Chapter 73

Chapter 73

Matt looked to Liz and Aster, and in unison, they all Tiered up. There was no need to go to a higher Tier rift and use its essence to help with compressions. After all,they had already delved a Tier 7 rift. Their cores were as compacted as they could be at Tier 5.

Looking inward, he inspected his recent cultivation. He had been allocating most of his directed cultivation to mind, senses, and proprioception. Now, his greatest problem was keeping up with his boost from [Mages Retreat]. It would only get harder from here, as he would be able to pump more mana into the skill as he Tiered up.

In the past month, he had gotten the skill into his core spirit, and was slowly expanding its capabilities to increase his endurance when using the skill. Once he was done, he would take the skill out of his core spirit, and start absorbing the other skills he had collected. He planned to try and make them cheaper, so he could use them earlier.

With the three of them now Tier 6, they quickly packed up their camp and flew into the air. Matt took one last look at the island they had camped on, and the neighboring one where they had done their rift experiments.

It was a bittersweet sight. He felt like he had passed a pivotal point in his life. Money and essence no longer meant as much to him as they had before this moment. His time experimenting had also given him a better impression of enchanting and of its benefits.

He felt like he was a different Matt altogether compared to when he arrived on this planet, only a few short months ago. It only took a glance to see the half dozen rifts that hed left. They were the best of his creations, and it gave him a bit of satisfaction to think of how valuable the island would be in the future. Especially once people saw that there was both a Tier 7 rift, and a rift capable of producing endless Tier 5 natural treasures for mana cultivation.

One would eventually Tier up the planet, and the other would create near-endless wealth.

The other rifts were the ones that produced growth items most often, or consistently had valuable rewards. Lizs herb rift would probably be a hot commodity in the future for an alchemy guild.

He smiled as he thought of the faces of the people who would find their little retreat.

With a thought and flex of his spirit, Matt turned and flew towards the gathering point. It was set in the middle of nowhere on the planets fourth continent. It was a weird location, but he assumed that it was selected by the imperial army, instead of the kingdom. Otherwise, it wouldve been in one of the two teleporter cities.

It would take them a few hours to reach their destination, but the message calling them together had a countdown timer. They had nearly a full day until the countdown would reach zero. Neither he nor Liz had any idea what the counter represented, but they didnt want to get caught out of the city if it indicated the invasion point and start time of the war.

Matt didnt think it likely, as this was more a training ground than a real war, but they hurried anyway.

As they flew, Matt increased his max mana pool to 80 mana, and then immediately downed one of Aunt Helens mana concentration potions. He almost fell, but was able to keep his flying sword steady with the aid of his AI. After checking and finding that his mana concentration was now 1.3, he was slightly taken aback. The potion had given him an increase of 0.15 mana concentration, even more than the 0.08 that the first one had provided at Tier 4.

After reflecting, it made sense that a Tier 30 plus mana concentration potion would do more than a max mana of 20 could handle. With the realization that he would get more out of Aunt Helens potions when he had more maximum mana to sacrifice, he decided to save the potions for the higher Tiers, and slightly regretted his decision to take the potion now.

Putting it out of his mind, he focused on returning his maximum mana to his new cap of 80. The doubling of mana gave him a massive amount of wiggle room in his spell casting.

A quick test of [Hail] showed his AI that he could create a much larger area of coverage. When given a larger portion of MPS, it also created more ice. By doubling the initial mana cost, the radius increased by forty percent, which equaled a near doubling in overall area of effect. That was nice, but what made it amazing was when he noticed that the increased ice density remained without increasing the upkeep cost. When he increased the channeled mana to his full mana generation of 80 MPS, the skill appeared more like a wall of ice than a natural storm.

Aster took control of it from his backpack and created a few ice sculptures that floated around the flying trio. He didnt miss that most were rabbits and hearts, but he laughed at her antics.

From her mental pushing, he knew that he would be making rabbit rifts for her anytime they stopped in a single location for too long.

He was also tempted to instantly absorb [Fireball], just so he had a skill to cast like a normal mage. He would need to use the mana stone trick that he had with [Hail], but the idea was so tempting. In the end, he decided to wait until [Mages Retreat] finished its modifications, and was out of his core spirit.

It would still be much faster to modify the skill when he absorbed it, rather than doing it the slow way. The small voice that said he could buy another [Fireball] was easily crushed. Even if he could do that, it was just too wasteful. The skill once used was gone forever, and as much as he had changed, he still remembered the lack of skills on Lilly.

I can change that.

Matt didnt know what he would be doing in the near future, with their management team still being assembled, but he started listing reasons in his AI about why going to Lilly and making some low Tier rifts for the populace was a good thing.

He brought his mind back to his skills. [Mages Retreat] had already been calculated out, but with his increase of mana concentration, it was nearly thirty percent more effective at increasing his strength for the same mana cost. The same logic applied to [Cracked Phantom Armor]. Matt sighed as he realized that while he would have the advantage in mana concentration at the lower Tiers, he would fall behind at the higher Tiers due to his reliance on potions. That is, if his math was accurate.

Matt quickly searched for the actual scaling for mana concentration. Finding nothing, he turned to ask Liz, Do you know the actual way mana concentration works on skills?

She shook her head. No, I just know it's good.

Turning back to the KingdomNet, he finally found a source that seemed well rated, and spent the money to get hard numbers for his math.

As it turned out, his notion of how mana concentration worked was slightly off. The math behind it was log10(concentration) + 1. Which meant instead of him having a boost of thirty percent, it was closer to eleven percent. That realization caused Matt to sigh in relief, as it meant he wouldn't be that much weaker than the mages of his Tier when he got stronger.

Before he knew it, they were nearing the marked location, and both he and Liz paused in their flight. The others that had been flying near them did the same at the impressive sight in front of them.

Where there should have only been an unexplored continent and a grassy plain, there was a massive city built of stone. It was a few dozen times larger than the cities that the seven suns kingdom had built around the teleporters.

At first, Matt swallowed. If this was the queendoms invasion force, they were well and truly screwed, but he quickly noticed the flying patrols were all in the armys color-shifting uniforms. Even with their camouflage disabled, they still seemed to blend into the background, making them hard to notice at first, and harder still to keep an eye on.

What is this?

Liz was close enough to hear his question and called out, I dont know, but its impressive. I cant imagine how difficult it would be to create a city that large in that time frame, but only the army could do it. Look at the wall. Its covered in defensive formations.

Matt caught the faint shimmering of the enchantments, and nodded as his eye caught something else as well. And look at their cannons. Theyre massive. I think I could stand up inside of that barrel. What are they expecting?

Liz circled back to him and shrugged, Maybe its a show of force to the vassals. Something like, Look at how strong we are, dont try and fuck with us. I dont know for sure, though.

Well, its working on me. The walls must be two hundred feet tall, and the buildings make them seem small.

Matt was thoroughly impressed. Even from here, the city was all a uniform brown that implied that it was created with [Earth Manipulation]. Before he could look into it deeper, he saw that his AI had registered an EmpireNet. They hadnt had access to once since they left the vassal kingdoms capital.

They followed the stream of people entering into the city, and Matt ogled the triple layers of walls, each over fifty feet thick. From the surrounding sounds of water, he assumed that there was a moat above the tunnel and between the first and second wall.

It would have all been useless if not for the flight inhibiting formation over the entire city. Liz tried to peek over the crowd, and found that while her flying device worked, it only got her an inch above the ground before she was shoved back down.

Matt shrugged, it seemed like a good opportunity to earn more points. He said, We don't mind taking a team leader role. He looked at Liz, who nodded at his unspoken question. This just feels wrong. I get that this is a curated war, but it feels a little too much like a game. The queendom is already here. Why wouldnt they just attack?

Juni looked tired and sighed at the question. Yeah, but we cant do anything about it. When the countdown ends tomorrow, we believe the war will officially start. The queendom will appear in the city that correlates with their teleport location, and they will start moving in. We dont know exactly where that is yet, though. And were unable to preemptively take control of any of the valuable points. Weve been limited to the areas near our cities, but that leaves nearly two-thirds of the planet uncontested. Once the war starts, well be scrambling to try and block the queendom off, and it wont be easy. They can appear anywhere and attack a single location with their full force, but at least our defending advantage wont be completely nullified with the Empires restrictions in place.

Matt took a look at the map and noticed that the cities with the teleporters were surrounded by blue forts, while the rest of the map was gray. There were also larger, city-like structures strewn about. There was one on each of the five continents, and one near an isolated archipelago chain on the other side of the planet

What are they? Fake cities?

Juni shook his head. No, theyre cities that the army made like this one, only a lot smaller. They also have teleportation formations in them that will allow the cities to reinforce themselves. We expect that the queendoms teleport location from their planet string will drop them in one. Sadly, they can only be teleported to when the war starts, and theyve already been captured by one side.

Matt tried to take it all in but was distracted by the sheer scale of it all. Twenty million people were being brought in for the first wave, and that didnt even account for the Pathers that the Empire would be shipping in.

To his surprise, he was actually excited and itching for a fight. Unlike with the golem fighting, lives werent on the line here, and there were goals to fight for. He didnt miss the forts situated around rift clusters and natural resources. If his guess was right, there were a few artificial resource nodes in areas that would otherwise be unimportant.

His competitive blood boiled, and he wanted to get out and take the fight to worthy opponents. Matt had no doubt that there would be strong people in both the vassal forces and among the exceptional Pathers.

Juni kept telling them about what to expect, but it all amounted to not much of anything. They would have to wait until tomorrow for the truth of the situation, when the war would officially start.

What should we do now? Lizs question re-focused him once Juni excused himself to make more preparations.

Well, we don't have any responsibilities until the war starts, and our team isn't assembled yet, so I doubt well do anything tomorrow. This all seems to be progressing much slower than I wouldve expected. We have a room set up, but Id like to visit one of the enchanters around the building. I want to get a second opinion on the pattern I made for my sword, so I can enchant it before the fighting starts tomorrow.

Welp, let's go. Our room doesnt seem to be in a dorm-style, so at least we can enjoy our off time in between fights.

She stretched, showing a bit of her midriff where her shirt rose up. That is, if we have much down time. Somehow, I expect this will be more like the golem war, and well running from place to place to put out fires.

Matt laughed and shook his head. Yeah, but without the risk of death, this should be pretty fun. Theres gonna be plenty of other Pathers to fight, and lots of vassal people to round out the numbers.

Liz shrugged, and they wound their way out of the building to find one of the Tier 7 enchanter locations. Unable to find one near them, they wandered in the direction of the crafter's district, until Aster leapt out of Matts arms and scampered off into the packed crowd.

Following his connection to his bond, he found her hanging off a mans red and bushy fox tail, who looked at the arctic fox with bemusement.

He met Matts eye and chuckled over Aster's growling. He shook his tail, causing the fox to sway. The man lifted his tail to waist height, bringing the troublemaker attached along with it.

I take it shes your bond.

Yes, Im so sorry. I have no idea what got into her. Shes never done this before, I swear.

Matt moved to pull his bond off the mans tail, and noticed that he was wearing an army uniform, and was traveling with a squad of others. Of course, Aster had to attack a Tier 15 or above soldier.

Its fine. Im assuming Im the first firefox shes met, and our elements clashed. I cant blame her. If I did, I would be a hypocrite of the highest order.

Matt finally wormed his finger into his bonds growling jaw, and finally freed the mans bushy red tail from her teeth. Even if Aster couldnt hurt the man, it was incredibly rude to bite someone, so he scolded Aster telepathically as he apologised to the man outloud.

Really, Im so sorry. As Matt was going to continue, the man shrugged and scratched Asters ears.

Dont worry about it. Once she calms down, shell have better control over it next time. I remember my first time meeting an opposite element. I bit his ankle and refused to let go. Good times.

With that, the man left, and Matt looked to a mortified Liz.

Do you know what that was?

Sadly, yes. Opposite elements can have reactions of hate and anger. Fire and ice in this case, but I didnt think Aster would be affected like this. Shes never reacted to me, and my bloodline is fire-based. Sorry, I never even thought about it.

Probing his bond, he could tell that the problem mostly stemmed from the man being a fire aspected fox, rather than being a fire aspected individual in general.. She clearly felt that all foxes should be ice aspected, and anything else was bad. It was all that she was thinking about.

Matt soothed his bond until she calmed down enough for him to get a message through to her.

Aster, you can't do that. You can get hurt or in trouble. You had me worried!

Fox ice. Fire bad. Fox ice!

With as stern an emotion he could push to her, he said, Aster no. Foxes can be anything. They don't have to be ice aspected.

He was interrupted with an inquisitive, Aster fox. Aster ice. Ice good. Like she had explained the most obvious thing in the world.

Matt wanted to pull out his hair.

Is this how it feels to raise a kid?

Suddenly, he was happy to have been fined for having his birth control implant missing. It would have been incredibly unlikely, but if this was how it was to raise a child, he wanted nothing to do with it.

With a sigh, Matt and Liz tried to explain how not all foxes were like her, and that she needed to treat them all with respect, and especially not bite them.

She insisted that she was right with the inarguable logic of repeating herself endlessly.

It was a long walk to the enchanters building.