Chapter 263
While they were still engaging in some counterespionage even as the tournament began, Matt was looking forward to Eleanor and Ethan arriving in Stormhaven. Of course, it wasn’t like they didn’t have a thousand and one other things to do in the meantime.
Matt spent a full two weeks helping Leon quietly fill up a number of royal mana reserves, which involved a lot of sitting on his butt while filling skyscraper-sized mana stones. For the first day, he just sat around and watched movies, but he quickly grew bored and started revisions of one of his new talisman arrays. With most of his mana going towards filling the mana stone, he wasn’t able to fully use his [AI] for its normal iterations, but he had fun doing the mental work himself. After that, he took care of a few miscellaneous things he had been putting off, like redesigning the next iteration of runes to use on his sword for when he reached Tier 19.
When he was nearing his final mana donation of three hundred and ninety-six billion, he finally opened the packet of information Leon had tried to bribe him with when the idea of Matt donating some of his time and mana to Stormhaven was brought up. It ultimately wasn’t much, an ordinary expense document, but the expenses inside were the things the mana would be used for. He would have given Leon and Mara all the mana they wanted for nothing with no accountability; but he was glad his father in law was going to use his mana for the good of the little people.
Matt had been tempted to look at it immediately, but he had wanted to wait until he had given the mana, so when he looked, he knew that he was seeing places that would soon be getting his help which changed the flavor of the information pact. He felt like he was about to open his first birthday present as a kid again and let the moment linger to savor it.
Right off the bat, his eyes skimmed past the thirty percent that would be released into the air to fuel rifts and formations. That was normal, and he had no issue with such a use of his mana. It was a little indirect, but it would still be helping everyone on Stormhaven, but he wanted to see the specific projects that his mana would be fueling.
In the second place, Matt grinned at the entry. Seven percent of his nearly four hundred billion mana was going towards Tier 5 and below public rifts. Most of that went to preventing the rifts from Tiering up, but a little more than twenty-seven billion mana would ensure prices remained affordable and instances were never delayed. That single contribution would fund rifts for the next century or more, and make a real difference to the lowest Tiers who lived on Stormhaven.
Third through seventh place were similarly rift expenditures, but they were for higher Tiers, and while Matt was happy they would be helped, it felt a little less impactful to him. In eighth place, Matt smiled at the ‘community enchanters’ program. Aimed at newly-awakened children of low-tier families, it was one part job, one part school, and aimed to teach the kids the basics of enchanting, as well as provide a route to provide enchanted devices to even the poorest neighborhoods. It even had systems in place to help find the gifted and talented and provide them with regular promotions or even sponsorship to the crafting side of the Path, and Matt’s contribution meant that they’d have operating budget to spare for decades if not centuries, as new enchanters clumsily picked up the basics of the trade. It kept them off the streets and provided a clean way to give back to the community, and even an automatic route up for the top performers, what wasn’t to love?
Thinking of the kids his mana would be helping, Matt couldn’t wipe the grin off his face as he looked at the next dozen entries, which were similar for various crafting professions, all getting one percent of his donated mana.
Seeing that felt really good, and Matt pinged Leon to ask if any of the organizations were already staffed or would be staffed before the end of the tournament. His answer was immediate and better than he could have hoped for. Each of the professions was already active in small numbers, and his mana would be going to expand those services, so he could see all of them by visiting any of the dozen current locations.
Putting that on his to-do list, Matt kept browsing the list and had to smile as the percentages people were getting out of his total mana were starting to become smaller and smaller fractions. 0.01% of his mana was still thirty-nine million mana, which was more than enough to fund a local charity that made stuffed animals for kids who, for whatever reason, found themselves in a hospital.
He had never heard of the idea before, but was more than happy to know they would get enough mana to fund their operations for years.
Being able to flex his mana and see the benefits was addicting, and he felt like a junkie as he was searching for his next fix. And, like an addict, he immediately had an answer.
Hospitals.
A quick flick of his eyes showed him that there were no hospital entries anywhere on the list, which struck him as odd.
When he asked Leon, his father-in-law had a quick but irritating answer. “Hospitals and their ilk have a very fixed income, and their budgets are public record. While technically much of your mana will go to funding them, it’s a lot harder to explain why a hospital is suddenly getting a massive amount of mana, beyond what they earn for their patient treatments. Yes, they can use that to fund research or expand their operations, but a few million mana suddenly appearing will raise more than a few questions. Billions of mana will mean people start digging, and that’s something we want to avoid. But yes, in practice some millions or even billions of your mana will be used in a hospital. Once it enters the system, we don’t have a way of tracking individual units of mana. I just wanted to show you the extra good that you’d accomplish, what new things the budget can afford, rather than a statistics report of where your mana could show up.”
Matt didn’t really like the answer, but it made sense, and he couldn’t really argue with one of the royals about what was and was not appropriate with their spending. For all that he wanted to ignore politics, he wasn’t dumb, and knew that any opening would be exploited by Leon’s detractors. And those battlefields could do more damage in the long run than his mana could help.
Telling himself to be content with his current donation, Matt thanked Leon before leaving to go visit the secondary schools that would be getting his mana.
They weren’t anything special, and Matt could tell at a glance they were struggling to accommodate the currently enrolled recently awakened young adults. Still, the foundations they were teaching them were solid, and would serve them well if they wanted to get picked up by a guild or a corporation in the future. Knowing that they would be able to expand and serve even more people put quite the pep in his step as he left to meet back up with Liz and Aster.
The two of them had spent most of the last two weeks assisting Leon in running Stormhaven and the million and one things that he needed to get ready for the Tier 10 tournament.
Matt tried to get into the last-minute terraforming team that was still working on an extra smaller moon that would be filled to the brim with monsters as a test for the up-and-coming pathers. It would be used to simulate protecting a planet from active rift breaks, or in the worst case scenario, taking a planet back that was lost to rift breaks. But upon his arrival, he was politely told that for all his power, the professionals had it handled. The lessons learned at Ventillyria were not soon forgotten, and similar massive killing fields set in simulated civilian populations were a great training environment.
Instead, Matt just helped Liz direct things as Leon’s child.
Matt had expected Aster to be doing something similar, but instead, she had asked for and been given a position in the chain of command. Nothing too high up, as she was only a Tier 18, but being an immortal still gave her enough authority to take care of a small department. Apparently, the man she was replacing had been happy to give away one of his departments, which was how Aster became the active leader of the Environmental facilities for the small planet that the Tier 10 tournament would be conducted on.
Matt even pitched in sometimes to help her teams shape pretty but challenging environments for the Tier 10s to encounter, which was a surprisingly detailed job that Matt could fully admit he wasn’t cut out for on his own. He was happy to just lend his manipulation skills to the more experienced workers.
The man Aster had taken over for had done ninety-eight percent of the work already, so she just needed to oversee the completion of his project, but that didn’t mean there weren't a dozen and one things that cropped up. Matt was confident that his bond could do anything she set her mind to, but seeing her take charge made him proud. After seeing her lead the project, he felt he could really see her taking over for Mara when she ascended.
Just three weeks before the Tier 10 Tournament was about to start, Eleanor and Ethan arrived on Stormhaven, and Matt, Liz, Aster, and Susanne were spying on the duo from a nearby tea house.
Susanne spun her finger along the rim of her glass as she murmured, “They seem normal enough. From what you guys said, I half expected the girl to break the world by just walking through the front door.”
Aster chuckled even as Matt mock gasped, “I never said that! I only said it was good she didn’t need to activate the teleporters or really had anything to do with them. Can you imagine how bad it would be if she got a one while activating them? It would be catastrophic at the very least. Still, she's a good kid, doing her best.”
Liz nodded even as she was constantly tapping at her pad, refreshing her messages. She could have used her AI, but this way, she could share the information with everyone.
Just moments after the duo started walking down the street, a message came telling the four of them that the kids had arrived and were calling on Howard and Willow, the false names Matt and Liz had used when they first met up with the kids.
Susanne and Aster had their own disguises as well. Aster was pretending to be Matt’s little sister, like normal, though that meant her tail and ears were hidden. Susanne just changed her appearance and tagged along as their friend, and thus sufficiently disguised, they moved to meet the kids in a training room they reserved for the purpose.
Matt had suggested the location partially as a call back to how Dena and Eric had done the same to him, and partially because he really wanted to see how the kids Talents and skill sets had evolved in the past decades. With that in mind, a training room was the only real place for them.
It took Eleanor and Ethan almost two full hours to get settled in and make their way through the city to their training room, but Matt and the others watched every step they took with their spiritual senses.
When they entered the room, Matt took the opportunity to look at the kids with his eyes. The spiritual sense was great, and could genuinely replace all five normal senses, but he was still human, and preferred his sight to the alternatives.
They had both aged up a fair bit since he’d last seen them. Physically, they were both still young adults, easily mistaken for a Tier 1 or 2 teenager, but Eleanor rightfully carried herself like someone twice that age. She was confident and strong, carrying herself with utmost surety and with a smile that could light up a room, a far cry from the buried uncertainty and intense bravado she’d shown at the carnival. To no surprise, she also carried a fair number of scars, but of more interest was the tattoo visible on her skull, the hair that should have been there shaved away. It was fairly clearly Ethan’s doing in some way, as the boy had a similar one on his shoulder, but Matt couldn’t tell what it was supposed to do except wiggle a little.
Ethan had also done well for himself, Matt could tell. He’d put on a good amount of muscle and lost much of his lankiness, resulting in a very solid frame befitting a melee fighter. His hair was actually longer than Eleanor’s these days, held back in a loose ponytail, and his own collection of scars were predominantly the burn marks of a smith, but the number of other scars he had were no less than that of his cousin. His confidence was a different sort than Eleanor’s was, a bit more cocky in comparison to her mature steadiness, but no less welcome to see.
The duo had journeyed on The Path of Ascension and came out whole. Not unscathed, but whole, and that was all anyone could ask for.
Matt smiled as Eleanor called out, “Mr VIP, Willow! It's good to see you guys!” Pausing, she cocked her head and scanned Aster and Susanne from top to bottom before addressing them. “And others.”
Ethan grinned as he sized up Susanne and Aster, clearly just seeing two possibly unattached women. “Well, hello! Ignore my cousin; she’s grumpy when she's awake.”
Aster snorted while Susanne didn’t even blink.
Seeing his charm was ineffective, Ethan finished crossing the distance and moved to hug Matt and Liz, who did the introductions.
“This is my younger sister, Ellen, and a friend of the team, Margret. How are you guys doing? You look good!”
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Eleanor smiled as she switched hugs with her cousin. “It's good to see you guys too.”
Once she separated from Matt, she cocked her head, inspecting him with a small pout forming on her lips. “I thought we’d be stronger than you guys when we met up this time, but I can't even see through your Tier. How is that even possible? You guys were only Tier 5 like thirty years ago. I thought for sure that we could have caught up with you guys.”
Matt smiled as he and Liz let their true Tier show through the masks' concealment and general veils they always wore, but didn’t say they were only 94 years old so as to not crush the kids' hope or expose themselves.
Eleanor stumbled back in a dramatic pratfall just for Ethan to catch her at the last moment and fall down with her.
While they were hamming it up, Matt could see that the duo were genuinely shocked by the transformation of their seemingly simple mentors.
Ethan was able to speak first and asked, “Huh?”
Knowing what he wanted to know, Liz filled them in. “While we didn’t reveal it, we were already fresh Tier 17s when we met up with you guys.” That was a little lie, but they couldn’t tell the kids that they were actually only Tier 15 at the time, as even an idiot could do the math and see they were on Pather pace, going from Tier 15 to Tier 18 in a short two decades. “To provide a bit of context, when someone awakens to a detrimental Talent, someone else who has made it to Tier 5 on the Path, and is currently a Tier 15 or higher, is called in to do the vetting and recruiting. We obviously satisfied those conditions, and we wanted to see how you reacted to what you considered peers instead of being awkward about us being so much stronger.”
The duo took a moment to process that, and Eleanor took the time to look at Aster and Susanne, the latter of whom revealed a Tier 18 cultivation as well. Aster, on the other hand, to better keep their identities hidden, only showed a Tier 16 cultivation, but even that was enough to make the Mallick kids groan.
Ethan rubbed his face as he grinned. “And here we thought we were impressive.”
Eleanor popped to her feet and challenged, “Wait, we can still beat them! How far did you guys make it on The Path? Did you guys even have a Tier 10 tournament to go to?”
Matt popped her bubble ruthlessly. “When you pass our Tier on The Path, we’ll tell you.”
Eleanor sighed. “Ahh, oh well. We have at least one or three more Tiers in us, I think. The manager should help us get at least that far.”
Matt raised his eyebrow in question, as they shouldn’t have known about that, and Eleanor explained, “Ethan was a boy toy for a Tier 15 pather we met up with a few years ago, and she told us about some things like that.”
Ethan popped to his feet, an indignant expression on his face. “I wasn’t a boy toy. We were casually dating, is all.”
Eleanor coughed out a quiet, ‘boy toy,’ which made everyone laugh, and Ethan gave up with a dramatic movement.
Seeing Ethan was embarrassed, Matt tossed him a lifeline. “So how have the two of you been in the last few years? How have you progressed?”
Saying that, he summoned an illusionary sword for himself and a spear for Liz while the kids withdrew their own weapons.
Ethan pulled out a hefty halberd crackling with lightning. Eleanor just donned puffy orange gloves that looked like really cheap winter gloves found at any mortal store.
Liz must have made a face, because Eleanor groaned even as her ears went darker as she explained, “It was a nice growth item I could afford, ok? Don't judge their appearance too much.”
Eleanor then showed what they could do when she clapped her hands together in a muddled thud, but when she pulled her hands apart, a burst of flames gushed out similar to [Flamethrower], but in a wave instead of a cone. Matt let the flames wash over him and smiled as he saw that each flame had their own dice roll. With five dice rolling for her odds, almost twenty percent of her attacks landed on 20s, and Matt smiled, feeling the larger pricks of damage trying to bypass his [Mana Barrier].
With more dice rolls, it mattered less if the attacks were individually weaker, as they were boosted in power thanks to her now substantial odds of rolling a 20. Even more amazing was that he didn’t see a single 1 roll, which made sense when he had his [AI] calculate the odds of rolling five ones. 1 in 3,200,000 wasn’t impossible, but it was incredibly rare. If he had been a normal Tier 11 monster, he would have died from that single attack.
He was going to rush in to put some pressure on Eleanor, but she was already casting a [Jolt] and throwing it at his face, forcing him to dodge instead of rushing her. He played along with the dodge rather than countering, as he wanted to see how her Talent handled it. The dice that seemed to be settling down as the attack was about to hit him started rolling more vigorously once more, until it hit the wall and rolled as normal.
Matt dodged a few more spells as Luna’s training started channeling through him. “Good predictive attacks, but what will you do when I don’t dodge?”
Standing still, he let the [Fireball] whiz by him where he would have been with a smile.
Just as Eleanor started casting and he watched the mana from the spell structure of a [Jolt] in her spirit, Matt started to tense his muscles like he was going to dodge and smiled as he saw her start predicting his movement. Almost immediately, she stopped as she realized he might be tricking her once more, and instead changed the trajectory to aim at his current spot.
Taking a single step to the left, he let the attack sail right by him with a laugh.
Three more attacks missed him until Eleanor finally started to think outside the box and instead aimed at the floor, letting the explosion of the [Fireball] ensure that he had to move or be caught in the explosion, and then attacked him while he was still mid-movement.
Letting himself act on autopilot, Matt watched Ethan fight Liz and smiled as she was using her shorter spear to keep him backpedaling, all while giving advice on how he could improve.
It reminded him of their time versus Dena and Eric, which brought him back.
While watching their fight and giving Eleanor some advice, Matt smiled as he noticed the halberd Ethan was using was very clearly the result of him using his Talent on a spear and an ax. It made him start looking out for other places where they had used his Talent.
The [Fireball] that exploded like a water balloon spewing hot oil was an interesting spell but an awful choice to use against Liz, who simply walked through the flames that couldn’t even singe her clothes. The [Earth Spike] that whistled with the wind as it ripped through the air was an interesting condemnation that seemed to have no down side, and Matt was getting excited about the possibility of what could come out of Ethan’s Talent if given some Tier 20 skills. But when he mentioned it, he got an answer he should have expected but hadn't thought of.
The range for the merges being stable was still pretty small for skills. Mundane weapons and armor seemed completely stable when merged, but the more magical an item Ethan merged, the less stable it seemed to be when away from his influence. With that in mind, Matt didn’t bother asking for unique skills, as they were fully magic and would break the moment he left the continent Ethan was on, let alone the planet.
A few hours later, when the kids were exhausted and panting on the ground, they called a halt to the sparring and took the kids to a nice dinner, even as they complained that he and Liz had been cheating with their higher cultivation.
They hadn’t been, but none of them burst the kids bubbles. For all that they were good, they were most certainly not Ascender level fighters. But that was ok, as they knew it as well and weren’t the types to push themselves to the limit time and time again until they ended up slipping over and dying. He was just glad they were safe and strong enough to take care of themselves.
Susanne even opened up enough to give Ethan some advice, and Aster spent a portion of the dinner doing the same for Eleanor as a fellow mage.
Matt even stole a look at Eleanor's gloves, which did as he suspected and converted spells into short-range waves of their spell effects. It was good for a mage in a small team with limited melee support, but Matt found the conversion rate a little lacking for her.
While he wouldn’t want them to go into Minkalla at their current skill level, he knew they would probably go in at Tier 13, possibly Tier 12 if their manager thought they were strong enough. He wasn’t sure that they were strong enough with their current capabilities, but it was a manager's job to make them stronger, and he could see several places the kids could improve.
After a long dinner, they promised to meet up a few more times before the tournament started, and Matt was forced to promise that he would get the kid's parents from the teleporter. They had broken off from the clan’s normal travel routes long enough to see their kids compete at the Tier 10 tournament, but would be arriving late and had made the kids promise that they wouldn't mess up their sleep schedule for something as simple as their arrival.
He and Liz happily agreed to do so between their other duties.
They spent a lot of their free time checking possible spy locations, but still found nothing until they gave up for the evening and started getting ready to try cracking the masked Pathers’ masks. It was interesting to see that from the other side, as they were given near unlimited access to funds to buy information from information brokers. At the same time, it was scary just how much those brokers had on anyone and everyone.
A lot of it was unindexed information scraped from public places, and while one piece of information didn’t mean much, when it was all put together, it painted a far too complete picture. Two teams of Pathers were almost immediately outed by the four of them, and Matt could only hope the identities were throwaway identities like Shawn, Jules, and Lassie had been, as it had been far too easy to find their ‘real’ identities.
When the tournament actually started, Matt and Liz had to watch off on the side as Susanne got to execute the bandits who had been attacking and kidnapping people, to the cheers of the crowds.
Leon walked forward after the [Clone] of the Emperor said his own spiel, like a hurricane about to slam into the coast of a primitive civilization. “As many of you know or have heard, there will be an execution today. A public one at that, which should show how serious the matter is. Bandits thought they could kidnap the children of the Empire because they grew up on border worlds. They thought they could do as they pleased because they had some unique Talents. They thought they could evade our eyes and blades, but they could not.” Nodding to Queen who stood off to the side of the kneeling bandits, Leon brought her into the conversation. “Our very own possible Ascender, Queen, found out about their plot and destroyed one bed of these pests, but when another cropped up, she threw herself into battle against Tier 20s and came out victorious. And here are her spoils.”
The crowd of Pathers went wild with anger, many of them screaming so loud that Matt was sure they were tearing their vocal cords, but they seemed unbothered as they called for blood.
“For the crimes of banditry, kidnapping, murder, espionage, and for doing so with not just mortals, but unawakened children, the sentence is death.”
The moment Leon said ‘death’ Queen moved in a flash and five heads landed as the crowd roared.
Leon ended the opening words and execution on a positive note. “Let that act as a reminder of what happens to the enemies of the Empire, and what you may become if you excavate all of your potential.”
As the blood ran, the Tier 10s fervor went through the roof, which made the first few days of the event especially violent, with a record number of brawls breaking out in the normally safe areas on the Pather’s planet.
Poor Aster had her work cut out for her, as she had to direct her teams to fix all the broken landscapes, but it at least gave her something to do, and she genuinely enjoyed it.
Beyond their work as spies, the three of them were paraded around as special guests at the Pather tournament. Aster was not included, as that would blow their cover and she was busy enough with her own work. Matt spent most of his time in his Quill mask as an assistant announcer, as Queen never said too much and Torch only had a handful of times where people heard her saying more than one word at a time. Monosyllabic sentences didn’t exactly make for good commentary, so Quill’s personality was much needed.
Quill leaned back as he watched a feed from a dungeon delve that had gathered attention. “Look at her go Messi, she's running through those unicorns like I run through the all you eat buffet at the Silver Stables. How much longer do you think she can keep it going?”
Messi nodded with his dark hair falling down over his eyes, and the cameras started flashing as they tried to capture the good looking man's image for the new sites.
“She is very impressive Quill, that is true. Look at how she twists out of the unicorns' charges. The only issue is her method of dodging won't work very well against the unicorns' kicks.”
Quill agreed, as he also saw the woman getting subtly herded into a trap. “Now we get the opportunity to see how she can handle a hit. My money is on the ‘not very well’ option.”
“I won’t be taking that bet. She—” Messi was interrupted as the girl got kicked in the chest and went flying into the dirt. “And there it is. The answer is not very well, let's just hope she can get up before they start trampling her.”
Matt actually had fun with it, as he was able to tone down some of his meaner comments in the name of public speaking, which let him generally just praise the kids and offer feedback with the other casters.
That said, he let his more acerbic comments loose on the other commentators, who sometimes said the dumbest things. He wanted to say it was just to increase conversation between the casters, and he was sure a few were doing just that, but others seemed genuinely dumb. He had to wonder how some of them had gotten on the shows he was a part of, and happily ripped their arguments apart.
The less said about some of the public's submitted questions, the better, though there were a few good ones.
Eventually, he caught on and learned that the stations he was working with had realized that his yelling at dumb comments was great for repeat viewings. He didn’t mind that, but when he noticed the trend, he spoke to the manager of the show and got them to intersperse more good comments. He didn’t mind the dumb ones, but he was getting tired of reading the same five stupid takes on the fights and events at the tournament.
He even very carefully didn’t talk up or down Ethan and Eleanor, as one day, it would come to light that Matthew Moore was Howard Lax and Quill, so he didn’t want to tear into them and ruin their future relationship. But he also couldn't be nice to them when they didn’t deserve it, as that would bring even more attention to them. Thankfully, they were pretty average Pathers, all things considered, and while they did well, they didn’t stand out too much.
That said, he and Liz sent them weekly updates on how they were doing and giving them encouragement. That and the cheers of their parents really seemed to help bolster them along as they fought their way through challenge and danger.
Liz and Susanne, on the other hand, were using their expertise and giving lessons to the kids who took the top places in the Thunderdome, what Leon had named the small planet filled with monsters, in the monthly resetting kill rankings. They weren’t as cool as Light and Shadow currently were, or as famous as Lila World Walker, but the two next teams who had a good shot at completing the Path were still prestigious enough on their own that they got their fair share of worshipful gazes.
Susanne privately complained about it, but even Matt could tell a small part of her liked being recognized for her achievements.
At the six-month mark, the three of them got pulled into their own little event, and in front of everyone, a wave of tens of thousands of Tier 22 monsters was set on them, and they were able to let loose and decimate them. None of them used any kind of special attacks, but that didn’t stop them from putting on a good show and impressing the kids.
Eleanor and Ethan did well. Well enough to get themselves a management team Luna said was adequate, which, when translated to anyone else's speech, was a glowing recommendation of their prowess. Though Matt wasn’t surprised. Ethan had a strong Talent on his own, and some of the unique spells he was able to make were fairly strong, even though the merging rate was abysmal. Still, a [Flamethrower] that spat out electrified fire was damn useful for anyone, let alone Eleanor, who could really abuse channel spells with her own Talent.
When the curtain fell on the year-long event, Matt felt bad saying farewell to everyone once more, as he had thoroughly enjoyed his time with Susanne and seeing Eleanor and Ethan again. But they promised to chat more going forward, and Liz had the good idea to convince Luna to ensure the other team's manager would inform them before the kids went into Minkalla so they could give them some advice.
Then, it was back to the grind, and they pushed hard and fast for Tier 20 so they could start working on their Intents safely.