Chapter 294 (Patreon)

I will be taking the 25th, the 29th, and the 1st off for my birthday (dec 30th) so chapters will go from the 22nd to the 5th.

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PoA book 5, the Tournament arc is now on amazon FYI, no need to buy but its there for anyone looking for it. https://a.co/d/9yAjXsA

Audiobook is delayed until late January at the earliest. Narrator is apparently very busy.

***

Chapter 294

Liz gingerly set her seed on a germination tray, activating the growth enchantments at a very low level while she spritzed it with potions. Despite her excitement, Odora’s seed was far too precious for her to just bull through this process, blasting it with magic and hoping it all turned out fine.

No, this was going to be a centerpiece of her garden for millennia to come. She needed to do this right. So, she was carefully monitoring the seed as it soaked up water, awakened its cells, and generally did all the things seeds did as they tried to sprout.

Fortunately for the seed, it wasn’t alone, and Liz guided water molecules precisely where they needed to go in each and every cell. Waste products were either nudged out or cleansed away, and contaminants were removed to ensure that her little seed was going to live its absolute best life.

By and large, dryad fruits were considered sterile. Even for those plants whose non-dryad tree cousins were capable of self-pollination, a plant grown from the seed of a dryad would almost never grow up into a dryad of their own. Unless at least two dryads, regardless of the gender of their human forms, were involved in the reproduction. But even that was considered fairly taboo in the Empire, as it consigned a fully human mind to live for decades, centuries, even millennia as a wholly immobile tree. It also made it far, far harder (though not impossible) for them to reach immortality and get their own human form.

But that didn’t mean dryads didn’t produce fruit. Self-pollinating trees, including citrus, would absolutely bear fruit on a regular basis, and those fruits were quite often sought-out for countless benefits both real and imagined. Dryads themselves had predictably mixed opinions on the matter, but there were plenty that were more than willing to profit from something they found quite easy to make. Lots of them even had Talents or Domains focusing on their fruits, be it to mass-produce potions, exceptional meals, or even explosives in a few cases. Meanwhile, other fruit-producing dryads instead focused on quality over quantity, bearing a singular exceptional fruit only after decades, centuries, or even millennia.

Odora was the latter sort of dryad, and was accordingly in exceptional demand for the rare times she produced a singular lemon. Each fruit contained eight seeds, sure, but that was still a very tall order for something that only happened once every few thousand years. A properly tended and well-cared for Odoran citrus would be able to bear fruit with magical effects comparable to nearly any kind of potion, acting as a renewable source for some of the trickiest and hardest-to-source potions across the entire Empire. She knew for a fact that there was at least one guild that had a tree dedicated to making false-Concept potions, but she had something a bit more… direct in mind. Beyond her doubt that she even had the gardening skill needed to cultivate anything as potent as that, she wanted a tree that would produce a lot of different kinds of ‘potions’ and quickly.

Liz still counted herself lucky that the woman had a couple of seeds from her last fruiting a few hundred years ago, and had even spoken to her to confirm that what she was trying to do was likely to work.

By and large, her personal alchemy had fallen by the wayside. While there were still a few instances where her blood alchemy was superior to what Group Cornucopia could provide her, it was hard to compete with alchemists with dozens of skills, Talents, Domains, and centuries of experience dedicated to the craft.

She wasn’t a true crafter, she just dabbled. The fact she was even able to stand among such titans and broadly understand what they were saying was in itself somewhat incredible. She wasn’t even entirely sure when she’d gotten so good at alchemy. Luna was probably responsible somehow, as were the alchemy tutors she’d had over the decades, but at no point had she ever felt independently competent before arriving. But now, looking back, she had just been feeling inadequate for weird, spurious reasons, despite her  fairly impressive technical skill. Her continued work with alchemists ten or more tiers and ten thousand years her senior no longer made her feel illogically inadequate.

Now, her inadequacy was just for completely understandable reasons.

But the one area that she could utterly, truly claim mastery was with blood alchemy. Most of the experts she’d spoken to had only given the field a passing glance. It wasn’t even common knowledge among them that fire and blood made an almost alchemically-complete formula for life. In their defense, that sort of thing was really hard to determine if you weren’t specifically looking for it, and even then, there were so many possible false starts and pitfalls to fall into that it was borderline miraculous she’d figured it out on her third try.

Though, in retrospect, the third try was when Luna had helped her walk through her process and provided a bit of her own feedback. She was really good at that, even for subjects she knew nothing about…

Her retrospective appraisal of Luna bumped up her respect for the cat a couple of notches.

Regardless of how incredible Luna was as a teacher, it still left Liz as basically the Empire-wide expert on bloodfire life-forms. That was her niche; that was her speciality. In a revelation that didn’t sound surprising on the face of it, it made her very well-equipped to work with bloodlines. Despite the name, bloodlines weren’t actually blood magic… or at least, not fully. The body element was the normal pinnacle of bloodline research, as the combination of blood, bone, and life elements, and was therefore the go-to element for bloodline-enhancing skills, enchantments, and similar. Life was the second favorite, with blood a somewhat distant third, even if it was technically slightly better at affecting bloodlines directly. Life was a more broadly-useful affinity, and so it won out. But that was old news.

The addition of fire changed everything.

She was still working out the exact calculations as to what was going on, with aid from Scry and Cornucopia, but her almost-alchemically-complete blood/fire combo was incredibly good at interacting with her bloodline in many ways. She could directly enhance her bloodline’s fire affinity, and she could enhance the boosts she got from her secondary bloodline. Generally, that was a physical boost from the higher realm dragon essence still churning through her, but she’d experimented a bit with other bloodlines as well, occasionally using her Intent to harvest blood essence from monsters she killed if they were the type to have a pseudo-bloodline. Usually, that was just to refine it into cultivation for her own bloodline, but sometimes that was used as fuel for a one-off potion, mixed on the fly within her blood.

It had been a really gradual process, sparked by Minkalla and her Folded Reflections life as a bloodline researcher. Her Concept being able to empower her bloodline slowly grew into her empowering bloodline-based alchemy, and by the time her Intent came around and she’d properly started creating bloodfire life-forms… it was just kind of a thing. Not something she’d paid much attention to, just part of the background soup of her blood alchemy that she used to keep up physically with monsters four tiers stronger than her.

But with her new perspective, it was a wholly new thing that she’d stumbled onto. She could probably, using just her magic, change her bloodline and make it purely blood-aspected. Or at the very least, she could make the process far easier… but that was a thought for another time.

What mostly mattered was that she had an entire class of potions which she excelled at. Project Breach members were actively looking into them, of course, but the advantage that she got from self-making the potions, using her Intent, still managed to outweigh what the experts were working on. And what she was really interested in was her secondary bloodlines.

And that was what she wanted Odora’s lemon seed for. With proper cultivation, and sufficient samples of other bloodlines, she could create a citrus tree that created renewable sources for just about any bloodline she’d encountered. It would allow her to swap her secondary bloodline practically at-will, or create potions heavily based in bloodlines. She was mastering her past through her Talent, and no matter how often it happened, Liz couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride trill through her.

She’d been given lemons, now it was time to make blood oranges.

Under Liz’s watchful eye, she carefully guided the budding life in her growth-chamber. Cells divided and specialized, the shell split, and the barest hint of white-green began to show beneath the cracking seed. It took agonizingly long, but trying to manipulate a bit of Tier 0 life at Tier 25 speeds was inadvisable. It didn’t matter if it would Tier up soon; it wasn’t there yet, and until then, she would be patient. She just let the wood magic do its thing, coaxing the baby tree to full life.

She wished she knew just what was missing from bloodfire life, though. She’d been able to create plenty of simple, mundane animals, but none of them were long-lived. And not even in the normal, life-is-fleeting sense, just that they’d always get sick and die within a few months of her first creating them. Sometimes, that was enough for them to reproduce, but none of their offspring ever survived until adulthood.

Most alchemists would have been content with just that, but why would she ever settle for something less than the best? She’d never settled for it before, and she saw no reason she couldn’t create a fully viable, fully self-sustaining branch of life. The trick was figuring out just what she was missing. It couldn’t be too major, or else her initial calculations wouldn’t have worked, but there was clearly some third element missing to balance out the blood and fire mix. Light had been promising thus far, but none of the calculations quite panned out. She was almost getting ready to move on to a new element, to metal, or lightning, or crystal, but wasn’t quite there yet. She really hoped it wasn’t another level three element missing, because that would just be a nightmare to calculate.

Maybe she’d be lucky, and Scry would be able to do the work for her… but she hadn’t given researching bloodfire as a high priority, so they probably wouldn’t. And maybe she liked it that way, having her own thing that was purely hers and nobody else’s. She knew that it would have to become collaborative eventually, sure, but she wanted to see just how far she could push it before the higher-Tiers casually outpaced her and turned her back into a child only playing at alchemy.

And right now, that meant she was working on her citrus tree, trying to imbue it with her bloodline, her bloodfire, her alchemy. She was at least confident enough that she wouldn’t fail. Not with her level of skill, not with her Intent guiding the way. The only question was how well it would work out… and how long it would take to get there.

The sprout finally began to show a budding leaf and extend its roots into the alchemical growing medium it was currently sitting on.

Liz carefully scooped up the ball of alchemical “soil,” moving it to a specialized, miniature crystal cauldron. Once it was installed, she retrieved a series of wands and other foci, arranging them as to best encourage the right environment for growth. Then, she infused the cauldron with her Intent, impressing ‘Blood Is The Cauldron Of Life’ upon the tree as best as she could. In response, a few of the leaf’s veins picked up a reddish tint.

Normally, a given person could have only one bloodline and one secondary bloodline. Chimeras broke the first rule… somehow, and the [Latent Ancestry] skill could help someone have an additional secondary bloodline. That skill had at least made it to her inner spirit basically unchanged, but she’d found that if she used it in conjunction with her [Conjured Avatar], then each clone that used [Latent Ancestry] would still provide one additional secondary bloodline to her entire self, not just the one responsible for casting it.

In theory, that meant she could have upwards of a dozen secondary bloodlines active at any given time, either using them passively or actively burning them for a much greater boost. But in practice, she was way more limited. Unlike her husband, she didn’t have millions of mana able to be reserved, so in actuality, she was limiting herself to no more than ten Rank 0 bloodlines, three Rank 1 bloodlines, or a single Rank 2 bloodline beyond the Elder Dragon blood that she kept inside what came ‘naturally’ for her

That still required a steady supply of bloodline essence, though. And the Empire simply didn’t have enough exceptionally high-quality bloodlines for her to reliably use them in battle, only to then let them dissipate afterwards. On occasion? Absolutely. But every battle was just impractical. So, she usually was well below even her self-imposed restrictions and absolutely wasn’t burning through them with her blood alchemy nearly as much as she theoretically could.

Bloodlines, after all, didn’t grow on trees.

But maybe she could change that.

Liz grinned as her bloodline tree continued to sprout and began to firm up. With exacting precision, she began infusing a small tendril of Rank 1 Shadow Wolf blood essence into the plant, and smiled as it began to incorporate the bloodline as a potion. As it continued to grow, she would keep feeding it various forms of blood essence. Aster’s, her own, the Elder Dragon blood, and more.

Her hopes were that she would get an infinitely renewable source of bloodline essence already primed for her personal use, and therefore could afford to keep burning the blood essence as secondary bloodlines. She could even use the fruit to advance her own bloodline development. Really, there were a lot of uses for bloodline essence, and she could keep incorporating it into her own blood alchemy at basically whatever rate she wanted.

She could even feel a small but growing connection to the seed.

Splitting herself in half, she had one of her clones slowly nourish the seed while she worked on getting the rest of the ingredients ready.

It took several days of feeding the seed her blood, mana, and essence for the plant to properly connect to her, but Liz was ready for it, and transplanted her nascent tree from her germination lab to the garden orb itself. It was still very much delicate and required constant attention from her, but she had been able to permeate it with her Domain and blood. It wasn’t exactly part of her, but it was certainly attuned and primed for her to keep integrating blood essence as she gathered it from her allies and enemies alike.

She had also installed an immensely powerful growth formation, with portions made by Tur’stal herself, into the garden orb. Furthermore, it was powered by a series of life, blood, and wood-aspected mana crystals that Matt had made just for this purpose. Magic flooded the greenhouse, and the tree took root into the soil, reaching down into the ground and drinking in the diluted potions and blood permeating the ground. It twisted and grew… then stopped as Matt’s mana crystals dissolved, completely out of mana.

Pinging Matt, she waited for him to arrive, all while three of her poked and prodded the tree.

When her husband arrived, she gave him a kiss and then pretended to pout. “My tree won't grow.”

Matt rolled his eyes and looked at the sapling.

Liz watched as he blinked at it a few times, hoping he had an answer that wasn’t ‘add more mana’.

When he stood up, all of her clones looked at him, but he just shrugged. “Looks like a plant to me.”

Rolling her eyes, Liz huffed but flinched as mana rushed into the surroundings.

“Hey, watch it there, mister.”

She’d grown quite desensitized to massive displays of magic over the course of her life, but even still, the sheer amount that Matt was bringing to bear took her breath away. A thin shell of mana crystal grew around them and the growth formation, glimmering with shades of green, gold, and red. Within that area, the ambient mana grew… and grew… and grew, until she could practically taste it.

In the growth formation, Liz watched as crystals manifested from pure magic in the appropriate places, but her husband just kept pouring more and more mana into their surroundings and the formation alike.

Dumping incredible amounts of mana into the surroundings was a known strategy… albeit a very wasteful one. If a normal mage tried that, they would just make a spell or two a little more powerful. But when millions of mana were being dumped into the surroundings every second, things quickly became volatile, and unless you specialized in casting multi-million mana spells, any mage would find it nigh impossible to cast any spells. Internal buffing spells were unaffected, but Matt had never feared someone outmuscling him.

Luna had just shaken her head at the very notion of saturating their surroundings with mana like this, but the other Chess trainers had taken to the novel idea and come up with a few uses.

Flexing just how much mana he could throw around was just a perk for Matt, but it was useful when working with magical materials.

Turning her attention back to her tree, Liz urged it to grow.

Slowly but surely, it grew taller until it actually looked like a tree rather than a sapling or bush aspiring for greatness.

Once the tree completed its first growth, Liz directed the orb to start feeding it the other herbs and plants while she inspected one of the lemons. If Matt was going to give her so much mana, she was going to put it to good use.

Twisting the fruit off the tree, she ran her finger along the skin and bisected the lemon.

Instead of a normal yellow, the insides were a red so deep, it was almost purple.

Taking a whiff, Liz nodded before offering one of the halves to Matt, who was far more hesitant to bite into the fruit than she was.

Blood dribbled down her chin, and Liz grinned before grimacing at the sourness.

Matt handed her back the uneaten half of the fruit, seeing her reaction. Once she got her taste buds back under her control, Liz explained, “Odora didn’t lie when she said the first few generations were sour. Ugh.”

Matt raised an eyebrow before turning to face the tree. “But it's your blood?”

Liz nodded, letting her joy radiate. “Yup! And that's perfect. At least for step one. Step two will be separating out individual bloodlines, but if nothing else, this gives me a renewable source of generic blood essence for my own advancement.”

Kissing Matt, she watched him return to his own experiment, having made her a few dozen multi-million mana stone bricks for more testing.

After her initial success, she called those from the alchemy and bloodline teams over, and they started inspecting the tree and its fruits.

In the end, they couldn’t tell her anything she couldn’t feel through her connection with her blood.

Grabbing a vial of Rank 1 Flame Tiger blood, she absorbed the blood, allowing it to mix with hers. Between her Intent and her new Talent, she no longer needed to drink blood or cut herself. She could just absorb any blood that was touching her with a thought.

Before it could properly mingle with her blood, or her Tier 3 Talent could have too much influence over it, she refined it into pure blood essence with her Domain and skills, then expelled it once more from her body. It floated above her palm like a pile of glittering, orange-red sand that nonetheless flowed, roiled, and wobbled as though it were mercury not blood.

With a gentle flick of her wrist, the blood essence scattered over the tree, drifting down like a gentle rain and sparking into a faint golden color wherever it contacted the young plant. Through her Domain, she felt the tree absorb it instantly, like a thirsty man given water.

It didn’t have any obvious effects, but Liz smiled as the tree settled and continued to grow. She gave Matt a kiss in thanks, and let herself be pulled away to let the tree grow. It was past the point where she needed to be hands-on with its growth, and now she could just let nature, and the low-power mode of her growth array do their work.

It took a few months of rift-time before there was any particular progress made. The tree fruited and continued supplying her with blood essence, but it wasn’t until after they returned from their next deployment that Liz finally got what she was after. The tree was still small, but the outside of the fruit was mottled slightly orange, and when she bit into the lemon…

Perfection.

Well, there was still work to be done. But the fruit undeniably contained the blood essence of a Flame Tiger in excess of all others. And, she retained enough of a connection to it that she could instantly slot it into [Latent Ancestry], no processing required.

She smiled and flexed her bloodline to consume the Flame Tiger bloodline. For a few moments, it nearly felt like a full-power bloodline, and then the sensation faded.

A complete success. Oh sure, there were still some issues with the process, but that was all just a matter of time. She’d already noted a few adjustments she wanted to make to the tree as it continued to grow. But even right now, as it was, she was already quite pleased.

But even better, the first prototype of her armor was complete and ready for testing.

***

Matt felt like a child waiting for New Year's morning as he waited for Colonel Galanodel to bring out his armor. Liz and Aster were no better, but the upside-down floating head that came out of random shadows made Matt restrain himself. He didn’t want to give Allie any ammunition for a future prank. He had already found all of his metal enchanting tools replaced with wooden copies of themselves, and his wooden ones replaced with metal copies, and didn’t want to find his armor suffering from the same condition.

After what felt like a decade, Colonel Galanodel walked out with three metal rectangles floating behind her.

They were identical and impervious to his spiritual perception, but Matt felt like he knew which one was his.

Colonel Galanodel coughed slightly to gather their attention. “Before we begin, I must remind you that these armors are a prototype only. We can change things based on feedback, but we need to field test things before we go forward. That said, please don’t break anything deliberately. We understand that there is a planned delve for later this week, and while we intend to allow you to bring th—”

She was interrupted by Aster jumping forward. “I can’t wait. Send me a message.”

As soon as Aster’s hand brushed the metal box, the outer casing melted away into mist, then seemed to coalesce into what was very clearly an even more combat-oriented version of Ascender robes. Normal fabric had been replaced with synthetic, high-end protective cloth, gleaming bracers provided a bit of extra protection to her forearms, and the outermost cloak was made of an exceptionally fine mesh weave.

While it looked like Aster’s ears poked through the topmost hood, and her tail hung out the back completely unprotected, Matt knew that they were in truth just a semi-cosmetic illusion. In reality, his bond’s vulpine features were tucked away in spatial pockets and only sense-linked to the illusions.

“Feels good,” Aster nodded, then rubbed her outermost metal cloak between her fingers. As she did so, the silvery metal positively lit up with all the colors of the aurora, and Matt’s senses suddenly became confused as to whether he was looking at a metal weave or an actual piece of the aurora borealis made manifest before him.

With a flick of her false tail, Aster sent off the hems of her cloak, the colorful material stretching and reaching out well past its normal limits. But it gently picked up a nearby rock, twisted it dexterously, and returned to drop it in Aster’s hand.

“Wow, that’s really responsive,” she noted. “And this is just the prototype?”

“The cloak is almost its final version,” Colonel Galanodel clarified. “There are a few tests that we’d like you to do with it and report back what you find, but we were able to get it nearly completed.”

While Aster kept feeling out her new armor, stretching and contorting her body to see how it felt, Matt turned his attention back to Liz. His wife was actively getting a hand from an armorer that was busy installing a pair of metallic wings on her back. That would likely take a few minutes, so in the interim, Matt began to put on his own armor.

With no small amount of eagerness, Matt touched the final floating box and felt his Domain resonate with the armor inside as the cube dissolved, revealing his newest set of armor.

It was a little taller than him, and very black. The outermost layer had what could be described as a charmingly mortal appearance, with centimeter-level texturing from countless hammerblows. It almost looked like stone despite being matte black metal, but the golden inlays were integrated with far more skill and subtlety.

This model had no openings whatsoever. While the final version could break apart into hundreds of individual pieces and surround him if he so desired, the prototype could only be accessed by either calling it from a spatial ring, or teleporting into it.

He chose the latter, and spent a moment familiarizing himself with the unpowered mode. Even without his mana coursing through its circuits, the armor was still heavily enchanted, with spellforged metals making up every last piece of the suit. It was a little stiff and heavy, but no more than a suit of armor two Tiers stronger than him ever was. Also, the visibility was a little low, as the suit's heavy construction materials restricted his spiritual sense a fair amount. But as he began to feed mana into it, all of those concerns went away as the armor woke up.

Its onboard AI connected to his and Matt watched as systems checks started and completed by the thousands.

It took a full three seconds, but once that finished, there was a pulse of power as mana rippled through the suit.

Flexing his hands, Matt looked at his gauntlets. With the built-in tactile feedback, Matt felt like his bare hands were rubbing against each other.

Clenching his fists, Matt felt strong.

Bending his knees, he jumped with just his own power and grinned as the suit's internal motors made his leap only a little smaller than he could manage on his own without the armor weighing him down.

The moment he landed, Matt flared his mana and let the suit take in a full 40 million mana per second. His second jump took him well outside Camp Lightfoot. For his third jump, he flared [Archmage's Presence], letting it boost his physical stats and the armor. That jump sent him close to a dozen miles away in an instant.

There was even an enchantment that automatically parted the air, meaning he didn’t even need to use his Concept to zipper the air around him.

Slamming into a mountain, Matt grinned and jumped once more. The gold inlay glimmered with blue light as his mana flowed through it, building up more and more charge within the armor.

At the peak of his jump, Matt stabilized himself with [Flight], activated his cannon, and fired off a [Mana Beam]. It felt different than shooting the beam from his hand… but he grinned manically at just how much stronger the attack was than normal.

Pointing with his right hand, he sent a wave of mana through the wand in his bracer and felt the attack resonate with him far more.

Using the stabilizers built into the suit, Matt hovered in the air above the mountain and raised his left hand.

The small lines of enriched gold started to glow as he used his very armor as a channeling focus to cast [Hail]. A seven-mile-wide storm cloud appeared and started to drop head-sized chunks of ice on the mountain. Letting it run for a second, Matt smiled so much it started to hurt. His armor acted like a mage's staff or offensive robes, amplifying his spell without him needing to do anything special.

Switching spells, he grabbed the air with [Air Manipulation]. Pulling with a flat million mana, he felt the air rush away from the mountain. He was just barely able to create a true vacuum, which was far more than he was normally able to do with so little mana.

Grinning, he slammed the air he had control over back down on the mountain and laughed as it shrunk slightly. There was no dust to obscure his view, thanks to his firm grip on the air, and once things were calm, Matt dropped the spell.

Moving on to [Telekinesis], Matt grabbed the now crushed trees and foliage and pulled. Pulverized trees, scattered leaves, misshapen bushes, and more flew up to him and then around him like he was a sun and they were simply stars in his orbit.

Or rather a black hole, and they were galaxies trapped in his orbit.

Then Matt swapped his Domain, pulsing his concept and empowering his repulsion in a tremendous blast rippling out from around him.

Just as he was enjoying that sensation, he felt something twist and snap and stopped channeling his Concept through the armor, as reports of an overloaded formation appeared in his view.

That was a little unfortunate, but Colonel Galanodel had made it clear that this was test armor. He wasn’t going to try and break it, but he was going to push it to its limit. If things broke as he did, it was a good thing.

Going back to spells Matt pointed his right hand and a stream of [Gravitic Bolt]’s shot out with no need for [Barrage]. The armor lowered the skill’s cooldown so far that he was able to cast the spell a dozen times a second. When he did cast them with [Barrage], the stream of bolts turned into a torrent of power that carved a canyon into the side of the mountain.

He was testing his suit’s alternate flight modes when he felt a pair of contacts quickly closing in on him. He expected to see Liz and Aster and wasn’t disappointed.

Aster didn’t even say anything and shot a stream of ice spells at him.

Wanting to flex his new armor, Matt just stood there and let the spells slam into his chestplate. Aster hadn’t sent a full power attack at him, but the boosts from her own armor weren’t to be understated. Her suit was less armor and more of an immensely powerful fabric layer, operating as a staff meant to empower her spells on top of all her other focuses.

In response, Matt cast [Cracked Phantom Armor] and practically shivered as he felt his signature skill meld with his armor. With the tactile feedback he had going on, it felt like the magic was actively merging into his skin… and it felt good. This was what being an Ascender was all about. Sure, his temporary armor from the Cosmos was fine, but it hadn’t been made for him.

This had been, and the feeling was almost indescribable.

Liz’s armor, meanwhile, was a skill. Or more specifically, a pseudoskill called [Feather Armory]. The massive metal wings Liz had donned were a prototype in more ways than one. Not only were they testing how his wife’s Talent changed the artificial skill structure as it passed into the inner and core spirit, they also were the actual focus for the effect, something the final version wouldn’t need.

Once it was finished, Liz would be able to conjure a nigh-unlimited number of “feathers” and telekinetically control them in a short range around her, linking them together into structures or firing them off at high speed. The feathers themselves were mostly just feather-shaped magical items, and would range from mostly-normal that boosted her magic in various ways, to metal and deadly sharp to serve as weapons, or even fantastically tough and able to act as armor.

They could even be upgraded over time or as Liz advanced in Tier, as [Feather Armory] worked by connecting to an actual template feather and then duplicating it. But as most of her initial set were still under construction, Liz only had three types for the moment- one enchanted for flight, one made for durability, and one made to be a weapon.

Liz was firing off razor-sharp feathers with every sweep of her wings, and Matt felt them ping into his armor with incredible force. Even if they didn’t so much as scratch the metal, they still felt really dangerous, a feeling only magnified when Liz made a spear out of her armor and weapon feathers and began chasing him down.

They spent three hours in total giving their new armors a proper rundown, and that was much shorter than they would have liked. But one of Aster’s ears had vanished, Liz’s feathers kept appearing misshapen, and Matt had a force amplifier burn out and drastically cut back how strong his left arm was.

Returning to Colonel Galanodel, they weren’t in the least bothered by her light glare.

As the smith returned to Group Firmaments depths to fix their damaged gear, Allie emerged from a shadow.

Grinning, she asked, “How did you like it? I remember my first prototype armor. I fell in love with it. In fact, I still have it. I—”

Colonel Galanodel's voice echoed into their ears, “And now that you admit it, I want it back. Lost my ass. I need to strip it for parts to repair your main armor.”

Allie continued on like she hadn’t heard the Colonel. “I love the thing. It's great. I can get you guys your ar—” Her offer was cut off as a killing intent came slamming down on them. “Ok, maybe not. Hey, I offered, and that is what counts after all. Right?”

Aster laughed. “Sure it does. So where are we going to delve?”

Allie shrugged as if she didn’t already know. “I don't really know. Darrow usually picks us out a Tier 27 rift and we bring him and Dena and Eric along for a nice murder spree, as we all try to Tier up in Darrow’s case, or reach the peak of Tier 25 in the rest of our cases.”

Liz looked happy at hearing that and said, “I just asked Darrow to avoid any bloodless rifts. I’ve got a new bloodthirsty tree at home, and I can’t just deprive it.”

Matt nodded, but he was more interested in delving with Zack and Allie and seeing how they, along with the others from Team Zero, handled themselves inside a rift.

It would also be nice to actually start to make progress in his Tier. At this point in Matt’s cultivation path, the difference between early, middle, high, and peak of a Tier was a noticeable one.

Zack, Allie, Dena, and Eric were all just about to reach mid Tier 25, but the people they had been facing were all peak Tier 25. If they were all peak Tier 25 themselves, they could easily crush Tier 27 opponents like those they had faced at the start of their last mission.

The issue was that delving on their own was slow. A Tier 35 rift had a eight times time acceleration, but a Tier 27 rift had a measly twenty percent time acceleration, meaning any time they were delving they were wasting almost seven days of training. It was still faster than absorbing essence stones, but Matt was no longer sure they could be obstinate and refuse to absorb essence stones like Zack and Allie.

He would have to see just how quickly they were able to clear a rift with Zack and Allie, but Matt was pretty sure he was going to have to be the asshole and push for all of them to start absorbing the stones.

Maven might not have gotten away if they were peak Tier 25.

That said, he was pretty sure that with two sets of Ascenders, they might be able to clear a Tier 27 rift in a matter of days, if not less. He gave them unlimited mana, and Allie could teleport them between encounters, meaning they could go from fight to fight instantly. That efficiency would be hard to beat, and that didn’t even take into consideration the myriad other combinations the two of their teams could come up with.

The real issue was the lack of appreciable time acceleration in a Tier 27 rift.

Pondering the issue for a moment, Matt dropped it to the back of his mind. This wasn't the time to worry, this was the time to relax a little with Allie and his team.

Seeing as the others were already talking about how they wanted to modify their armors, he joined in the discussion.