Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The forest around Matt was covered in the thinnest layer of snow. It was almost see-through, giving a muted look to the area.

The rift was cold enough that he activated [Cracked Phantom Armor]. Not because of the ever-present danger, but to stop the biting wind.

It was a strange feeling. Matt couldnt feel the wind, but [Cracked Phantom Armor] gave him slight sensory feedback. It was almost like wearing a thick jacket in the winter but not quite.

Aster was loving the cold, and the wind didnt bother her in the slightest. She pranced around sniffing the air.

Matt had his new longsword in hand as he surveyed the area. The trees were a mix of tall pines and shorter evergreens. He saw the first monster of the rift as he walked to the left of the entrance.

It was a bipedal wolf about 55. Matt estimated it would be taller if it wasnt so hunched, closer to 59. It snapped its head towards him as he approached, and with a howl it rushed him.

The large wolfman had its disproportionately large claws held out to either side, and its teeth bared as it charged.

Sidestepping, he struck out with his blades enchantments active, and the blow sliced the monster in half. It had landed one hit with its claw, but was unable to pierce [Cracked Phantom Armor]. One stab through its head put the whimpering monster out of its misery.

Smiling, he cut the hands and head off the monster. The claws and teeth were useful to both alchemists and blacksmiths, so into the sack they went.

The rush of essence from the Tier 3 monster flowed into Matts spirit, and he couldn't keep the grin off his face. It was so much more than the Tier 2 rift had given him. Even the Ant Queen hadnt provided so much essence. It was also a denser, better material to build upon.

Quickly, he pulled Aster along, who was busy eating a mouthful of the wolfman's heart. This was a Tier 3 rift, and the entire area was a valley two miles long and half a mile across. There were no distinct rooms or zones like the Tier 1 rifts.

The wolfmen had a camp in the center of the valley where the exit was, and Matt knew from the guide that the howl would have attracted attention.

That would lead the wolfmen leader to send hunting teams out, so he wanted to move before they inevitably picked up his scent.

A few minutes later, Aster, with her keener senses, heard the trio of wolfmen gaining on them. Matt turned, and sent the fox behind him. Her role was to watch out for any who had been ahead of them and who would try to attack their rear, now that he had turned to fight.

The monsters tried to surround him. Two circled around to flank him, trying to get Matt to place his back to one of the three. He wasnt willing to call their bluff quite yet, he wanted to learn how the monsters fought.

Normal wolves were pack animals, and these bipedal rift wolves were no different. Matt kept retreating slowly, keeping the trio to his front. As he watched, he tried to assess the enemy in front of him. They had large hind legs with powerful thighs, their hunched stature belying their tendency towards lunging attacks.

One went for a swipe at his left side, while the rightmost wolfman did the same on the right. The pincer attack forced Matt to make a quick decision. Matt sidestepped to the right to disrupt the timing of the charging wolfmen, and slashed at the one now closest to him. His attack took off the wolfmans swiping hand as the other skidded to a halt in the snow.

Seeing an opportunity, the third monster rushed at Matts exposed back while the other monster charged from the front. He kept them at bay with swipes they werent willing to take after seeing their compatriot disarmed so easily.

After an aborted lunge and swipe of its claws, Matt thrust out with his longsword catching the wolfman in the chest. It wasnt deep enough to kill, but the attack gave the remaining monster the courage to attack while he took down its packmate.

Matt had planned for that and stood his ground, swinging his sword around towards the attacking wolf.

The wolf must have thought it could sacrifice an upraised arm to get a killing blow. However,its rudimentary intelligence couldnt comprehend the enchanted blades total disregard for things as frail as flesh and bone.

The slash sheared the monster clean in half, its lower body frozen still in the harsh cold as blood sputtered up from its dismembered entrails. Steam drifted away from the gushing blood, as if mirroring the life leaving the wolfman's remains. Matt felt more of the powerful Tier 3 essence flow into him.

I love this sword.

Matt took advantage of the hesitation in the wolfmen caused by the death of their packmate, and rushed at his next kill. He ran the beast through without breaking stride, [Cracked Phantom Armor] allowing him to absorb a glancing blow. The last wolfman roared in protest, and Matt took the opportunity to finish it off by hurling his sword at it. It sliced through the monsters skull with ease, impaling it to a thick pine tree. Whistling his satisfaction, he collected his sword, as well as the monsters heads and hands.

The new sword was so amazing, he couldn't help but test its limits a little with the killing throw.

Aster took a couple of bites out of their corpses before following Matt.

As they ran, he checked his HUD for the charge of his mana stone in the hilt of his longsword.

Sword: 178/200.

The mana consumption seemed reasonable, and was easily produced with his talent. It would take longer for the mana he produced to unaspect than it would to make. He could have shut off the enchantment, but was happy to burn the mana to get a true test of the blade.

He also checked his AI, it was working correctly and recording the fight data, but he had it off for now. He would review the data after the rift. He didn't want to rely on the predictive capabilities of the AI until he had confidence in his own ability to fight.

Matt repeated the same maneuver until the wolves stopped attacking, slinking silently through the trees with Aster until they came upon another hunting party. Thirty-seven dead pack members later, the leader was calling everyone into the central camp.

Now that the retreat was sounded, he would have to fight almost seventy wolves in the large clearing the pack called home. It was weird, they had the facsimile of an intelligent society, but they didn't have young, or even pregnant female wolves in the camp. It was all wolves of fighting age.

That was how most rifts operated, but Matt still found it odd. In nearly eight hundred million years of recorded history, rifts had been repeatedly proven to not be intelligent, so why the farce of having the wolves in a clearing with structures?

He had Aster stay a few feet behind him while he stepped out of the woods into the clearing. As he stepped out of the trees, he surveyed his surroundings, only to have half a dozen wolves rush him.

This was a far less elegant fight, but Matt only took three hits to his [Cracked Phantom Armor]. Which, for the intensity and lopsidedness of the fight, he considered acceptable. He didn't back up this time, and they didn't try to slowly whittle him down. It was a brawl that his enchanted blade and skill turned into a bloodbath.

His plan was to step back into the forest and repeat the same actions until the pack leader appeared, continuing his pattern of guerrilla warfare. The leader had no intentions of playing along, he obviously noticed Matts last fight, and led the remaining wolves in a charge.

This wolfman was a foot taller than his brothers and sisters. And of course he came with five others that were also larger specimens than the previous he had fought. As the leader charged, his underlings used the same tactics Matt had already seen and flanked him, as he backed up to the forest line. He wasn't hoping to stop the monsters charge, but simply break up the attacks.

He took an attack from the leader, while killing two of the lesser wolves. That single blow nearly cut through [Cracked Phantom Armor]. This monster was stronger than the orc he fought in the Tier 1 rift challenge. It was only because he could supply more mana to his skill that it held. If he took another attack on the same arm before the skill repaired itself, he would need a healer.

He tried to push more mana into [Cracked Phantom Armor] but when he did, he felt the skills structure in his spirit start to destabilize.

Ducking the next attack, Matt struck out at the wolf leader. The enchanted blade, which had sliced through everything so far in this rift, just bounced off its large claws. He had assumed that would happen, but had hoped for a better outcome. The pack leaders teeth and claws were worth ten times what the lesser wolves were worth for a reason.

Dodging the leader's attacks and taking out the remaining lesser wolves took all his patience and skill. It was a battle of mental endurance as well as physical. Each lunging attack was followed by another from the opposite direction, so Matt had to dodge and parry at once in order to avoid damage. Any misstep or error in timing would leave him vulnerable to the leaders powerful swipes. He took glancing hits from the smaller wolves as he dispatched them, but was able to choose where they landed. His focus and agility were able to keep anything from getting through [Cracked Phantom Armor].

The fight was hectic and seemed to drag on for hours. Matt had approximately forty wolves left, and they surrounded him, trying to use their numbers to land hits on his back and whittle him down. When that didn't work, they eventually charged as one and tried to tackle him to the ground.

That was far more dangerous, as his mobility was the only thing keeping the leader from being able to land lethal hits. Matt had no choice but to hack his way through the pack, ducking and weaving through the mass of claws and fur. After a good five minutes of carnage, it was only him, the leader, and two of the larger wolfmen left.

During a biting lunge from one of the last wolfmen, Matt was finally able to turn the battle into an equal fight with two slashes of his own. Even if the lesser wolves hadnt been able to hurt him easily, they could disrupt his footing with their momentum and weight.

Now that he could fully concentrate his attacks and attention on the leader, he quickly struck out and landed a blow to the leg. He knew his first hit already marked the end of the fight. With less mobility, the leader was circled and whittled down. Nick by nick, cut by cut, Matt bled the leader of the wolfmen down, until it collapsed dead from blood loss. An anticlimactic end to the large wolf.

Once Matt felt the rush of essence, he started collecting the remaining spoils of the delve. He was exhausted. That last fight was long, and it had taken everything he had to not be pulled under with their sheer numbers. He was slow in his collection of the monster parts while he settled his racing heart.

As Aster ate the bits she wanted, he dragged the leader's corpse over to the exit rift and looked at the reward distortion. It was a swirling yellow, and as he sent a burst of essence to dispel it, he found a pile of mana stones. After counting Matt laughed, fourteen, double the average. That was 140,000 credits, he was making a dent in his money problems after just one delve.

The advantages of a solo delver were showing themselves more and more as the Tier increased.

As he prepared to leave, Aster sent that she wanted to remain in the rift a while longer. She got the feeling being in the cold would help her ice powers.

So, Matt sat down and let her manipulate the cold around them. As he waited for her, he enabled the AI overlay and had it process the data. He had kept it throttled to a max of two mana a second for the duration of the rift, because he didn't want it to distract him during the delve.

As he let it analyze the data, with all the remaining mana he wasn't feeding into [Cracked Phantom Armor], he saw a replay of his vision appear in his lower right field of view. The AI ran through the entire time in the rift three times, before signaling that it had completed its analysis.

The data was good, and the analysis had a decent amount of predictions. Matt was looking forward to using the predictive methods during his next delve.

The last year and a half spent in the PlayPen had been amazing for his growth, both as a cultivator and as a person. He found it hard to imagine any of them advancing faster, unless they had an amazing Talent and were picked up by a larger, off world guild.

He felt like such a different person than the one who arrived with just a dream, hope and empty pockets. Matt chuckled to himself, he may have empty pockets, but he had also had a stolen skill. That skill had allowed him to take risks most wouldn't consider.

It's all paid off though. Matt thought with a smile, and caught Aster who jumped into his arms. This is her first time off the island isn't it?

Matt pushed happy thoughts of adventure to his white fox, and they stepped off the boat that was picking up the newest members of the PlayPen.

The first thing they did was go to TrueMind to get the Tier 3 scan out of the way. He had called ahead, and they were immediately ready to conduct the scan and AI testing.

The room they brought him to was like the scanning rooms on the PlayPen, clean and clinical. A scanner circled him while he had his AI run the simulations they sent him. It was quick and easy.

Getting the staff to stop lavishing attention onto Aster was much harder than the testing had been.

As they had the rest of the evening off, the duo went window shopping. Matt felt it was an odd contrast to when Griff had dragged him through all of these shops the day he arrived at the PlayPen. Now he could afford most of what he saw. When he had walked these streets last, he would have agonized over any purchase.

Now, he enjoyed watching Aster preen over all the attention she received from the workers at the various shops they stopped at. That is, until a vendor offered her a bit of ice cream. The cold treat instantly became her new favorite snack, and the only way to get her to leave was to pick her up and carry the squirming fox away from her new best friend.

Ignoring the mental pleas to return, Matt continued his trek through the city. They rented a room, and had a lavish dinner, with Aster devouring more than her fair share of the banana split.

As they checked out the next morning, he thought over the bill. The nice room and feast they enjoyed cost a little over a thousand credits.

It felt unreal. He would have vomited blood at the thought of spending that much on a single night at a nice hotel before The Path.

How things change. I can make more in a single delve than years working at Bennys. I wonder why they don't charge more for a room? Maybe they do on higher Tier worlds? I can't wait to find out.

He arrived at the teleporting platform an hour early, and checked in with the front desk. Looking at the prices, he was glad he was on The Path, because the prices were absurd like Griff had mentioned. Twenty-Five Tier 4 mana stones a teleport for a single person. He got subsidized prices as long as he was on The Path, and did not waste resources.

The platform was nearly thirty feet across, and Matt could see runes engraved along the perimeter. Large metal beams enclosed the top to make a half sphere.

After checking in, he was directed to a lounge that had seven others waiting. The first he noticed was a group of five who all were in a guilds uniform that he didn't recognize. He didn't care enough to look them up. The other two were in business suits and didn't look up from the pads they were typing on.

Finding a chair out of the way, he sat down with Aster, idly brushing her silky white coat.

He felt eyes on him after a few minutes, and a glance showed one of the guilders was looking at him. His first thought was that she was looking at Aster, but following her eyes revealed that it was the longsword propped on the wall next to him she was eyeing.

He gave her a nod, and went back to his perusal of the information about the training world.

The world was officially named B-7112923, but had the nickname of The Vacant. The planet was slightly larger than the average, and despite the lack of water, the planet was on the colder side.

The equator was temperate enough, but it was brutally cold at the poles, reaching a regular daytime temperature of -50F. Matt made a mental note to avoid getting too close to either pole.

The only other information he could find was that each nation had a base near the equator. There, they had jointly created a large lake, and had built a city on opposite sides of the water source.

The last piece of information he managed to discover was that there was a local teleportation system set up. It served to help delvers traverse the planet quickly in the limited time the event was active.

They would teleport participants from the hub cities, and each participant was given a recall beacon. It could be activated to be pulled back to the users original teleporter. The catch was that only the first teleport out was free.

Any other teleportation was costly, at the going price of a 1000 mana each way per person. It would be far cheaper for groups to pay the mana directly than trying to pay with mana stones. The problem was, that much mana was enough to leave one or two of the party members completely spent for days.

That fact alone encouraged down time in the city, so those drained of mana could recover safely. The cynical part of him wondered if the guild charged rent as well.

Matt wouldnt have that problem, but it was good information to have. It gave him an inkling of how he could take advantage of his Mana Regeneration to hop between areas with large amounts of rifts.

According to the information from last time the world opened, there were tens of thousands of rifts on the planet. It was a gold mine of rewards. New rifts and rifts that were left alone for long periods of time built up essence, which led to greater rewards.

Skill shards were twinkling in his eyes. The last time the planet had opened, there had been over four hundred skill shard rewards sold. That didn't even account for the shards people directly absorbed.

This was the best time for Matt to get a second skill. Even if the skill he got was useless to him, he could still sell or trade it for something useful.

He had been perusing the Tier 8 skills that lower Tiered rifts usually dropped, and one stuck out to him. It was perfect for his mana situation.

[Mana Strength] Reserve an amount of mana to infuse into the user's body. The more mana reserved, the larger the increase.

It was the first choice for melee fighters, except it was a reserve skill. He could technically use it, but the effect he would get from reserving less than 1 mana would be negligible. It took a hundred or more to make the skill valuable.

No, [Mana Strength] was good but his choice was:

[Mages Retreat] Infuse mana into the body to increase physical ability. Channeling skill.

They were similar, but [Mages Retreat] was better for Matt. The skill was usually used by mages to keep distance between themselves and opponents. Even then, most higher Tiered mages preferred short range teleports or a pure speed increase. [Mages Retreat] was good, but other skills were considered better at the same job.

Its advantage was that it was a Tier 8 skill, and a common one at that. Its only real downside was the constant mana cost needed to use the skill. Around 2 mana a second. That cost ensured it was at best the third or fourth choice for most delvers. [Mana Strength] was undoubtedly a better skill when looking at a mana cost comparison.

However, [Mages Retreat] was the perfect skill for Matt. He might not have mana reserves, but he had the mana production to beat anyone. He had even paid for a more detailed analysis of the skill, and there didn't seem to be an upper limit of mana the skill could use, just the minimum of two mana a second.

Hed need to train with the skill so it could accept his absurd amounts of mana, but he theorized he could boost his bodily power to unheard of levels at high Tiers.

The skill had been sold four times during the last planetary opening, and Matt was fairly confident that he could trade for [Mages Retreat] if he found a half decent skill during a delve .

It made him oddly happy to take a skill most saw as useless, and turn it into something extraordinary.

The door opened, and a worker guided them to the teleporting platform and started speaking.

If you haven't traveled with teleportation before please take a barf bag from the stand over there. It can upset the senses and lead to nausea for new travelers. Other than that, please don't move much as we are very tight today.

Matt looked at the platform, and saw the half sphere was stuffed with smaller platforms and containers. Only a small portion near the edge had an open hatch, and conformed to the edge of the sphere.

The man continued as they walked to the open door. Once the door is shut, please don't try and leave. The vessel is for your own safety. Anything that is out of the teleporter field is left behind. That includes any bits or pieces of you.

As they climbed into the small pod, Matt realized just how cramped the room was with eight of them occupying it. With his six-foot two frame, he was awkwardly pressed along the curve of the outer hull.

Aster was better off with the extra room between the legs of the passengers.

After the hatch shut, things got worse. The businesswoman was pressed uncomfortably into him. With his height, and the way the wall curved, he was almost resting his cheek on her head in an attempt to not look down her blouse.

A speaker in the corner announced, Two minutes until teleportation.

The next two minutes felt like hours, but soon Matt heard, Scans complete. No protrusions. Transit in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

When the countdown reached one, Matt felt like his body and spirit were being torn apart. The sensation only lasted a second, but he felt the nausea he had been warned about. With a pure effort of will, he was able to keep it down. But from the retching he heard, someone on the other side of the container hadnt done so well.

The door quickly opened, and a woman's voice asked them to exit. He was happy to comply, but had to wait for the others in front of him. The smell of vomit permeated the small space, and through the bond he felt Aster's sensitivity to the smell as she bolted for the now open door.

As Matt stepped out of the hatch, he realized this was the first time he was on another planet.