Chapter 72

Chapter 72

Matt pondered Lizs question. Which side did he want to fight on? He didnt know off the top of his head.

The Kingdom had proven that it was corrupt and Tierest. They abused their power and oppressed their citizens. They didnt care about the little people at all.

Matt flat out didnt like the Kingdom, but he didnt know if the queendom was any better. His first instinct was to say they couldnt be worse, but he really didnt know if that was true. They could be a million times worse for all he knew.

He looked to Liz, who was pacing back and forth.

Any suggestions? Im torn. Is the vassal we know worse than the one we dont?

She spoke from hands pressed together in front of her face. I dont know. I also would feel like shit if we had to fight against the people we took the ruin down with. It would be like a betrayal.

Matt hunkered down and thought about the possibility. While he couldnt name more than a dozen people by name, it would feel like a betrayal to swap sides. As much as he wouldnt mind punching the Prince for his stunt with the flying fortress, he could understand trying to profit from the whole ordeal. Getting a prize that large would have made anyone greedy.

He just didnt feel any sort of connection to the vassal Kingdom. He didnt care which of two vassals got the Tier 20 planet. They were both subsidiaries of the Empire. In the end, the planet would belong to them.

If it wasnt for their manager pushing them into this, he wouldnt even consider staying. The question was, what would they even get from staying?

Matt checked the contribution point rewards for participating in the war and whistled out loud, catching Lizs attention.

Theres a ton of rewards teased in here with reduced prices just for participating. Nearly everything is half off for combatants.

Seeing Lizs interested look, he dropped the bad news. The combatant part is the key though., Theyre counting a separate contribution point system. You have to earn them in the war for the discount to apply.

Liz kicked a rock and resumed her pacing.

As Matt continued to ponder the situation, he kept coming up blank. The queendom was the unknown here, regardless of his indifference towards the Kingdom. He wouldnt be able to stomach fighting for people even worse than the Prince and his family. His searches didnt come up with anything more than what they already knew. There was nothing that would have indicated they were a bunch of assholes.

The lack of information on the queendom gave him a bad feeling, especially compared to other vassal nations of the Empire, which usually had glowing reviews regarding their treatment of citizens under Tier 15. Granted, only about a third of the vassal states had such reviews. But if the ones with no information were anything like the Kingdom, he didnt think the queendom would be any better than what they had experienced.

Im torn on what to do.

Liz plopped down next to him and stretched out her legs until they quivered.

Does it really matter? We have no dog in this fight. If the Kingdom wins, they keep the planet. If the queendom wins, they keep the planet. None of that matters to us. I was looking at the provided documentation and found a few interesting details.

A message highlighting some of the text mirrored what Liz said. We get points based on our contribution, so it seems like the winner of the war is irrelevant. If we want to maximize contribution points, we want to take the weaker side, so that anything we do makes up a larger percentage of the battlefield contribution. For what its worth, I think most people will see the Emperor allowing the war to happen as tacit support of the queendom, since he couldve put a stop to the whole thing very quickly.

That was a good point, and Matt did some searching to corroborate her line of thinking, but was disappointed when he saw that there was no counter for commitments to either side.

He did find a clause that stated everyone would be earning contribution points, not just the Pathers participating. It meant that the Kingdom and queendom would probably send everyone they had to the fight, especially if it meant getting benefits from the Empire.

Matt figured that it was all part of the plan. If he was reading the situation right, the Emperor was setting up an entire war just to season his Pathers. The decision to provide essence stones to all Pathers who fought only served to support Matts hypothesis. It meant no one would fall off The Path because of the fighting. In fact, some teams might be able to get an item or skill that would catapult them through the Tiers, or at least help them get ahead of the curve if they were close to falling off.

The thought that an entire planet-wide war was an excuse to sharpen The Path of Ascension was mind-boggling. The cost had to be enormous, but it was seemingly not a concern. Even just moving everyone to this planet, situated on the outskirts of the Empires territory, would mean thousands of rapid, off-schedule teleports.

It was way more than Matt would ever consider spending, just for a bunch of kids to fight in a mock war. Everything he was reading showed that it would be more like a giant game of capture the flag, rather than a real fight.

Zones and points of control were set up, along with designated areas of high-value resources and rift clusters. It was reminiscent of the golem battles, but with the army watching, there was nearly no chance of death.

His musing was interrupted by a message from Juni.

Idly, he opened it. Can we talk?

Matt looked at Liz and saw her looking at him with a questioning look.

Do we answer him?

I dont think we have a choice. Would be pretty dickish to ignore him, and it would set us up against the Kingdom if we didnt.

Matt paused at Lizs implication. She was right. If they didnt answer Juni, the Princes representative, they would be effectively choosing sides.

They both accepted the message and were quickly greeted with a video request.

Juni smiled at them when they answered in a group chat.

I take it youve heard the declaration?

Liz responded, Yeah, we heard him. Kinda hard to miss.

Juni grinned at that, We were in a rift and missed it. Came out to a shit show. Everyones losing their minds. We dont know much, but some word was sent with off-schedule teleports. The king is responding with force and sending as much as he can in both manpower and resources.

Matt knew where this was going, and wasnt surprised when Juni launched into his pitch.

Will you be staying? Wed love to have fighters of your caliber participating. Fighting up a Tier seems to be worth quite a few contribution points from everything I read. We intend to assemble a company of everyone who participated in the fortress attack as the tip of our spear.

Matt finally cut the exuberant man off. We havent really decided which way were going to fall. Juni, you must understand, the Kingdom looks like shit to us. Everything weve seen so far has been negative. When we were on the capital planet, we were nearly set up and press-ganged into hard labor. We had to fight a golem war because the Tier 15s kept the Tier 7s from saving innocent people. Then the Prince sent our group to move early, therefore drawing more golems to us, and causing even more deaths. What reason do we have to fight for the Kingdom?

Juni just nodded and waited for Matt to finish.

Matt, youre not wrong. The Kingdom needs to be fixed. Thats exactly what we want to do. I know you all had a hand in killing that idiot Zoey. If you hadnt taken care of her, I was going to make a move, which was what the early movement was supposed to cover up. I dont think you understand how the Kingdom works for inheritance. Let me explain, please.

Matt paused at that accusation but kept his face steady. He doubted that Juni had firm proof; the prince's right hand was just speculating.

When their old squad leader had both of their nods, he launched into an explanation.N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.

There are nineteen contenders for the throne. Three of them are direct descendants of the current king. But the king knows that the Kingdom is going to be integrated into the Empire, and he doesnt want to be the ruler at that point. Hed rather pass the Kingdom off to a successor, instead of ending his rule with a lesser title. Theres a lot of competition for that role. The king adopts anyone with a bit of drive or skill from the royal branch families. Hes always considered the talented ones as potential successors. But that leaves the three actual children at a severe disadvantage.

The Princes eldest sister, Cori, learned that the hard way. She was and still is a great fighter and a masterful dueler. But she made a mistake. She only worried about advancing, and had no support from the nobles, so she was squeezed out of the running from lack of political acumen. Now shes a general with no hope of taking the throne. The nobles dont want someone who cant be influenced on the throne after the integration. Theyll still be considered upper class citizens of the Kingdom, just at a lower level of nobility. To keep their status, theyll only give their support to someone they can work with.

The Prince learned from her failure, and gathered as much support as he could. As much as the last golem fight was tragic, it gave the Prince a massive boost in support. Despite being cut off from vital resources, he was able to tackle the invasion with little difficulty, and without the need for interference. It helped him massively expand his support base, and hes now one the top three royals in contention for the throne. If he can do well in leading this defensive war, he can easily muster enough support to secure the throne and make meaningful changes. Even the king is seemingly lending his support to the Prince, as hes sending Cori to defend the Tier 20 planet. Essentially, this mini-war is all on the Prince. Its his chance to prove his ability to lead without the risk of anyone trying to steal his thunder.

Matt looked to Liz. That was a nice breakdown of the Princes situation, but didnt explain why they should help him.

He said as much, and Juni nodded. The Prince is trying to make changes to bring the Kingdom more in line with the Empire as a whole. Even if he doesnt personally believe that would be be a good thing, hes not stupid. He knows that changes will happen when the integration happens, whether he agrees with them or not. He wants to make the transition easier by starting the shift earlier. The other top contenders are pushing agendas of trying to hold off the integration as long as possible. That was only a viable strategy before the Tier 20 planet was discovered. Now, its inevitable that the Princes platform gathers more support from all sides. Look up the records of the Prince meeting with his people. Hes always pushed an agenda of improving and changing laws to more reflect the Empires standards.

Matt and Liz met each others eyes and silently communicated. Matt was swayed by Junis speech, but Liz seemed more reluctant to join the Prince.

He let her decide, and after a moment, she nodded.

Sure, Juni, well help. I hope the Prince will keep his promises if he wins the throne. Ill be checking.

Juni didnt seem to recognize the severity of the threat, and just thanked them profusely.

Ok, for now, were just preparing defensive embankments. We dont know where the connection to whatever planets theyre linking up will equate to here. We expect a few weeks before the first push from the queendom. They need to gather their forces as much as we need to. The king doesnt think they were given any more warning than us for the war, so theyll also be scrambling to get their fighters in place. At least when it comes to this Tier 6 planet. The Tier 20 planet will be a much larger and more detailed fight, but that isnt our problem. Try and Tier up in the meantime. With your combat prowess, you can fight the Tier 7s and make a much larger difference.

Matt was startled, but the skill shard on the scanner was gone.

He panicked, and his reaction was met with similar reactions by Liz and Samuel. The latter he looked to with distrust.

Did you store it in your spatial ring?

The Tier 19 looked as panicked as Matt felt, and nearly screamed, No! I didnt! My AI can confirm it. Do you know how fucked well be if we cant find it? Oh no.

The appraiser looked like he wanted to vomit, and with the AI backed guarantee, Matt believed him. It didnt explain where the skill went.

The scanner beeped and caused them all to pause. Congratulations, an Empire representative has confirmed receipt of skill, and rewards are now distributed.

All three of them slumped to their seats.

Liz looked around and cursed. Whoever picked the skill up, youre a dick. You could have at least appeared in person and introduced yourself. No need to snatch the skill from across the planet and leave. You also didnt have to wait so long to confirm receipt. Asshole.

Matt felt Liz was understating it, but Samuel looked flustered. We shouldnt speak ill of someone who can take a skill shard away at that kind of range. Just bad practice to get on anyone that strongs bad side.

Liz shrugged and countered, Its the truth. They pulled a dick move and deserve to be called out. Its also rude as fuck.

After they all calmed down, they finished their transaction, and Liz brought up their second reason for visiting. I need to exchange for growth item requirements from Tier 1 to Tier 7. Can we do that off our last sale?

The now recovered Tier 19s eyes flickered for a moment, and he nodded. Yes, you will have some money left over with the Tier 14 skill shard, as long as you dont need the absolute rarest materials. This local company also authorized you some credit, so dont worry about it. Worse comes to worst. You just need to convert some Contribution Points to mana stones. Ill have someone lead you to the room where they keep the tables.

With that, the man quickly vanished around a corner, and Matt grinned at Liz. Think hes still happy to be assigned to us now?

Pshh, no. I bet hes requesting a transfer immediately.

They had a good laugh at the mans reaction. Matt had been surprised as well, but after all the weird stuff that came with being around the daughter of two Tier 48s, he was pretty used to this kind of thing.

Two hours later, Liz was rubbing her gloved hand and looking at it weirdly.

I think I could handle the Tier 7 upgrade now. My spirit doesnt feel stressed at all from the Tier 6 upgrade.

Its still not worth it. Sure, we can Tier up if it proves too much for you to handle, but then we lose out on pulling more growth items. We have the Tier 7 upgrade material, so theres no rush.

Yeah, I know that, but I kinda want to push it and see if I can handle the Tier 8 upgrade at Tier 6. The leaf really did help in ways I didnt expect.

Matt felt envious, even though he knew it was stupid. He had already gotten a massive boost from the root of the tree of perfection. Wishing for more was a fools errand, but he was still slightly jealous. He put the thought out of his mind and focused on his next tests.

Before they left, Matt purchased another set of mana stones with all the elemental aspects. If he was gonna do the testing, he figured he might as well go all out.

Samuel also came back to pay them a visit, and looked nearly gleeful when he asked, Look for more unique goodies like that. While I don't like higher Tiers playing games. My being nearly right on the appraisal brought my credit up a ton. A few more like that and I can get a promotion, or five.

When they arrived at the island, they did their testing. Liz went to test her upgraded glove, and Matt prepared for his two most important rift creations yet.

He decided to start with the rift to get mana concentration herbs. He used the same ratios as the rift he did to create Lizs herb rift for her alchemy practice.

Before each Tier up, he closed his fingers and pleaded with his lucky stars to prevent the rift from devouring the herbs he seeded it with. He had two small plants, and didnt want to be left with a single shot at the rift creation process if the rift ate the herbs.

Thankfully his luck was good, and he reached Tier 4 without anything going amiss. He carefully packed the test subject away with the other herb.

He queued up a message for Liz and hopped into the wooded rift. He quickly cleared it out and found a variety of herbs, but wasnt able to identify them. Knowing how particular Liz was with the herbs she harvested, he just dug up the entire plant whenever he found something with a high essence or mana concentration.

The reward at the end was lackluster, as he expected with being over the rifts Tier, but he was hoping they could brute force a good reward out of the rift. It could always dish out something over its Tier with a little luck and persistence.

Exiting the rift, he dropped off everything he collected near Lizs alchemy table and went to set up his next experiment.

With the useless growth item and the aspected mana stones he just purchased, he created a rift with equal parts from every mana type he had. He even added in his own unaspected mana. The rift was strange, with golems that seemed to be made from giant crystals arranged in a roughly humanoid shape. Each had a different elemental attack, and it gave Matt hope for getting something unique from the rift when he got it to Tier 5. However, the Tier 1 version only gave a single mana stone.

Carefully, he Tiered up the rift and noticed that the monsters changed each time. But when he reached Tier 4, the rift swallowed up all the items he was using to influence the rift.

He spent the better part of a half hour cursing his luck, and debated running it as a Tier 4 rift, instead of chancing the upgrade. If the rift changed to an unaspected rift, he would lose the growth item for nothing.

With more bravery than common sense, he Tiered the rift up. To his relief, the same crystal elementals came out of the rift.

Matt whooped and hollered long enough for Aster to come and investigate. He ignored the rabbit blood covering her muzzle, and kissed her while spinning her around. To his consternation, it took Liz nearly an hour to come out of her rift so they could delve his latest creation.

The fighting was easy enough, as the monsters couldnt stand up to either of their attacks, and they found a weirdly colored rechargeable mana stone. As best as they could tell, it produced water and wind attributed mana. Matt pocketed the stone, as he needed to do testing to see exactly how it functioned. The mix of aspected mana in a single stone might lead to different effects when used to make a rift, rather than the two elements as separate aspects.

For all the good luck Matt had with the aspected mana stone rift, he had the opposite luck with the mana concentration rift. None of the plants were mana concentration herbs, and he decided to reset the rift with Liz there, to check it at each Tier up.

They were lucky with regard to the fact that the rift never ate their materials, but it only produced mana affecting plants once. The Tier 3 rift produced some mana regeneration plants. They were useful for others, but not for them, so he left the rift and created a new one from scratch.

Nearly a week of delving and testing later, they finally had a Tier 4 rift that produced mana concentration herbs. It was better than anything else they had made, as it also produced mana regeneration and maximum mana herbs. For a Tier 4, it was a gold mine, and they debated endlessly about risking the Tier up.

Finally, as another week went by, they decided the time for the invasion was too close at hand, and they took the leap of faith.

Unable to seed the rift without Tier 5 materials, they had to roll the dice. All three of them held hands as the rift Tiered up, and they quickly entered to find that their gamble had paid off. They had successfully kept the rift correctly aspected, and it produced all three types of mana cultivation herbs. It was worth an absolute fortune, since the rift itself produced the herbs, and they werent dependent on rift rewards.

It took Lizs full attention to learn how to create each potion, but she had unlimited attempts. After three days of trying, she had a potion for Matt, and the full trio of potions for herself and Aster.

Liz did some research on the potions as well while she was learning to make them, and she found an answer as to why someone couldnt use multiple potions at the same Tier. Even if they came from different sources, the spirit could only handle one change per aspect of both physical and mana cultivation. This applied to a change in each of the aspects, like strength or mana regeneration. Afterwards the spirit resisted changes in the cultivation aspect for the rest of the Tier.

They were taking an incredibly dilute version of the concentration potion, as they couldnt recover the lost maximum mana and mana regeneration like he could. They only took enough to counter the effects of the maximum mana and mana regeneration potions. They would net positive in overall mana cultivation, as they essentially got free mana concentration out of it. The bonus would increase the overall damage of their spells.

They sat around and downed the potions in a single swig. The others only twinged at the mana concentration potion, but Matt writhed on the ground as the full-strength potion reduced his maximum mana near zero, before the effects of the potion subsided. A quick check of his AI showed that his new mana concentration was 1.15. Not quite as good as the potions Aunt Helen gave him, but close enough. He wasnt going to complain, as it was unfair to compare Liz to a woman millions of years old.

He sat up and used an empty mana stone to increase his maximum mana back up to 40, and waited for the mages to finish their own experience with the potions. He could feel Aster trying to adjust, and gave her soothing pats to help her through it.

The potions didnt feel any better to them, as they forcefully changed their mana pool without their mana cultivation cores being changed. Where Matts was dark and not used, theirs were alive with pools of essence, which resisted the changes enough to make them painful for the women as well.

After that was a success, Liz continued to delve the rift to gather more herbs. She wanted to make mana cultivation potions and sell them to the soon to arrive Pathers. Meanwhile, Matt focused all of his attention on the mana aspect rift.

His gut told him it was worth it, and three weeks to the day after the war declaration was announced, he hit the jackpot.

It was a ring growth item that had dozens of little shards of what looked like mana stones in it. He wasnt dumb enough to immediately bind it, but they went directly to the auction house to get it inspected.Samuel confirmed that it was exactly what Matt had hoped for.

The ring could remember the aspect of any mana it came into contact with, and could then convert any mana passed through it into a stored aspect. The ring started with an awful conversion rate, but Samuel told them that as he Tiered it up, the rate would slowly improve. It wasnt a combat item, but it was perfect for his experiments. He could have asked for a better item to help with his rift creation method. Matt had to resist jumping for joy, and forced himself to play it casually for their appraiser.

His blade and Asters Winter Embrace arrived soon after their appraisal, and he upgraded the weapon to Tier 6. He made sure to acquire the material to upgrade his new weapon tier 7, and stored it in his bag. Unlike in Lizs case, it was a strain for Matt to use the weapon, since it was a full Tier higher himself. But he was ok with the temporary inconvenience. The sword was physically heavy, and he found that he was able to add more metal to the weapon at each Tier, which would increase its weight slightly. He also learned that he had some slight ability to adjust the weapon's shape. He used that ability to make the blade a little slimmer, and more in line with his Tier 5 longsword. His old sword had only bordered on the size of a greatsword unlike this current, pure greatsword.

He didnt trust himself to enchant the weapon himself, so he hired a Tier 7 Pather enchanter to plan out the enchantments layout. He made sure to incorporate his standard sharpness, durability, and repair runes, but he also took advantage of the growth items ability to hold more enchantments. He was able to get both [Mana Charge] and [Mana Slash] inlaid into the weapons structure.

Before he could get to the actual enchanting, the news came. The queendom was invading, and everyone was called to gather.

It was time to Tier up and prepare for the upcoming battles.