The Path of Ascension

Chapter 314

Matt teleported to interpose himself between most of Team Zero and the newcomers, then powered up [Archmages Presence] to enhance his mental cultivation, wanting to catch surprise attacks, but he wasnt prepared for their enemies to stop advancing and pause. His [AI] had managed to identify a good number of the lead fifteen, but he didnt need it to identify the man heading up the squad, right next to Maven.

Long Zhiyuan. Matt was a bit surprised to see a familiar face on the battlefield, sure the reports had said he was part of the team but he couldnt help but smirk at the memory of the Sect man fleeing as fast as he could on the battlefields of Minkalla. That smirk turned into a bit of a glare as he remembered what happened immediately after their last encounter, and the disastrous ambush hed led them into.

The Sect man held up a red-gloved hand and motioned that he wanted to talk, but Matt had no interest in allowing their enemies to determine the pace of the engagement so firmly. There was no situation in which a surprise attack from an elite turning into them simply, wanting to talk, was a good idea. So Matt responded as succinctly as he could.

A lightning-aspected [Mana Beam] erupted from Matts cannon, lancing towards the former Young Master Bloodhand. It crossed the distance in a blink of an eye, only to, instead of annihilating Long Zhiyuan, be stopped dead in its tracks by a muscular Sect man Matt didnt recognize. He was wearing even less armor than was typical for Sect fighters, leaving much of his skin bare, but he practically radiated boredom as he caught one of Matts most powerful skills on the palm of his hand. He hadnt even moved beyond raising his hand. Admittedly, it was impressively fast considering the speed at which Matt was processing everything, but it still irked him.

Matt tamped down the urge to turn up the power and blow the man away, and instead simply re-aimed his shot at one of the others. Lorlael was a Republican mage with spells as strong as anything Matt could put out, but she needed time to build up. If he could knock her out of the fight early on, she was a non-threat.

However, his [Mana Beam] refused to budge. The mysterious man still simply caught the beam on his open hand. Matt flared [Sharp Mind] and [Barbarians Hide], assessing himself for any subtle taunt effects, then assigned his [AI] and his armor to double-check his mind was clean. Nothing came back, which meant the effect was physical.

Redirects were rare. A smile spread across Matts face.

This was going to be fun.

The rest of Team Zero was beginning to act, other spells beginning to fly across the distance, and their opponents responded in kind.

Plenty of their standard set of buffs had worn off at this point, to say nothing of all the ones they hadnt used to begin with, but if their enemies were trying to catch them in a moment of weakness, they would be sorely disappointed. Matts armor injected some of his most important and powerful potions directly into his bloodstream, and General Darrows own Domain meant that all Domain-based buffs easily renewed themselves.

Alongside the power, information flowed to fill Matt in on those of their opponents who he didnt recognize. Apparently, the man responsible for intercepting his [Mana Beam] was Gan Le, a fairly small-time elite with a reputation for being invincible.

Matt couldnt wait to prove that reputation false.

He hadn't been on their short list of the members of the Harmony Accords which made his presence interesting.

Except, his [Mana Beam] was doing nothing to the Sect fighter. He poured more mana into the spell until his cannon began giving him warnings about mana overload. Then he changed to alternating its aspect, looking for some kind of weakness. Fire, arcane, metal, force, plasma, summer, aurora, armageddon, and even weirder ones like spatial, thought, and moon were blocked. Out of curiosity, he tried spectral mana, but even that was halted dead in its tracks. Similar fates befell illusion and mirage, despite those not even trying to do anything.

It wasnt until he tried travel mana that anything seemed to affect the man at all. It didnt hurt his opponent, of course, that wasnt really what travel mana did, but it did yank him towards Matt at a fairly high speed.

As they neared each other Matt didnt miss the two companies of Corporation elite mercenaries fanning out and setting up long range mana cannons. Hed need to take care of them after he took out Gan Le.

Turning his sword black, Matt slashed out as Gan Le was dragged within melee range, trying to disable his defenses, or better yet, take him out of the fight outright.

Gan Le raised his crossed arms, and the armor on his forearms flared with energy as they fully blocked the physical momentum of Matts blow. They did nothing to stop the wave of mana he unleashed, but that seemed to wash over Gan Le without even singing his skin.

Alarms were ringing at the sight, but Matt was unable to immediately react as he started to get peppered by attacks from the Corporation mercenaries. Slashing out, Matt aimed for a gap in Gan Les leg armor. Gan Le seemed intent to ignore the slash and instead drove a glowing claw into Matt's face.

Dodging upward slightly, Matt shifted the trajectory of Gan Les attack. Matt still landed his blow while he relied on [Cracked Phantom Armor] and his physical armor to block the attack.

Both blows landed, but neither of them did anything.

Gan Les claw attack just fizzled out on Matts armor, which he expected, but what he hadnt expected was for his blade to only create a scratch on Gan Les flesh that almost instantly healed.

His blade should have cut the man's leg off, but it had done nothing.

Matt decided his efforts were better spent elsewhere and flared his repulsion Concept, backing it up with a powerful shove of [Telekinesis]. Gan Le was sent tumbling away at an angle, but Matt felt himself get pulled along with him. It was then that he realized that Gan Le hadnt just been trying to kill him in their earlier exchange, but instead had been linking them together with a tether of some sort.

Momentarily cutting off mana to Liz in order to flare his Intent, Matt halted his momentum just for Gan Le to slam to a halt just a few hundred feet away from him. The move had taken him away from the battlefield, but it opened Matt up to a concentrated barrage from the mercenaries.

Pointing, he sent out a wave of [Mana Beam] along the ranks of mercenaries, but before he was able to do more than take out a few cannons, Gan Le was back on him.

Matt took a punch to the chest, and while he needed to redirect the second layer of [Cracked Phantom Armor] to safely block the blow, it wasnt that strong.

Growling in frustration, Matt punched Gan Le in the face with a burst of speed earned by flaring all of his boosting spells and armor. The punch combined with [Fist Blast] could have cracked a moon, but Gan Le took the blow on his crossed arms without dying. His vambraces disintegrated along with his helmet, but that was the extent of the damage. Gan Les forearms were lightly singed and a few paper cuts appeared on his face, but they vanished as quickly as they appeared.

Matt twisted and brought his blade around, but while it cleaved through the armor on Gan Les chest, it stopped just half an inch inside his flesh as if Matt had struck a wall as a mortal.

Seeing the rest of his team embroiled in their own fights, Matt turned away, intending on ignoring Gan Le to help them, but the Sect fighter darted in the moment Matt took his eyes off of him. A barrage of blows landed on his exposed back, along with the ever present fire from the mercenaries.

Matt fully intended to ignore them, but as he started to fly away, Gan Le cast a taunt of some kind. Despite himself, Matt brought his blade back around and down.

An explosion of mana illuminated the vacuum of space, but Gan Le took the blow without blinking.

Growling, Matt broke the taunt and started flying towards his team, but quickly felt Gan Le stop moving, which activated the tether and forced Matt to a crawl as he tried to pull the resisting man forward.

After a few calculations, Matt twisted and started attacking Gan Le once more.

He needed an opening. Once he had it, he believed that he could break the tether, but he needed to lower the man's defense by seeming like he had given into the rage.

***

Valentina looked down her scope and blinked as she carefully slid a round the size of her forearm into the chamber. The bullet was depleted tungsten, the byproduct of creating enriched tungsten, a magically conductive metal perfect for enchantments. The inverse was an effect just a hairs-width away from true anti-magic. It ate through magical armors like a hot knife through butter, and the mass meant it could pierce even physical armors with barely a hitch. It was a deadly material, but almost impossible to work with. Harder still to actually fire, but her rifle was more than up to the task.

Even better, this round was enchanted. By most conventional wisdom, that was impossible, but Republic weaponsmiths were truly the best in the Realm at this sort of thing. Better even than the dwarves. She slid the round into the chamber, locked it in place, and began her real work.

Willpower bled out of her and soaked into the bullet, carrying with it additional skills only held in place by her Intent. But fortunately, everything was going exactly to plan.

The Harmony Accords had even been mostly acceptable, for all that everyone but those from the Republic were a group of squabbling brats more concerned with their own glory than actually completing their mission. But they were well equipped, powerful, and more than capable of serving as an adequate distraction.

Shed been waiting out in the cold depths of space for nearly two weeks now, setting up her nests and surveying the upcoming battlefield. Theyd known that the Empires Ascenders would be coming this way for months, and that this would be an optimal place to spring their first ambush. It had nearly been ruined by the Federation commander assigned to attacking this system waiting until the Ascenders had left the system to begin his assault, but Shadow had brought them back, the army had drawn them out long enough to get them just on the edge of complacency. And now, her teammates were ensuring all eyes were on them.

They had debated her opening fire the moment the fight started, but in their tests and simulations, that only had a forty two percent chance of ensuring a kill. Waiting for the fight to settle into a routine for her to take action had instead provided a sixty four percent chance of success, and that was enough for them to want to wait.

It also meant that everything was up to Valentina, but she had never minded pressure. Pressure brought out the best in her.

It was just up to her to pick her target and kick off the slaughter.

Sighting in, she started scanning.

***

Dena tried to twist out of the way of one of the Federation elite squad, but she was a tad too slow to fully dodge the attack and took a small gash on the thigh. She wasnt able to give the wound too much thought though, as two more of the Federation soldiers darted in trying to force her away from Eric and Bolt.

Her cloth tendrils snaked out and entangled the legs of two of the group, but Dena had to quickly pull back her cloth as two of the feddies tried to cut through the fabric. There was a yard long tendril wrapped around her head from getting in that trap once, and she wasnt about to let herself get whittled down like that.

She sensed an attack incoming, and rapidly pulled herself to the side to avoid it, as Eric shrugged off a splash of lightning and swung his hammer to retaliate. Drifter swooped in, dropping a blast of ordinances that bought them a moment of time to regroup.

The problem was, these guys seemed prepared for every trick she had. And while the Ascenders seemed to have little trouble fighting two or three to one, Dena was having a hard enough time with the one that kept on her consistently. The times that she was in a two-on-one never went well, and she needed nearly constant intervention from those around her. She didnt mind, though. A Weave is Stronger than a single cord, and she was as much a part of their fights as they were hers.

Even now, tied down as she was, she could feel little threads of her tapestry twanging as the rest of her team pushed and pulled. It was endlessly satisfying, and gave her a sense of satisfaction unlike any other. Legion was ritual-casting with herself, weaving magic on a scale which Dena could never replicate on her own. But she could be the loom, the channel for that power and making ever-finer cloth. Elsewhere, Light called on her strength as he joint cast a skill with the gunslinger Colton, in practice simply stealing whatever spell had been used on him and throwing it elsewhere.

Eric shifted to block a downward strike that would have struck Bolt, and the woman in question used the moment to fire a series of rapid fire shots at the feddie who had brought the axe down. The bolts were deflected by the neighboring feddie, but that forced her to stop her own attack and bought them all a second of breathing room.

Shift right and down. Darrow sent the command through his Domain and Dena obeyed without question, rerouting her entire body mass to the end of one of her cords and yanking herself like a piece of cheesecloth down and out of the way.

Through the space they had been, a bolt of lightning arced out and struck the feddies, arcing between them and giving her a chance to unleash some attacks of her own. She might have done more, but Queen, propelled off a tendril of cloth Dena hadnt even truly realized she was controlling, slammed in like a wrecking ball. Two other attackers were right behind her, but she was keeping them both at bay, even as Dena pulled her out of one fight and into another.

Erics Domain thrummed through her, and an opening provided itself. A spare strip of cloth shot out, ensnaring the foot of one of the soldiers fighting Queen. Instantly, the momentum shifted as a second Queen emerged from the tip of the first ones sword, already in a massive two-handed swing. The feddie soldier tried to block it with his sword, but Dena had slid her cloth up to his arm and gave it a yank, exposing it to the copy-Queens blade. While Denas fellow almost-Ascender wasnt able to cleave fully through the mans arm, shining blood spurt from the massive laceration.

Through her Intent, Dena could feel as the feddie healer passed a spell to them from the other side of the battlefield, repairing the wound in an instant.

That same pulse of power also landed on the other feddie soldier, who had chosen to lose a hand instead of a head to Queens lingering sword-strokes, and fixed them up as well. A shield suddenly appeared in front of Denas face, causing a steel cable whip to clang off Queens manifestation. Dena responded in kind, and she snapped a length of cloth like a whip, ensnaring and pulling the feddie whip-soldier off-balance.

That was apparently taken as some kind of invitation, and Dena found herself, Eric, and Queen under tremendous pressure to survive.

***

Liz stabbed out at the Federation golem-woman, her spear wreathed in voracious flames, then pelted Eliana, as Darrows mind-link helpfully informed her, with a barrage of feathers enchanted to break armor. The spear skittered off the womans forearms, wreathed as they were in an intricate set of skill-bracers. The feathers had better luck, sticking and cutting their way into the womans arms and torso, but they drew no blood and were wrenched out moments later by the other Federation soldier she was facing.

Saziel, a manipulation expert.

Darrows Intent had been quite a boon to them, overall. Not only was the knowledge it provided second only to knowing the information already- or if you were Matt, within his outsized [AI] and [Library] databases- its ability to cause other disparate Domains to function together as though theyd practiced together for centuries had made them far more cohesive as a unit. But right now, all she cared about was how the stupid Feddy kept yanking out her feathers like they were from his skill and not hers.

A bit of Lights expertise bled over to her in that regard, and she fought back a grimace. The exploit in question wouldnt be something she could easily change this fight, and covering it would require her to compromise elsewhere, but if the mage survived, it might make for a worthwhile trade.

A gust of wind brought Saziel up next to her, and he drove his rapier into her side. He managed to knock aside a few of the feathers that made up her armor in the process, but wasnt able to score a very deep cut as her blood actively fought against the attack. Similarly, though, his own skills prevented her from healing the wound outright. Was that body manipulation? That was a thing?

[Heal Genetics] is the closest skill to that effect.

Huh. You learned something new every day.

She was needing to devote far more of herself to each fight than she had grown accustomed to, and it was great. She was at a total of five distinct locations, each one representing a singular mind, with a second Liz inhabiting their blood. And even as one body was pinned down by the two Federation fighters, two more were side-by-side, with Bulwark protecting Origami, and the other two accompanying Torments summons as they pushed a squad of eight other Federation soldiers with weirdly homogenous spirits away from Queen, Stone, and Stick.

Those fights were eminently manageable, for all that she was having so much trouble drawing blood, but they were still tough fights, the sort shed been missing. Fortunately, she was still getting fed mana from Matt, so she was able to keep up her aggressive style, but if she didnt kill someone soon, she might need to scale back a bit on her offense.

Admittedly, the fight with Eliana and Saziel was where most of her mana was going. The former was as much machine as human, healing herself with the exact same kinds of skills that Liz kept trying and failing to use on her. Hitting her was like trying to hit Matt but with no resonance from blood so many of her best skills just didnt work. Then, just as soon as she made any headway, Saziel would jump in and keep interrupting her remaining attacks before she could get a truly strong strike on either of them.

If she had been facing either one of them individually, she could overpower them with one of her backup abilities. But she wasnt. She was only one-fifth present and facing both of them, plus a platoon of Corporation mercenaries that kept taking potshots at her every time she left them alone for too long.

She dove forward with her spear, then used her internal blood control to puppet her body like it was on strings, redirecting that momentum into Saziel. She struck him with the butt of her weapon, flexing one of the feathers it was made of to slice into his arm instead of cracking against his metal implants. The light gleaming within his arms abruptly sputtered, but he retaliated with a blade spontaneously sprouting from his elbow, driving it into her chest.

Before it could connect, Liz ignited a Bedrock Tortoise bloodline she had prepared for this very moment. The bloodline gave its owner incredibly hard skin, which made it a popular one to burn in battles, as it gave anyone who had it that same level of defense for a few brief moments.

The blade still left a long gash down the front of her chest, finding or making gaps in her armor as it traveled. But the wound was shallow, letting Liz retaliate with a palm-strike towards the mans helmeted head, her hand wreathed with corrupting blood.

Eliana teleported in to intercept the blow, and Liz redirected the attack to the side of the biomechanical womans neck, waiting to take her head off. With some satisfaction, she turned her arm fully into blood and had it dive into minute exposed cracks, infiltrating and-

Liz bit back a curse as the blood inside the woman was shredded with some kind of corruption, a little piece of her spirit annihilated in seconds.

That was a new experience, and not a fun one.

Reeling back, Liz barely dodged the sword-thrust and its accompanying blade of wind from taking her in the throat, deflecting the lingering cutting winds with a twirl of her spear. A mote of her attention went to the Liz residing in her bloodstream, and she decompressed some of its blood to get enough mass to rebuild her arm. The process was slower and more annoying than she was used to, with pain lingering even once all the nerves were in place, but she had no time to figure out what was going on.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Growling, she cursed to vent some of the pain and flexed her newly rebuilt hand despite the increasing agony. She didnt have the time to really analyze what was going on, but she felt a dozen curses trying to invade her body through the healed wound.

Liz blocked another flurry of attacks, sword strikes from Saziel and axe slashes from Eliana, when all of them were sent flying as - Incoming! - an explosion rocked the space around them.

The shockwave rippled out through the vacuum of space, and on instinct, Liz shot out a wave of blood to blunt ah, blunt the strength of what Origami would experience. Her own body was violently discorporated into a tangle of blood and metal feathers, but she reformed just as fast, now re-oriented to better cleave into Saziels head. Unfortunately, Elianas axe knocked her attack off-course before it could strike the mans helmet.

That was courtesy of Maven and Shadow, Darrows tactical awareness filled her in, and Liz flinched slightly as a portion of her became aware of Shadows current state.

The spatial Ascender had actually taken hits, with multiple gashes in her torso deep enough to warrant her to bend space such that her blood portaled from one side to the other. More worryingly, shed detonated a backup explosive in order to get space.

That wasnt a good sign.

Just as she was starting to get pushed back and pieces of her sliced off, a wave of cold washed over her enemies, slowing them just long enough for Liz to burst forward and reset the momentum of combat, chunking her willpower and mana to instantly manifest another full-power Liz to even out the numbers somewhat. The relief didnt last long, as Asters momentary support was cut off by Long Zhiyaun closing in on her again.

Except, there had been someone there. Hadnt there?

There was definitely something going on, but it wasnt that important. She had bigger concerns than that. She should have a keen idea of where everyone on the battlefield was, but something was missing. Then again, it would be easy enough to lose track of someone in the chaos, so it didnt matter. She did need to pay attention to the incoming attack though Yes, this immediate engagement needed her full attention.

Something needed to change, and it needed to happen fast.

***

As she scanned her targets, Valentina internally cursed.

She needed to get a solid hit on an Ascender, but she had to begrudgingly admit that Ascenders were worth the hype. None of them had any true weak points, but theyd each had multiple false weaknesses that had nearly gotten her to pull the trigger too soon. Shed never encountered a false weakness as convincing as the one which Ascender Wraith had presented, but not falling for the traps still left her with nowhere that she could readily secure a kill.

Ascenders Light and Wraith were the softest targets, but that was only in comparison to the others.

Ascender Shadow was difficult to pin down and even harder to hit. She didnt even need to be consciously aware of an attack to deflect it with her spatial control, and even in the hardened space surrounding Maven, Valentina predicted no better than fifty-fifty odds that her bullet would vanish into a crack in space, never to be seen again. If she was further from Maven, or closer to Titan, those odds swiftly dwindled to single and sub-digit odds. If she did land a shot, it would be fairly devastating, but it was too all-or-nothing for what she needed.

Ascender Legion was perhaps the most annoying target that Valentina had ever seen. Every shot she would take was predicted to score a kill which could be true, or a clever falsehood that she hadnt been able to circumvent. Oh, and that only was the case if Titan wasnt able to intervene somehow, which he kept doing in all her predictions. Worse still, her shot would only

kill the body she struck, and leave the other five, previously four, bodies unaffected. She could manage one, maybe two shots before they all went on high alert. Six was completely out of the question, and so too was Legion as a first target.

In an almost welcome change of pace, Ascender Titan was the most traditionally hard target out of the Ascenders. Her shot was guaranteed to hit him, and that was where the good news ended. He had no physical weaknesses, and even his spells registered as powerful enough that mana-depleted tungsten wouldnt definitely interrupt them. She didnt even know that was possible. His only weakness was his emotions, and that was a piece of feedback shed historically only gotten when trying to target someone way above her tier. Even his simple presence was making everyone elses shots that much harder, thanks to whatever undercurrent of information they all shared. And Gan Les interference, valuable as it may be, didnt distract him enough to ameliorate that.

Theyd known Titan would be a tough target, but the intel which the Harmony Accords had had drastically undersold just how utterly impossible actually taking the Ascender down would be. Theyd need to go back to the drawing board after this mission, figure out some different strategy for the man. Maybe they could trap him in a spatial lock? Only if Shadow was out of the picture, but they at least had plans for that.

No, her best targets were Ascenders Wraith and Light.

Ascender Wraith was comparatively vulnerable, she was pretty sure. Unless the wily fox had five layers of false-weaknesses, if she could ever land a hit it would not outright kill her, but certainly disable her for the fight at minimum and put her into critical condition. The trick would be hitting her, because she was every bit as evasive as her namesake. Valentina wasnt entirely sure if she even existed most of the time, but the white-clad figure engaged in a fight with Long Zhiyuan certainly wasnt an actual body probably. Except for brief moments when she was, and Valentina had yet to figure out any tells for when it was real, or just an illusion.

Ascender Light was unpredictable, but in a refreshingly straightforward way compared to Wraith. Her weakness sensing knew that it wasnt able to fully predict his actions, that there were hidden depths to the man she couldnt even guess at, but his most common actions were at least familiar enough to her predictions. He also kept using some kind of mana which she had never seen before, but she thought she had enough of a grasp of it to work around it.

Running through their plans, Valentina found one that would work.

Plan fourteen, variation Bravo.

Taking aim, Valentina caressed her trigger.

***

Matt was beyond frustrated as Gan Le continued to stick to him like a bit of toilet paper to the bottom of his shoe.

He had already gone through all of his available methods to try and break the bond between himself and the seemingly invincible man, but nothing had worked.

Matt prepared to cycle his methods again when something happened. A presence, and an absence.

Essence washed out from somewhere there should have been nothing.

A block of their entwined spiritual awareness suddenly went away, and their group awareness stumbled as they tried to correct for a missing piece. Matts body experienced a sudden hitch as his cultivation suddenly lost a support hed only barely been aware of.

Stones power armor was missing its helm, and part of its shoulders. Fragments of enchanted stone drifted from it in slow motion. Erics head was not visible. Erics vitals on Matts [HUD] were all null.

Matt stopped moving as Gan Le slammed two blows into his head then chest.

Eric was dead.

Except that was impossible.

Eric couldnt die. He was Matts friend, his mentor, his sponsor. He couldn't be dead.

Except he was.

His armor was mixed in with the flesh of his head as it spread through the emptiness of space in slow motion as Matts increased perception forced him to watch every agonizing fraction of a second.

Screaming, he moved to rush to his friend, wanting to save him somehow.

But the moment he started to accelerate away, he felt like he slammed into a wall as Gan Le braced himself and resisted Matts forward movement.

Roaring, Matt didnt go for any complicated methods to resist the tether, but instead pushed with everything he had. His body, his armor, his Domain, it all went into a desire to move.

And so he moved.

Reality started to warp as Gan Le tried to resist him.

Just as he was starting to slow down against the seemingly immovable Gan Le, just an instant from Erics death, Light's head turned into a cloud of blood.

Unbridled rage flushed through Matts veins, but unlike the hot anger from Eric's death, this anger was cold as Aster.

Gan Le had regained his positioning, holding Matt in place, but Matt would not be denied. He called upon his Intent, crushing his mana into a singularity, and a pitch-black beam with every drop of mana that Matt had access to erupted from a massive, overwhelmingly powerful [Mana Beam]. He didnt channel it through any of his enhancers, none of them could take that much power, but he didnt need the help.

The white-rimmed pillar of blackness slammed into Gan Le, Matts willpower dropped precipitously, but the Sect man was sent absolutely flying, his body flailing wildly as he vanished into the distance.

With a snap, the tether holding him to Gan Le broke and he was free.

***

The moment she pulled the trigger, Valentina abandoned the body she had been inhabiting.

The question of how she was going to survive taking out someone with a hyper long range teleporter like Shadow had come up early, and she hadnt let anyone forget it. Valentina wasnt a throwaway asset, no matter how the analyses of the other Great Powers might hint that her life for an Ascenders was a worthy trade.

Thankfully, there was an answer.

Corpse Flowers were rare natural treasures that allowed one to create simulacrums of oneself to transfer their consciousness into. It was hardly a perfect copy, as the replacement had no essence while uninhabited, but it made an excellent starting point. The smiths theyd worked with in the Federation had worked wonders, somehow turning the flower into a genuine pseudoskill. Something reusable, which could be slotted into the spirit and used time and time again. There had to be a catch somewhere, but she didnt know what.

Oskar had been the one to take the [Blind-Dead Drop] skill, as his Domain fit it better than hers would, and with a thought, Valentina and her spotter changed positions, their consciousnesses seamlessly moving from one spot to another.

The two of them appeared ninety degrees off from where theyd been before, and Oskar raised a temporary bubble of time, giving her just enough time to reload her freshly-manifested Anchor, pour a dozen skills into the payload, take her aim, to stroke her trigger once again.

The pause between strikes was tricky to get right. Titan was the main issue, weirdly. Her Domain made it clear that Gan Le didnt tie the Ascender down as much as their tests had hoped, enough to make him entirely useless. Her predictions made it clear that any time a genuinely dangerous attack would come in, Titan would interfere somehow. Her senses didnt explain how, but one thing was clear. Titan had to be completely and utterly preoccupied with something if any of her main shots were to stand a chance at landing. Eliminating the Ascender was a non-starter, so shed had to turn to alternative methods.

Like targeting his emotions.

Of everyone on the battlefield, Legion, Wraith, Queen, Stick, and Stone were the only things that came to her attention as genuine weaknesses of the Ascender. Legion and Wraith were impossible to eliminate, and Queen and Sticks danger senses were honed enough that trying to eliminate them would certainly trigger a full response from Titan. So, one shot to eliminate Stone. Confusion, rage, and above all focus would be drawn entirely to the death, and that heartbeat between complete focus and hypervigilance for additional shots was the optimal time to strike.

All she needed to do was predict the exact reaction speed of everyone on the battlefield, their respective responses to the death, identify where Light would be when her bullet struck, and ensure that it wouldnt trigger danger senses until it was too late.

Easy.

The second shot was in flight moments later, well before the first had struck, but Valentina was confident in her aim. She abandoned that body a moment later, arriving at her third and final backup body an additional forty degrees off. Predictability meant death.

This last shot was less pivotal, and several of her skills were on cooldown regardless. There would be too much chaos to properly predict what this shot would even do, but she was certain it would be dramatic. And a moment after the third retort sounded, those bodies too were abandoned, returning to her real body, this one completely off-axis from the battlefield and in an intensely warded hiding post.

Summoning her weapon once more, she inserted a round into the chamber and prepared to fire, but hoped she didnt need to. If she did, it meant she and Oskar would need to bug out while being chased by an angry teleporter, and Valentina didnt like those odds.

Sighting in, she waited and watched, ready for the show that would start as her bullets hit their targets.

Who knows, there might be an opening for her to exploit.

***

Allie felt a pulse of shock run through her as Erics head vaporized, and that shock turned to pure, unbridled rage as her partner was struck just a moment later. The entire battlefield came into sharp focus, and Allie let loose.

Maven tried to block her teleport, but Allies priorities had shifted from fight to rescue, and she struck out with her Intent, fracturing space into a thousand pieces and giving her the room needed to trigger seven backup forms of teleportation to disengage. And while it cost her an arm, Allie got in one last hit with her severed appendage before it was shredded by the opponent who should have been easy to defeat. Where before Maven had wielded power like a cudgel too heavy for her, she now wielded it like a rapier. And it showed.

Zack was still alive, even though half his head was missing, because hed intercepted whatever it was that had struck him with a complex web of aspects that caused his magic and the projectile to shred one another evenly, meaning hed taken a faceful of shrapnel that annihilated a massive chunk of his face. Hed only managed to pull through that with a combination of a hyper-reinforced skull that Allie would never call him paranoid about ever again, and by finally breaking through with a momentary fit of genius that had gotten him a partial-body, partial-blood [Spirit] skill usage that reinforced his material existence.

If hed had even an instant more warning, or if hed had ten times the mana, he might have been completely unscathed, but now he was floating almost blind, half conscious, and under attack. Allie appeared next to him, grabbed him with her remaining arm, took a half-dozen bullets from Colton that would have otherwise struck him in the head, and reached out with her Talent towards home, towards Camp Lightfoot, where they could fix him

The bullets embedded in her flesh burned her spirit, trying to interrupt her, but she would not be denied, even as a huge spell crashed down on them, but her teleportation spun up agonizingly slowly, looking for the place that she told it to go, looking, looking, looking, and finally finding the exact place she was aiming for, giving her enough of a fingerhold that she could hook on with practiced ease and pull.

That much distance was hard, taking people with her was hard, entering a rift was hard, teleporting through a spatial lock was hard, teleporting while her body was filled with spirit-straining cursed or poisoned metal pellets was hard, and doing it all at the same time was nearly impossible. But Allie had made a career of doing the impossible, and it was practically second nature for her at this point.

Space folded and bent, connecting her to the rift. And in that instant, her awareness stretched out and Allie searched and found the one place, the one person that she needed to find. While Melinda wasnt on-duty yet, she was only Tier 17, and Allie could scoop her up and shove her wherever she wanted, no matter how much her spirit screamed at her for it.

Allie, Zack, and Melinda appeared in the triage bay where high-Tier healers were on-call. They were well trained, and the moment they fully materialized, they were already beginning to pour their magic into Allies friend just as the first syllable of her hoarse, HEAL HIM! began to tear itself out of her throat. And while it took an agonizingly long time, Melinda began adding her own magic, her own Talent to the effort, and Allie could relax as Zack would definitely be alright now.

Allie waited a moment to see if Zack would be recovering, but the moment the healing started, her partner slipped into unconsciousness. Whatever had hit him had done serious damage to his spirit and body alike, and hed need more than a few seconds of healing to recover.

One of the healers moved to begin healing Allie, but she was gone before they could near her. There was no time for her to heal, there was no time for her to wait for Zack. Though her body and spirit groaned with the effort, she pulled on her teleportation once more and returned to the battlefield she had just left.

A spell slammed into her remaining arm, but she ignored it and looked out to where Darrow had tracked the attacks to have come from. He told her to remain with the group, but Allie ignored the order.

She had a head to take.

***

The moment Matt broke free of Gan Le, he raced forward and brought his blade down on Long Zhiyuan who was fighting with a few others that were trying to take his bond out.

The former Young Master seemed to have predicted he would do exactly that, and sent a blast of energy out of his elbow strike, but Matt ignored the attack and drove his blade home. Hed dropped most of his ongoing skills, focusing entirely on his attacks.

The blade sunk into flesh even as a few cracks spread across Matts helmet.

Unleashing the stored mana, Matt intended to blow Long Zhiyuan apart, but while the attack did considerable damage, it was far less than it should have been.

Wrenching his blade free, Matt saw Gan Le approaching, literally being carried back by one of the eight-man Federation squad, and watched as the residual damage lessened as he got closer.

Not caring about the spells that hammered into his rapidly-cracking helm, Matt grabbed Long Zhiyuans exposed chest and quickly threw a million mana into [Breach]. When the spell unleashed its power, it rocked the world as a shockwave of mana blew everyone else away, including Gan Le. Still, his Talent protected Long Zhiyuan enough that only half of his body was vaporized instead of the whole thing.

He expected Long Zhiyuan to run with an escape method of some kind, but instead he drove a clawed hand at Matts head. Even with his helmet in mostly-good shape, Matt felt a fair bit of danger from the attack, and redirected a massive amount of mana towards bringing his armor skills back up. The attack splashed harmlessly against the armors newly-reinforced plating, and Matt responded with a pulse of his Concept to fling the Sect man off him.

Knowing he had limited time before Gan Le was back on him, he turned and started casting [Mana Beam]. The arm thick beam of mana lanced out, cutting into, and doing serious damage to several of the enemy who had been pushing his team, before Maven slammed her hands together and created a white full moon and the spells damage halved.

Changing his target to the mercenaries attacking them from range, he cut off and recast the spell, redirecting it to his mana cannon, and sent out an oversized pulse, this time aspecting the entire thing to void. Infuriatingly, the eight-man Federation squad had managed to get in front of the shield protecting the mercenaries, and somehow deflected the shieldbreaker straight upwards and into the nothingness of space.

Matt resumed his assault of the shield, this time using summer mana as a base, but the Corporation mercenaries had set up some kind of shield-amplifier, and Lorlael and the Federation soldiers cast their own spells to reinforce it, holding it fast against Matts assault.

No, no, no. This wasnt how this worked.

A small pulse of his Intent concentrated his mana enough that it sent the base flying, turning everyone inside into a gory mess as they became a danger to everyone around them. That move cost him even more of his already tapped willpower but that was fine.

His blind fury begged for more destruction. He wanted to go in there and tear them limb from limb, slowly. But Matt had bigger targets than mercenaries here for money.

Screaming, Matt threw himself at Maven and brought his blade around to bisect her.

Maven deflected the blow and the wave of mana that accompanied the attack, using the opening to lash out at Matt with her digitigrade lower legs. Her claws carved straight through his armor both magical and physical, but Matt ignored the damage to bring the pommel of his longsword into her shoulder.

The blow that should have shattered every bone in her body only broke her collarbone, which was rapidly healed thanks to Gan Les approach.

Matt barely even needed to turn to bathe Gan Le in a wave of white-hot [Dragonflame], hoping that protecting his allies resulted in a corresponding attenuation of his own defenses, but with how fearlessly the man plowed through the inferno, he saw that his hopes were in vain.

Maven hadnt allowed the opportunity to pass, and lashed out with all four of her limbs. They turned almost incorporeal, and despite his armor defending against that exact sort of thing, bypassed his defenses and tore into his flesh. A large portion of his torso was eviscerated, but [Regeneration] rapidly put himself together just as quickly as he was injured.

A startled yelp emanated from a point of empty space a bit behind Matt, and Aster tumbled into visibility, the left side of her chest missing. The bullet responsible passed through her and with a wrenching sound ripped through the wing of Bulwarks griffin mount and embedded itself in his shoulder.

Matt flared his Concepts repulsion to the point he almost passed out, and while it bought him some room before he could free himself, a dagger wielding man Matt hadnt seen drove a blade into his face.

It struck right on the crack in his helmet, and slid through the nearly atomic-level gap in a way that was impossible without magic to pierce Matts skin, but he barely flinched as the cold metal sliced through. Instead, he activated his repulsion armor and swung his longsword, not aiming for the body, but the much more vulnerable wrist mere inches from his face.

Even with Gan Le there to lower the damage, his blade still sliced through the joint, though it took every bit of power Matt had in him.

With the blade still in his flesh, Matt tried to shake free of the duo Trio? Had there been someone else?

Matt ignored the incongruent thoughts as he twisted to the side, preventing Maven from driving the blade in his face deeper with a palm strike. Hed love to reach up and remove the blade, as it was layered with anti healing effects, which caused even a multi million mana per second [Regeneration]s healing factor to slow to a crawl, but he was completely occupied with trying to defend himself from Maven and Gan Le, both pelting him nonstop with attacks. His armor kept beeping at him about compromised defenses, but he ignored it as lightning poured from his body and sank into the bodies of his attackers.

A Liz body went down near him as a group of eight took one down, then another in rapid succession.

General Darrow was already calling for them to retreat and gather up, but their enemies had them locked down tight.

Rage coursed through Matts body like a second heartbeat. He refused to die here, refused to lose anyone else under his care. Theyd been caught flat-footed, but woe betide them if they thought that would be enough.

No. Matt refused to go down like that.

He was not some petty footsoldier, who lived and died because something went wrong. He was Ascender Titan. Hed stared death in the eye time and time again, and he had never blinked first.

He was endless. He was dauntless. He would not be denied.

His armor had hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of mana stored within it in crystal form, as a backup power source. But here and now he released all of it, and a massive cloud of raw magic suffused the battlefield. It was larger than anything hed done in the fight so far, and trying to control it would be an exercise in futility for him, let alone anyone else.

He kept a modicum of control over it regardless, feeling the spells throughout the fight impact it and begin to tear at it, destabilizing pockets and straining Matt as the unleashed mana still poured out from him.

He let go of the entire mess.

It started with lightning.

A bolt of electricity, twice as thick as Matt was tall, ripped through the space, and the thunder took physical form as the mana immediately next to it twisted into sound, then that sound into force and that force into fire. The fire absorbed metaphorical heat from its surroundings, making thermal and ice. An uninteresting part of the battlefield became spectral and allowed a vicious flame made of aurora to crash through it, detonating into a thousand other pieces.

Gan Le was sent flying in a tornado made of force that actually opened up cuts on his arms, Matt took a blow to his chest that crushed his armor into his torso and took off his arm. His skull was cleaved nearly in half as the dagger still embedded in it was torn asunder and shattered, flying off into the distance in a flurry of freezing hot shadows.

That was when reality started getting really weird.

Matt tore a hole into chaotic space to escape, wanting to cough up blood but unable to with his armor still constricting his chest cavity. Raw pain wracked every aspect of his being- emotionally, physically, spiritually, and even through his domain - and while he ached to return to the fight and show them what true endlessness looked like, his responsibility warred with and won against his desire for revenge.

He wasnt sure how long he floated there in chaotic space. Intellectually, he knew it was only a few seconds, as evidenced by the degree of recovery in his physical body. But it could have been hours, or even days, as his mind struggled to process what had happened. At least, until mana wrapped around him as a ship appeared within his field of view, pulling him into Drifters ship. As he landed next to Aster and Torment, the ship was full.

Stone was there too. Or rather, what was left of him.

Shadows power wrapped around him, around the ship, and then they were gone, back in the rift. She collapsed to the ground a moment later in a swiftly-growing pool of blood, but the hatch was ripped open and things blurred together. Shadow disappeared first, and Matt was vaguely aware of someone trying to move him, but he refused, and the pressure on his Domain lifted a moment later as they stopped trying. It was pointless anyway, as his body had already almost fully recovered and was just pushing out the last bits of armor still embedded in his chest.

Instead of concentrating on any of that though, his eyes were fixed on Erics body, where Authur was still holding onto it.

At that same moment, Dena dropped to her knees and let out a keening wail that tore at Matts very being as she shook the corpse of her husband, demanding he come back to her.

Matt stood, unmoving as the world slowed to a crawl around him, his own eyes fixed on the headless body of his friend and mentor.