The Path of Ascension - Chapter 316

Matt felt a level of disconnect he hadn’t ever felt before as he made his way into the briefing room.

Unlike their normal, relaxed debriefing where if half of them bothered to appear, it was nearing on a wonder of the realm, this debriefing was somber, with everyone giving it their full focus.

Or, almost everyone. Eric’s empty chair stood out like the gaping hole it was. Dena’s chair was also empty, but the fact she could, and even would rejoin made all the difference.

Just before Darrow was about to open his mouth and speak, Liz growled out, “How did we not know they were moving? We knew they were doing something for the last forty years ago, but we got caught flat footed when they actually moved?”

Matt nodded as Darrow’s third eye looked around, gauging the room’s desire to have that answered before getting into the rest of the debriefing. “There was a large-scale push which helped obscure their planned departure, which was supposed to be just another test run to a nearby system. In addition, there was some level of total information blackout in the region. It wasn’t suspicious at the time, but in retrospect, it’s obvious what they were trying to hide. We have yet to hear anything from them, but we do have reason to suspect that our spies are still alive, just in lockdown.”

Matt didn’t like the fact the Empire had been caught so flat footed, but from their earlier debriefings about the Great Powers joining forces to make a team which could take them on, he knew the enemies were putting in substantial effort to make the team their perfect counter.

The enemy Great Powers were hardly incompetent, even if they had different ideological beliefs that had led to this war.

“First and foremost. Gan Le. We’re not certain why or how the Sects have been hiding him all this time, but it is clear that he is a substantially greater threat than previously assumed. The precise nature of his ability to wholly nullify any attacks is unknown, but centers around what I suspect to be a heavily modified [Force Armor]. He is also capable of sharing this defense with others, but potentially at the cost of weakening the protection on himself. Or, at least, taxing him in some way. We’re still investigating for patterns and potential weaknesses.”

A slew of holograms were projected, showing Gan Le flinching when Matt’s spells impacted people other than him, most notably Long Zhiyuan.

“It could be a feint on his part.” Aster brought up the same thing Matt was thinking, but Darrow shook his head.

“Possible, but unlikely. Chess has found that it’s consistent with his behavior from previous fights, and while it’s possible he had training on giving false tells, there aren’t many other signs of it. He has been active for quite a while, he just wasn’t notable before this.” He looked over to Matt. “Titan, as the only one who fought him directly, do you have anything to add?”

Matt tapped the table as he sent a few of his [AI] recordings to the table. Gan Le’s glowing claw which had linked them with the tether appeared and then highlighted. “Do we know what this was? I’ve never run into that strong of a tether, and it took a lot of power to break. If I have to use my Intent to break free each time we fight him, I’m going to run out of willpower. I don’t think any of us want my Domain to be unusable for a couple of years, so does anyone have ideas?”

Darrow’s third eye blinked, which got Matt hopeful, but he ended up shaking his head in a negative. “It bears some passing resemblance to a few skill modifications, but I believe those are merely cosmetic. I’ll pass what I have off to Scry and Branch, to see if they can figure anything out, but it may be some time before they conclude anything.”

Letting that go, Matt showed a brief clip of him hitting Gan Le with his longsword, and despite the absolute torrent of lightning it unleashed, the only evidence of the spell’s existence was a faint bit of smoke curling off his still-immaculate outfit. It did leave a tiny scratch, but not enough to even draw blood. “It at least isn’t infinite, and I did get a couple of hits on him, but nothing more than scratches.” He nodded at Allie, “Do you think you’d have any more luck than I?”

Allie watched the recording for a moment but shook her head and looked to Liz. “Won’t know until I try. Think you might be able to drain him if we can keep a hole in his skin?”

Liz chewed on her lip but ended up shrugging. “Maybe? Depends on what his defense focuses on.”

There was a questioning air in her tone that none of them liked, but none of them had any other suggestions.

Except Aster. His bond leaned forward and summoned a small sphere of winter. “The guy’s a complete and total sponge, right? All defense, no offense. Why don’t I just drop him in my winter space? Sure, I might not be able to hurt him, but I bet I can keep him in there.” she grimaced and continued, “Assuming I can use it. My access was inconsistent last fight, I think one of the anti-Allie locks brushed against my ability to extend my range.”

“Oh is that what that was? Man, I was having so much trouble figuring out the tickles, you think it was about reality overlays? I can probably help you out there. Might be fun to banish a whole person to the frozen hellscape, ‘stead of just their attacks.”

Darrow’s third eye flicked around until he nodded. “I’ve also submitted a secondary simulation request to try and find a more direct workaround, Wraith. For the time being, Stick can attempt to grapple and detain him. Up next, Long Zhiyuan. He’s predominantly unknown, as nobody expected him at Tier 25 for at least another century. He’s the same age as Titan and Legion, and I believe they even encountered him in Minkalla?”

Susanne nodded as she had been there with them, and knew him just as well as the others.

Darrow put up a few overlays as he said, “He seems to be an analysis-based fighter, and certainly favors something I think is [Analyze]. Multiple times throughout the fight he managed to predict attack patterns the first time he saw them, possibly indicating some form of precognition.”

A few flashes of combat from their last fight appeared and Matt caught on to what Darrow meant. Long Zhiyuan dodged most attacks, and when he couldn’t fully dodge, he was able to deflect the blow so it did as little damage as possible. There were still times like when Matt got ahold of him that he took serious damage, but that was the exception to the rule.

Zack pointed at an aborted stab that turned into a rake of his claws. “That looks like someone following an [AI] prediction to me. Could he have a Talent for his [AI]?”

Darrow replayed the moment, but Matt wasn’t so sure and said so. The group ended up split. It looked like he changed his mind, that was undeniable, because he certainly did. The crux of the argument came to when he’d been fighting Rage. Sebastian’s emotional manifestation absolutely lacked subtlety, and its gaze oftentimes looked at the exact spot it was about to strike. That was the sort of tell that most [AI]s looked for, and as a result, most experienced fighters trained themselves to turn that tell into a trap. And yet, Long Zhiyuan had dodged to avoid the location Rage had looked at, well before any other tells manifested. The fact that he had ended up being right meant that he was either relying on his [AI] for suggestions, or what Matt personally thought, he’d read Rage like a book and knew that there was no deception to be found in the fiery giant.

Ultimately, it was too inconclusive to properly say, but whether he was an [AI]-based fighter, had some form of seeker ability, or was just skilled remained to be seen.

“Next. Maven. We’re still working to diagnose what she’s using to boost her strength, but it seems to have amplified since the last time we saw her. Or at the very least, she has more control over it and is better able to counter Shadow. In a one-on-one, I wouldn’t give anyone good odds at keeping her under control except for perhaps Titan. Maven also seems to be the locus of many of their anti-teleportation effects, so with Maven otherwise occupied, that can free up Shadow to pursue their sniper.”

Remembering what Luna had said, he simply nodded. “I’ll figure something out.”

He had no idea what he would do, but he would do whatever he needed to, even if it was the impossible.

“Next, the Federation fighters, particularly the eight-man squad of soldiers. Titan, Legion, Wraith, and Queen would have some experience with their ilk, as they too were in their Minkalla run.”

“Man, your guys’ delve was busy,” Allie looked to Aster in a way that said she was trying to lighten the mood, but failed miserably. “Most we had to fend off was a chimera, how come you guys had all the fun?”

“Regardless, we do have additional information on these fighters, thanks to a defector named Carlos, who escaped to the Guilds in the wake of said Minkalla run. From what we’ve been able to gather from his story and presence, the eight are members of an experimental program to imbue unawakened mortals with enchantments, form them into squads, and produce fighters with the figurative strength of ten men. They’re fanatically loyal and all draw strength from one another. I believe you may have noted the latter, as to spiritual perception they all seem to blend together. Specifically, their spirits overlap and in some contexts they all count as a single person. But despite their apparent homogeneity, their individual capabilities do matter, and it’s worth at least attempting to keep them straight.”

Morgan blinked as she read the report and asked, “This is a joke right? They all have C names and are Charlie squad? And the others all follow the same theme? This makes me doubt the legitimacy of the rest of the information.”

Matt agreed. The names were… Themed. Charlie, Conan, Chase, Clarisse, Calvin, Corvis, Carter, Cynthia, according to the defector Carlos?

“The defector claims they all named themselves, but it’s clear Virgil wanted to keep things… Clean.”

Matt almost smiled at the joke, but he couldn’t manage that level of enjoyment so soon.

“With that said, the defector has integrated well and appears to be wholly genuine. However, any information we have which cannot be independently verified is marked as such on the reports. In addition, due to the fact these runes were meant to function in a group, having only a single example means we can’t know all their capabilities. However, we do believe we’ve identified one particularly pertinent ability.” Darrow guestured, and a still image of the fight, with some added annotations appeared on the projection, and a diagram of a rune-riddled skeleton next to it. Matt didn’t catch what they were for, but Liz’s eyes widened in surprise. “Their spirits have formed wholly around the enchantment, and as I mentioned, are tied together and overlap in some ways. As a result, we expect that none of them can properly die without all eight of them being killed. Their spirits hold onto one another, preventing any of them from rupturing so long as at least one anchor persists, assuming they can get proper healing in time.”

Arthur winced. “That can’t be healthy. Or comfortable.”

“According to the defector, the runes provide constant unending agony in a way that I would translate as ‘hanging a weight off of nails driven into your spirit’, but so long as you don’t care about the suffering of your people, it’s likely to be effective.”

“That’s just…” Liz shook her head and glared at the projection. “That’s barbaric.”

Matt agreed, but his answer to the pain they would have been subjected to was to end them without as slow and painful a death as he could manage. That was all the kindness he could spare for their group. He had to stop himself from daydreaming what horrors he would inflict on Maven and the sniper should he be given the opportunity.

“Do we have any counters? Other than just killing them all, of course,” Morgan asked.

Darrow looked off to the side for a long moment before saying, “Sufficiently strong essence-draining might be able to interrupt the preservation. It’s pure speculation, but the defector claimed that when one of his peers was killed in Minkalla, the planet consumed the more loosely-bound essence instantly, before their runes could preserve it. We can’t fully replicate Minkalla’s draw, and there were extenuating circumstances, but it is a possible weakness to be noted.”

“[Sacrifice], maybe?” Liz asked, and Darrow nodded.

“I’ll put in a request with Group Scroll. It’s worth a try.”

Sebastian came up with a more novel idea, even as unlikely as it seemed. “Oh! I know! So, if their spirits are linked… wouldn’t that make them more vulnerable to curses? Could Liz infiltrate one of their bodies and try to inflict them all through that one wound?”

Liz shook her head. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Most of my suite still requires a blood connection, not just an essence one.”

“What about an essence curse then? Morgan, you’ve got something for that right?”

The crossbow-woman stroked her chin. “Maybe. It might not do anything until we kill one of them though, and it’s a toss up as to whether or not the curse jumps and infects the next in line.”

A few other people chipped in with suggestions for a few moments, but nothing super promising came up.

Coughing slightly, Darrow brought everyone’s attention back to him. “The last two members of the Federation are Saziel and Eliana. We have full dockets on them as they are old pinnacle elites from just after the War of The Monster Collective Liberation.”

Matt paused at hearing the official name of the war that had seen the Federation ripped from their position as the strongest Great Power to the weakest. It wasn’t like the official story was wrong, the Monster Collective had been liberated from the Federation. But in practice, it was because they’d gotten a Tier 46 planet and threatened to upset the balance of power with what was nearly a second capital planet. And yet, his presence and drive promised to bring not one extra, but dozens of extra planets of similar power.

What would they call the war for him? The War Against The Empire’s Aggressive Expansion?

He didn’t like that thought. Not at all.

Why couldn’t they—

Matt stopped himself from going down that mental rabbit hole and listened to Darrow starting his debriefing.

“Eliana. Her Talent causes her body to be both living and inanimate. As a result, spells which affect creatures and objects act irregularly, and she has managed to integrate many enchantments and items which normally couldn’t be supported by living flesh. Legion, were you able to determine any potential weaknesses while you fought her?”

Liz shook her head. “No. In fact, she has some formation or spell that shredded my blood as it entered the range of her body. Complete and total loss of connection to it.”

Darrow nodded with a sigh. “They were very prepared for us. Our teams will work on counters, but try other things should you be forced to fight her. Find the limits, then we can break them.”

“Up next is Saziel. A swordsman of some renown, as well as a very skilled kineticist. Some of his manipulations are tuned to be most effective in concert with a sword, but others utilize either his body or the blades within his body as keystones.”

A hologram of Liz being stabbed in the chest with a hidden blade played for a moment before Susanne flicked a finger and a brief video of him fighting her flashed on the screen. “I noticed he has a habit of relying on his manipulation to land serious hits. He’s not that good of a swordsman. Buy me some uninterrupted time with him and I can kill him.”

Matt watched the clips she showed and agreed. Saziel was good, probably a little better than he was in raw technical bladework, but definitely under what Susanne was these days. In a one versus one, she would have defeated Saziel in another dozen moves. She hadn’t been given that opportunity, but it was good to know for those who could ignore his elemental manipulations. Or they could have Eric— except, no he was dead and unable to be a wall between the enemies and their back line.

“Careful with that assumption. He’s got some pretty potent tricks, and was able to stop me from healing.” Liz’s warning caught Matt off guard, distracted as he was, but as he processed it, he nodded.

With that new information, it came down to himself or Susanne to take him out. Morgan might also have a chance, as she wasn’t as elementally dependent as most of their other ranged fighters, but Matt felt that was less reliable.

Darrow let them talk and strategize a little more about how to take out the duo uninterrupted. It was similar to how they had done before with hard fights, but this time, they were lacking someone. There was a missing link in their armor.

Eric.

They had some ideas though. Zack was pretty sure he had a spell combo of [Analyze Item] and [Clean] that if he could cast it on Eliana then have the mana change to decay, would cause her body to fall apart like any other item. They were touch range spells, but it sounded possible so long as her Talent couldn’t transform her instantly, which they weren’t too sure of. Their counter to that was to have Liz there and ready to rip apart anything biological that might appear, but dedicating two Ascenders to one elite was basically impossible in such large and hectic fights.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Saziel, on the other hand, was a little weaker on his own, but harder to kill thanks to his manipulation skills. Even Susanne, who could reliably overwhelm Saziel in melee combat, would struggle to finish him off. But she could at least tie him up if given the opportunity.

“Ari Kai. He’s a antimemeticist of zero renown.”

Aster gestured in confusion at the unfamiliar word, to which Darrow explained, “He makes you forget his presence. He stabbed Matt in the face. But I doubt you even remember that.”

Matt touched his nose where there wasn’t even a scar. “I remember being stabbed, but I don’t remember who did it. Is that his power?”

Darrow nodded. “It’s difficult to tell how common antimemetic effects are, for obvious reasons, but we think they’re more common in the Republic. They make it harder to notice or remember things, be it a specific spell, oddities with a situation, or even an entire person. Ari Kai is a particularly potent and focused one, as even looking directly at him isn’t enough to overpower the sensation, and his scope extends even to [AI]s and other data storage. His particularly seems to work best when he can fade into the background, nudging attention away from him and onto more apparently important things. As a result, he’s filling the role of a battlefield assassin. I suspect I might be able to help combat his abilities by keeping close attention to him, but without more experience, I can’t guarantee that I’ll keep track of him. However, I am open to suggestions.”

Matt scanned the info packet on antimemetic effects. While he hadn’t heard of the term before, he realized he was familiar with the effect, as something similar was used in a couple ways for Masks like the one he’d worn as Quill, and what he wore presently to divert attention from his Talent. But proper antimemetics were several degrees stronger than surreptitiously diverting attention away from identifying characteristics.

He idly wondered if he could get any use out of it personally. Apparently, in the Republic it wasn’t uncommon for people to develop a light antimemetic cloak as a generic Domain ability, much like how so many people in the Empire developed telekinesis. The more focused the effect, the more potent it could be, and there was no reliable defense against every form. Even being high-Tier only helped against most types, and they made for excellent spies and assassins.

Suddenly paranoid, Matt swept the area with his spiritual perception.

As he did so, he felt everyone else’s spiritual perception doing the same.

There was always the possibility they were under surveillance by higher Tiers at any moment, so privacy shouldn’t matter, but this felt different. More invasive. Creepier.

Thankfully, Ari Kai didn’t have any exceptional defenses… at least, none that they noticed, and relied on special items like the dagger he had driven into Matt’s face to take out his targets. Thinking of him as a stealth specialist made him somewhat less scary, because Matt knew how to deal with that kind of enemy.

Massive, overwhelming, area-of-effect attacks that laid waste to everything, whether or not he could see them.

“Lorlael was the mage we saw. She’s an old combo mage. Each spell she casts on a target affects the rest of the spells she casts on them, each time growing in strength and intensity. We have an info packet with all known combinations, but the main one to be aware of is air, followed by fire, followed by lightning. It seems to be a pure damage multiplier, and with enough stacks, it’s enough to crack a planetary shield. Zack, you battled her. Do you have anything to add?”

Zack gestured and the image changed to him and Lorlael trading spells. “Her spells are more than multiplicatively stronger. They are…” Zack paused as he searched for the right word. “Malleable. Most skills are rigid save for a few well-defined points wherein they can be adjusted. Hers are almost fluid, freely restructuring themselves in response to outside stimuli. My normal techniques for stealing or countering don’t work against her, but I believe I’ve made some headway in adapting for the difficulty. They are merely theoretical for the moment, however.”

Zack looked to Matt, who nodded, giving the other Ascender access to run simulations on his [AI].

“With Matt’s processing power, I hope to be able to calculate how her spells are changing themselves based on the spells cast and the order. Once I understand the underlying principle, she dies.”

While he never frowned, Matt knew Zack well enough that the man’s professional pride had taken a hit from the other mage. Matt understood it all too well. He had been countered in his area of expertise and then they had been defeated resulting in one of their own being killed. And Zack had almost lost his own life in that same battle. For a perfectionist like Zack, it must be eating him alive.

Darrow simply nodded. “Good. Up next is Colton. He’s a gunslinger of steady aim, and his gun is a growth item capable of generating whatever ammo he needs for a situation. But, it’s always created in the last empty slot, so will always be five shots away. His reaction speed is also unparalleled, possibly placing him in a similar situation as Long Zhiyuan in having some minor precognitive power, as well as some means of vastly accelerating his mental processing power. We aren’t sure, but it allows him to react to attacks and dish out a lot of damage in a short amount of time.”

“Last but not least is the sniper. We don’t know who it is, but the three most notable Republic long range snipers are Alphonse, Valentina, or Jullia. All three have different powers, but they all boil down to super long range attacks before leaving. Alphonse is believed to have highly reliable future sight, Valentina’s attacks gain power the further they fly, and Jullia is capable of placing a mark on a target and ensuring that her attacks will hit. None have been seen in decades, and all are dangerous.”

Allie growled, “When I chased them down I only got to a platform set up nearly halfway to the next star. There was a degrading body from a simulacrum of some kind, but it was so decomposed, I couldn’t get anything from it before the place went up in metaphorical smoke. They were ready for me to go chasing and set me running around like a dog chasing its tail. Tell me that gives us something Darrow.”

Darrow nodded. “It’s more than expected, and the analyst might be able to make out some more from the recordings.”

Allie flicked a finger, sending Darrow the relevant [AI] scans, but even that small action screamed disgruntlement. In any other situation, it would almost be funny, but Matt only wanted an answer. He wanted a name. A face. A person to blame for the death of his friend.

They talked for a few more minutes before Darrow brought up something odd. “However, intelligence notes that there were twenty individuals assembled for the Harmony Accords. That leaves three people unaccounted for. One is possibly the unidentified sniper’s spotter, but beyond that, the only information we have is the name ‘Crastor.’ Who or what that is, we don’t know, but the fact there are two to three people with no apparent presence in the first fight is equal parts worrying and reassuring. For various reasons, we think antimemeticists are unlikely, but other forms of stealth specialists are possible.”

That sparked some speculation about the potential reasons they might be absent, ranging from acting as transport, like Joy, synergistic buffs like Dena, or perhaps post-battle healers who were technically part of the team.

In the end, they could only control so much and instead turned their attention to their next fights.

The one thing that stood out to Matt was the fact they were going to appear more than a handful of worlds away from their last known location, but General Darrow shrugged the question off. “The call’s been made. Shadow’s deployment restrictions are being loosened, with the hopes that we can keep one step ahead of these so-called Harmony Accords. Keep them close enough to chase us, wear them out, while keeping our focus on freeing battlefields before they are tried and we can strike a killing blow.”

Allie murmured half under her breath, “It’s the League of Evil. The Harmony Accords is a stupid name made in a PR room.”

That almost got a smile out of Matt, but Eric’s death weighed on him too much for him to enjoy even Allie’s normal flippantness, which turned the expression into a sneer. The name did suit them better.

Darrow ensured that the spotty information about their enemies would be updated by the time they reentered the rift after this next outing. By then, they would have updated profiles for all of the enemies, which would correctly account for the power boosts they had shown in the last fight, and with possible counters. It was disheartening to know the enemies had decades of preparation on them, but he was sure they could get themselves up to speed faster than expected.

The title of Ascender wasn’t for nothing, after all.

Too soon they were boarding another one of Joy’s shuttles, but to his surprise, Dena came stomping into the hold just a moment behind them. Matt wanted to try and get her to stay behind so she could grieve, and more importantly so she didn’t get herself killed on this next mission, but he didn’t say anything. He made a mental note to keep an eye on her, but his sponsor was a grown woman who knew herself and could make her own decisions. Decisions that he respected her enough to honor without second-guessing her.

A teleport later, they arrived in a system already under siege.

The only good thing about them being on the defensive was that Allie had a teleport in nearly any system they could possibly need, which made responses like this fast.

Matt wanted to say he was cool and calculated in his fight with the attacking Tier 26 army, but he was anything but. He wiped entire squads out without ever giving them a chance to surrender like he would have last week.

The death of someone close to him shouldn’t change his perspective of the war he had been participating and killing in for decades, but he was angry, and those in front of him who refused to accept his first surrender were easy, available targets which he vented his rage upon mercilessly.

It felt like just minutes later when the enemy surrendered en masse, but Matt’s fury wasn’t even close to sated. He wanted them to resist so he could crush them, make them feel as helpless as he felt.

He wanted them to hurt like he hurt.

But he controlled himself. Not because he was a better person, and even his enemies deserved respect, but because he knew if he didn’t control himself, he would be removed from the war and would lose his chance to fight the true enemies again.

And that would be unacceptable.

No, he wanted heads, which meant he needed to play by the rules.

Too slowly for his liking, they jumped to a Tier 25 battlefield and then again they went back to a Tier 26, repelling the attackers each time before moving on as fast as possible.

They just needed to clear their last stop, the Belview system, and they could head back to the rift where they would be informed about all the details they would need to defeat their enemies.

He couldn’t wait.

Vengeance grew closer with every protected planet.

***

Long Zhiyuan smiled. He couldn’t help himself, even with his long millennia of training telling to remain stoic and in control. He was just too happy to bother with that level of control. He was in such a good mood, he didn’t even mind the twinges of pain that the flesh of his lower body, stretched by the healing cooldown, sent out from time to time.

Almost everyone was similarly wounded, but they’d been patched up remarkably well by the first response healers on staff which had regrown his arms. Gan Le and Valentina were the only ones who had escaped mostly unscathed, with the rest of them having been injured during whatever explosion Ascender Titan had triggered by the end of it. Even Synoid and Crastor had suffered, something Long Zhiyuan hadn’t thought possible, and a few others had been more seriously wounded from the unexpected explosion. He still didn’t quite understand what had happened, as Titan’s armor made simulating him nearly impossible, but he had been able to get ahold of enough scans of the man from the ship to at least get a start.

None of that curbed his excitement though.

The others being just as happy fed into that feeling just as much as his own excitement. They had spent fifty years planning for that moment, and it had gone off without a hitch. It might sound measly. Decades worth of preparation for one pinnacle elite dead and two Ascenders seriously wounded, but it was the start of an avalanche.

The beginning of the end.

Now that their enemies had taken serious damage, there were two options going forward. Either the Ascenders and the Empire would turtle up, licking their wounds until they were back in top shape, which would allow their Great Powers almost free reign to overpower any battlefield they wished, with the Harmony Accords only deployed to crush particularly annoying elite holdouts. Or the Empire could throw the Ascenders back into the fray, where they would be wounded, riddled with curses, on extensive healing cooldowns, and generally in bad shape. If that happened, their enemies would be easy pickings, even without a long planned ambush.

Either way, Long Zhiyuan would have free rein.

Their side had taken damage, but it had been minor in comparison. Half of his body had been blown apart, but with Gan Le sharing his Talent, Long Zhiyuan had survived the explosion and had instead been able to inflict serious damage back onto Ascender Titan in return. The hit near the end with the explosion had ripped off his arms before Gan Le’s Talent had fully kicked in, but they hadn’t been destroyed, and he was able to reattach them. Most of the others had been similarly wounded to various degrees, but it had been a glorious victory by any metric.

Jai Meng and Jai Xilu nodded as they laughed with the others before moving over to Valentina and Oskar, who entered through a side hatch, the former of whom they plied with compliments by everyone but Charlie’s team from the Federation.

Long Zhiyuan made his way over and congratulated the sniper for her excellent shots before walking to Gan Le, who was hanging along the edges of the crowd.

“How bad is the spirit strain?”

Gan Le’s white eyes didn’t seem to move, but Long Zhiyuan felt him watching. “It was truly awful, I was on the brink of death countless times, and my protection on all of you nearly broke so many times. The power he can bring to bear is far in excess of our most aggressive estimates. It is my expert opinion that we stop trying to block Titan with brute force, and instead try to deflect or avoid his attacks as much as possible.”

Long Zhiyuan sneered. Such weakness was unbecoming of a fellow Sect member, but it did give him useful information about the man’s upper limits. Not that he expected to match Ascender Titan in power, but simply knowing of the limits was sufficient for his clones to begin practicing with and exploiting it. But before he could lambast his peer for his foolishness, Synoid materialized from the shadows, throwing an arm over Gan Le’s shoulder. The white-eyed man tensed, but otherwise didn’t react to the disrespectful contact.

“You have a point about the damage, but you are missing the most important thing.” Jai Meng waited until he had everyone’s attention before continuing, “You did it. Despite the miscalculation, you managed it. That’s all that matters. The job was done, and we know better going forward. I—”

Before he could finish what he was going to say, Supreme General Alicia Fortan walked through the nearest hatch, which stopped all chatter.

“Good mission. Dump your AI feeds and add any notes you have. We are going to dowse our next fight in a few minutes, so prepare yourselves for the possible answers.”

When Long Zhiyuan heard there would be another dowsing, he didn’t need the twins’ prodding to head along with everyone else to watch the show. Sora Fortan was the Supreme General’s granddaughter, and had a very similar set of abilities. Where Alicia’s allowed her to plan for battlefields and plan attacks, her granddaughter focused upon plucking pieces of information out of the possible myriad futures.

Her powers were how they had planned the ambush so well, and their use was always a spectacle.

They had to head deeper inside the ship, into the bowels where the layers of armor made even a hull breach nothing more than an inconvenience, where security was higher than even their living quarters. It was almost amusing that even they were subject to security scans and checkpoints, but Long Zhiyuan knew it was just part of a good security perimeter and didn’t mind.

Once they were inside, they entered a massive room a full two hundred feet tall, with thick cables crisscrossing the area like a drunk spider had tried creating its web in the room.

In the center, Sora Fortan bounced on her toes like she was getting ready for a fight. It was almost cute with her pink skin and light sheen of sweat. The knowledge that she had never delved into a rift without a team to do all the killing in her life only exacerbated that feeling.

It was like seeing a child posturing.

Despite that, no one, Long Zhiyuan included, said anything. Sora’s job wasn’t without its cost, and if she needed to hype herself up before its use, who were they to say otherwise.

Placing her hands in the glass like orbs that connected to the tangled webs of cables, Sora’s body jerked as it grew taut.

It started small, like a light being seen through fog, but her eyes started to glow before growing bright enough to be unmistakable. As the glow seemed to reach its peak, her mouth, which was stretched open like she was trying to scream out unimaginable pain, started to emit the same early pale glow.

As that glow intensified into an almost physical beam, Sora’s already taut body started to spasm. As bones broke, the mass of cables started to glow with the same eerie light and images of possible futures started to appear between the cells created by their entanglement.

Sora was only Tier 25 herself, which made it hard to dowse same Tier people, but as the images started to flash by, they also started to get clearer. From blobs of mist whose very movement caused them to fall apart, to irregular, but stable, humanoids shapes that quickly settled into full on apparitions.

As energy pulsed along the cables, Long Zhiyuan felt the entire ship shudder as most of the available power was sent into the amplifying cables and their accompanying formations.

Alicia was unbothered by her granddaughter’s bone twisting plight and asked, “Empire Ascenders. Where are they likely to appear next? Show me who they fight.”

Sora’s head snapped to Alicia, her mouth opening to the point that the flesh of her cheeks stretched unnaturally well past the point where it should have been tearing. “Ascenders. Ascenders. Ascenders. Ascenders…”

As Sora repeated the single word over and over, the misty light that had been expelled from her eyes and mouth condensed in the weave of cables where they condensed into images. Ascender Titan blasting through a group of Federation soldiers. Ascender Light detonating a spell in front of a Federation general, causing the man to die. Ascender Wraith summoning a field of ice on a group of soldiers for all of them to vanish a moment later, leaving behind a shimmering vacuum of cold. Ascender Shadow, a literal shadow driving her blades into someone’s back before vanishing before the man even realized he was dead.

The images started to cycle while the dozens of watchers recorded everything they could, trying to get as many details as they could from the bits of information visible in the images.

So far, none of it had been too useful, but in an image of Ascender Legion cutting through a pack of Republican soldiers, the planet behind them was visible, which allowed everyone’s [Spiritual Self] to match the war planets with Republic forces nearby. That image was bolstered by the close up of Ascender Shadow cutting off a general’s head, and there was just enough detail in the general’s face to identify him as Federation general Alko. Combined with the other bits of information, they were able to identify exactly where the Ascenders would attack next.

Except it made little sense.

Long Zhiyuan waited for the others to get their own answers, but his clones had already come to a near certain conclusion. The Ascenders would be back out in the field in less than an hour, and they would be seven systems away before cutting a path through the Tier 25 battlefields.

After a few more images, Sora’s taut body dropped limply to the ground and the healers rushed to her.

Supreme General Alicia Fortan just nodded like a wise sage. “That confirms our guesses that Ascender Shadow can teleport across great distances in chaotic space, possibly across entire Great Powers in some capacity, if the images of a fully healed Ascender’s Wraith and Light are accurate. Prepare yourselves. We will intercept them in the Belview system.”

The moment Alicia gave the order, Long Zhiyuan felt the ship tremble as dozens of cultivators worked in unison. With the harmony of long practice, they wove their extraordinary powers through the ship before the engines activated and they ripped a hole through space itself and they entered chaotic space.

From experience and his own testing, Long Zhiyuan knew the oversized behemoth of a ship was far, far faster than anyone could guess. Dozens of hyper-specialized Talents working in perfect harmony could do marvelous things.

“Three days before we re-engage. Everyone goes to the healers and gets inspected, then you may take six hours for rest. But afterwards, we start training simulations. I want another death added to the toll in our next fight. This is the time to keep the pressure on.”

Long Zhiyuan smiled at the thought even as he headed to the healers. Or rather healer, singular, as the Federation had pulled one of the few healers with an overhealth healing spell out of whatever bunker they were normally kept in to add to the mission.

A translucent orange machine-like spider skittered out of a closed door and up the walls, spinning a glowing thread across Long Zhiyuan’s arm. The itching that accompanied healing cooldown didn’t quite fade, but it certainly became less prominent. A few moments of work later, a woven bandage completely enclosed the recently-healed flesh. Were he to require healing again, he knew that the bandage would prevent his cooldown from getting any worse. It could even be applied infinitely, making it the best healing Long Zhiyuan had ever received.

That it couldn’t be applied to completely healthy flesh was hardly an issue, as so long as it was reapplied following each battle, he could be healed forever, with no risk of his body rejecting new healing. All he needed to do was prevent his body from being completely destroyed in one battle.

It was an impressive and likely expensive asset, but it would ensure they could return to the fray far faster than expected, possibly even outpacing the Ascenders and wearing them down with every engagement they fought.

As he joined the others in the training room, Long Zhiyuan couldn’t help but smile once more at the thought of the upcoming fight.