Delving the rift. Nothing earth shattering, but that also made it just feel like a fun chapter. Just being able to rampage through a rift without caring too much about things like other people, politics, or consequences.
For Matt, that began with pulling his newest set of armor out of storage. Sadly, it wasn't the hyper-awesome set of power armor that he'd used in the war, but a new set he'd commissioned for himself now that he was Tier 26. In theory, if they were to start a new war right now, he'd go back to using his power armor. But with centuries of peace for the Empire ahead of them, that wouldn't be happening. The maintenance of the armor made it impractical to use in normal delving, and it wasn't technically his anyway. He could push that fact if he really wanted to, but… eh. He had used others' old weapons and armor and that was only possible if the Empire had them ready to loan out.
With his personal buffs taken care of, Matt withdrew his trusty growth sword. He hadn't used it in the war, but he had personally enchanted it with runes in all of its forms. Thanks to a bit of shenanigans with an [Overcharge]d [Sword Twin] and its ability to create four copies of the blade, he'd melded the best of its five forms into a single longsword that had the potency of dagger armor-piercing and the spell empowerment of a glaive, all further empowered. He swept the re-merged blade through the air, feeling out its weight and adjusting his [Archmage's Presence] strength boost until it had the right heft to it.
Ah, none of the shiny OP equipment from the war, but the explanation makes sense. Super optimized equipment with high maintenance makes sense when you have access to the total war machine of the Empire and are playing high stakes, but less of a priority in normal times. Kinda nice having his old sword that he self-tinkers with back.
Even as he noted that thought, a cavalcade of buffs landed on him from Zack. While the man wasn't much of a support mage, he had a number of interesting and unique buffs that he could provide, though Matt wouldn't say he was especially good at using them to their maximum.
Once he felt he was in perfect sync with Liz and Aster, then he'd drill more with Zack. That might be a few centuries away, but he was immortal. He had time.
Turning, Matt looked to Zack, whose small smile would have been the equivalent of a manic grin for anyone else. It was good they were on the same page, even after a decade apart.
Matt let a mana stone crumble in his hands, just in case there was somehow someone spying on him, and unleashed massive amounts of mana into their surroundings.
Once the area around their platform was saturated, Zack twisted the affinity, kickstarting a cascade. But instead of dropping his connection to the mana, Matt kept throwing mana at the problem, like someone trying to outrun speed wobbles on their flying sword by accelerating through. There were only two possible results, you outran your problem, or spread across whatever was under you.
And Matt was nothing if not fast.
The resulting explosion lasted for almost an entire minute, and was bright enough to dissipate the surrounding gray smoke like fog under the morning sun.
Once the attack settled down, Matt felt thousands of shackles cinch down onto his spirit. And from Zack's small wince, he must have encountered the same.
Zack's newest toy, his spell array, helped him use all sorts of external focuses to influence his spells even more than he already could, giving him a frankly absurd amount of versatility in his casting. But even without that, they'd had plenty of ideas for combining Matt's overwhelming power with Zack's exacting control during the war, lots of which they hadn't been able to try at the time.
But rift monsters, unlike soldiers, weren't up to date with the latest in countermagic.
Matt fired a massive [Mana Beam] at Zack, who intercepted it with his fiery spell array, filtered it through a dragonscale, and unleashed a massive, elongated snake-dragon upon the monsters around them, laying absolute waste through the physical embodiment of Matt's ludicrous power.
That wasn't sufficient, or at least using only that would have been boring. So over the next day, they tried out a bunch of their more outlandish combos. Some, like trying to turn Matt's [Tribulation Strike] into gravity, literally blew up in their face, but others were much more promising.
Fortunately, with the final monster's death, the shackles fell off their spirits, relieving a tremendous amount of spiritual pressure on him and Zack alike.
Also nice seeing Matt making plans for people outside of just Liz and Aster. I mean, working together with Zack isn't exactly going outside of his comfort zone or anything, but interacting with other friends is nice.
"I wonder what it will be?"
Allie poked at it without disrupting the membrane, which would have condensed the reward. "Gotta be something good, right? We did the perfect run, just like Sien said. I swear if we just get mana stones, I'm going to dissipate this rift."
Allie leaned in and started whispering mean things at the rift distortion while Matt and Liz tried not to laugh.
How Allie would replace the rift's lunch with plain cheese sandwiches was a mystery, but he didn't doubt she would do something if the rewards were bad.
Not gonna lie, I'm not exactly blown away by any of these rewards. I hope Allie does steal the rift's lunch somehow.
Unless this insta-volcano rock turns out to be something more special. Some kind of super magical volcano. Wasn't Liz getting a fire planet? Can this volcano be put on that planet to make it even firier?
