absurd rate. Like a starving man at a banquet, he kept pulling more and more in.

The pressure built until Matt felt like he was underwater from the sheer volume of essence that was being pulled in. As the quantity increased, a resonance started to expand out through the essence as more and more rushed inward, condensing within the enchanter.

Once the entire room was vibrating from the resonance between man and essence, there was a moment where the torrent stilled. His enchanter friend was no longer Tier 10, but Tier 11.

Kelley's first word was, “Huh.”

Matt kicked the man. “Huh!? Is all you have to say for yourself!? That was an inspiration! You just had an inspiration! By every ascender.”

He had no idea how to react, honestly. It wasn’t just mind-boggling. It was beyond that. Inspirations were rare, and Matt had no idea how rare it was for a crafter to create their Concept at the same time.

Matt had no idea why it had taken so long. The movies he had seen depicted an inspiration as lasting only a minute at most, but this experience had lasted five already. The real oddity was that this planet was only Tier 6, while Kelley was Tier 10. The essence shouldn't be useful for the man, but he still felt the essence condensing as it neared the enchanter.

Or at least, that was the feeling he got from his spiritual sense. It would explain why the man was pulling in so much essence. Quality had to be created from quantity.

Kelley hardly rocked from Matt’s kick, and just started laughing until he had to wipe his eyes from the excitement.

“I can't believe it either. Fuck! It’s kinda hard to believe. I… I don't know.”

The newly-minted Tier 11 vibrated with excitement before he broke out into an awful dance.

“I need to test… everything!”

Matt wholeheartedly agreed. He didn't ask about the man's revelation. From the little he knew about inspirations, which was solely based on a movie or two, asking was considered incredibly rude.

So he asked about the man's Concept instead. “What about your Concept? What did you make? What do you think it can do?”

Instead of answering, Kelley picked up a scrap of metal and looked at it. Matt felt out with his own Concept and felt nothing. After a few minutes, Kelley looked up and said, “I have no idea. How did you tell?”

Matt felt flabbergasted, but half shrugged. He had just flexed his Concept, and it had worked.

“I don't know. It just worked for me when I interacted with it. I felt there were two things it could do, and it was pretty easy. If I had to guess, try something related to the image. I assume it's crafting related, so try that.”

The Tier 11’s stylus appeared in his hand, and he started carving into the metal bar in his hand. The rune was familiar to Matt, as they had just been working on it. After a minute, the outline of the slowing rune appeared, and Kelley started to imbue the rune with his own mana.

Matt was about to offer to do that when Kelley grunted out, “Mana. Please.”

Throwing his Concept onto the man, Matt watched as the enchanter imbued his rune and then inspected it with a grunt.

He waved off Matt, who was still refilling the man. “I'm good now, you can stop.”

Matt didn't and just asked, “You figured something out. What was it?”

Kelley looked happier than a kid on his birthday as he said, “I got myself the ability to somewhat influence my own mana with different properties. It’s almost like copying what I learned from the cold. But it seems that I need to know how the aspect and sub-aspect work.”

He tapped Matt with the bar, then from Matt’s perspective, rapidly cleared the workbench up. By his AI count, the effect had lasted one and a quarter seconds, but it had felt more like fifteen.

Matt nodded to the man. “It worked, but not as well as the slowing ice aspected mana.”

Kelley nodded. “It also burned a lot of my own mana to convert it to both the aspect and sub-aspect, while also eating a ton of my willpower. I have a headache like you wouldn't believe, but I think that if I practice this, the mana conversion will get a lot better. Something feels off right now, but I'm not sure.”

“So, what are you gonna do now?”

Kelley looked at Matt like he was dumb. “I'm going to keep testing! At the minimum, I'm going to copy your idea with normal converting mana stones. It will cost me an arm and a leg, but I'll need to at least test with them. I bet the large guilds have pre-made libraries already, but I don't. It will just take some time and searching.”

Matt offered, “Why not try and hire a few Tier 5 teams to run the rift I got this from? It was dropping dual typed mana stones until I got this.”

Kelley was interested, so Matt explained how the army was selling the rifts.

“It's a good idea, and it’s worth a shot. I doubt I’ll get a growth item like that, but there’s a one in a few trillion chance I get lucky and get something similar.”

With that, they went back to creating various applications of the ice mana. Matt wanted to make an addition to Aster's collar to get her more cold damage from her own mana aspect, and the ability to slow things down with the other mana aspect.

If it worked as intended, he’d see about making one for himself.

***

After three hectic days, Matt finally saw an exhausted Liz for more than five minutes. She had been working twenty-hour days trying to set everything up, and had finally finished most of her preparations.

He had been bringing her food three times a day after he noticed that she had been skipping breakfast and dinner.

She was so busy, he hadn't seen her with a free moment at all when he brought her the meals. He offered to help, but while she asked him to run an errand or two, it wasn't much more than her trying to make him feel better. So, he just gave her an open offer and left it at that, while trying to make sure she ate regularly.

After those three days, she was able to cut down her responsibilities with managing the Pather side of things to about half a day's work. She said she expected it to be even less as time went on, but she was still effectively running the show.

While the trickle of points was quite nice, it wasn't crazy. As a top fifty team, they earned about a thousand points a day. Unfortunately, as their ranking fell, so did their points. It got to the point where, a week after their death, they were only earning a measly seventy points a day.

It was still something, so no one complained. Well, nearly no one. Liz had ranted about how someone had called to complain about the new point system, and how it would let other people buy things faster, and therefore make acquiring the limited goods even more competitive. That, and people were mad over others getting points while doing nothing, even though it scaled to contribution. At least they had expected that complaint..

As dumb as it was, that particular gripe reinforced the reason why everyone was here. To earn gear or skills beyond their normal means.

Just mentioning it was enough to piss Liz off, though, so it was a topic avoided by everyone.

Now that it was a week after their deaths, they could safely train with light sparring. Matt, Liz, and Aster were still intent on helping their teammates get their own Concepts.

It would have been safe for them after three days, when Matt had Melinda come by and give everyone a ‘check up’ with her Talent. But he couldn't explain that to Annie, Emily, and Conor, so he settled for knowing that they were properly healed.

They all faced off against Annie, who blocked blows from both Conor and Liz while he and Aster tried to force the assassin to stillness with their Concepts. It was like fighting through molasses for her, and while they all pulled their punches, it was a losing battle.

That was the point, and as her desperation grew, the hope was that she could start to resist, and therefore find her own Concept.

They were an hour into things, and the training wasn't going as well as Matt had hoped. He knew that he was overestimating how effective standard training would be, but a part of him believed that it would be as fast as training with the reality shard had been for Melindas team.

Objectively, he knew the idea was stupid and unrealistic. If it was as easy as fighting someone with a Concept for a few hours, everyone would have Concepts. But his new friends were strong and competent, so he felt that they should click with it.

Kelley had been Tier 10 without his own Concept, and was not only successful, but also considered well ahead of his peers. It was just another indicator of the truth. Concepts were hard to create, and some people never managed to form them. There was a reason that the Empire restricted knowledge until people hit Tier 10, and had already used the two bottled Concepts. It was for their own good.

Even at Tier 10, a cultivator would have a lifespan of seven hundred and twenty years. At Tier 14, it was double that. Compared to Tier 4, with a lifespan of around one hundred and thirty years, it was a massive difference. Without the bottled concepts, the average lifespan of a cultivator would be drastically reduced.

As Matt commanded Annie to halt with his will, he thought about what it must have been like before the bottled Concepts. He tried to imagine what it would be like if Annie, Emily, and Conor grew old and died while sitting at the peak of Tier 4. Unable to advance as they grew older and older, with Tiers ahead of them to reach immortality.

He thought of Melinda, Mathew, Vinnie, Kyle, Sam, and Tara. Even with the help of the reality shard, they were still stuck at their phrases, and only slowly progressing.

Annie panted out, “Break.” and he and Aster released their hold on her. Aster was panting slightly, and Matt understood. It was hard work on their end, even if they were sitting on their butts while the others fought.

Liz flopped to the ground as Matt stood. Emily stood and glared at Liz, who was manipulating her blood to cover the twin in a thin film. They had quickly realized that Liz couldn't exactly recreate what he and Aster did with their Concepts.

She could resist them trying to slow or stop her easily enough, as her Concept was internal. But she didn't actually have the ability to project her Concept without her blood. Because of that, she needed to cover the person in blood to hold them.

On the bright side, she was able to fully lock down a person on her own, letting Matt and Aster get a break, but it wasn't pleasant for the one resisting.

As Liz was sitting with her eyes closed, Matt repeated her mantra. “Find what you are and what you want to become. Find what resonates with you.”

He sidestepped a bolt of mana that was tinged yellow-brown and felt like an earth element. With a stick, he slapped Emily’s side and rotated around her.

“Think about how you see yourself, and how others see you. Find where you want to go from there.”

A strike from Emily was less than half speed, but Matt blocked it with a raised forearm. “Find an idea that represents yourself, or some aspect of your fighting style. Find it and visualize it.”

Emily kept a fierce expression as she shot another [Cracked Mana Bolt] at him. Matt had tried to absorb the mana from her attack into his ring to get free aspected mana, but hadn't found a way to efficiently absorb it. The skill simply dissipated on contact after expending its energy in the initial hit.

It was incredibly disappointing, as her skill could create any elemental type. They were still working on the numbers, but it seemed like fifty percent of the time it was a basic aspect like wind, water, fire, or earth. Thirty five percent of the time, it was a higher level of aspect like ice, lightning, wood or metal. The remaining fifteen percent was broken into weirder elements and effects that they weren't able to document very well.

Matt was pretty sure that they felt a soap aspect on one of the bolts, but how those percentages broke down would take a lot more testing than they had done so far.

He changed his mantra to something more specific to Emily as he struck out again, “Your Talent lets you double things. Maybe you’re a bacterial growth in a petri dish, with the skill being food. The more food you can add, the more you can grow.”

She ground out, “I'm not bacteria, Matt. Fuck you.”

Since she had the ability to talk back, Matt hit her thigh and then her extended arm. She sent a bolt of lightning at him. This one stung his shield, as it was within her window of doubling time. Matt kicked some dirt at her in retaliation.

It was kinda mean to compare her to bacteria, but it was the best doubling thing he could come up with at the moment.

“Think about standing on a pyramid where...” Matt halted in his diatribe as he felt something. It was faint, but his Concept felt a resonation from the blood-covered girl.

They all watched as Emily sat down cross-legged. Conor and Annie, from their panting positions, each scrambled to a spot where they could see Emily. Liz stopped resisting the women's movements and watched with everyone else.

After about five minutes of nothing happening, Emily opened her eyes.

“I lost it. I had something, but I lost it.”

Annie crawled over to get right in front of her bloody sister’s face. “What did it feel like? And what do you think triggered it?”

Emily opened her eyes and mockingly glared at Matt. “It definitely wasn't bacteria. There was something about the pyramid, but I don't know what.”

Liz fist-pumped. “Well, see? I was right! That's the first step. Now you know where to start. We just need to do more training.”

Conor hopped to his feet when Emily retreated back into herself to examine her slight breakthrough.

Matt hoped it was a sign of things to come, but it wasn't. No one had any more progress, even when all three of them were out of will power and had blinding headaches, forcing them to stop training.

It wasn't much progress, but it showed that the end goal was possible.

***

Matt was pulling apart his golem crossbow arm in a workshop while half-listening to Liz and Sam work behind him. They had rented a general workspace for half the day, as it was cheaper for them to all rent the room.

He could have crashed Kelleys workshop, but the man had been so busy with his Concept and engrossed in his research, that he hadn’t even noticed Matt showing up or leaving.

So instead of risking bothering the man, he rented out a workshop to convert his golem arm crossbows into ones wieldable by humans.

When Liz and Sam finally started to meet up to practice alchemy together, they needed a room as well, so they rented one out as a group.

But Matt wasn't fully concentrating on the item in front of him. No, he was much more focused on listening to Liz complain about running the Pather side of the war.

“I have people always coming up with great ideas. It's always just coincidental that the idea only helps themselves or their friends. These people clearly think I'm an idiot, but I still need to hear them out.”

Something clattered, and Sam said, “Just tell them to take a hike.”

Liz groaned, and Matt had to resist turning around. She hadn't shared any of this with him. She had played things off like it was mostly busy work.

“I can’t. I need to hear people out at least marginally. It’s even worse now, because people are complaining to me about the missions they get. I only approve the missions that the AIs suggest if it looks viable. I can't help that the Tier 5 teams are outmatched for most things other than guard duty, or being a part of a larger group. Am I supposed to make the other side weaker and only send Tier 5’s as well? No, that’s fucking stupid. Ugh! It's just frustrating.”

“People suck.”

“Yeah, but I need to lead them, which makes it worse.” Liz sounded incredibly tired.

Sam said something Matt didn't hear, and Liz responded in kind.

Matt wanted to go over and ask her what else was wrong and try to help, but it wasn't like she couldn't have told him. They hadn't seen that much of each other in the last week and a half, but things had been hectic with them playing catch up on training and Concept work.

They had all been busy with their own thing, but he was slipping as Liz’s friend and boyfriend.

That night Matt asked Liz as they were settling into sleep, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it's all fine.” She murmured her answer while stifling a yawn.

Matt waited, but when he got nothing, he pressed, “Even with the leader gig?”

“It's fine.”

“I heard you talking to Sam.”

Liz groaned, “Dammit. I thought we were quieter than that.”

“You mostly were, but when I was changing arms, I was able to hear.”

Liz rolled into him as she said, “I've barely seen you, and it feels like all I do is complain when I do see you. I don't want to burden you as well.”

Matt poked her under the rib. “I'm happy to help.”

“See, that's the thing. You like to fix things, but this isn't something that can be fixed. I just wanted to complain and bitch to someone new a little. It's shitty sometimes, but it's not all bad. I’ve met some really nice and grateful people. It's just turds that taint the whole bowl sometimes.”

“Well, I wanted to let you know I'm here to help.”

She patted his chest. “You are helpful. Time spent with you is time I don't have to think about all the bullshit I need to work on the next day. Thankfully, we only have two days off left, and things are heating back up, so we'll have more time together.”

He kissed the top of her head, and they lay there together.

Matt wasn't happy that Liz was dealing with everything on her own, but at least they weren’t having any problems as a couple.

How can I help?

As he drifted off to sleep, Matt kept thinking about the question.

***

Matt took a fist on his unarmored forearm, and felt [Mage’s Retreat] flare slightly in response as the skill moved more mana through the area that increased Durability. He concentrated on stretching that area out. Just slowly.

If he moved too fast, the skill would actually start pulling from the Strength boost it gave. But if he was slow, he could slowly stretch the skills structure out like taffy. Adding his manual manipulation while getting hit doubled the effectiveness of his training.

His normal meditation was better for feeling out the skill, but he knew [Mage’s Retreat] as well as he knew [Cracked Phantom Armor.]

Matt’s AI pinged him. It was nearly time.

Shutting down and retreating from the training aid, he sat down. With two hours of meditation, he moved [Mage’s Retreat] out of his core spirit and into his inner spirit, with [Endurance] and [Hail].

It was right at the edge, but he needed the free slot for [Fireball], which he was currently absorbing. When it reached his core spirit, he would quickly modify it to reduce the mana cost while it was still malleable.

He checked his AIs timer, and found that [Fireball] had another three hours before it reached his core spirit. Then, he could perform his modifications to the skill.

It was enough time for a little more testing. He had practiced for the last week with the cube he and Liz had used to train for modifying [Endurance], and the time was nearly upon him.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to test the modification once more. He had the time.

Matt connected his AI and sent his spiritual sense into the cube, and started to simulate the process.

In the last week, he had doubled down on his skill training. Normally, he spent an hour or so a day doing it in the morning or before bed. But with the abundance of free time, he had been focusing on pure meditation training, and adding in skills training while using them in sparring matches

He knew it was just another side effect of his Talent that he hadn't appreciated. Annie, Emily, and Conor all commented on how his refilling their mana regularly let them use their skills more, and actively expand their capabilities.

They were usually forced to only meditate on the skill, and try to eke out whatever increase they could get when fighting or sparring. Even then, they were normally only able to do that once a day, as it took them a day and a half to fully regenerate their mana naturally.

His keeping them topped off let them train much harder than normal.

It was still a weird thought for him, as some small part of himself still thought of his Talent as useless. Even though it gave him and people around him advantages he could never have dreamed of.

With a soft chime, he stopped his wandering thoughts and focused inward. [Fireball] was close to the edge of his core spirit.

The longer it took him to make the modifications, the longer the skill would have time to sink deeper into the spirit, and therefore increase the time it would take to move back into the inner spirit.

He wanted to be quick.

As the skill breached the dividing lines between the spirit layers, Matt started to shrink the entirety of the skill down as much as he could.

He condensed it along the x, y, and z-axes, along with shrinking the inner tubing that made up the skills structure.

The first bit was easy, but as the skill shrank down further and further, it was harder and harder to compress. Matt even felt some of his willpower going into the task. His task became increasingly more difficult as the skill continued to shrink.

As the skill stopped moving and its malleability diminished to normal, he inspected the skill. He hadn't been as fast as he wanted, but the results looked good.

The skill was nearly half the normal size.

And at a base cost of 10 mana, he was hoping to get the skill to a mana cost of about 6 when it was removed from his core spirit.

Still, his modification had worked perfectly.

Standing, he went back to the training aid and turned on [Cracked Phantom Armor] at the lowest draw possible. He filled a mana crystal up before refueling his mana pool. He only had 80 mana for a second, as the 1 MPS of his armor and AI slowly drained his mana pool. His regen was next to nothing if his current mana was over ten percent of his maximum.

Still, he sent mana into the new skill in his spirit, and with giddy excitement, watched as a fist-sized ball of flame appeared, then launched in the direction he was thinking of.

He missed the training aid, and the [Fireball] splashed harmlessly over the back wall.

Not caring in the slightest, Matt launched half a dozen follow-up [Fireball]s, and laughed his best evil laugh as the vents needed to pull the heat and smoke from the room.

After half an hour of testing his new skill, he checked his AI for the results.

In his core spirit, the skill cost 4.1 mana, more than the ideal 3 mana cost that would allow him to use the skill endlessly at Tier 8. Matt didn't think an item could reduce the skill enough. He had learned from Kelley that mana reduction items were hard to make, and worked off a percentage. Essentially, he'd need an amazing item to get him under the cost of his one percent max. A thirty percent reduction wasn't impossible, but it was rare.

At Tier 9, at one percent of his max mana, he would have 6 mana, which would make the skill perfect for his inner spirit. Skills in the core spirit were thirty percent cheaper and far easier to manipulate than the inner spirit, which was considered the baseline.

He decided to move the skill out of his core spirit until he was Tier 7, so he could continue to work on [Mage’s Retreat] some more. But he was going to commission Kelley for a Tier 8 mana reduction item. Matt winced for his bank account. Even with the Tier 15 mana stone from the sale of the growth item, it was going to be an expensive item. Tier 9 or 10 materials at least, to help the efficiency get to thirty percent.

It wasn't a huge problem, considering the value of the Tier 15 mana stone that he had. But Matt really hated spending money, and it felt incredibly expensive as a Tier 6. In the end, he refused to take advantage of a friend, and that won out.

Still, the skill worked perfectly, even if it was at a little less than half power after his modifications. He could make up for quality with quantity.

Deciding to let large decisions be a problem for tomorrow, he cleaned up and headed out. Tonight, he would celebrate with everyone for the success of his new fire spell.

Matt paused. He should get some ice cream for Aster. She was going to hate his new spell. But he loved it.