The Path of Ascension

Chapter 118

Achlys was an utterly plain man, Matt found through the brief introductions. It only took minutes for the man to change the topic to rift creation.

Matt thought he was a kindred spirit, who would join him and Erwin in their testing, but he was quickly disabused of that notion once they started to get to work.

The man's soft voice almost wafted to Matts ears as they looked at a formation setup. Why do you even want to make rifts?

Erwin opened his mouth to say something, but Achlys shook his head. Not you, Erwin. I know your mind well enough. Youve helped me some time ago; I understand you. You have no motive greater than the quest for knowledge itself. No, my question was directed to Matt. Why do you want this?

That question was one that he had never considered. It wasn't something that had come up in conversation, or something that hed pondered on his own. He was just doing what he found in front of himself, for the most part, over the last few years.

He struggled over how to respond, but concluded that the truth was better than trying to guess what Achlys might want to hear.

It's fun.

Seeing an edge creep into the mans placid, brown eyes, he hurriedly added, It is. This is something new and cutting edge. I can provide the mana to allow everyone to delve all sorts of rifts. But it doesn't stop there. If we can figure out the underlying mechanics in rift creation, we can design rifts that are safer, or at least identical, so low Tier people can be safely taught how to delve.

He saw his new trainer soften and kept up his rambling. This is new ground, and its so under-studied, our potential to uncover useful information is endless. Rifts are the center of everything we are as cultivators. We don't study them more almost solely because of the cost it entails. I've spent billions of mana in the last few years. That isn't without it's opportunity cost, of course. I don't know exactly how higher Tier planets are really run, but that much mana could help several higher Tier rifts cycle a few times, I'm sure.

Matt gestured to his frame and said, I'm weak. I get that. I can get swatted into a bloody mist by anyone. I won't pretend that I'm about to discover the truths of the universe or anything like that, but this is important work. I was born on a Tier 4 world. We didnt even have enough rifts to go around. We were too afraid to build cities anywhere but the safe areas off the coasts, which severely limited our strength. I was unable to delve when I was awakened, because the rifts near the cities were all monopolized by the governing bodies and guilds.

A wash of sadness overcame Matt as he thought of the rift breaks, and he didn't restrain the heat that crept into his voice.

Our local nobles were incompetent, and their negligence led to rift breaks destroying more than a few cities. I lost my parents in those attacks.

Matt felt his Concept resonate with his mounting anger, and felt his mana start to leak out as well. 320 MPS wasnt a small amount, and the visible blue haze began to escape into the surroundings as his mana rushed out.

Achlys was completely unbothered, and just watched Matt with a flat look.

I was weak then. Yes, I was a child, but our entire planet was weak. They were Tier 3 and 4 rift breaks. No one should have had any issue in fighting that level of attack back, even with three rift breaks happening at once. If we had been stronger, we could have done something. At present, I alone could have prevented all of those deaths, but we had no one.

Matt controlled himself and pointed to the formation plates. This is how we do that. I want to ensure every planet has rifts that they know are safe and fueled. I might not be able to accomplish the latter on my own, but I can ensure that information about rifts is readily available for all.

The brown-haired man seemed utterly unmoved and flatly asked, What do you intend to do when a guild or noble family gets mad that you're spreading information that they probably have? What will you do when they send their hit squads?

Matt snorted, I don't expect the Emperor will tolerate such actions, but I'm not so naive to think theyll be happy if I spread knowledge thats been locked away. But Matt held up a finger, I don't expect them to have as much information as I do. A higher Tier mana stone could provide more mana than I have, but from everything Ive seen, few would be willing to spend the price to have researched this thoroughly.

With a slight bit of pride, he finished, And if they want to play stupid games by attacking me, Im happy to return the favor.

Achlys shrugged slightly. I think you underestimate the powers that might be aligned against you, but good enough. You seem to understand the weight of what you're researching and the consequences it will bring.

A yellow tint tinged his eyes, and a soft growl entered his voice. Just remember that you are responsible for the monsters you make. They might come back one day to eat you.

Matt just blinked at the higher Tier man, and they had an awkward stare down for a long minute, before Achlys gestured and asked, What have you learned so far?

With that out of the way, the three of them dove into the rift creation process, and Matt detailed what he and Erwin had learned over the past two years.

They completely skipped over the Aura experiments, but filled Achlys in regarding the rest of their research. Most of their examples were accompanied by practical demonstrations, to show the actual effects they were explaining, and give the other man a better grasp of the situation.

A few hours into their lecture, it was clear to Matt that Achlys was brilliant, and had an instinctive understanding of the process.

When they discussed trying to create a rift around a skill shard, the brown-haired man shifted into a medium-sized brown wolf.

His voice remained understandable as he said, As Erwin knows already, Im a Briarwolf, a species that has a deep connection with forest, and a power over our environments. I'm something of an oddity, with a greater control over things like rifts. Most of the brethren can only stop rifts from forming, but Ive found that I have a degree of control over where they form.

Matt bent down and stared at the man's paws. They had seemingly merged with the grass around them. He had a hard time pinpointing where the grass ended, and the flesh began.

He was unable to resist asking, Does that hurt?

A wolfish eyebrow was raised with a cocked head that reminded him of Aster a great deal.

Seeing that the man wasn't offended, he continued, My bond is an arctic fox. She can't merge with her element, and honestly, that looks painful.

No. It's as natural to me as breathing. Im simply expanding my domain and control to the area around us.

In fifteen minutes, Matt understood what the man had meant. The grass around them perked up, and the flowers that had started to wilt in the chiller evenings began to revitalize.

Finally, Achlys sat down and gestured with a paw for Matt to continue.

This was the first of the testing they did with the Briarwolf.

As they repeated all of their previous tests, they discovered that Achlys' presence increased the success rate of rifts keeping their aspects by close to five percent. As long as his intent was in line with the rift they wanted to make.

If he wanted the rift to deaspect on Tiering up, it happened close to seventy percent of the time.

But for all the good the man's presence did them, they ran into a wall when trying to create rifts with skill shards as the seed.

Despite their best efforts, close to eighty-five percent of the rifts sucked up the skill shards when coming into existence. That was the precursor to the troubles they had when Tiering the rifts up.

They were unable to get a rift to Tier 2 without deaspecting at all.

The three of them spent almost a month just trying to get a single rift to Tier up without deaspecting, but had no success at all.

It was during that time they decided to take a half step back, and try to create rifts with the purpose of creating skills.

They had a much greater success with that line of testing, and within a few months, they had created Tier 8 rifts that usually produced the skills they wanted.

Taking that a step further, they tried to recreate the rift with [Copper Skin]. It wasn't easy, and took over a week of tweaking the formula, but they finally were able to create a rift that dropped the skill.

It was an awful rift, with crab golems that shocked anyone who touched them, but it fit the general theme of the first rift they had gotten the skill from. It being a Tier 8 rift instead of a Tier 6 rift meant that the skill dropped far more often, with it being one of the rifts three common drops.

Instead of the haphazard formula Matt had accidentally made when he was Tier 5, they broke down the elements needed, and were able to recreate the process of forming the [Copper Skin] rift.

That caused a celebration that lasted days. Despite his outward quietness, Achlys even joined in and chatted with all of them, instead of disappearing into the uninhabited parts of the continent, as he usually did. Aster pestered the older beast, but he seemed unbothered by the endless stream of questions that generally came back around to making an ice cream bunny rift for her.

She shot mock glares at Matt every time she brought it up, still miffed that he hadn't figured it out for her yet. Matt just blew raspberries at her when she brought up the topic, to her endless annoyance.

Over the following year, they discovered two new skills from their efforts.

The first wasnt a helpful combat skill, but instead was a skill for cleaning bushes of bugs and other insects. The skill removed pests from plants or small trees, like snails, slugs, and bugs. The key was that it didn't kill them, but instead pushed them off of the target via a burst of air from the plant.

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The other skill came from a test Matt had done solely from a gut feeling. The fact that his hunch paid off irritated Erwin to no end, but they had gotten a seemingly new skill out of it.

The unnamed skill allowed the user to send a strand of mana into anything their feet were touching, and stick to the surface as if it were the ground. It was a mana hog of a skill, taking fifteen mana per cast, and it had to be recast for each footstep.

The rest of their other tests mostly created already known skills, but that was hardly an issue. They were filling in their data points, and constantly making improvements to their models.

When he was taking some time to work out on the new obstacle course, Matt sat at the top of a pillar he had climbed and watched as Melinda trained with Baxter on her Concept. He was woken out of his trance and paused as a thought came to him.

Melinda's Concept goop was an excellent fertilizer. It was also something that he hadn't really thought of after seeing it in use the first few times. She didn't like it, and didn't want to talk about it. She was a friend, and he respected her wishes on the topic.

The poor girl already took too much pressure onto herself as it was, and he didn't want to add to it. She was always trying to mother them all.

But, that goop could be useful in creating rifts.

After dropping the twenty feet, Matt took off in a loping stride that ate up the intervening distance.

Melinda wasn't happy with the idea to use her goop to create rifts, but acquiesced after Matt explained his thoughts. Baxter seemed to vibrate with excitement at the idea, and followed behind like a puppy.

He was helpful, though, and produced an endless stream of monsters for Melinda to melt.

With the last months of testing, Matt, Erwin, and Achlys were able to make the rift they wanted.

They started with some wood aspected mana with no sub-aspect, and combined it with a life aspected mana that made up a greater percentage of the rifts total mana.

The other mana types were the standard elements, with sub-aspects that had a healing or life theme.

It wasn't easy, and they had more than a few failures when trying to Tier up the rift. But they threw mana at the problem until they got a rift to Tier 8.

The rift didnt have the skills they wanted, so they tried again and again.

Fifteen unsuccessful rifts, and weeks later, they finally got what they were looking for.

A new skill appeared. It was in none of their databases, and even Luna and Kurt didnt recognize it.

Everyone on the continent crowded around Luna, who inspected the skill with a plethora of equipment.

Finally, she said, I think it's a Tier 8 healing spell.

What!

No way!

Melinda and Baxter let out nearly simultaneous shouts, but the older man was faster, and snatched the skill from the table where Luna left it.

Before anyone else could do more than stare, the skill shard crumbled to dust.

Matt was doubly shocked. He knew that higher Tier people could absorb skills faster, but that had been near instant, which implied that Baxter was a much higher Tier than he had believed.

He was also still reeling from the fact that they might have created a healing skill where there hadnt been one before.

That had massive implications that couldn't be underestimated.

Baxter brought out a small knife, and sliced a furrow into his forearm as they all watched.

A glowing light appeared from his hand and covered the wound, like a see-through bandage made from mana.

Melinda started probing the man's arm around the wound before saying, I cant tell what it's doing exactly. You're too strong, Baxter. Before anyone could say anything, she used the knife still in her mentor's hand to cut herself slightly.

Baxter then cast the spell again, and a near-identical bandage appeared to cover the wound.

Matt leaned forward to watch.

The small wound sat there with seemingly no change for nearly a minute, before the skill faded.

As the mana faded, the wound started to bleed again.

Huh! Not what I expected. Baxter said that with so much confidence, Matt almost believed he had predicted the outcome.

Mathew looked at his still bleeding wife and said, I don't get it.

Melinda cast a healing spell on herself and thanked Liz as she removed the blood before saying, I think the spell isn't a true healing spell. It's more like a bandage. It doesn't heal anything, but stops it from getting worse. Kinda like a pause button on the wound.

She looked to Baxter. What was the cost of that?

The older man brought his attention back to them and said, 20 mana, but I think more mana will be needed for larger wounds, and for the skill to last longer.

Slowly, he added, From the feeling I'm getting with the skill, I think 20 mana is the minimum cost, but not the max. If what I'm feeling is correct, more mana can either expand the coverage of the skill, or increase the duration of the protection. Theres also a slight instinctual feedback from the skill, letting me know how long it will last with the amount of mana I used, and with how bad the wound is. Interesting Let me see if

To Matt's horror, the man's hand fell off with a glow of a pale light, and blood started to pump out of the severed stump.

Baxter seemed unbothered, but everyone else recoiled in shock. Matt didnt miss Liz sneakily gathering up the blood and sucking it into her glove.

Unbothered, the same healing light appeared and covered the stump, and stopped the bleeding almost instantly.

Melinda, come feel this. The skill is acting as a prosthetic and circulating the blood naturally. It's quite

As Baxter was still talking, the skill faded, and he started to bleed once again.

Hmmm... It seems like the skill uses the mana faster for greater injuries.

Melinda nodded along and picked up his severed hand, and asked, What does the skill do for the severed flesh?

Baxter pointed at his detached hand, but nothing happened. They then put the hand back to the stump and cast the spell once more but the skill failed to activate.

Vinnie, from his place next to Matt, asked, What's that mean? I don't get it.

Mathew shushed him, but quietly said, It means that it's an undirected healing skill, like [Ranged Heal]. So, without Overhealth, it wont do more than keep the user alive. If you lose a head or heart, it wont activate, since it will consider the body dead. It also wont act as a way to keep a limb attached if it's fully removed.

Baxter nodded to the large man. Correct. I guess you do listen when Melinda talks. My wife stopped listening to my babbling ages ago.

Mathew shrugged. Of course. Though, is that a bad thing?

Melinda snorted at her husband. Hardly. It's a Tier 8 spell. I'm surprised it does this much already. Honestly, this is perfect for low Tier delvers. This will give them a cheap way to survive a more serious injury. At worst, it will give people time to use a potion or real bandage. At best, it will help people escape the rift and get to a proper healer.

She turned to Matt and hugged him hard. Thank you for making something good out of my Concept.

She then repeated her actions with Erwin and Achyls. The latter of whom looked uncomfortable at the attention, but didnt pull away.

Baxter pressed his hand to the stump, and a few seconds later, it was perfectly attached.

He then looked at everyone who was Tier 8 or under. I need you all to delve the shit out of this rift. We need a few hundred of these for further testing.

Luna opened her mouth with squinted eyes and said, I know you arent pulling that card.

Baxter looked unbothered. I will, and I am. I need a hundred before I report in, and I need it done yesterday. If I need to bring in outsiders, I will. This is too big, Luna. You know that as well as I do.

Luna looked to the confused Pathers and explained, Baxter is calling in an imperial edict. As of right now, this is the most important thing on this planet, and all other projects are now of a lesser priority.

Matt shrugged. It really didnt bother him. He wanted one of the skills for his own testing. He would have done it without the order.

At Baxter's instance, they all started to delve the rift. It wasn't a challenging rift, considering the value of the skill shards. But it was an irritating one, with its swampy jungle environment and amorphous, blob-like monsters. For Matt, Liz, and Aster at Tier 8, it was a breeze for them to individually fly to the boss, kill it quickly to retrieve the reward, and leave.

They generally could get the reward before the rift cycled instances.

For Melindas team, they went together as a whole first to learn the rift, and then split in half to tackle the rift in two groups. They were employing the same tactics, but they struggled because of their lower Tiers.

They spent every waking moment of the next week delving the rift, until they had the requisite one hundred skills for Baxter. To speed things up, with the five of them running the rifts, Matt took the time to create a second version of the rift as he waited for his turn to come up. As they learned the rift the fifteen minute cycle time for instance was longer than it took everyone to finish the rift, as they were only going for a boss kill, and they were wasting time sitting around.

It was interesting to see Baxter slowly and methodically testing the new skill and all of its variations. How the man withstood the constant pain of cutting various parts of his body off, Matt didnt know, but the results were soon hammered out.

The skill had its oddities, but nothing they hadnt initially deduced. They just hammered out the hard details, like how much mana it took to keep the skill going based on the degree of injury. [Bandage], the tentative name of the skill, was an efficient skill for what it was able to do. A few hundred mana was able to keep a life threatening injury controlled for nearly an hour.

The efficiency was even more broken on Melinda, whose Tier 1 Talent reduced the cost and increased the effect of healing spells by fifty percent each. She now had a 10 mana skill to remove the healing cooldown on someone. It didnt actually heal anyone, but it gave her options to make her mana last longer when Matt wasn't around.

Baxter also was willing to waste upgrade orbs to check what the skill could do at higher Tiers.

At Tier 14, the skill was able to reattach limbs and hold them in place, while being a lot more efficient in its mana usage. With a Tier 26 upgrade orb, the skill started to get interesting. It started to boost the body's natural regeneration, and stopped only pausing the wounds. If that was all, Baxter wouldnt have been so happy, but the skill had a multiplicative effect on the Tier 26 skill [Regeneration]. Sadly it had no effect on the upgraded Tier 38 [Regeneration], with its overhealth.

Baxter raised [Bandage] to Tier 38 with an upgrade orb so rare, even Luna watched in fascination as he used it. When asked, he only said that it was given to him by the Emperor, for the purpose of testing the new skills upgrade path. It was a normal procedure for new skills that seemed to have potential. The skill then started to heal any wound it was cast on, without incurring a healing cooldown for the wound in question. It was slow healing, but one with little cost other than time.

It made Matt wish that he could afford the orbs himself, but they were rare, and extremely expensive. Lacking that, he wished he could make Tier 14 rifts in less than weeks. That was the minimum Tier that the orbs started to drop at, and to make a rift seeded with upgrade orbs, it would take too long at his current Tier. Just filling a Tier 14 rift would take over a day with his regeneration. Getting it to Tier 14 would just take too long to be practical.

He wondered if he could get a few for his team as compensation for making the rifts, but he assumed that they were just waiting for him to fall off The Path to give them to him. From his understanding, when strong Pathers fell off or completed The Path, they were provided with resources to round out their skills that complemented their styles.

Once he got the final skill shard, Baxter vanished after speaking to Luna and Kurt. Things returned to normal after that, but there was an added pressure on those remaining.

All of them, including the higher Tier cultivators, took a copy of the spell to test. Personally, he thought the higher Tiers did it with the intent to get the skill to Tier 38. But none of them used the upgrade orbs in front of him, so he couldnt confirm his theory.

With Lizs Talent, the skill was turned into a scabbing skill that was useless for anything more than minor cuts. The only advantage it had was that the scab was natural, so it took no mana to recast the spell and stop the bleeding. Baxter tried to sneak her an upgrade orb, but Luna batted it away, then pulled the man out of reality. Liz took a second copy of the skill and kept it in her outer spirit to prevent her Talent from affecting it.

Matt found the skill to be fascinating, but it was outclassed by [Ranged Heal]. [Ranged Heal] was a skill that only took 100 mana to cast, and actually healed the target. Meanwhile, the new skill, [Bandage], only paused the damage. It seemed like a worthless skill at Tier 8.

For someone like him, with unlimited mana, he expected to never use the skill, but Melinda reminded him of an important fact that he had forgotten about from having her around. Without Overhealth, wounds couldn't be endlessly healed with undirected healing spells. [Bandage] would allow them to get healed in a rift right to the limit, and then still be able to take a final hit before having to retreat. It paused the wound without adding to the healing cooldown.

Melinda tried to explain how much that would change healing, but Matt wasn't sure he understood.

According to her experience in hospitals, more than one person was at their healing cooldown, and took a wound that pushed them into rejection. Afterwards, they started to fall apart from the wounds that reopened.

Directed healing spells could be used to a greater degree than undirected skills, but there was still only so much a healer could do when the delver had already reached that limit. And the sad reality was, anyone who was severely wounded in a rift that had a healing spell just cast it as much as they could, hoping to keep themselves or their teammates alive. That left the proper healers with little wiggle room to work with, in regards to the healing cooldown.

The new skill, [Bandage], could let the Empire healers delay healing until the body recovered enough to use proper healing spells once again. Or better yet, if the delvers themselves got the skill, they could use it to keep their wounds at bay without making the healer's job harder.

When Matt reminded her that this was only possible with her Concept, she actually teared up.

With renewed vigor, the three of them tried to create rifts with skills as the seed object.

It took them months, but they discovered that creating a rift with perfectly pure mana and essence, along with a skill shard, gave them a better base to work off of. What made the discovery so obtuse was the fact that it was contrary to every other rift formula they had discovered so far. In the others, they had needed to start with aspected mana, or they would fail. The rifts seeded with a skill shard needed the aspected mana added after the rift was created at Tier 1.

Erwin had been the one to theorize that, and he had been incredibly proud of his scientific approach succeeding, where Matts gut instinct and Achlys' Talent had failed to provide results.

Neither of the other two begrudged the man his good-natured celebration. Without his methodical process, they would have never guessed that skill seeds needed an entirely different approach.

Matts AI hadnt even had an inkling of that idea, still insisting that they needed to better match the mana types and sub-aspects.

That got them over the first hurdle, but they still struggled with Tiering the rifts up. In desperation, they used a [Fireball] skill, one of the most common skills they had gotten in the last few years, and tried to brute force the creation of a Tier 8 rift.

With the [Fireball] skill as the base, they created a rift with only pure essence and mana, simply adding another copy of the skill every time the rift sucked up the previous shard. It was wasteful, but the process produced results.

The results were just bad.

The skills that the rift dropped were all blank skills. Matt had been excited at the concept, but Erwin and Achyls both dashed those hopes. Blank skills weren't unheard of, just rare. The blank shards only had one purpose: to let someone transfer skills, pushing it out of their spirit back into physical form. They had severe limitations, though. The blank skill shard's Tier had to match or exceed the Tier of the skill, and there was a chance of shattering the shard in the transfer process, which would waste both the skill and the blank skill shard.

Besides, not many people were willing to buy second-hand skills, since they could be altered in ways that the new users might not find desirable. Not to mention the fact that few people were willing to give away skills that they had invested their time in modifying. They lost all of that effort in transferring the skill, after all.

He and Liz did use a blank with [Create Water] and [Water Manipulation] shards, to make him a [Create Blood] and [Blood Manipulation] with her Talent. But other than that, they considered the test a failure. He still had trouble with the manipulation skills, and his fine manipulation in general. After Tiering up, he had to contend with the absolutely massive influx of mana and regeneration that came with it.

But they both liked the idea of Matt being able to create blood for Liz, and having another manipulation skill was never bad. After they collected half a dozen of the skills, the rift was discarded for its lack of value. They wanted to give him other skills but were limited by the blank skill shards being only Tier 8.

Not long after Baxter came back, Melinda and her team decided to Tier up and return to their own advancement. They were twenty-five years old, and didn't want to push their ages any closer to the edge of falling off than they had to as they needed to reach Tier 7 before twenty-seven.

It was a sad departure, but Matt knew that they wanted to be able to stand on their own two feet, and say that they earned everything they had.

He could understand that, and didnt protest.

Their absence left a hole in the house, and all three of them threw themselves into more training. At least for Liz, an alchemy trainer came for her not long after. They spent weeks on the mainland, working on her own projects.

During that rut, Matt, Erwin, and Achlys discovered the recipe for using skill shards as seeds for rifts.

To give rifts a way to form around the skill shards, they needed to supply mana types of the opposite alignments to the skill's own, while having the sub-aspects be in line with the type of skill. It was a confusing paradigm, but they were able to get rifts to Tier 8 about fifteen percent of the time. However, the skill used in the seeding process was always one of the three common skill drops for the particular rift. They still had the issue with the rifts eating nearly every skill they used as a seed, but that was fixable with more skill shards.

The oddity was that the rifts needed opposite mana types than they normally would use. Erwin theorized the opposite mana was needed to counteract the absorbed skills, which were heavily weighted in their aspecting and they were simply bringing things back in line to balance out, but they were unable to prove that hypothesis either way.

Achlyss help proved to be invaluable, as without his help, their chance of success was only about seven percent. The Briarwolf was a steadying presence, guiding the rifts to whatever destination they desired.

After they figured out how to replicate the skill rifts with a degree of certainty, Luna had them leave for a new border region of the Empire. She made sure to destroy all traces of their presence on the continent, including everything but a few mid level rifts they felt wouldn't stick out too much. When they arrived to a new area of the frontier, on a single world, they created a skill shard rift with otherwise rare skills.

The rift with the new healing skill, [Bandage], was created deep in a forest that was cleared out for their presence on a Tier 11 planet that only had Empire terraformers. They even created a rift with [Endurance] as a common reward, the third in the Empire, according to Luna.

The only reason the skill was available to the Pathers as a Tier 5 reward was that it could drop from any Tier 8 rift in the five percent chance roll that could be any skill. And there were a lot of Tier 1 through Tier 13 rifts across the Empire with a chance to drop it. The government just had a standing order to exchange the skill with a Tier 14 skill to encourage people to sell to them, while personally controlling the two rifts that dropped them regularly.

Adding in the convoluted method behind seeding rift with skill shards as seeds, Matt understood why no one had figured it out before. Even with unlimited mana, it had taken them years to get even the most rudimentary method for making skill shard rifts nailed down. He wasn't even sure if they could have figured it out without Erwins methods and odd thinking patterns.

The other rifts they created were more ordinary, but valuable, like the rifts for the four elemental manipulation skills. Matt suspected that they were cover for the two more important skills. No two planets near each other were seeded, and while Luna moved them through chaotic space, he was certain they had covered vast distances. They didnt even use any planetary teleports to reach the recently discovered planets that had just been added to the Empire's network of planets. They hadnt yet been explored beyond cursory scouting missions.

He also understood the idea behind not creating more of the most valuable rifts. More attention wasn't a good thing.

After that initial burst of rift creation, the four of them returned to the same planet, and picked up Liz and Aster from the training they had been undergoing with instructors.

Luna hadnt provided any details, but she had plans for them that didnt involve cultivation.

***

Virgil paced as she watched the operation below with her spiritual perception. The head healer, Lester, was a part of the old guard, and was loyal. The rest of the assistants would be purged once the operations were successful.

As a Tier 50, she was well aware of the true cruelty of the realm. Her grandfather had been too weak to protect what was his, and caused The Federation to be splintered and fractured.

She wasnt as softhearted and weak as him. While her family had lost the title as Federation leader for a generation, and they were now the weakest of the Great Powers, she had clawed her way back to the top by proving herself the best leader that the Federation had to offer. Her program of expansion and unapologetic foreign diplomacy had also played a part, but none of her peers in this generation were weak. They had suffered too much to be anything less than ruthless.

This little experiment was how she was going to reclaim the territory that was rightfully theirs.

Nine sets of ten-person squads were arrayed throughout the room.

Jecker was a fantastic enchanter and had a unique Talent. His Talent was simple, he was able to reduce the Tier of an enchantment. So he could make a Tier 30 enchantment act like a Tier 5 enchantment, then, at his discretion, increase its power. Even if he didnt reactivate his Talent, the enchantments would slowly return to their former power.

It had been considered a useless Talent, no one wanted enchantments weaker, until her head healer came to her with a proposal to use the man's Talent in conjunction with their own.

Virgil had been skeptical at first, but her head healer had his own unique Talent that let him perfectly heal someone if he was the one to create the wound.

Together, they would take the country's cast-offs and create the strongest fighting force available under Tier 35.

She had been tempted to break the international agreements on war, but would refrain until she had the power to back up such a bold move.

With the Empire about to be jumped on, she needed to be ready to occupy a large swath of land, and to do that, they needed to be able to fight Duke Waters.

Virgil wanted to spit at the thought of the man.

It was unfair that the Empire had gotten so lucky with the monstrosity. Light and Shadow were ordinary enough, but she had seen recordings of Duke Waters. The man was powerful in a way that was only seen once in a hundred generations.

Still, she believed that she had the means to at least equal him. Soon, she would rush the children through the Tiers, and she had two retainers who were ready for Ascension. She could ensure that they got their Concepts and Intents in short order.

As she watched, the test subjects were stripped to their bones, and their brains were hooked up to life support. Then, the enchanting started.

One at a time, the bones were enchanted with formations to increase their power individually, and as a unit. If everything went well, as they Tiered up, they would transfer power to a single person of the squad, and allow them to hit like a Tier 37 or Tier 38.

The brains were carefully carved and healed to remove their past memories. When they awoke, the soldiers would be blank slates for her to mold to perfection.

Virgil didn't expect more than a single of the squads to reach Tier 35, but that would be more than enough. It would let them have power greater than an Ascender, while staying entirely within the rules.

If more than one of the squads made it, she would be ecstatic, but the odds were already low.

The Tier 0 humans were so fragile, and even with Jeckers Talent, the runes would be a tremendous strain on them. They would need to quickly Tier up to prevent their bodies from falling apart as the restrictions weakened, but she believed that they could do it.

She would turn the Federation's trash into their greatest asset.

As the bones were enchanted, the ligaments were regrown and then inscribed, and following the tendons was layer after layer of muscles. Finally, their skin was stitched back together.

One by one, the runes were carved, empowered, then healed. It was a beautiful display, as the colors became indicators of future strength.

Virgil's smile grew wider as squad after squad was finished without any complications.

When the final squad was finished, and all vital signs were normal, the assistants began celebrating.

Lester moved to Jecker and clapped the shorter man on the back. Her head healer nodded slightly to where he knew Virgil was waiting.

She paused and frowned. The original plan was to kill Jecker, but apparently, her healer disagreed. She trusted him, so she decided to entertain the idea for now.

With an effort of will, she teleported the two men out of the room, then killed the assistants.

She ensured that it was a gory sight, and observed as her new soldiers came awake.

Putting on her best motherly expression, she reached out and helped the first man to his feet.

He was a newborn in mind and spirit, but a teen in body.

Who are you? Where am I?

As he asked the questions, Virgil held back a smile.

Perfect. He knew the language, but his other memories were gone. As a Tier 50, she could tell that he was being truthful without external skills. Everything from his heartbeat to brain waves indicated confusion.

I don't know. I only just found out about this dastardly plot and came to rescue you. Sadly, I was too late. The evildoers were killed, but they already did something to you all. Are you sure you remember nothing? Try hard. Please?

Her eyes pleaded for the boy to try his best, and she watched as he looked inward and found nothing.

I don't remember anything. The boy then inspected his glowing arm and asked, What happened to my arm? My entire body feels weird.

She rubbed his arm and, as others started to wake. I don't know, but I'll take good care of you. For now, let us help the others get up. Maybe one of them remembers something that can help us piece this together.

There was so much trust in his eyes as he moved to help the others.

Virgil inwardly celebrated. The untrained boy with no memories already moved like a seasoned soldier under the influence of the enchantments. Swift and fluid movements came as naturally as breathing to the boy. She used a bit of her will to knock a table over behind him. Spinning, he caught it and righted it, all without a conscious thought.

She repeated her story of saving them as the ninety men and women were woken and questioned for memories. None had even a faint recollection left, though one was missing most of their language functions. But that was fixable, with a bit of time and training.

Gathering the kids up, she started phase two.

She needed to make them loyal, and then start training them in earnest. After all, she was their savior, and had delivered them from the evil men and women who would perform such invasive surgeries on them.

Virgil was the closest thing they had to a mother now, and her Talent hooked into them in a way it hadnt for millennia. She had been too busy to put in the time necessary to garner a strong effect from her influence Talent since hitting Tier 30. Children were her life's work, and her Talent only operated at peak effectiveness if she was personally invested.

She hadn't had time to raise children for far too long.

What good child wouldn't die for their parent?

The ones she raised would, at least.