Chapter 378
Matt couldn't help but look at the ascender in awe as Manny talked to him. It was just so strange to think of someone ascending into their Realm.
They didn’t get many people from lower Realms, as there weren’t any Tier 25 Realms directly connected to this Realm, but they still tended to pop up every few generations give or take a dozen as the complex currents of inter-Realm cosmology pulled someone off-course. Weirdly, they knew a lot more about higher Realms than they did lower Realms, thanks to the cosmologers who had made it their lives’ missions to learn as much about the structure of Realms and how they related. But Tier 25 Realms were subtle and difficult to spot, and there were some people who thought that they simply couldn’t see the lower Realms connected to their own, with the people there simply not developing the Intents needed to survive ascending.
The man in front of him was a mark against that theory, as a Tier 26, which implied he had advanced the whole way through Tier 25 without accidentally ascending, or he had had an inspiration which caused him to advance. If he was a front-runner of the Realm, it was possible he was just the first of many ascenders.
Which might not be a good thing.
About a year ago, Manny had sent Allie on a mission to the border world of Exalon, just to monitor the situation. Not wanting to do a long-term recon mission alone, Allie had grabbed Aster, who had in turn messaged him and Liz, who then decided they might as well brings the whole group and told Allie to go get Zack, who had been with Susanne at the time, which was why they had all gathered for the Ascension.
Who wouldn’t want to meet an ascender?
It was a good thing too, because the actual process of Ascension was quiet. It wasn’t like an Ascension leaving the Realm, which had benefits to those around the ascender and was impossible to miss. No, Ra’thala had not been there one minute and had appeared the next like a ghost.
A good thing for their own possible Ascension, but that was a thought Matt didn’t really want to consider quite yet. He had way too much unfinished business in this Realm to even consider leaving.
There had been a bit of last-minute panic when the cosmological sensors they were using indicated the proximal lower-Realm crossing had fully vanished, but Zack’s insistence on overbuilding their observatory array paid off when they identified that it had just spontaneously shifted four planets over, into Federation space.