The Path of Ascension

Chapter 327

Two months. Sixty one days objective. Four hundred and eighty-eight days subjective.

It should have been enough for Matt to be raring to reenter the fight, but he wished they could have had another objective month off. Just another two hundred and forty days. That much additional time would allow them to go from eighty percent of their best to eighty-five, or even ninety percent.

For all his power, he couldn’t grant wishes, but they were ready.

Eighty percent of their peak performance was better than Team Zero had been in a long time, and the Empire needed them.

The last of the reinforcements had been called forth and sent to slow the Harmony Accords down, but from the reports, reinforcements was a generous designation. The five armies were mostly comprised of new Tier 25 troops, either fresh recruits or Tiered up soldiers, and veterans who had been cycled to the backlines for extensive healing. The fact that the Empire had to call them to the frontlines was clearly desperation, but it had bought some time, and by all accounts had slowed the Harmony Accords’ rapid advance down.

As their analysts expected, the Harmony Accords had used their influx of elites to rapidly attack nexus points. In the two months they had been uncontested, they cracked two of the three nexus points they had attacked. It was only a valiant effort on the defenders’ part that prevented their last assault from victory, and if they decided to circle back, they would surely succeed the second time. Which they surely would, as they were trying to clear a channel even as the Tier 25 battlefields retook ground for the first time in the war. And if their enemies wanted a secure supply line to the Citadel, they needed to keep a region under their control.

Which was exactly why they were needed. If Allie was able to teleport them they might have gotten a few more days of recovery but now they needed to travel the normal way.

Not that they were going to be traveling like a normal combat troop. Ascenders had better methods then that even when they didn’t have access to a teleporter on Allie’s level.

The first leg of their journey would be taken in one of the fastest Tier 35 supply ships, already scheduled to make a trip from the capital to the Citadel. Unfortunately, due to how close the battlefront was, it couldn’t take them any further than that. But the week and a half or so that the ship would take to travel through a corridor of allowed supply routes was still far faster than they could manage on their own while also conserving Joy’s strength.

From there, Joy would be taking them to their actual targets in her new, or rather old ship.

It was, in fact, the ship she had used when transporting Aiden around in his first war, albeit with a few modifications. With her Talent making most ship functions free, the designers could make hyper specialized ships for her, and with an Ascender’s budget, they had. Her new ships were built almost like single fighter ships, all maneuverability and guns thanks to engines being a secondary concern with Allie’s ability to teleport them. However, her old ship was all engine.

And with Matt there to fuel it, they had added even more engines.

The efficiency would make even Matt’s most inefficient runes look like a beacon of longevity, but that was by design. Her Talent made the ship free to run so long as it fell within certain parameters of ‘ship-ness,’ and it didn’t care how much mana it would normally need. With Matt’s assistance, they could surpass even that, adding various ways to enhance the ship’s speed that weren’t technically part of the ship, and therefore weren’t part of the normal calculation.

That was where the boosters came in.

Most engines were primarily based on fire or air enchantments, thanks to their efficiency and simplicity. Many of the most advanced engines, in turn, were often based on force, but above that things got a bit… wilder. Engines designed to utilize level four mana types, like sky, cosmic, space, and aurora were known quantities, but were exceptionally rare, complicated to construct, and harder to maintain. There was only a single twilight ship in the entire Empire Tier 25 fleet, a custom fighter ship constantly maintained by its pilot. The absolute pinnacle of war-Tier engine design was a single, warp-based ship in the Corporations, which similarly was maintained by a small team of Tier 35 experts.

And Travel mana was absolutely nothing like any of those. It wasn’t that surprising, all told. Each type of mana, with just a few exceptions, required its own unique approach to design and usage, and air, fire, and force had a lot of momentum behind them, millennia of research and experience refining designs and informing mechanics and pilots alike of best practices. Joy’s ship was a hybrid affair, using force, air, and fire alike, as well as a touch of plasma for good measure, all in concert. Just shoving travel mana in would be actually worse than useless.

But it could absolutely work as a supplement. One of Zack’s projects, since he’d worked out the mana type, had been trying to develop a basic travel engine with Ai’la and Joy. Matt had popped in from time to time, and had spent most of this past break dedicating a ton of time to the effort.

The four of them, alongside some Firmament members, had gotten something working in just the nick of time. It certainly didn’t look like a traditional engine, being primarily made of white marble columns supporting a roof, above which floated a tesseract-shaped travel mana-aspected crystal. With enough power, any ship it sat within could up to double its speed, with no interference for other engines.

Working with travel mana was fun. It wasn’t quite as simple as fire and air, but it was far more powerful than those, and its speed-efficiency was above any other engine they’d been able to test. At least in theory. Their current models were incredibly rudimentary and would need a few thousand iterations before they started to shine. Then they’d still need to derive engine enchantments from scratch for the esoteric mana type, but that wasn’t too big of an issue and could be pushed off to the future.

Matt was actually really looking forward to it. Once he got his guild up and running, he intended to help spearhead the work. There were undoubtedly going to be Tier 40 guilds and corporations working on their own, proprietary, high Tier version of the engine type, but Matt hoped he might be able to find a niche within high-end low-Tier devices, like flying swords, trains, and taxis.

It would be incredibly expensive, but would have a lasting impact on the realm, which was all Matt really wanted to do.

Like so many other things, it would have to be pushed to the future, as they still had a war to deal with.

Unlike their normal teleport out of the rift in Joy's ship, they had to exit the rift via the entrance distortion, and it was only then that Matt realized he hadn’t seen the entrance in a long time. Even when they went to just explore the capital, they usually cajoled Allie to teleport them. Not that it was difficult to convince her to abscond from the rift, but it made the trek through the base all the more jarring.

The new ship was a nice distraction, at least.

From the outside, it looked smaller than their old ship- roughly halfway between that and a personal one or two-man ship- but the spatial compression was so much more intense that in truth, it was about three times larger. Of course, most of that was engine, so they only had marginally more habitable space.

Granted, a fairly substantial amount of that was taken up by what could only be described as a massive throne. It was ominous, primarily black and red, and had a backrest reminiscent of two spiral horns supporting a velvet backrest. Behind it, a dozen arm-thick power cables extended into an open access hatch, which Matt knew led to the travel mana booster and a bunch of similar contraptions.

The entire contraption, all put together, looked almost comically evil.

Stopping to stare, Matt sighed. Before he could lament, Ai'la slapped his back as she stepped around him. “It's ok, you get your evil overlord arc earlier than most. I’m sure the movie will be hilariously exaggerated. Maybe I can make a formation that you need to wear as a crown or something to help sell the image.”

Matt was going to make a snarky comment back, but he caught the hint of a smile on Dena’s face, so he just played into it. “I’m sure they will add a black cape and maybe even a green scarf; something incredibly impractical just so the fans can easily identify me.”

Aster, on the other hand, chortled at his plight. “Oh yes, please do the crown. That will be so funny.”

Even Liz piled onto him. “Oh, I always wanted to be seduced by an evil overlord. Maybe spirited away from my castle in the night? I’m pretty sure we have a black cape somewhere.”

Flopping into the chair, Matt lounged like a stereotypical villain. “Go forth and conquer the good people, my minions. Failure will be met with murder, so make sure not to fail. Can’t have my side too strong for when the hero gets here to murder me after I don’t take his threat seriously. Also attack him one at a time, never all together.”

Before they could get into it any more, Joy's voice came over the ship's intercom. “Welcome aboard the IFV Rubber Ducky. Today our mission is to get ferried to stupid punchie people planet where we will make our enemies… Ugh, I can't do this if Aiden isn't on board. Buckle up fuckers, this bitch has got one heck of a kick.”

As they rose off the surface of the planet, Matt called through their AI messaging system, “Is there a reason for the physical intercom? That's so… mundane.”

Joy's voice was noticeably irritated as she replied. “Aiden made it a rule not to call him over his AI unless it was important. Fucker always complained that I was interrupting him, but he was always just playing with himself- sorry, his Domain- to no avail. But, it ended with me getting this big red button that just begs to be used.”

Matt couldn’t really argue with that and nodded.

As Joy took them to the resupply ship they would be gathering in, Matt instead focused on sending his mana into the conduits and turning his mana solid. Then he frowned. The chair was trivial to use, no expertise required.

He wasn’t freshly Tiered up any more, damn it. His mana control was excellent. Okay, it was almost the worst of any of the mages he knew, but considering how many of those were Ascenders, or at least five Tiers stronger than him, that was a boast.

Still, it meant he didn’t need to think about supplying mana at all once the time came. In the meantime, Matt started resonating with his Concept before switching to his Intent. It was less about harmonizing and recovering his willpower, and more about him trying to get the switch fast enough that he could start to overlap the powers.

It wasn’t a part of the Guild training information, but Matt felt like even if it turned out to be a dead end, it was good training.

With everyone working on themselves, the travel inside the massive supply ship passed in what felt like mere moments, leaving them at Rusty’s capital.

There they were met with two pinnacle elites, Estelle Deloffre and Tedwin Dumont as well as their entourages, who would be joining them on their mission. They had been injured and cycled to the Citadel to recover in a safe location, but that simply made them prime candidates to be gathered up for their counter to the newly expanded Harmony Accords.

At least they wouldn’t be getting any of the ransomed captured elites back this soon. The fact that the enemy Great Powers were getting any of their captured elites back at all felt slimy to Matt, but he had seen the reparations, and even he couldn’t argue against the trade.

Three of the captured elites were being traded back to their respective Great Powers, one each, for an astronomical price. Twenty planets to no longer be counted as captured at the end of the war per each elite returned. If that wasn’t enough, Manny had argued for the return of a huge number of Empire and Guild prisoners and their immediate return to combat status. Though, the Empire’s own elite captives weren’t being retrieved yet, that was still something like thirty Tier 15 armies, eleven Tier 25 armies, and four Tier 35 armies, which would be a welcome boon for all the war fronts once they were cleared and able to reenter the fight.

It would be another few months before the trade was finalized and the transfers complete, but the other Great Powers were pretty obviously rushing to complete the trade before Allie was back on her feet.

There was, apparently, also the understanding that any further trades would be exceptionally rare and only considered on a case by case basis. Matt was personally very, very interested in finding those cases, but only time would tell.

The two elites were polite, but they did little talking. Aster said they were obviously terrified of them, but Matt was pretty sure she was just joking.

Instead, everyone started overlaying their Domains and getting a feel for the metaphorical wavelength everyone liked to operate on. Taking the time and practicing in training scenarios would have been better, and would have ensured a more seamless fit of everyone's Domains, but they didn’t have that luxury. Besides,Darrow’s Intent assisted with smoothing out the worst overlap on top of helping with communication.

Not that the Domain work stopped Matt from paying attention to the ship after they entered chaotic space.

The entire ship rattled as the primary engines came online in a way that didn’t seem good, but as they started to pick up speed, things smoothed out to a nearly imperceptible vibration.

That lasted until Matt started powering the boosters he was connected to.

The initial kick was massive. Half the passengers literally fell out of their chairs, though most recovered quickly. Liz’s phoenix body went sprawling across the room with an undignified- but very cute- squawk, Dena was nearly knocked out of her seat until a strip of fabric uncoiled from her armor and grabbed onto a handhold, and even Matt had to use a subtle touch of [Gravity Manipulation] to make sure he stayed firmly in his seat. The only people who seemed entirely unaffected were Darrow, who was firmly secured in a binding enchantment, Joy, whose whoop could be heard even before she turned off the intercom, and Susanne, who simply clenched her fist around the grip of her sword which hadn’t budged an inch.

Matt expected it to return to normal after a few minutes, but that absolutely did not happen. Not only was the entire ship shaking viciously from the sheer power it was experiencing, Joy needed to make far more adjustments to her flying. They weren’t even going off the well-defined paths, but with the speeds they were going at, even the relatively tamed paths within chaotic space were a veritable minefield of turbulence that if hit wrong could smash their ship into dust.

After a swift drop sent Aster flying into the ceiling about ten minutes in, the overriding opinion shifted to security over comfort, and the restraining enchantments switched on throughout the room. Matt thought he saw a bit of a smile cross Darrow’s face, but he might have been imagining it.

Three days later they picked up three more pinnacle elites and their crews, which made the living conditions positively cramped.

Then they were off to chase the Harmony Accords.

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The massive ship was suspected to be aiming at a nexus point and they wanted to intercept them.

With their projections it was unlikely they would beat them there, but they hoped that they could, if nothing else, prevent them from cracking the planetary shields and taking the fortress world.

While their ship was cramped with just over a dozen people, their spies had long since gotten their hands on some of the Harmony Accords’ general blueprints, and there was more than enough room for an army or five with room to spare.

They arrived at Opalian as the Harmony Accords pelted the planetary shields with mana cannon fire, arriving from chaotic space and scarcely even slowing down. It took mere minutes for them to get within range, plenty of time for everyone to get ready. It wasn’t as good as teleporting, but it was good enough.Of course, the Harmony Accords saw them approaching, and even before they arrived the core elites fanned out, flanked by the nominal members. They were further flanked by the corporation mercenaries, who set up a wall of fortifications and weapon emplacements.

They were throwing themselves onto the blades of their enemies.

Once they reached the three quarter distance mark the mercenaries opened fire with their mana cannons, but Matt just cast [Bulwark] and crystallized it, while Drifter tried to drift as much as the ship’s design would allow. Not that there was any air for the stubby wings to grip onto, but her Domain made it work as if there was.

Before they got too close though, they exited the ship and Drifter flew upward over the orbital plane to get out of the battlefield.

That left them to advance under withering fire, and Matt was immediately forced to cast another [Bulwark].

Bulwark cast his namesake spell as well, but with the hits they were taking, his shield was quickly worn down.

Origami used their advance to set up her own mini space fortress, which Aster promptly froze over, further adding to the defenses.

Coasting on their borrowed momentum, Matt’s world was a litany of colors as spells slammed into and splashed around his crystallized [Bulwark]. It was almost pretty.

Pointing his left hand to the side and slightly down, Matt cast [Mana Beam] and smirked as Ari Kai appeared and then promptly vanished again as he was teleported. Whether he was forced to the Harmony Accords’ ship or just retreated to the rest of his team, they wouldn’t know until Darrow got another sighting of him.

Their erstwhile leader hadn’t been idle in the two years they spent in the rift, and had developed several techniques to constantly observe people even after losing sight of them. It wasn’t a perfect counter to Ari Kai, and Darrow was primarily focused on finding Daxton Vestant anyway, but it was good enough to make it much, much harder for the…

Who?

Matt stopped his idle musings and put his mind back to the fight.

Taking a deep breath, he started charging a [Barrage]d [Breach].

The three train sized mana bolts tore through space with enough power that Matt was sure the Harmony Accords spiritual perception was screaming at them they needed to move.

Except, it wouldn’t be so easy this time.

Aster waved her staff at the same time as Light narrowed his eyes, and the three projectiles started to orbit each other before splitting into nine projectiles. Those nine then turned into twenty seven, then into eighty one. Eighty one spinning, multi million mana [Breach]es. Seventy eight perfect fakes and three incredibly dangerous projectiles.

Matt couldn’t even tell which ones were real, if that was even the right way of thinking about it. Light and Aster had worked hard to make their movements perfectly in sync with zero communication between the two that might be intercepted.

The Harmony Accords didn’t sit still and let them attack unabated. While the elites spread out, the mercenaries hunkered down and unleashed spell after spell, trying to play whack a mole and hit one of the real projectiles. Each failure caused Aster's illusion to be disrupted, but that only let her better concentrate on masking the real ones.

Then, fifty four projectiles struck home.

There was a brief instant where their enemies froze before the first [Breach] detonated. The explosion vaporized two sections of the mercenaries defensive line, but the chaos spread as another section exploded as the second real [Breach] hit.

The third, however, never exploded. Instead it flew, invisible, at the army attacking the planet behind the Harmony Accords.

Just when Matt was hopeful that it would slip through the net, Gan Le was flung in the projectile’s path by Maven. A massive explosion erupted around him, but of course the man was more ruffled from his sudden relocation than the enormous attack..

Matt cursed their bad luck, but they hadn’t really expected that move to work. Illusions just weren’t that good at trying to completely hide millions of barely-constrained mana.

Still, at least with him being off to the side, Matt could [Mana Beam] Maven with impunity… only for Gan Le to still get in range to drag the beam towards him, nullifying it once again and earning a glare from Matt.

He was seriously tired of the defensive powerhouse, but they had a method to get rid of him if they could just isolate him a little.

Flooding his [Bulwark] with mana, Matt deactivated the skill and let his endless sub-aspect and his Tier 25 Talent keep the spell going while he flew forward. It wouldn’t last long, but it would buy Aster some time to spread her spirit space far enough to start absorbing attacks in his stead.

Matt was just a half mile from Maven and Long Zhiyuan when a trio of crossbow bolts zipped past him and detonated on Maven's side.

They did no damage, but that wasn’t what Matt was looking for. He instead focused on her reaction time. It seemed slow for her baseline, but the answer of who was being boosted became clear when Lorlael cast a massive lightning spell with zero charge up.

The spell lit up the surrounding area, but the illumination lingered and turned into shards of hard light that raced towards the ice fort.

Matt stopped the attack dead in its track with a pulse of [Gravity Manipulation]. A second, lateral pulse shattered the shards, causing them to dissolve.

Maven made motions towards approaching Matt, turning into some kind of feathered octopus, only to be stopped in her tracks by Queen, who used a trail of ink being left by her sword as a whip, ensnaring one of the shapeshifter’s arms and pulling her close.

Matt loosely wanted to join in, but he found himself under attack by a new duo. Gurtuid Sing of the Republic and H’wuit Ber of the Federation, neither of whom he was terribly worried about. [Mana Slash] lashed out, only for Gurtuid to deflect the projectile away. From there, Matt momentarily pulsed [Mana Beam], only to freeze it with [Reinforce Mana] and grab it as a spear for his off hand.

Now armed with a sword in one hand and a spear in the other, he fended off the duo for a few moments, keeping a wary eye out for when Gan Le started closing in. Matt parried a void-laced dagger from Gurtuid, then snapped his attention to the more-inconvenient Sect tank as he finally closed in. Matt leveled his cannon at Gan Le, and-

An enormous pulse of DANGER echoed through Team Zero’s link, and then Liz died.

All of her. All at once.

Understanding flooded Matt’s mind as Darrow reconstructed everything that had just happened.

One Liz had been engaging the Federation’s rune squadron alongside Bulwark and Torment when one of the soldiers - Charlie - had gotten within arm’s reach of both pinnacle elites. In the blink of an eye, he’d cast aside his sword and reached out to grab each of the duo. That had been the spike of danger, and Liz had reacted innately, knocking Charlie away. Unfortunately, that had involved direct physical contact between her blood and the soldier, which instantly killed her.

Target acquired.

They’d been expecting Daxton Vestant to be invisible while he waited for a chance to strike, not disguised as another member of the Harmony Accords. But in retrospect, the tactic made sense. The man’s talent enabled him to instantly kill anything he touched. The exact limits were unclear, but physical contact was known to be required. Armor wouldn’t stop him, and weapons usually didn’t conduct his deathtouch to the person holding it, let alone spells. But all of Liz’s blood was part of her body, and that contact as she’d saved Torment and Bulwark’s lives had been enough to kill all of her bodies in a single instant.

Already, the bodies were beginning to discorporate, dissolving into blood as her Tier 25 Talent no longer held her human form in one piece, but the blood gleamed and glowed with the light of embers as her bloodline worked to revive her.

Bulwark and Torment each tried to enact their own form of vengeance, the former firing off arrows of light and the latter summoning a small horde of disposable minions to swarm the disguised Daxton. Unfortunately, the real runesoldiers worked in sync to block the haphazard attacks, not that they could stop Aster from pelting Daxton with ice, slowly building him into a human popsicle.

This close to Maven, Matt couldn’t swap places with his wife- though he wasn’t sure if her being dead would interfere with it - and at this range, Gan Le would just attract any [Mana Beam] or other projectiles he tried to fire off. But not all of Matt’s attacks required projectiles.

[Telekinesis] wasn’t Matt’s favorite spell, despite his time spent using it with Harper’s blade. It took too much concentration for him to use it with much finesse, and he had better options when it came to blasts of raw power. But in some instances, it was the right tool for the job.

A focused pulse of raw force slammed into the human popsicle, shattering much of the ice that Aster had built up on the man but knocking him out of formation. That took enough attention that Gurtuid was able to land an attack with her void dagger on Matt’s armor, but he aspected [Cracked Phantom Armor] to arcane, reinforcing the suit’s innate defenses against void to the point he didn’t need to worry about it at the moment.

Instead, Matt let his attention return to his wife’s killer. It didn’t matter that her revival was going quite well, her dispersed clouds of blood sparking and beginning to flame, it was the principle of the matter. A telekinetic blast struck the man again, ideally keeping him off-balance and away from the closest bit of reforming Liz.

Unfortunately, an orange blade cut through the wall of force and the slippery elite tried to escape, but Matt redirected his attention from a slap to a crushing fist.

Gan Le hit Matt with a taunting spell, but he hardly felt it. He’d get to Gan Le when he was done.

There was nothing in the world except the man he was holding just feet away from from a tendril of resurrecting Liz.

Much of Liz’s blood from throughout the battlefield had been dispersed already, to the point where Matt didn’t know how many bodies she’d have when she came back, but he was going to make damn well sure she had at least one.

Matt absentmindedly deflected H’wuit’s attack into Gurtruid’s face, hardly giving it a thought. At the same time, the runesoldiers managed to break through Torment and Bulwark’s defense just a hair too late. Liz’s blood turned golden, casting a gilded light across the battlefield, and she reformed into a phoenix blazing with brilliant flames, intercepting the runesoldiers with a massively Concept-empowered fury. It looked like she had had most of her bodies dispersed, though a couple were making halfhearted attempts to reform, but she was officially back in the fight.

Matt released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and squeezed.

Inside Matt’s relentless [Telekinesis] grip, Daxton Vestant died, his body crushed into a perfect sphere. Unfortunately, he didn’t truly die, as a phantasmal black dog erupted from the man’s chest and dove into a small ethereal gate, no doubt returning him to the main ship.

Matt harrumphed. Grims, like phoenixes, were incredibly hard to put down for real, but he was a bit sad the man had chosen to flee instead of continuing to fight in phantom form. He would have liked to see if he or Light could kill the ghostly form, but Daxton preferred to retreat when things got too intense, and apparently dying was too intense for the man. Bah. He’d return to flesh and blood sometime over the next couple of days, and they could potentially capture him then.

The better undying fighter on the field was showing her worth, and two of the runesoldiers were already floating in pieces, and the others in a fighting retreat.

And with that, Matt properly returned his attention to the fight he was actually in. He was in the middle of dodging a very aggressive attack from Gurtuid while blocking a beam from H’wuit with his left hand. So, he struck out with his sword, scoring a potent blow against Gurtuid’s side. Unfortunately, with Gan Le present, that only knocked her to the side, but it did still properly block H’wuit’s attack. Rage sparked within Matt, and a ghastly grin spread across his face.

Gan Le was around. So… neither of these two would actually die too quickly. And right now? That was a bonus. Doubly so, as it would probably tire out Gan Le as well.

He followed up with a massive [Tribulation Strike], the lightning digging into Gertuid’s invisible protections but dealing no damage to the man underneath. In response, Matt hardened the electric arcs with [Reinforce Mana], turning them into binding chains. H’wuit blasted Matt with a torrent of fire, which Matt deflected with [Bulwark] to get in closer to Gan Le.

[Cracked Air Slide] let Matt effortlessly dodge the followup and close the distance to the Sect fighter. He raised his hand and spewed a torrent of [Cracked Dragonflame], the blue flames washing over Gan Le and freezing as Matt applied his Tier 25 Talent, locking the man within a prison of mana crystal.

Gurtuid had escaped from the lightning chains and brought his sword down on Matt’s head, which Matt met with a blast of his Concept’s repulsion, focused directly on the sword. The blade continued to descend, but Matt took advantage of the man’s off-balance attack to stab him in the gut.

It skittered off Gan Le’s protection, of course, but that was the point. Matt’s [Dispelling Edge] sank into the defensive spell, finding no purchase. But repeatedly pulsing his Concept, occasionally using a flash of his Intent’s gravity control, and mixing it in with [Gravity Manipulation] and [Telekinesis], Matt absolutely savaged the invincible Republic fighter.

Gan Le’s protection definitely had an end somewhere, and Matt would find it.

At some point, Gurtuid stopped trying to counterattack, instead working to parry Matt’s attacks with an array of blades wielded both in his hands and with skills. Matt countered with his own [Sword Twin], each carrying their own [Dispelling Edge] thanks to [Barrage]. In time, that stopped as well, as he apparently figured out the true extent of Gan Le’s protections, but that was fine by Matt.

He was intentionally scaling back how much mana he was using with each attack, pulling back his constant usage of [Overcharge] as [Double Tap]’s own empowerment grew with each attack he made. With hundreds of [Dispelling Edge] slicing into Gan Le’s impenetrable defenses, as well as absolutely shredding any spells that had been sent his way, every single attack was hitting hundreds if not thousands of times harder than it normally should. By the time he was intentionally underpowering the base [Dispelling Edge] to sell the illusion of him attacking Gurtuid futilely, he decided it was time to act.

[Archmage’s Presence] poured into all of Matt’s skills and his sword, strengthened by and strengthening [Reinforce Mana]. That was in turn funneled into an [Overcharge]d [Barrage], itself applying to [Overcharge] to stack an absolutely monstrous amount of power into his [Double Tap]-boosted [Dispelling Edge]. It was, all told, taking so much mana that Matt needed to pull from his mana crystal reserves to afford it.

All of that took but a fraction of a second, and as Matt recalled all of his [Sword Twin]s into a single sword, boosted the blade with [Hypersonic Edge], and attacked. It was, all told, so much mana that he could barely contain it all even with his Dewdrop Jadechip helping him manipulate the mana within his sword, and it was almost blindingly bright to his mana sight, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

The wickedly sharp artifact whipped forwards, Matt using his Rubberfruit-enhanced flexibility to snap his arm like a whip, concentrating a truly Titanic amount of power into a single strike.

Despite there being nothing strictly designed as an attack spell in Matt’s attack, the sheer amount of power involved exploded as Matt’s dispel struck Gan Le’s infuriating protection, whiting out Matt’s portion of the battlefield.

Matt didn’t let that stop him, and while the amount of dispelling mana in the area meant even his backup, Manipulation-based senses returned nothing, he slashed out blindly at the figure he assumed was still there.

When his senses returned, he was caught between satisfaction and fury that Gurtuid was still in one piece. Fortunately, that was the only thing still in one piece around him. The man was wholly naked, his swords were nowhere to be seen, and it looked like he’d had a fairly substantial amount of hair either torn out, burned off, or shaved to his skin. He also had several long and thin cuts across his body that Matt corresponded with his blind attacks. Given Gurtuid wasn’t known for incredibly durable skin, Matt came to the conclusion that while he had managed to overwhelm Gan Le’s protective skill… that wasn’t the only form of defense the man provided.

He growled in frustration, summoning the stunned Gurtuid to his hand, closing his armored hand around the man’s bare neck, and fanned out a [Barrage] of [Sword Twin]s around his body and the body of the Republican elite.

“Yield,” Matt ground out, only to receive no response.

“Yield,” he pushed again, pinging the man’s AI for a surrender. The dumbfounded man still gave no response, so Matt gave up asking. Any moment and-

An illusion of Aster appeared next to him. At least, it was probably an illusion given how all the attacks barraging him simply passed through her body. She didn’t stay long enough to say anything, but instead grabbed Gurtuid’s unresponsive hands and twirled as though she was going to lead the man into a dance. He passed through Matt’s grip and vanished an instant later.

Matt turned his attention back to H’wuit and Gan Le, who seemed to be busy with some combination of ineffectually pelting Matt with spells and freeing the latter from his mana stone prison. Gan Le did not look good, and Matt took the chance to fire off a [Mana Beam].

It still arced towards Gan Le and didn’t leave so much as a scratch.

With a blast of [Cracked Air Slide], Matt raced to where the duo was, and lashed out with a sword blazing with [Tribulation Strike]. H’wuit vanished in a puff of air before the attack could even land, presumably back to the ship.

Gan Le, for his part, crossed his fists and encased himself within some kind of emerald shield Matt hadn’t seen before, then coughed up a mouthful of blood. The tether connecting him to Matt dissipated, and the man rocketed away towards the ship.

Matt turned to engage with the rest of the Harmony Accords, glad to finally be free of the Sect defender, but found that the rest were also in retreat. Before he could celebrate their victory, the world turned blue as the Harmony Accords’ ship pulsed with an attack that was large even by Matt’s standards, slamming into the planetary shields and shattering them.

A quick AI query relayed through Darrow informed him that the planetary shields had been permanently broken, the formations responsible for them broken wholly, and they’d need to be rebuilt in their entirety.

Simultaneously, the enormous ship vanished, tearing its way into chaotic space and leaving the battlefield empty.

Without the spatial lock, Matt rapid fire teleported to Liz’s side where he inspected her.

Instead of worry or anger, he saw a hint of… avarice in Liz’s yellow eyes.

“I'm fine. I wasn’t expecting the deathtouch, is all, and I’ve still got a good revive or two still in me before I need to molt. I might be able to isolate it next time, too? Or redirect it to someone whose blood I recently took with some practice. It was… enlightening.”

Matt desperately wanted to ask, but with their enemies having just left and proving they were just as adept at using illusions as Aster, it wasn’t the time or place.

So long as she was alive, things were fine.

That couldn’t be said for the fortress world. Even though the planet remained in Empire hands, without its planetary shields, the defenders were sitting ducks, and Matt wasn’t surprised when Darrow ordered the stationed soldiers to retreat. There was no reason for them to throw their lives away when the inevitable follow-up armies reached this world.

It took Joy almost ten minutes to circle back around, but then they were off, chasing the turbulence of the Harmony Accords’ ship.