The Path of Ascension

Chapter 117

When Matt crawled out of the rift exit, his only good leg was doing most of the work. He was quickly scooped up by Mathew and Kyle, who dragged him over to where his team and Melinda. She had clearly started casting spell after spell at the sight of their condition, unwilling to stop until they were whole again.

Knowing she was burning through mana at a prodigious rate, Matt used his Concept to keep her mana topped off, though he barely had any willpower left in the tank.

Despite his exhaustion, he knew she would need the mana.

Yes, she had Overhealth, but her skills still needed to be powered if she was to regrow their flesh.

And considering that Liz was more like half a corpse than a living person, he would make sure that she was able to keep healing.

Mathew asked, Dude! What the fuck happened to your hands!?

Matt managed to grunt out, Stupid sword had some skill on it. Damn thing absorbed attacks and shit out damage.

Still, he kept his eyes on his teammates as he spoke.

Aster was covered in blood, but was asleep, and seemed to be fully healed. Liz, on the other hand, was being regrown before his eyes. Her torso healed, then filled out.

It was slightly disturbing to see her hip bones form under the skin, then fill out, and eventually sprout into legs that extended to their original form.

In mere moments, she was whole, and Melinda turned to him.

Matt, trying to lighten the mood after seeing the dark expression she wore, waved his stumps.

Can you give me a hand?

He was still hurt, but his family was healed, and they would be fine.

They had officially completed Lunas task as well.

He had a plethora of reasons to be happy.

Melinda didnt even smirk, only saying, Drop your armor on three.

Matt was about to speak when he remembered that back in the PlayPen, she had also needed him to drop his armor to heal him. She quickly counted to three, and he complied with an effort of will.

With the sudden disappearance of his armor, and with it no longer keeping pressure on his missing limbs, he slumped over as lightheadedness overtook him.

He wasn't so out of it that he didnt feel the calm energy of Melinda's spells, and it rushed to all the injuries in his body.

He expected the energy to rush to his apparent wounds, but the rush to his kidneys was unexpected, and brought on a sudden urge to urinate.

As the feeling overwhelmed him, Matt stumbled to his feet and pushed everyone away. He waddled off until he put a few feet of distance between them, and pulled off his tattered armor.

He was still luxuriating in the relief of emptying his bladder when Vinnie asked, Why is your piss purple? That cant be good

That caused Matt to snap his eyes open to see what Vinnie was talking about. With a pang of nervousness, he quickly asked, Melinda, why is my piss purple?

He was pretty worried and disturbed by the implications.

She called back, I don't know Maybe the massive amount of poison your body was trying to process? Did you ever think of that?

Matt finished and pulled up the remainder of his pants as he cast [Create Water] to wash his hands and clear the foul-smelling urine away.

Turning back to them, he said, I did get poisoned, but we got it healed. The dark color vanished along with the pain as we healed it. As he considered what they had done, he added, I even used a ton of [Endurance] to ensure I was healed.

Melinda gave him a flat look while Sam just smirked.

The healer was the first to speak. You stopped most of the damage, yes, but it was already in your body and needed to be processed out. It also did quite the number sitting in your kidneys as they tried to break it down.

Sam was more interested in the poison. You didnt happen to keep the poison, did you? I assume it wasnt from an animal.

Matt shook his head in the negative. No, it was on a dagger. I didnt pick it up either.

Mathew asked, How did you guys get fucked up so bad?

Vinnie chimed in as he held up the gauntlets from the reward distortion. I take it you beat the boss?

Matt went over to inspect his armor and said, Yeah, we won, but we also got our asses kicked doing it. The boss was Tier 10 and really good with his sword. We He trailed off for a moment, We paid a hefty price to win is all.

They quietly chatted while the others slept, and when Matt saw Aster start to wake up, he moved over to his bond and gently rubbed her head.

She licked his face and asked, Ice cream?

Matt sighed and scooped her up. She was fine.

Seeing that her ploy for treats went unanswered, she opened her eyes and scampered up over his shoulder, then gently jumped onto the bed Liz still slept in.

After sniffing her for a long minute, Aster jumped into Melindas arms and started thanking her as well.

Matt took the hint and did the same.

Melinda just brushed it off, refusing to acknowledge the help at all.

Half an hour after Aster woke up, Liz did as well. After washing up, they sat around and joined in telling the story of how they fought through the rift. Melindas team was far more interested in how they fought the two new sub-bosses, and how they defeated the Tier 10 boss.

They inspected the armor set, but were unable to determine the effects just by feel. It was far more complicated than anything they had discovered before.

A part of him had expected Luna to show up and talk to them, but she, Kurt, and even Erwin were absent from the camp that evening.

Taking it as a sign that they were being given time to rest, the trio did exactly that.

The following day, Luna gathered the three of them up first thing in the morning.

Well done.

Kurt held up a sign that had a bunch of fireworks and confetti drawn around the same sentence.

Matt expected a comment about how they hadnt cleared the rift well enough, but Lunas following words surprised him.

Completing a rift higher than your own Tier is always dangerous, and a full rift, even more so. With the boss being four Tiers higher than your own, any victory is beyond reproach.

Aster fluffed up at the compliment, and her tail started slapping hard against his side.

Luna then poured a bucket of cold water over their heads. Do you think you can do it again?

Matt wanted to say they obviously could, but paused. They had fought hard, but they had only succeeded by making a desperate move. One that only paid off because everyone had immediately reacted to the plan, and had thrown everything they had into it.

He wasn't confident that things would play out as cleanly as they had the first time.

But they had learned a lot with the practical experience.

There were counters that could be prepared.

Liz answered for them all. Yes. With proper knowledge we can plan better. We know how the boss fights, and have an idea about the full rift now. So I think we'll do better in the next fight, with some preparation.

Kurt wrote, Yes, that's true. Are you confident in a full clear of the rift?

Matt answered, With some more practice, I think it's possible.

The older man smiled, and Luna said, Good. Thats my goal before we Tier you up. Once you fully clear the rift with a clean fight, well push to you Tier 7, then directly to Tier 8 without stopping. Once were there, that's where youll sit for the next two decades or so. I want you to have more mana to throw around, and let you cast other spells with an initial cost of over 100 mana.

Kurt added, This little break will also let us gather the materials for your mana concentration potions Matt.

That was when Luna pointed at his hand. So, do you want to know how to regrow that ring, Matt?

Matt looked at his hand, and finally noticed the teleport ring that he had exchanged with Liz so many years ago was missing. He hadn't even noticed it.

Instantly, his body locked up as he asked, How? It felt like he had swallowed an entire egg, but he pushed through it to get the question out.

Her grin was evil as she said, Youre going to need to regrow the ring from Lizs, and that's not easy. You need to find a material five Tiers higher than the rings current form that it actually wants, and then pour it in. Sometimes, it only needs a pinch, and sometimes it needs a thousand pounds of material. Fixing broken growth items isn't cheap at all.

It didn't seem that bad until Kurt wrote, The materials to regrow missing parts of growth items are never cheap. Theyre rare, and hard to find.

Matt wanted to complain, but not because of the price. He was pissed that the ring was gone. That was one of the things that had bound Liz and himself together. He had offered the ring more on instinct, and it had paid off better than he could have ever expected.

It wasn't about who Lizs parents were, or anything else.

The gift of the ring had earned him Lizs friendship and company. That was worth more than any tangible benefit.

Still, it was a price he would pay. Now that he knew the ring was missing, his hand felt empty.

That would be the first thing he rectified.

Luna then said, We need to set up a plan for your mana concentration potions going forward. The next one is easy enough with your current funds, but that's about as far as they will travel.

Matt shook his head. Cant we discuss that when were Tier 8? I don't need to use the potion immediately, and the extra generation can help cover the cost. And Tier 8 is so far away.

Luna looked like she'd wanted to say more, but refrained and just let them go.

***

In the coming months, Luna was proven correct. They had to hop five planets further back into the more settled regions of the Empire, because Matt flatly refused to go without his ring any longer than necessary.

The item ultimately needed was known as Stones Knuckle. It was the liquid metal joints of stone golem bosses. The ring being Tier 9 worked against them, as there were only a few rifts with the necessary monsters, and only one at the required Tier, Tier 14.

It didnt help that the monsters, even when perfectly harvested, only had about two ounces of the material.

Adding to the problem, Lizs ring ended up taking fifteen pounds of Stones Knuckle to spit out a second copy of his.

The only reason they were able to afford it was that they delved the Tier 8 wave rift, and an assortment of other Tier 9 rifts Luna let them make. Through their efforts, they were able to get a small number of Tier 14 skills, and they supplemented their income by selling Matts mana to the local cities through Luna.

Even the armor they had gotten from the T9 challenge rift wasn't worth enough, though it was incredibly valuable for its Tier. Kyle ended up buying it from an auction that their team insisted Matt hold. They didnt want to take advantage, and he wasn't willing to argue it.

As it turned out, the armor was a Tier 10 set of heavy armor that could absorb nearly all the damage from the four basic elements. If that was all, the armor would have been interesting, but not that valuable. What set the armor apart was its ability to funnel those attacks into whatever weapon that the wielder was using.

Matt and Liz found no use out of the armor, as they each had their own styles that precluded heavy armor. He didn't want to be slowed down with that much bulk, and Liz got more out of armor that let her use her blood. If rift items werent so notoriously hard to modify, they would have tried to let her use it, but even the best smiths they found were unwilling to make the attempt with any degree of certainty.

So, they sold it. Local teams went crazy for the armor, bidding the price up to two Tier 11 mana stones- a total of two hundred Tier 10 mana stones. Or an absurd one billion, two hundred Tier 6 mana stones. Melindas team had at least had one of the Tier 11 mana stones from when Erwin bought their Sea orb reward, which greatly lessened the burden on them.

I told you that youd get used to it, he joked as they exchanged fortunes.

Once they had their items back in good repair, which was child's play in comparison to the difficulty they had with the rings, they went back into the rift.

They completed the Tier 9 rift another five times at Tier 6. They revised their plans and made each rift clear cleaner than the last.

The last two were done perfectly.

As they delved the rift, they learned a few things about its makeup.

If they killed all four of the sub-bosses, they had a much easier fight, as the monsters that accompanied the boss were far weaker than when their respective elemental animals were still alive.

In the end, money was what finally helped them beat the water serpent.

Or, more accurately, talismans.

Matt used Asters mana to create talismans that froze an expanding area rapidly. They used the disposable drones that were in no danger of being shot down, with the fire chicken dead, and had the drones dive into the water with a talisman set to activate after a delay. They tried to enchant the drones themselves, but the metals couldn't hold a fraction of the mana that the animal skins could so they had to strap the talismans to the drones.

With most of the bay frozen over, they were able to trap, then kill the water snake. The first attempt wasn't pretty, as the monster had a massive range on its [Water Manipulation], but they fixed that with more drones and talismans.

They even learned that the ghost monster in the boss room could be removed entirely if they killed every shadow assassin in the rift, prior to fighting the boss. Easier said than done, but each one killed also made it correspondingly weaker.

When they fully cleared the rift for the first time, they held a four elemental beast flesh feast. The sub-bosses had a delectable taste that was a treat for Matt to create dishes from. His preference was the fire chicken, as it made a wonderfully spicy meal when sliced into steaks and incorporated into stews.

It wasn't because it had destroyed his flying sword. Not at all.

After their fifth successful completion of the rift, Luna dropped an almost crystal-like potion in Matt's lap, and told him to Tier up.

When he brought up his contract with TrueMind to show them his AI each Tier, and how he hadnt done so yet, she looked at him like he was stupid before saying that the contract was null and void. The Empire wouldnt allow a civilian company access to his AI, now that he had a manager. He was going to have to pay a penalty clause, but that would be once he fell off The Path, meaning the Empire would be able to cover the debt.

With that settled, they Tiered up, and Matt concentrated his mana.

The event felt like something between a circus and a dissection, as Erwin had Matt hooked up to half a dozen different testing machines while he increased his max mana to 160, then drank the potion. After his mana dropped to zero, and his mana channels felt like they were set aflame, he cleared his mana stone imprint and then filled his mana back to 160.

Erwin, Luna, and Kurt all spent days inside the scientist's lab, only telling Matt, Liz, and Aster to reach Tier 8 as soon as possible on their own.

They delved a variety of Tier 9 rifts that were all markedly easier than the one Luna had created for them. Compared to the difficulty of that rift, these were a vacation.

With over 100 mana as his maximum, Matt was finally able to remove [Mana Charge] and [Mana Slash] from his longsword, and use the skill shards he had saved for that purpose.

With the skills in his spirit, he was able to take advantage of his mana generation, and pump far more mana into the actual skills. The proper skills also provided much more damage per unit of mana than the stripped-down versions of the skills that were simplified to fit into the blade which lead to an explosive increase in his combat prowess.

With their new strength, they delved Tier 9 rifts multiple times a day. In a little less than three quarters of a year, they reached the peak of Tier 7, then advanced to Tier 8. They focused almost solely on delving, to the point that it was their main activity, other than some light training. They fully cleared rifts to maximize their essence gain, and refrained from using [Lesser Sacrifice]. Without it, they were slightly weaker than they could have been, but the increase to their Tier meant that all the essence from Tier 6 was now increasing their strength. And with their advancement through tier 7, they got the strength from half the essence they distributed. That more than made up the difference.

It was almost bittersweet, as Luna told them it was the last time they would be advancing for the next decade, as they only needed to reach Tier 9 by thirty-five years old. They would be sitting at the peak of Tier 8 for the foreseeable future.

They didnt have Matt concentrate his mana quite yet, as Erwin was apparently working on creating an even more potent version of the standard mana concentration potion, with the goal of getting Matt down to as close to 0 mana as possible. The potion would be designed for his spirit specifically using lower Tier ingredients, as simply using the Tier 17 herbs that he would need to take wasnt allowed on the Path. At least, not without him somehow earning an equivalent amount of wealth. But that sum of money was far out of his reach.

Not that it mattered for their training.

With Matt at Tier 8, he had a maximum mana of 320, and as long as his current mana was below 3, he regenerated the full 320 mana every instant. It wouldnt be long now before he could infinitely cast spells. Once one percent of his max mana was higher than the initial cost of a spell, he could cast that spell infinitely, with only its internal cooldown limiting his damage, without having to use a mana stone to fill his mana pool.

It was also the first time his mana pool was greater than a rechargeable mana stone, though not by much. It was an odd feeling to have outgrown them.

That was an absurd amount of mana, and they swiftly put it to use, testing and creating rifts by the hundreds.

With the ability to make Tier 8 rifts in under a half-hour, versus the multiple hours it had previously taken, Matt and Erwin started to create rifts with the intent to make unique skill shards.

They didnt forget about everyone else, and continued to create rifts for everyone's hobbies and crafts. There were a half dozen rifts of each Tier, from Tier 5 to Tier 11, with a wide variety of herbs for Liz and Sam.

There were rifts with minerals for Vinnie to practice his smithing hobby with, and rifts for any other craft that someone would want to try their hands at.

Matt even made Aster a number of rifts with rabbits for her to play with, though he was still unable to make a rift with bunnies made from ice cream.

Eventually, Erwin and Matt settled back down into their research, and created a dozen rifts with the same variables. Then, they had everyone delve them repeatedly, to get a complete picture of their skill drop tables.

Even Melindas team participated, despite the fact that they stayed at Tier 6. It was one of the conditions that the newly returned Baxter set down, if they wanted to remain with Matt and company.

None of them wanted their time together to come to an end too soon, so they remained at Tier 6 and kept honing their skills. They even managed to delve some of the weaker Tier 9 rifts that Matt created for his team's push through Tier 7, albeit with difficulty. But they did manage it after a few attempts, and he was happy for their success.

The rifts they started crafting with were simple enough.

Their baseline consisted of two sets of tests that they repeatedly conducted through the continent.

The first series of tests was to create rifts with a normal rift charging array, with no active barriers and only drawing in ambient mana. They also refrained from using items to seed the rifts, and let them form naturally.

As they expected, the rifts created using that method varied wildly, with seemingly no rhyme or reason between the rifts or their rewards.

Some of the rifts were even valuable, dropping a variety of rare skills. The rifts were marked as keep-able, but their primary purpose was to test terrain and other factors.

The two of them then repeated their testing with rifts near the same areas, and with the outside world cut off. In those rifts, the terrains more closely resembled the areas around them, but interestingly enough, they had far less variation in skill drops.

The rifts still followed the standard twenty-five percent rule for skill drops, with there always being three common skills that dropped seventy-five percent of the time. There was also one rarer skill dropping just twenty percent of the time, called the uncommon skill. The remaining five percent chance for a skill was utterly random, but could even ignore Tier barriers, though that was rare to the point of being theoretical.

Rift skill drop tables were only technically considered complete when one thousand delves had been completed, and the percentages for skill shards fell within a ten percent margin of error. But they considered the rift scouted when they had a rough table mapped out. That only usually took forty delves or so, which didnt take them long at the same Tier.

They cleared the rifts individually, with no issues and typically without even getting wounded.

Luna had them delving Tier 10 rifts alone, and Tier 11 rifts with their teammates plus a few restrictions. They even delved a Tier 12 rift, though that was an exercise in the slow, methodical progress of learning the best ways to fight higher Tiered monsters from Kurt.

Even as a team, they struggled to fight a single Tier 12 monster, though they slowly improved.

A Tier 8 rift was nothing to them, and they were quickly able to clear the rifts by simply going straight for the bosses, and killing them before dispelling the reward and leaving. They even turned it into a game of who could clear the rift the fastest.

An interesting tidbit that Matt learned about rift rewards was that the uncommon skill drop of a rift didnt necessarily mean that the skill was worth more than the common drop. Uncommon in the context of the skill drop table only meant that it was the skill least likely to drop from that rift, as one of the four regular drops. A rift could have the uncommon drop be something as mundane as [Fireball].

Rare skills were a product of their value, and how often rifts produced them. If there weren't enough skills to meet the demand of the populace, then it was considered rare and valuable. If the skill was hard to find, but useless, then it wasnt regarded as rare.

[Endurance] was a rare skill, as only a few rifts dropped it as their uncommon drop, and the demand was incredibly high for it.

[Random Color Change] could change the color of a skill to some other unchoosable color, but it was considered useless, despite it being only found in one rift.

When they finally moved onto careful testing with mana types, they discovered that they could influence the skills that the rift dropped.

Rifts with earth mana produced common drops of earth skills more often than rifts without them. The same held true for the other elements.

They even had an oddity pop up during their various tests. They had a fire rift with two of its three common drops as [Fireball]. It was apparently seen before, but it was a one in a trillion circumstance. The situation was so rare, that they delved the rift the full thousand times to confirm that their initial rewards weren't just a string of unlucky rewards.

No, they confirmed the rift had two chances to drop the same skill.

Matt and Erwin tried to recreate the feat, but never managed to do so, despite their numerous attempts with elemental rifts.

It was almost sad when they had to remove most of the rifts that they created. They couldn't leave a continent packed with valuable rifts without drawing massive attention to their activities. Neither of them were willing to remove all their hard work, so they culled all but the most exceptional rifts by keeping a list, and removing anything that fell out of their collaborative top ten.

After testing rifts only by varying mana types, they moved on to creating rifts with mana types while also seeding them with items.

Rifts with swords and mana aspects of metal created weapon skills more frequently, which was what they expected. To the pairs irritation, they were unable to control the variables well enough to determine which skills would drop. Only the general type of skill could be predicted, as long as the rift didn't unaspect while Tiering it up.

That was a far more common problem, as they added multiple layers of mana and seeds for the rifts. With two types of mana and a single item, they had less than a twenty percent chance to get the rift to Tier 8 before deaspecting.

Neither of them let that fact slow them down, and they simply noted down every variation they noticed for further isolation and testing.

They both agreed that it was too early to add in variables like essence filtering for their tests.

If they added more variables, like complex mana types, the chance of a rift reaching Tier 8 before deaspecting plummeted. Adding to their disappointment, they discovered that the rifts didnt usually have more complex skill rewards. Most of the skills had a single element that they used from the creation of the rift, and that was all.

By sheer accident, they did discover how to create rifts with Aura.

Matt had to be reminded of what Aura was, as he hadnt encountered it since they found some on the training world. It was able to help people create a Concept that aligned with the Aura type, as long as the cultivator was of a lower Tier than the Aura.

They were trying to create rifts with only sword skills, when they created a rift containing tigers that accumulated Aura in their claws while still alive. It was an incredibly rare find, but with their combat prowess, Matt and Melindas teams had no difficulty in subduing and restraining a number of the tigers to harvest the Aura.

Collected Aura was sold for massive profit, as everyone wanted help in creating their own Concept. Shards of Reality were better for that purpose, but they were rarer, and came with a limited lifespan. Aura was farmable from rifts, so it was far more available.

That led them onto a tangent of creating rifts that contained monsters with Aura of various types.

Through nearly a year of testing, they discovered a way to semi-reliably create rifts with Aura of the simplest elements.

The first ingredient that the rift needed was mana of a compatible type, and a subtype that could work as a weapon, or some way to attack. The latter was a hard requirement that they found no way to subvert.

Fire mana with a hot sub-aspect was essential to create fire Aura on monsters like fire aspected salamanders and firebirds. With the proper sub-aspect, the fire aspected monsters back scales and wings, had wisps of fire Aura, more than a quarter of the time.

If things had been simple, they would have discovered the second ingredient to making rifts with Aura in the first week. After two months of testing, they finally narrowed it down to Matts personal mana being the factor that made the Aura more likely.

It threw them for a loop. While Matts Concept had been slowly converting his essence, he hadnt noticed any difference with his mana. However, with testing, they isolated his mana type and sub aspect. His mana was primarily neutral, but with an endless sub-aspect.

The effect was minute, as only the smallest portion of his mana was converted, but it was still noticeable. When his mana was used in charging items and runes, they lasted a little longer than they should before running out of energy.

After observation, they saw that the percentage of aspected Mana was always the same, at each step of observation. They even planned for Matt to take some extra time sitting at 0.1 when he used the next mana concentration potion. With a mana pool that small, his mana would quickly aspect that small portion, which would then be kept through his expansion of his mana pool.

His mana, like himself, was endless.

At least, it tried to be.

The efficiency boost was less than a single percent, and only noticeable when they had light rune tests that lasted more than an hour. At that quantity, the light lasted a second or two longer than the control test, every time.

Matts mana seemed to be required to create Aura with any regularity, but they speculated that it was due to his mana acting as some sort of bridge, to allow whatever deeper factor happen regularly. Even all the information that Erwin had about rifts from the Empire stated that they had noticed no repeatable patterns to Aura rifts. Their best guess was that the Aura was the mana type in a more permanent and enduring form that was, without his sub-aspect, difficult to recreate in nature.

They did discover that the sweet spot for creating rifts with Aura was within Tiers 6 through 9. Outside of that Tier range, they were couldn't to get the Aura to form with any regularity, no matter how many times they tried to tweak the formula. Tier 7 seemed to be the Aura's preferred Tier, since it would continue to form there despite any deviations in their formulas.

That revelation forced them to return to the start of their tests, and repeat them all with the mana samples that Matt had gotten from the kids he had helped awaken, and then his old mana imprint.

Thankfully, his mana did not seem to change any of the results other than the Aura, but only when the conditions were aligned. Otherwise, the mana seemed to have no impact. To be careful, they only used the cleanest mana types for their baseline testing from then on. Though Matt had the feeling that he could create wave rifts with more experimentation, he and Erwin agreed to wait until they finished their Aura testing first.

Still, the Aura rifts were a closely guarded secret that even pulled Luna and Kurt into the discussion.

Matt passed nervously as Erwin unbotherdly studied a lizard with flame Aura rolling off its back like waves of fog.

Luna seemed bothered, and Kurt seemed like he wanted to say something, but kept stopping himself.

Matt looked to the older cultivators and asked, This is as big of a deal as I think it is, isnt it?

Kurt wrote, Yes. Aura is great for lower Tiers. It's a step between bottled Concepts and shards of reality. We need to keep this quiet. Maybe not even look into it.

Matt was relieved at the man's serious take on the situation, and was going to agree, but Luna squashed that hope.

No. Continue with the testing, just only do it when Kurt or I are nearby. We can't risk this information getting out, but we cant just avoid exploring this avenue.

With that proclamation, the conversation ended, despite Matt wanting more reassurance. From then on, whenever Erwin and Matt tried to create Aura rifts, one of the managers was always with them. As an added precaution, they would personally destroy the rift as soon as Matt and Erwin were done with their testing. Every time, they would collect a sample of the Aura, take one corpse, and then use their greater cultivation to scrub the area of life.

That was when Matt started to get nervous.

If two high Tier individuals were taking this many precautions, then he wasn't sure that he and Erwin should be creating rifts of this nature.

Erwin just looked at him like he had been replaced with an imposter when he broached the topic with him, only saying the science demanded they continue. And of course that they needed more testing.

That nonanswer forced Matt to seek out Luna and ask the same question.

She seemed to age a dozen years when he brought up the topic, but only said, It isn't up to us. We will find out what information we can, then pass it up to people stronger than me.

Matt cocked a confused eyebrow, and Luna explained further. This is big enough that well need to take our findings to the Emperor. Theres no question that he needs to be informed, but we can't trust any public information channels with this information. So, Ill have to make a trip to visit him. But Im not going to him empty handed. We will get what low hanging information we can, then give it to him so he can make a decision for everyone.

That didn't quite make Matt feel better, but he couldn't come up with a better answer.

Before Luna dismissed him, she added, Worry not young Matthew. Even if the Emperor is going to make this information public, which I doubt he'd do, it won't involve you. At best, hell ask for a few thousand mana crystals to be imprinted with your mana, and then sent around to be used in rift creation. You won't be involved.

When he talked to Liz and Aster about the situation while in bed, he was glad for the first time that Luna kept the three of them encompassed in her power at all times. If she didnt, he wouldn't even feel comfortable talking about it with his AI.

It was a secret, much like his Talent. It was big enough to get him shoved into a box.

Ignoring his mana sub-aspect, the Aura could allow more people to create their own Concepts earlier, reducing the reliance of bottled Concepts, and people being stuck at Tier 14.

With his mana sub-aspect allowing his mana to power standard runes and enchantments longer, he was now afraid to sell his mana without deaspecting it first. And that took a week normally; time he couldn't explain if he was filling a city's reserves.

Aster had the idea to just use his oldest mana imprint in his mana ring, and just deal with the inefficiency when selling his mana. It wasn't even a large loss, like when he converted his mana to other types, as it was only changing the sub-aspect of his own mana.

It was the best idea they had, but it still reminded Matt that there was an ever lingering threat over their heads.

His head.

The threat was entirely on him, with his Talent and Concept. Liz and Aster would just be caught in the crossfire.

A selfish part of him wished that his Concept was different, and he debated doing what Melinda did. But deaspecting his mana was out of the question, since he couldn't create a separate mana pool like she had done to keep the changes contained.

He was unable to do that, and was unwilling to sacrifice his uniqueness for safety.

It just lit a fire under him to get even stronger, and make sure that no one could threaten him.

Within the year, they found the recipe for creating Aura of the basic mana types of fire, water, earth, and air, while also making more abstract Auras like sharpness. In their testing, they even created Aura for the other weapon types, like blunt weapons, staves, axes, polearms, spears, and such. Though, the more abstract their experiments became, the harder the intended Aura was to create.

They were able to create Aura for a few of the dual elements, but not all of them. Oddly enough, mist and magma were easy to create Aura for, taking almost no effort and being easily recreatable. The rest were far more hit or miss, for reasons they couldn't determine.

With thousands of rifts created, they were able to make at least one of each, but it was difficult, and took time for tweaking their formulas. To Erwin's irritation, they had more success when Matt simply followed his instincts regarding what to make the rifts with.

No matter what they did, they were unable to get Aura of the triple elemental mana types, no matter what they tried. The obvious answer was that Matts mana wasn't strong enough to create endless versions of those mana types, but they couldn't be sure without converting more of his mana. But that was normally a slow and laborious process.

They estimated that about one percent of his mana was converted, but that had taken him over four years, which was a result of his Concept being so large and robust. Keith and Travis had warned him that this would be a problem, and that this would be where Matt would feel the effects of such a massive Concept. However, if he spent time with nearly no mana, he could shorten the process down to a few days or weeks at most.

Aspecting his essence would still be an issue, they unfortunately couldn't find any shortcuts there.

Luna had just left after Erwin and Matt finished up the last of their Aura testing, when a brown-haired man came into their encampment, escorted by Kurt.

Erwin seemed to know the man, who he was introduced as Achlys, but said to just call him Ace.

When he said he could influence rifts, Matt knew that they were in for their final steps of rift creating.

Trying to create unique skills, and using skills as rift seeds.

***

Luna tore a tiny hole through chaotic space with a finger transformed into a claw, ripping into the defenses around the Emperor's palace on the capital, and then quickly retracted her power.

Her intrusion was instantly noted, and the familiar presence bled out into chaotic space, then locked the nearest three worlds down.

The Emperor looked as if he was ready to kill, until he saw that it was her.

Luna was quickly enveloped in his power, and then dragged into a sitting room inside the palace.

Emmanuel's first words were a curt, What? That was little more than a growl.

I need somewhere more private. Luna knew the importance of her news, and refused to speak more without greater security.

After The Emperor inspected her for a moment, she was pulled along as they went deeper into the palace.

Once she was inside, she felt that they were in an odd expanded space that was almost completely cut off from realspace. It was isolated to a degree that she had never encountered before. She could only speculate that it was a Talent from someone else that the Emperor was using, or a special rift reward that the imperial family had gathered.

Either one was just as likely.

It's safe here. Speak.

Luna tossed him a spatial ring and then sent the video of Erwin and Matt's experiments. The ring held a sample of each rift and its Aura, along with one monster per rift. In a corner of the ring was Erwin's preliminary hypotheses and theories about the phenomena on an information crystal.

Emmanuel's face visibly hardened as he reviewed the information.

Well fuck me a thousand ways from Monday.

Luna understood the feeling. It was beneficial information that they couldn't use for fear of creating waves. The entire Empires lower Tier rift setup could be adjusted to allow more people to reach past Tier 15, which would increase their power in a way not seen since bottled Concepts.

Emmanuel paced for half an hour before the ring vanished into one of his own spatial rings that could store more of its kind.

After turning to Luna, he spoke with a tone of finality and command that couldnt be ignored. Tell them not to mention it, and to cease all rift creation with his mana. Not until after the war, at least. Catching her eye, he added, I want you or Kurt near them at all times. Ill assign another half dozen Tier 35s through Mara and Leon. Make it seem like it's them being themselves.

The Emperor threw his head back and took a massive breath before holding it. He let it out with a laugh.

If we make it through the next few millennia, we will change the realm. With enough targeted Aura rifts, we wont need bottled Concepts, and well be able to make Tier 24s by the billions. Even if their Concepts arent perfect, theyll still be immortal, and we can always have them break their Concepts and reforge them when they figure it out later. The pure number of extra people well be able to create will help tip the balance for large scale engagements.

Luna disagreed with the macabre humor.

If was the keyword, and she hated uncertainty. She also didnt want to die in a realm war.

But she did agree. We must dig into our reserves, and hope our preparations are better than our enemies. If we lose, we won't live to regret it otherwise. The efforts of your grandmother and father will be put to the test, while your leadership will steer us through the next few centuries.

If they lost, Matt might survive if he sold his Talent, but she doubted that the child would be allowed to. For all his goodwill and kindness, she wasn't sure that Emmanuel would let him have the choice.

But she wasn't sure. Luna didn't know this new Emperor as well as she did the last. She knew for certain that Emmanuel's father would never let Matt fall into enemy hands.

At least not alive.

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