The Path of Ascension

Chapter 252

Matt was browsing possible ways to infiltrate the local Sect strongholds with Liz when the entire planet seemed to rock. He initially thought it was an earthquake and nothing to really worry about, but that notion was ruthlessly crushed when the PlanetNet erupted with rapid-fire warnings about a possible rift break.

Just when the first rift break was confirmed, a dozen more warnings appeared on his [AI]. In seconds it went from dozens, to hundreds, and then thousands as rifts all over the planet seemed to break all at once.

What had been a budding sense of horror turned into terror as he looked at Liz, and they both had the same thought:

The Sects had made their move.

Aster sprung up from her spot on the couch a moment before Matt and Liz burst out of their chairs. They only paused long enough to change into their Quill and Torch personas while Aster got into a more neutral mask; they were tentatively calling it Snowflake until they came up with something better for her.

Not willing to take the extra time to exit the building the normal way, Quill punched through the high-Tier glass and made a new exit for them.

Lunas message reached them as they were falling, and Quill quickly realized by her tone that Luna was talking to every Tier 15 or higher on the Planet.

Protect the civilians. Im destroying monsters as fast as I can, but my first priority is getting civilians out of danger. Move quickly and do your best, but be careful. I repeat, protect the civilians.

Hearing Luna use an AI any other time would have been a shock, but that was nothing when compared to seeing the city below him start to fall to chaos.

On a well-developed planet like this, rifts were integrated into cities just like everything else, but that integration meant monitoring and defenses. Rifts near populated areas needed to be in secure buildings that were meant to slow any rift break monsters escape, while also guarded by people of an equal Tier, which mitigated the severity and chance of a rift break.

While he was still only getting scattered reports, those defenses had clearly failed or were sabotaged, if the explosions were any indicator.

The anger that Matt had under control instantly flared as he saw a massive praying mantis ripping into a bus full of low Tier civilians. Blood and body parts flew, but whenever someone was in danger, they vanished right before their life was taken from them.

Most were saved.

However, even in the initial moments, Quill saw a dozen people die. He didnt know if Luna just couldnt save them in time, or hadnt seen their danger, but the toll on the civilians was increasing rapidly.

It didnt help that this was a Tier 22 world, and the monsters attacking everyone ranged from Tier 15 to Tier 22. The area their hotel was in had an artificially weakened Tier 15 rift, so the monsters it produced were less of a problem than in other areas, but to Tier 5 civilians, a Tier 15 or Tier 50 didnt have any meaningful difference to their survival rate.

The only good thing was that this was a Tier 22 planet with a large number of equal-Tier delvers who all sprung into action. Just from their building, there were hundreds of cultivators flying to the worst-hit areas to help as best they could.

Hundreds to stop the millions of monsters.

Hundreds to protect the billions of civilians.

Quill just hoped it would be enough. Hoped they could buy Luna enough time to start killing the monsters that had used the initial few seconds of chaos to spread out through miles of the city.

The moment Quill landed in the street, he cast [Bulwark] via a talisman over a taxi with a family inside, even as he brought the halberd he had been using as an alternative weapon down on a rampaging insect of some kind.

Even as the Tier 15 monster exploded under the force of his attack, he started processing the broadcasts from the PlanetNet, digesting the information that came in as quickly as possible.

The situation was, as Luna had said, not great. While the larger picture was still being figured out, a base level analysis of their predicament was readily apparent.

The terrorists had first sabotaged a number of rifts by entering them with enough mana to cause rift breaks in hundreds of rifts all across the world. Just as he suspected, they had also targeted the rifts security, and had blown holes through the outer walls while attacking the guards, thus buying the rift monsters enough leeway to spread through the cities like a plague.

They hadnt even spared the smaller cities; the outlying settlements had also been overloaded, which caused hundreds of thousands of monsters to start rampaging and seeking out the nearest sources of non-rift life, after running rampant through the less dense population centers.

From the initial reports, that was where Luna seemed to be focusing her attention, as there were few immortals there to take the brunt of the damage.

Quills mind was surprisingly calm despite the similarities to what happened to his own hometown all those years ago, calculating exactly what he needed to do in this situation as he drove the halberd through two more Tier 16 monsters. But as soon as the thought that this was a deliberate attack, Matts anger started to leak through again.

Still, while anger had its uses, blind rage wasnt good in a battle where a stray strike could kill dozens, if not hundreds of people. That wasnt something Quill was willing to see happen, so he tamped those feelings down.

There was enough death going on that he didnt need to add to it. At least, not until he found those responsible.

Sending a stream of mana into [Fire Manipulation], Quill grabbed the flames from a nearby burning building and sent them at a small horde of monsters that were trying to breach the walls of the buildings neighbor. It took precious moments for him to burn through the high Tier monsters, and each moment cost lives.

Lives Luna wasnt able to save.

Lives he wasnt able to save.

While the first building he had stolen the fire from was empty of people, with only a few corpses inside to speak of the former occupants, the second was filled with people who had seemingly taken shelter inside. They had apparently used a variety of earth spells to block and seal the windows and doors on the lowest two floors. A great idea that had undoubtedly saved lives; Quill couldnt fault them for that. The issue wasnt their plan, but the fact the monsters could sense the people inside, and were digging through the false walls faster than the mages inside could repair the damage. The moment the monsters got inside, those walls would turn into both prison and coffin.

Quill couldnt save everyone, but he could at least stop that from coming to fruition.

Even as he washed the building in flames, Quill ensured that he didnt let too much heat transfer over into the building, as cooking the very people he wanted to save would be an incredibly stupid move. There were unawakened children and building materials that couldnt handle the level of heat required to kill the Tier 16 monsters.

Torch, who was also grabbing flames and earth using her staff as a medium, started crushing the rampaging monsters that were attacking another building, while Snowflake started creating massive ice fields to both put out the fires and slow the approaching monsters.

Feeling Torch pull at the flames he was controlling, he relinquished control of them and focused on [Earth Manipulation], sculpting a wave of compacted earth around the inhabited buildings that circled the intersection they were fighting in, just to buy everyone more time.

In doing so, he realized two things.

The first was that people were vanishing more and more slowly, and the second was that there were small monsters in some of the buildings already tearing their way through the inhabitants. It was those inhabitants who were vanishing. While they were usually pulled out before a monster could get to them, from the bodies Luna hadnt bothered to remove, it was clearly a losing proposition.

Flaring his AI enhancement for a brief moment, Quill located each and every monster inside the nearby ripped-open building with his spiritual sense, before tearing them all apart with a rapid series of localized gales created with [Air Manipulation].

Blood and guts flew, but it was all monster parts. It was a close thing, though, as he did send a shard of wood into a woman's leg when he was tearing apart the kobold that was trying to kill her and her two children. That injury wasnt life-threatening enough to immediately kill her, as evidenced by the fact she wasnt teleported away, but it reminded him that he needed to be more careful.

Thankfully, the local bureaucracy was getting a handle on the situation, and the information being sent out through the PlanetNet was making things easier.

Those who could fight the monsters should do so.

Those who couldn't fight should hunker down inside an enclosed room until the danger had passed.

Those who couldnt fight but were in danger would be prioritized by the higher Tiers who would teleport them out of danger.

Quill hoped the pluralization of high Tiers meant Luna wasnt the only one saving people, but he feared that she was.

The massive explosions that were happening outside the city limits, like a rapid-fire staccato, told Quill that the worst of the fighting wasnt happening within the city. Now that he had a moment to focus on it, he sensed squads of delvers killing most of the monsters before they ever reached the city in wide area attacks they could easily maintain, letting Luna focus on the delicate Domain work of pulling civilians out of immediate danger.

It just wasnt enough, as evidenced by the dozens of attacked cities and millions of people put in danger every second.

That was where people like Quill, Torch, and Snowflake came into play.

Like Luna had said when she broadcast to the entire world, their job was simple. Protect the civilians by killing the monsters and relieve the pressure off the higher Tiers as much as possible.

Simple in concept, but far from easy in reality.

Even just the portion of the city they were in had tens of thousands of monsters crawling around, trying to attack any living beings they could find with extreme prejudice.

Launching himself forward and away from Torch and Snowflake, Quill drove his halberd through a bear-like creature with glowing, oversized paws that were tearing into the side of a skyscraper. The bottom few floors were mostly shops and were rapidly emptying out, even as Quill approached. He still needed to stop the creature, as it was big enough to possibly weaken the structure of the building if it caught a support pillar. And if the building came down, thousands would die, since like most buildings in the city, it had apartments on the higher floors.

To make matters worse, smaller creatures like kobolds and insects were using the opening as a means of entry where the much thinner inner walls might as well not exist in their efforts to find the humans.

The bear was a peak Tier 19, and it would be a struggle for him to beat in a rift full of them, but as a lone monster, Quill went with the easy route.

Overwhelming damage delivered in a single attack.

[Hypersonic Edge] to deal with the physical armor, [Dispelling Edge] to deal with the magical armor he could see as a layer of mana under its skin, and [Cracked Air Slide] combined to give Quill an armor-piercing attack backed with a massive amount of physical force. With it, he drove the halberd through the hide in one fell swoop.

Sadly, his weapon did not survive the impact and splintered inside the monster, where it detonated as the durability runes were overloaded, causing even more damage to the monster.

Unfortunately, the blow didnt outright kill the bear, and even as it started to bleed out, it turned to him with mana gathering at its maw in preparation for either a beam attack or a breath weapon of some sort.

Quill didn't intend to find out, as he already had a dozen [Fire Bolt]s cast from Tier 19 talismans flying at the monster's mouth, thanks to his [AI] anticipating the move.

Even as the monster fell and essence rushed into him, Quill was already rushing deeper inside the building while he grabbed earth from the rubble and ground to cover the gap in the outer wall in an ugly patch job.

Withdrawing a hammer he had delved with a few months ago, he started swinging through a number of monsters trying to force themselves through a hole in the ceiling. His appearance thankfully caught most of their attention, and they turned on him, trying to bite and tear through his flesh.

Without [Cracked Phantom Armor], he was comparatively defenseless, but he had other skills to make up for it.

[Barbarian's Hide] empowered his flesh and skin while a layer of [Earth Manipulation]-controlled gravel gave him an extra layer of defense that the monsters needed to dig through, and he flared his repulsion effect at its highest power to push all attacks off course. While none of that was as good as his signature skill on their own, together, they earned him enough time to crush most of the monsters that had turned to attack him.

The hammer and its war spike made short work of the goblins and insects, despite their own innate armor and the lack of offensive enchantments on the weapon, but that was more a product of Quills own skills, both magical and mundane.

Even so, charging into the center of a dozen different monsters without his main defensive skill wasnt without its risks, and he took half a dozen small wounds all over his body from where attacks punched through his defenses.

After all, monsters had their own Domains, even if they rarely used them beyond the most basic applications, and dozens of them were enough to punch through his repulsion.

Needing to move on quickly, Quill tossed out a dozen talismans, activating them and using the appropriate manipulation skill to direct the attacks into the monsters without breaking the stride of his melee slaughter, killing most of the horde still trying to get to him.

With the death of the last monster attacking him, he flared [Lesser Regeneration] and threw himself into the room above while pulling a scimitar out of his storage ring and using it to slash down half a dozen stragglers who managed to get through the opening in the floor.

Monsters died, but that didnt stop them from taking out two young men who were trying to hide behind a table.

Unable to stop and mourn their loss, Quill ran through the nearest wall as his spiritual sense found the next family that was in the most immediate danger.

A father and his daughter were caught mid-stride sprinting for cover, a man-sized centipede menacing them and beginning to spit a green acidic liquid at them. Some scraps of clothing behind the centipede, slowly sizzling with the same liquid, suggested that there had previously been another running in the same direction, but Quill had no time to contemplate it.

[Air Manipulation] intercepted the acid before it could claim another victim, blasting it to the side, an [Earth Spear] knocked the insect on its back, and a [Hypersonic Edge] coupled with a [Wind Cutter] kept it from recovering and sent its head spinning through the air.

The [Wind Cutter] carried on, and while Quill was able to deflect it to the side, the trailing edge of the projectile was just close enough to cleanly bisect the man right above the waist, and leave a scar on the floor beyond him.

Quill cursed. He didnt have the few hours hed need to stitch the man together properly, but [Air Manipulation] kept the top and bottom half of the body together, [Ranged Heal] got the healing started, and [Bandage] ensured that he would at least live long enough to make it to a healer who would finish healing the man's legs.

That was all he could do, but it was good enoughit had to be for now.

He didnt even stop his sprint, but made sure to send an AI message to the father explaining what had happened. He probably hadnt even noticed the centipede.

For two of the families, he swept the monsters threatening them outside and impaled them with flying debris using only [Air Manipulation], but he needed to personally kill the other monsters to avoid doing damage that would bring down the entire building.

Wanting to endanger the civilians as little as possible Matt switched to maining using [Water Manipulation] thanks to waters abundance and inability to cause collateral damage.

As he let his spirit spread throughout the city once more, he found Snowflake and Torch had separated, with Torch inside the buildings trying to clear the monsters out, and Snowflake running interference on monsters in the streets, throwing up [Snowpack] walls and [Cracked Ice Canopy] barriers to protect the civilians.

Thankfully, the influx of monsters had seemed to stop, so while there were still a number of monsters running around, there were less and less of them for those fighting. At least on the streets.

The buildings were turning into the battlefields, as the fighters on the streets slowly tipped the scales on the bigger and more threatening monsters. The corpse of an enormous anglerfish blocked off one street, providing some cover as several squads of fighters protected the entrance to a large apartment block.

They were still outnumbered by the influx of monsters that needed killing and the civilians that needed protecting.

Things seemed like they were turning around for the better when a new sun seemed to be born in the sky.

Quill paused just long enough to see that the moon had been cracked like a pebble, and debris was ejecting from the celestial body. Hundreds of miles of lava ran down the face of the moon in jagged fissures, radiating from a single point near the northern pole even as more debris ejected from the impact site.

It didnt take a genius to understand Ventillyrias supply depot was just attacked, but that was a battlefield for the Tier 27s, not Tier 15s like him. If the attack was focused on just the base, Luna wouldnt be able to interfere, but it made Quill wonder just how the attack hadnt broken the rules of war. If the attackers had any connection to the terrorists, Luna should have been able to crush them like so many ants beneath her feet for breaking the articles of war, but he wasnt able to ponder that for more than a second before he was forced to refocus on the besieged city around him.

Quill passed by two buildings on fire, and then a third already being cleared out by a pair of Tier 15s, before he threw himself into the air and through a wall. He crashed into an apartment just in time to catch a dagger with his invulnerable left hand that a Tier 19 goblin was trying to drive through a woman's back, the monsters moving at a speed slow enough for the low Tier woman to know the horror she was being subjected to. Her calves and tendons were already sliced to ribbons, and the monster was preparing for the last strike when Quill burst through the wall.

While holding the monsters blade with his left hand, he put a [Fire Bolt] talisman on the creatures head, which caused a small explosion of gore but ensured that the woman wasnt put at risk.

Now that Quill was inside, he threw a large portion of his mana generation into [Create Water] and then sent the water through the nearest walls in tendrils reminiscent of Liz. With them, he captured each of the monsters and crushed them with all the force he could muster.

Having cleared out that complex, Quill threw himself into another building, repeating his actions again and again. He was willing to kill with melee when he had to, but by relying on his [Water Manipulation] and [Create Water], he was able to take out most of the monsters quickly with minimal collateral damage to the inhabitants.

A few people had their sinks and dishwashers explode as he stole the water from there, but he considered property damage a small price to pay for people's lives, and he didnt stick around to hear any complaints.

Quill was just entering his tenth building when the world vibrated for an instant, and every monster in his perception exploded into purple motes of darkness. Soon afterwards, the alerts from the CityNet and PlanetNet changed their reports.

The higher Tiers Luna, it seemed, though her name wasnt included in the message had gotten a handle on the situation, and together had earned themselves enough time to stop teleporting people and target the remaining monsters. Those who were wounded would still be teleported to hospitals, but there was no more risk of attacks. Civilians were asked to report to the PlanetNet with their situation, location, and physical status before doing anything else, so they could ensure they had records of those who made it through alive and could start making arrangements for those who had passed and left loved ones behind.

Those that were able were asked to start assisting local officials with whatever they could do. Healers were directed to hospitals and trauma centers that had been rapidly set up in a grassland, as it was adjacent to the dumping ground that civilians had been teleported to.

Not that the reported dumping ground was nice. Luna had apparently decided the dumping ground needed to be sterilized, and had done so with an attack that had removed any creatures and leveled the area to a mirror finish before putting anyone there. That had created a nice safe area, but now they were in a crater in the middle of what was once a nature preserve, and were lacking a lot of critical infrastructure.

Infrastructure which, according to the reports, was being brought in as quickly as possible but was ultimately insufficient. Hospitals all over the planet tried to absorb the influx of patients as fast as they could, though they were already using everything they had available with little to spare.

Calls for healers seemed to be the most demanding, and Quill headed to the local healer's station. It wasnt even a proper hospital, but rather a clinic for the neighborhood that was overrun with casualties, as it was the designated healing area for this portion of the city.

As he floated in, a worker scanned him before dismissing him as she tried to stop a woman from bleeding out from a severed leg using only mundane tools. Seeing the arterial spraying, Quill cast [Bandage] on the wound, which startled the worker, who looked up to where he was standing and gasped. Oh, thank the Emperor. Over there, people I didnt think I could save. I have no healing spells. Please help them.

Following the woman's finger, Quill found four people who seemed to have been pulled directly out of a monster's mouth, if the wounds he saw lined up with his experience.

A dozen quick casts of [Bandage] covered the worst of their wounds, and Quill hesitated to cast an actual healing spell. He was no healer, and undirected healing spells werent nearly as efficient at patching up wounds as a directed healing spell. But after a second inspection, he wasnt sure if they could make it with just [Bandage] until a healer got to them anyway.

Making up his mind, he cast [Ranged Heal] on them. They needed to be prevented from dying in the near future, full healing could wait until the people who were bleeding out could be treated.

An AI notification from Snowflake told him she was helping to shuttle the wounded and that she was almost upon them, just before a sled of ice slid around a corner to them.

The still unnamed worker helped Quill get the people off the ice sled, while Snowflake immediately moved to go rescue more trapped and injured people who were inside collapsed or collapsing buildings. Torch was doing the same, but she was helping another district, having gotten farther away from him in her effort to save civilians.

Snowflake was just the first of many to bring in casualties. Before long, dozens of higher Tier fighters were bringing people into the healing station in whatever manner they could before heading back into the city. Everyone was wounded, but those higher Tiers ignored their wounds long enough for Quill and the hospital worker to stabilize the low Tier civilians. Despite that, they were still overwhelmed.

Quill was just about to ask Torch to send one of the official healers at her proper hospital to them, when an influx of teleports happened and set his teeth on edge, thinking it was another attack.

Thankfully it wasnt.

With the attacks under control and seemingly no follow-up attacks targeting first responders, the nearby and untargeted planets had sent over most of their healers to assist them, along with a shockingly delayed response by the border guards and their healing teams. The reports Quill was getting indicated that this wasn't an isolated incident, and the garrison had been attacked in conjunction with the moon depot and terrorist attacks, which explained their delay.

As a man and two women appeared in hospital robes, they immediately assessed the situation before they started to bark orders while rushing to the most injured.

The apparent leader, a Tier 22 woman, called out, [Bandage] caster on me! even as she started stuffing the intestines back into a womans abdomen.

As Quill appeared, she seemed surprised he was the one with the skill and asked, Do you just have the talisman, or have you gotten the skill?

Both.

The woman let out a slightly relieved sigh and ordered, Cast on her lower abdomen. Shes pregnant, and we need to try to save the fetus. The shock from healing will render it non-viable if we aren't careful, but if you can protect it, I can save both of them with an extra [Bandage].

Quill did as he was instructed and then cast the skill two more times on the patient, who seemed more in shock about the pregnancy than about being slashed apart, but Quill didnt have time to listen to her confused babbling.

The other two healers, seeing he had [Bandage], had him casting it as fast as possible. Quill kept up appearances by absorbing Tier 10 mana stones into the bandolier of rechargeable mana stones on his belt, just like the healers who were doing something similar with their own mana stone racks. They were just as fast as Quills rechargeable mana stone, but much more efficient.

None of them could afford to run out of mana at a time like this. Eventually, they had to fall back on his [Bandage] talismans, but that was their last resort, as the talisman was less controllable than the skill.

Thankfully, things started to stabilize after the first three hours. Those that were saveable were brought from death's door, and those who could wait for healing were given what triage they could be before being forced to wait until they were able to afford the mana cost of non-vital things, like limbs being reattached.

With so few healers to go around, there was little else they could really do.

Quill and the other combatants who had undirected healing spells offered their use but were generally refused as that would just prolong a patient's injured status. [Bandage] was more useful, as it gave the healers some much-needed time.

[Bandage] was so useful, Quill was actually directed to a few of the more remote healing centers to assist them as much as he could. Thankfully, he wasnt the only one with the spell; it had been close to thirty years since the spell was discovered. There were a few thousand of them able to cast the spell who werent dedicated healers, mostly among the support staff teleported from the neighboring planets.

The next two days were a blur as everyone worked at a frantic rate, but eventually, things stabilized.

Quill and Torch were able to stop casting [Bandage] on the needy, and Snowflake was able to stop reinforcing damaged buildings with her ice constructs. Though that had only lasted the first few hours, and his bond had spent most of her time as a [Bandage] caster too.

Disaster had struck, and it had struck hard.

Out of a population of twenty-two billion, there were two hundred and twenty-seven million wounded, and fifteen million dead. A shockingly large number, but a relatively small portion of the planet's total population. That was less an indicator of the terrorist's bad planning and more an indication of the rapid response by the high Tiers, as the entire situation had been handled in less than ten minutes.

Luna, when she finally returned, was clearly in pain, with even the violet eyes of her cat form bloodshot and lightly crusted with dried blood, as if she had been crying tears of blood. Their usually taciturn manager had clearly pushed her still recovering Domain to the limit to assist. While most of the civilians didnt know of her assistance, it being attributed to high Tiers in general, Matt did know, and kept it in mind whenever he wanted to get mad at her for not stopping the attack outright. With her destroying monsters left and right, she had prevented the situation from getting worse. Matt knew few others could, region by region, wipe out individual monsters that were killing civilians without also killing millions of those same civilians in the process.

Just two days after the attack, the acting Marchioness gave a speech about how they would rebuild stronger than ever and punish those responsible, going as far as to show the speedy preliminary trials of the terrorists who had been captured. Only a few dozen, but that was more than enough for the people to fixate onespecially when the involvement of the Sects was confirmed by those captured.

The attack on the moon was being dismissed as part of the terrorist attack, but Matt heard from the military channels that nearly seventy percent of the supplies had been looted by one Dao Child Maven, who had personally cracked the moon open and led the attack.

When they were finally able to sleep, Matt had one name on his mind.

For the first time in his life, he truly hated someone.

Dao Child Maven.

Someone who was willing to collude with terrorists to complete her mission of crashing the supply depot. He made sure to memorize the information the news stations broadcast about her and her supposed ability to counter Light and Shadow. He didnt care about any of that. If Light and Shadow could kill her, that was great, but he promised himself if she was still alive by the time they finished the Path, he was going to kill her himself.