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Chapter 172

Luna, Carol, and Kurt awaited them, the latter two with more serious expressions than Matt was used to seeing them with.

Luna was the first to speak. “First, a bit of recap, but but with a bit more context. The first new thing you need to know is where Minkalla comes from. There are a few different theories, but one in particular tends to hold more weight among the higher Tiers. Specifically, we have reason to believe that it may be a reward from a Tier 100 rift that was then assembled and sent into lower Realms.”

Matt jerked along with everyone else at the first bit of information, being a knowledge bomb.

Liz asked the question they were all thinking. “How do you know that?”

Luna shrugged a single shoulder. “We can't verify it to any real degree, but a Descender left us some clues in their dying AI data dump. They weren’t trying to teach us that in particular, but among the recoverable data were some details that are generally thought to be relevant. One document on high Tier rifts spoke of Tier 100 rewards, including some passages describing a ‘divine puzzle box’ which offered a reward beyond understanding if, and only if, it could be completed. The only other major clue to be pieced together was that it involves ‘ten thousand ruins, gathered and assembled as keys’. Descending from a higher realm bursts the spirit as a matter of course, so the AI dump was spotty at best, and that’s all we were able to get as far as that particular lead goes. Those particular quotes are simply the most promising clues we’ve ever had. We don’t strictly know that Minkalla, or anything like it, was what they were talking about, and it could have been referring to something completely unrelated for all we know. The idea that it’s from a higher realm is controversial at best, but it does provide an excellent explanation for some of the planet’s power. If it is true there are two things in particular which this does pertain to.”

Luna pointed at the screen, and a cross section of Minkalla appeared with seven layers in descending colors highlighted, with the first layer blown up.

“The first is something you already know, namely that Minkalla is seemingly made up of interlaced Ruins, not rifts. They butt up against each other and are randomly redistributed during each reset. When you enter, they will be packed full of monsters. More importantly though, things inside don't work like they do in the rest of our Realm. The rules are different. That's why I said we believe it's a reward from a Tier 100 rift. A rift drop ‘beyond understanding’ is pretty much the only thing that can explain everything that goes on inside.”

Matt nodded as he looked over the picture. The expanded first layer seemed to have three smaller layers inside of it, while the second layer had the same number of ruins stacked like interlocking bricks.

Luna let them study the image for a few minutes before resuming. “Now, you already know how the floors work, and all the proper strategies for bypassing or defeating the sublevel bosses, but the rewards also work differently and are why it’s so important to defeat as many challenges and monsters as possible. Fundamentally, there’s four types of rewards that you can earn on Minkalla; challenge room rewards, monster drops, theme rewards, and exit rewards. All four of them are loosely tied together by…”

The screen changed and said ‘Genesis Energy.'

“Genesis Energy. Instead of getting essence from killing monsters, you get Genesis Energy. It acts a lot like essence, but is better in every way that we can measure. It only exists in Minkalla and can't be taken out of it. And before you ask, no, from what we know of the higher Realms, it does not exist there. If it does, it’s rare. But while you can't normally allocate it like essence, there’s also no limit to how much you can store inside your spirit. Think of it like Minkalla’s way of keeping track of how much you kill inside its depths.”

Matt raised an eyebrow at that, but otherwise said nothing.

That had some interesting implications and consequences. It might also explain why Minkalla was draining the surrounding star system of mana and essence. Creating some form of higher realm super-energy couldn’t be free.

The screen behind Luna changed to two people fighting, and unlike the edited version they’d previously seen, this time once one killed the other, they saw a golden light flow from the corpse to the victor. “And yes. When you kill another sapient, you harvest about half their accumulated Genesis Energy by default, which means killing each other isn't just a possibility, but actively encouraged. Like you should know by now, people are the true danger of Minkalla. Also, it’s easier to sense people with lots of Genesis Energy. They’ll light up to your spirit senses like a bonfire, even through Minkalla’s suppression. You get enough, everyone on the planet may be able to sense your presence. There are technically ways to hide that, but they’re all rewards from inside the planet. One of the most notable is a brass ring with a gauge in it that allows for storage and retrieval of Genesis Energy. It will reduce the sensing efficiency by about half, so while not perfect it's useful.”

The picture of Minkalla returned, but different things were expanded. Between the floors, there was a thin green line that was expanded. Next to that, a small area in the center of a Ruin brick was a different color and expanded as well.

“So with that in mind, when I say that the areas between Minkalla’s floors are safe to rest areas, I mean both that there are no ruins or monsters there, but also that Genesis Energy isn't transferred over on a kill. You still aren’t actually prevented from killing anyone, you’re just not rewarded for it. Though given those are also the places you can leave, running away is a very possible solution. That brass gauge ring I mentioned? Some enterprising souls try to set up shop, selling items they find- or bring- in exchange for Genesis Energy. Sometimes, they even succeed without having everything extorted from them, but if you’re going fast enough, you’ll be well ahead of all of them. And yes, the amount of Genesis Energy you have can also influence the rewards you get when leaving, but I’ll cover that in due time.”

Behind her, the slide changed and showed a graph of monster density compared with time on the other axis.

“One of the main things to keep in mind is because you’re going in at the start of a cycle, the Genesis Energy has just reset, and you’ll be able to find plenty of treasures. But that doesn’t keep you from wanting to go fast, so that you stay at the head of the waves of people delving and keep the advantages of going in right at the start. The earlier and further you progress, the better the Genesis Energy and monster drop rewards, largely because you’ll have less competition and the most obvious locales won’t have been plundered. If you fall behind, and the theme reward isn’t absolutely incredible, speed up. Being one of the first on a new floor, if the theme is good, is very valuable. While there are no hard limits for how many people can get all the rewards, and you have the advantage of being Tier 11’s, you still want to stay ahead of the curve and away from the soft cap limited by the available monsters.

“As for the challenge rooms, you need to pay a Genesis Energy price before you can enter them, which is the risk I told you about. If you can’t complete the challenge, you can remove yourself at any time, but there is no refund. If you beat the challenge, you are given on average about twice the Genesis Energy you spent to enter it, and may get a few other rewards as well.”

Matt nodded. He knew all the challenge rooms by heart- they were often some kind of incredibly strong monster that needed to be defeated, but there were also plenty of puzzles, displays of skill or strength, and even some more… abstract challenges.

“Liz! How do you spot a challenge room?” Luna quizzed.

Liz sat up straight in her chair, reciting one of Luna’s earliest lessons on Minkalla, “Despite being technically hidden, on the higher floors it’s possible to find challenge rooms by the lack of anything, leaving huge and unnaturally blank spots in your spiritual sense.”

Matt nodded along. That was broadly true. They had trained enough that the practice areas certainly felt gaping at this point, but they’d still been tuned to Tier 14 spiritual senses. Luna, being Luna, had spent about six months hiding random stuff of theirs under what was supposedly a similarly strong cloak, until they had to know what to look for if they wanted to wear socks on a given day.

“It gets better-hidden as you progress down the floors,” Liz continued, “And not only will the blank spots be less obvious, or become better camouflaged with their surroundings, but the actual entrances be hidden as well.”

That had been an annoying month.

“Like everything else, the top floors are bottom Tier 14 in cultivation, and just like with the monsters and challenges themselves, it will scale up until the cloaking and camouflage is peak Tier 14.”

When Liz paused, Luna slipped back into the conversation, “Good. Now, you can generally get a feeling of the challenge type, and sometimes its reward, from the entrance. At least, once you break through the cloaking. But, the Genesis Energy you get from those challenge rooms are secondary to the rewards, which are some of the true treasures of the place, second only to the theme rewards.”

Kurt raised his pad and interjected with his pen and paper. “Genesis Energy also has its own advantages. It's a higher form of energy, and can change items that are exposed to it into growth items. That's why you were all supposed to get good armor with your rewards from the Tier 10 tournament. Sadly, only Liz got hers.”

Matt and Aster had been directed to buy the best armors they could, but they hadn’t been told the ‘why’ beyond the fact they were good armors, and would always be useful.

The under armor he had bought boosted self buffs, which was amazing when paired with his new skills, but if that turned into a growth item?

That would be incredible.

Carol shrugged. “You don’t directly choose what items convert, and it’s possible, though really rare, to get two. The record I know of is four converting, but that asshole has more luck than even a fate-driven Talent could explain. Rolled sevens on everything in Minkalla despite having a six sided die, I swear. Regardless, one is pretty doable. Just use the items a lot. Generally speaking, the more you use an item, the more likely you are to bond with it. Keep it on your person a much as possible. There isn't a strategy beyond that. Technically, even items shoved away in spatial storage can convert, but I only know one person that’s ever happened to. If you encounter a challenge or floor reward that affects a growth item, but don’t have any, whatever item is the closest to bonding will finish the process. Then you’ll get whatever other benefits you should get.”

“There is actually a way to speed up how long it takes for an item to bond to you as a growth item,” Luna added, “but it doesn’t give you any more control over what bonds. Essentially, manually spin your Genesis Energy like you’re overcoming an essence suppression band, particularly while using the item in question. If you do that, you stand a much better chance of getting two bonded items.

“While monsters in Minkalla don’t give any essence, they are liable to drop essence stones, items, and skills in addition to the Genesis Energy you’ll get from them. Any monster drops you find are incredibly valuable and should be collected. The essence stones won't last long before Minkalla reclaims them, as it does everything that dies in its depths, so pick them up and get them in a spatial bag or ring quickly. The first floor will only have Tier 8 skills, but past that, there will be Tier 14 skills, and by the time you reach the seventh floor, you’ll be finding lots of Tier 20 skills. It’s the best likelihood for skills you’ll find anywhere in the realm, so grab everything you can. We’ll cover some more in detail later, but keep a particular eye out for Headhunter’s Necklaces, Muffle Cloaks, and Genesis Crystals. They all only function inside of Minkalla, and become mundane when removed, but they will be very useful for your delve.”

Hearing that even the monsters would be dropping items, essence stones, and skills, Matt was stoked and ready to go and Luna hadn’t even started talking about the “real” rewards of the place. The things she had mentioned were interesting but not so much that he believed she would drag them here. Not this early.

The screen changed once again, and Luna explained what they were seeing. “Just like how each of the possible floor themes that could appear get more challenging the deeper they are, so too do the rewards get stronger as you approach the core. These theme rewards are usually considered the greatest treasures of Minkalla, for all that it’s nigh impossible to know ahead of time which seven you’ll get, let alone what order they’ll be in. Once you complete the floor, for a sizable amount of Genesis Energy, you can enter a special challenge to gain the corresponding reward. This is where most people reap the largest benefits.”

Luna nodded at the screen. “Some theme rewards are more useful for you than others, but all are generally good. Manage your risks accordingly. Likewise, don’t waste time and Genesis Energy on completing any extra challenge for themes which don’t help you.”

Kurt, interjected, his pen flying as he wrote. “Technically, anything but the deepest theme and exit rewards are available out here, even if they are incredibly rare and hard to find or time consuming to replicate.”

Luna nodded in agreement. “That is technically true, but incredibly rare is an understatement. Minkalla is the only place that produces such rewards at a consistent rate. But continuing on. Once you are inside Minkalla, your AI and your spiritual perception will be restricted in its range and effectiveness.”

She shot them a look, and Matt nodded, though he still felt that she was over correcting their training for what was fundamentally a one-time thing.

Luna let out a sigh and looked at them like she knew they would disappoint her. “While none of the theme rewards are bad, I will reiterate that you can still have good or poor luck that we just can’t account for. There’s always some who wait until reports return on what the themes are before venturing inside, but doing so cuts them off from the very best rewards. The easy sources have been picked over, most of the monsters have been culled, and even as Tier 11s, you would struggle to afford some of the deeper rewards, let alone the really good ones which always cost more. So, it’s something of a gamble that you’ll get good rewards, but one you can’t not take.”

She pointed to the screen where an empty numbered list appeared.

“When you complete the deepest sub-layer of a floor, you’ll be presented with an opportunity to claim a theme reward, but like the challenge rooms, they come with their own extra challenge to complete. Sometimes, just getting through the floor is the hardest challenge, and the end challenge is less difficult. But you still need to fight under the restrictions of the floor's theme, so it's never easy. The usual example given is the ‘Folded Reflections’ floor. Matt?”

Folded Reflections? That was… oh right, “Folded Reflections is one of the few floors which doesn’t carry some special ‘rule’ to it, but instead has the largest variety of enemies. Namely, it involves fighting weaker and slightly different ‘reflections’ of other people on the floor, including you. The final boss of the floor is a fight against yourself, exactly as you are. Thus, it’s seen as one of the most dangerous floors, especially early on. I don’t know the bonus challenge though.”

He looked back to Luna, who nodded but said nothing. The four of them looked on expectantly for her to elaborate.

“I didn’t teach it to you because the challenge is in some ways a reward itself. Now, its challenge is considered one of the least dangerous, but in some ways also one of the hardest and riskiest for you four in particular. Upon accepting it, you will find yourself experiencing a number of lives equal to the depth of the floor. Each life will generally be vastly different from your own. They may start similarly and branch off in odd ways but they will always end up with you living a different life. Still, each life is different enough that you are guaranteed to have a new Concept in each. The challenge here is to overcome each life, figuring out what is happening and deliberately moving on. Should you fail to move on from one life, you will awaken afterwards with that life’s Concept having replaced your own. Yes, even if you do not currently possess one. However, should you succeed by moving on from each and every life, you will awaken with some version of all the Concepts added onto your own. At Tier 11, they will be a little under sixty percent the strength of your main Concept, and I trust you understand how useful that could be, particularly at the deeper floors.”

Aster let out a low whine at the statement.

Luna did not, in fact, have to explain how strong that would be. Having a Concept that could do one other thing would be strong on its own, but being able to do that for seven other Concepts would be amazing.

Susanne asked, “Are there any side effects or downsides? Weakened willpower? Harder to grow your Concept? They can't grow or something?”

Liz added her own question, “Harder to form your Intent?”

Luna chopped with her hand. “No to all of that. There are no side effects, and the additional effects can potentially grow right along with your base Concept, assuming you practice with them enough. You could think of them as an additional, if unusual, generic use of your Concept, like locking down space or flying. The closer the use is to something your Concept already does, the easier it is to use and expand. There’s a reason that Minkalla is called the place of miracles. In fact, getting this reward will actually make forming your Intent a little easier, but that’s usually attributed to living multiple lives, rather than any of the additional effects folded into a Concept. It even works with beasts, so having an inherited Concept wouldn’t keep you from benefiting, Aster. In fact, some argue it's better for beasts, as it makes expanding your existing Concept easier in the future. It’s considered one of the best single floor rewards Minkalla has for a reason, and whenever it shows up as the first floor there’s a lot of people who flood in, eager to try and get or change their Concept relatively easily.”

Carol nodded and said, “They also scale with your Tier. If you're Tier 11, everything works far better than at Tier 14. That sixty percent? If you were Tier 14, try ten percent. That holds true for all floors and their rewards. It's either cheaper to take the rewards if you're a lower Tier, or the rewards are better for lower Tiers. Sometimes both. In theory, a Tier 11 can just explore their way through the floors killing monsters and get every floor reward without killing anyone, but that's only in theory. We have records of tens of Tier 11s who have completed Minkalla’s seven floors, so a lot of this is just speculation. Better to have more Genesis Energy than you need for obvious reasons.”

Matt heard the unspoken comment that they might need to kill people and should do so if they needed to.

That was cold, but he understood. Others would be operating on the same logic, and the higher Tier people would be desperate for more Genesis Energy and might kill anyone they encountered.

Luna continued, “If you do encounter Folded Reflections, it’s important to remember that the other lives aren’t real. It’s very, very convincing, but it’s basically just an elaborate illusion. Things can happen in them which aren’t possible, such as being born in a different Great Power, having a different Talent, having the Empire fall into anarchy, being born as royalty. It won’t show you the future, and what other versions of you do does not reflect on who you are. Many people have gone mad, trying to find people they meet in their other lives or pining after something that never will and never could have happened. It's nothing more than Minkalla spinning possibilities from your own memories and thoughts.”

Matt couldn’t help but murmur, “What the fuck?”

The thought of living other lives seemed both scary and enticing.

It might just let him see his parents again. Live with them. See them healthy and whole.

He had to ask, “And it’s all fake? How can you know? If it’s from a higher realm, surely it can do more than we’re used to?”

Luna shrugged. “Tests, mostly. Most of the lives will reuse materials such as names and faces. Don’t be surprised if you encounter the same people in multiple lives, or see some who are strangely familiar in one way or another. Also things will tend to go either really well for you in a single life or really bad. It would be useless as a prize if the alternative lives were just you having changed what shirt you wore one day. Though I have heard of one person who did experience that, but that was quite an outlier and that life went quite differently even with such a small change.”

As he started to go into a rabbit hole of what ifs Matt squashed that thought process. It just wasn’t productive for something so remote of a possibility.

He could feel Aster was uncomfortable with the thought and could read Liz’s face well enough to see she was also leery at the idea. Susanne, he didn't know well enough to judge, but she didn't look excited to go through that.

Thankfully Luna moved them on quickly.

“Now, Aster, Unskilled?”

“Oh, that one! The one where I can’t use my Talent. Er, no. No skills at all. Not even Innate ones from a Talent. You just have to do stuff with your Concept and cultivation. And Talent, if it isn’t a skill.”

Matt still had a difficult time properly grasping just what kind of insanity was required to suppress a Talent, but if it really was from a higher realm, it almost made sense. About as much sense as being able to let you live over a half-dozen other lives as a way to change your Concept.

“Yes, it’s quite notorious. But the rewards are equally great. On the first floor, you can level up a single Tier 8 skill for some Genesis Energy. If the theme shows up on floor two, you can upgrade two Tier 8 skills or one Tier 14 skill. Each deeper floor, you are able to upgrade more Tier 8 skills and or trade them up. But the scaling is better than a simple doubling. On floor one, you get one then it’s two, three, five, eight, eleven, and sixteen. Also, by using four Tier 8 upgrades, you can upgrade a Tier 20 skill. If that was it, it would be strong but not amazing, but you can spend a little extra Genesis Energy as a Tier 11 and get nearly complete control over the upgrade. Want a [Fireball] spell that has no cooldown? Easy. Want that spell to have added lighting or void damage? Done. Want to have the [Fireball]s bounce on hitting an object? It's a thought away. The possibilities are theoretically endless, and as Tier 11’s you will have nigh complete control while the higher Tier’s have less and less. Tier 14 only gets standard upgrades like you can get out of any upgrade orb.”

Matt felt his mouth go dry as he thought of the possibilities.

If he got that floor deep enough, he could upgrade his [Cracked Mana Spear] or [Cracked Phantom Armor] to their Tier 26 equivalents. Unique perfect versions of themselves to remove their weaknesses and bolster their beneficial qualities.

[Cracked Phantom Armor] and [Cracked Mana Spear] both were Tier 20 skills as far as upgrading was concerned, and Tier 26 upgrade orbs were incredibly expensive due to their rarity and the demand. Getting a better version of that for free?

He could hardly sit still at the thought.

Luna dumped ice water on them. “Once again, it’s impossible to predict which themes you will encounter, let alone which one will be at the seventh floor, but that's what brings me to the final category of reward, the exit rewards. The only static rewards Minkalla offers. Sometimes called chaser rewards. You only get one of them, no matter how far you delve, and you only get it when you leave. What does change with how far you delve is what options you get. For beating floors one through six, the options presented are good but not amazing, but beating floor seven and having enough Genesis Energy you get what is perhaps the best reward of all.”

Better than adding effects to my Concept? Better than perfectly upgraded skills?

Matt struggled to think what could qualify for that.

The screen changed to an empty list of seven. “Like everything else, they scale based on your Tier. The reward for exiting on floor one is a single Tier 8 skill. For Tier 14’s, they have no control, and it’s all random what they get. Tier 13s can choose vague categories to narrow down the results, such as a buff, attack, defense, or utility skill. Tier 12s get a bit more control, and they can add more qualifiers like a self-buff skill or ranged attack. If you have a bit more Genesis Energy, you can narrow that down to something as specific as ‘fire type ranged attack spell.’ For Tier 11s, they can describe to the littlest detail of a skill they want, and Minkalla will give it to them, within reason. There’s even some reports that it can make cracked skills, or at least pre-modify some skills to make them better match a request, but we just don’t have enough Tier 11s who take a skill as their exit reward to really know for sure, they almost all die early or make it deep enough to get better options.”

Matt shook his head. That was absurd. And it was only the reward for getting through the first floor.

“The second-floor exit reward is better for those weaker. It will fix your essence allocation perfectly like an inspiration. For the Tier 14s, it only fixes it but adds nothing extra. For Tier 13s, it fixes your foundation and brings you to the peak of that Tier. For Tier 12s, it will fix your foundations and also bring you to the peak of Tier 13. Theoretically, Tier 11s will get the same benefit, but we don’t know for sure. No Tier 11 from the Empire ever publicly stated they took this reward. Regardless, it's a strong reward for anyone who made a mistake or used essence to power a skill, as it will fix said flaws. For you, it’s not so great.”

Luna changed the screen, and the floor three's exit reward appeared. It was simple, and a Tier 14 skill that followed the same rules as the Tier 8 skill on floor one did.

It would be even more useful, but Matt wasn't that interested in it for himself.

“Floor four’s exit reward is what all the old geezers are going for. At Tier 14, they get the equivalent of a very general Concept that will allow them to reach Tier 15. It's not great, but it will let them live, which is all they care about. At Tier 13, you get a more specialized Concept, but it's still fairly generic. Tier 12s get a strong personalized Concept that is about on par with a decent self-made Concept. From what we’ve simulated, we believe Tier 11s get a Concept on-par with yours, namely a very strong one which perfectly suits them. Anyone who already has a Concept and reaches that floor, they can choose to upgrade their existing Concept to that level. Though for the walking corpses it’s not entirely assured they will get a Concept. If a Tier 14 genuinely has not even the faintest idea as to what their Concept might be, they won’t receive a completed one, but for most people it’s essentially being handed a complete Concept as long as they know their Phrase or Image.”

Matt didn’t need that reward himself, but the implications of being able to form a Concept like that for people was staggering. It was the equivalent of a Shard of Reality being used on each person who exited there. And the Empire alone was sending in hundreds of millions of people.

It was a staggering realization, but he understood why so many older cultivators were willing to throw themselves into Minkalla despite knowing the death rates.

Matt also understood that those people would probably be the most rabid in wanting to reach the fourth floor and would be vicious to anyone they saw as an obstacle. The ones entering at the reset wouldn’t be willing to wait for the rush to pass and take a slower path as in theory they might not be able to accumulate enough Genesis Energy.

“Floor five is a Tier 20 skill that follows the same rules as floors one and three. There have been some very rare skills that have come from here, but it’s not terribly remarkable. Floor six can merge skills. As Kurt mentioned earlier, this is entirely possible to do on your own, but Minkalla does it perfectly in moments, rather than centuries. It’ll even keep whatever modifications you’ve already made, which as anyone who’s tried to merge skills will tell you, is no mean feat.”

Matt knew of skill merging but only the basics. It was possible to merge two skills together, but it was about the hardest form of modification that could be done, and took hundreds, if not thousands of years to get better than a ten percent success rate.

Luna smiled as she said, “The merger is flawless and has no risk of failure, which is nice, but Minkalla takes it a step beyond. It can take two plus two and make it equal to seven instead of four. For a Tier 14 who reaches that floor, they can merge two Tier 8 skills they have in their spirit or on them, into a new, combined one. Even they, for a Genesis Energy cost, can control the direction of the merger and make something truly unique. Tier 13s can combine a single Tier 14 and a Tier 8 skill, Tier 12s can combine either two Tier 14 skills or three Tier 8 to make a single new skill. Finally, Tier 11s can combine a Tier 14 and a Tier 20 skill, or presumably multiple Tier 14 and Tier 8 skills, though nobody’s ever tried. And once again, the lower your Tier, the more control you have over the final result.”

At this point, Matt was growing numb to the kinds of things which Minkalla could do. Why wouldn’t it also be able to perfectly combine skills, a process which was largely regarded as taking centuries of practice to even approach middling competence at?

He was going to ask, but Susanne spoke before he could. “Can you take an exit reward even if you pass the floor? Like reaching the seventh-floor exit and taking the sixth-floor reward?”

She was quite literally rubbing her hands together in anticipation.

Luna laughed, “Tier 13 and Tier 14 delvers who reach the seventh floor usually do exactly that, but none of the Tier 11 or Tier 12s ever do. The exit reward for reaching floor seven is unique in the entire Realm, and why I want you all to go in at Tier 11.”

The dark-haired manager waited for them to all grow visibly agitated and for Aster to start to quietly yip before she spilled the beans. She was taking an unusual amount of pleasure in stringing them along, Matt couldn’t help but note.

“Tier 14s who complete the final floor upon exiting and with the condition they have enough Genesis Energy, which, by the way, is a lot, will have a Core skill slot opened in their spirit. They will have to designate a skill to go into that slot, and after that, they will never be able to move it, but it will be an additional slot which isn't a minor benefit. Tier 13s get the same reward, but it's a skill slot like any other and able to move skills in and out of it.”

“At Tier 12,” she continued, pausing for drama, “You will get a single Innate skill slot. It, like for the Tier 14 reward, cannot be changed, but it can be any skill in your spirit.”

Matt blinked, trying to process what she’d just said.

An Innate skill slot.

That was something only given by Talents. Or at least, so he had thought. Aster had Innate [Ice Manipulation] as her first Tier talent, and it was her strongest skill by a wide margin.

Innate skill slots had a whopping fifty percent increase in effectiveness, and modifying a skill inside there was reportedly as easy as breathing when compared to Core skill slots.

Beyond Aster he knew second-hand from Vinny, who had an Innate skill for a Tier 1 Talent like Aster. Even he said modifying the Core skills was dozens of times harder than his single Innate slot.

But Matt came back around to the fifty percent increase in effectiveness that he could get out of a spell.

His first instinct was to put [Cracked Phantom Armor] into that slot, but then remembered [Cracked Mana Spear]. That would also be amazing to quickly modify, let alone the advantage of having a massive increase in power.

He was still mulling over whether offense or defense should be the best when he realized that Luna had kept talking.

“Should you reach the core while still at Tier 11, you get a single flexible Innate skill slot, which you can freely switch any skill you possess into, like any other skill slot.”

A flexible Innate skill slot? That was a thing? How would that even work? Just… how? That’s better than most Tier 1 Talents.

Matt couldn’t even guess how Minkalla managed to do that for someone but he knew he wanted it.

Well, if that were the case, he’d hardly need to choose between offense or defense, he could swap them out practically at-will. Then another thought occurred to him. Skill merging. Normally, it was impossible to merge a Talent-given Innate skill with anything else as the Innate slot couldn’t be interacted with. If it was, it would make the process dozens of times easier. But if the slot were flexible? He could have something even better than most skill Talents gave.

He was suddenly thankful Luna was willing to push them that hard and send them into Minkalla at Tier 11.

Luna smiled as she looked at each of their faces. “Yes, going in at Tier 12 is good, but Tier 11 gives you a level of versatility nothing can match.” She nodded to Aster. “No, it won't convert your Talent given Innate skill slot to be moveable. People sometimes wonder, but it doesn’t actually interact with your Talent at all. Talents are the one thing Minkalla seems to have no power over modifying. It can suppress them but not modify them.”

Carol spoke up, “Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves, though. Minkalla is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. And while the rewards are impressive, you need to keep in mind, what matters first and foremost is that you survive. You’ll definitely be finding essence stones almost constantly, and if you find yourself pushed too far? Use them. Hitting the Core at Tier 11 is something of a dream, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’ll be easy. It may not even be possible. Getting a flexible innate skill slot is perhaps the best reward you can get, but a static one is still very strong. We don’t know who all will be in there, but they’ll all have a full Tier on you or more. If you have to break through to Tier 12 to get to the Core, do it. We almost expect it. Getting deeper at a higher Tier is better than leaving early at Tier 11. It happens a lot, and it’s not required to actually complete the Path. Duke Waters didn’t even enter Minkalla before Tier 12, and The Cosmos- Lila Worldwaker’s predecessors, that is- had to push to Tier 12 to survive the last few floors.”

Luna added after Carol finished. “They made the right call, as should you. Don’t mistake me being willing to send you in at Tier 11 as an expectation you’ll complete Minkalla at that Tier, just that I expect you to survive. The deeper you can get before you have to advance to Tier 12, the better. This is the one time I will accept something less than complete perfection, because I do not want you to die pushing yourselves too hard. The four of you together might actually manage to make it to the core working together.”

“What about Light and Shadow? Did they do Minkalla at Tier 11?” Matt asked.

“I don’t know,” Luna flatly replied. “I’m not their manager, and I don’t even know who is. If I had them, I would have sent them in at Tier 11, but whether they completed Minkalla at that Tier, I don’t know. I’ve sent in many groups at Tier 11, very, very few hit the core without needing to break through to Tier 12.”

That put a bit of a wet blanket on their enthusiasm, but Matt was still determined to succeed. A part of him wondered how hard it could really be, as there was nothing of Tier 15 or higher inside, but that was the wrong way of thinking about it and he knew it. He was going to be fighting at a full Tier disadvantage against people as strong as anyone he’d ever fought at his own Tier, and they would still be able to Tier up if they were pushed too far. He wouldn’t be able to beat Queen if she were two Tiers above him, and his fights against Eric and Dena also came to mind.

Minkalla would not be a walk in the park.