The Path of Ascension

Chapter 328

General Lucas Darrow sat in quiet contemplation as the endless maelstrom of the infinite realm whirled by outside the viewport. It was an odd sight these days, made all the more outlandish by the realization that he even viewed it as odd. He hadn’t truly realized the degree to which he had become accustomed to Ascender Shadow’s long-distance transportation capabilities, such that if a flight were to take more than a few days with Prima Ace Drifter at the helm, they would often simply teleport to an alternate destination to keep moving at all times.

But with nearly a week of hard-flown pursuit of the Harmony Accords, old habits and memories were beginning to emerge once again. In his last role, such travel time would have occurred in massive troop transport ships, where he and his squad were but one of countless Tier 15 pieces of a whole, being moved from one mission to the next. It would have been time well-utilized, as well. Training, maintenance, group exercises, healing, paperwork, and very occasionally rest.

Now it was mostly idle time.

What few field repairs had been needed, given the astounding degree of self-repair their gear had, was performed in a matter of hours thanks to the combined efforts of Elite Technician Origami and Ascender Titan. There was no training to be done, when his squad was pinnacle elites and outright Ascenders. Nor were there any group exercises which would aid them, and Graduate Bulwark outstripped most of the healers Darrow had met outside of Fort Lightfoot itself. There were no requisition forms to be filled out, nor even a genuine need for them other than politeness. Requests for increases to an operational mana budget were accomplished by asking Ascender Titan for a minute of his time, and none of his team lacked any of the gear needed for them to shine the most. They already outshone him, if he was being honest, so how could he see what might make them burn even brighter?

Therefore, he spent much of the two weeks they stayed in direct pursuit of the Harmony Accords by personal strategizing. There were no weaknesses he needed to compensate for among Team Zero, but the new elites that had joined them did provide additional complexities for their tactics. Let alone the added complexities that all of the Tier 25 pinnacle elites across three Great Powers came with, as well as a substantial number of peak elites. It all brought many new considerations for his leadership. Titan’s passive Concept mana-granting aura meant Darrow could run substantially more intensive simulations, and he put that capability to good use.

Darrow dedicated a portion of his attention as he heard Drifter start complaining.

Mostly it was about how unacceptable it was that they weren’t faster than the Harmony Accords ship with the new engines. They sometimes caught up, which implied they might be faster over a marathon, but it never lasted.

Anytime they got close to the massive ship, it started to blur and would leave their detection range in a few short moments. Drifter, a seasoned pilot, explained in great and excruciating detail when Estelle asked how they kept moving so fast.

Darrow wasn’t certain if he agreed with the woman’s assessment, all told. She might have been an expert in piloting, but he was an expert in harmonizing disparate powers. Coordinating dozens of Talented Aces to merge their capabilities into a warship of that size… it would be a feat on par with assembling the Harmony Accords to begin with. Though Drifter certainly thought much the same of constructing a ship with said capabilities. She complained extensively whenever prompted, primarily out of a sense of jealousy, and Darrow couldn’t in good conscience condemn her for it.

Were it not for the additional boosters that had been fitted onto what had already been an exceedingly fast ship, there was no question the Harmony Accords would easily outstrip them. Even their current speed was accomplished only at phenomenal expense, courtesy of just over half of Titan’s immense mana regeneration, as not even an Ascender team could afford twenty five Tier 25 mana stones per minute simply to travel.

Indubitably, once he ceased working alongside Ascenders, particularly Ascender Titan, Darrow would be in for a harsh recalibration of expected budgets and allotted resources, yet for the time being, he would appreciate the abundance he had been provided.

He also was fairly certain they knew the Harmony Accord’s next destination. Gol’Ru was a Tier 25 supply depot which supported a number of what had become important chokepoints near the Citadel, and a tempting bastion from which their enemies could harass and further attack that most critical of battlefields.

High Command expected the Harmony Accords to hole up in Gol’Ru for the next few years if, like they expected, the enemies were preparing to rush the Citadel with their Tier 35 armies. And he agreed; itt was what his own wargaming said they should do.

He expected them to behave accordingly if Team Zero kept pressure on them. If Team Zero left and started crushing other armies without the assistance of Shadow’s Talent, High Command believed the Harmony Accords would drop off an army or five and then dip into the backlines before wrecking havoc, similar to what they had done.

So long as they kept threatening to retake the Gol’ru system, the Harmony Accords would be forced to sit in place.

Which, all things considered, wasn’t a bad thing. The frontlines were… holding, technically. The Harmony Accords had managed to disrupt a number of important supply depots, and while some creative resource redistribution meant the armies weren’t helpless, it was a very finite situation. Even then, their enemies were pushing hard enough that planets were falling, and they were cutting what seemed to be a supply channel through Empire space, presumably towards the Citadel front. With some luck, Ascender Shadow’s return would help them keep the Harmony Accords penned in, and thus unable to deal additional damage, while liberating planets.

It was a situation that would be impossible under normal circumstances, yet there was nothing normal regarding working with Ascenders.

Another two years, and the war was as good as over.

At least in the Tier 25 bracket.

The Tier 15 bracket was looking more and more like a loss with the million man armies of the other Great Powers simply overwhelming the Empire defenders, slowly but surely. As a General he had a decent degree of command review ability which let him see the reports of near constant losses. A loss there wasn’t too unexpected with just how many soldiers fought in the lowest Tier bracket.

It was immensely challenging for a single individual to have a meaningful impact upon those battlefields. There were just too many soldiers, too many fronts, too limited of transportation. Numbers were often on the Empire’s side, and being outnumbered so starkly was an unfortunate inverse of what the Empire often experienced.

His participation in the rapid ambush would make for a good story when he was able to brag about it. All of the other special operation officers would already be jealous of his leading the Ascenders team, but that single strike would garner more attention than anything else. It was one of, if not the, most decisive strike ever, while also being public enough that he could brag about it.

Then for the Tier 35 bracket, that rested largely upon Ascender Waters. There were backup plans for what should occur if the man were to fail, or Ascenders forbid, be slain, but none of them were preferable or reliable.

Darrow personally felt the Ascender didn’t truly have a plan, just a hope. He’d seen firsthand the sorts of insanity which Ascenders could accomplish when truly threatened, and it seemed probable that Waters assumed that such immense pressure would result in a correspondingly unfathomable degree of discovery. What such a thing could be, Darrow couldn’t imagine.

Nonetheless, should the man fail, it would be entirely up to the Tier 25 battlefield, and Team Zero most of all, to earn sufficient warscore to prevent the Empire from being crippled altogether.

That all consuming thought nibbled at him any time he tried to turn his attention to something else.

At least, it did until they entered Gol’Ru just an hour or two after the Harmony Accords ship, and he was able to give the Empire defenders the order to retreat before the Harmony Accords could descend upon them.

There was no purpose behind contesting the planet with what comparatively few forces were stationed there. Their ransom would simply worsen the Empire’s station.

That and they could and surely would be either used to reinforce some other battlefield or merged into an offensive army to help push the frontlines. That however, wasn’t Darrow’s place to decide, even if he believed they would be best utilized on the frontlines to reclaim more worlds.

That just left them and the Harmony Accords.

This was what Darrow was used to expecting in battles even if it was rarely done as a special ops soldier.

Two entities standing off and fighting back and forth repeatedly until one side made a mistake and collapsed.

Darrow, for all that they were outnumbered, expected them to win in the long run so long as they didn’t let themselves get swarmed.

Which meant judicious retreats. With that in mind, he went over his expectations of his team and spent some time explaining why they would need to avoid decisive battles unless he said otherwise.

Darrow expected they would need to fight half a dozen times before they could capitalize on a fight. And frankly, he was more than a little worried about Titan or Legion going off and pushing too far forward and getting enveloped. They were strong, but Darrow expected the Harmony Accords to try cutting them off from the team and then retreating to the ship with repeated engagements.

That was a fairly standard tactic to elites, even if it was hard to teleport someone involuntarily.

Darrow watched the feed of the Harmony Accords deploying ten armies through his eye with more than a little incredulity.

The ship was large. Massive even. But ten armies? That was unlikely. They would surely fit. There was no question about that. The ship was large enough. But from everything they knew about the ship, they never carried more than five armies at a time, and usually less than that. With the eight they had disgorged in their previous sieges, he couldn’t understand the means by which they could have housed eighteen or even more armies.

They must have picked the armies up on their mad dash to Gol’Ru, though Darrow was uncertain about how such a thing would be possible. They were deep within Empire space, and there were no armies for them to have rendezvoused with at any point therein.

Origami had suggested they had some form of portable connection to the Republic’s Between within the ship, but insofar as Darrow knew, that wasn’t how the Between worked. It was more akin to a road system than a teleport system. A portable portion of the Between would be as useful as a slab of train tracks would be in the middle of a forest. Yes, there was much they didn’t know regarding the mechanics of the feat, but that much was fundamental.

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If the Republic had figured out how to bypass those restrictions, they might have a larger problem on their hands. It turned the Harmony Accords ship from a thorn in the side to a teleportation formation deep inside their territories, able to spew troops and elites past their defenses with impunity.

Stick pointed out that they had seen Sect and Federation armies disgorged in the last world and the reports said there had been a Sect army deployed in the world before, and there was no way the Republic would allow another Great Power such access to the Between.Sadly, Origami pointed out that the Harmony Accords had more than enough space to hold six armies without anyone being cramped, and more than that if people got cozy.

No one had a rebuttal for that. She was right, but suddenly their mission became a whole lot more difficult if that was true.

It was still possible though, and that was all that mattered to Darrow.

Nothing changed the fact that if the Harmony Accords and their elites left the Gol’Ru system, Team Zero would crush any amount of armies left here. One, ten, or a hundred, it made little difference beyond how long it would take.

Even as the armies moved to take over the fortress world, the elites and Corporation mercenaries set up embankments and cannons. Without Shadow, they were once more forced to fly into oncoming fire but they also encountered something new.

The Harmony Accords had left a minefield in their wake.

Not that it mattered to the [Bulwark]s Titan and Bulwark created, but it helped lend credence to Origami’s idea that the ship had access to the Republic Between network.

Darrow used his third eye to scan for any other surprises, but found none.

Once they were close enough to be dropped off, Drifter bade them farewell before retreating. Not too far away, but far enough away that she wasn’t in danger of being ambushed. She and her ship would be their encampment while they stood off with the Harmony Accords after all.

The battle began as such things did. Darrow managed to relatively quickly identify where Ari Kai lurked, and a hail of projectiles from Bolt forced him out of the melee. Daxton, or at least someone who looked like him, was lurking invisibly near the edge of the battlefield, and he directed Wraith to extend her spirit space near the man, which seemed to keep him at bay. He was a potential threat, though an eminently manageable one. His touch registered as overwhelmingly dangerous to all of his squad, and a few of them - most notably Titan, Tedwin, and Stick - had armor which counted as ‘alive’ to defend against such attacks. Hopefully it wouldn’t come down to that, as killing their armor would drastically undercut their defensive capabilities, but at least the backup existed.

Dao Child Darkness Everlasting was dashing towards Origami in his velociraptor beast form, and Darrow directed Light to reinforce the crafter before the void specialist could cut through her constructs. Dao Child Brilliant Wing had already managed to bring Gan Le within range of Titan, and alongside H’wuit and Dao Child Maven, were already engaging with the Ascender.

That was acceptable. Wraith subtly pushed the four of them away from the main battle, effectively neutralizing Gan Le for the remaining fighters while still keeping Titan, and his mana-granting Concept, in range thanks to the effects of Darrow’s own Domain. Colton was exchanging cover fire with Bolt, complicating things for Queen as she fought off a trio of peak elites.

Torment was steadily losing ground to Archwarrior Sparks, and was forced into outright retreat when Lorlael closed in, pursued by Legion and Stick. Bulwark swooped in to provide a bit of healing to Origami, but the void wound she’d taken wasn’t healing. Light supplemented with a conjured forearm and hand made out of synthetic mana.

Drifter pulled up, pulling the ship up out of the path of a barrage of fire from the massive battleship, forcing Darrow to recover from the momentary change in orientation. Legion had a few bodies come under attack from the Federation runesoldiers, but an assist from Wraith made her keep them in check. Tedwin and Estelle had gotten separated from the main group, under heavy assault from Dao Child Clawed Forge, Long Zhiyuan, and a pair of Republic pinnacle elites. He directed Bolt to provide a bit of cover, but that interrupted her duel with Colton, and Queen was quickly pushed back to the safety of a trio of Legion.

There was no sign of the sniper yet, which was worrying, but Daxton was still on the fringes of the fight. Ari Kai attempted to backstab Stick, but Light turned the man’s invisibility into a stone prison, letting Bulwark crumple the man’s chest and triggering his recall.

That was one down, and far, far too many to go.

Eliana and Darkness Everlasting pinned down a Legion body, and managed to kill it, prompting Wraith to sweep through with a wall of ice. Unfortunately, it was met by Dao Child Crashing Tundra’s mountain of ice, and Darrow directed Wraith to disengage and reinforce Tedwin before he was overrun by the Federation runesoldiers, rather than get into an elemental battle with the glacier specialist.

She agreed after a reluctant moment, stripping a thrown spear of its deadly spells the instant before it struck Tedwin’s chest, sparing Darrow from needing to recall the Graduate. The other four new pinnacle elites were also in a fairly bad position, having been separated and pinned down by the combined efforts of Archwarrior Sparks, Long Zhiyuan, three Republic elites, and several miscellaneous peak elites.

Drifter shot a missile to break up the formation, while Darrow contemplated how to rectify the situation. He’d like to send Legion in, but all of her were too distant. Light was close enough he could reinforce, and he unleashed a massive storm of hail he’d stored within his spellbook, originating initially from Titan. The hail turned to pyroclastic flow, and managed to send many of the peak elites back to their ship, but Clawed Forge managed to redirect the flow of the lava to his hands, where it became a massive axe made of obsidian.

Bulwark passed his namesake spell off to a giant summoned by Torment, who deflected the oversized blow. Bolt fired a barrage of brilliant blasts towards Crashing Tundra, only to be struck by a bullet from the hidden sniper. She was pulled back to the ship, and the runesoldiers nearly struck Bulwark and Torment from behind, until Legion interposed and drove them back, killing three of them and pushing them until they were reinforced by a duo of Republic elites and she lost her momentum.

Things were going… acceptably. But maybe not for long.

***

The new pinnacle and peak elites were the weakest links, and that immediately became clear in the first dozen exchanges.

Matt had gotten a feel for H’wuit in their first battle, which meant that, even with Gan Le there to soak up his and everyone else's damage, Matt was able to batter them. Gan Le was also clearly the current recipient of Maven’s old buff, which was making his attacks incredibly strong… by normal standards, anyway.

Gan Le clearly wasn’t used to his overwhelming strength, and he had very few skills to take advantage of it. His most effective maneuvers had been conjuring various forms of shields and trying to bash Matt with them, or creating two walls and trying to crush Matt between them.

They were quite powerful, and plenty of peaks or pinnacles would fall to the overwhelming force, but Matt was plenty tough enough to power through or dodge them outright. Every once in a while, a peak elite would try to get in a shot on him while he was dodging one of Gan Le’s attacks, and he would invariably respond with a [Telekinesis] crush.

After the fifth one had their lifesaving gear activate, pulling them back to the ship, they seemed to give up on that plan of attack.

Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones getting worn down.

Bolt took a sniper shot from inside the Harmony Accords ship's open hull through the chest. It activated her own tether and pulled her back to Drifter's ship.

The Harmony Accords tried to capitalize, but with just Gan Le on Matt, he was easily able to simply drag the other elite along for the ride.

He tried to stop them with his tether, which was, like his physical strength, stronger than usual, but Matt used his armor's ability to make telekinetic platforms. With a foothold for leverage, even Gan Le was no match for Matt’s physical might.

It was slow, but he was able to walk towards the others while dragging Gan Le along.

Unfortunately, when Maven and Brilliant Wing attacked him he was forced to dodge their combined attacks. Violet feathers burned against his armor while Maven brought a fist made of wrought metal and twice as big as Matt was tall down on him. That dodge helped Gan Le pull him back, and the next time he tried to drag himself closer to the fight, he was immediately beset by the combined efforts of the two Dao Children.

The battle dragged on for what felt like hours, and like they expected, the Harmony Accords started to run out of mana while Matt’s side were all still above half capacity. Even his white hole couldn’t keep them full, but they were in a better place than the Harmony Accords. Which was why Matt dropped his Concept for his Intent, locking down space and preventing the Harmony Accords from using their spiritual devices to retrieve mana stones for their rapid converters.

Matt was the only one allowed to give mana. That was his Domain, and he would give or take as he pleased, and it pleased him that the enemies were going without.

That earned him the ire of the collective, and even he couldn’t deal with that without repercussions.

Gan Le summoned a pair of massive golden gates inlaid with emerald and sapphire filigree and began to smash them together, Maven transformed into a dragon and breathed a stream of fire, and Brilliant Wing attacked with a full dozen wings made of burning violet light, forcing Matt to switch back from his black hole’s immobility to his white hole’s repulsion.

As he shifted gears, Matt felt the world slow to a crawl for an instant.

For just a moment as Matt was deactivating his black hole and activating his white hole, he was doing both at once.

Within him, the spiritual halo of his white hole blazed out, yet within the halo was not the normal brilliance of endless mana, but an all-consuming void of pure darkness, an eclipse unlike any other.

It wasn’t an eclipse wherein the moon passed before the sun, no. It was far more profound than that.

The black hole had lost its accretion disk, but blazed with a halo of twisting white light from every angle. The white hole had lost its fore, but consumed all within the perfect blackness of the black hole.

Infinite, impossibly deep darkness paired with blinding white energy in a searing display that caused the entire realm to stop and take notice.

Matt felt a searing in his eyes and felt the white hole manifestation that existed in his pupils had changed. A black hole appeared in the deepest parts of the white hole, creating what almost looked like a normal pupil inside his manifestation-changed pupil.

But that was the smallest change.

As Matt activated his Domain Meld, he felt what the mix of his Concept and Intent was.

It was nothing.

It was him.

It was…

He was…

He was endless.

He was dauntless.

He was unstoppable.

He was inevitable.

He was the white hole, which produced all for eternity. The tide of mana which would reshape the realm in his wake.

He was the black hole, which carved its way through all of reality. The titan whose sword would carve through all leaving not even dust in its wake.

His trajectory was definite. Nothing could alter him from his course, and he would leave his mark, the wake of his passage echoing for all eternity.

It was empty. It was nothing. It was Matt.

There was only nothingness, and the nothingness was Matt.

There was only energy, and energy was Matt.

Matt was both at once, and that was impossible.

He was two sides of the same coin, at the same time.

His mirror Domain had merged, melded, into a singular hole for a brief instant.

And it was everything and nothing.

It reigned supreme because it was there, and it wasn’t. It was both at the same time while being neither, which left no space for anything else.

Matt lofted his left hand above his head, and manifested his anchor. The eclipse blazed forth in all its might, white darkness and dark light shining out, an unstoppable light that drew every eye on the battlefield to its existence, daring them all, challenging them all to submit to the truth of Matt’s existence.

This was his battlefield, his realm. They would suffer his rule, and fear his judgment. Under its light, all other Domains snuffed out. Friend and foe, Matt’s assertion of his reality was the only one permitted.

Susanne’s swords started to crumble and fragment, the edges chipping away. Liz’s blood boiled, yet held its shape. Colton’s hat was blown off his head, forcing him to shield his eyes with his hand. The bracelets on Torment’s arms turned to dust and vanished in a puff of smoke, instantly causing his skin to stretch under the pressure of his summons trying to force their way out. Darrow’s communication link broke, like a taut cord pulled too tightly. The runesoldiers all seemed to spasm slightly, Brilliant Wing’s feathers lost much of their brightness, and throughout the battlefield, everyone staggered under Matt’s absolute power. But most importantly, the massive moon that hovered over Maven winked out of existence and the spatial lock that reinforced the ship’s twisting of space vanished.

The pressure was immense. Matt could feel himself directly contesting everyone’s willpower, as they all fought to reassert their own domains. It was less draining than using his mana compression, but not by much. Even as that thought came, the pressure redoubled as people fought against it, and he was forced to drop it within a second. It was then that he lost the understanding that had come over him on just how he had managed the meld and everything unraveled.

And yet within that second, Aster, the best fox in the realm, Matt’s bond, his little sister, acted where no else managed to.

While his Domain meld shut down Domains, it did nothing to stop Talents.

Nothing at all.

A ripple of color swept out across the battlefield, a brilliant aurora dancing through space, and it closed around two people in particular.

Daxton, where he lurked in the wings, ready to dart in and touch someone like they were playing a demented game of tag, vanished in a swirl of green and a puff of ice.

Gan Le, for all his might, guarding against all of Matt’s might, was obscured by a curtain of violet light, and when it withdrew, he was gone.

In his place, a green-skinned blue-haired and a blue-skinned and green-haired pair of men were suddenly forced into reality, a tangle of limbs that they quickly extricated themselves from.

There had always been two names they’d heard as within the Harmony Accords, but never seen.

Synoid and Crastor.

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