The Path of Ascension: A LitRPG Adventure, page 21
“But what you want to know is how much better each would be. Well, it depends on the smith or enchanter doing the work. But the usual improvement is Tier 4 is about 30%-40% better than Tier 3. And Tier 5 is usually twice as good compared to a Tier 4.”
That didn't really help Matt at all. If he got a new weapon at each Tier, it would be incredibly expensive, and he still needed to get a spatial bag. That gave Matt his next question.
“Would this make the spatial bag impossible to use?”
“Only at the same time. The real problem is how expensive the bags are. The spirit is only strained when actively using the enchantments, so it shouldn’t interfere unless you can't deactivate one or the other.”
Tun shrugged.
“Really, it's up to you. After Tier 5, most get a new weapon every rank. I can't really tell you to do either but, from what I’ve seen people buy, the dual rune Tier 3, and then 5. Or they get the single rune Tier 3 and buy both a Tier 4 and 5. I can make you a custom longsword with the size and runes you want.
“The turnaround is usually a week though, so—”
“You don't happen to have a buy one get one free so I can get a Tier 3 hammer or ax as well, do you?”
Tun just looked at him, then turned around and started hammering on a red-hot bar of metal he pulled from the furnace.
Seeing his joke fell flat, Matt thanked him and walked back to his room. He couldn't decide if it was better to get the higher-Tiered weapon. It was so expensive that it would eat into his spatial bag budget if he did, but he might be able to use it for two Tiers if he got the better one.
The next day, he decided to get the better sword. He was putting all his essence into his physical cultivation, so he was growing stronger than most people in his Tier. The chance he would break a weapon was higher than most, and if he broke one, his wallet would be punished far more than the single large purchase.
He also had to consider he didn't have another way to attack, other than his weapon. So, he needed the ability to deal damage, and the dual rune option offered him a way to increase his damage per hit.
The two of them spent a few hours designing a sword for Matt, and it was far more fun than he thought it would be. He designed a balanced blade that was slightly longer than his current one so he could grow into it. While he had grown quite a bit in the last year and a half, he expected to grow more before his next upgrade at Tier 5.
He had just finished with Tun and was playing with Aster in a field when his pad beeped that he had a package waiting for him.
With excitement, he retrieved the package and found another pad and a box. A note came with the smaller package. It just stated the device was to be installed by medical professionals only.
Matt checked over the pad that came in the package. It was smaller than his current one, and heavy. At least three times heavier than his.
When he arrived at the medical facility, he was told it would be at least an hour before a healer could oversee the installation of the device.
It made Matt slightly nervous when he considered the fact the small, rice-sized hardware would be connected to his spinal column at the base of his skull. It wasn't strictly necessary to have the hardware left in after the construct took residence in his spirit, but it allowed for more computing power before the AI grew and evolved, so it was usually left in for the long term.
When the healer came out, Matt saw he was an older man with a touch of gray at his temples. He escorted Matt to a room and explained Matt would feel groggy for the next three days. That is, until the AI was fully online and settled both in his spirit and in his skull.
Matt laid down, and the doctor wiped at his neck, the area going numb. Then he felt the surrounding flesh moving. A healing spell washed over him, and the numbness and small aches from training washed away.
“All right, when you cycle essence into the construct, it will assimilate like any skill. If you have important things to do, I recommend doing them before. You'll feel drunk or very tired. At least, most people describe it as one of the two. I felt drunk when I got mine. Also, you are barred from delving for a week after the three-day period. Good luck.” With the last words tossed over his shoulder, the doctor swept out of the room.
Matt ate lunch with Aster, and then headed back to his room and put on a show before cycling essence to the back of his skull. It was gradual, but he felt mentally exhausted. He wasn't physically tired, but his thinking turned slow and sluggish.
The next three days passed in a haze. He couldn't even work out safely, so combat training was certainly out of the question, so he and his bond mostly relaxed.
The third morning, he woke up and felt clear-headed. The world seemed sharper, crisper. He wasn't sure if it was the AI doing something to improve his senses, or if it was just the contrast of coming out of the fog he had been in for the last few days.
He sent a mental probe to the AI, and his mana drained to near zero in an effort to feed the construct. If he didn't have his Talent where his mana regeneration was equal to his Naximum Nana under 1% of his max mana, he wouldn't be able to fuel this AI. It was taking nearly half his available 10 MPS.
In his vision, he saw, ‘Startup procedures initializing. Please, stand by. Estimated time to finish, fourteen minutes.’
Matt took Aster to eat at the dining hall and, after setting out her food, ate his own. The new food was even more expensive than her kit food, as it was made of Tier 4 and 5 monsters. The expense drained his already tight budget, but he wasn't going to skimp on his companion.
The startup process finished, and a heads-up display overlaid his vision. ‘New host detected. Start scanning? Yes. No.’
Matt selected yes, and the pull on his mana grew stronger.
This AI is absurd.
It pulled almost seven mana a second. Any normal mage at this Tier would be empty of mana in just a few minutes. It explained why they had been working on this model for so long. It was nearly unusable at lower Tiers, and at the higher Tiers, no one would want to get rid of their older, more established AI for this glutton.
After a moment, the mana draw slowed to a trickle, and Matt had an outline of his body covering his view of the dining hall. When he looked closer, he was tinted green. Focusing on any part gave a breakdown of the limb and its current status.
Under that was a display for his mana.
Mana: 0.9/10
While the mana display wasn't very useful for Matt, the body scan was. It would be nice to be able to see any damage done to him.
Matt looked to Aster, who cleaned herself, and the AI responded to his intention. ‘Bond detected. Start scanning? Yes. No.’
He went through the process, and a small outline of Aster appeared next to his own outline with the same breakdown. It hurt to realize his fox had 900 mana at Tier 2 while he had a whopping ten mana at Tier 3.
After they finished their breakfast, Matt headed to the training room and set the room to the goblin and hobgoblin configuration of the Tier 1 rift. He made sure to bump up the difficulty, but only to peak Tier 2 strength. This was more about testing the AI than his own skills.
Once he activated [Cracked Phantom Armor], the AI prompted ‘skill use detected. Start analysis and optimization? Yes. No.’
Matt smiled. This was exactly what he had hoped for. All AIs could optimize mana usage, but it was usually only seen at Tier 5 and higher. Hitting yes, he waited eagerly.
‘[Cracked Phantom Armor] detected, analyzing properties and mana usage. Processing. Processing. Processing. Analyzing complete. Optimizing. Failure. Please, provide more usage data and information on optimizing skills.’
Decidedly less thrilled, Matt realized he shouldn't have gotten his hopes up. It was a long shot to expect a brand-new AI with mostly barebones software to do what took most AIs years to accomplish.
He started the combat predictive mode, then had the AI start the training room scenario.
Immediately, he stopped the training room.
The AI had shown every possible move the training aid could do.
Every single one.
The predictions ranged from the general attacks to more obscure combinations the goblins would never do. It was blinding and cluttered to the point of being useless.
One prediction had even shown a one in a million chance of the training aid just shutting down. That prediction was useless even in practice.
Tweaking the settings was tedious but easy enough. He lowered the tolerance for shown actions to 40% or higher only while taking into account past actions for the monster type and the general body structure.
He repeated the process again. It was better with less clutter but, after a few exchanges, he paused the training aids again. Matt then re-enabled the predictions that accounted for the weapon type.
The next fight was better, but he stopped the training after a few exchanges to raise the threshold of shown prediction to 60% and increase the transparency for all predictions greatly.
After that, Matt just fought the training goblins and hobgoblin. He wasn't sure if the learning speed was normal, but the AI soon predicted the attacks with far fewer possible predictions. Even better, the most likely path was nearly always correct after only a half hour.
He didn't quite trust the predictions because, in the end, this was a simulation of the goblins, not the real thing. While it was nearly perfect, the real goblins could, and did, make unexpected attacks at times.
The training continued for the next hour, with Matt tweaking settings as he went. He ended up changing the transparency to indicate the probability instead of showing numbers as it had before.
Having the AI re-review all the data it processed, he went and purchased three new 200 mana rechargeable mana stones. Tun had suggested it so he could swap the power source for his new blade, and Matt agreed. He didn't want to get screwed because of the wait time for his mana to un-aspect.
When he had asked about letting it use his own aspected mana, Tun had said that would double the price because of the added runes, while also forcing him to use two minor runes, so he just dropped the idea.
Tun said the weapon would be done in four more days, but that left Matt with little to do for the next week, so he trained and exercised. Any down time was mostly spent stress testing the AI.
The pad TrueMind had sent had far more testing scenarios than what was mandatory. There was monster vs monster combat, monster vs cultivator combat, and even cultivator vs cultivator combat.
Most scenarios were just small snippets the AI was supposed to reconstruct the fights off. Some contained a small area left over from a fight, and some a vast, destroyed landscape with hundreds of corpses. A more interesting scenario he found was when the AI was put into a PoV of a fighter and had to predict the opponent's movements. The AI was awful at it, but Matt was interested in watching the fights play out and making his own predictions.
At first, the AI had the same predictive problems as before, but as he let it watch the early fights, it slowly got better at predicting the flow of combat. It was still useless when it came to skills or Talents, but it got better after he found an information repository on common Tier 8 skill shards on the EmpireNet.
The AI could predict low Tier skill usage somewhat, but only after seeing the skill used at least once. So, surprise attacks and a clever first usage still tripped it up.
It was only at a 5% predictive ability with any fight that involved skills, and only 2% for combat over Tier 5. Still, Matt felt progress of his own watching the fights. Seeing the flow of combat in higher Tiers gave him ideas and possibilities for his own fighting style.
He also found an AI downloadable class on veils and purchased it for ten thousand credits.
It was incredible. The class had information packets that allowed his AI to simulate the feeling and pattern of what a veil should be.
With the AI’s help, Matt was able to get a rudimentary veil that would dampen any spiritual sense trying to probe him in only a few hours. It wasn't perfect, as he couldn't hold the essence at the edge of his spirit as well as the AI projected, but he was happy with the progress.
It was a strain on his concentration but would help hide his mana regeneration, so he set the AI to ping him any time he let the veil slip. The improvement was slow but steady. He and the AI predicted that, within a few weeks, he would be able to hold a weak veil constantly. Then it would just be a matter of strengthening it over time as his spirit grew stronger.
His new weapon was finished two days before the ban on his delving was lifted. Matt was glad he had gone with the more expensive version of the weapon once he got it. He and Tun had done a cutting test and, even without the enchantments activated, it was stronger and cut better than his first sword.
When the enchantment was active, it cut through a log like a dream. It was odd to use the enchantments on the blade. It felt like his spirit was trying to lift heavy weights while being covered with a wet blanket. It was a distracting sensation to get accustomed to.
It was mana efficient, being a low Tier weapon, but the more stress the weapon was under meant a faster mana drain. Still, Matt went and bought another three rechargeable mana stones. He just had to will the runes to active with his spirit, and they would pull from the mana stone in the pommel.
Having extra was a nice backup, and he wasn't going to run out of mana to keep them topped off even with the worst recharging rate stones he bought.
After his testing, he discovered with constant use, he could expect the 200 mana to last an entire rift. But if he did run out of mana in the middle of a delve, he had extra mana stones to swap out.
Using a rift mana stone was a waste of credits he couldn't afford.
His Talent was even a source of income with his mana if he was careful. Out of the PlayPen, people could sell mana to fuel the cities. The price was pretty low at fifty credits for 200 mana, but it would keep him from starving.
For a moment, he wished he had had a rechargeable mana stone and device to transfer the mana when he was at Benny’s. He could have made ten thousand credits in no time if he had had it.
The lack of information had greatly hampered his planning, though Matt figured he wouldn’t have been at Benny’s to meet Dena and Eric and join The Path if he had sold his mana. So, maybe it was better he didn’t know of the ability.
It's weird to think ten thousand credits was a far goal just a few years ago. Now, I can make it in a single rift if I get a little lucky. And with the Tier 3 rifts, I'll make that with every mana stone. Yet, I still feel poor. Things are more expensive, but I’ve come a long way.
I can't believe I once thought Benny charging four hundred credits a week was a lot. Most of them were Tier 3. The place truly was a dump that was just in a good location.
His gear was getting a little small, so he took his time off to buy new clothes for combat and casual wear. The combat clothes he bought were simple, just sturdy cloth, but they fit better and wouldn’t tear apart if he moved too fast.
Four days later, Matt stood in front of the tear to the Tier 3 rift, and with Aster on his heels, he stepped through.
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 couldn’t 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 didn’t bother her in the slightest. She pranced around, sniffing the air without a care in the world and excitement flooding through their bond.
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 5’5”. Matt estimated it would be taller if it wasn’t so hunched, closer to 5’9”. It snapped its head toward him as he approached and, with a howl, it rushed him.
The wolfman had its disproportionately large claws held out to either side, and its teeth bared as it charged.
Sidestepping, he struck out with his blade’s 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 Matt’s 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 hadn’t 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 the howl would have attracted attention.
That would cause 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 that had been ahead of them and that would try to attack their rear, now that he had turned to fight.
The monsters tried to surround him. Two circled to flank him, trying to get Matt to place his back to one of the three. He wasn’t willing to call their bluff quite yet. He wanted to learn how the monsters fought.
