The Path of Ascension

Chapter 272

Matt groaned, dropping to a seated position. There technically wasnt any meaningful gravity this far out from the closest sun, but the action still felt gratifying.

He had wanted a place to be alone to meditate for the first time after his incident, but just locking himself in a room hadnt been enough, so he quickly flew into space. Even that hadnt satisfied his need for solitude.

It cost him a small fortune, but he paid a Tier 25 to help him build a teleport leash which, when activated, would pull him back to an anchor. Once that was set up, he got on his flying sword and flew at top speed away from the planetary ecliptic plane, and away from the sun's influence.

Without air to create drag, his endless acceleration quickly got him away from the planets, but he still wanted more. To further increase his speed, he rapidly activated his teleport ring to cover even more distance. With his current mana generation feeding both his sword and ring, he was able to clear the gravity well of the systems star in just two weeks.

When he was deep in the emptiness of space, with only twinkling stars to accompany him, Matt put away his sword and let himself drift in the lotus position. His body still hurt everywhere thanks to his extensive Domain damage, but after eight months of treatment and time, he was mostly fine, and the remaining injury was mostly just psychosomatic.

The last year had been aggravating enough that the moment he was given the all-clear from his healers, he went on this adventure. He knew that Liz and Aster wanted to come with him, but he needed to be on his own.

Partly because he was tired of them mothering him, but more than that, he needed to become the embodiment of a black hole. Lonely and pulling every stray bit of matter in until all that was left was a silent, cosmic graveyard

There was a peace in the loneliness, and he enjoyed it before delving into the center of his cultivation cores where his Domain lay.

A few months ago, the place was full of cracks and felt like a fractured bone, but now everything was back to its normal shape, and Matt reveled in that feeling. The damage to his Concept had been like living with a broken limb after he had grown so accustomed to it over the last century, and he was glad to have it back.

Having had his revelation in the destruction of his first attempt, Matt knew what he needed to make and immediately began building the image of a black hole. Hed always found actually crafting the Image to be the most gratifying, and so his starting point was a single pinprick of darkness.

From the moment his Image began to stabilize, he immediately felt his Concept rail against its polar opposite in the attempt to destroy the invader. If his concentration slipped for even a moment, he knew that the Image would be destroyed, but that was to be expected. Having polar opposite images for two stages of a Domain wasnt some new thing, and many had walked such dualistic paths before him, but all encountered harsh obstacles in making the newest portion of their Domains. For him, with polar opposite images, he would ideally create his Anchor and Phrase before his Image, as that would give the Image some stabilization. But he wasnt close with the other two facets of his Intent, and he needed to make progress.

Rather, his recent change meant that he needed to re-determine his top Phrase candidates. For his Anchor, the Heart of a Black Hole, a prize he had won in Minkalla, would be damn near perfect as the literal core of a black hole. He had attempted to bind it last week, but his Concepts Image had attacked its polar opposite just as it had in his resistance training. He did feel a connection to the Heart of a Black Hole, but he couldn't tell if that was just familiarity from spending so much time honing his Concept against it, or because it was resonating with him. He expected it was a little of both, but his instincts told him he needed to create his black hole Image before he could even attempt to claim the Heart of a Black Hole as an Anchor. Even then, it wouldnt be easy, and hed need to figure out something beyond the items origin as a way to tie it into his Intent.

He was curious what powers it might grant him, but he crushed that train of thought mercilessly. He wasnt about to try and sculpt his Intent in a way that it might grant him certain powers again. Hed tried that with his Minkalla image, contrary to general advice, and it had fought him enough that he didnt want to go through the whole process again.

Settling himself, Matt released his black hole Image and waited to see if it could stand on its own. It was like an eggshell currently, but he hadnt had the time to really fill out the image and make it solid.

Despite putting in only a few hours of work, it felt good. Not solid or stable, but Matt could already feel his spirit connecting to it in a way it had taken years for Minkalla to resonate. It just felt right, like stretching an arm that had been cramped for too long.

Despite the superior compatibility with him as a whole, the Image collapsed within seconds under the pressure of his white hole Concept. He was in for a serious fight, trying to both form his Intent and balance it with his Concept, but he was certain he had it right this time.

As his Image finished collapsing, Matt started rebuilding it. Thanks to it failing in the initial stages, and him not actually trying to actualize the Image, there was no damage. But now he knew for certain that he had the right path, and so, he rebuilt the Image of a Black Hole.

Starting at the outer and most superficial layer, he created it like a shell before starting to fill the Image in.

It took two months for him to get the Image to a point where it was stable in the presence of his white hole Image, but the black hole Image wasnt even a quarter filled in. Part of that was his Concepts size, but a larger part of it was his own expectations of his Domain and his own power.

A black hole had an indisputable impact on the world around them, and while he wouldnt admit it, Matt was beginning to truly grasp just how impactful his mana doublings would have on the world around him. In many ways, that helped, but in other ways it just made it harder.

He couldnt just think about the science of a black hole and substitute mana for energy, like he had for his Concept. The Intent was a matter of reaching out to reality and imposing his truth over the natural order. In that sense, he needed to think of a black hole as an extension of himself, not simply a phenomenon he found cool. He needed to truly comprehend the vast infinitude of the ways he would impact his surroundings and draw those ties to the black hole itself.

He would be the center. No matter what people threw at him, he would take it and only grow stronger, until over time, he was the point which the entire Realm revolved around. The ultimate immovable object whose path could not be altered. But so too was it the opposite of simply being a white hole that spread mana wherever it went. To be certain, there was a lot of energy put off by a black hole, but it was incidental to the raw destruction it wrought, and that made it tricky to balance against the rest of him.

And so he reflected, meditating upon his existence.

Still, he didnt have an unlimited amount of time. Their year-long break was ending, and they needed to get back to delving if they didnt want to deal with a time crunch.

Slowly releasing his black hole Image, he sighed in relief as it withstood the pressure his Concept put on it.

Seeing it was stable, he pulled out the other half of the device he had bought from the Tier 25 and sent mana into it.

When the device didnt instantly activate, he started to get worried. The formation was based on the Tier 26 skill [Recall], and was set to bring him back the moment it had enough mana to do so. That his mana regeneration wasnt sufficient to immediately activate the device concerned him, and Matt began to prod at it. He was just wondering if he needed to start flying back when he felt the device that was now glowing light blue with mana activate, and he felt himself get yanked.

One gut-wrenching moment later, he found himself standing back at his house and looking at Liz and Aster, who were sitting there eating sandwiches.

Aster waved, mouth full, but Liz at least got up and came over to give him a kiss. Or at least, she appeared like she would. Instead of leaning in, she shoved the sub into his hands.

It's not as good as when you make it. Her mock pout was almost ruined by the grin that tried to escape.

Matt blew a raspberry at her and took the sandwich and took a bite. Chewing, he analyzed the tastes. You didnt put any oil or oregano on it. It's dry.

Liz reached out to take the sub back, but Matt smirked at her and stepped away, chewing.

Hey, that was my lunch! Give me back my sub.

Im good, thanks though.

Liz huffed but lost her fake pout as she followed him into their bathroom and the shower.

***

Matt looked out at the rift. Nearing the peak of Tier 22, even if they didnt have Intents, it was time they tackled this obstacle.

A Tier 25 rift.

They needed to work on pushing themselves, and without a full Intent, this was as hard as they could push.

Matt readied his sword as the three of them stood right next to the rift entrance.

Tier 25 rifts were massive, usually the size of a gas giant, and this one was odd. Instead of a planet or even an endless plain, they found themselves floating in space next to a blue star. In front of them, a truly colossal space station slowly spun, debris flowing from the many breaches in the shell of the ship.

It was an unusual type, but not one he was wholly unfamiliar with. Every so often, a rift pseudo-civilization was modeled off of some unorthodox reality. Like if theyd never discovered fire, or had literally everything made out of living wood. Or, like this one, where they didnt have any enchantments.

Instead of gravity engines, the station was slowly rotating to pull people towards the outside in a way few people bothered with, and the ship itself was powered by a massive fusion reactor instead of any mana banks, crystals, or trapped elementals. They still had shields in the form of magnetically-constrained plasma banks, but it wasnt anything too interesting. Every once in a while, someone became enamored with the idea of powering something or many things without mana, only to quickly learn just why nobody did that.

Individually, it sometimes made sense to utilize spinning rings instead of gravity engines, or mundane plasma in place of flight cores, but you pretty much always wanted some form of enchanting, and by the time you tried to develop two parallel power systems and ensured that neither would interfere with the other, you were pretty much always better off just using mana for the whole thing.

Still, it hadnt been on the dossier theyd glanced at when selecting this rift to buy, so presumably, most of the time it was a more typical space-based rift. But it was always interesting to see something a bit different, and Matt was excited and maybe he could glean a few ideas from the unique ideas rifts sometimes came up.

Liz pointed her spear at the nearest wreckage of a massive ship with a hole torn through the side. Let's check this wreckage out.

Together, the three of them edged closer to the wreck. He and three Liz's, two kitted out clones and Liz herself, created a wall for Aster, who watched their rear.

It was a simple formation, but one that almost felt ridiculous. Aster was the only one with two-thirds of her Intent formed. Between her snowscape Image and recently-established Phrase of Deep Winter of the Frozen North, all she had in front of her was her anchor, but was waiting until they completed a Tier 25 rift before trying and potentially putting her out of commission for a year or more.

Or at least, that was what she told Liz and Luna. Matt, connected to her as they were, knew there was a degree of pride keeping her from forming it. She wanted to conquer a Tier 25 rift, a rift where every monster had their own Intent, without her own to prove just how good they were.

That almost-formed Intent, accordingly, made her their strongest weapon against other Intent-holders. That said, Aster was still a mage, and was not suited to close-quarters combat, so she shouldn't be deployed on the frontlines.

It was a good thing too, as when they neared the metal ship, they felt something preventing their spiritual sense from entering the actual ship, but a distinct air of malice still penetrated the hull. Fortunately, the ships hull was only Tier 20, making their next moves easy.

Matt charged and released an [Arcane Powershot] in the blink of an eye, blasting through the outer hull of the ship and unveiling their enemy.

The ship disintegrated around it, revealing a coral-like substance that had formed inside the ship like blood vessels inside a body. When the coral shot out arm thick needles of what looked like bone, they had the first monster of the rift.

Matt cast [Sheer Cold], letting Aster take over the spell and direct the normally omni-directional blast into a cone of cold. The incoming bone shards showed their hand by twisting mid-air like fish or eels, and the three of them unleashed their attacks on the swarm of monsters.

They were a well-oiled machine, with Aster slowing them, Matt keeping them at bay, and the Liz's usually landing the killing blow. She and her clones would drain their life for her own strength, leaving them as bloodless corpses as she moved on to the next monster in line. Even still, the monster in the ship had an Intent empowering the bone-eels, making each engagement a brutal matter of wearing them down over the course of seconds, balancing the dance of power to ensure none of them were swarmed.

It was slow, but they crushed their opposition. Or at least the first wave.

The second wave made itself apparent the moment they finished off the eels.

Humans.

Or, more accurately, zombies.

Very dead humanoids with lamprey-like monsters digging themselves out of the corpses mouths in a disgusting display.

The zombies were slow for Tier 25 monsters, but that only translated to extremely fast to the Tier 22s, rather than impossibly fast. Though, extremely fast opponents were nothing new to them, and were fairly straightforward to deal with.

Matt twisted and sent out a [Mana Slash] and a [Wind Cutter], both boosted by [Hypersonic Edge], cutting through a dozen of the zombies but not killing them, with the monsters upper halves still flying forward. Seeing the lower halves stop moving, Matt cast [Sword Twin] three times. The first was a copy of his melee blade that he let fly next to him before he swapped his blade into its magic form, where he made two more copies. One of the copies merged with his blade, and he returned to its melee enchantment loadout, while the other mage blade merged with the floating sword.

The now empowered [Sword Twin]s raced forward and started cutting into the zombies, going for the head.

But that proved as ineffective as cutting them in half, as the monsters continued on unperturbed. Targeting the lamprey, with its circular cutting teeth extending forward to eat them, Matt cut the appendage itself in half, and the entire zombie went slack.

An interesting take on zombies, but not one that he didnt know how to counter.

Weaving in and out of the attacking zombies, Matt aimed for the heart, where the lampreys seemed to be nestled around, while informing the others.

He took a few hits in doing so, the Tier 25 monster having enough strength, speed, and durability to block his hits with their human forms. But that was why he had [Cracked Phantom Armor] and physical armor underneath it.

A zombie grabbed his left arm and tried to bite him with its lamprey mouth, but Matt twisted and used his invulnerable left hand to cast [Mana Charge] and explode the monster. Even as the first zombie was disintegrating, a second zombie grabbed his arm again but twisted and snapped his left arm at the elbow.

Growling in the vacuum of space, Matt headbutted the zombie. The lamprey seemed ready for that move and tried to bite him, but even its razor sharp teeth just scraped off [Cracked Phantom Armor], and the force of his blow pulped the monster and killed the reanimated corpse.

Matt caught one of the two Liz clones fighting off a few monsters that had gone after Aster, and after analyzing the fight, dove into a larger pack of the zombies after seeing they had the fight well under control. Liz and her other clone were fighting a number of monsters, so Matt flared the physical power he was sending to them as he picked up on what his wife was trying to do.

With the burst of power, Liz flew backward and kited a number of the monsters while she sent darts of blood in and out of the zombies, having ripped a lamprey itself out of one of them. It took almost thirty seconds of Matt and her clone defending her, but when she squeezed and crushed the monster, all the other lampreys near her exploded in an expanding wave.

It was one of her more successful skill-less blood abilities, and relied on the rifts creating exact copies of monsters. That made it less useful outside of a rift, but against swarm or parasite monsters whose physical strength was usually weaker, it was a debilitating attack.

The rush of essence felt good, and Matt cycled it into his core to further empower himself. He even allowed some of the essence to rush into [Lesser Sacrifice]. It was technically wasteful, as they werent yet at the peak of Tier 22, but the power boost was damn useful. They had tried to ask for the Tier 26 [Sacrifice] skill for one of their Tier 20 rewards, but they were laughed at by April, who told them to look the skill up and try to buy one. They had and quickly realized that the skill was in high demand, and its supply was incredibly limited thanks to no rifts regularly dropping them in the Empire, meaning most were imports.

So they made due with what they had.

Lack of rare skills aside, they still had a formidable arsenal.

A ring of blood flowed around Lizs wrist, twisting between her clasped hands like a serpent. Flying over to Liz, Matt put his hand on her shoulder, flooding her with mana with his Concept. Her blood clone was standing guard off to the other side, shield raised. He didnt need to be close to do this, but for this to work, Liz needed to concentrate, and it was safest to do that with him there to protect her. Her clones were good and were nearly fully autonomous, but a large enough distraction with one of them could still pull her out of the trance.

Five minutes later, the blood stopped flowing around her wrist and exploded outward in a fine mist.

All three Liz's almost immediately started to convulse, but her AI started feeding information to his [AI], where it processed the information and created a map of enemies in the rift. It would become increasingly useless as time passed, but it was still good to get an impression of the rift before they headed in too deeply.

Matt silently whistled as the spell resonated with every lamprey-like monster in the rift. There were billions. Most were concentrated in the space station in front of them, but Matt knew that was just the tip of the iceberg.

The coral-like thing that had fused with the ship's structure wasnt a lamprey, and so hadnt appeared, but Matts [AI] had already counted the ships floating through space.

As soon as Liz recovered from the strain of casting the skill-less spell, Matt cast [Cracked Mana Spear] at the ship-shaped coral structure.

Like the eel things it had fired, the ship thing twisted like a fish in water and darted away, trying to flee, but Aster was ready and slowed it to a crawl, which allowed Matt to carve it into pieces without any risk to themselves.

Only when there was a rush of essence confirming it was dead did Matt carefully move forward to inspect the monster's corpse. It didnt take long to confirm the monsters really did seem to be sea creatures adapted to the vacuum of space. That didnt explain the humans or technology, but that didnt really matter to them.

They had a rift to clear.

A task that became more complicated when they inspected the human zombies.

They each had personal identifiers on them in the form of pad-like items that were mostly filled with gibberish. All except for an identifier number that was in Empire standard.

Aster spat off to the side when they realized what that meant. Are we really going to bother with a full clear?

In theory, Matt agreed. A rift of this size would take at least three months to fully clear, but when things like this appeared in a rift, it usually meant the rift had some hidden boss or extra reward. Who could pass up extra loot or an extra fight? Matt surely couldnt.

A Liz clone nodded and made to throw the data pad away. You're right. We can skip it.

But before she could finish throwing the data pad away, Aster grabbed it and stuck it in her spatial ring. Hey, dont get ahead of yourself. I was just complaining. I never said I didnt want to do it.

Matt smiled and looked at the cut on his arm that was now mostly healed. I'm ready to go when you guys are.

Knowing they needed to fully clear the rift, they spent the first two weeks flying around on Matts flying sword and cleared out all the ships.

It was on the third ship they encountered a new oddity;. an intact, but empty, ship.

With nothing alive inside the ship, Matt waved his hand, wanting to pull the ship into his spatial ring, but the moment his spirit started to pull it inside, the ship detonated.

Cursing the stinginess of the rift, Matt moved on with the others, who consoled him. The failed attempt was still interesting, and he pondered it even as they cleared the infested ships before going deeper into the rift and entering the massive superstructure.

There were a few shops and stores he explored that were filled with an assortment of junk, some of which he pocketed for later study.

What made him pause was a vaguely similar helmet design he had seen advertised for mortals who traveled through the vacuum of space, and he spent close to half an hour disassembling it before coming to the conclusion that someone had copied the general form factor in the Empire before iterating on it and improving the design. The physical shape was nearly a perfect copy.

Sadly, the rest of the rift wasnt nearly as interesting or easy.

The single humanoid zombies they had fought outside of the space station were nothing when compared to the swarms of monsters they encountered inside.

Massive, ten foot tall zombies made from a dozen or more people, small sleek zombies created from children, and exploding zombies whose blood was both toxic and acidic were all mixed in with the normal zombies.

Initially, they just wanted to shred the superstructure and force the zombies into space, but the space station had an integrity value that lowered anytime they blew a hole in its shell that updated on all the data pads they were collecting. It was clear they needed to keep the ship intact, which was easier said than done when fighting Tier 25 monsters.

Instead of just ignoring the challenge, they turned it into a game like those imposed on them by Luna.

Each of them took injuries as they delved, but they tried not to let that slow them down, and thanks to Lizs healing and Matts mana, they rarely had to stop for more than a few hours for a limb to be properly reattached. The boss was a giant coral monster that had infected the power station of the space station and was feeding off the energy.

Killing the monster while not destroying the generators was difficult, but the three of them managed, though a few Liz clones died in the rift.

Clearing the rest of the rift, they discovered what the purpose of the station was.

It was a sun forge. It was weird that a society simulating an enchantment-free reality would have one, but he wasnt complaining about the ingots of Solar Steel that they managed to find. It wasnt a ton, maybe enough for a sword. But if they were lucky, it would cover the materials theyd need to upgrade one of their growth items.

Sun forges were fairly rare, especially outside of the Corporations and Clans, and they each charged a small fortune for any of their exports. Solar Steel was fairly low on the scale of supermaterials that sun forges could produce, but that didnt keep it from being in high demand for fire, light, and especially summer mages and warriors. Especially as they neared Tier 25, it seemed like everything was getting far more expensive, but in this case, it was to their benefit.

Still, they had completed a Tier 25 rift without their own Intent, and that was a monumental moment for the three of them. Despite not having their own Intents, they had proved they could tackle even that gap and washed away any lingering trauma with their loss against Girang and Soddus so many years ago.

Progress was both tangible and material.

It felt good.

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