The Path of Ascension

Being back in school was weird for Matt. Things were similar in some ways, and strangely different in others. Unlike his time in the orphanage, he now had access to his AI and the EmpireNet. The classes were structured around both.

It made for an odd parody of his early schooling.

The thing was, he was enjoying it. There were two main lecturers teaching the general classes he was taking. The older man Matt found interesting enough, but the younger woman made the classes a joy to be a part of. Even if he mostly sat quietly and took everything in.

He learned about so many things that the orphanage either didn't think were important, or just didn't have the resources to teach. Tax law was the current topic that he found a perverse pleasure in learning. The Empire usually only demanded a five percent tax from earners, depending on the lowest Tier they were that year.

It led to a lot of people trying to break through on the first of the year, since the Empire didn't care about the lowest Tiers when it came to taxes. Only Tier 5's and higher had to pay the tax. And with the increasing value of mana stones, the higher Tiers covered most of the Empire's needs. Taxes were public record, and the Emperor himself provided nearly a quarter of the needed public funds for the entire Empire.

He even learned that there was an option to sell items in government-sanctioned auctions that sold items one Tier lower. They counted as one and a half times more valuable for tax purposes. It was an incentive that the past Emperor had set up. It allowed people to get resources above their Tier, and strengthened the Empire as a whole.

His favorite lesson covered the punishment for deliberately hiding wealth. The instructor used the oh-so-recent Dual Stars scandal as an example. They went through the public information, and went over the revealing case documents.

The guild had shot themselves in the foot well and good with their actions. The training planet was funded by a government loan, and the expected influx of growth items was the main collateral. Dual Stars had decided that skimming off the top, while pumping every available mana stone into the best-hidden rifts was a good idea. All while reporting a paltry few growth items for the last few centuries, for every new training planet loan.

The newest court document was putting them at nearly a thousand Tier 3 through Tier 5 growth items, while the guild reported a fraction of that. The damages owed started at five times the penalty, and they continued to rise day by day, as more items were found.

Currently, there were rumors that the guild leaders would be sent to an asteroid mining prison station. There they would spend a few centuries breaking big space rocks into little rocks, then rebuilding the big rocks.

The instructor said that there was a near-zero chance of that happening, but the thought still put a smile on Matt's face. Regardless, they were still looking at heavy fines, and anyone who could was jumping ship to other guilds.

The only one from the guild that Matt worried for was Simeon. But at Tier 15, he should have no problem joining another guild. Though from what Matt saw, it wasn't all bad, and the teacher even said that they weren't the first guild to get caught doing this. They were just the most recent. Even the worst offending guild rarely broke apart from simple tax evasion.

What they had done was standard practice when cultivating a planet. You noted rifts with great growth potential, and culled the worst of each Tier. Things like monster type and density of monsters were the primary concerns for rifts Tier 7 and under. After Tier 8, they focused on skill shard drops, for more value per delve.

Eventually, the rifts would be mostly farmed as value producing machines, essentially money printers. On training worlds, where the rifts were left to sit, they focused on rifts that gave growth items. That wasn't the case on worlds that were delved regularly, as the chance for growth items dropped off sharply if the rift wasn't at full capacity.

Matt made a note of that. If he could find a rift that others didn't know about, which had a growth item as an even semi-regular reward, he could get a few of them. Even if they weren't great for him or Liz, they could always sell them for a nice payday.

The other bit of information that surprised him was how fragile the economy was. The Empire had strict limits of what higher Tiers could do with their money. A lower Tier world's economy could be irrevocably damaged if a higher Tier came through and bought everything up.

The issue was mostly solved by Tiers. Generally, large expenses were loosely regulated, as long as the items were at their own Tier or higher. But things like housing and food were strictly controlled. The empire wouldn’t stand for any slum lords or food hoarders.

The information was good, and he was better for learning it.

After classes, he spent most of his time trying to find a hobby. Matt had made a list, and worked his way from the bottom. He tried painting, gardening, wood crafting, sculpting, dancing, acting, and even alchemy.

None of them gave him any pleasure. Blacksmithing and enchanting were saved for his third and second choice. He was vaguely familiar with the former, from a few lessons he took on the PlayPen. It was a useful skill, and he planned to at least learn enough to be able to maintain their weapons. But it was still just a job to him.

That left enchanting. After a brief overview, Matt found that he hated it. He also recognized that he had an advantage that every enchanter would kill for. Mana was the limiting factor in most professions, but it was even more so for enchanters. They required tens of thousands of mana for the simplest of runes to take form and burn into the structure of the item they were trying to enchant.

That cost only multiplied when trying to enchant with the ambient mana that most cities stored.

Matt had none of those problems. The mana cost wasn't a single big price, but one that needed a slow and steady input of mana.

He was the perfect enchanter.

And he hated it.

He was taking lessons, and had purchased everything he could download to his AI. He wasn't going to waste an opportunity for a productive life skill that was perfect for him, just because doing so was a chore he didn't enjoy.

Matt finished the lecture and packed his notebook and pad away. He preferred to hand write the important bits of the lecture down. It helped to commit them to memory. They weren't tested in any way during the class, as it was simply meant to cover gaps in education, or give people a starting point for further research on the massive EmpireNet.

The teacher called out during the mass exodus from the lecture hall, "One special announcement. The vassal kingdom nearest to us is expanding in the next year. They’re putting out very nice terms for anyone who's willing to join as a subject of the new planet. Anyone who moves to the new planet to settle will be given special treatment depending on Tier, contribution, and skill set. It's a vassal kingdom, not the Empire proper, so do with that information what you will."

Matt received an information packet with the relevant information. As he walked to his next class, the one he enjoyed the most, he scanned the provided data. Travis and Keith scouted new planets for a living, and had talked about how amazing things could appear on planets that remained untouched for long enough.

The final destination, and main reason why the vassal kingdom was expanding, was a newly discovered Tier 20 world four jumps away from their border. They couldn't pass up the opportunity to add a high Tier world to their territory. The planets in between were nothing special, and would eventually be subjugated and colonized as well. The vassal kingdom needed them to remain safe, for passage to the valuable world.

Matt had no interest in settling the planets, but he was intrigued by a Tier 6 world that was part of the intermediary planets. It too had to be subjected, and that meant opportunity.

The thoughts were pushed to the side when he arrived at his next class. He quickly found his usual table, and removed his knife set from his spatial bag. He hadn't been surprised when he had loved cooking after trying it for the first time. It reminded him of simpler times and he could share the closeness with Liz and Aster.

There was something about not using his mana or Talents, these things that made him a valuable commodity instead of a person, to create something special that he truly enjoyed.

The class was still focusing on mundane food for the next two weeks, but soon they would cover how to purify monster meat. He would be learning how to make the meat consumable by normal humans.

I can’t wait to see Aster's face when I steal one of her hearts.

The thought made him smile in anticipation. He'd pay for the prank, but it would be worth it.

The teacher walked in, and Matt focused intently on her as she sat at her desk. The woman, Miss Ruth, tolerated no nonsense, and he was pretty sure she had a skill for noticing wandering attention.

"Class, today we will be going over the types of beef and its analogs. We will be butchering a standard cow today, and going over the various cuts and how to prepare them. Finally, we will wrap up the lesson with storage. Beyond throwing it in a spatial item with time effects, that is. Tomorrow we will be using said meat and cooking. There will be a large quantity of meat, so decide if you want the food for yourself, or to have it sent to the dining hall. Either option , as usual, is fine. But either bring a spatial item, or have your diners come here after our usual class time." Miss Ruth's voice was clipped, and each syllable was perfectly enunciated.

With that, she turned on her heels, and was quickly out the door she had just entered. Matt and the other seventeen students headed out to the pasture after her, where nine cows were meandering around.

They were expensive, but all the meat would be either used by the students, or it would be sold to the school dining hall at cost. Travis had paid for one of the cows so that they could have the meat to eat together. Matt didn't mind, the price was only two Tier 2 mana stones. It was just that he had no way to safely store the meat.

The class proceeded with humanely killing the animals. The teacher used [Process], a skill that quickly drained the freshly slaughtered carcasses of blood, and replicating the effect of hanging and drying the meat. It was a skill that had no real purpose in combat, but Matt was intent on purchasing it before they left the planet.

They were split into teams of two, and each team took half of a carcass to butcher. The meat was placed in the special storage items that the school had set aside for storage of perishables. They weren't rings, so you only had to be Tier 5 to use them. Their only problem was how expensive they were, with the time stopping effect they carried.

After the class, Matt went and hurried off campus to a custom shirt shop. He had seen the shop on his way to his first class of the day, and wanted to get a gag gift for Liz. The stop took longer than he expected, as there was a pretty long line. Despite the delay, he only had to run half the way to this therapist session.

This was his third therapist, and one he thought he liked. It was their fourth session, and the older man with gray at the temples was the right mix of sophisticated and understanding. Matt felt comfortable in his presence.

He was surprised that the therapists had all started his sessions unlike anything he had seen in shows and movies. None of them tried to dig into his past at all. They were far more focused on his present, and only addressed his past when he brought it up himself.

Dr. Hastings was sitting in his leather chair, and handed Matt a glass of water with a slice of lemon at the bottom.

Matt plopped down in the chair. "Thanks, doc. Look what I got, Liz."

Matt pulled out his joke shirt and showed the doctor.

"I take it that's an inside joke of some sort?"

He hadn't shared much about Liz's background, but the older man wasn't stupid.

"Yeah. She already got me, so I need to return the favor."

He had bided his time, waiting for the perfect revenge for the mana battery box joke. It had taken nearly a month, but she had let down her guard, and now was the time to strike.

***

Later that night, Matt was sitting around, finishing up charging the 250,000 mana storage slab they had from the city. This was how Matt and Liz were affording everything. The city sent someone over with an empty slab every third night. It only took Matt a little more than three and a half hours to charge each slab of mana stone. So, he used the time he had to work on his Concept, or practice his skill shaping abilities.

They had requested every three days as it would draw less suspicion than Matt filling one up every day, which would draw unwanted attention to his regeneration.

This time, there was a second man with their usual delivery man.

He had an official look about him, and when he saw Matt, he briskly asked, "Can you get the owner of the residence? Thanks."

With that, he just looked past Matt like he was already gone.

Matt cocked an eyebrow, and felt at the man with his spiritual sense. He felt like a Tier 7. Only slightly stronger than the average for the world. It wasn't that impressive, given the gray peppering his hair. His AI came back with nothing from the public database.

Shrugging, Matt went inside, and found Travis peeking his head into the living room from the kitchen.

Quietly he asked, "Who's that?"

Matt shrugged and followed the Tier 17 outside.

The man, on seeing Travis said, "Ah, good. We need you to move your house at least thirty miles from this area."

Travis smirked and shook his head.

Matt looked at their normal delivery person, Jessie, and asked her, "Who is this guy?"

The woman was friendly enough with Matt, and said, "I don't know, but my bosses told me not to piss him off. "Just do your job and stay out of his way," were their exact words."

That was slightly ominous, but Travis seemed to have things in hand well enough.

"We are not leaving. If you’re asking me to leave, then you know what’s going on here, and on whose orders it’s being done. I'm a part of that same guild, and I have every right to be here."

The Tier 7, who still hadn't given a name, didn't seem bothered in the least. "Well you may legally be allowed here, but the Baroness is clearing this entire area. We expect you to be gone in the next fifteen minutes."

Travis looked behind him, then checked under his arm as if looking for something. When he finished his theatrics, he had an exaggeratedly surprised look on his face. "Who are you talking to? I don't see anyone else, and I know you aren't talking to me like that. Not in my own home. In a place that I'm perfectly within my rights to be at. A place where my guild leader suggested I go."

"Baroness Varsies had ordered this area cleared. This is her world. She has every right to remove an interloper. If you wish to refute the claim, you can put in an official complaint. We are quite busy right now, so that will take at least half a year, minimum."

The man's smile showed that he knew exactly what he was doing, and trusted the Baroness to protect him from any retribution.

The official's grin turned wicked, "If you want to make a direct complaint, you can go voice it in person. The Baroness will be happy to show you the correct path."

Travis jumped in the air, and in a flash of light, transformed into a thirty-foot-long bird. With two flaps of his flaming wings, he was out of sight.

The man's mouth was hanging open, and Matt was sure an egg could fit inside.

Keith came up and said, "I hope your boss can cash the check your mouth just wrote. Also, get off our property. If you aren't gone in the next thirty seconds, I'll consider you trespassing."

The bureaucrat clearly didn't think the larger man was bluffing, and quickly got behind Jessie. The two of them flew off on the transportation flyer.

Keith grabbed Liz and Aster, who were now standing by Matt, and flew them north.

They were going much faster than the usual speed they flew at. It was so fast, Keith turned on the wind barrier so he could slice through the air better.

They arrived to see a floating and flaming Travis, standing with arms crossed in front of a woman with an apologetic expression. She was clearly not putting up a fight.

Before they could get close enough to overhear, Travis turned and headed their way. He was using his ankle flying devices, and his shirt was burned away. His shoulders and hair were still aflame, and when he caught up with them, Keith asked, "What, no show?"

Travis rolled his yellow eyes. "No. She saw how I came in ready for a fight and didn't even try to contest me. At least we won't be bothered again. I made it clear that I would be roasting her if we were bothered again."

Keith bit the corner of his lip and smirked. Liz caught the look, and poked her brother-in-law in the ribs. "Is he getting you hot and bothered?"

She giggled at her bad joke, and all Matt could do was gape at her.

"What the fuck? You can make corny jokes about flames, but I can't make one single redhead joke? This is bullshit. Bullshit of the highest Tier."

Keith rolled his eyes and tossed all of them off his flying sword, while withdrawing the one Matt used from his spatial ring.

"Get yourself back. Also, get dinner on your own. Byeeee."

With that, he was gone, and Matt tried to stabilize the sword while catching the falling woman and fox.

Liz cursed after her brother-in-law, but he was already a dot on the distant horizon.

"This is all your fault. If you didn't make the bad joke, he would have taken us back."

Liz shot back immediately, "No! If you didn't start complaining, he would have forgotten about us."

Their squabbling lasted for the entire hour-long trip back. It was fun, and the only thing they could do for entertainment during the long trip.

They decided to eat dinner in the town and splurge a little bit. They went to a movie after, to give the couple as much time as they could. It was dark when they arrived back at the house, but the duo was nowhere to be seen.

While they walked around the city, he brought up the expanding vassal kingdom.

"I think it would be nice to fight monsters and explore places that aren't a barren wasteland for a change. Especially when we don’t have to delve the same few rifts over and over again."

Matt didn't mind their method of delving into the same rift over and over. It was safe, and helped them get to where they were at, after all. But he wanted to get out and see the wider Empire.

Liz nodded next to him. "I wouldn't mind. It seems fun. We can even ask Travis and Keith for advice, since they’re usually the first people to explore new planets. Though, I doubt they have any info on a vassal kingdom's expansion. Their guild only does exploring in the Empire proper."

"What do we need?"

They each thought over Matt's question for a few minutes, before Liz finally said, "We should regear and get new equipment. New, larger spatial bags. I don't think that two of the bags will be out of our price range. The rift charging rings though…” Her voice trailed off, “But with your skills as an enchanter improving, maybe you can make a crappy copy? We don't really care about bad efficiency."

Matt nodded at that. His mana was selling well, and they only expected the price to increase as the news broke.

Refitting their gear was going to be easy enough. The only problem was finding the skilled labor for the job. He wasn't sure whether it would get better or worse, with all the people coming to watch the ascension.

As they were going back to their rooms, Matt remembered his shirt for Liz and stopped her.

"Oh, I got you something."

He couldn't keep the smirk off his face as he dug around his spatial bag for the shirt. The thought of her angry face was making it hard not to cackle in anticipation.

He shoved the bright pink shirt with half a dozen rainbows and 'Double Princess’ printed in bold along the chest.

Liz didn't get mad or embarrassed like he expected. Instead, she smiled and said, "Thanks, I love it."

With that, she hugged the shirt and disappeared into her room, leaving Matt standing there with his mouth agape.

Weakly to the closed door, he said, "No. You're supposed to hate it."

With that, he sulked back to his room.

***

Matt weaved left, and the bolt of mana splashed harmlessly against a tree in front of him.

He stuck his right arm back, and from the device in his hand, returned with a volley of mana bolts of his own.

His AI didn't register any hits, and he heard Travis just laugh behind him. Instinct honed through taking repeated stunning bolts in the back screamed at Matt to increase his altitude and leave the trees. They weren't working as cover, and Matt wanted to use his new flying sword’s greater top speed to his advantage.

The flying sword was one that he and Keith had finally settled on, after they spent weeks reviewing various models. Their final decision was a performance Tier 7 model that had a maximum mana consumption of 30 MPS. They wanted to future-proof the sword to a degree.

Money wasn't a concern. After Travis forced the Baroness to submit, she came over and asked for more mana in exchange for skills and items. She didn't have physical mana stones to spare, but she opened her vaults and personal collections.

News was going to be spread tomorrow, but her workers were already building massive temporary structures out of mana constructs. Most of the structures were simple bleachers, meant to seat as many people as they could.

Even with Dominic ascending with minimum warning, millions were expected to show. And, while being unable to see him ascend had no technical bearing on the potency of the benefits, everyone wanted to be close enough to actually see an ascension.

The mana structures were incredibly wasteful, but they didn't have time to build anything else. Besides, more permanent structures would simply go to waste.

The demand for mana really allowed them to splurge on upgrades. Liz got [Water Shield], and the skill shifted to its blood variant with Liz's Talent. It turned the woman into a monster when she got going. The skill, along with the reward from the mini-war on the training world, made it so she didn’t have to brute force everything with [Blood Manipulation], which was mana expensive. Now, she could rely on the skills she had accumulated to automate most of her techniques, letting her use manipulation to tweak the skills.

Aster got an ice variant spell as well, [Frost]. It would allow her to send out a wave of cold that boosted any ice skills in the area. It was something she wouldn't normally do, and could combo well with Matt's [Hail], making it a potent pick for the ice mage.

Matt decided to forgo a skill for himself, and got the entire team refitted with new armor. He just didn't have many usable skill options until Tier 5, unless he wanted something simple like a [Fireball]. But that was too unwieldy for a single shot at the start of a battle. By the time Matt could adequately use most Tier 8 skill, he'd be able to get them through delving.

Liz had a new armor made in a more neutral brown and green pattern, without the hardcore winterizing her last set had. It was all made by the Baroness’ own armorsmiths, and it was a solid upgrade to her existing armor.

They even got Aster an armored vest that would protect her back and flank. More importantly, it was made from snow yeti fur, so it attracted ice. Aster used it to grow spikes on her back and flank. But instead of looking fierce, as she intended, she looked like a cute hedgehog. Matt and Liz found it absolutely adorable when Aster created the spikes for the first time, while Aster yipped her displeasure.

Matt decided to take Travis' and Keith’s advice and get actual armor, even if it was thin and mostly a backup. Everything but his vambraces were made from standard Tier 5 monster hides. His vambraces, however, were plundered straight from the Baroness’ vault. The rift made Tier 5 forearm armor gave a small strength boost when fighting unarmed, and had a slight chance to break bones when barehanded strikes connected. They would be useful not only for fights that involved grappling, but would also synergize well with the manipulated fist spikes from [Cracked Phantom Armor].

Still, none of those upgrades helped him escape the sadistic Tier 17 chasing him. The mana bolts from the blaster had a stunning function, and would lock the body up for twenty minutes.

Travis liked to talk while Matt drooled on the forest floor.

He would let the topics take him on adventures of conversations so wild, Matt had been sure he was reading from a script or quoting a movie of some sort. After the first ‘talk’ Matt wanted to strangle the man. After the third, he wanted to strangle himself. He had a million tortures ready for when he finally beat the man.

Matt broke from the canopies and leaned back hard, trusting the force of his forward movement and his flying sword’s friction enchantment to keep him on. With a twist of his hips, he swung the blade around, just in time to block a stunning mana bolt. He aimed around the blade, and emptied the blaster’s mana crystal in the direction where the bolt had come from.

His AI registered nothing, and as he tried to sink back down to use the trees as cover, he was hit in the side by yet another bolt that locked his body up. [Cracked Phantom Armor] protected him from the branches and impact with the ground, but it did nothing to stop the grinning redhead who landed next to him.

"So, where were we?"

Travis tapped his lower lip and sat down next to Matt. "Oh yeah, the type of leaf structure on the planet we explored three jobs ago. Oh! First, I need to start with Kathy, the receptionist at the guild. That's how we got the mission. She’s trying to date Maverick, who doesn't even know she exists. But Maverick, he got started..."

Matt watched a bug crawl along the stick he had almost landed on. He wished he had landed a little further forward, and without [Cracked Phantom Armor] active.

Maybe next time.