Chapter 31

The Trio exited the rift after killing the group of attackers. Matt still felt the sensation of being watched, but he knew that the threat had been eliminated. No one was around the exit. The group went to inspect the area where their attackers had a tent set up, but found nothing of value.

Even after widening their search over more of the surrounding area, they still could not find any hidden stashes of loot or valuables.

“Well shit.” Matt looked at Liz and asked, “What are the chances some ‘young master’ type was using them? They might want to get vengeance for their people.”

Liz shook her head. “Probably not. Our luck can’t be that bad.”

Matt and Liz were back to their own tent. It was late.

Matt sat down and sunk deep into himself, searching through his Concept space. He wanted to push his boundaries. Practicing with his Concept’s image was slow going, but he was now able to maintain the image of the spring. It seemed to give him a boost in strength and energy.

It was only a slight boost, as the image was wrong for him. He felt as if he would be able to manifest his Concept now. But with this image, it would be a sloppily made thing. Like clay that wasn’t the correct composition, or that wasn’t fired right. It might hold water, but it would shatter under duress.

Matt refused to settle on something this half-assed. He and Liz still had time before they needed to hit Tier 5. They were only 17 and 16 respectively. She had even mentioned that she was willing to fall off The Path if he needed the extra time. It was more important to her that he created the best foundation possible.

That was touching but not how he wanted it to play out, but he was having trouble thinking of anything that was truly endless. The best example he could come up with was a star, and even they weren’t truly endless. They just operated on a much longer timescale.

A star would expand until it swallowed the system it was a part of, and then it would turn into either a black hole or a white dwarf.

Then, the white dwarf would burn itself out until it was a heatless black dwarf. The black hole would last longer, but it would still eventually expend its energy and disappear.

The black hole felt like an antithesis to his Concept. Even trying to create that image had knocked him out for an hour.

An image of the sun felt better, but not perfect. With that particular idea, it was proving to be nearly impossible to create an image of something that complex.

Liz told him that he was reaching too far with ‘Sun’ as a starting point for a Concept. A sun was typically the ending phase for most fire Concept trees. The sun itself was never a Concept. It was mostly an Aspect. The end of a path, not the beginning.

Matt knew it would be easier to expand on his Concept if he started with something like the spring. He just felt like it was wrong. He’d rather try and reach further, and get stuck at Tier 24. That would always beat not striving for the best version of himself.

Still, trying to encapsulate the sun as an image proved to be a brick wall that he could not overcome.

‘Endless’ was a misnomer, and it was creating a contradiction that was tearing him apart. On a long enough scale, nothing was endless. Trying to get an image that represented endless while actually not having an end was difficult.

The problem was that Matt felt like there was something there. Something that would fit the hole in his cores. It was out there, and no matter what, he would find it.

His current line of thought was that Tier 15 was endless, but he resonated even less with that image than the spring.

The other line of thinking for his Concept that he was toying with was one involving fractions and infinitely repeating math equations. But there was just no resonance there at all. Liz said those were valid images, but with the lack of results, Matt concluded that he needed something more concrete, something real.

The deaths of the other ascenders still bothered him. It wasn't the act of killing them, it was the futility of it all.

It went against the core of what his Concept was. It was proof positive that he was trying to find something borderline impossible. After all, even his mana would be ended if he died.

That contradiction nagged at him as he tossed and turned that night. In the end, he fell asleep while doing his mental scans of his skills structure. No reason to waste time.

Waking up the following day, Matt was sure someone from the guild would be knocking on their tent and arresting them. It didn’t happen, but the nagging feeling of being watched was still there.

Liz asked him after they ate their breakfast of stew, “Want to go check out the rifts the group was monopolizing? Could be something interesting.”

“Sure, delving the same few rifts over and over gets boring quickly. Though, I think we should wait until after our next pyramid delve.”

The mage pondered it while she shimmied into her armor. Her tent was large enough that Matt didn’t have to stand outside. He still tried to avoid the unintentional show she was putting on by brushing Aster. The fox languished in the attention, seeing nothing wrong with being a distraction.

When they were ready, they left their tent and did their regular two rifts. They were hardly a challenge at this point.

Matt didn’t even need to concentrate while killing the bears. He had done it so many times at this point, he was essentially running on autopilot. His advancement through Tier 4 made [Mage’s Retreat] more effective with each distribution of the rift’s worth of essences.

Slashing down on the bear in front of him, the thought of rifts being endless made him take another stab at creating his image.

He spun up the idea of a rift. They endlessly created monsters, and all they needed was ambient mana or essence to form. Just like that, the image collapsed. Matt didn’t need anything to make mana. That dissidence shattered any hope of that particular image working. It was a shame; he had liked the idea. The image of an endless rift probably had quite a few unique uses.

Having killed their way through the rift, they sat and meditated. Matt was pondering his Concept, when he realized that he never asked Liz what her image was.

“Hey.”

The woman didn’t react, but he saw a slight twitch of her lip.

Oh, so that’s how you want to play it?

Matt poked her cheek. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Each ‘hey’ was accompanied with a poke. The last one finally broke her facade. Laughing, she slumped and gave Matt a shove.

“What do you want?”

“What’s your image? You said you’ve had it for years. It must be perfect by now, right?”

Liz stretched out, nearly toppling off her chair.

“My image is a secret! You won’t get it with your vile torture! Demon! Evil creature of the chaotic space between worlds! I’ll never tell!”

Matt gave her a flat look. “What trashy romances are you reading now?”

The redhead’s blush made the hue of her face almost match that of her hair.

“Hey! How do you know about that?”

Liz was looking anywhere but at him.

“You talked about it in your sleep.”

“No! Don’t lie, there’s no way.”

Matt smiled. It was time to turn up the heat. He had her on the edge, now he just had to push her off.

He started wiggling, and said in his highest pitch. “Oh, demon lord. Don’t touch me there. Gasp! Ohhh touch me morreeeeee.”

The earlier color that came to her cheeks was nothing compared to the shade of scarlet that her face burned with now.

Continuing, Matt pressed his advantage. “Oh lady demoness Charlotte, don’t! Please! The bindings are too tight...” Before he could finish, he was shoved off his chair.

“Ha! That fact you know who that is means you’ve read them as well. You can’t make fun of me you hypocrite.”

“No, I know them because they’ve made like five movies about the ‘Two faces of the Demons’. How could I not at least know their names?”

Liz had regained most of her composure, and sat primly. “Well, they’re amazing books.”

“They’re trashy books, and they’re only popular because they genderbend the love interest so everyone’s happy.”

“You take that back!”

They bickered back and forth for a few minutes, with Liz protesting the claim that the novels were trash. She also disputed that their softcore porn aspects were the only reason that the movies sold well. Matt continued to poke as many holes in her arguments as he could.

He had, in fact, read the books, but wasn’t going to admit that to his partner. At least, not until he could do so without destroying his side of the argument.

Deciding to call a truce, Liz shifted in her seat to get more comfortable, and answered his first question.

“I’ve had my Concept from an early age. It’s super rare, but not unheard of with people who have family with Concepts. Maybe one in a million will get that lucky, but most don’t get any great advantage out of it. My parents and their friends all have and use Concepts. My bloodline played a huge part in it as well. Phoenixes are well known for rebirth. It’s a central part of the bloodline.”

“My image was a great fire and a phoenix burning down like an ember. Then, once it winks out, it bursts back to life in a blaze. Fire and life rekindled from the ashes of the old. Now, it’s not as good. The phrase was easy to convert. But the image was harder, and it’s not as good. The fit is like eighty percent of what the old one was.”

“Ok. But what is it?”

“Now, it’s the same thing, but with blood.”

“Shouldn’t that be just as good?”

“No, not even close. The reason the fire worked so well was that it was central to the identity of a phoenix. Blood isn’t.”

“What are you working on then?” Matt was curious now. He thought the rebirth through blood would be pretty good for her image.

“I want kind of the same thing. But more… blood-related. My ideal image, at least what I think would be better, would be regrowing from a single drop of blood. Everything comes from blood. It’s how we live, and through that, how we can achieve rebirth.”

Matt thought that over. “And you were giving me shit about going for a sun.”

This time the woman didn’t blush. “Well yeah. Both are pushing the envelope of what a Concept should be. If we both get what we want, we’ll have a hard time at Tier 24. But we’d get quite a lot of power from it.”

“Fair. What about the opposite of broadening your Concept? Can you keep the idea the same, or narrow it down further?”

“Sure you can, but it can be tough to do that. And you miss out on the broadening of powers. It really depends on the person and type of Concept. A longsword Concept just won’t work with another weapon type. But something like water is already pretty versatile.”

“Look at Duke Waters. He’s told everyone what his Concept, Intent, and Aspects are. The Duke did what you asked. His total phrase is, Drowning in the Shallow Depths. His Concept is water. His Intent is ‘drowning in the depths’. And his Aspect is ‘the shallows are enough to drown you’.”

Matt thought that over. It seemed ambitious. “That only seems possible because he started with something as broad as water.”

At that, Liz nodded, “Yup. An advantage of having a physical Concept. It’s the same with fire and the other magical elements.”

That gave Matt an idea, “So you start with flames or embers, and work up to fire as the Aspect. Or you start at fire and narrow it down. One gets you more power, but what does working up in that example get you?”

Liz shrugged. “Not entirely sure, to be honest. If I had to guess, it’s a whole lot harder to start with fire as a base. You might get more control with fire as an Aspect. But that’s just speculation.”

After thinking it over, he asked, “Isn’t Duke Waters worried about sharing his Concept?”

“Not from what I can tell. The man gave a lesson himself on Concepts and beyond. Put it out there for free to all Tier 14’s and up. Maybe he lied, but I doubt it.”

That got Matt thinking. How strong could one be if they were confident enough to reveal their Concept to everyone? Matt wanted that power. He couldn’t imagine a level of strength that could create that kind of fearlessness.

It felt like a stretch, but Matt tried for endless power, and only heard the burning wood of the bonfire lure popping from the flames.

Liz must have felt something, because she squeezed his shoulder and said, “We’ll figure things out. Worst comes to worst. I beg my parents or an aunt or uncle for help with your image.”

She shifted around a bit, he could tell that something was making her uncomfortable. “I will say that I already contacted one of my aunts. She owes me a favor, and I want to get Aster a bit of phoenix bloodline. She’ll be able to bind the dragon bloodline to it, so the benefits of the dragon will be permanent.”

“I thought you didn’t want to get your family’s help? Also, how strong are they?”

The squirming increased, “Aunt Helen isn’t super strong, but she’s really old. Like saw the unification of the Empire old. I was going to play it as if it was an accident we met up with her, but... But, that didn’t feel right.”

Matt was surprisingly touched. He knew how much the girl avoided leaning on her family.

“What did you do to earn a favor from someone that old? And what does ‘isn't super strong’ mean exactly? Is that Tier 15 or...” He let the end taper off, and gave her a raised eyebrow.

“She’s only Tier 24. She’s been stuck there pretty much forever. She has a family Concept, and her son died in a rift eons ago. That broke her husband, who dissipated his own spirit. She’s been unable to form an Intent ever since.”

That hit Matt like a fist in the gut. How bad must it be for someone older than The Empire to be stuck at a Tier and unable to advance? He shuddered at the thought of it.

Maybe I was a little too cavalier about reaching far as possible earlier.

“Ok, so how did you earn a favor from someone that old? Even if they never delve or advance, they must have everything they could ever need. Was it an, ‘I’ll owe you a favor, so you get some protection while on The Path’ kind of thing?”

Liz just laughed, “Nope! She’s really bad at poker. Her feathers are a dead tell, and she was out of chips. So when she wanted to keep playing, that was all she had to offer. I was six, I think. Well before I thought about The Path. I don’t mind using it to get Aster a little phoenix blood essence. Honestly, you could probably get that with the dragon info alone. Once you send it to my mom, she’ll get it to Mara, and you could get a lot in return. But that will take a while. Tier 40+s don’t view time the same frame as us. A few decades of sleeping isn’t crazy.”

That unsettled Matt’s understanding of the world. Sure, he had seen movies with a high Tier dragon who napped for a few centuries, but Liz was talking about real people.

“What will the phoenix bloodline do for her?” He still wasn’t entirely sure about that.

“Blood essence. It comes from bloodlines. An older term for it is ‘heart’s blood’. It’s the source of a bloodline’s power. I’d need to hit Tier 15 to be able to give any away without crippling myself. Phoenix blood essence will let Aster create a regenerating source of the dragon blood essence once they’re bound together. Phoenix bloodlines are all about rebirth and renewal. With it, she can get more out of that dragon’s blood. It won’t peter out by Tier 20.”

That gave Matt ideas. “So can we like, collect bloodlines for you two?”

“Nope, the body can really only handle one extra. The phoenix bloodline doesn’t really count if it’s bound to either the main blood essence or a secondary one. Most will get a second bloodline and have it shore up a weakness, so if someone comes to kill them with a power that counters them, they can stop it. Think of a fire creature getting a water bloodline to control a bit of water in a last-ditch effort to survive.”

That logic seemed sound to him, and he followed it out. “You said before that only the main blood essence regenerates. Does that mean that a phoenix’s blood essence is super valuable?”

“Yeah, but mom’s a phoenix, and so are a lot of her friends. Dad’s mostly friends with the water and air monsters. The phoenix population would get wrung dry if everyone could get some blood essence, but for friends, there’s more than enough.”

The gift seemed far more generous as he learned more. He opened his mouth to thank her on the fox’s behalf, but Liz punched his shoulder, saying, “We are friends, and friends help each other. Besides,” She wiggled the hand the ring was on. “It’s not like we’re going to be separated from each other.”

Matt looked at the snoozing fox, who had eaten all the hearts from the bears and was currently plopped over with an extended belly.

They were a team.

***

The pyramid rift seemed more ominous the second time they entered. The empty forest was a different place when he knew that waves of monsters would appear shortly.

Reaching the steps of the great structure, Matt viewed each carving of sacrifice with new eyes. This rift had a sick and twisted sense of humor.

After binding their blood to the bowls once again, they started the rift.

The feathered raptors were again the first monsters, and with the downtime in between rifts, Matt had his AI analyze the information from the entirety of the last delve of the rift.

Now, the ghostly images of the AIs predictions allowed him to dance through the onslaught of monsters. Each movement of his sword resulted in a clean blow. Not every strike was a killing one, but the damage allowed Liz to take blood from the monsters, and set up her own killing station in the far corner.

They each worked their areas, and Aster waited to use Upgraded [Heart Of Power] to supercharge her attacks. The ice mage was better served by conserving mana until her ice spells packed more punch, so she bided her time. She kept involved in the action by protecting Liz’s blind spots from her perch in the backpack.

Matt settled down. This rift should be much easier without Liz empowering the boss with created blood.

The rhythm of his falling sword calmed him. Each attack had its purpose and consequence.

The raptors’ chaos in numbers was child’s play with the help of his AI. They used pretty standard group hunter tactics; a lot of feints and attention-grabbing, so the ones behind could deal a critical blow. Even the extra aggression instilled by the rift did not change the monsters’ true nature.

Matt was pretty amazed, his AI’s predictive measures were nearly perfect, but Liz’s lagged behind slightly. He had, of course, shared his AI’s findings with his partner, but it didn’t seem to help her make any headway with improving her AIs combat analytics.

Some of it had to do with the absurd amount of mana he could devote to the task, but overall, his AI just seemed to be better at modeling attack patterns. He was grateful to Griff for suggesting that he get a researcher model. He made a note to ask for a comparison against a standard model when he went for a check up at the end of this training world.

Matt finished off a twitching raptor and paused.

“Fuck. I’m so dumb.”

That caught Liz’s attention, and she shrugged a shoulder at him in question of his statement.

“I’m so stupid. I could have my AI show people’s names and such.”

Matt berated himself. He might not have a module for the AI, but how hard would it be to train the AI to note down and display an overlay when someone said their name? He could probably even access the public database for people, at least to get their names.

Sitting down, he started to allocate his essence. As he did so, he held Liz’s wristband that held one of her rechargeable mana stones, and dumped 9 MPS into it. He did the same with the one in Aster’s collar. Liz had two rechargeable stones, so she had given one to the fox, that way both mages could take advantage of Matt’s mana in between rifts.

The two humans were embarrassed that it had taken them this long to think of it. With mana no longer being the limiter for how many delves they could do, they intended to try and delve a third or fourth rift each day.

This ability to delve all the rifts you wanted was a rare opportunity, and not one they wanted to pass up. With the five minutes in between waves, Matt was able to give each girl the 2000 mana necessary for their stones to convert 200 mana to their respective aspects.

According to Matt’s HUD, the girls were nearly back to full mana, and the stones were once again filled to capacity. With the extra 200 mana, they could cast without hesitation, and push their respective manipulation skills to the max.

Unlike standard skills, the manipulation family was a mana control burden. The skill itself needed little in the way of expanded capabilities or training, unlike his [Cracked Phantom Armor]. No, they needed to use the skill constantly to get better control of it.

Liz could use the skill for blood whips and the blender ball, but they were easier for her. The floating and circling streams of blood were much harder on her control, but they had versatility. The golem form she used both burned mana at a prodigious rate and demanded a crushing level of control.

Aster’s problem was that her innate skill was [Ice Manipulation], not [Create Ice]. Her bloodline let her do the latter, but it was expensive. It was why she favored smaller shards of ice. They could usually be regathered and reforged if they broke. She also could push ice aura out to slow and freeze enemies, but as an area attack, it was much harder to differentiate friends from foe when using it. It also was somewhat wasteful to use so much mana on single monsters.

Matt wanted to get a cold aura or ice aura skill for himself, to give the fox something to work with. But he wondered if it would be better to get her an [Ice Spear] spell, or something along those lines. It would automate the creation of ice, and the launching of the projectile. No manipulation needed. It would greatly increase her combat prowess.

Liz wanted a [Water Whip] or [Water Bullet] for the same reasons.

They were just too poor.

Matt also pondered what skill he wanted after [Endurance], and his current choice was [Demon Zone].

[Demon Zone]: 5 MPS base cost. A portion of all damage dealt while in the area of effect is reflected back to the damage dealer as physical damage. Percent chance for any damage dealt in the area to affect all occupants in the area. No designation of friend or foe. User takes fifty percent damage from all reflected damage. Cannot be recast for two hours. Channeling time does not count towards cooldown.

It was a rarer Tier 8 skill with some serious drawbacks, but Matt had weighed the pros and cons. Most melee fighters avoided it altogether. Even with a mages mana cultivation, it was only usable for five minutes at Tier 5 and 1500 mana.

Melee fighters wouldn’t have that much mana, and they wouldn’t be able to use the skill for half as long. If they could flick the skill on and off, it could be halfway decent, even with the damage reflection. But with the long cooldown, it was a skill that most found unusable at this low a Tier.

That also didn't account for other melee fighters taking full reflect damage. It would kill your teammates as fast as the enemies. The skill was mostly used by melee defensive fighters who rarely attacked and had a lot of mana for whatever reason.

[Cracked Phantom Armor] should be able to completely negate the reduced reflect damage, and it would allow Matt to strike back at his foes with both his attacks and their own. With each swing of his sword, he had a chance to damage everything around him. And with each of their attacks on him, they would slowly be bled down.

It wasn’t a lot of damage, as it was only a Tier 8 skill, but it would help Matt punish anyone that came in too close.

He really wanted a ranged skill, but anything at Tier 8 had a mana cost higher than one percent of his max. He thought about just using a rechargeable mana stone, filling it, then pulling the mana over to cast a normal [Fireball] or something. But that was slow, and pretty redundant with Liz and Aster already having plenty of ranged attacks.

Speaking of [Fireball], I’d love to get [Flamethrower]. It may be a Tier 14 skill, but it only has a 30 mana initial cost, then it’s just a mana per second upkeep. I could cast it at the beginning of a rift and keep it active the whole time.

Matt stood and reactivated his sword. His thoughts and daydreams took up all the time he had to charge the girls’ mana stones. He’d need to get the first kill so Liz could get her blood going.

They murdered the inhabitants of the rift until they were at the last wave. Matt was ready. He had been channeling [Mana Charge], and was storing 1000 mana in the blade’s skill. As soon as the statue turned into the boss dragon, he brought the blade down on its expanding head. Instantly killing the peak Tier 4 boss.

He looked to Liz. “Well, that worked better than I hoped. Almost anti-climatic, really.”

“I won’t complain. I love this rift. A shit load of essence and a reward per person if we finish all ten waves.”

They opened the rift rewards, Matt and Liz each received a half dozen Tier 4 mana stones, while Aster had a bottle drop on her. The fox scampered away from the object that tried to brain her, yipping her displeasure.

Liz scooped it up before whistling. “Damn, girl. Did you seduce the rift or something? That’s two for two. Maybe this rift likes fluffy things?”

Matt pushed out with his spiritual sense, but didn’t find the reward to be very strong.

“What is it?”

Aster sniffed at it, before losing interest and going over to the dead boss, using [Heart Of Power] on the large corpse.

“It’s a really nice base for a Tier 4 potion. If you use this to make something, all the ingredients will be used to their fullest extent. So it’s a perfect potion. Or at least one potion’s worth. Not enough for an entire batch.”

Matt knew the mage liked to dabble in alchemy, so he asked, “If you want it to keep it. Its...”

“No. No. As much as I’d love to, it’s better if we sell it. The value is better in a more skilled alchemist’s hands. I like the science, but I’m no expert, and we might be able to get something good in a trade. At the very least, we would get a good price for it. Everyone wants one of these to make a superb potion and have a breakthrough.”

“One of the breakthroughs that give essence? How do they even work?”

“Yeah, one of those. The theory I heard is that there’s a resonance with the world, the item, and the crafter. The three of them being in harmony creates essence, and it’s perfectly matched to the person. That essence gets bestowed to the person, and I’ve heard rumors that it can even fix foundations if they weren’t perfect.”

“Your parents didn’t tell you?” That surprised Matt. She knew nearly everything else after all.

“It’s very rare, and honestly, I never really asked. I only got into alchemy when I was at the PlayPen.”

“Ahh. That makes more sense. I was wondering if my walking encyclopedia needed an update.”

Liz rapped his shin with the butt of her spear in retaliation.

“Come on smartass, let’s go sell this.”