The Path of Ascension

Chapter 312

Matt forced out a weary smile as more of Team Zero trudged into the meeting room. He was the only one who did so, however. Even Aster and Allie dropped almost reluctantly into their seats, not even making a basic attempt to provide some amount of amusement to the group. Theyd been on a bit of a trend lately of dressing up in unusual ways, starting with them coming into the meeting dressed as one another, and gradually shifting into other members of the group. Theyd even ventured into some cartoon characters and so forth, always trying to one-up the previous ensemble. Last time, theyd come in wearing basically nothing- Aster had been more modestly dressed between the two of them, and the only thing shed been wearing was her tiara- so he was kind of curious how theyd out-do that.

But it seemed that this time, theyd finally broken their streak. He couldnt really blame them, though. It had only been ten hours since they got back from their last deployment, a far cry from the week they normally had during trips to the base.

The war was the war. Once the novelty had worn off and theyd gotten the last shipments of their gear and skills, it had shifted from fun, to a bit tedious, to pure, unbridled monotony fast. And it stayed that way for nearly seventy years. It didnt help that Command was having them stay out almost constantly, reinforcing and pushing back siege after siege, after siege after siege.

The only times they got breaks were after a battle at or adjacent to a system which Allie already had a waypoint at, and even those were almost never more than a day real-time, after which theyd pack back up and get back to the front lines.

Once in a while, theyd get something a bit more exciting, if the alliance arrayed against the Empire decided to send a small group of elites for a push into Empire territory, but that was rare these days. Two sets of Ascenders was simply too much for any group of elites to handle, and theyd just stopped coming out to play.

By this point, most of the same Tier armies simply surrendered as they arrived, even the Sects. The prideful little part of Matt wanted to believe their enemies surrendered because of how strong they were. But in truth, they surrendered because it took longer to capture and secure that many troops than killing them did, which wasted more of their time.

The higher Tier armies still tried to resist, but Tier 26 or Tier 27 enemies just couldnt stop them without a good number of at least low level elites. They couldnt even go off-script or get in a good fight once in a while, only adding to the monotony. Fighting higher-Tier footsoldiers was just boring, trying to siege a planet was tedious, and there werent any proper same-Tier pinnacle elites for them to fight. At least, not on this side of the Empire.

Even Duke Waters was getting tired of the war. They hadnt seen him in decades, but theyd all gotten exasperated reports from both him and their commanding officers. Their senior had clashed with Maya Embers and Yun Me twice each, with an even record versus each of them, which only seemed to irritate him further. He'd been explicitly told not to give chase to them if he caught wind of their presence. He disobeyed that order regularly, but they just kept melting away before he could properly confront them, and usually in a way that meant wherever hed been heading or defending got reinforcements, worsening the overall war effort. Allie had taken to aggressively slacking off in her spare time, with Aster doing similarly, albeit with fewer propositions. Meanwhile, Liz and Zack had been just as aggressively trying to get their projects done. Matt would like to think that he had just been doing what he was told, when he was told, like a perfect soldier but he was definitely as irritable as the others.

His frustration was borne more from the complete lack of apparent progress they were making than anything else, but it was there nonetheless. No matter how many forts they took, sieges they broke, or convoys they sabotaged, it felt like trying to plug leaks in a dam with one's fingers.

The moment they left one area to repel attackers in another world, another army moved into the area they just liberated.

Intellectually, Matt knew that meant things would be that much worse without their assistance, but saying that didnt change the fact that the war fronts were getting pushed in day by day, month by month, year by year. If the generals hadnt pointed out all the ways in which the war would have already been lost without their constant intervention, there was a nonzero chance he would just go diving deep into the Sect backlines, wreck a few fortresses, have some actual fun. There was no way that Maven would stop avoiding them if he were closing in on their capitals, but he just couldnt bring himself to do so in good conscience.

The current projections said the enemies would reach King Rustys capital planet in seventy, or at most a hundred years if nothing changed. If that happened and the regional capital fell, it would be the first in any Great Power to fall in almost two hundred thousand years. The rumor mill said the fall of the local capital would signify the end of the war, but Matt didnt know how true that was, and neither did anyone else. It was all just meaningless speculation at the end of the day.

It was hard to remember sometimes that this entire war, all the lives lost, and all the planets possibly changing ownership, was effectively a game to the Tier 50s, and the Emperor might very well cut his losses if Rustys capital fell. If that happened, it was expected the other Great Powers would take seven or eight planets deep on their shared borders. That meant hundreds of planets changing hands.

Matt really didnt want to have such an outcome, but he didnt have an answer of how to stop it. There was only so much they could do, even as Ascenders, without taking out the enemies elites.

That was why their fleeing instead of fighting was so frustrating. As callous as it was, the Great Powers cared more about a single pinnacle elite than they did a hundred armies. The armies could be replaced with time, as with enough training, any Tier 25 could reach the minimum standard. But each pinnacle elite was uniquely capable and nearly impossible to perfectly replace. If Team Zero could fight and kill or capture enough of them, the enemy Great Powers might be willing to come to the table sooner. If they had a Tier 40 world under their control, they would demand a correspondingly large ransom to give it back, which the populace of the border worlds would end up paying.

Arthur and Zack were the last to arrive, and as they took their seats, Matt tried to sit up a bit straighter, only to be dragged back into a slouch by Liz as she refused to stop leaning against him. Amusingly, Susanne loosely mirrored the action as Zack took his seat next to hers, resting her head on his shoulder.

It was the most public affection hed seen between them since theyd started dating years ago, but he wasnt too surprised. They probably hadnt gotten any alone time before the emergency meeting had been called, considering they hadnt come in together.

Darrow had a solid poker face, but Matt knew that their team leader was just as annoyed at the rest of them. Their current rest was being interrupted because Well, it sounded like an army had been hiding out and had laid siege to the planet theyd left the literal second, if the timelines in Matts head were correct, theyd returned to the fort. They suspected some kind of abstract danger sense ability.

Regardless of the why, blah blah war, blah blah chase them out, blah blah take prisoners, blah blah ooh, time off?

Everyone perked up at that, but Darrow held up his hands. Dont get too excited. Its technically just a delayed enjoyment of your current break but I was able to persuade them to give you an extra rest day, and not count what you just had as any kind of rest. So, sixteen rift-days off when we get back.

That announcement led to actual cheers, mainly from Sebastian, and raised everyones spirits enough to actually start chatting again as they loaded up for deployment.

Im still stumped at how to get blood and fire to work together. Nothing is stable. Any mana type we try just falls apart. It seems literally impossible. Even the researchers are getting nowhere.

Matt just nodded along as Liz complained. It was hardly the first time shed vented about it, but it just didnt feel like they were making progress. Theyd even commandeered Erwins mana researchers after Zack finished creating his fast mana- these days called travel mana- but even with decades of progress and weeks of Matts mana generation, they had only really figured out that it would need a third element for stability. The current top contenders were emotion, lightning, spectral, and crystal, but it was slow going.

The big problem was that nobody was entirely certain what the end result would be. Liz was mainly hoping for either lightning or crystal, as those would most closely cleave to her current use of the element. Adding lightning hypercharged the mana, making it an incredibly potent shape for attack spells, while crystal stabilized it and made it better for solid constructs. Emotion helped out its more plague-like and contagious effects, while spectral weirdly made it better at healing.

It was the opposite problem compared to travel mana, which they had a singular effect in mind for, and all attempts were to orient everything to that goal. Personally, Matt felt that they were making good progress, especially compared to how long it had taken them to make travel mana; let alone the difficulties ongoing with making his crystals into talismans. But his wife was in a rush.

Still, it was nice to spend some time together and Matt didnt mind Liz complaining for some of it.

Because of the fairly mundane nature of the fight, they didnt bother giving themselves their full, maximum level of buffing. Sure, Darrow extended his Intent through all of them, Matt focused his Concepts buffing effect on Liz, Stick and Stones domains settled over them, Bulwark cast his group buffs, and they all used their respective self-buffs, but most of their consumables were left in the war chest.

It was only a Tier 26 battleground, no known notable elites, and while that meant they couldnt slack off, their innate abilities were more than enough should the army even decide to fight. Using the expensive potions, temporary buffing runes, and single-use blessing stones for something like this was just a waste, which made it even more boring.

They popped into existence in a hidden spaceport on the planets surface, blasting out by phasing directly through the still-closed ceiling, then into the atmosphere and the space beyond. As they did so, Matt overcharged his AI to access the civilian nets and pick up whatever he could about the ongoing battle, too early to have truly started swinging one way or another.

Strictly speaking, what he was doing was illegal, but it was also impossible to prove.

With the final checkpoint passed on the planet behind them, Drifter slammed her throttle all the way forward and flew towards the besieged war world.

A simple planet just barely inside the local star's stable gravity well, it served as a safe place for the Great Powers to wage wars with each other while not involving the many civilians whose lives would be lost if Tier 25s fought large scale battles among them.

Exiting the ship, Matt broadcast a message for surrender but stopped bothering as spells started flying at him.

With a wave he cast a [Bulwark] large enough to cover himself, the rest of the team, and the ship. Fifty years ago, he would have struggled to cast such a large spell, but now it was second nature.

Instead of immediately firing back, he waited to see what his allies did.

Lizs phoenix body led the charge, riding a wave of blood-red flames with a triumphant screech. Shortly behind that body, her human form also changed into bird form and took off with a flap of her wings.

So that was how this would go.

Boosting his physical body, Matt darted forward alongside Susanne.

As part of their efforts to make the war less dull and repetitive, they had started fighting with limited kits or with abilities they rarely used. It was good training couched as a competition.

Liz frequently tried fighting in only a single form, or without using blood magic, or while only using her [Feather Armory] pseudoskill-weapon. She tried limiting herself to only puppetting the blood in her opponents bodies, or more recently to only using only bloodline abilities from her lemon tree. This time, it looked like it was going to be a combination of fire magic only while in phoenix form. Matt thought for a moment, then decided he was going to use skills as little as possible.

It was definitely enjoyable to fight alongside Susanne again. Since shed joined Team Zero, shed joined himself and Eric as the groups primary frontliners, and it was fun reminiscing about Minkalla while tearing into higher-Tier fighters to everyone else's annoyance.

Spinning, Matt dodged a line of arrows before dashing through the rapid fire attack to stab a glowing Federation fighter in the chest.

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His bones started glowing, but Matt had already dealt with the phenomenon enough that he wasnt surprised. The Federation and their rune boosting program, while interesting, could only make the average soldier so much stronger than they were before, and it didnt do anything for their training instincts or habits.

Ducking and then bobbing left, Matt dodged the [Fist Blast]s the man sent out.

Twisting his blade and pulling, Matt bisected the man. He was prepared to follow the move with a thrust, but the man sent his surrender, so Matt turned and caught a spear that was being thrust into his back.

At the same time, a wave of spells flew at him, but Matt didnt cast any more defensive spells. He just flew forward, shoving the spearman into another group of Federation soldiers.

Matt cursed as he took a grazing hit along his right shoulder. His armor stopped it entirely cold, of course, but before he could even indicate it, a message from Allies [AI] gave him one demerit, which put him in last place.

Mildly irritated that he was now losing their bet, Matt flared his Concept. Repulsive force built in the blink of an eye, then released in a single overwhelming shockwave.

The soldiers near him were sent reeling as their weapons and armor were destroyed.

Susanne slid in front of him, trailing a silvery line in the wake of her sword, brimming with destructive energy. Her current restriction was that she couldnt use her sword directly, but instead, could only use her Tier 25 Talent, the ability to write on anything, as her weapon. It wasnt as impossible as it sounded, as shed managed to get the sword-strokes to be just as sharp as her actual blade, but it still required creative maneuvering and positioning to really make work.

It wouldnt break through his armor, but he still made sure to dodge out of the way of the stroke.

Matt was not going to lose another point.

Darrow passed along a request for a lot of fire mana from Zack, and Matt obliged. [Dragonflame] flooded out of his armors cannon, magical threads permeating it from Dena as her Domain helped weave the spell from Matt to Zack. His fellow Ascender swirled it counterclockwise, focusing it into a white-hot miniature sun, and he launched it so fast that it left afterimages.

Zacks personal restriction was fairly simple. Any skill he personally used had to be exclusively travel mana-aspected, and he couldnt request any non-energy spells from the rest of the group to compensate for that limit.

It was an amusingly subtle restriction. Back when hed first started practicing with travel mana, Zack had won four competitions in a row through some variation of applying a maximum-speed travel spell to rocks and metal, or transforming a travel [Mana Bolt] to metal in the instant before it struck its target. Then theyd unanimously agreed that it was too boring, and Zack moved on to more challenging permutations.

Last battle, hed used travel mana to rapidly accelerate random body parts, literally causing some of their opponents, mostly those with insufficient flexibility cultivation, to tear themselves apart. It was impressive, but impractical even by their standards, and he was working on a different application for travel mana today.

A non teleporting Allie flew past Matt, diving in and out of groups of combatants just long enough to stab a few in vital places, get a few surrenders, and leave to do it with another group of enemies.

Matt backhanded a lance of mana, the spell splintering against his Stygian Gossamer-enhanced hand and armor, and used the momentum it provided to dodge to the side, out of the way of a barrage of attacks that three commanders trying to pincer him had unleashed.

One lightning bolt came a bit close for comfort, and he needed to engage his repulsion in maximum deflection mode to avoid it, but he successfully managed to avoid losing another point. Right now, only he and Dena had a single unintended hit to their names, and if he was going to lose, he would make sure it was at least a tie.

With a flash of channeled mana through his Tier 25 talent and a few moments of intense concentration, a sculpture of mana stone in the shape of a small rune appeared. His Bifate Pair-Linker appeared in his hand for an instant, linking it with a pair of small metal plates tucked into a storage container in his armor. The talisman thus completed, he activated it and sent off a [Firebolt]-like spell the size of Joys ship.

Matt still hadnt been able to instantaneously create an entire talisman, but he always did his best practice while fighting, so hed been using his BPL more and more in combat to better refine his mana control, linking premade arrays to ever-more-complex sets of mana crystal. By and large, he could only change some of the less complex parameters on the fly, but manifesting a runic array in mere instants midfight, with no stabilization or tools beyond the absolute basics, was neat enough.

The efficiency was at least decent, though anything he created on the fly wasnt the same quality as his own skills. Still, it was good enough that even a relatively small amount of mana could have some pretty massive effects.

Part of his ongoing improvements meant using the mana compressing formation any time his spirit was fully healed. In fact, he was almost ready for another round of condensing, and while the process still sucked, its improvements were indisputable.

The concentration array was another one of his projects that Matt didnt have enough time to dedicate his AI to. It was absolutely invaluable, helping him bring his mana concentration to a point where it was more potent than a stiff breeze, but it still had its limits. Specifically, its efficiency kept going down. Instead of crunching his mana into a more compact form, he was just losing some of that mana, with it being shorn off from his spirit to no gain before the formation took affect. He could get it back no problem thanks to the nature of his Talent, but with every use, the amount that was lost for no gain kept increasing. Eventually, he would be getting essentially nothing from scouring his spirit, and the concentration array would be useless for him.

That wouldnt happen for thousands of years and thousands of uses, but Matt was slowly learning to think like an immortal and planning for such far out eventualities. There were some models which suggested that the diminishing returns might reset, or at least loosen, when he Tiered up, but it wasnt really possible to tell at this point. Fortunately, his Intent passively concentrated his mana entirely on its own. It was incredibly slow, but it meant that no matter what happened, he would keep growing stronger entirely on his own merits.

Compared to his fresh Tier 25 self, who could only make five million mana into a head sized sphere, Matt could now put that much mana into a fist sized sphere. That meant the talisman, which he had cast the simple [Fire Bolt], contained eight million mana, and he hadnt even needed to stop casting his other spells to do it.

One of the things Matt had truly come to grips with over the last century-ish was that his Talent wasnt a combat Talent. For all of its immense power, it only incidentally made him good at combat. It didnt make his skills hit harder directly, it didnt help him supernaturally bypass defenses, nor did it give him fantastic insight as to the perfect place to hit. Of course, he hit hard enough that it usually didnt matter, but while going from 10 mana to 1,000 might increase its power by a factor of fifteen, going from 1,000 mana to 1,000,000 mana might only quadruple the power, while simultaneously making the spell thousands of times harder to actually cast and keep contained.

That was the entire reason mana concentration was so useful, despite the fact that investing in it lowered one's mana regen and max mana. Increasing mana concentration made the spell itself more efficient. Even Matt, who had more mana than he knew what to do with, found his own sweet spot with spell cost and efficiency. Sure his sweet spot was higher than everyone else's, but he wasnt making use of all of his mana.

But spot-charged talismans helped change that.

So did his power armor.

It had been refined a few times in the intervening decades, small tweaks to the original design, usually in favor of giving him far, far more power in exchange for drastically less efficiency. Sometimes it felt like half the mana he put into it was just there to offset the fact that almost no Tier 25 materials could properly handle ten to twenty million mana per second.

In truth, it was probably more.

But while Matts talent wasnt a combat talent, it was genuinely unparalleled when it came to making mana. That fed into his spirit both literally and metaphorically, empowering his Domain- especially his Concept- to a truly absurd degree. And in the past several decades, hed taken that connection, and with the help of One Step Behind, refined it into something truly great. He wasnt quite a sovereign of mana, but he had picked up a few tricks.

His favorite was making a trick hed picked up in Minkalla useful after all these years.

Mana flowed out from him, but as he raised his hand, a small sphere of power began gathering above his open palm, a white hole running in reverse. It wasnt a black hole; he was still working on adapting his Intents gravity manipulation to function with mana. And besides, calling on his Intent would cut Liz off from the buff he was providing with his Concept. But it still pulled in on all the mana in a wide area.

What once sought to steal mana directly from spirits now snaked out and attacked spells directly, almost intelligently seeking out weak points in their spells, their gear, even their implants, and pulling on it viciously.

Zack was the only mage he knew that could basically shrug off the effect, but for anyone without Luna for a tutor, spells collapsed and were swiftly devoured, their remnants collapsing violently within the spirits of the enemy casters. This being the Federation, plenty of those skills werent within their spirits, but within pseudoskill enchantments implanted into their bodies. It meant that several of the opposing soldiers found their cybernetics malfunctioning, and in one particularly dramatic instance, exploding and taking the womans hand it was implanted in with it.

Then, because he had a big ball of mana in his hand that needed something done with it, he threw it at a nearby defensive structure, blowing a massive hole in the side of it as the mana violently detonated.

Matt had several follow ups they had practiced, but he didnt use any of them and instead resumed his melee attacks.

Matt, that counts as using a spell.

Allie's voice chirped into their group chat, but Matt already had his rebuttal ready. And teleporting mid-fight to get a snack is teleporting. If we want to start cou

It's very different. Getting a snack isnt related to combat.

Matt was concentrating on defeating a group of five melee soldiers who were less affected by his removing the mana in the area, but Liz backed him up. I seem to remember someone saying they were powered by snacks and therefore snacks were a necessary part of all combat supplies.

Caught by her own words, Allie lied through her teeth. I only said that because Aster is a snacker and needs her treats. She's like a puppy and gets grumpy if she isnt plied with snacks.

Excuse me! Are you calling me a dog?

No, I called you a puppy. It's different.

No it's not, you teleporting, backstabbing, bitch!

Seeing that her mark on him was overwhelmingly rejected by the others, Matt stopped paying attention to her and instead looked to where Liz was fighting a group of Federation soldiers in phoenix form.

While there was little sign of the warpaint that his wife usually traced out on herself across her armored feathers, the multicolored flames surrounding her were a literally sure-fire way to tell that she was channeling... That looked like six different bloodlines at once, as well as Asters cold fire, an application of the foxs Concept which Liz was borrowing thanks to a blood contract.

Really, Liz was terrifying in the best way, simply because of how unapproachable she was as a combatant. Trying to outnumber her was a losing proposition, as any body thrown at her was simply more fuel for her spells. Trying to outmatch her in physical combat was also a terrible idea, because she could outnumber, outmuscle, and outskill just about everyone. Trying to attack her with magic just meant shed infect you with some terrible draining-slash-wasting blood curse that allowed her to form a clone within your veins, after which shed assume human form, displacing the space that your body should have been taking up.

Even if shed eased back a bit on the clones following a minor crisis of identity about fifty years ago, she still constantly had at least three distinct bodies active at any given time, and wouldnt hesitate to push that up to a hundred and fifty in short doses. Even still, she was working on slowly trying to up that literal body count, specifically by seeing how possible it would be for her to act as Matts blood full-time.

Current status was an incredibly uncertain, maybe.

Her wings were iridescent with all the colors of the rainbow as white-hot, blood-red, icy-blue, and a particularly sickly shade of purple flames washed over her foes, leaving them burned, exsanguinated, frostbitten, and rapidly necrotizing. .

Those who survived that had to deal with flaming feathers being shot at them. Lizs [Feather Armament] was doubly effective in phoenix form and she used them to great effect.

Someone managed to get in close to her and smashed her bird form with a massive hammer, but the blood that burst out like a squashed melon simply reformed into a phoenix. A now angry Liz flapped her wings and darted at the man, piercing a hole through his chest.

Happy he was no longer in last place, Matt pretended not to hear Lizs complaining and instead turned to wrap up the battle as fast as possible.

Once they had defeated most of the officers, the general troops accepted the offer of surrender which ended the one sided fight, but forced them to sit around while the army stationed on the previously besieged planet came up and secured the prisoners.

Matt had once asked why they didnt just keep all the prisoners until the enemy ran out of troops, which could end the war sooner than later, but he had been given an annoyingly hard to argue with answer. The wars had once been fought exactly like that, and wars had become far more brutal, with each Great Power unwilling to allow their soldiers to surrender. Things had eventually progressed until the point that the Great Powers were implanting their troops with curses that their officers could activate in case the lower ranking troops tried to mutiny. After several wars where the Great Powers had close to sixty percent casualties, they had changed the rules so that any surrendered troops were to be ransomed back to their respective Great Powers as soon as possible, while the individual troops couldn't fight for a mutually agreed upon time not longer than a decade.

That old ruling was in fact why the Sects rarely allowed their general troops to surrender. It had been a necessity, but now, it gave their troops an edge on the rest of the fighters despite leading to higher than normal casualties.

It was a trade-off they were willing to make.

Once the troops were shipped off, they made their way to the next system where they were met with immediate surrender. But the third, oddly enough, decided to fight.

As the Republic army was only Tier 25, it seemed like an odd choice. But sometimes a general got a bug and thought they could do what no one else had managed, thus refusing to surrender.

It took a couple hours, but just as they were clearing out the last of the space fortifications, a new ship appeared near the inhabited planet.

At first, Matt thought Joy's sensors must be wrong, as there was no way the ship could be that large, but as the details came in, the information was corroborated by secondary and tertiary sources removing any doubt.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Matt watched as the ship accelerated impossibly fast, which made Matt noticed just how far the ship had appeared away from the inhabited planet, indicating chaotic space engines leagues beyond what even Joy's ship had.

They didnt need General Darrow to call them together to know something bad was about to happen.

Matt wasnt afraid, but rather interested.

After decades of monotony, this was something new.

They floated there over the planet as the ship approached. As it flew stellar north it disgorged five companies of corporation mercenaries, one of which Matt recognized. The moment he did, he snarled at what it implied.

Just seconds later, he got his answer as Maven led fourteen people out of the ship.

Flexing his left hand, Matt couldn't help but smile.

It had been too long, and he had been saving [Mana Claw] especially for Maven. She had even brought the team of people who the Great Powers had been training to counter them.

But she wouldnt be escaping today, no matter how many friends she brought with her.

The enemy the other Great Powers had cobbled together to counter them, The Harmony Accords, had finally arrived.

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