The Path of Ascension

Matt felt like the flight down the nearby tunnel to a safer area was excruciating, but waited until they were a safe distance away to set up the house. After three days of constant stress over the puzzles, and only being able to sleep in shifts, they all needed the break. He even cooked everyone a proper meal before he started inspecting the new gloves.

Without his sight or a dedicated skill for it, the process was annoying, but he was able to confirm after a thorough examination that there was nothing dangerous around them.

Once their safety was confirmed, everyone gathered in the living room to figure out what exactly they could do.

Matt slipped them on and then sent a stream of mana into the gloves. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but then a loose cup flew across the room at Matt. As he reached to grab it, it snapped into his hands as if it was magnetized.

“Maybe we should take this outside?” Matt offered. He really didn't want to ruin the house if what he suspected was true.

Once they were all armored up, Matt moved away from the house and put a trickle of mana into the gloves once again. As soon as he did that, any and all loose rocks in the area started flying towards him.

Even Aster was affected; she had to use her Concept to fight against the pull of the gauntlet.

If he had his full senses, it wouldn't have been so hard to control at first, but Matt was able to get a pretty good feel after varying the amount of mana he sent into the item.

It also helped that the pyramids had been affected by the same force.

They were gravity gauntlets.

“I think these make what seems to be a miniature gravity well. Let me get away from you guys and see what they can do with my full mana generation.” Matt couldn't suppress the excitement he knew was in his voice at the thought.

Flying down the tunnel further, he put 100 MPS into [Cracked Phantom Armor] for protection.

At just 5 MPS into the gauntlets, the attraction was generating enough pull to draw even fist-sized rocks towards him.

Increasing the amount of mana he sent into them, he found that the gravity well grew stronger and stronger. He’d need to do some testing, but the scaling seemed better than linear.

And that made sense. Not many people could use a channeled item if the requirements were too high.

As he hit 20 MPS, Matt felt something shift in the gloves and affect the world around him. It felt like everything was locked down, and he was unable to move even a little.

He felt like an impassable object, and that anything that came near him would be shredded apart.

At this point, his spirit started to feel strained by the constant use of a Tier 14 item, but he had dealt with far worse from his skills.

Taking the test to the next level, Matt increased the mana to just over 50 MPS over the course of a few seconds.

The rocks weren't the only things sucked into him. The ground near his feet was starting to be ripped up, and joined the other rocks that were already pressed on his gauntlets.

As he hit 100 MPS, the items on his gauntlets started to compress under the power of gravity, and enough of the material from the surroundings had wrapped around Matt that he had to use [Earth Manipulation] to keep himself from getting crushed. He created a pocket for his body to reside in, pushing against the weight of his own mana with… more of his own mana. He tried to channel even more into the gauntlets, to push beyond just a bare smidgen of his mana, but they seemed to be capped at 100 mana each second.

Ending his test, Matt stepped down and paused for a moment to inspect the ground that he was unable to manipulate, and his new gauntlets were unable to rip up either.

Without his normal proprioception, he was only able to inspect them with his spiritual senses, but they had become quite sensitive over the last four days. Sill, the remaining ground just felt like normal stone, for all that he was unable to affect it.

Returning to the group, Matt said, “Well, they affect gravity, and they’re definitely strong.”

Liz scoffed over their AI and said, “Yeah, except the fact you had to throw a hundred MPS at the problem. We can't really use them as effectively, so you might as well keep them.”

Susanne nodded. “And we have our outer armor that we can’t exchange the gauntlets out for without breaking the item with enchantment. You only have under armor, which is a blouse and trousers.”

“Well, they do have a limit of about a hundred mana per second…” he protested. It was… actually a lot, he realized. Even if he blasted Liz with his full Concept, she could only use them for a little under two minutes before she ran out. He, meanwhile, could use them very effectively.

Aster wasn’t bothered at all by the gauntlets, as she had no hands to use them, and jumped into Matt’s arms, starting to ask about what it felt like to use the item.

Matt used that as an excuse to explain everything he had learned. “The gauntlets have a gravity field that ramps up pretty fast, and is extremely effective. We’ll need to see if it brings in magical attacks along with mana and essence, as normal gravity does, but these brought in matter quite well, and even started to compress it.”

Before he had left, he had gathered the bits of stone that had compressed down to denser versions of themselves. He didn’t have nearly enough power to perform actual atomic fusion, but he had compressed the stone into something denser.

“Beyond that, I felt like I was a rock at the center of the universe. Everything would move before I did. I was immovable.”

Matt flexed his hand even though he couldn't see anything, and inspected the gauntlets once again.

They went nearly up to his elbows, and were made of a thin metal alloy that he wasn’t able to identify without his sight and better tools.

He was quite happy with what they could do, and felt like a kid on his birthday.

The rest of the evening, he played with his new item and tried to learn how they worked. As far as he could tell, he was unable to limit the directional force of the gravity, but he wasn't sure if that was a limit of the item, or his understanding of said item.

Normal gravity was omnidirectional, but he didn’t think the item was so limited.

Still, everyone got a good three hours of sleep before they moved on and traveled down the tunnel they had entered.

When they had first entered, the path deeper had been over a hundred feet tall, but as they progressed further with not an enemy or trap in sight, the tunnel got smaller and smaller until they were walking single file.

Just as they were scraping their shoulders on the walls, their spiritual perception found the exit, and they carefully crept up to it.

They once again entered a massive cavern. Liz, with her more sensitive blood, sent out feelers and reported back. “Something is eating at my skills. It's not destroying the blood, but rather my mana inside of it.”

After a few more tests, they determined they had found a pool of Mana Leeches.

The monsters were, as their name suggested, leeches that ate mana, not blood. If they were just able to drain people with direct contact, that would have been something easily countered. But they had an aura they exuded that was able to drain any mana that entered their sphere of influence.

Liz was excited, and started planning their expedition into the cavern’s lagoons as soon as they suspected the Mana Leeches as the reason for her skill’s dissipation. Mana Leeches created environments where rare herbs and natural treasures existed in large quantities.

They ate the mana that the items would produce, and therefore hid them from casual inspection and location through spiritual senses, as the lack of mana would make it harder to identify what was inside.

Matt spent half an hour creating a formation to push back the Mana Leeches’ aura before they walked into the main cavern.

He was in charge of the formation while Liz transplanted the herbs that littered the edges of the pools to her garden, and Susanne protected them from anything trying to attack them, with Aster's help.

Matt ended up with the quickest and crudest method of keeping the Mana Leeches from draining them and their gear of mana. He simply created a bubble of mana and kept feeding it with more and more mana for the leeches to drain, protecting what was inside of the bubble from their influence. Minkalla made the process more difficult, but he was able to just spend more mana to counteract its draining effect as well.

It only took 200 MPS to maintain, but that was more a commentary of Matt’s enchanting style than what a normal, better designed item would be able to do.

Ten minutes into their voyage, they found their first real monster. Or rather, it found them. A massive, crocodile-like reptile that was all but invisible to their spiritual senses had burst from the water, and they didn’t even notice until Susanne vanished from ‘sight,’ as she was swallowed whole by the monster. It didn’t go well for the creature, as she cut through its mouth in a single, devastating blow, highlighting its existence as she killed it.

Susanne ended up not being too worse for wear, as her [Cracked Second Wind] took care of her wounds. But they made sure that they were substantially more careful as they progressed, encountering several more of the crocodiles as they explored the network of tunnels and caverns. The next time, it was Matt swallowed whole, and he didn’t notice he had been swallowed until his companions vanished from his perceptions.

His armor proved stronger than the bite, since the jaws were unable to pierce the skill before he exploded out of the creature’s head in a gory, icy [Icicle]. He made his escape fast enough that the mana leech-repelling ward didn’t so much as waver.

By then, Liz had figured out the telltale signs of the predators, and when one came from her, she intercepted its ambush with a hail of [Blood Bullet]s, punching through its upper jaw and skull mid-bite. They didn’t have that much trouble with the beasts all together, as they were only low Tier 14 and specialized for stealth, but they were annoying.

Meanwhile, Liz led them through a zigzag pattern between the various pools and streams that littered the caverns as she collected several plants. Most weren't all that valuable, but they did encounter a few notable natural treasures.

Purple Heart Lotus was a natural treasure that, once eaten, would grow a membrane of purple mana around the eater's heart, which would protect them from stabbings and generally help keep the heart pumping in spite of any injury.

Sadly, the item wouldn’t work after Tier 15, when biology took a back seat to essence and manipulation of the spirit. At that point, the body and spirit produced enough essence on their own that the cultivator’s body was self-sustaining.

Still, it was useful for them, and all of them ate a leaf before Liz stored the rest of the plant. It would sell for a rift on the outside world, and they weren't going to pass that up.

The next viable item they found was an odd one… pine-apples. It was a pine tree that grew… apples. They were rare and quite valuable, not because they were useful or had some special properties, but just because they were incredibly tasty.

Liz had a difficult time transferring the entire tree to her alchemy garden because of its size, but they succeeded in the end, and as long as they kept the item charged with mana, it would give them a slow but steady stream of the pine-apples.

Her portable garden was a rare and expensive spatial item, built around being able to hold living things and keep them alive, but it had the downsides of being expensive to run, along with restrictions on what could enter.

Still, it showed its value in times like these.

The next item they found was a Grasping Vines Root, which was an item like Aster's Heart of Winter. Once eaten, it gave the user an ability that would grow along with them, but wasn't an actual skill.

Susanne debated taking the natural treasure, but in the end, she decided not to. It would be useful, but she would need to remain rooted to a single spot, which wasn’t how she liked to fight.

For that same reason, they all passed up on it.

They were nearing what they expected was the center of the cave network when the first Mana Leech attacked them.

Susanne cut it in half before it neared their barrier without issue, but they were surprised by just how much Genesis Energy they got.

It wasn’t a ton, but it was more than any of them expected for a creature that had little in the way of offense or defense. They suspected it was because Matt was feeding them with mana at a crazy rate, which in turn created a large population of small Genesis Energy generators.

That discovery led them into a Mana Leech extermination mission, where they hunted down all of the parasites they could find.

During that mission, they actually found another challenge room when a Mana Leech disappeared into a blank spot of another large lagoon. Once again, the sense-suppressing nature of Eternal Darkness had made them almost completely miss what should have been blindingly obvious, but Matt felt that they were getting better at accounting for it.

The pillar of crystal stood on a small sandbar at the center of the body of water, and gave them a feeling of… testing, building, and guidance. It wouldn’t involve combat, they were sure, but the impressions it gave didn’t really correspond with any mana leech or swamp-style challenge rooms that they knew of.

Beyond that, they couldn't get a better feeling for the challenge. Still, they decided to venture inside.

After sending Genesis Energy into the pillar, all of them were sucked into the challenge.

Matt laughed as he saw what their test was.

It was a simulation environment, specifically ‘Essential Civilization’.

Together, the four of them needed to raise a civilization out of a pre-essence age to as high as they could in one thousand years.

Matt looked to where he felt Liz, Aster, and Susanne off to his sides. The floor theme was gone, but their bodies weren't actually here either, and they were all just outlines of their normal shapes.

“Everyone knows the strategy for this one?” Liz asked.

Aster yipped, “Yup! Push 'em early then in waves.”

And really, that was it. As the leaders of the simulations, they could speed up time or slow it down at their whim, which made this a fairly quick challenge room. Beyond that, they would have to spend Genesis Energy to spawn rifts and monster breaks throughout the planet at first, until it started to self propagate.

Their only other way to influence the simulation was to spend Genesis Energy to change the reaction to some of the events that would occur through the process.

There was no hard and firm strategy for this challenge room, but as Aster said, the general rule was to hit the simulation fairly hard, then send waves of monsters until they started to grow stronger.

After they talked it over, they initialized the simulation, and a planet sprung up and started to spin rapidly. Life started to spark and grow. Humans evolved, and started to expand on the planet until they inhabited most of the five continents.

Then, the simulation halted, and time froze for those in the world.

The first thing they all did was check the technology level of the world.

It wasn't great, but it could have been worse and they didn't feel the need to spend Genesis Energy to re-roll the starting civilization.

The best was steel age civilization, before it advanced into the gunpowder or space age.

Those more advanced eras suffered the most in the early stages, as they were so used to relying on their technology that there was a pushback on essence and the increase of physical powers. Most of the time, they spent at least a century trying to solve the essence ‘issue,’ which for something like this was just wasted time.

Eventually, they would realize the benefits of cultivation and start to lean into a more melee combat style, but it wasted valuable years as their score was based on how far the civilization progressed in a thousand simulation years. If the simulation lasted longer, those more advanced civilizations with their greater populations and technology would start to pull ahead. But with the limited time, wasting ten percent of the simulation time was a hard blow to recover from.

By contrast, a society that had just entered the steel age effortlessly slipped into cultivation, being already used to smacking each other with metal weapons. Accordingly, they tended to embrace the power of essence almost immediately. The real issue with those simulations was pushing too hard, and sending too many monsters or rifts at them, thus wiping out their smaller population.

Technically, the absolute best for the challenge were the rare societies that had already discovered cultivation independently, extracting it from the ambient essence and using highly complex rituals to awaken themselves without killing rift monsters. But those basically never appeared in the simulations Minkalla made for this scenario.

After reviewing everything, Liz gave them the rundown. “Our simulation was just starting to enter the gunpowder age, which, while not great, isn't bad. We’ll have the population boom at the start of the technology boom, but there are still a few people and places that have a martial tradition.” She hmmed as she spun the planet in front of them. “These are the four most advanced political entities. It says that they all hate each other, and will make alliances with each other only as a countermeasure to any of them looking to get ahead. They just got out of a ten-year war with one another, and are in the recovery phases.”

Liz tapped her chin as she thought.

Matt offered up his idea. “These are the most advanced civilizations on planet Simeyer, but they have a strong fighting tradition. From the records, most of their wars are for stupid reasons. I think if we set off a few rift breaks in the outskirts, we can minimize casualties while showing them that there is a new threat. Then, once the rulers know something is off, we start ramping up the rifts and monsters. Eventually, they will get the hint and turn their attention inward.”

Liz nodded, but said nothing as she flipped through pages of information.

Susanne spoke next. “We still need to worry about the other countries and their peoples. Can’t leave them in the dust completely, or we will create an imbalance.”

Liz kept nodding as Susanne talked and finally said, “Very true. Susanne, are you offering to take the outskirts while we hit the centers of tech?”

Without saying anything else, Susanne assigned herself to the outer regions with the lowest technology levels in the areas, where civilization hadn’t seemed to reach.

Her goal there was to keep the people from dying out, but also push them forward. Not as easy feat with their limited technology and smaller, more spread out populations.

Liz turned to Matt. “Want to take the middling countries that are mostly vassal states to the four big guys, while Aster and I take the main civilizations?”

Matt had no issue with that, and selected the regions Liz mentioned then waited.

Once Liz and Aster were ready, the simulation started to progress.

Immediately, Matt cordoned off his dozen countries by the superpower they were under the influence of, and then spawned a rift in all of them near each of their food production areas.

That would get the royal's attention faster than anything else. Part of their duties as a vassal state for the four larger superpowers was to send food to keep their massive armies fed.

If they didn’t produce their quota of food, they would become the target of the next campaign.

He spawned the rift early in the morning, and sent a small wave of goblins out in every direction.

It took a little Genesis Energy, but he prevented the monsters from grouping up, as most of the farmers were small families, and simulation or no, he didn’t like the idea of anyone dying to a rift break.

They were playing the first few hours slowly, but once their monsters were all defeated, they sped up the simulation to the next day before repeating their actions.

The farmers were able to fight off the first wave of monsters on their own, thinking they were little more than a new pest, but after the third day, they couldn't help but notice their bodies were getting stronger and faster after the fights.

That was the byproduct of undirected essence allocation spreading evenly between their cores, but it was enough to freak the farmers and their families out. A normal sixty year old man shouldn't be feeling like he did in his twenties after all and a twenty year old woman shouldn't be beating her larger brothers in contest of strength after killing one of the new pests.

As the farmers started to flee their farms, Matt got his first pop-ups.

Each country he oversaw had two options in how to react to the news that their farmers were fleeing their fields as new enemies appeared.

The first option he had, which cost no Genesis Energy, was to have them react negatively, and force the farmer back to their fields, calling the monsters a simple nuisance.

He could only think of the bad path that option would lead them down, and really didn’t want to choose it.

The second option, which took about a quarter of a single worker ant's Genesis Energy, was to have them mobilize their own smaller armies and try to figure out what was going on.

Matt spent the Genesis Energy to have all of the vassal states under his control react appropriately, despite it costing a dozen ant kills worth when each country was accounted for.

They weren't necessarily going to get more Genesis Energy out of this challenge than they put in if they went with the expensive options each time, but Matt felt that he needed to guide them early.

That would set the foundation for their later reactions, where he could hopefully take the cheaper options.

As all of the vassal states sent out an army or two, he watched and then spawned in a new wave of rifts closer to their major cities.

This time, there were casualties that he couldn't prevent.

Some people refused to believe that the little monsters approaching them were dangerous, and learned the hard way that even a Tier 1 monster that was only knee high was able to kill them with ease.

Caravans and outlying villages got hit the worst, and that hurt Matt on a personal level.

He knew that pain and wished it on no one. He felt for these simulated people and the upheaval that they were encountering. Their world was changing around them as forces they didn’t understand started to awaken.

Still, there were bright spots.

The interface showed him people who were advancing and pulling ahead of the pack.

A young woman from an outlying village near his initial rifts had been on a tryst with a lover when they were attacked.

She was the only survivor, and armed with only a rock, bludgeoned the two kobolds to death. She returned to her village and gathered them to find the monster's lair, then exterminate them.

Except, they found the rift and didn’t know what to do.

Most of them were still Tier 0’s, having not killed any monsters to absorb their essence and advance, so only the woman he named Abby was able to see the distortion in space.

He was able to see her Talent which was a nifty feature of the simulation, and was interested in its simplicity. Her Tier 1 was the ability to notice details. Simple but effective, it served her well in spotting the rift distortion.

Seeing the other villagers were debating to leave, he spent a tiny amount of Genesis Energy to set off another rift break… right in front of the villagers. It was something they couldn’t possibly miss.

That earned Abby the villagers trust, and as they killed the monsters, they too started to advance and step onto the path of cultivation. While modern technology allowed a single monster to awaken a dozen children, this simulation had nothing of the sort, and they each needed to personally land the killing blow for the essence contained

Abby then demanded that they enter the rift to kill any of the monsters inside, but the villagers were squeamish of the unknown, and refused to enter.

Seeing that, Abby went in on her own.

Matt watched as she, now armed with a simple iron wrapped club, beat her way through the kobold rift. She was injured a number of times, and only just barely killed the final boss. Seeing that, Matt felt like he was back in his own first rift days. Looking back he honestly didn’t know if he would be as good as her without his years of training and preparation.

Seeing her do so well, Matt spent some more Genesis Energy to adjust her rewards.

That was one thing he wished he could do in real life. As one of the controllers of the simulation, Matt could see and adjust the rewards each rift gave.

This rift, he changed the permanent rewards to give a variety of decent steel armor and weapons. It was a Tier 1 rift, so he couldn't set the permanent rewards to drop skills, but he did spend a little for Abby's first victory.

He gave her a healing potion, a Tier 5 longsword with a [Mana Slash] enchantment, and finally a [Fireball] skill shard.

The first was because he was afraid she was going to die before she got out of the rift. Guts and determination only could push a body so far before it failed. The sword was based on his own, and he was biased to that type of weapon, so she got a copy of his own sword at Tier 5.

Finally, the skill shard was to show them what they could do with cultivation.

Abby, who had just fought her way through three dozen kobolds, was exhausted and parched by the end of her ordeal, so she just drank the potion without question.

Matt had expected her to question the mysterious bottle of clear liquid, but she didn’t hesitate.

Seeing her wounds close up, she wept.

Now mostly healed and having collected the skill shard and weapon, she exited the rift like a conquering queen.

Seeing her power increase and a new magical sword that could shoot light blue crescents out of its edge, the villagers were frightened, but soon wanted that same power. Human nature ensured that.

Matt was proud of them, as through trial and testing, they learned of the rift instances and the need to send in people after the fifteen minute window. It took them longer still to learn how to deal with the enemies inside the rift without getting injured. After the first day, they discovered that if they delved the rift and killed the monsters inside its depths, they didn't have rift breaks.

It took time, but they learned.

Abby was one of the first ten people on the planet to reach Tier 2, and the power difference was stark to anyone who knew her. Essence, even without the ten compressions Matt did between Tiers, and her not directing it consciously, was a force multiplier unlike any other.

She was strong enough to be a god to the Tier 0’s in the surrounding villages.

That same strength was also what attracted the attention of the local nobility.

The noble family had heard of the village's changes and power, and sought to suppress them. They called Abby to them under the guise of trying to fix the monsters, but intended to surround and kill her.

Except, they weren’t ready for a woman armed with a Tier 5 sword that had enchanted skill, who could also shoot [Fireball]’s out of her hands.

It was a slaughter, and only a few of the smart ones were able to run away.

After that, Abby stood on a roof and shouted to everyone in the town who could hear her what she had learned about rifts and monsters.

It was then that Matt got two new events. One was for Abby and the other for the town.

The first one was about how the town would react to Abby’s information. It was an easy decision for Matt to spend the tiny amount of Genesis Energy to have them react in a favorable way.

He then set up a couple new rifts to spawn in the next few days, but that was second to Abby’s own choice.

It seemed that she was conflicted on what to do. Beyond her brave exterior, she was as confused and scared as anyone in her situation would be.

Still, she saw the way the world was heading, and had the choice on whether to go to her country's capital, or whether to stay and protect the people around her.

Matt saw that neither option had a Genesis Energy cost and had to pause to reflect. Why would he be given the option to choose for her when it cost nothing. That wasn’t how any of the other events had worked after all.

He gamed out what each event would lead to, and eventually chose for her to remain behind. He didn’t see how the rulers of the county would take an actual cultivator telling them how to do things. If the woman was Tier 5, he wouldn't worry, but at Tier 2, enough Tier 0s could kill her, and he was growing attached to the determined woman.

Matt felt responsible for her after interfering with her life.

To his surprise, she ended up writing a letter to the rulers of the country, and sent it along with one of the local noble's servants. Well, she had the letter written, as she was an illiterate peasant before the rift breaks, and a few days of monster killing hadn’t changed that.

Seeing that all was going well, he created a new Tier 2 rift with Horned Wolves and zoomed back out to watch the larger picture.

Over the first months of the simulation, the four of them were busy putting out and preventing metaphorical fires. Liz and Aster had it the hardest, as they had to corral the four super powers to keep them from attacking each other, their vassals, or exploding from civil war.

Thankfully, the ever expanding threat of rifts and rift monsters was enough to force them to focus on their own problems.

The first week turned into a month, then a year.

Heroes had risen up, and they were the ones advancing the fastest. Abby was still among them, and as the planet was pushed to Tier 5, she was one of the five strongest people.

In the simulation, the planet didn’t take time to advance as they would in the real world. As soon as they spawned or upgraded ten or more rifts, the planet advanced to that Tier as well.

It was a good thing for the people, and it was how the strongest of people quickly rose to prominence. They were mostly people with some of the more noticeable Talents. Things like Innate [Fire Manipulation] or other immediately useful skills or abilities gave them enough of an advantage to shoot ahead of the pack.

Still, there were no super crazy Talents from a planet with barely 50 million people.

With their lacking technology, they were limited by their communication, but the news of strong new rifts appearing with monsters even more powerful than before spread, and those who led the pack in advancement were the first to arrive and pacify the situation.

They started to speed up the simulation as the first hour of real-time ended. Five minutes after that, they were through the first year, and the people in the simulation started to adapt and learn.

With their help, the planet advanced. There were problems and events, but with their guidance, the people of Simeyer adapted to their new world.

After the first decade, when they had advanced the planet to Tier 5 properly, things were mostly hands off. The population had stabilized, and rifts now followed the same rules they did in the outside world.

People started to learn about advancement and how to differentiate between a mage and a melee fighter. With that, they started to categorize and note rifts that dropped skills.

It took a little longer for the crafts to catch up, but eventually, as the general citizenry started to learn how to advance by being carried through rifts or cultivating ambient essence, they started to discover how to work higher Tier metals. That led to the discovery of how to enchant weapons and gear, which was a game changer for the planet as a whole.

The four of them were surprised that the people had learned that trick on their own, without an event or them spending the Genesis Energy to directly interfere. But that advancement helped tremendously, as they were able to advance the Tier of monsters and rifts with their increased power levels.

As Tier 6 and Tier 7 rifts started appearing, things became dangerous, since the strongest people were only just advancing past Tier 5. At the same time the general populace had only reached Tier 1, but they still survived and even thrived, now they had an idea of what was happening.

With more people awakening, they started to notice the difference between people and eventually learned that Talents were universal, rather than just fantastic powers only a few held. That discovery also taught them just how useful Talents could be to help people do new things.

Without the technology of the Empire, they were unable to categorize the Talents, so it was mostly trial and error, but as more and more people advanced, strong people started to stand out.

The real problem was the Tier 5 bottle neck. Anyone without a Concept, or as the people of the simulation called them, a Truth, was stuck at the peak of Tier 4. The simulation had no bottled Concept to allow them to push that necessity to a higher Tier.

At that point, Matt shamelessly cheated.

Anything they knew how to do they could recreate in the world below. It just cost Genesis Energy.

Matt didn’t hesitate to do so, and by spending a good fraction of his saved up Genesis Energy, he recreated a Tier 4 Aura rift. It took them some time, but they learned that with the Aura, they were able to create a ‘False Truth’, as each person who made their Concept from Aura called. Sadly they misunderstood why each person who used the Aura was limited to an earth type Concept and labeled it weaker. Still it allowed them to advance past the bottleneck, and the island he spawned it on soon became an independent city-state, despite everyone trying to gain or retain control over the rift.

The Aura rift did its job amazingly, and the percentage of the population who advanced to Tier 5 and beyond exploded.

As the first century of the simulation ended, people started to notice that the higher advanced people lived longer and were healthier, which created a drive to advance in a lot of people who had otherwise not bothered with cultivation.

At first, the four of them were able to advance the planet a Tier once a decade, but soon, that slowed down as advancements took longer and became harder.

If the four of them weren't on a time limit, Matt would have loved to spend time observing the simulation and seeing just how everything worked inside with its slightly altered rules, but they didn't have time.

After the second century, they just sped the simulation to maximum speed and watched the countries grow and fall.

None of the original ones were still standing a thousand years later, but the planet as a whole had reached Tier 16 with its special rules.

Before the end, Matt checked in on Abby. The woman who had started as little more than a peasant girl had grown into a respectable warrior, and remained one of the ten Tier 18’s who had taken the role of guiding their planet's advancement. He was proud of her for that and was sad to see her life fade to nothing with the end of the simulation.

A Tier 16 planet and an average population reaching Tier 7 was a very respectable final score, earning them more than triple the Genesis Energy they had all put in.

Back in their bodies with six hours spent in the simulation, they watched as their rewards were created.

Unlike the previous time, they only got a single item, but considering it was an endlessly refilling healing potion, they didn’t care much. Sure, it took mana, time, and a touch of Genesis Energy, or presumably essence, though they weren’t able to check, but the chalice definitely helped ease the burden put on their normal potion stock. Of course, the fact that the potion couldn’t be poured out of the chalice without being drank was a double-edged sword, as it meant they didn’t have to worry about it spilling, but they also couldn’t pour it on their wounds or into any of their empty potion bottles to stock up.

They ended up giving it to Susanne, who didn’t have the advantage of unlimited [Lesser Regeneration] or Liz’s ability to make her own healing potions. She’d probably get five or six tiers of use out of it, before out-Tiering it to the point that it wasn’t worth the increased healing cooldown that a lower Tier healing potion would impart.

After that challenge room, they inspected the rest of the cave network, collecting anything they found useful before they continued on through the tunnels and found the exit of the sub-floor they were on.

Even with their dampened spiritual perception, they could see the Ruin reward distortion off in the distance.

When they exited the tunnel they were in, they found themselves in a shifting desert, and finally got a good feel for the distortion. It was a good distance away, but it shone like a light in the darkness that the floor imposed on them.