Chapter 282 (Patreon)

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Matt was not smiling for long.

“Come now, Matthew. Is that truly the best you can manage? You substantially overshot the bounding tether, and it looks like you completely neglected the Deloid Principle.”

He was holding a crystal sphere twice the size of his hand with various simple, two-dimensional runes carved into the material. Or, they were supposed to be runes. This attempt had made them look more like a child's squiggles than the crisp lines, artful strokes, or precise curves that runes should have been made of.

Even making a perfect sphere had taken a few attempts, and getting the lines to appear on the crystal at all had taken a few more besides. All of those crystals, and his previous sloppy rune-spheres, littered the ground around him like overflow from the world’s most valuable ball pit.

It should have been a simple task, even with his control suffering hard from its recent doubling, but Matt had found that his new Talent struggled with fine detail. It was a bit embarrassing, really, that the Emperor had managed to seemingly master it within seconds of first copying it, but he couldn’t account for that.

“At least you aren’t reduced to physical direction,” Luna relented. “That would be a shameful display from my former student. You’d think I barely taught you anything.”

It actually was easier to utilize his Tier 25 Talent if he moved his hands as he formed crystals, metaphorically sculpting the crystal-clay as he went. When doing so, he could get to a decent level of fidelity, but Luna had refused to allow those bad habits to set in. He would have as well, of course, but Luna provided support, which made fully spiritual and mental creation of his crystals far easier to focus on.

“What do you think you’re doing wrong?”

She wasn’t asking for specifics, she’d already given his particular points of failure. Instead, she was prompting him to figure out the base cause of why he was struggling. Previous permutations of the question had already gotten him this far, but he was sensing she wanted something a bit more comprehensive than usual.

“I’m starting too small,” Matt concluded. “My Talent clearly has a penchant for doing big things, and it’s fighting me hard to try and reel my mana into my standard spiritual bounding. Now that I’ve got a definite feel for items small enough for me to hold, I need to go big and slowly scale back from there, instead of trying to get bigger over time after I master the small-scale. It’ll be fighting my normal inclinations twice, and probably take longer each way than starting big would take total.”

Luna nodded. “Good. Go off somewhere and make your skyscraper-sized practice crystals, get a feel for it, come back in a few hours.”

Having said her piece, Luna turned back to talk to Light again. She’d spent most of their training time with the other mage, all told. She’d given Shadow a task to cut through a full-powered defensive construct made out of pure void, a challenge that the teleporter was still struggling with, but had been keeping Zack quite busy with all sorts of very particular challenges, each more complicated than the last.

He’d passed the first few with flying colors- literally, his magic cycled through a full rainbow quite regularly- but Luna had hit the right balance of ‘challenging but possible’ for him almost immediately.  Matt’s fellow Ascender was currently straining in an attempt to weave together dozens of different colors of lightning to produce a completely soundless hologram, while Luna instructed him to change aspects, what the hologram was, and even various ways to animate the hologram in question. All the while, she provided biting remarks about high-level mana control theory that Matt barely followed, but Light nodded along to like it made perfect sense.

A sullen-looking Shadow popped over next to Matt. “And she stuck with you the whole time? You never got a break when she went off to other teams? When she went to go use a litter box or something?”

Matt shook his head even as he smiled. “Nope. This is unadulterated Luna, Shadow. Shit, this is happy Luna. She lives for pushing people to their maximum, picking apart a process to figure out where every last inefficiency lurks, and cutting it out. I’m pretty sure it outright pained her, at the start of my training and before she adjusted, to have me utilize more mana for an effect that could be accomplished with less, so Light has to be a century-long dream for her. She’s been struggling to keep my mana control halfway decent, with my regular doublings, and being able to talk shop with someone who can actually take her advice? Yeah, she’s thrilled.”

He was distracted by Luna as she had Light add sound to his hologram, but only by allowing some of the natural crackling of the lightning he was using to add together for decidedly different sound waves. It… sounded really bad, if he was being honest. Matt yelped as he looked down to see Shadow withdrawing the dagger from his bicep.

“What the fuck?”

Shadow blinked at him like she hadn’t just stabbed him. “I told you. Call me Allie. If you don't…” She spun the still bloodied dagger around her fingers. “Stabbie time.”

Matt always kept [Regeneration] running, so the wound was already closing, but he still looked at his peer oddly.

“You earned the title, so why not use it?”

Allie rolled her eyes. “When we are on missions, sure, use it. But when we are here and training, fuck no. It's the same with Darrow. I can’t be bothered with that formal shit when we aren’t actually working, so I don’t. Who gives a shit about Good Order and Discipline when we aren’t fighting? I sure as fuck don’t. Besides, you’ve been using the names of our teammates instead of their titles, and we’re not different just cause we missed the first meet and greet thanks to you blowing Zack’s mind with your mana output.”

Matt wasn't going to argue with her about how good order and discipline in peace time was crucial to good order and discipline under fire. She would have already gotten those lectures and was clearly choosing to ignore them. Her attitude also fell in line with Duke Waters' and Lila’s from everything he had seen from those older Ascenders.

Instead, he pointed down at the six distorted fields surrounding the orb of pure blackness hovering a few feet away. “You’re listening to her though.”

Allie nodded sagely. “Yeah, well, she had a really good idea. I’ve never been able to really interact with void in anything more than a ’welp guess I’ll just die’ way before this. Its the one thing Zack can’t really use after all. Maybe this will work. Shit, maybe it won’t, but I’ll try anything once. And she’s scary. And threatened to eat me. And I’m pretty sure she meant it.”

Matt nodded. “Not all of you, but an arm or something? There’s plenty of healers around here, she’d know it’s far from permanent and that she can probably get away with it.”

Allie murmured a quiet ‘fuck’ but only nodded. “Want a jump somewhere with some more room?”

“I’m happy to accept but I thought you don’t want to be a taxi?”

Allie snorted. “Look, we’re going to be friends eventually with how much we fight side by side, so I might as well be nice from the outset. And I don’t mind helping people, but I refuse to let people take advantage by silently accepting their demands on my time. Figured you would have understood that one?”

Without Allie even touching them, they teleported a mile or so to the edge of the manicured grassland where they had been working with Luna, and Matt stretched out his hand. His Talent definitely preferred more naturally crystalline shapes, and so he gave it one.

Mana flooded out of his body, enough that Allie took a half-step back, but instead of flowing freely into his surroundings, he forced it down, onto the ground, and activated his Talent.

A small speck of blue crystal appeared, at near the center of his mana torrent, and quickly expanded outwards into a crystal spire, growing in height and width with every passing second.

Seeing that Allie hadn’t left and was watching the growing brick with a smirk, he answered her question.

“I get the worry. I mean fuck. I’m incredibly worried that someone will find out about my Talent and decide I need to be tossed into a box to become a battery. I’m terrified. But I also have a social responsibility to do what I can do to help those around me. I have all this mana, and I don’t want to just keep it all to myself. You grew up in an immortal enclave right? Low-Tier planet, high-Tier parents?”

At Allie's nod, Matt continued, “My family were simple Empire citizens living normal mortal lives before they were killed in a rift break. They were happy, but there was so much they couldn’t really do because the economics made it impossible. With my mana, planets can be raised up to Tier 5, so there are a plethora of Tier 1 rifts for people to get started delving in if they so choose. Lilly, where I grew up, had only a few dozen safely delveable Tier 1 rifts near the coastal cities, and that made the prices really high for low Tiers who also needed to pay for a team to carry them and equipment. My mana can change that. Enchanting, smithing, and crafting, in general, are incredibly expensive for those who can’t afford or source enough materials to test and fail on like dedicated fighters can. My mana can create subsidies to reduce those prices. I’m happy to help with all of that. I just want to do it while keeping my freedom.”

Allie pursed her lips, and they stood there working on their own projects for a few minutes when she nodded. “That makes sense. But you are nicer than I am. I don’t think I’d be willing to share. I value my independence too much.” Matt was going to say something, but Allie punched him in the shoulder. “But hey, if you ever get boxed, I’ll teleport you out.”

Matt was touched by the sentiment but shook his head. “If I did get boxed, it would be by a Tier 50, and I doubt that you could get me free from them.”

Allie shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I could manage it. If nothing else, I’d just teleport the entire place they were holding you in. Give me enough time and a dozen Tiers, and I’m pretty sure I could teleport an entire planet.”

“That's impossible.”

Allie rolled her eyes and nodded at Matt’s crystal as it passed the ten foot mark in height. “The impossible is what Ascenders do. Who the fuck is going to stop me from growing my powers and becoming the single best teleporter there is? I especially don’t want to hear about limits from the guy whose Concept is about being Endless.”

They each worked in silence for a few minutes, as Matt worked on his crystal. There didn’t seem to be any particular range limit for it, interestingly. While he could only begin the crystallization process within a short range of him, so long as any part of the crystal was within that range, he could keep building… well, arbitrarily far away. A column six inches in diameter pierced the sky as Matt pushed the limits of just how far he could keep it cohesive, and while it absolutely grew less efficient the further it got, it hadn’t begun to lose meaningful cohesion even once it passed the ten mile mark.

His next task was a perfect sphere the size of a small house, and then a hollow sphere the exact same size. Then, two hollow spheres half that size, connected by an axle that allowed them each to spin freely. And finally, fifty-foot runes. While he was limited to simple three-dimensional, fully contiguous runes, he was able to physically form them. They didn’t have any magical effect, but that wasn’t too much of a surprise.

There was something magical, watching the crystal form itself out of nothing. A faint lightshow at the leading edges of his runes, as they traced out their swoops and lines, coalesced into sparkling magic and finally into the crystal itself.

So long as he was feeding his entire mana regeneration into the task, he was actually fairly good at it. He was still limited to focusing on a single ‘stroke’ at a time, so he couldn’t just manifest an entire rune in one go, but it was substantially more satisfying and productive than forever trying to work with less titanic mana stones.

Allie popped over, “So uh, how many mana is that? It’s got to be a few billion. With a B.” She gave him something of an odd look, which tickled his pride a little.

“Ehh, my efficiency isn’t perfect, so instead of a full twenty-five billion, it's closer to twenty-two billion. Can you pop us back? Since it seems I can’t create planets out of mana bricks.”

Allie mouthed the words ‘Twenty-two billion’ but teleported them, and the mana stones he’d been working on, back to the group.

That in and of itself was impressive, and Matt made a note that Allie, for all her flippant dismissal of military decorum and easygoing attitude, was still an Ascender in her own right.

Just a moment after they arrived, Luna walked over, and Allie vanished just as quickly.

“I expected worse. What are your main limits right now?”

“Something similar to metaphorical inertia, I think.” Matt answered, earning a nod, “It’s a bit different, but I think there’s enough similarities to make the comparison. I can make something simple pretty much any size I want, but the moment I want to change what I’m doing, it becomes so much harder. But because of the outflow-endlessness that I need to cultivate in my mana to simply get it out of me fast enough to be useful, it can’t do intricate things. Any changes have to be gradual, as the mana wants to keep building out what it was doing before.”

“Good. What if you try to make a lot of similar, but small objects quickly? How quickly can you make coins? Aim for about this large to start, and we’ll go from there.” Luna directed, holding her finger and thumb up in a circle.

The first few came out a bit misshapen, but with a bit of work he was able to get a fairly steady stream of coins created, each almost identical to the last. Luna snagged one out of the air as they were sent flying, sliced it in half- letting the crystal dissolve into glittering motes of mana- and nodded.

“Light! Why don’t you come over here.”

Light looked over at the pair of them, then was suddenly next to them as well as across the field. A moment later, the more distant man faded, revealing itself to be an illusion.

Luna assessed the feat cooly, “Illusion-aspected teleportation?”

Light nodded, “In high-Tier surroundings, the baseline difficulty of pure spatial manipulation is substantially higher than most other forms of instantaneous travel. Lightning is technically the cheapest, but that tends to have unfortunate effects upon the surroundings, and I need to be careful as to not waste mana on anything but the transportation itself.”

“Well done. How precise is your movement?”

“At this range? A variance of zero point zero three inches.”

Luna chuckled. “And this is why I’m going to pair the two of you up for some training. The mage who is all about control and efficiency and the mage who doesn't even know what the phrase mana conservation means.”

Matt wanted to interject that he knew what the definition of mana conservation was. Once upon a time, he had been a mana-hungry low Tier who had needed to spend each MPS with the utmost efficiency. But he took the point and held his tongue.

“Light, I want you to work on going big. Let Matt keep you full of mana. Start casting with at least ten percent of your mana pool, and work your way up from there. Matt will help you, as you keep growing. Your prismatic-affinity Talents are likely to make you somewhat more prone to spontaneous aspect-cascades than normal, but there are far more forces than simply that at play. Hyperthaumic singularities, protocausal ur-definition, Dallier Principle collapses, eclipsical overflow, and more. Matt is perhaps the Empire’s foremost expert on solo-cast multimillion mana spells for your Tier range, he’ll be able to assist you should any begin to appear. Matt, I want you to keep working on getting your mana stone creation smaller and smaller. Don’t worry about particular shapes yet, just try and make the smallest mana stones possible. Light can help you with subthaum dissipation, acontinual quells, intermanal bonding, and… no, those are likely to be the only things you encounter today.”

Having said that, Luna started looking around. “Now, where did Shadow go? I need her to assist Aster in exploring her Tier 25.”

Luna vanished for a moment and came back, holding a sheepish-looking Allie by the scruff of the neck.

Turning away from the impending disaster, Matt looked to see Aster laughing at Allie’s predicament and four Liz’s sitting in a circle with their eyes closed.

Light turned back from the large mana brick Allie had teleported back to the training area and gave Matt a weird look.

“You really never had mana problems did you?”

Light’s tone was flat enough that Matt had a hard time understanding his intention but decided to give Light the benefit of the doubt. “Yes and no. I was pretty much limited to channels until Tier 6 or so. Back then I couldn’t even cast a 10 mana [Fireball] without using an external mana stone to refill my mana pool to full, so I do know what not having mana feels like. But that's a pretty specific problem. I never had the problem Liz did where she just couldn’t train some days before she met me because she needed to save mana for her next delve. I’ve always had an endless stream of mana to fall back on, even when I didn’t realize how useful that could be.”

Smiling his best self-deprecating smile, he added a bit of his personal history. Allie hadn’t been wrong about them working closely together and eventually becoming friends through that. That, and he liked Light’s ideas about mana types. That was some science he could get behind with his mana ring able to copy anything stable they created.

“I worked at a small inn for over a year before I got accepted to The Path with the detrimental Talent clause, when I could have sold my mana to make a killing. It was probably a good thing I didn’t, if my Folded Reflection lives are to be believed. But of course, Minkalla lies. Who knows how much was true, and how much was just it feeding into my fears.”

Light nodded. “Yes, I heard Minkalla can be ruthless with that floor. Personally, I’d have been interested in what it showed me, but I understand why others are so opposed to that floor on principle.”

The conversation petered out a little, and Matt took the time to create a small coin out of a few thousand mana. He got the outward shape down pat, but when he tried to create an Empire flag on one side and the Emperor's profile on the other, the sides looked like half-melted renditions of the ideas he was trying to project.

It wasn’t like he had seen many physical credits, but he felt he should have been able to do better than that.

Tossing the mana stone to the floor, Matt started to create another one even as Light gestured and pulled the mana coin to his hand, where he inspected it like it was a treasure.

“This is impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.”

Matt looked up and nodded. “It's apparently not unique, as the Emperor had a few similar Talents, but I think it will be useful once I get it under control.”

Light didn’t respond verbally but did nod. Then, he surprised Matt as he held up the mana coin and asked, “May I experiment with this?”

“Sure. It cost me like five seconds of effort. Speaking of which...”

Having been given the thought, Matt changed his mental whitelist of people to give mana with his Concept to to include everyone around him.

That prompted a few head-turns, until he sent out a ping on his AI clarifying that he was responsible. They’d already discussed his Concept as a part of Team Zero, so nobody was truly surprised.

Light sighed. “It’s one thing to hear about your Concept strength, and another to experience it myself. Small wonder, why the rest of your team's skills are so developed, Ascender Quill. Allie and I weren’t able to really start fine-tuning our skills until we finished the Path. We just never had the time or extra mana to spare.”

Seeing as Allie had already dropped the titles, Matt decided to offer the same to Light. “You can call me Matt if you want. I don’t mind, and I think we will be getting along quite well in the coming days. Speaking of getting along, my [AI] already processed your data about the mana tests. Do you want me to send you its readout?”

Light jerked slightly before nodding. “Thank you, Qu— Matt. You are free to call me Zack, if so inclined. I suppose I should be surprised your calculations are already complete, but how much mana have you spent on it? If you could send it to me, that would be appreciated..”

Matt grinned back at Zack. “Nothing obvious you guys missed. It was very thorough.”

Zack didn’t smile, but Matt felt like he was doing so. “I suppose that's good news. It means we didn’t miss anything, but finding out we had missed something obvious would have been convenient, as it would have given us more direction. Researcher Karl and I have put in a lot of hours on this project.”

He hadn't seen Erwin in what felt like lifetimes, but he made a note to go see the distractible researcher when he got a minute. It would be good to catch up, and if he was working with Light on a mana-type project, he was sure the man would be willing to sit and talk about some rift theories, as they were tangentially related.

Speaking of which, as he worked on creating an even smaller mana coin, he turned to Zack and started a conversation about rift theory.

Zack, while having never delved into the topic, picked up some of the intricacies that Matt had learned through trial and error quickly, and was able to offer suggestions and ideas as they worked on honing their skills as Luna directed.

***

Matt nodded in thought, as his advisors spoke and he fidgeted with the pitch-black orb on the table in front of him spinning it like it was a very expensive top.

While he had been told very emphatically that he was free to take whatever skills he wanted, no matter what had been recommended to him, and that they would never, under any circumstance, force him to absorb a skill, he had been informed by Group Chess, the Group of Project Breach in charge of broad-strokes leadership and strategy, that if he were so inclined, he could also get advisors from Groups Branch and Scry to help him get the absolute most out of his new skill acquisitions. The entire explanation had a faint undercurrent of exasperation and almost desperation, not outright pleading with him to not take offense at any people who might be a bit pushier than they nominally ‘should’ have been when giving suggestions for his skills, but very strongly suggesting it.

He wondered what the story was there. He suspected a stab happy teleporter didn’t like to be told what skills they should absorb. Or maybe a water mage lightly drowned a few people who suggested things he didn’t like. Or a dragon ate people who suggested anything. Yeah there were more than enough stories he could probably find if he went digging.

He’d accepted, almost more worried after the entire speech meant to pacify him than beforehand, but had been quite pleased with his advisors so far. One was a wizened Tier 38 mage named Delphi Ghan who specialized in Innate Skill Theory, the second a young-looking Tier 45 woman from Group Firmament who went by the name ‘Overload,’ and was a resident expert in high-mana crafting, and the final member was a Tier 35 man with pitch-black hair and eyes from Group Branch who introduced himself as Xell Brians, a statistical analyst and diviner.

They all had their obvious preferences and areas of expertise, and while Overload seemed to be a bit uncomfortable around Matt, she was still quite professional. The three of them had gone through Matt’s entire list of ‘possibly interested’ skills, both the ones that he’d mentioned and the list he’d been given by Group Scroll, and had opinions on all of them. Not only did they know, in incredible detail, the effects that the skills would have individually, but also how they interacted or overlapped with the other skills on his list and that the rest of Team Zero as a whole was known to have.

And he was learning a lot.

Unlike what he’d always thought, apparently skills didn’t always work exactly the same for everyone. The simple act of absorption changed the skill structure in usually-unnoticed ways, a sort of very basic modification simply required to use the baseline skill. The further into the spirit it was brought, the larger the effects, up to and including Innate skills. Also, not all Talent-given skills worked the same way from the start. Some automatically were tied to physical movements, others, particularly neutral-mana skills, could start off aspected, some even needed a physical focus to work at all. The Minkalla-granted Innate slot worked differently in some ways, but similarly in others. The speed at which he absorbed skills could affect things, which skill slot, even within a given layer of his spirit, he put them in could affect it, what skills he already had in his spirit could impact things…

None of the advantages were insurmountable with sufficient time and dedication, but added together, they could make a substantial impact on his immediate combat prowess and make future advancement that much easier.

It had been a dizzying array of knowledge crammed into his head all at once, and they’d outlined an initial set of skills for Matt to absorb, and an optimal order for doing so. It wasn’t complete by any metric, as there were still plenty of reasons why they might want to change up his loadout. The most obvious of which was his upcoming custom-made gear, in case he decided on something that boosted a specific spell, or was most effective with a given skill empowering it.

Then there was the main wildcard, his upgrade orbs. He’d already used his first Tier 38 orb on upgrading [Regeneration], fulfilling a practically lifelong dream of being essentially unkillable. Sure, there were still things that the skill couldn’t handle, like curses, but with his Talent he could keep the Overhealth flowing constantly, and even with ‘only’ 10,000 MPS dedicated the skill, he could regrow any part of him in mere seconds and left him functionally immune to physical trauma so long as he didn’t let the skill lapse and then get injured in the skills cooldown.

But now, he had a second one. Some Duke Falgrio had sold the Empire an extra Tier 38 Upgrade Orb on the condition his “sincere generosity and show of favor” was made explicit to the “new Ascenders.” Even if it didn’t increase his base allotment of upgrade orbs any, Matt was still quite happy to get ahold of a second orb months in advance of when he was expecting.

Even before he’d discussed it with his advisors, he’d already known exactly what he was using it on, and he was pleased that they hadn’t tried to talk him out of it. Well, Overload tried to sell him on using it on [Mana Beam], and he suspected that Xell would have preferred that he wait to see how well [Cracked Reinforce Stone] worked for him, and use it on that instead, but he was ready to ignore all three of them even if Delphi hadn’t been in support of his idea.

[Cracked Phantom Armor] had been there since before he was on The Path and he wasn’t going to throw it away like a used toy.

Even though the Tier 26 upgrade had been a little underwhelming, Matt outright refused to accept the idea that a different spell, a new spell, would be a better fit. They’d all been fairly curious what the second upgrade would bring, as the most common second upgrade for [Phantom Armor] upgrade allowed one to adjust the trigger conditions of the spell, letting the user bring it up the moment they entered any form of danger, or only protect from very specific parts of the body or types of damage. It was somewhat conditional, but undeniably useful under those conditions, but was completely and utterly redundant with Matt’s particular crack.

In the end, it increased the range and flexibility of [Cracked Phantom Armor]’s second layer, letting it cover his weapon or other held items. While it improved their durability without impacting his sword's sharpness, it overall felt like a bit of a dud upgrade. 

Still, he believed in his oldest and most faithful skill.

While nobody in the army’s records had ever used a Tier 38 upgrade orb on [Phantom Armor], that didn’t mean his advisors were clueless about how his skill might react.

Overload figured there was a fairly high probability that it would be fairly useless to him, or something he could accomplish with enough modification. She cited how the spell liked to vent mana out of the second layer, acting as a form of power overflow, and through some fairly advanced arguments that Matt only half-followed, thought the most likely upgrade would be something that let him turn a part of the second layer into a weapon of its own. Making a sword out of his skill would be something of a dud, he had to agree, especially since odds were good he could do something similar with his Talent. Even if it made it easier, it would be something of a waste.

Xell, via some divinations and statistical analysis, predicted that the skill would have something to do with separation, or otherwise reaching external to the base effect. The example he’d given was physical discontinuity between portions of the armor, such as creating floating barriers or becoming able to also cast the armor on another person.

That could be useful but not something Matt really wanted. There were other skills that could do that.

Finally Delphi, using a spiritual scan of the skill’s interaction with Matt’s spirit, where it sat in his Innate slot, pointed to several sections of the structure where mana could be stored. He proposed the idea that the skill was already synergistic with his Tier 25 Talent and overall mana flow, and would prove exponentially stronger the more mana was used during a given cast of the skill, stockpiling the excess to either strengthen itself, or possibly any skills he cast while using it.

With a degree of excitement he hadn’t felt since he was Tier 6 and first getting new skills, he pretended to make his final choice and crushed the black upgrade orb with his spirit.

As he felt the orb sink into [Cracked Phantom Armor], he felt out some of the changes to the skill, before hitting it with [Analyze] as Xell did the same. It took a moment to figure out, but confirmed with the diviner his findings before giving it a proper test.

He was quite pleased.

On a very basic level, the upgrade absorbed incoming magical attacks that it would have otherwise blocked, and attuned the spell to that given attack. The more attuned it was, the better he could defend against that specific attack and other attacks like it, but it also gave him various elemental effects and boosts when adequately charged.

He relocated to the testing facility, where some on-hand trainers were quite willing to bombard him with [Arc]s and [Meteor Shower]s. The former turned his armor an electric blue and began leaving trails of lightning in his wake, while the latter turned his armor red and covered in flames, even unleashing explosions every time he punched something.

The rate of conversion was on the slower side, but Matt already had an answer in mind for that.

He dismissed and re-conjured the armor to reset its accumulated affinity, then called upon his mana-aspecting ring, and flooded [Cracked Phantom Armor] with fire mana, turning the entire suit cherry red. Even without thinking about it, the second layer twisted its filigree and design to be more flame-like in design, and while no fires burst forth initially, he could sense the heat just below the surface.

A nearby trainer, at Matt’s prompting, hit him with a [Firebolt].

Matt cackled as the spell splashed against his armor like it was a pebble landing in a lake, barely costing him any mana to block and causing his armor to actually flare up.

“Hit me with a water spell, please.”

The mage did so, and Matt nodded. Given the mana it had taken, there was a slight decrease to the efficacy of his armor for spells of opposing elements, but that cost was more than offset by the general power boost it had gotten as a side effect from the Tier 38 orb.

With a thought, he flooded [Cracked Phantom Armor] with water mana, and in just a second, the armor was a deep blue and ready to protect him from water spells.

There was a small time frame where the mana types were switching, that the armor was back to a normal affinity, but Matt could already feel that with some practice, he could get that one-second time frame down to something viable for Tier 25 combat. It also seemed as though he wasn’t able to get some of the more atypical effects from simply flooding the armor with mana, but even if that wasn’t just a matter of practice, which he suspected it was, he could just hit himself with the requisite spells to get the best armor effects.

It was at that time Matt realized he had no idea how it would interact with his newest Talent, and he dismissed the mana aspecting from [Cracked Phantom Armor] before letting his Tier 25 Talent turn the mana into physical crystal.

He had already tried to crystallize outside sources of mana, or mana he’d passed through his ring, and while it was possible, it was damn hard, and it was nowhere near combat viable with his current skill.

With a breath, he flooded [Cracked Phantom Armor] with lightning mana and his crystalline armor started to spark. When the trainer hit him with a lightning spell, they found that his crystallized [Cracked Phantom Armor] actually absorbed the spell and reinforced the physical mana crystals.

Overall, a very useful upgrade that Matt was sure he’d be figuring out new uses for constantly in the centuries to come. With Zack on his team, the possibility space for interesting mana types in varying skills was if not outright infinite, damn close.

But, most importantly, it didn’t change any of his primary skill acquisitions, and the first of them had already arrived in the rift.

Matt felt a deep upwelling of glee as he beheld the eleven skills on the table before him. More would arrive in the days and weeks to come, but this was true power. This was what he had waited for, what he had fought and bled for. Before him were the dreams of a starry-eyed younger Matt being fully realized, and he loved it.

The first one was [Breach], the uncracked version of the skill he had almost gotten in the vassal wars he had participated in. He’d ultimately been bought out by the opposition in an attempt to get him to change sides near the end of the war, but he didn’t regret the loss that much.

Seeing it now felt nostalgic, but it wasn’t nearly the coolest skill he was immediately given.

That honor went to [Dragonflame]. The Tier 32 skill was one of a series of spells that dragons typically used to supplement or replace their innate breath weapon. The spells had been recommended by Overcharge on account of the sheer number of different options the base spell had. Matt could separately control the heat, duration, speed, and quantity of flame produced by the spell, which made it substantially surpass his old [Flamethrower]. By pumping his mana regen into the spell, he would be melting mountains.

It was the attack every child imagined themselves playing with.

He also got the air and sand variants, [Dragon Breath] and [Dragon’s Drought] respectively, for the additional variety. In time, he might extend that to more elemental varieties, but the three would suffice for now. They were an uncommon but popular spell family, and Matt had heard rumors that Lila herself had been involved in his acquisition of [Dragon’s Drought]. He had always known the big dragon was a softie.

[Flight], [Telekinesis], and [Gravity Manipulation] were three obvious choices, each a channeled skill with clear utility in fights. He would no longer need to fly or manipulate tools through indirect means, and his Intent had direct synergy with gravity-aspect skills, making it an easy choice.

Accordingly, Delphi recommended he also pick up [Gravitic Bolt] and [Cosmic Pressure]. The former was a fairly simple armor piercing spell that warped light as it flew, while the latter was a spell that drastically strengthened gravity in an area to slow fighters and trap most mages.

[Barrage] would complement his non-channeled spells, allowing him to duplicate most single cast spells at a higher mana cost, and after some modification he would be able to flood a fight with an endless stream of projectiles.

Then there was the creme de la creme.

The Tier 38 skill [Mana Beam]. As a proper channel, Matt would be able to throw all the mana he wanted into the skill without any spiritual strain, and while it made [Cracked Mana Spear] obsolete, he was more than happy to upgrade.

Next up, meeting with Firmament to plan out his armor.

He couldn’t wait.