[STT] Chapter 65: Arrivals at the Top (Patreon)

Giving in to his curiosity, Ben reached out and tapped the strange rock. But the stone produced no reaction from the system this time around. He had already accepted the invitation, so that seemed fair.

He pushed a thread of mana straight into the rock to test things out and was surprised when it completely vanished and he lost control with his mana.

Ben frowned, and ran [Mana Sonar] to figure out what was happening. Changing the skill's frequency on the fly was almost second nature now, but even as he adjusted it the exact same way he usually did to scan through solid objects, nothing answered back from the stone.

Every single surface up here returned something through his sonar.

Except for this rock.

Intrigued by the lack of feedback, he pushed the frequency of the skill as high as it would go. The ping went straight into the rock, and again, nothing returned to his senses.

Deciding he really didn't care enough to figure out a rock at the moment, he simply filed the information away for later, and walked away from the center of the peak. There was no point stressing over it when he still had a rare skill evolution to figure out.

But for that to happen, he needed Alice and Ethan up here.

Looking down the edge, he found no one was close yet, so he returned to the stone to look at the symbols.

None of the symbols made a lick of sense to him. So he picked out the simplest one of the bunch, tracing its shape with his finger to memorize it for later.

Turning his head away, he immediately forgot what it looked like. The memory just vanished completely from his brain like it had never been there at all. And strangely enough, he didn't even care that he had lost it.

Pulling up his system notifications, he checked the status of the monolith event. He wanted to see if it had finally figured out how to reward him. Or if it would let him "enter" the monolith.

Processing… Processing…

The notifications blinked in and out with a repeating 'Processing…' message instead of the previous 'Waiting' one.

So the system is still…

Ben sighed.

He walked over to a comfortable looking spot to plop down and decided to cycle his mana and essence. He pulled his bag of holding off his hip and chugged down some pond essence water. He forced the dense mana down his throat and immediately started cycling it through his core.

He really wanted to hit Tier 2 before this rift ended.

Thinking about his journey so far, he realized just how insanely fast he was advancing. The sheer amount of progress he had made since entering the rift was staggering enough, and to think this was supposedly just a basic Tier 1 rift.

Recalling Alice and Ethan's words from the times they talked about rifts, he remembered them saying this specific rift was actually not that great for progression. But if this was considered bad, he couldn't wait to see what a good rift looked like.

Cycling his mana over and over, he lost track of time entirely. Opening his eyes eventually, he stretched his arms and looked around the empty peak. And no one was here yet.

Weird.

He pushed out a quick pulse of [Mana Sonar] to see what was holding everyone up. The skill pinged against a figure clinging to the stairs right near the top edge of the monolith and he jogged over to check it out.

He fully expected to see Ethan or Alice struggling with the final steps, or perhaps Cassian. He doubted it would be Theodore, given that the guy could have probably already done it but had decided not to, or maybe he'd already done it and found the peak lacking.

But what he actually saw pulling itself over the edge was absolutely nothing he imagined.

Slapping a small hand over, a familiar figure hauled herself over the edge. Panting for air, Sera collapsed like she had just run a marathon. And he honestly hadn't expected the team's healer of all people to be the second one up.

"Unexpected."

Fixing him with a completely flat look, Sera stared at him from the floor. So he rubbed the back of his neck and offered a quick apology.

"My bad. But where's Cassian?"

She pointed down.

Dropping a quick pulse of [Mana Sonar] over her body, he checked to see exactly how she had survived the crushing gravity. And the feedback returning to his brain made absolutely no sense. Sweeping the skill through her, he found absolutely no reinforcement magic or defensive buffs holding her together.

She didn't have anything remotely close to [Warforged] protecting her, so she was bleeding internally and her body was completely wrecked on the inside but constantly knitting itself back together with healing mana.

She only looked fine on the outside.

Realizing the sheer absurdity of her method, which, to be fair, was much like his own, he just stared at her.

Just how strong is her will?

Sera pointed at his face. Then she shifted that same finger toward the center of the summit, tilting her head with a flat, questioning look. She gave her wrist a little twirl to silently ask what the big prize was.

"There is absolutely nothing up here."

She blinked.

"Well, there might be, we're going to have to work on it."

Her shoulders shook wildly as she giggled silently, but a booming shout from down below immediately cut her silent laughing fit short.

"Are you actually kidding me right now?!"

Looking over the edge, Ben spotted Cassian currently fighting a losing battle against the endless staircase. The warrior was still near the top, practically fighting the monolith itself and losing terribly.

Sera dragged herself to the very edge of the cliff and dangled her legs over the side, sitting there comfortably. She propped her chin in her hands, thoroughly enjoying the complete lack of physical exertion on her end, and gave Cassian a small wave.

Watching Cassian slam his foot onto the next step, Ben wondered why the gravity down there actually was so bad for a physical fighter. Was it actually not gravity? Cassian was a Peak Tier 2 warrior built entirely on strength and constitution path.

Ben wasn't. And he'd climbed first. So maybe there was more to the monolith than he realized.

Still…

I am incredibly glad I went all in on mana.

###

"My organs literally tried to liquefy!" Alice complained. She'd collapsed right next to where Ethan was already face planted on the floor when she'd climbed over, and they had barely beaten Cassian to the top by a few agonizing minutes.

Theodore casually strolled up the stairs a short while later, completely unfazed, followed eventually by a heavily panting Clarissa and a surprisingly beaten up Thomas.

Ben had been watching their individual progress all along, and they were the only ones actively pushing their limits in this rift anyway, so they were all the people he'd expected to reach the top alongside him.

Turning his attention back to Alice, Ben ignored her dramatics, dragged her and Ethan away from prying ears and sat them down with a look that made Ethan raise a hand to stop him from speaking. Pulling out a talisman from his spatial ring, Ethan tore it and slapped it on the ground.

"Now, go ahead."

"What's that?"

"It's a talisman that will stop eavesdropping."

"I see."

"Care to tell us now?"

Ben grew silent, gathering his thoughts. Staring at the skill paths he was offered, he told them about [Fire Burst]'s evolution and what skills he'd gotten as the advancement options. He was pretty clear he wanted their help deciding what to pick as he had no idea what these skills even did.

Alice fell silent for a while, thought about it, frowned, and then asked him to repeat the names again.

He genuinely just wanted her to pick one for him so he didn't have to stress over it, but he knew he was falling into one of his bad habits again when that thought crossed his mind. But he couldn't really stop himself from doing so, as that just wasn't how the brain worked.

And considering how much he usually hated giving up control… Yeah, he was pretty out of his element right now.

"I can only tell you what I know about them."

Rubbing her eyes, Alice sat up properly.

"I'd like that, yes," Ben replied, "I just need information."

"The actual choice is entirely yours. So, obviously, [Fire Burst] is just your standard, general upgrade that makes the boom bigger."

"Expected."

"But [Ignition Step] is completely different. It's a chained burst that taps directly into the concept, the abstract, of the skill rather than just pure affinity. Think conceptual weight, if you will? This is the point where skill paths start to wildly diverge."

"Conceptual weight? Like, abstract ideas?"

Ethan joined the conversation.

"Think of it as the 'idea' a concept holds. They can be abstract, or they can be literal. My sister has wings, for instance."

"Okay. And?"

"And they're not big enough to actually fly. They're conceptual in nature. It's not as much as the wings letting her physically fly as it is the idea of flying associated with them. Wings let you fly. Therefore, she flies."

Nodding along, Alice picked up the explanation again.

"Exactly. We think it's our collective knowledge that drives skills concepts. Reinforced over time, if you will. No one really knows. So [Ignition Step] takes the concept of movement and fire, and merges them. It gives you a movement skill that's spatial in nature even if the affinity is fire. And it's a skill that gets progressively faster the more you 'jump' from point to point. Or step to step, I guess."

"So I just keep accelerating?"

"Theoretically, you can go insanely fast. It's an incredibly strong skill to pull this early."

Ben absorbed the information like a sponge. This skill… it sounded amazing. He wanted to pick it right now. But he forced himself to not be impulsive for once, and asked:

"What about [Spontaneous Combustion]?"

Shivering slightly, Alice rubbed her arms.

"That one taps even deeper into the abstract. You basically choose points in the physical realm and just spontaneously combust them."

"That sounds terrifying."

"It is. Higher levels of that skill are absolutely nasty. It isn't weaker than [Ignition Step] in the slightest, they just serve completely different purposes."

…Ben wanted this one too.

He wept internally.

"And [Fire Wall]?"

"That one is a peculiar one. It creates a boundary, a domain where the concept of fire is enforced on reality. Anything inside can be ignited, fire skills get heavily enhanced, and opposing affinities get crushed."

"…"

"The limitation is massive. Skills like this are notoriously tricky because the more abstract they are, the less control you have over what constitutes a violation of it."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning it could just completely interfere with every other skill you try to use inside it. Plus, the range is incredibly limited unless you're an immortal or something."

"…"

He had asked for clarity, hoping to find an easy answer to his problem. But learning how utterly broken all these options actually were only made the choice infinitely harder.

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