The Path of Ascension 9

The Path of Ascension 9 opens on a feat no one has managed in living memory: Light and Shadow have completed the Path of Ascension. The triumph is short-lived. Three foreign Great Powers, each a match for the Empire, answer it by declaring war. With only one ally in its corner, the Empire's honest projection is a close loss — unless it can produce another miracle Ascender in time to change the arithmetic.

That task falls to Matt, Liz, and their Bond Aster. Now among the Empire's most closely watched climbers, they push through the final stretch of the Path — espionage assignments, contested planets, and rift dives that can still kill them — racing to reach Tier 25 before the war is decided. Along the way the book keeps widening its world, filling in the foreign powers, the Empire's history, and the workings of the magic system.

This is the ninth of twelve volumes in C. Mantis's Path of Ascension, a progression-fantasy serial first published on Royal Road and released by Aethon Books. The series blends LitRPG trappings — dungeons, skills, measurable Tiers — with the internal logic of xianxia cultivation, following Matt, an orphan with a supposedly detrimental Talent, from the bottom of the Empire toward its heights alongside Liz and Aster.