The Path of Ascension

Matt rushed forward and punched the moose creature in the face, even as it tried to bite him in retaliation.

Dodging the monster’s maw, he stabbed down at its eye with a dagger he summoned, and after finishing it off, he turned to see how his team was handling the rest of the smaller creatures that the boss had summoned.

Seeing they had everything under control, Matt was about to turn and dispel the reward distortion, when he noticed a team standing in the tunnel they had come down to find this boss.

This new team wanting to leave through an already open exit wasn’t in and of itself surprising, but their stances, lack of Genesis Energy fluctuations, and general demeanor told Matt that they had less than honorable intentions.

As he watched them watch him, he saw the moment that they decided Matt’s team were easy targets and made their move.

All six people rushed out of the tunnel as Matt yelled, “Another one!”

That was all the others needed to hear, and they started slinging spells.

The fight was short, not because the team was weak, but because as soon as they put up a resistance with strong spells, the other team decided to pull back.

On any other floor, Matt might have chased them down or used [Cracked Mana Spear] to finish them off, but the increasing cost of his spells meant that his strongest channeled spells were now only as strong as a stiff breeze after being on the floor for so long.

The other team backed off, not wanting to get into a life-and-death battle right before they could leave the floor.

If they had been spent from their boss fight, the other team wouldn’t have hesitated to push the attack, Matt was sure. But without easy kills, they decided to move on. It wouldn’t be the first, or even tenth team that had tried to ambush them, hoping they were weak from prolonged skill usage on this floor.

How the team got this far with so little Genesis Energy was a mystery, and Matt didn’t get the feeling that they were hiding most of their Genesis Energy in rings, as his team was.

Getting stuck on the third level with no Genesis Energy was a hard place to find oneself in, being faced with the choice of facing down the incoming waves of slower delvers, or skipping out on a valuable reward. Though, the thought occurred to him that maybe they actually had been lucky, and someone let them surrender at the cost of all of their Genesis Energy, which was why they were now so desperate.

Matt’s team had left other Empire delvers alone, but maybe some people took a middle ground between killing their fellow citizens and mutual ceasefire.

They, on the other hand, were flush with Genesis Energy after their battle on the second level of this floor, and had been able to get ahead of most of the pack with that boost.

As Aster looted the dissolving boss, Matt and Liz guarded their rear as the four of them walked into the distortion and were finally able to leave the floor.

When Minkalla saw that he had more than enough Genesis Energy to take the floor theme challenge and offered it to him, Matt agreed with a lethargic sigh.

The floor itself was a slog, and its challenge was no different.

For this test, they needed to fight their way through waves of monsters. That, in and of itself, wasn’t a difficult challenge, and wouldn't have been up to Minkalla’s standards. But, like always, there was a catch.

During the test, they were put into false bodies, and they would need to kill monsters for extremely breakable gear and talisman-like spells, color-coded for quality. As this was the fifth floor, he would need to clear the twenty-fifth wave to maximize his reward for this challenge, and get the full reward of three skill slots in his Core spirit, fifteen Inner slots, and forty Outer skill slots.

Gaining control of his body, Matt moved his arms and legs to test the new body and found that this one was generally the same as his own, at least physically. He was a bit slower and weaker than normal, and his Talent and mana pool seemed to be wholly gone, but he knew that it was all just part of the challenge.

Inspecting his surroundings, Matt found himself inside a valley with steep walls that he knew would be impassable, but what caught his attention were the five towers lit with what looked like small fires at their peaks. One piece of gold-quality loot per boss wave, as expected.

Even as a mental countdown appeared in his mind, telling him he had five minutes until the first wave of enemies, he ran forward and started looking for monsters to kill.

The waves would start small, but grow over time, and he knew there would be random, lone monsters he could kill for equipment that would be wandering around the area. If he could find and kill any of them, he would be in a much better position for the first wave.

Thankfully his luck was good, and a lone kobold was standing around a smoldering fireplace, as if in a daze.

Scooping up a rock, Matt bashed the small monster on the head once, then twice, but as his weapon impacted the monster for the second time, it shattered in an explosion of motes of light. The item's destruction wasn't dangerous or a surprise, but it was inconvenient, as the monster wasn’t quite dead yet.

Even as the kobold swiped at him, Matt stepped backwards, keeping out of its range, before stomping down at the monsters over extended leg. Bone snapped and the monster was sent stumbling backwards, which allowed Matt to grab a larger, head-sized rock and awkwardly drop it on the monster's head.

As it died, its body faded away and was replaced with a pair of gloves that had spikes on the knuckles.

The instant Matt touched them, they appeared on his hand, and he took off running towards the nearest tower. He frantically searched for more monsters to kill before the waves of monsters started spawning.

He was able to find and stomp another kobold to death quickly, and this one dropped an iron-plated, leather chest piece. Fortunately, putting armor on quickly wasn’t a part of the challenge, and the chest piece appeared on his body with not a second to spare before the countdown hit zero.

Not bothering to run anymore, Matt stayed in the clearing and listened to the sounds around him.

All he heard was normal birds chirping and the rustling of the forest as branches moved from the wind.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

At least, not until he heard the sounds of crashing from his left.

Turning that way, he found half a dozen goblins appearing out of nowhere from inside the nearby trees.

They seemed to phase into reality as if walking through water or a heat haze.

That wasn’t an ideal way for the first wave to start, but it was random, and his luck couldn't always be good. But still, he would much rather have had the monsters appear out of noisy portals, or from burrowing out of the ground.

Not having time to complain any further, Matt ran to the left, stretching the line of monsters out to give him time to analyze their equipment.

Three out of the six were armed with only small daggers, while the remaining three had a bow and two short spears, possibly for throwing.

Thankfully, the archer was less than skilled, and Matt could read where they were going to fire well ahead of time. He ducked the first shot while punching the first waist-high goblin in the face with his spiked gauntlets.

The monster's face exploded in a shower of gore, and even before the monster hit the floor, it was already dissolving into a mass of light.

Seeing how strong the weapons actually were, Matt held his ground and killed the next two goblins with two more fast, straight jabs.

Before he was able to pick up their loot, he was forced to sidestep yet another arrow as it almost hit him.

The two spear wielders tried to use their range advantage, but Matt was twice their height, and was easily able to grab their spears behind the sharpened blades and disarm them.

To his disappointment, the spears vanished as soon as he tried to use them, but with no weapons of their own, he was easily able to punch one of the goblins to death, and then use the second one as a shield as he ran down the archer.

Despite the archer's best efforts, he still managed to pulverize its head in a single blow, which then retriggered the mental countdown of five minutes.

Matt also had the idea that he was now able to leave the challenge at any point, as long as he wasn’t in a fight.

He firmly rejected that idea, and instead grabbed the items that dropped from the goblins.

Not every monster had a drop, but half of them did, and he was grateful that the archer was one of the goblins that dropped something.

He was less excited when it appeared to be a bow with a dozen arrows, as he was barely a decent archer at the best of times, but he still accepted the bow with a mental command.

The other two drops were more useful, at least to him. The first was a dagger that seemed to be made of decent steel, and the second was a pair of chainmail trousers that felt more durable than the chest plate he had recovered earlier.

As he took off towards the tower once more, he inspected his spiked gloves.

They had obvious cracks on their surface that made them seem ready to break in a few more blows. He suspected three to five, but he couldn't be sure without actually punching something, which he wasn’t willing to test on anything but a monster.

The second wave came out before he was able to reach the tower, but he was able to repeat his earlier tactic of leading the goblins away from their spawn area to kill them one by one.

There were twice as many goblins this time, and the two archers made things difficult, but he was able to dodge most of their shots while killing the melee monsters.

As it turned out, the gloves had four more uses in them before they shattered into motes of light, which forced him to use the dagger to finish off the final two goblins armed with similar weapons.

The spear wielders were a more difficult problem now that there were four of them, as they tried to surround him anytime they got close. A good strategy on their part, as it forced Matt to stand and take three blows to his back while dealing with the main group of goblins.

Thankfully, his armor held up nicely and blocked the weapons from injuring him.

Quickly dispatching the two remaining goblins, he ran down the archers and finished them off, despite taking an arrow to the chest that made the cracks on his armor visible and concerning.

With the final monster dead and with five minutes left to recover, he ran back to where he killed the first goblins and collected the items they dropped.

Another chest armor similar to the one he was wearing appeared in his mind, but vanished into whatever holding mechanic the test had, and another dagger easily went away as well. What gave him pause was the item, or rather the skill, that one of the spear wielding goblins dropped.

Mentally inspecting it gave him a description, and it seemed to be a simple lightning spell. It wasn’t quite [Jolt], [Bolt], or even [Arc], but something in between. He also knew that he'd get exactly three uses out of the spell before it too fell apart.

Continuing to run towards the tower, Matt quickly climbed the winding stairs to reach the top, where he gratefully picked up a shining, golden ball of light.

As the item inside appeared in his mind, Matt nodded. A shield wasn’t his ideal choice, but he wasn’t going to complain.

Gold-quality loot, though even more random than most of the drops the monsters gave, were substantially more durable than anything else and was enchanted as well, making them invaluable for doing well on the test.

A quick inspection told Matt that this shield had the ability to reflect projectiles back at the attacker, which would come in handy with the growing number of archers that this set of waves was sending his way.

Equipping the shield, he exited the slowly fading tower and waited for the next wave as the final few seconds ticked by. He didn’t bother to set off towards the monsters, since he was in a nice open field with dense trees nearby, offering good cover if he needed it.

The third wave consisted of the same amount of goblins as the last wave, thankfully, but they were instead better equipped than their previous counterparts.

However, with his own upgrades, Matt had no problems in killing them, though both his current armor and dagger fragmented into motes of light in the process. His armor had been replaced instantly by the other set he’d picked up, and fortunately the dagger didn’t break until he was finishing off the final archer.

As he picked over the loot, Matt found and instantly equipped a spear to match with his shield, and was pleasantly surprised to find an archery skill in the drops. It would increase the penetrative power of six shots, which was useful with the monsters now appearing with armor.

He was almost to the second tower when the fifth wave came out of the water like barrier.

Every five waves was a much harder wave, and Matt expected to spend most of his spells and gear taking this one down.

At first, two dozen goblins came out of the water like apparitions, and instead of trying to fight them one by one, Matt activated the lightning spell he had received. A bolt of lightning as thick as his arm lanced from his arm, bouncing between the armored goblins like they were lightning rods.

The spell started out strong enough to instantly kill the first six goblins, but it only wounded the final six. Even then, Matt was quite happy with the result. He didn’t recast the spell, but instead rushed forward with his shield raised high, killing the goblins still standing with his spear.

He was nearly done with the goblins when the boss appeared. A ten foot ogre emerged from thin air and instantly sprinted at him. Disengaging from the goblins he was fighting, Matt turned and ran as fast as he could, wanting to get as much distance as possible.

Seeing the monster crossing the distance a little too fast for his liking, Matt cast his lightning spell once more at the unarmored monster.

The spell still bounced from the ogre to the goblins, but it didn’t kill the ogre, only angering it instead.

Once Matt got far enough away, he summoned his bow and cast his empowering shot spell while pulling back his arrow.

If he were a better archer, he would have gone for a headshot, but with his mediocre skills, he only aimed for center mass. And the ogre helped by being a massive target.

His first arrow blasted a hole the size of his fist right through its lower abdomen, while the second hit something vital in its upper chest, ending its life.

A silver drop appeared in the place of its body, but Matt wasn’t able to pick it up, as the small horde of goblins weren’t too far behind them.

Swapping back to his spear and shield, he was able to kill the remaining monsters, but destroyed his spear on the second to last goblin, which forced him to end the final archer's life with a dagger.

With ten minutes between this wave and the next, Matt collected the gear and sorted it.

He got two new spears made out of better materials, a full set of armor made from plaited leather, a helmet, and a pair of boots that the ogre dropped, which increased his running speed by half at the cost of constant degradation.

As for spells, two of the goblins dropped a mana weapon spell, which would cover his weapons in mana, increasing the damage they dealt for ten blows while strengthening them against harm. Sadly these spells were single cast, but he had received two of them, which made up for it.

Finally, he got a fairly standard [Fireball]-like spell that could be cast five times before crumbling.

Needing to test the boots, he equipped them and found that his entire lower body seemed faster than before, without throwing off his sense of timing or balance.

Putting the boots away, he ran towards the tower and claimed his reward.

Laughing, he equipped the helmet that would create a burst of flames anytime he killed an opponent.

Not the longsword he hoped for, but quite a strong item.

The sixth wave came out of the air like before, but instead of goblins, a half dozen flying imps appeared and started dropping small, bomb-like vials of liquid that exploded in noxious green gas wherever they landed.

Matt, with his less than stellar skill with archery, would have had a hard time with the flying enemies. They seemed to only have a single bomb each, however, and could only engage him in melee afterwards. Though the bombs were a threat, each imp was a pitiful challenge when he could directly strike it. A lucky shot finished the first wave of imps early by hitting one in the air, causing its bomb to kill its nearby friend.

As Matt looted them, he found that they dropped interesting items.

One dropped a cloak that would allow him to hover in the air for a few seconds, and a second dropped a spell similar to their bombs, that would create an explosion and small area of dangerous gas. With only two uses, Matt put it away in his metaphorical pocket and kept moving to the next tower.

He was able to get the next golden drop before the ninth wave.

Finally, a gold-quality spell.

The spell was similar to [Cracked Mana Trap], in that it created a mine-like area that would explode when an enemy stepped on it. But unlike the other spells, it didn’t have a set number of uses. Rather, it could only be used once per wave.

Still, it was incredibly useful for Matt, who had taken to kiting the monsters around.

As the tenth wave came out with a mix of flying imps and goblins, Matt saved his new spell and relied on the imp spell to kill the first few goblins, and created an area of gas that caused the survivors to choke and sputter.

The ogre that came out shortly after was better equipped with a club and hide armor, but that wasn’t what caught his attention.

No, that was the werewolf-like creature that rushed out of the area like an arrow directly at him.

Casting the trap spell, Matt retreated and allowed the monster to run over it. The werewolf was sent flying, but as it got to its feet, with fur singed and one arm missing, Matt raised his shield and cast the weapon enchantment on his spear while he rushed the monster.

Even his golden shield started to show signs of cracking as it blocked the werewolf’s blows, but Matt was able to finish it off before the remaining monsters recovered from the gas, which he killed with the last of his bow shots.

The next wave consisted of goblins, imps, and a new monster that resembled something like a floating banana that shot various spells at him. As Matt avoided a stream of attacks, he realized that he now possessed a disgusting combination of items.

The trap spell didn’t always kill the enemies it hit, except for smaller and weaker ones, like the goblins. Those kills then activated the helmet enchantment, whose detonation took out more of the monsters, and more often than not, set off a chain explosion that killed most of the weaker monsters for him.

And without the cannon fodder, he was easily able to kill the stragglers and the occasional ogre or werewolf that survived both attacks.

His fourth golden loot was a throwing axe which he could recall, while his fifth was a blanket that made him hard to detect.

That final one never got used, as Matt was more than happy to kill his way through the waves as fast as possible.

With his method perfected, he used his extra spells to finish off any of the survivors.

As the twenty fifth wave ended with his standing victorious over a giant’s body, he was booted out of the challenge and into the safe room between floors.

There, he found hundreds of teams scattered around the area, which massively increased the space of the safe room. Though, it still didn’t hold a candle to the size of the fourth floor safe room.

Thankfully, it seemed like he was the first one to exit, which he considered a good sign. With his trap spell, he had expected nothing less.

He had beaten the challenge perfectly and relatively quickly, with his abuse of his golden drops, which meant that the others should be able to earn the top reward as well.

Matt worried for Aster a little, but knew that she would be fine, as they had practiced for this floor. Even with her body being small and not ideal for combat, she would succeed as long as she got a spell or two early and took her time.

After he scanned the area for anyone he knew to check in with, but finding no one, he set his house down in an out-of-the-way location and inspected his own spirit.

He had been warned about what was coming, and knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Once he started inspecting the portion of his spirit where his skills sat, he found a small bubble of Genesis Energy nestled next to his Core skills, waiting for him to activate it.

Sticking a mouth guard between his teeth, he touched it and felt his spirit stretch and grow like a balloon, rapidly filling with air.

As he bit down and screamed, he involuntarily flexed his muscles so hard, he felt his bones creak and fingers pop.

It wasn’t like any kind of pain he had experienced before. His spirit was expanding, but it felt like his very person was being ripped apart and torn to shreds, before being reassembled and stretched back out in a vicious cycle of pain.

When it finally ended, he found only two minutes had gone by. It felt like an eternity, but the reward had done its job.

His spirit was larger than before, and he could see where he had space for three new Core skill slots, along with fifteen Inner slots and forty Outer.

With the harvest of skills they had earned in Minkalla so far, Matt was excited to start absorbing new skills. Waiting could also be good practice for if the next floor was New Growth, but it could just as easily backfire if it was World of Cardboard. The needle overall tipped slightly towards it being better to absorb skills ahead of time, but he’d need to wait until his spirit settled down in any case. The strain was so bad, he felt physically cold and couldn't stop his limbs from shaking.

This strain felt worse than it had when he pushed [Cracked Mana Spear] too hard multiple times in a row.

Susanne came out fifteen minutes after Matt did, and found him nursing a cup of tea as he ran his freshly-usable healing spells.

Seeing him curled around the cup in his hands, she asked, “It’s that bad?”

“Worse than Luna said it would be.”

She plopped down next to him without a word, and he could feel her spirit expand and contract repeatedly for a few minutes.

Feeling slightly better, he boiled water and made her a cup of coffee, which she gratefully curled around in a mirror of what he did not moments ago.

Through chattering teeth, she said, “Fuck that. I'd rather go another ten rounds with the troll.”

Together, they suffered in silence until Liz came in and joined them in their misery.

Aster was the last to come out, a full two hours after Matt had, but she was in high spirits until she saw the three of them still recovering.

Her tail drooped as she said, “You know what? Maybe I’ll wait to take this reward for a couple years. I have plenty of skill slots anyway.”

Matt scooped her up, and after wrapping her in a blanket to comfort her when she experienced the spirit strain, said, “It makes you feel super cold. Like spiritually cold. I’d bet you won't even feel it.”

Burrito Aster tried to wag her tail as she readily agreed. “Oh that sounds great! I had so much fun in that challenge. I was in a city, and between rounds, I was able to raid a bunch of ice cream stands, it was so good. I—” Aster twitched a few times until it turned into a vibration. “This feels awful. I should have waited.”

Matt felt for his bond, but just kept her in the blanket, even as he felt the fibers start to freeze over. Though, he put her down when he started to get chills as well.

Aster, at least, wasn’t bothered by the coldness the spiritual strain gave her. Apparently, she actually liked the feeling despite it being uncomfortable. She thought she might be able to replicate it when her control over ice was stronger.

The four of them spent the rest of the day recovering from their spiritual strain by abusing Matt and his unlimited mana to recover from their physical injuries as much as possible. Not being able to run [Endurance] at a high rate almost constantly made fights truly exhausting, especially when they were coming on as quickly and often as they had in the previous floor. It may not have done too much, but using his self healing spells did work to lower his healing cooldown a degree, and every bit counted.

While they had some downtime in a relatively secure area, they took the time to look through the growing pile of loot they had accrued. It was an unfortunate fact that many of the best skills and natural treasures got used shortly after being found, so the items taken from other delvers were typically worse than what could be found from Minkalla directly. But quantity had a quality all its own.

Not everyone had a need for any given valuable item at the moment they picked it up. A fire mage wouldn’t absorb even the best water skill or natural treasure if they could trade it for something that better fit their existing abilities once they left Minkalla.

After the fifth floor, upgrade orbs were one of the most valuable things that one could find with some regularity in Minkalla, but they were also useful for pretty much anyone. Luna had even told them that if they did find an upgrade orb, they were to use it as soon as possible. The improved combat ability from even a single upgraded skill would outweigh any opportunity cost of using it later, if they could leverage it to get deeper into Minkalla before Tiering up. At this point, it was quite possible that a few of the people that Matt’s team had killed found an upgrade orb earlier in their delve, and used it on themselves.

In terms of more direct monetary rewards, Matt was getting somewhat numb to it all. The three shards of [Directed Heal] would be worth a substantial amount when sold, alongside the twenty or so shards of undirected healing spells, and suite of Tier 14 Manipulation skills. As a joke, Matt started making tiny buckets for each type of skill that they had, with a full fifty five [Fireball] shards in the most full bucket, followed closely by [Create Water]. The normal buckets for classes of Tier 14 skills they had no plan on using were less full, but more than respectable.

That was all in addition to the items, materials, natural treasures, houses, and innumerable other odds and ends that their liaison April would be identifying and selling for them after leaving Minkalla. While Matt and his friends were fighting their own battles, April was preparing for war at one of the inter-Power auctions that occurred periodically through each of Minkalla’s cycles. That phrasing was apparently not entirely figurative; people did die on occasion.

Susanne elected to fill out her manipulation skills somewhat, though not nearly to the same degree as Matt, because she previously only had [Air Manipulation]. The manipulation skills for fire, water, earth, and metal would give her a greater degree of flexibility once she had some practice with them, and they had endless mundane uses that really couldn’t be overstated. She also finally relented on taking [Ice Manipulation] and [Create Ice] for herself, after Aster’s many comments on the subject.

Matt, on the other hand, chose [Fire Weapon] as another skill that he would be adding to his spirit in short order. Liz had used the skill in her Torch persona, but had a hard time justifying the mana cost when fighting up four Tiers. Channeling mana to encase his weapon in fire was a simple and effective way of improving his damage potential, though he was hoping for one of the more potent variants in the same family of skills, one that would work with his Courtly Warfare boon more. [Air Weapon] was somewhat redundant with [Sword Twin]’s enhanced sharpness abilities, though he’d have to give it careful consideration before absorbing it nonetheless. Even with a newly-expanded spirit, Matt could benefit from thousands more skills than he could ever fit in his spirit.

He also picked out a [Mage Hand] shard, recalling Harper’s advice about learning telekinesis, but he likely wouldn’t absorb it until after they left Minkalla. It was intensely useful, but required a fair bit of practice before it could be used effectively in combat, and Matt needed to prioritize ‘not dying’ at the moment. Or, more realistically he needed to prioritize ‘not being forced to Tier up,’ but the steps lined up well enough.

Liz ended up with a pair of very fetching boots enchanted with [Air Slide], letting her slide around flat terrain like she was on ice. It gave her a level of unpredictability in a fight, similar to Concept flight, with much less ability to be disrupted.

From the moose boss itself, Liz got the Tier 20 skill [Skewer], which paired extremely nicely with a [Return Weapon] she had been holding onto. [Skewer] was a straightforward spear or javelin skill which let the user launch their weapon at a positively enormous speed, with a degree of added homing and durability for the weapon to survive the impact. Matt hadn’t been too impressed until he watched a video of a Tier 20 blow a hole as wide as Matt’s torso through a same Tier dragon from thirty miles away. After breaking through two layers of shielding. It was a railgun of a skill, if a bit too slow and predictable at close range, and the hope was it would make it through Liz’s skill conversion without changing too much.

[Return Weapon] was a mainstay of archers everywhere. Reserving some mana would tag a weapon, and teleport it back to the caster when the mana was unreserved, with the cost scaling with estimated distance to teleport. Archers needed to modify the skill to better apply to multiple smaller weapons, but Liz could use it straight away, and was combat-usable even in her outer spirit. She would likely be using some of their many looted spears for ranged battle until it had settled in her spirit. Matt wanted the skill as backup for his sword, but [Crescent Sweep] was better suited for killing monsters than people anyways, and they didn’t typically try to steal weapons.

Aster found [Brittle Cold], a debuff skill that sapped durability from a person's skills, making their skills easier to break, along with making Concept powers slightly more vulnerable. The second portion wasn’t quite as strong as the skill portion, but in a close fight, it could quite easily make the difference. She’d also ended up with the singular [Side Slide] skill shard they’d found, which Matt had initially tried to claim for himself. However, she’d eventually won that argument on the basis that he already had a way to teleport himself, whereas she had nothing.

Entering the next floor, they found themselves in a fog-covered field with limited visibility and spiritual range, but almost immediately recognized the people they were standing across from.

Themselves.

Wispy versions of the four of them stood in the mist and almost immediately attacked them.

A sixth floor Folded Reflections.

Matt couldn’t be happier.