Chapter 220

Chapter 220

Matt looked at the distortion in the fabric of reality with a sense of trepidation, irritation, and hesitation.

He could read Liz and Aster well enough to know they felt the same way.

This was one of their final attempts at beating the pinnacle of challenge Luna had set for them once Liz and Aster had reached Tier 13, and beat a peak Tier 17 rift.

A Tier 18 rift.

For three average mid Tier 13 cultivators, that was an impossible leap even in their dreams, but they were anything but average.

After digesting their gains from Minkalla, the three of them had had a substantial increase in their combat prowess, and with Lunas direct teachings, they had been forced to push themselves every step of the way.

Matt was 80% sure that if they had been able to enter an old Tier 18 rift with a known layout and with easily available guides, they could have cleared it, but that would have never counted in Lunas books.

Or even his books, really.

Matt didnt really expect to ever go into a fight knowing everything about an enemy, and understood how that false security dulled the adaptability of a cultivator. At the same time, it made their few forays at Tier 18 rifts far more difficult. Theyd been randomly created right before they went in, and as such, they had no idea what they would face. It made Matt jumpy.

Their most recent attempt at a Tier 18 rift was three weeks ago, when he had his leg twisted into a pretzel, after which they needed to retreat.

Swamp trees were an unfair combination of elements and monster type. Trees should be burnable, everyone agreed on that. However, that particular rift had proven that trees who wielded mud and water were less than susceptible to their ancient foe.

Luna paced in front of the rift while still in her cat form, something none of them had missed. She had implied that she would be fine in just a few years, but it had been almost five years since their manager had been in her human form, showing just how badly she had been hurt from delaying Matts inspiration.

She didnt say anything, but April, standing to the side, did. Are you three ready? Are your exit plans in place?

Matt nodded as Liz went over their exit plans for their liaison.

Luna had been pushing her into a mixture of Kurts and her own role over the last few years, and this had become routine before all of their delves.

When they were done, Luna jumped into the air to hover behind him out of the way. Matt activated [Cracked Phantom Armor] and all of his channeled physical cultivation buffs, stepping through the distortion in reality with Liz and Aster close on his heels.

Once he was through the distortion, Matt instantly sent [Earth Manipulation], [Air Manipulation], and his spiritual sense outward as far and as fast as he could, taking in all the information at once and letting his AI process everything with the help of his Minkalla reward.

While inside the copper planet, the reward had been magnified as the restrictions placed on the pseudoskill had been largely lifted. But even after leaving, he retained the ability to supercharge the skill for short periods of time.

Alas, his willpower wasnt quite as Endless as the rest of him, at least when pushing his Concept this far from its basic abilities. If he wanted to stay at full capacity for the rest of the delve, he couldnt use his AI empowerment for very long, no matter how useful it was.

In less than a tenth of a second, Matt had a complete layout of the surrounding three miles of the rift entrance, with a resolution that would put most Tier 15 scanners to shame.

This rift was odd, to say the least, and the more he saw, the more Matts guard went up.

If he didnt know better, hed say they were coming in after another team had already cleared the rift. The nearby forest had giant holes in it, with large swaths of the forest toppled as though Aster had fought in it.

Behind him, at the maximum range of his skills, he was detecting a mountain range that seemed peppered with craters, which only became more clear as his AI processed the information.

Even as he took a step forward, Matt looked upward.

The sky of this rift was in a semi twilight, with just the inkling of a sun peeking over what Matt suspected was a false horizon.

A Tier 18 rift was large, massive even. But they had limits, and generally maxed out at one-third the size of a standard habitable planet. The giant moon hovering in the sky, with tentacles of pulsing and twisting flesh that had burrowed through its surface, told Matt that the moon itself was also in play for the rift, meaning this area couldn't be a true planet.

Aster, who had entered and was already looking up, asked, What the fuck is that, and why is it eating that moon. I know it's not made of cheese, and who wants to eat rocks?

Liz brandished her spear and settled in behind her shield, looking outward. I sense something out there. Thousands of signatures.

Matt glanced over, catching the faint red haze surrounding Lizs left hand, signifying her use of blood magic to find potential targets.

It was, to date, the only bit of unstructured blood magic she was capable of performing. It was intensely difficult, time-consuming, and took tremendous preparation to pull off. In short, it was nowhere close to combat viable, and was vastly inferior to her [Blood Sense] skill in almost every way, but it represented a massive step in the right direction. Minkalla may have shown her some of the possibilities of blood magic, but all the skills that shed picked up in its false lives were just wrong enough that she had to functionally start from step one.

Essentially, she needed to establish a connection to other blood around her, either to draw power from it or direct a curse to it. Or, in this case, to detect it. Camouflaged enemies. Be careful of ambushes.

With Liz trying to decipher more information from her spell and Aster scanning the air, Matt took the ground and sent out a ripple with [Earth Manipulation], looking for anything which didnt heed his command.

While he didnt directly find anything but stone, it did indirectly reveal the rift monsters as they erupted from the ground in a rage.

Masses of tentacles burrowed out of the ground in rapid, but short, jerking movements that made it seem like they could move in any direction, which completely broke his AIs movement predictions.

A [Bulwark] held back some of the monsters as his AI predicted their attacks with tentacles that grew needle-like protrusions. In response, the monsters whipped their appendages to send the needles as projectiles whistling through the air.

Matt dashed forward, with [Mages Retreat] and [Air Slide] combining with Asters already-established [Tailwind] to let him cross the distance in the blink of an eye. His [Sword Twin] was already established, and the mage-focused enchantments turned a simple [Bolt] into an arm-thick bar of lightning that arced from the tip of his blade to the closest monster.

It twitched, trying to dodge, but Asters [Headwind] fought its progress long enough for the lightning to strike. The first monster hit by his attack exploded in a wash of silver gore, but the second and third monsters his lightning bolt hit went rigid before seemingly turning to stone as they froze.

Liz arrived by his side with fire announcing her presence and blood following in her wake. As she buried the metal portion of her spear inside the creatures body and began to drink in silver blood, the trails of blood from her [Bloodrush] whipped out to cut through the tentacles of another frozen monster. She then continued to burn and corrode the body of her victim.

[Corrosive Blood] had been one of her tournament rewards, but it had taken her literal years to modify it to the point where it would only function on blood outside of her body. The acidic blood proved quite the potent weapon, and as a burst of willpower and essence signified Lizs [Hungering Weapon] had finished its first target, she ripped the spear from its tentacled housing, ready for her next victim.

She spun her spear like a staff, gathering a vortex of flame around it to ward off some questing tentacles moving fast enough that Matt could barely keep up with them. She singed then with the maneuver and left dark streaks of ashen blood in her wake. As soon as she was able to see her actual target, blood coalesced around her spear and [Bloody Cleave] took off the remaining threatening appendages. Silver blood flowed through the air from the wounds and into Lizs body.

While Matts attempts at making spatially expanded storage areas for Liz went nowhere, and some minor commissions didnt hold up well inside her body while also not affecting her health, he had managed to craft a tiny metal insert for the back of her wrist that could either allow blood to pass through or not as she desired.

It had been decades since Liz had needed to cut herself to access her blood, and Matt didnt want her to be forced to resume the habit. [Hypertension] and [Blood Storage] helped with her volume issues, but only sparingly. The former drastically increased the density of blood in her body, which was most useful for skills which reserved blood, such as [Blood Storage].

[Inventory]s conversion wasnt nearly as useful as theyd hoped; instead of spatially storing blood, it allowed Liz to reserve some blood to transform another object into blood. It took up less volume than the original item had, but unfortunately, it didnt yet work on blood that was already hers. Still, Lizs Tier 3 Talent allowed her to very rapidly refill on blood during combat, so she was rarely short on her primary element, even if she had to scale back the size of her workings.

Once they were off the Path, theyd figure out some form of solution, but if Liz could figure out a way to properly store her own blood inside itself, she wouldnt need to worry about it.

Aster arrived borne upon a [Tailwind] elemental steed, flitting around the battlefield at high speeds as [Meadows of Rime] and [Absolute White] slowed the lashing tentacles to a speed that was best described as only very fast, which they were more than equipped to handle.

Unfortunately, the monsters didnt seem to be particularly affected by the cold that Aster passively created as a byproduct of her skills, likely indicating a resistance to the element.

It wasnt a great resistance to encounter, but at least they werent immune. Not that there was such a thing as true immunity. If something wouldnt burn, that just meant your flame wasnt strong enough. The same applied with cold.

True to form, Aster yipped in triumph as her Concept took hold of the monsters, allowing ice and frost to creep along their tentacles.

You know, I was worried there for a moment, that wed have to deal with the bosses after all my buffs had run out. She turned to Matt and asked, Spot me?

Always.

The grin grew wider as she responded, Love you.

Liz closed her eyes and began muttering mnemonics under her breath, forming and using potions directly in her bloodstream as Matt moved their earth bubble up and up, flying through the ground as they neared the surface.

They erupted from the ground in an explosion of wind and fire with Liz launching herself up to the closest monster, her spear glowing with an ominous red light as she stabbed it. It tried to fight back, but with Asters contributions, it was having a hard enough time simply staying airborne. It was only a matter of time before Liz finished it off, and as the monster plummeted to the ground, [Hungering Blood] drained it dry, and Liz leaped to the next-closest monster.

She couldnt kill the monsters with a single blow, but she could make them bleed, and that was all she needed. Silver blood streamed from open wounds as Liz ran along lashing tentacles, building up speed from [Bloodrush] and feeding through her weapon into strengthening its attacks and her own cultivation. [Lesser Blood Sacrifice], [Hungering Weapon], and her own Concept all reveled in the bloodbath as wounds refused to close and bled profusely thanks to [Blood Wind], and it all fed into making her an unstoppable gold and silver juggernaut.

Soon, Liz was killing a member of the swarm with every strike, diving through the jerking masses of tentacles and adding their blood to an ever-growing wave following her. It quickly got to the point where she was simply incapable of controlling the sheer volume of semi-earth blood around her, and it erupted in a conflagration so massive, Matt could feel it from where he was.

He wasnt completely idle, of course. While Liz enjoyed letting loose, he was keeping an eye on anything that could serve as an interruption to her enthusiasm. That necessitated being in the sky, and the monsters werent about to let that happen. Theyd been attacking him, but he was staying within range of Asters [Headwind] and [Tailwind], rendering the monsters slow y enough that he could avoid the swarm without difficulty. He couldnt afford to get hit, of course, but Asters efforts made that a fairly minor concern. Instead, he spent most of his time funneling 5,000 mana each second into [Sheer Cold] and unleashing it periodically.

While 10,000 mana made for a very sizable area of effect, the monsters were resistant enough to ice that it took several seconds of charging between each cast if he didnt want to just waste his mana. The spell wasnt that efficient in a purely mana to damage ratio, but with his ability to throw mana at the problem, even the Tier 18, cold resistant monsters were overwhelmed and killed off by the thousands. At least, the lesser variants were. The gold monsters seemed to be able to shake off his quick burst of [Sheer Cold], but it wasnt his job to kill them.

The other half of his mana, of course, was being spent on all of his buffs, defenses, mobility, and occasional [Arcane Powershot] or burst of [Cracked Mana Spear] intercepting a monster attempting to sneak in an attack on Liz.

Even as he watched, a [Blood Whip] snagged the passing tentacle of one of the golden elite monsters, and Liz launched herself into the air above it, kicked off another monster, and dove at the elite. It summoned a stone-gray barrier that shattered like glass under Lizs attack, and while her attack failed to kill it, it tore off one of the monsters tentacles and sent the creature into a death spiral. [Headwind] refused to allow the beast to regain its balance and sent it plummeting to the ground below.

Aster finished off the monster with a titanic [Glacial Spear], the mountain of ice only made slightly less impressive by the dozen monstrous spires of black stone dotting the landscape.

An AI message came, and Liz responded by igniting her tide of blood, creating a new sun on the surface of the rift. Red and gold flames washed out as her ammunition ignited, a massive cascade of flames immolating much of the remaining swarm. Matt flew to meet her, catching her by the hand and jetting them to the ground, sheltering behind a [Bulwark] as Aster detonated her [Glacial Spear] with a [Cracked Shatter].

The resulting explosion shook the landscape and sent nearly all the remaining swarm monsters tumbling to the ground, frozen solid. Even some of the elites fell from the sky, either caught in the blast radius or bludgeoned by their slain brethren. Aster was merciless with any of the monsters who stumbled for even a moment, her winds casting them to the ground like oversized pebbles.

Matt gave Lizs hand a quick squeeze, dropped his [Bulwark], and blasted them back into the sky, some fragments of tentacle monsters caught in the updraft and joining their madcap pursuit of the elites.

Aster joined them en route, perched on a flying cloud and locking down the air around them for any of their enemies. Their first enemy glowed with a reddish-gold light and shot a [Mana Bolt]-like projectile that tracked them even as Matt sought to dodge. The blast broke through his initial [Bulwark] and was only stopped by a combination of [Diffusion Shield] and [Bulwark].

Once they reached it, the first elite barely even slowed them down, between Lizs still-empowered spear and Matts accompanying [Cracked Mana Spear]. It exploded into rubble and essence, instantly filling up Matts spirit twice over as he directed most of the incoming essence directly into his core, and the rest into [Lesser Sacrifice]. It had taken lots of practice to properly allocate essence on the fly, but hed had practice material to spare.

He spun in the air, launching Liz at the next elite like a discus while diving towards a second one in tandem with Aster. [Flamethrower] billowed out, engulfing the both of them in light-blue flames as he allowed Aster to convert the fire to ice-aspect and use it for fuelling her own skills. Wind and snow cracked the golden hide of the monster and ice accumulated on its skin courtesy of [Glacial Strike]. By the time he was within melee range of the monster, teleporting past a bright red shield it tried to raise, the ice was thick enough that he could cast [Cracked Mana Trap] on it.

The detonation blasted a hole in the side of the elite, and Matt finished it off with his sword burying his blade into the beast up to the hilt and channeling a [Bolt] through it, then ripping it to pieces as he centered his Concepts repulsion on his sword. The fragments of stone fell to the ground far below, and Matt used [Air Body] to quickly reposition himself near a pair of Liz-shaped beings of blood. One vanished and the other manifested itself as his girlfriend bathed in the blood of her former enemy, ending both her [Lesser Blood Clone] and [Blood Body].

[Lesser Mana Clone] was a difficult skill to control, normally requiring full concentration to manage, and [Lesser Blood Clone] was no different. However, Liz had learned that while in [Blood Body] form, she could have her clone either duplicate or mirror her actions with comparative ease. Anything else was still impractical, though they hoped once she got the hang of Concept duplication, she could manage more autonomy for less focus.

Hand in hand, they dove once more into the fray.

It took them nearly a week to clear off all the monsters landside, as the moon had sent out a new wave of enemies in the skyscraper-sized ships once a day. Even approaching immortality, they werent quite able to go indefinitely without sleep, particularly with such exhausting combat, but they were able to get some rest between monster waves. It mostly reset Lizs momentum, her buffs fueled by the deaths of enemies all needing to be constantly fed or wither away, but she also appreciated the amount of practice they provided her. If anything, each day was easier as the rift sent half as many spires with each barrage.

They werent quite untouched, of course. Matt had a few minor flesh wounds and a fairly nasty gash across his abdomen that would have needed a professional healer had Liz not been able to tend to it quickly with her [Lifeblood Manipulation]. Aster had a few broken bones that would take a couple weeks to heal without further medical attention, and Lizs intestines were lightly perforated after shed taken a barrage of quills to the gut at one point. But her own healing was more than enough to keep her upright and fighting.

Once no more pillars fell from the sky and they had killed all the monsters hidden in the ground, the three of them were forced to look up at the moon.

Flying up thankfully didnt trigger the monster to throw more pillars of stone at them, but it did start to wave some of the smaller tentacles around the largest crack at them, throwing train car-sized stone pillars at them like the drone monsters did.

Thankfully, they had enough control over their flight to dodge everything, but it still left them with a serious issue.

How do we kill that thing? Matt asked through their AI.

He was currently sharing his vision of the boss with his AI, having enhanced his sight with [Telescope] and [Ranger's Sight]. The two of them combined to let the trio see the boss even from their distant perspective.

The boss was thankfully not the entire moon monster but rather seemed to be the exposed heart of the moon, visible and reachable through the crack in the outermost layer of the satellite. It pulsed and wriggled even as the canyon leading down towards it wriggled with the stone tentacles.

Aster ventured her opinion. Frankly, I don't want to kill it. It can have space, and we can have the ground. It's a victory in my books.

Her tone said she was only half joking, but Matt considered it even as they floated to the side to dodge an incoming pillar of stone.

Liz shook her head. I hate to admit it, but you might be right. I don't see how we can fight tentacles that big. Even if the biggest ones that sent the ships out don't swing at us, the smaller ones guarding the canyon are hundreds of feet long and thick as a building. I just don't know if we can blast through that much stone.

Matt was still thinking things over when both women looked at him.

Offering up his idea, he asked. Which do we want to try first? [Skewer], or [Arcane Powershot]?

[Arcane Powershot], Liz answered. Im not risking my spear against that thing.

Aster flicked her tail and huffed out a breath of air that vanished into the void. Hell need to stand still for so long, and we definitely cant block any more of those spires if youre tied up aiming.

Well, well have warning, Matt pointed out. The minimum charge time isnt longer than the travel time for the pillars, if we see an attack incoming I can just shoot off a weaker arrow and reposition.

Liz shrugged, Its better than getting closer. Lets see if we can make this work.

***

Luna watched as her charges planned how to protect Matt long enough for his [Arcane Powershot] to gather enough mana to do enough damage to deal with the largest tentacles and then slowly move in.

She knew the plan would work because she had already inspected the moon creature when they first entered the rift. It was big and looked scary, but those larger tentacles were mostly mana constructs, and wouldnt be able to stand up to a single fully charged [Arcane Powershot].

Once they learned that, they would easily be able to clear out the remaining tentacles and then waltz in and kill the writhing mess of stone and silvery blood that was the boss of this rift.

Even though she was separating herself and Kurt from the rift in a bubble, so it didnt affect their rewards, she still controlled her [Air Manipulation] so only he could hear.

A Tier 18 rift at Tier 13. Not the hardest Tier 18 rift, but they went in blind and will come out alive.

Kurt silently sighed before writing. Im impressed. Where do we go from here?

Luna knew what he was asking, and it was only long experience that gave her that answer.

The normal answer for pushing a team was to make them delve higher, or delve with restrictions, but her team was at the point where they constantly ran the risk of being killed by a single blow, and already used their best spells with discretion.

It was only true Ascender teams who pushed a manager this far, and while Kurt was her protege, he had only started working with her after Lila, her last Ascender, so he hadn't learned her methods.

Weve forged their blade, Kurt, now we just need to sharpen it.