The Path of Ascension

The following day they were treated to a massive breakfast, and then Aunt Helen sent them on their way, through a portal to the teleportation station. Matt wanted to savor the breakfast, but they had only been able to get out this quickly because of the portal the Tier 24 had created for them.

There was a wave of people exiting the training world, and once they reached the teleporters, there would be no room to exit for months. Aunt Helen's help got them out before the rush.

Sitting in the lobby of the station, they found out what the guild leaders had been seeking Aunt Helen's help with. The news station feed being broadcast on the large wall screen that had been covering the returning delvers was suddenly interrupted.

"Breaking news. We just had a leak that the guild Dual Stars is being investigated for tax evasion. The Empire Tax Service just levied a freeze on all guild accounts. This is a shocking turn of events. The ETS is known for going after larger guilds and companies after all, but..."

Matt stopped paying attention and looked at Liz. The woman had an ‘ohh’ look on her face.

"What did you do?"

She looked at him and poked her pointer fingers together.

"Wellllll... When the guild invited us to the secret rift, I assumed they had more secrets, so I messaged Dad."

Matt couldn't believe it. "How did he get them to move in hours? I've never heard of any bureaucratic thing moving that quickly. Even Mara moving instantly is hard to believe, but she's just one person."

Liz sat up straighter, "Ohhh. No, I told him when they first invited us to the special rift, in case it was a trap."

"How did you get a message out? The planet was locked down!"

Liz looked offended at the suggestion, "Pshhh no. They say that, but messages to higher Tier people don't use the same services as normal messages. Every month the guild operated a small teleporter for a data swap. I never heard back from them, so I assumed he didn't do anything."

"But why did they respond to them? Does your dad work for them or something?"

Now Liz looked embarrassed. "No... No, my parents are stupid. My dad's heads always in the clouds, and Mom’s a bird brain. The dummies forgot to pay taxes a few decades ago on a few dozen planets that they own. Now the ETS just comes and visits them to tell them what they owe."

Matt didn't believe it for a second. "They have AIs! How could an AI forget that?"

"My parents are stupid, that's how!"

Then the second thing hit him, "Wait, did you say they forgot about a few dozen planets they own? A few dozen? As in they own more than that?"

Liz looked around, and Matt pressed, "Liz, how rich are your parents? You've said they are strong, but you always imply they aren't that strong."

The woman next to him wiggled in discomfort. Her answer was to sputter, "I ugh. I..." Closing her eyes, Liz took a deep breath and settled down. Opening her eyes, she said, "I'll tell you if you ever ask again. I just want to be out of their shadows. It's so nice to be with a friend who isn't afraid of them or trying to suck up to them. But I trust you and respect you. If you want to know, I'll spill."

Matt thought it over. He did trust the woman, and with the hints she had dropped, he would assume her parents were Mara and Leon. That is, if the two weren't so antagonistic to each other.

He sent his AI to look for married couples consisting of a phoenix and a storm user. Public records were scarce, but there might be a mention on a report somewhere.

Focusing on the woman next to him, he lightly elbowed her and said, "Eh. Well, it's nice to see the guild squirm. Thank your dad for me, I guess."

The look Liz gave him for not pressing was worth being in the dark a little while longer. They were going to visit her brother after all.

***

As Matt quickly learned, Aunt Helen had a good reason to make Liz promise to keep on track. The woman, while a focused and driven delver and cultivator, liked to wander.

Liz didn't spend much of her time traveling by practicing her mana control or any of her shaping skills. Sure, she did practice here and there. However, most of her time was spent planning things to do at each teleport stop that would last more than a few hours..

At first, Matt didn't know what to make of her attitude. When he traveled to the Dual Stars world, he buckled down and worked on his skills, or he just relaxed.

Liz wanted to do things. She wasn't picky about what they should do. They just had to do something.

The second planet they arrived on came with an eight-hour delay. Liz insisted that they should do something, and she ended up finding a play with open seats and no dress code.

At first, Matt had to pretend to be interested. The story started slow, and he sated his boredom by pulling out his mana control orb. To his dismay, Liz caught his hand and held it, effectively forcing him to stop. He decided to give the show an honest shot, and if he didn't like it, he would bow out from further distractions.

As the second act started, Matt was enthralled. It was a retelling of an older story. It had been retconned so many times, and had been made into so many movies, that Matt didn't see a way for it to be interesting. He was wrong.

The acting was amazing. There was something about watching people go through the story live that created a new and exciting experience. The actors blended practical effects with skill to weave the story in a way that made it come to life. No movie had ever come close to being this entertaining.

Even limited to only a stage and no post-production, the way they embodied the story was new and special for him.

Leaving the showing, all Matt could talk about was the play.

Liz didn't gloat in her victory. Instead, she glowed.

It was worse.

After that, Matt was willing to participate in whatever excursions the woman wanted to drag him on. His only requirement was that they never be later to the teleport or train station. He wanted to be there no later than two hours before their next departure time. Liz had no problem with that, her own standard was an hour and a half, but she was happy to make the concession.

Most of their time traveling was spent in practice, but the moments in between were spent on adventures.

They had to pass through a dozen planets to reach Tintel, and the variety was a bit of a culture shock to Matt.

Once they reached the third planet, they had a fifteen-hour layover waiting for the teleporter to cycle. They used the time to visit TrueMind for his Tier 4 AI check-up.

They had messaged ahead, and weren't made to wait, but the testing wasn't as simple as his Tier 3 test had been.

He sat in a chair for nearly twenty minutes, where technicians poked at their pads with noises he didn't know how to interpret. Matt had a readout of what they were looking at projected on his HUD.

One of the techs asked, "So you made the AI create this identification program. Why?"

Matt's sarcastic answer of, "Because I was tired of forgetting names," was just nodded to, and the woman kept on tapping vigorously at her pad.

They continued to ask him questions about how he wanted to direct his AI’s growth. They also asked if he felt that his AI was performing equally to the normal AIs of its Tier.

Matt answered what he could, but he just wanted to say that the AI worked fine, and not give much detail. That apparently displeased the technicians. They wanted concrete plans for his AI’s growth. They also wouldn't give him any hard data on his AI stacked up against the other AIs of his Tier.

They put his AI through tests for the next two hours, and all Matt heard were tuts of seeming disapproval and sighs. The experience irritated Matt more and more, until he was finally able to leave.

They never even said that he could go, but he asked and was ignored for fifteen minutes. He, Liz, and Aster just walked out after that.

All in all, the stop was mostly useless, as Matt somehow felt that his AI wasn't living up to expectations. Their condescension was annoying. He felt like his AI was doing its best. His mood was completely ruined after the meeting, but Liz understood and was a good listener as he ranted about it.

While they waited for the teleporter, Matt looked up what news he could find on the Dual Stars. It was nice to see the guild get smacked down. So far, they were facing fines in excess of Tier 35 mana stones. The investigation concluded that they had underreported the number of growth items obtained from the training planet by half.

The local stations all tried to play the guild as the hurt party, but any news station not from their planet painted the guild in a much worse light. It gave Matt a perverse amount of pleasure to see the prospective fines racking up for Dual Stars.

At this point, he didn't even feel the need to get revenge for himself. Whatever he could do would be temporary to the few idiots that directly tried to hurt him. This tax evasion debacle, on the other hand, was hurting the guild from top to bottom.

Matt watched an analysis report while he pecked at his food. While the food couldn't compare to Aunt Helen’s cooking, it was a satisfactory dinner. Especially after the way the TrueMind meeting went.

Hearing people talk about how dumb the guild was never ceased to put a smile on his face. Liz even commented that he was becoming an evil mastermind at this point.

Leaving the planet was a relief to Matt. On their fourth planet, they had a three-day wait for the teleporter, giving them enough time for some traveling. Matt saw they had an amusement park, and made a quiet comment that he had never been to one. When Liz found out, she demanded that they check it out.

The tickets they bought had been pricey enough to make him a little uncomfortable, but Liz insisted that the three Tier 5 mana stones were worth it. They were only able to go on the Tier 6 or lower rides with their current cultivation. That allowed them to hit seventy percent of the park. But it was so large, even the two days they decided to dedicate to this stop wouldn’t be enough to cover it all.

The park was as large as three of his old cities. There were endless things to do. From what he had read about the place, it was an attraction that drew crowds from all over the nearest worlds. It generated half of the planet's overall revenue.

The trio spent the next forty-eight hours exploring the park. The first ride they went on was a spinning cup ride, where the individuals in the cup could pull on a lever to spin them faster and faster. Liz tried to make Matt sick by spinning it, but he enjoyed the sensation so much, he started spinning it until she begged him to stop.

"Go find something else!" The look on Liz's face made Matt sure that she thought bringing him to the amusement park was a bad idea.

After that, the trio hit ride after ride. Even Aster enjoyed the roller coasters.

They found wearable animal ears at one of the convenience shops, and their fox companion demanded to get a second set of fox ears. Matt and Liz bought rabbit ears for themselves. That gave Aster the bright idea to chase them around, hunting them. If they got caught, she would jump up and try to snatch the floppy ears off their heads.

They walked around eating overpriced food for the full two days. It was fun. So fun that Matt didn't even bother to practice any of his skills at night.

On the second day, they spent more time going through the exhibits. They found many a simulated habitat, consisting of some truly exotic rift creatures.

Back on the train, Matt found that the breaks helped him concentrate fully when they left the fun areas. His Concept work wasn't progressing that much, but the improvements were steady. What really took off was his spiritual sense, and his ability to manipulate skills. He was now able to successfully reproduce the changes he would need to make to [Endurance] after acquiring it once every four attempts.

It wasn't an earth shattering improvement, but it was quite a decent improvement from where he was before. Liz was able to do it every time, and he felt that within the next month, he would be able to get close to that same success ratio.

Matt, Liz, and Aster visited many planets in the next month. The path that Aunt Helen had set for them wasn't the most direct to get to Tintel. No, she planned for a more circuitous route.

The fifth planet they arrived on was a resort world. It was a Low Tier world that someone sculpted to be a world of shallow seas and small islands. The sandy beaches were interspersed with islands of marble and stone.

The route that the train took was picturesque, and the three of them agreed to come visit in the future. Sadly, they had no time to linger, and had to hustle to reach their next teleporter in time for the jump.

Halfway through their journey, Matt found an interesting attraction. There was a rift being pacified. It reminded him of the attraction that they had seen at the amusement park.

When they traveled to the location, they found a giant Dome covering nearly two square miles of grassland. They signed up for the tour, and a guide led them around the outer perimeter and through some top hatches. Once through the hatches, they were able to see into the cut-off area.

"Here we have the desired creature. It's a Tier 8 flower bull. The distinctive flowers on its back are what give it such value to be worth subjugating. These beasties can eat nearly anything, and their excrement is incredibly fertile. Entire fields can be rejuvenated with a few pounds."

Matt and Liz leaned over the railing with most of the others to peer at the monsters. It looked like a normal cow, simply with a variety of flowers growing from its back.

Aster poked her head over as well. The fox was sticking close to Matt and Liz. He could feel from their bond that the little fox was terrified, but didn't want to show it. All her thoughts seemed to be variations of, 'Don't fall'.

Two of the beasts saw each other, and passed by without trouble.

The guide spoke up after people stopped looking over, "These are on their third generation, and the violent tendencies are almost entirely bred out from the species. When they are fully mature, they will be sold off. These are only the third batch to be displayed. The last was sold for an astonishing Tier 20 mana stone each."

That caught Matt's attention. He was debating the logistics of buying a place like this as passive income in the future. But he realized that the profit margins were not probably that great. The man said that it took years to breed the aggression out of the rift beast.

He pointed out around them and asked the guide, "Why don't they do the generational thing away from the rift and scale up their operations?"

"Ah, good question. That's because, when the rift creatures are removed from the rift, they lose their vitality and die in a few years. Breeding them near the rift allows the connection to lessen over time, along with the aggression."

Matt didn't know enough to argue, so he took what the man said at face value. The tour continued, but he thought about which of the monsters he had fought could have special characteristics like these cows.

Are there people who just watch rift monsters to see if they have good poop? It seems wasteful. I guess if you’re immortal, time isn't an issue, but who checks monster poop?

Matt was sitting at a coffee table in the teleport station two planets later, when he took note of the young man serving them. He was smaller in stature, but what surprised Matt the most was that this young man looked twenty, but was still only Tier 1.

This was a Tier 5 planet, the perfect place to evolve past Tier 1. The question of why he would remain so weak stumped him, until he saw the family resemblance to the woman behind the counter.

They were family, and this was their business.

They had no reason to go out and risk their lives.

They had no need to get stronger. It wasn't like they needed the physical strength that Tiering up would grant them. This city was along the coast, so mana wasn't required to power the shield to keep rifts from spawning.

Is this what my city was like before the rift break?

Matt couldn't remember. It certainly wasn't like that after the rift breaks. Even a shopkeeper like this would be at least armed when he left, even if they were still Tier 1. No one wanted to be unprepared if a disaster ever struck again.

He spent more time watching the family of two than he probably should have, and when he returned to Liz with her drink, she glared that it was turning cold.

Matt had to ask after a minute, "On the higher Tier worlds, how do common shop keepers work?"

"What do you mean? Work how? They still sell stuff, and unless it's higher Tier goods, the prices are usually capped."

That was interesting but not the answer he wanted, "No, I mean, do they stay weak without access to low Tier rifts?"

Liz nodded, then shook her head. "Sorry, no. There are public rifts held at lower Tiers, but it can take a while to get into them. There are also programs that allow people to travel to the frontiers, where rifts are plentiful. They can stay in the 'core' Empire, like the beast kingdom or storm kingdom. Those are all ruled by one of the royals. Or they can go to a vassal state where a local king or queen rules."

She wobbled her head a bit. "That's not recommended, but it has its advantages. They still have to follow the Rights of Sapience, and can't break those eight laws. But they have more freedom in their day to day laws and customs."

Matt knew about the vassal kingdoms well enough, but had never looked into them more deeply. They were mostly weaker, on par with a duchy in the empire proper, but four were quite large. These were nearly the size and strength of a true kingdom. They were technically under the authority of whichever royal they fell under in the Empire proper. But custom and law gave them freedoms.

When they reached a certain size, they would be absorbed into the core Empire, and their people would be granted full citizenship. Matt read that it wasn't hard to become a full citizen from vassal status, but when the vassal was first integrated, there was a time of transition.

Matt nodded, but refocused his question.

"Ok. But do they just stay weak on higher Tier worlds?"

"No. If the world is strong enough, people can cultivate with the ambient essence. It's not perfect, but it's enough for day to day life. And even a Tier 1 could live on the capital. They would just feel a little stuffy."

That brought Matt's thoughts to Lilly and his orphanage there. He wanted to give them funds, but doing so in a safe and controlled manner was harder than he realized. He'd need to sit down with a bank and set up what was essentially a trust fund for them.

The irony of the poor kid setting up a trust fund for his orphanage wasn't lost on him.

While they were waiting around, a woman in a multicolored blue vest approached them.

"Are you Matt and Liz?"

Liz seemed giddy and nodded, and one AI identity check later, she spun on her heel and was gone.

Liz flipped the package and sighed. "It's for you."

She looked sad to miss out on the opportunity to tear into the box.

Matt inspected the package. It was from Melinda's group.

Further inspection showed that it was sent with a courier service, called Aqueducts.

One AI search later, Matt found that Duke Waters had set up his own courier service, and apparently had a sense of humor. From the blurb on their website, they moved high-value goods between people and businesses.

They only employed people who had been on The Path, and services while on The Path were subsidized by the Duke himself.

Matt popped the package open, and found a handwritten note.

Hey Matt! It's Melinda and crew, we knew that you were on the training world, so this should catch you when you exit. Don't say no or try to give it back.

Friends help friends!

That was it. He found a second, smaller package that he needed to link his AI to in order to open.

When he did, a sliver of ice radiated so cold, he had to turn [Cracked Phantom Armor] on, localized to his hands. Aster, who had been napping next to him, shot up, all of her hair raised.

Liz read the note and saw the shard of ice, and whistled softly.

"That's a nice gift there."

Matt checked the packet of information that he had received with the package.

Shard of Primordial Ice Tier 4: A Tier 4 ice shard that can increase the potency of one ice skill or increase ice mana inside the body.

It was a perfect gift for the poofy fox next to him.

Matt murmured back to Liz, "Yeah, it is."

He made a note to be on the lookout for anything that the group could use.

Liz pulled him up and said, "We'll give it to Aster, and we need to send them a very nice letter back. This will save her months of time on a cold planet."

He asked, "What would this be worth do you think?"

His quick search didn't find any Tier 4 variants of Primordial Ice. Primordial Ember at Tier 4 sold for a Tier 6 mana stone.

"I don't know everything, you know." Liz glared at him. "If I had to guess, about the same as most Primordial elements at that Tier. It depends on where they got it. If it was a common drop in a rift they were in, it could be less. If you get one on a world that never drops them, it could be more..."

Matt nodded and finished for her. "Either way, it's an amazing gift."

"Yeah, stupid! Give it to Aster and send them the video with our thanks."

Matt did so, with the reaction of the fox captured for all time. She was still staring at the shard of ice, tongue lolling to the side.

Giving her the shard, she reverted back into a kit. She scampered around for a solid five minutes until she crashed, and collapsed onto the floor.

Liz even introduced herself and thanked the group. She had quizzed Matt for nearly ten minutes about each of them. And even more so about what skills and items they should be on the lookout for.

The video was sent, but Melinda’s group was on the other side of the Empire. Even data would take at least a few months to make its way to them. Traveling there in person would be a matter of a year's worth of travel or more.

For the next few stops, they tried to find something the group could use, but anything in their price range wasn't uncommon enough to ship that far. Melinda's group would be able to find whatever they had found so far locally.

What Liz did insist on was to send them some of the pretty views they saw and interesting things they did. At least one thing per planet. It turned the activities they did into fun messages.

Matt was rocking with the train, and looking at the cube in his lap, when Liz jerked slightly. She was in the seat next to him and spun to face him.

"My brother said that they’re going to be waiting for us at their house. They aren’t picking us up."

Matt shrugged. It really didn't bother him either way.

They stepped into the teleporter and entered a new planet. It was winter on this planet, but it was mild. Where they were going, it would be deep winter. According to his AI and the map of the planet he downloaded, they were near the equator. They needed to travel south, near the southern pole of the planet to reach Liz's brother Travis.

A train trip got them closer to their destination, but Liz's brother was over a small mountain range. Thankfully, there was a large city only fifty miles away or so. They just needed to trek the Tier 6 wilderness, and climb a mountain or six to get to them.

Liz grumbled the entire time, and when they left the city proper and stepped off the trail they were following, Liz screamed out, "I hate you, Travis."

Matt heard nothing, and didn’t see anything either after looking around.

As they started up the incline, Matt asked, "Ok, so why do we have to walk to them. This feels..." He searched for the right word. "Pedantic."

Liz kicked a rock, saying, "It is. And I bet they’re following the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of it. If they’re so deliberately not helping us, it's for a good reason."

Having only one option, the trio hiked on. This mountain range was new, and full of sharp edges. Weather and time hadn't had their chance to smooth the rough crags down.

After hours of hiking, they crested a ridge, and not more than fifty feet on the other side, Matt found a house.

A three story house.

A mile above the ground.

A male version of Liz stood on the balcony and waved.

"Hey BethBeth."