Chapter 208

Chapter 208

Liz looked at Matt, red-eyed and with sadness dripping from her voice. “I loved fire growing up. Still do, really… the flicker of the flame, like a tiny life of its own. Mom would always play with me using her fires, they’d be there when I scraped my knee, or if I was tired or bored. Flames of all colors, warm to the touch but never burning. My siblings, when they visited, always showed off too. Whenever they both were around at the same time, Alice and Erin would compete to see who could burn the best picture directly into a block of wood.”

A smile flitted across her lips. “Erin would sometimes do somewhat more risque pictures of her lovers. Those were always fun, and Dad’s reaction to her burning them when I was around was always hilarious. I think I still have some of those actually, in some old forgotten closet back home. Some of my classmates were afraid of fire, meanwhile I had blankets that were literally solid flame. Mmm… I loved those blankets. I wonder where Mom put them; I know she didn’t throw them out.”

Shaking her head, she continued, “But fire was in my blood, literally. How could I be afraid of it? Working magic when you’re not awakened is hard, but hey, that didn’t stop me,” Liz chuckled. “You know, looking back, I was really good at fire magic. One of those things you don’t really appreciate when you’re a kid, I guess. But I could fire-dance on my own, spin ribbons of flame, and even create little puppets made out of fire. I’d always send them dancing around the room to put on a show for anyone there. Even just myself some days.”

To illustrate her point, Liz sparked a small fire between her fingers, shaped it into a hummingbird, and sent it buzzing through the air. She fell silent, and Matt just hugged her tightly.

When she next spoke, her voice was nearly breaking. “I loved fire. I knew exactly who I was, and exactly what I would be. I would be a pyromancer unlike anyone had ever seen before. Flames had birthed me, flames would be my companion, and I’d live forever basking in fire. I had my Concept all but made. I knew exactly what my image was, exactly what my phrase was, and the only reason I wasn’t on the first step of my Domain was because it’s physically impossible before the peak of Tier 4.”

“I had my Concept, Matt.” Her voice broke, and she started crying quietly into his shoulder. She kept talking, only slightly muffled by Matt’s shirt after a few moments. “At age nine. That was younger than Uncle Aiden was. Ascenders, some people spend a thousand years trying to figure out what their Concept was, and there I was, a precocious little girl not even a decade old, and I had it all but done!”

Matt rested his lips against her forehead, and Liz relaxed into the kiss, releasing her death grip on his arm. “And then… and then? The day of my fifteenth birthday came around. All my siblings, Uncle Aiden, Aunt Helen, even Uncle Manny were there, all ready to celebrate with me as I awoke my first Talent and took my first steps as a pyromancer.”

Between her wavering voice and just knowing how the story went, Matt could guess what was coming, and hugged Liz tightly, pulling her as close as he could manage without hurting her. She took a deep, shuddering breath and continued, “I absorbed essence no problem, it settled into my spirit, and everything went wrong.”

“Have you ever had your mana forcibly aspected? Rhetorical question, I know. Mana carries a sort of sense to it, and my bloodline meant I naturally had fire-aspected mana. I never realized the warmth it carried for me until it was gone. Everything went cold, my spirit shook, I started bleeding from the eyes, and everything went wrong. All but completely unable to use fire skills! I lost my ability to connect to fire. To feel fire. Not the heat, but the fire.”

“My life… it didn’t go well for me, those first few weeks. My Concept shattered and I hid in my room, looking up every blood mage on the EmpireNet. Niall Erlian, the blood researcher, he killed four million people through his experiments. There was Kell the Impaler, they had a habit of drowning people in their own blood after, go figure, impaling them. The Red Plagues, were a series of pandemics that wiped out three low-tier worlds, perpetrated by a cabal of blood mages. Another was Duke Sanguine, infamous for his blood-haze spells that could drive armies into self-destructive frenzies. Countless cases of blood sacrifices, disease, unethical experimentation, I saw it all. Was that going to be my legacy? Was I just going to be a young spark snuffed out by the real world, not even able to take any steps to real power?”

“And oh, there were rumors. My Awakening was private of course, but people talked. Ohh, did people ever talk. They didn’t know what happened, but they saw that I wasn’t around dazzling everyone with an even better mastery of fire magic, and they came to conclusions. The Extinguished Phoenix, they said, the Cinder Sparrow. Oh did they ever talk, did they ever revel in their rumors. They thought I might be unable to use magic altogether, that I got some Talent so detrimental even my parents were hiding me away, never mind that they’d never do that.”

A small smile crossed her face as Liz continued, “But what they did do, was spend every single one of my waking moments trying to help me feel better. They brought in a blood mage from a local hospital to talk about all the good that blood magic could do in healing. It just wasn’t as flashy, so it didn't make the EmpireNet headlines. They told me they didn’t care what my magic was like, and they reassured me in every way they possibly could that they still loved me and always would. What finally got me, in the end, was them saying that I could be just like Uncle Aiden and my dad. After all, what was blood but just red water? I could use blood like it was water, and that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Liz wormed her way out of Matt’s hug, sprawling across the bed and putting her hand under her head as she stared at the ceiling. “And you know what? It wasn’t. I had already been planning to join the Path before my awakening, and there wasn’t much need to change that plan just because my Bloodline was largely cut off from me until- until I got stronger. My mana aspect was all wrong, my Concept was shattered, and I had to learn an entirely new form of elemental magic from scratch. No, no reason at all. Dad gave me a [Water Manipulation], and after a few days of practice with it at home, he officially sponsored me to join the Path and I was on my way to the PlayPen. I said my goodbyes, and well… that was that. The only time I saw them before Tier 10 was after I graduated the PlayPen and headed off-world, though, while I was local, we still communicated via AI. But I’m sure they watched me the whole time.”

They stayed quiet for a long moment before she spoke again.

“I moved on, or at least, you know, I thought I did. Stupid Minkalla,” she grumbled.

“I’ve talked to my psychiatrist about it, talked with Mom and Dad about it during the tournament, and even talked with Uncle Manny about it. Even by the time we met, I was mostly over it. Still prickled a little, but I was fine. Torch really was the crowning achievement that finally put everything to rest. I managed to fight my own Talent and win. First place as a pyromancer with a Talent actively working against my own magic. I was beginning to really embrace blood magic, and I always consoled myself knowing that even if I hit a major roadblock in my path, it was my own grit and willpower that got me here. If I’d gotten the fire Talent I always dreamed about, I wouldn’t have been forced to push myself so hard, so fast, and I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Liz scowled, and her face contorted with the clear desire to kill something before fading back to normal. “Then Minkalla happened.”

She looked off to the side before pulling one of their pillows to her and grabbing it in a one-handed hug. “My first life, like I said, I was a blood queen. I used the blood of my enemies and my allies for my own strength. It was weirdly honest for a sacrifice-based skillset, but I guess that’s just all the more proof that evil is in the mage, not the magic. Still though, it was disturbing, and it did give me a few ideas as to how I could use blood in some novel ways. It doesn’t particularly matter at the moment, but I’ll probably want your help implementing them at some point.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Matt gently needled his girlfriend, earning himself a good-natured swat.

“Brat. But yeah, a nice clean life. Then, I decided to go for some spiced wine, very clearly a fire mage life. I thought to myself, may as well get it out of the way, could be fun, might be nice to reminisce and feel good about myself and what I’ve accomplished,” Liz looked up to him and caught his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Remember what I said about how I always consoled myself that I pushed myself harder and faster as a blood mage than I would have as a fire mage? Well, at least as far as Minkalla thinks, nah. Just, nah. All that meant was my drive to excel on my own merits, to push myself out of the shadow of my parents and siblings was all the stronger. I pushed myself just as hard as I ever did in real life, and boy did it pay off. It took me years to become half-decent at blood magic, but after a few years as a fire mage, I was the best, no question! We met up and teamed up, but I matched you as easily as breathing. You pushed yourself harder to keep up with me, with both of us excelling and feeding off each other. Once we met Luna, my drive didn't even matter!”

A tear slipped out of her eye and slid down her face as she continued, “Best pyromancer she’d ever seen, according to her. From fucking Luna. We blasted through the Pather tournament, barely breaking a sweat. We completed Minkalla at Tier 11 with barely a scratch! She never lost her arm fighting the General. She hardly even got hurt! That tree Concept backed by most of an Intent? She burned the tree to the fucking ground and the General right behind it, because that’s just how strong she was. Oh but her flames weren’t just destruction, they were healing and light, beauty and life, and… it was perfect, Matt. I was perfect!”

Matt stroked her head as Liz lay silently, staring up at the ceiling for almost ten minutes. “I got a bit of a break then. Life as a researcher, using my Talent to explore my bloodline. I wasn’t evil, but I certainly wouldn’t call myself good. I was too obsessed for that, if nothing else. Then, Minkalla decides to kick me while I’m down. Straight from my dream life to one of my literal nightmares in the days and weeks following my awakening. Filth and disease, my blood spreading across the world and infecting everything. I don’t get many comments these days, pretty much everyone of our Tier has gotten the concept of good or bad mana aspects soundly beaten out of them, and I’ve gotten better at controlling my blood when it matters to make it less intimidating. But early on... Ascenders, early on? I got a few bad comments about being a ‘filthy blood mage’ at the PlayPen, but I was already so deep in self-loathing, I’d come out the other side, and my parent’s support kept me stable. In my fourth life, the comments were so much worse, and on top of that, my parents had managed to die in a rift. I think they weren’t full Royals, or something nonsensical so Minkalla could kill them off, but all that loathing just kept bottling up while they hated me for something I couldn’t control. And so, I killed them. Slowly, painfully, and somehow tracelessly. I turned their own blood against them, infected them with incurable diseases, and fed on their dying gasps, relishing in their suffering and the baffled attempts of the healers called in to fix them. Then, I ran away and kept preying on the weak, impoverished, the poorly protected, and went even heavier into sacrifices than even my blood queen life did. No greater cause, no morals, no guiding… I think I killed five planets before being forced into hiding.”

Liz looked up to Matt, but he didn’t revile her. It hadn’t been her, and he wasn’t a hypocrite. “And I don't mean I killed all the people, but I sacrificed the planets themselves. Eating the essence out of their cores to power my rituals. I turned my blood into a self-replicating infection that spread from planet to planet, consuming everything it passed to grow stronger. It wasn’t pretty. Oh, but I loved it. She loved it. Whatever. Ascenders, is there even really a difference? At some point, does it matter whether I was the one in control or not? Because the memories are still there, and those definitely aren’t going away.

“The dying heartbeats of my victims, bodies sometimes forcibly fed life so that they’d keep on living while I drained them for everything they could give, feeding on their pain and misery just as much as their blood, mana, and essence. There were billions of people on each of the planets I killed, and I want to say I remember each one, except I just can’t. Too many men, women, children, beasts. Young and old. Sometimes I’d slowly kill children in front of their parents just for the delight of it, but usually, I wouldn’t bother and would just move on. The screams and the sobs of the dying, mothers begging to save their children, husbands begging to save their wives, or the other way around, parents trying to give me their children to save them, or to take their spouse and leave them alive, I saw it all. I saw the absolute worst that humanity has to offer, and I caused it all.”

Matt pulled her into a hug, and she sobbed into his shoulder before clearing her voice to a calm, if unsteady tone. “My next life went basically the same as my real life. At least, until you died in one of our early rifts, bitten in half by that giant feathered serpent. And Aster died shortly thereafter, crushed by a stone golem. I teamed up with Conor, Annie, and Emily, and they all died too. I’m not really sure what I truly snapped at, or if there even was a single instance where I went from sane to unhinged. That Liz kept some level of morals; she didn’t go around eating planets or killing babies, but I definitely wasn’t right in the head. She’d kill people for the slightest provocation, cause bloodshed wherever possible, and literally bathe in the blood of her enemies to strengthen her blood. Then of course, just to top it all off, there was a life where I was a control freak, binding people to me with contracts signed in blood. I barely even tried to excel personally there, she just wrote off skills as a lost cause and got other people to do the work for her.”

Her voice fell to barely above a whisper as she continued. “I just… what if Minkalla is trying to tell me something? All of my other selves, they all truly used blood magic in ways I never have, nor ever wanted to. But… is it saying that I’m a monster, and would do those things? Is it saying that I need to become a monster to truly realize my full potential? Or that using my Talent to its full potential would corrupt me, and make me a monster?”

Matt just pulled her closer, giving her a peck on her cheek. “Hey. I love you.”

Liz smiled and muttered something that sounded like agreement as she melted into his arms. Liz didn’t need his reassurance. She already knew he had her back and would stop her from going too far. She just needed him to hold her as she processed things.

After they had sat there for over an hour, he spoke up, stroking her head as it lay on his lap. “My firsht life was one where my parents never died. I was a chef and had Aster as a little sister. It was perfect. Everything I could have wanted. I think they would have liked you.”

Liz’s single arm gripped him tightly for a moment, and he patted her back to show he was with her and not lost in his mind.

“Things only went downhill from there. The next few lives weren’t that bad, but the last two were awful. The second to last one, I got locked in a box, treated like nothing more than a mana stone.”

Trying to inject some levity, he added, “At least our Emperor was his same old self. That life happened back before he was even heir-apparent, and old Emperor Gregorios had no problems keeping me locked away once I had been ‘rescued’ from the last group trying to control me. That life was bad, but in the next one, I became a terrorist.”

Matt swallowed hard twice before he could speak again. “I killed a lot of people, and I know I should feel bad about them, and I do, but what really eatsh at me was how eashy it was for me to slip into that life. Each decision seemed like one that I could see myself making at the moment.” Taking a breath, he let it out slowly. “I didn’t wake up until I killed you, and even then, it was only because my alternate self thought it was too easy. It was a relief when that life ended, I couldn’t stand seeing your parents hating me as my trial went on, wanting me dead but refusing to do it themselves.”

Liz didn’t try to justify his actions or comfort him, just as he hadn’t for her, she just pulled him close and kissed him before cuddling into him.

Matt wasn’t entirely sure how long it was before they fell asleep, but when they finally did it was while holding one another.

When he woke up, the first thing he saw was Liz grinning at him, inches from his face. “You have my only arm pinned, I really have to pee, and I can’t teleport.”

Getting up, he exited out of their room to see Susanne and Aster sitting in the living room.

After Liz came back, he used the bathroom himself and started making everyone breakfast.

He paused as he looked at his knife block and then swapped two knives. Chef Matt had his block arranged that way, and Matt felt his hand reach for that configuration instinctively.

It wasn’t quite muscle memory, but it was a firm habit.

Reviewing that life, he decided on a breakfast he had cooked at one of the restaurants he worked at. It was more fancy than he was used to making out in the real world, but he wanted to try.

“So Matt,” Aster joined him by jumping up onto a bar stool on the far side of the counter, settling into a position where her tail would have been wrapped around her legs, if it wasn’t a charred stump. “I had a life where you were my big brother.”

Matt’s eyebrows raised as he chopped an onion. “It wouldn’ happen to have been tha life where you were an artist, was it? Because when I was a chef, you were my little sister.”

“Yes, it was! And yeah! You were a super awesome cook!”

“Now, now. Wash I a cook, or a chef? I’m a cook right now, but a chef works in a restaurant.”

Aster rolled her eyes and shook her body. “Fine, you were a chef. So, do you think we had the same life?”

“Luna said that linked lives were impossible,” he reminded the overeager fox as he moved to cutting up peppers. “But I don’t see why we couldn’t have separately had the same kind of life, even if they weren’t literally shared.”

Aster preened, “I choose to believe they were shared, no matter what anyone says!”

Then she wilted, with her body slumping onto her stool as she met his gaze. “I miss them too.”

That made Matt instantly lose it, and he pulled his bond into a hug as the two of them cried on the kitchen floor.

Kissing the top of her head, he said, “You are always a part of my family, and mom and dad would agree. I’m glad you got to meet them and have them as your parents officially.”

Aster let out a long, slow whine as they grieved for what was lost.

When they got up, they deliberately lightened the conversation by talking about the funny moments in the life they seemingly shared.

Matt didn’t care about the little details that seemed different, like when a family friend had a different nickname in the other's life. Those could simply be a byproduct of imperfect memory, and the main points were nearly identical besides. Really Matt was just glad he could share something that special with Aster.

As they were winding down from talking about their shared experience, Aster pulled out a skill shard from her collar and said, “I wanted to give you this. I got it from my final clone, and it’s really only right to share this with my bond, even aside from how I don’t need it.”

Matt plucked the skill from the air as Aster released her hold on it, and cast [Analyze] on the skill shard, before his eyes went wide.

It was [Ice Manipulation].

Aster’s [Ice Manipulation], with her upgrade, and years worth of Aster’s own modifications to it. Combined with his boon from Courtly Warfare, it would near instantly become one of his strongest skills. He really couldn’t ask for anything more fitting, and wrapped the little fox in a hug all over again before scratching the spot she liked right next to her ear.

When they served breakfast, Matt saw the wet spots on Susanne's face, but didn’t ask. Emotions were running high this morning, and if Liz was able to help her while he and Aster had their little moment, that was good.

Breakfast was a quiet affair. When they finished, they fitted Liz’s prosthetic arm over her stump. It wasn’t much, as it had essentially no tactile feedback, and its fingers could only really be used to hold onto or release a single object.

To make up for the weakness, Liz went searching through their loot vault and eventually came out with a round shield enchanted to be basically immovable for anyone but the wielder, for whom it was all but weightless. It had a maker’s mark that Matt identified as being from the Guilds, but the design on the front- a stylized leaf surrounded by ripples of water- wasn’t something that any of them recognized.

While she was doing that, Matt and the others were busy experimenting with their new abilities. Fortunately, for the most part, it wasn’t terribly hard to figure out how to activate them, but figuring out what they did wasn’t always quite so simple.

By pushing Willpower into his Concept’s repulsion ability, Matt felt two new ‘slots’ branching out in his spirit, one going ‘inside’ and the other going ‘outside’. With a bit of experimentation he determined that the new development was associated with his life with just him and Aster, and his life as a terrorist.

When he activated the ‘inside’ ability, he felt the weak repulsion field around him drawing in, far closer to him and his body, and made a sort of second skin around his body and armor, even with [Cracked Phantom Armor] when he activated that. Overall, it acted as a potent defensive ability, and though Susanne was able to overcome it without too much difficulty, that wasn’t necessarily a fair assessment.

The repulsion-armor also seemed to help with Matt’s lifting strength, but that would be more trouble than it was worth to try and measure at the moment. He could also feel that if he worked with it, he could send it into his sword for an explosive addition to his blade, but he had a hard time getting the power to get further than the pommel.

Overall, it promised to be a decent addition to his defensive arsenal once he got some more practice with it. Since it wasn’t a traditional form of ‘armor’, it wasn’t quite as vulnerable to standard armor-piercing attacks. It had its limits, sure, but Queen was hardly a good benchmark for its defense.

The next power was different.

Normally, his repulsion worked by pushing solid objects and spells away from him with a solid, gentle force, up to a certain range. After which, the object could keep moving if it had enough momentum.

Motion in its purest form.

The ability he’d gotten from his life as a terrorist, meanwhile, wasn’t nearly so gentle.

He could ‘bottle up’ his repulsion in a particular way, building up force at a rate only matched by his Willpower expenditure, then release it as a massive shockwave that traveled… well, a good ways. He’d tested that ability outside the house’s shield, and so far as he could tell, it hit the edges of the safe room before being absorbed away by Minkalla.

Even with his warning to the others in the safe area, that stunt earned him some very unwelcome attention- fair enough though. He did basically attack the other two teams unprovoked. That he’d given them a warning that ‘something’ would happen didn’t seem to mollify them, but in the end, it didn’t matter, as nobody tried to follow him through the house’s shields, contenting themselves with just yelling at him.

If he didn’t want to ‘bottle up’ the explosion, Matt could also push his Willpower at it in a constant stream, creating a rapid-fire, continuous explosion as his Concept created dozens of weaker shockwaves a second, rippling out from him in a low roar.

Both uses were quite destructive and incredibly satisfying, but taxing enough on his Willpower that he’d gotten a nosebleed from Concept overusage for the first time in a very, very long while. He meditated to recover while passively helping Susanne explore her new abilities.

Most of hers were fairly quick to master, being abilities she’d already been using for a while, in some form or another. She could manifest a shield as well as a sword now, and make either of them animate itself and dance around her.

She could also freely manipulate the size of any of her Manifestations, even while they were active, and absorb them inside of her body in a way that was somewhat nauseating to watch. Her arm peeling open to accept a miniaturized sword nested between her radius and ulna was… unsettling. Doing that made her arm Concept-reinforced, and about as unbreakable as her sword normally was.

During their final test, she even managed to halt a low-powered [Cracked Mana Spear] with her palm, then dispel it by cutting the energy in half with the tip of her sword poking out of her hand.

That almost wiped out her willpower, but it was still impressive.

Her last two abilities were frustrating her, though. She described it as trying to reach for a power that just wasn’t in reach, despite knowing very clearly where it should be.

While she ruminated on her own investigation, Matt returned to his own experimentation, this time with Aster.

His mana-granting ability wasn’t quite so easy to figure out, despite only one obvious new ‘mode’ to it. When he used that mode, he could feel the mana around him drain away and into him in a way that he instantly recognized as associated with his life stuck as a mana stone. He wasn’t able to test if it worked on ambient mana, as there just wasn’t any for him to experiment with, but he wasn’t able to target individual spells, like he suspected his alternate life would have been able to if presented the opportunity.

He was able to determine that it worked on people, but that meant he needed to overcome their spiritual defenses. Even when Aster intentionally tried to let it affect her, she couldn’t truly, as she described it as a deeply unpleasant feeling she couldn’t help but flinch away from. The most Matt was able to drain from her was about twenty mana a second, which wasn’t much over the scale of a fight, but considering it was a complete reversal of his Concept’s normal effect, he was still content with its power. He was pretty sure he’d be able to absorb ambient mana with some training, but Minkalla, with no ambient mana, wasn’t the place for practice.

The only way they found to really use it was when he got in melee range, where if he was able to get through someone's spirit, it took considerable effort for them to break the connection.

Two of Aster’s new abilities just focused on making her ice even better- specifically, harder and more defense-piercing. Her ice-based debuff spells were the most obviously affected by the latter, as Matt’s passive spiritual defense was barely able to keep her out. He needed to actively focus on not allowing the creeping cold at the edge of his perception inside him to block it, and her [Ice Spear]s definitely put more strain on [Bulwark] when it was active, though not enough to actually break through the defense in a single cast.

She’d also gotten the ability to create an illusory duplicate of herself, an ability she promptly swore off using until her fur was healed, and an expansion to her normal sheer cold Concept to enable better interaction with wind and Winter abilities. Her Concept-empowered gusts of wind cut nigh to the bone with their chill, actively stealing heat from whatever they touched.

Her experimentation with that ability, in fact, led her to discover the ability she’d gotten for being a fire fox, namely the ability to invert fire and make it burn icy blue and cold, sucking in heat from their surroundings to sustain themselves. Even skills weren’t immune to the effect, though they were harder for her to affect than the candles she predominantly practiced on. She was naturally thrilled and enthusiastically thanked Minkalla, apologizing for ever doubting its wisdom of making her live with fire for an entire lifetime.

Matt’s main takeaway from her celebrations, though, was that he should make her heart chili at some point, just to mess with her. See whether her hatred of the spicy food or love of hearts would come out on top.

Liz joined him, pulling him into a hug as they watched Aster dance around the room. Her new arm was cold metal, barebones, and certainly not mistakable for flesh and blood. Those prosthetics were far too expensive to warrant keeping in their first-aid kit, but while Matt’s heart ached to see her so injured, he didn’t bring it up, instead focusing on her own Concept discoveries.

Liz had found that her blood had gained a similar effect to Aster’s defense-piercing, but even more focused on subtle usurpation of spiritual defenses. When paired with her permanent Lady of Red Snow ability, it allowed her to make bloody wounds unnoticeable to the wounded. With some practice, they theorized Liz very well might be able to tear someone apart from the inside with [Bloodthorn Vines] without them even realizing they were under attack.

A terrifying proposition.

She’d also gotten the ability to infuse her weapons with her own blood and make them ‘drink’ blood from wounds they inflicted. They’d only tested with relatively small amounts of blood, but if the trends held true, the more blood they drank, the more she was able to directly empower her attacks with her Concept. It was practically assured that there was more to it than that, but their healing cooldowns limited the amount of self-flagellation they could do in the name of information.

What was easier to test was her ability to empower her own bloodline, and correspondingly her already-impressive fire affinity. Furthermore, she could make blood she controlled burst into flames at will, and could direct the flames she controlled to burn things to blood instead of ash. It made for a fairly nasty loop if the ability worked the way they hoped.

She also had two abilities she hadn’t been able to test, but was fairly certain she understood in broad strokes. One allowed her to use the blood of the recently-deceased for… something. Some form of personal empowerment, specifically. The other was an ability to establish a permanent ‘blood oath’ between herself and another person, giving both of them benefits in exchange. That sounded fairly worrying to Matt and Liz alike, and they agreed that they needed to talk to Luna before even thinking about potential uses, though they had a few.

Even with roughly half her new abilities mostly untested, Liz was quite pleased that she at least had an avenue for direct weapon empowerment with her Concept. Only time would tell how effective it would be exactly, but they were all fairly optimistic. Liz would be terrifying if it even worked out minorly.

Aster, meanwhile, had finished her own experimentation, and found that her last ability enabled her to freeze things, or even spells, in space and seemingly time.

When caught by her Concept, they hung in place, perfectly still until disturbed. It took most of Aster’s focus on a single object, but as a starting point, it was quite promising. It also covered one of the typical weaknesses of defensive air magic spells, namely large singular attacks, which was quite the upgrade to a previous weak spot.

Aster’s description of her discovery sparked Matt’s own mind, and he quickly discovered another one of his Concept uses when he took his mana regeneration enhancement and ‘focused’ it onto a single person. When he did so, not only was the mana regeneration he could provide nearly doubled, but so too did his ‘champion’ experience a substantial boost to their physical cultivation in a way that perfectly matched up with Matt’s own cultivation. The boost was, split- a focus on Mind and Senses, then a bit more Strength than the rest.

When paired with [Mage’s Retreat], it became a powerful addition to his arsenal.

It also gave them the idea that they might be able to make a feedback loop of Matt’s ability to transfer physical strength and Liz’s contract power, to empower both of them more than they could do on their own.

If he focused on a single item, Matt found he could imbue it with mana to enhance it. With food, that meant stronger reactions, including taste, in a very familiar way, but he could also saturate his crafting materials with mana for a similar effect. Most true enchanting-work didn’t require mana-heavy materials, but it definitely made things easier. He could also focus onto a mana crystal to fill it with mana at range, or if he switched to mana draining mode, withdraw from it at range as well.

If he focused on an enchantment, however, he could fill it up directly with mana, an ability which extended to talismans. Having just lived a life with a similar Concept power, Matt already knew a ton of ways to take advantage of being able to charge his armory after creating it.

Normally, creating a talisman was like painting a steady line. You had to have the right amount of paint on your brush the entire time, and know exactly how much paint you were going to use in total from the very start. Any deviations could ruin everything. Of course, with a talisman, it was mana instead of paint, and failures could be literally quite explosive.

If he could charge talismans after they were made, however, he could do the equivalent of scratch a quick thin line on paper, and only later decide how much mana he wanted in it. It would also drastically speed up his talisman production, both because he wouldn’t need to be so worried about things blowing up in his face, but also because he could spend less time at the workbench limited by his mana regeneration.

Actually, it would also help him make stronger talismans, too, because he could spend several days powering up a single talisman until it held millions of mana. Before, he’d have to use an array of talismans to hold that much mana, simply because he was unable to spend literal days only making a single object with no interruptions even if he had higher Tier materials that could naturally hold that much mana.

He still had to be a bit careful to prevent burning out the runes, but on further reflection, he realized that just meant he could probably cause some weapons to burn out, if they weren’t properly designed to handle excess mana.

With a bit of practice, he could probably ruin any enchantments that his enemies had on their weapons before they knew what happened.

While he was busy celebrating his newfound ease of enchantment, Susanne finally figured out her last two abilities. The first required her to hand her sword off to someone else, where it would dissolve in their hands. Then, for an ongoing Willpower cost, she could use her Concept to empower their sword. It only worked with swords, and was limited to a single person at a time, but like all Folded Reflection abilities, it was only a starting point.

With a little practice, she was even able to boost herself by making a Concept copy of herself, then empowering each other for a short burst of strength.

She eventually figured out that for her last ability, her Concept wanted her to ‘absorb’ other swords into itself, and when she did so, she could choose to Manifest a copy of the absorbed sword instead of her normal blade. She could even keep the absorbed sword’s enchantments, albeit at only about half strength.

Considering one of the main weaknesses of Concept-manifested swords was their inability to be enchanted, Susanne was appropriately thrilled. She couldn’t tell how many swords she could absorb into her Concept, or if there even was a limit, but even the three she already had to switch between- one with armor-piercing enchantments, one with a flame enchant, and one with an imbued [Mana Slash]- were already a great boon.

Watching her absorb a new sword was really neat as well- she held a sword in her hand, then manifested her normal sword ‘over’ it, then dismissed the Manifestation, which took the formerly-real sword with it into her Concept.

They were in something of a rush to get going, but they had one thing left to decide upon before moving to the final floor. Six upgrade orbs between four people weren’t terribly easy to split up equitably, but after a few minutes of discussion, they came to a deal. They would each get one upgrade orb to use immediately, and keep the two spares for later, either for the final loot split after Minkalla, or to use when they got another two orbs so that everyone could have a second.

After that was hashed out, the upgrading went quickly, since everyone had picked out the first skill they would want upgraded ages ago. Matt upgraded [Sharp Mind], which typically enhanced his mental cultivation, but now also greatly improved his resistance to outside mental effects of all kinds. The disorientation skill he’d been hit by in the fight against the team of ten from the last floor had left an impression, but if they ran into that group again, he should be able to resist it. There were a few smaller improvements as well, such as better mental focus and a slight efficiency boost, but without pumping his entire mana regeneration into the skill, he would have been hard pressed to notice the practical differences.

Aster upgraded [Winter’s Harvest], which she was excited about. The base skill drained strength from designated enemies and used that to boost allies, but the conversion efficiency was typically somewhat weak. In addition to improving that aspect of the skill, the skill started to affect the mental and regeneration aspects of cultivation, inducing a mental torpor onto foes while hampering most healing they might attempt to do, and improving those same attributes on allies in turn. When combined with Matt’s new ‘championing’ concept ability, he and Aster would be able to turn Liz into a positive wrecking ball in a fight, though most people would already consider her one.

Liz herself upgraded [Hungering Weapon], which Matt was a little unclear on until she explained. Most of Liz’s skills were heavily changed by her talent, and because of that, she didn’t actually know what most of them would do once upgraded, which happened to be especially true for her better skills. She hadn’t had [Hungering Weapon] for long, but it was largely unchanged from the normal skill, and going from draining strength and blood to also preventing all but the strongest healing skills was quite potent. There were other skills that might have given better returns, but this one was less of a gamble.

Finally, Susanne upgraded her [Mana Strength], which allowed her to focus the increased strength to different areas of their body, shifting where they were strongest nearly at will. It couldn’t mimic the sheer numbers of the upgrade for [Mage’s Retreat], but it could improve the strength of a weapon strike at one moment and then let the user leap much further in the next.

With that taken care of, the four of them stood in front of the pillar and touched it.

One last floor.

Then they could rest.

***

Matt looked down and paused as his mind tried to process what he was seeing.

His body was gone.

Kinda.

His body looked like [Cracked Phantom Armor], glowing, blue, and ornate full-body armor that was leaking wisps of white light from where the joints would be on a normal suit of armor.

He looked up and saw the others.

Susanne had the most extreme change as a literal shadow of herself, mostly just a silhouette of a human woman that was missing half her head and holding a very real greatsword. So real, in fact, it made everything around it look unreal by comparison, such as the fox standing next to her.

Aster looked like a fox-sized hole in the universe, with distant stars peeking out from the cutaway, each slowly dying. She had a tail again- a fact which she seemed immensely happy about- but it was wispy and insubstantial, like a memory of a tail rather than the tail itself.

Liz looked like a perfect copy of herself, but made of glistening blood. Even her individual strands of hair looked like tiny veins of blood, but her left arm was still mostly missing, a network of blood vessels tracing out where it should have been. The prosthetic was a shimmering cover that seemed to exist in the same place but not interfere with her arm.

Only two floors included such a drastic change to reality, Spirit Journey and Mind Over Matter. But given their surroundings bore more of a resemblance to a watercolor leaking pigment into the air instead of a psychedelic nightmare, and the fact they were all together from the start…

Aster’s message came through at the same time Matt came to the conclusion on his own.

“Mind Over Matter confirmed.”

***

Omake

Matt looked down and paused as his mind tried to process what he was seeing.

His body was gone, replaced with a bucket overflowing with mana stones, skill shards, and odd rectangles of green cotton with people’s faces on them.

He looked up and saw Susanne was a floating sword with oversized eyes who tried to move but just wiggled her crossguards.

“Sword sword sword, sword sword. Sword sword? Sword, sword sword sword, sword sword!” Susanne said. Matt thought she made a good point, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

Liz was a sparrow with blood red hair. Human hair. The combination was unsettling and Matt looked to his bond.

Aster was now a floating snowflake wearing a crown.

Matt laughed. “You know Tara said I should name you Snowflake. Maybe she was right.”

As Aster cried at the awful name, Sword Susanne wrote in the air. “This feels like some sword of bad joke.”

***

Author's note, here are their abilities listed out so you can see what they do together.

Matt

Make his Repulsion into a shockwave

Mana-draining Concept

Shield/tank, mostly internal

Charge enchantments easier

Passing both his mana and physical power off to a single target

Putting mana into objects

Liz

Empowers bloodlines

Boost when she absorbs the blood of the recently-deceased

Physical reciprocating buffs, each giving a bit of strength to the other to a net positive. Not easily revocable and probably has other benefits depending on the oath made.

Concept helps her empower weapons

Makes her blood more insidious, lets her use it as a plaguelike weapon (Infiltrate/control blood of people closer to her in tier)

Her blood can burn like fire/make fires burn blood.

Aster

Mirror images of herself

Stronger Ice

Freeze the area around her in place, or focus onto a single target

Wind/motion power

Fires near her burn cold instead of hot

cold penetrates resistances and defenses much better

Susanne

Absorb swords into her Concept to use their enchantments in any combination

Shield manifestation

Change sword size freely

Animated sword

Absorb sword to empower self.

Empower other’s swords