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Chapter 388
🕑 Added 2025-01-06 19:59:01 +0000 UTCChapter 388
When Matt arrived back at Palustris he was immediately greeted by Liz, who hugged him before they shared a long kiss just enjoying being back near each other.
They didn’t give themselves the time they would have liked to enjoy each other's presence, however, and Liz got right to business just a moment later. “Anything you didn’t mention in the Ascender chat?”
“Not really, but I have been thinking about everything as I flew back. Something that Rhea said stood out to me about these mystery enemies. They haven’t shown themselves, which makes it impossible to strike out at them but it also ensures they can strike out at us with far more impunity. On the surface that makes sense, but if they were just trying to prevent me from taking some of their profits they would have probably made entreaties. Or at least historically the ones who attacked Lila and Aiden did so, many times in fact. For obvious reasons, directly confronting an Ascender is a last resort, but we didn’t get a threatening anonymous letter to back down.”
Liz’s expression told him she understood where he was going as he finished with a grimace. “My gut tells me that's because we already stepped over their bottom line and they are willing to fight to the death.”
“That, or they wanted to probe us with a way for them to slink back into the dark. That said, I agree with your assessment, and we should prepare for the long haul.”
Matt snapped his fingers and said, “That reminds me, I told your people at the research station that they should increase their security measures and to go into pseudo lockdown if we go out of communications for any length of time.”
He had swung by when he checked in on his guild and the lawyers who were battling it out. Even with the mortal clause, the actual case could take upwards of a decade as the cogs of bureaucracy churned, but Matt wasn’t too worried about the outcome.
They had enough proof to ensure at a minimum a very short patent, and this was an opportunity to dig into Falker’s guild’s information. It was doubtful that anything pointing to who was pulling their strings would be easy to find, but it was information all the same, and more than they had now.
As he took Liz’s hand, a phoenix formed on her shoulder and hopped over to her customary perch on his.
Together, they flew down to where their floating island sat in the ocean.
It was pretty and if one didn’t know its true nature, they might mistake it for a well built up, but otherwise ordinary, island.
They only stopped long enough to grab the house and inform all of their local staff they were going to be delving for the next few years.
Just as they were leaving, Liz cursed and flew up, calling out, “We said we’d take Ra’thala to the rift, and he asked about it when you were gone. Might as well make the first rift a Tier 26 as we ease back into delving.”
Matt agreed with her reasoning and so changed his direction to the rift he had initially wanted to take Ra’thala to, as he thought the man might like it.
He was standing next to the rift by the time Liz and Ra’thala returned and he met the ascender with a grin and a handshake.
“Good to see you, Ascender Titan.”
“Matt, I insist.”
Ra’thala cocked his head and his eyes flicked, indicating he was checking in with his [AI] before nodding.
“Then you should call me Rah. Or Thala. Either way, it's less formal and you all are the closest thing I have to friends in this Realm, so it feels fitting.”
Matt was touched and said so. “Thank you and—”
Liz slipped in next to him and poked him. “Don’t get too much of a big head there buckaroo, he already made the offer to me first. You're just second best, it seems.”
Rah seemed a little taken aback, but Matt knew Liz was teasing and played into it clutching his chest. “The lady wounds me. However shall I recover?”
Liz didn’t reply with the flirty response Matt expected and instead said, “Deal with all the paperwork you owe me for being gone so long.”
Matt tsked. “Ouch, but fair. How about instead of either of us doing paperwork we delve?”
Liz tapped her chin as if thinking. “Hmm. I think I can accept that. Mayyybeee. Fine but only because I’m the kindest, most understanding wife.”
“Prettiest too.”
“Damn right.”
Having enticed Liz into a kiss Matt enjoyed the moment until they needed to get going.
As they were about to enter the rift Matt had a thought and pinged his seneschal, Cato, that he wanted to see a number of his people in the coming years as they moved in and out of delves.
A few were to just follow up with things that had been missed in his last year of absence, but most were parts of the plans he had created while traveling between.
Countess Walsh was a part of that list and the only one of the people he requested to arrive in their next estimated break. Being in their duchy, she was only a month's travel away, but he and Liz intended to go head-down and delve as fast as possible until they reached Tier 27 at a minimum, which meant minutes outside of rifts at best.
Delving for advancement at their Tier was an endeavor which could take centuries, and he wanted to get one of his plans in motion sooner than later, while also not risking any information leaks that might exist in the public networks.
Beyond that, most of the messages were to friends and close personal acquaintances they had made over the years. To be safe, they extended it to anyone they had any level of connection to, offering a place on Palustris for as long as this spat lasted, wanting to be safe rather than sorry.
That taken care of, Matt, Liz, and Rah entered the rift.
It wouldn’t be winning any kind of unique rift awards, but it was one that Matt had enjoyed delving thanks to its layout.
Inside the rift they found themselves standing on a perfectly flat plain stretching out farther than even their Tier 26 vision could see, which was far.
It made for a stunning sight, and Matt hoped that went double for someone who had mainly lived on planets and didn’t delve.
“Welcome to a rift.” Matt gestured around them with a flourish.
Rah spun on a toe and made a whistle-like sound Matt interpreted as awe.
Sticking his tongue out at Liz, he returned her sure to be coming mockery of the rift.
Liz gave him a little shove. “You only like this rift because you perfectly counter it.”
Matt gave her rebuttal as much dignity as it required and blew a raspberry at her.
Rah gave them a questioning look, so Matt explained. “I do perfectly counter this rift. We can show that after you get a taste of delving. Rifts generally have a safe area near the entrance and exits. Move about ten feet away, and you’ll be eligible to be attacked.”
Rah immediately asked the correct question. “What's going to attack me?”
Not that Matt would spoil anything. “A great question, and one a lot of people like to research about rifts before they enter, but that’s boring. Safer, but boring. It’s not like real life enemies have walkthroughs of how to best beat them.”
Phoenix Liz on his shoulder warbled a disagreement, and Matt conceded to her point. “We did know about most people's abilities in the war, so fair enough. We can tell you bu—”
Rah stepped out of the safe area and the rift that was a perfect grassland that stretched for millions of miles in all directions started to boil.
It wasn’t a rising tide, but a wave of corpses that started crawling out of the ground.
Zombies of all types, fast ones, slow ones, tanky ones, boney ones, wights, liches, golems of all types started to appear. Normally, undead rifts were destroyed due to the diseases they tended to carry, but this was one of the rare ones spared of that plague, and Matt was hardly the only person to love nice clean sightlines like this, so it was left alone.
Neither Matt nor Liz moved from their starting locations, nor bothered to ready any weapons. The rift safe zone wouldn’t stop them from being overwhelmed, but they had delved into this rift a few times and knew how it would play out.
Best to let Rah play with the zombies first.
Matt enjoyed watching the ascender spin around them, clearing their immediate vicinity of the rising horde. His moves were clean, fast, and decisive.
Interestingly enough, he clearly knew the weakness of most of the zombie types, showing he had either downloaded information about them and was getting updated via his [AI], or he had encountered things similar in his home Realm. But if he was being updated by his [AI], that was all it was doing, as he didn’t have any of the telltale signs of someone blindingly following an AI’s predictive algorithm. Then again, considering his old home didn't even have [AI], even having a predictive [AI] would be novel and he might want to play with it.
Matt thought it was more likely that he had encountered similar monster types that spilled onto planets from rift breaks before. Rah was well traveled according to his stories.
The first enemy that did more than slow him down was a thirty foot tall bone golem that didn’t particularly care if its head was destroyed, which led his initial method to take it down to fail and nearly cost him an arm.
Rah danced around with it while letting his area of effect slash spell take care of the weaker zombies that rushed him, trying to overwhelm him with sheer numbers.
“I really need to buy one of those little area of effect spells when he gets around to making the one for Susanne.”
“It is cool. Think I could get it working with a spear?”
“Probably? It does work when he thrusts. Speaking of, how has the creating skills in blank skill shards been progressing?”
“Pretty good, actually. I’ve got the knack of how to do the creation down now. It's still fiendishly difficult to manipulate a skill that is so far away from the core of my spirit, but I can test all kinds of weird stuff now. Sadly, the idea of shoving a spell into the blank skill shard and then manipulating that didn’t work. Same with merging spells inside them.”
Matt rubbed her shoulder in solidarity, just to get nipped by phoenix Liz for not giving her enough attention. “We figured they wouldn’t work, but it’s good to test. And really it might just need another trick. Did anyone try doubling the Tier of the skills for the blank shard? If it’s a space issue that might fix it.”
Liz shot his idea down with a shake of her head. “Rah tried it himself but couldn’t figure anything out, and no one wanted to do more than a few tests given how rare and therefore expensive Tier 20 skill shards are, especially blank ones.”
“Shame. That would have been very useful. Prices of the skill shards should see a decent uptick now, though. Good for those few who didn’t just destroy blank skill shard rifts.”
Liz bit her lip and phoenix Liz looked away from Matt and he felt a sinking feeling worm its way into his stomach.
“What?”
“So since you weren’t here and we, the guild and myself I mean, blew through the few blank skill shards on the surrounding planets, I may have placed an order to buy blank skill shards.”
Matt sighed. “I still think we shouldn’t be benefiting from an early movers’ advantage like that, as now people will feel they were ripped off, but that shouldn't be the biggest impact to the market.”
Both Lizzes dug their toes into the ground, phoenix Liz having to settle into dulling its claw on his armor, and Matt felt the sinking weight grow heavier.
“Just pull the band aid off. How bad is it?”
“So, Aster had been visiting at the time. Came to check in on us and Rah.”
“Oh, how is she doing? Last I talked to her was before the guild stuff. Anything new with her in the last year? I don’t like the implications of that, though.”
Matt had a pretty good idea of where Liz was headed, but hoped he was wrong.
“No, she's fine. Or at least nothing compared to our issues, and she said she had the rifts we wanted to delve picked out and waiting for you to return. The issue however is exactly as you were imagining.”
Matt couldn’t stand the suspense anymore and asked as he watched Rah finally figure out the golem’s weakness was the stupidly hard bone heart beating inside its chest.
“Allie?”
“Yup. Allie came to grab Aster for lunch and when I mentioned my problem, she offered to pick up all of my orders.”
Matt facepalmed. “She’s going to buy every blank skill shard she can, isn't she?”
Both Lizzes still wouldn’t look at him, and he poked the bird on her chest trying to get her to look down at him.
“Spill or I'm going to ‘accidentally’ dump honey in your feathers again.”
Both Lizzes pointed at him. “Ha! So you admit it! That wasn’t an accident. Vindication!”
Matt immediately backpedaled. “I admit no such things about past events, that was purely a threat about future events.”
“Nope, you admitted it.”
Seeing he wasn’t going to win that argument, he steered them back onto the topic at hand.
“So Allie is going to be buying every blank skill shard she can get her hands on before we break the news?”
That wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t so bad. It—
Seeing Liz’s expression, Matt shook his head in denial. “How can it be worse than that? Even if she liquidates every mana stone I’ve ever given her as well as all her other assets, she can’t make that much of a dent in the blank skill shard supply. They aren’t super valuable, but they are still useful and must exist in the billions.”
“So, she may have mentioned the discovery to Lila and Aiden, who both jumped onto the scheme and are leveraging themselves to the hilt to buy up every blank skill shard they can in all of the Great Powers.”
Matt just blinked at his wife, letting the moment linger before he snorted. “I hope the market crashes and they lose their shirts holding the bag.”
Liz laughed and pulled him into a hug. “Honey, I know you have a lot of pressure and responsibilities because of your Talent but you aren’t compromising your beliefs or the integrity of the guild with small things like ordering a lot of blank skill shards before the news goes out. If you went as far as the other three then maybe, but I know you aren’t going to stop the research, so there is nothing wrong with allowing yourself to save that little bit of money.”
Matt pressed a kiss onto her helmet but didn’t contradict her. He felt he needed to be better than that, but he was also not going to stress too much about something already done.
He did, however, truly hope the trio of Allie, Aiden, and Lila lost their money in the scheme. Same went for any of the other Ascenders that ended up getting pulled into it, because he knew there was zero chance they managed to grab even a small portion of the other Great Powers' blank skill shards without notice. That was unless they enlisted the help of the local Ascenders to do the heavy lifting.
Their little chat was interrupted by Rah walking over the surrounding few hundred miles free of zombies.
“While interesting, I’m going to need to figure out how I’m going to handle this more compacted essence before I do much more.”
They had figured something like that would happen when they initially talked about delving, so taking his cue, Matt grinned and stepped forward. “Then see why I love this rift so much.”
Creating a platform out of the ground, Matt pulled it up slightly. They could have just flown, but he knew Liz would sandbag and try to ruin his clear speed if he didn’t carry her along. Currently she had the fastest Tier 26 rift completion thanks to a lucky mouse rift when they were still on the path having a incredibly short path to the boss.
She immediately proved his prediction true by pulling out two chairs for herself and Rah, who just seemed thoroughly confused but took his seat.
Throwing the platform forward at his best possible speed, which was just under his top flying speed, Matt fired [Mana Beam] with every iota of mana he wasn’t spending on moving the platform.
Not that the last ten million mana per second or so did much, given the degree of diminishing returns he was hitting. But it was the principle of the thing.
Given that they were in a same-Tier rift, none of the monsters stood a chance and essence rushed in to be split between himself and Liz.
They offered to cut Rah into the split but he declined, saying his spirit was already full and, until he figured out the form of his next stage of advancement, any essence was useless.
It took almost a week, but the monsters didn’t stop crawling out of the ground and Matt didn’t stop firing his [Mana Beam] or dragging them towards the rift exit.
When they arrived at the boss, they did stop and introduce it to Rah, who used the experience of fighting the stronger than normal and better-skilled monster to top up his spirit with rift essence before they left.
The glass knife was actually one of the more valuable rewards the rift dropped, by the low standards of undead rifts at least, as it had the effect of killing undead easier. Its durability left a lot to be desired for its Tier, but it was a decent backup weapon for anyone delving such rifts and sold fairly well.
Moving to the next rift, Rah split off despite their offer to show him a few more typical rifts.
Understandable but unfortunate, as he wanted to figure out his cultivation system and how he could use rift essence instead of ambient essence for a greater power boost.
That was a problem Matt had never considered, and seeing Rah fully stuck and unable to advance, he was grateful he had their Realm’s method that required just compacting the essence together and squeezing.
He did hang around near the rift in a portable house he had bought as he worked to better take advantage of a rift that he could pop into to get some essence without waiting or screwing over a managed rift.
For their actual sustained delving spree, they were going to go to Aster's ducal capital, but she needed more time to free herself from her responsibilities, and so they were going to get some delving done in local rifts.
Liz demanded they enter one particular rift on the other side of the continent, citing that he owed her for dragging her through the zombie rift half a dozen times over the years.
Matt acquiesced but knew he made a mistake as he saw her grin slip through multiple times as they waited for the rift instance to cycle.
Spider centipedes that swarmed like crazy in the caves they had been dropped into.
Liz was in love with the rift and demanded they delve it between every other rift until Aster finished up.
Matt naturally refused out of principle as he chased after an army of Lizzes who were flowing forward, killing the weaker than normal enemies with minimal effort. He got so desperate to do anything that when they entered a larger than normal cavern, he used [Portal] to get ahead of the swarm.
[Dragonflame] washed over thousands of spiders and Matt grinned as the essence started to pour into him, but his expression turned into a frown when he felt a dozen Lizzes jump into his flames and start to absorb them.
A passing Liz blew him a kiss. “Thanks, honey.”
Having gone from carrier to carried felt terrible, and Matt chased after the horde, calling out, “At least share the essence! I can’t get good angles with the tunnel's twists and turns.”
He only got a raspberry for his efforts and had to settle for following after Liz who, like a vacuum, easily killed anything they encountered in an ever-growing wave of blood and ichor. There were so many bodies she didn’t even bother converting everything to ichor beyond what she needed to max out her clones.
She even dedicated a phoenix Liz to sit on his shoulder and chirp and coo at him as it pointed out the places ambushes or other traps had been hidden, rubbing in the fact he was being carried after just showing off in the zombie rift.
Matt’s only retort was, “This is only a Tier 27 rift. We’d be more efficient if we Tiered it up.”
A Liz shouted from in front of them, “No way am I letting you risk this rift de-aspecting! Tier this rift up and I’ll think mean thoughts at you.”
Matt let out a small puff of mana. “Oh no, I added too much mana into the rift. Whatever shall I do?”
Phoenix Liz bit his ear in revenge and Matt shot her a dirty look. “That's not nice.”
A human Liz joined him with a mock glare. “Says the man trying to ruin my new favorite rift. You need to get on figuring out how to make these rifts en masse. If we can make horde rifts like this, we'll be Tier 27 in just a few years.”
Matt moved to retort but both Lizzes glared at him. “And don’t say you don’t know the mana types that go into making these types of rifts. I know you keep track of that kinda stuff, rift boy.”
“Rift boy? Since when did I get downgraded to rift boy?”
“Since you threatened my new favorite rift. Act like a little boy, and I’ll treat you like one.” Both Lizzes put their noses into the air in exaggerated motions. So much so that phoenix Liz nearly fell off his shoulder.
“Can I at least be a rift adolescent?”
“Nope.”
“Liz, there is no way to recreate this rift at our Tier. If it were Tier 5, I might be able to manage it, but there’s no way to keep a rift from deaspecting twenty seven times, even if I knew the mana types that formed this style of horde rift which I really don’t I’m not sure we could keep get lucky enough to keep it from deaspecting. Shit, I wish we were that advanced.”
In an overly deep voice, Liz shouted, “I don’t want to hear excuses, rift boy. I want results!”
Matt’s composure broke first with a snort that made all of them laugh.
Jokes aside, these rifts, while fun to blow off steam, weren’t good to delve all the time and they both knew it. It may be good essence per hour, but they were so easy that even with the Tier difference, they taught a lot of bad habits and no good ones.
Advancing in Tier for them was about pushing their limits, not just gathering more essence. Blindly chasing Tier was a good way to backslide in relative power, and throughout history there were many peak and pinnacle elites who had fallen into mediocrity by doing so.
Matt’s hope of being able to help with the boss was dashed when it was an even larger swarm of monsters fueled by an overproducing queen ant sort of thing that didn’t last long enough to do anything interesting. Liz simply slammed a large portion of the rift’s blood at it the moment they entered its cave.
The delve wasn’t a full clear, far from it, but with the mini bosses and boss monster having a large portion of the total essence, they were more than happy with the results.
When they exited the rift, Aster was waiting for them.
“I can’t believe you snuck in not one but two rifts without me. That’s fucked up, guys. I call dibs on the first ten, no fifteen, no twenty rifts rewards.”
Matt didn’t back down and shot back even as he hugged her. “And it's more messed up that you let Allie know about the blank skill shards. Serves you right.”
“Yeah, making a ton of money does serve me right, thank you. I added my own money to the pot. Venture ended up being a joint mobilization by nearly everyone in the Ascender chat. If you ask nicely, I'll consider giving you an allowance.”
Matt threw up his hands. “I’m half tempted to drop the news now just to cut everyone else off.”
Aster poked his puffed up cheek. “Hey, you're getting five percent of the profit. So is Rah. Yeah, we’re besties now and he lets me call hi—.”
Seeing their expressions, Aster sighed. “Damn it. I was late for that, too? Ugh. Into a rift. I wanna kill something.”
“Don’t you have rifts for us to delve on your world?” Matt rolled his eyes at the suggestion.
“They won’t be ready for us for another month, so we have time.” Aster shrugged in a way that was a little too casual.
Though while he could tell she was up to something, he couldn’t figure out what and didn’t mind delving a few more local rifts.
They entered the nearest free Tier 28 rift, which was a newly Tiered up rift that had deaspected and needed to be cataloged. Additionally since it had lost its fire aspect they would need to calculate if it was worth keeping as they didn’t want too many non fire rifts on the world making non fire essence which if too many could threaten to deaspect the world itself.
Also it was the closest thing they had to a new rift, and they were excited to delve it. Once they fully buffed themselves and prepared for an actual challenge, they cautiously entered the rift.
According to the reports, the rift had spit out bipedal-like creatures they would have called minotaurs except they were a normal size instead of hulking ten-plus foot tall creatures. That, and the fact their horns were made out of mana stone, which might be valuable.
Being at a two Tier disadvantage meant the fights were actually making them sweat, with the creatures being incredibly durable and nearly immune to energy-based attacks.
Their mana stone horns absorbed all magical energies, stored them, and unleashed them on death or when they reached some threshold.
That meant a lot of Matt's kit was rendered ineffective, but Liz and Aster, both preferring physical mana types, were less impacted.
Not that he minded too much. It gave him more experience fighting with his sword and he was making revisions as he fought, subtly tweaking the shape of the runes in the mana stone filling the blade to better fulfill its role as mana conduit.
During one of their breaks, Matt and Liz both looked at the horns to see if they could make an effective alchemy ingredient or enchanting material.
Matt was pretty sure they would make a pretty good material to make talisman ink out of, but he couldn’t be certain until he spent a few months testing the possible formulas, which needed more space and supply than they had brought in with the portable house. Talisman ink wasn’t necessarily rare, but finding out something that every rift monster had was a useful ingredient might make this rift a keeper instead of one to destroy.
To add to that, Liz even thought the horns, after being processed and ground down, could make a good catalyst ingredient for potions and pills.
Their interest was increased when they found one of the mini bosses was a mutated version of the standard creature and shot out mana stone spikes like a demented porcupine.
It was unlikely, but if they could domesticate these monsters and breed the rift madness out of them, they might make a half decent stable herd. So long as they didn’t domesticate into an intelligent creature, as it was always possible they were one of the rare few who could become inherently fully sapient instead of just sentient, assuming they could breed the rift madness out of them at all.
They were even tempted to turn their quick delve into a full clear, but they had already spent two weeks in the rift just rushing to the boss, and didn’t want to spend the decades it would take to fully map it out when they could just offer the job to one of the many delving teams living on Palustris.
Making such a discovery was a good start to their delving, but not one they encountered in the next rift, which was more standard with simple bears to fight.
Angry bears that adapted to their environments and wielded vast elemental powers, but bears nonetheless.
When they exited that rift they were feeling well warmed up and were about to push into Tier 29 rifts when Matt got a message that Countess Walsh had arrived and was waiting on him.
Having used some of his breaks when delving to formulate his plan, Matt sent it off to her to review and start working on.
It was clear he had stepped on someone's business toes and he wanted to know who, and he felt that being a business woman herself, Countess Walsh might have a unique view on the situation.
Tholly was working on the situation of their spy or mole, but that wasn’t likely to turn up anything quickly, as otherwise the spy would have been caught by their current efforts. Sure, knowing what to look for helped but they would need time to start digging through everyone's recent dealings, while also doing their intra Great Power counterespionage work.
Ball rolling, Matt, Liz, and Aster moved to her capital where they would start delving Tier 29 rifts.
Comments
KnightRider007
It’s kind of frustrating that Matt in particular (and male characters in general) are always on the butt-end of this style of banter and behaviour. - Liz set the record by finding a Rift that she perfectly countered, yet “sandbags” when they find one that’s suitable for Matt -Matt dragged her into a specific Rift half a dozen times *over years*, so she feels entitled to demand they delve this one every second delve -Matt shared the Essence of the zombie Rift. She hoards the Essence of the swarm Rift, with a “Get gud, sucka” -when he does use his own abilities to try to claim *his share* by teleporting to active enemies, she immediately one-ups his effort and literally steals the Essence -physical violence all one way. Sure, it was just a bite from her Phoenix form, but when was the last time he did anything similar to her, eg swat her jokingly on the butt when she brats? See: Matt getting literally stabbed for showing Allie basic courtesy. - “rift boy”. ‘Nuff said. Any rare, temporary “victory” by Matt in this arena requires planning for him to pull off, while Liz and Aster just regularly dunk on him. It may “all be in good fun”, but it really does come across as “all in one direction”, which is very unpleasant.
KnightRider007
Someone has been reading Dungeon Core Online 😜
Julie Smith
I belive Ra'thala slows time down while he attacks so it seems he attacks faster. That's what I remember.
Julie Smith
Tier 27, 28, and soon 29 rifts. No big challenge for them. We'll see what happens next.
Nathan Mayes
For a fire rift all I can think of is fire lands from wow but instead of spiders and all the other mobs it’ll be fire rabbits and aster goes insane
Corac
I'm shocked that they arnt sponsoring or creating a rift world for thier duchy's.
Grimmace
I know I'm a little late to the suggest rifts game, but an at their rift similar to the pyramid from the training world would be cool, they can feel all nostalgic and be like look how far we have come.
Scarlett O'Hare
Haha. Ok. I was coming to the comments to also suggest a Dancing rift for the fire planet. Why? Because fire is passion. Fire is sensual. Fire is smooth, flowing movements. So it the Tango and dance in general. Though I was going to suggest it would be much like a puzzle rift. No fighting, just dance battle! Solo dancing. Partner dancing. Dancing against rift "monsters". The better you dance the better your rewards. It should also be half tongue in cheek. Like those cooking anime (Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma/Delicious in dungeon/others) where the dancing transcends the normal bounds of reality. Not so much in the way that the multi-reality rift that was just delivered in chapter 389, but that the dance makes us readers see MAL reacting in over the top ways.
MinE
The bonus list for her concept.
Drew Tunison
Ascender chat has been bothering me as well. Too much information is passing through it especially when they will all be enemies in a true war. The fact that the sects might get a hold of Rah skill creation methodology probably through ascender chat or have been now alerted to it because of ascenders is a huge problem for the empire. The sects are leagues ahead of the empire when it comes to skill adjustments so building and adjusting a unique self made skill from tier 1 up is going to be perfect for them.
emmitt booher
I think a fire rift where you are given a flame at the beginning, and the longer it stays lit the better the rewards are. Keeping it lit takes consistent mana/willpower. Monsters target the flame and if they successfully absorb it they become a mini boss. If defeated there is a short window to recover the flame, but maintaining it now takes an increased mana/willpower. Amount can scale logarithmically to prevent abuse.
David Harr
The reason that they never wanted to see penguins again is because penguin parents catch food for their chicks, swallow and predigest it, then regurgitate on demand. Thus the comment about Liz doing something “once her mouth was free of the taste of vomit.” Apparently, the challenge had something to do with keeping a bunch of baby penguins alive.
Coorsbie
Its effects would have been folded into her concept a sub-power
MinE
I remember her being a flame fox, but it isn't on her bonus list for her concept.
Kevin DD
Rereading Book 1 aylt the moment and encountered the Dual Stars guild. I'd like to see Matt interacting with them somehow, maybe they get manouvered into acting against him by the Cabal and he remembers their treatment of him and reminds them of that.
Amithyst Stonewall
I think a rift that has timed puzzles and monsters would be neat. Like, ascend pyramids surrounding a volcano, each temple has puzzles to advance upward and at the top you fight a mini boss beast 'sacrifice' to delay the volcanic eruption. You speed through them as fast as you can to unlock the volcano temple with as much time left as you can and get harder bosses/ better rewards for faster times. I think a speed run rift at higher levels might be pretty novel considering how ppl expect to take years doing them.
Coorsbie
It’s been so long but I thing Aster has a fire concept form her mirrored lives… frozen flame?
Throngler In Chief
New idea: Fire Giant Farmhouse. Typical Farm with cows, chickens, pigs, horses, sheep, etc. Everything is fire aspected, ~100x bigger, and the Farmer himself is basically Surtr with an even more explosive temper. Think old MacDonald but everything has superpowers. The cat is secretly an eldrich abomination, the cows spray napalm from their udders, the pigs burst into flame, and all the farm equipment are really just mimics. And so on.
MinE
Maybe ones based on the floors they missed. Hills have eyes and Floating Islands sound fun.
MinE
Aster would freeze it somehow. Wonder if they could work together abusing thermal fatigue to make it shatter or use Mpemba effect to flash freeze things.
Coorsbie
The delvers are required to burn down the entire right, with the boss being a giant sentient tree, and the right is a swamp rift with lots of water and earth, but the “Win Condition” is to BURN EVERYTHING as everything in the rift tries to stop you, and is immune to all other damage and highly resistant to fire damage. Think you have to incorporate fire into your very domain and impose your laws on the rift… it’s a perfect rift to nerf Matt and let Liz shine. Like an inverse of the Minkalla seasons floor, and the drop could be like an ember or spark of fire natural treasure or something that either must be absorbed in the rift or immediately gets absorbed by the planet if removed from the rift, which would increase the planets fire aspect.
mrt
I like the idea of a rift that is a truly giant wick (on the scale appropriate to a tier 29 rift), where it is several threads woven together -- one puzzle thread, one monster thread, one mixed/surprise thread with traps, puzzles, difficult environments (the thread might change material as it's transversed--the fire wool section has fire sheep monsters, the fire papyrus section is so dry it's dangerous, etc). They need to climb the wick, and they can climb any of the threads and swap to a different thread if they want at every intersection point. The threads are all also on fire, which grows in intensity as they approach the end of the wick, where there's a boss that alternates intense fire attacks that use up gases it conjures with void attacks , where it then refills the void to launch another fire attack. Or some pieces of that, maybe?
kinesi .
My 2 cents : A labyrinth or tower made out of crystallised fire that turns to viscous sticky liquid when struck hard enough then gas raising the temp and burning along the way.
rusty
I like the idea of a fire jungle. Think Amazon rain forest but fire.
Trevor Mergen
Thanks!
C_Mantis
Ill note they only chat over it with unimportant things. Matt didn't ask Liz about things over it like three chapters ago. Also I think there is a misunderstanding about the AI? Where did they get messages inside a rift because if they did thats a mistake. As for downloading information, if you mean Rah's section that was more a "hes using what he already downloaded" if I need to edit to make that more clear I will.
Rodney
When you say a fire rift the first thing that came to my mind was the God of war stage with the Minotaur balls but you kind of already did that the second thing that came to mind was Defiance of the Fall's fire golems and that idea led me too Norse mythology fire Giants so maybe a mixture of that would be interesting as a fire rift especially since they be level 25 and up so yeah fire Giants will be cool I think
SavageNordheim
Might be a little late to the party here, but here are some rift ideas: 1. do a callback to their collective Minkalla run and do a penguin rift, I still don't know why they came out of that challenge saying they never want to see another penguin, but that would be funny. 2. More serious: A rift that absorbs mana and requires constant willpower to be used to make sure spells don't fail, all absorbed mana increases the difficulty of the rift to the point where by the end, if they are not careful the boss is more like a challenge dungeon boss, but the rewards from the rift would correspond equal to the difficulty. This could work as both a aspected or de-aspected rift 3. Last one: Fire and Time rift that scales relative time due to the "Heat of the Moment" where any challenges, be it traps or fights fluctuate relative time of both the monsters and delver that makes dynamic fights that are hard to coordinate with each other. Maybe make the setting a Dreamscape fire jungle with an aura sky. Last but not least, TFTC!
Shane Kienholz
Rift Ideas: A sauna or hot tub type rift where people go to "relax", a rift where it rained lava, or maybe they are given an egg or an item that they have to protect and keep at a certain temperature as they progress through the floor.
Alec Johnston
Similarly I think the Ascender chat is getting overused. They have had so much practice with operational security and ever since it got introduced it's how they send every single message to each other. Seems obvious that Matt, Liz, and Aster would have their own chat/DMs, but they never seem to.
Jonesy
Fire rift idea: I think it would be cool to incorporate a throwback to how Matt beat the lava whale in the speed run rift in the tier 10 tournament
James Evans
I didn’t think you could communicate into rifts. In this one the AI was downloading information and they were getting messages. Wasn’t that the reason the bad guys hid a person from the trial in a rift?
David Jenkins
Rift idea: The rift at first looks like a normal hilly valley until you look closer and see that everything is made of fire, lava and obsidian. Even though the grass and leaves are a slightly brighter shade of greens and tans they are made of flame. The trees both looking and swaying like normal trees are made of bark like polished obsidian and flakes of cooled lava rock. The heat all around feels dry and hot like a desert, it isn't uncomfortable but definitely hotter then expected.
Jacob Cox
I was thinking more like the group is miniaturized, or the stove tops are massive from their point of view, but honestly, whatever works! The sky's the limit with something abstract like this.
Corvid
Dreaded Water Level: Lava Edition. Whole thing is under lava, fighting flaming fish and the like.
Colin Groh
Rift Idea: delving the depths of a fire. Rift is in layers of yellow orange red white (maybe some blue and green special zones) and the closer you get to the heart of the fire the more tightly packed the enemies + they evolve until they are closer to peak difficulty
Gjim
The fire of desire rift. Where your inner most desires tempt you to surrender. If you deny temptation you get hotter and hotter increasing the temptation. If you manage to clear the rift and its boss you get something you didnt know you needed.
PikaAndrew
Tftc x 11
dbdlion
Rift idea: An empty Volcano where, as they kill the mobs, their bodies turn into lava that slowly fills up the Volcano. The more lava, the greater the rewards. Actually, with how large rifts are for them, it might need to be a chain of Volcanos
PikaAndrew
Rift idea ish: Fire Uniquely suited for making things.
Mike Blanding
You could also make the monsters they need to fight in this rift cold fire foxes to really rub asters nose in the “wrongness and stupidity” of the rift.
Zack
Like a Hansel and Gretel rift? The witch is the final boss?
Zack
Also, maybe a bonfire/pure sacrifice rift? The bigger you can make the final pyre the harder the final boss and the bigger the reward. Kind of a repeat of the blood sacrifice rift at the training planet, but fire.
Zack
Bring back the lava whale from the tier 10 tournament
Zack
That burnable idea could be like a wildfire challenge. The less that gets burnt, the better the rewards.
Zack
Rift idea: cold fire at the pole. Make it asters least favorite rift because it's still fire and she's mad that fire is encroaching on her ice.
austin kutz
That would essentially be similar to the rift where they were fighting mosquitos and maggots on the back of a dragon. A solid chance that the sparks are actually super rare materials
austin kutz
That's some higher tier nonsense stuff. I could see it happening in a tier 45 rift though
PartyPlatapus
And a final rift guardian that looks like a turtle dragon with massive defense owing to a thorny shell
PartyPlatapus
Rift Idea: there’s gotta be a fire Fox at some point to mess with Aster.
Alex
Flames do have shadows actually. It's a bit counter intuitive since fire is a light source, but flames occlude enough light to create a visible shadow if they're illuminated by another light source.
Derze
Rift idea : Mining Cave. Just a regular mining cave with glowing rocks. They get progressively hotter. Goal is finding stairs or entrances to go further down. Show a fire that only produces light and no heat. Ends with black fire that has a shadow. (Flames dont normally produce shadows, so it would be interesting)
Kurt A
Rift idea: a fire rift where they have to collect wood from different biomes and light them on altars somewhere else. The lit altars spawn flame elementals that try to burn down the whole rift and you have to get all the wood before that happens. Some trees only spawn after a certain number of altars are lit. Successfully lighting all the altars summons a giant Omni-flame elemental that you kill for the reward. Bonus points if you avoid killing any elementals prior to that.
PurpleLynx
A massive desert rift filled with dry heat but no actual fire. With the bosses and mini bosses spread out in every direction
nolan saylor
Thanks Mantis! Thanks Dae! Fire rift ideas: Maybe a rift with burnable material, run through it as quickly as possible, saving the material. The boss arena is a castle that is a fire, the flames are the various turrets. The more material you collect the more you can toss on the boss's castle to grow a bigger castle and stronger boss. Maybe a similar idea but the tree is on fire with fire elementals. The faster you kill the fire elementals the more of the tree survives... but the tree is a treant boss, so the stronger it is the better your reward. Maybe a mirage rift formed from the heat, but you enter the heat mirages and that can lead to even a water rift. Maybe a demon/ phoenix rift, explaining their actually focusing on the rift. Defeat the demons and the ashes gather together to form a sort of phoenix. It's not truly a phoenix but it is fire bird that reforms itself. The hellfires on its wings spawn more demons and if enough demons spawn then the fire bird gains enough ashes on their deaths to spawn again. The number of respawns is probably not infinite. Maybe a rift formed inside the planet, a volcanic cavern with a rift inside it. The inside of the rift is a lava version of a water rift, the entire rift is lava with monsters that swim in lava or are composed of lava. (I guess that is magma.) Oh, seeing the flat plane of a rift I suggest a rift that is just a massive frying pan. Maybe you can get out of the frying pan to a lower plane that is a fire. Maybe a rift that interests Aster. A fire and ice rift where the fire is consuming all the heat, instead of creating it, which allows the ice to grow immensely. Maybe the ice also holds in the cold and repels heat which allows the fire to grow hotter. So the longer you wait the higher the difficulty and the better the rewards. So they can't speed run it if they want an interesting time/fight. Something that is immune or focused on temperatures of hot & cold could be a fun counter to Aster and Liz simultaneously. I do enjoy some sweet love and cheesy lines. Woohoo, now we get to see Ra'thala's first delve! Poor Aster, she also got the short end of the stick thinking Rah had let her use a nickname first. I kinda hope Rah is doing that deliberately, his own way of teasing. Well, a fun start to the week.
Andrew K
Rift idea: A rift where all the layout and shapes are very abstract and loosely conform to Plato's association between the Platonic solids and the Greek elements (e.g. very cube-based landscape, the more purely fire-aligned being closer to regular tetrahedrons).
Christian Sullivan
I'd love to see a fire elemental, hurling flaming rocks and all that.
Warren Nichols
I'd love to see a rift with some ideas taken from D&Ds fire plane and the city of brass. No breathable air, every thing is made of fire
Andrew K
They should absolutely domesticate those monsters and call them. . .minitaurs.
Kyle Smith
Was reading the earlier books again and loved that undead graveyard/house rift that was made during the first rift creation arc(dropped lesser sacrifice I think?). Would be fun to see something in the same ballpark as that.
Throngler In Chief
Ooh, the rift could drop the skill "Caramelize" and if Liz picked it up and it'd become "Caramelize Blood" or something. Then she could literally give people (Matt) stage 7 diabetes at will.
Flopmind
I like the idea of an underwater rift, but in an ocean made of fire/lava. Or perhaps something with a waterfall of fire.
Matt
Desert mirage rift Where the giant sand dunes keep on melting into molten glass monsters but one of the mirages is actually a real unique treasure.
Asur
Rift Idea. An Underground Ice rift. But the landscape is not Ice naturally but because all monster are massive heat sinks which pull in all heat and energy thus pushing the temperature way down. Once most monsters are killed in a given area the temperature starts rising to dangerous levels even to Matt and Aster. The remaining monsters are buffed thanks to the greater energy they can absorb. The boss/mini bosses give the best rewards once all monsters are killed in the rift.
Matt
"Blindingly following" should be "blindly following"
Will
Came here to suggest a freezing fire rift, specifically thinking about Minnkalla! Love the idea of playing with entropy. Maybe the Boss reverses entropy and draws all energy / fire towards it, becoming like the heart of a (neutron) star? Leaving everything else freezing.
TechB
Fire Rift Ideas. 1st TYFTC. It was enjoyable to read. 2nd. Fire rift idea… I’d like to read about a fire rift that exploits various aspects of fire. For example… Stage 1. The minions and sub-boss focus on heat. Their attacks are very good at scorching skin, burning and melting armor, and exhibit a concept that makes it very hard to breathe. Stage 2. The minions and sub-boss focus on the movement of flames. Their attacks shift, flow and move like flames. For example the tip of their sword thrust wavers (like a flame). The same thing happens with punches, kicks, arrows, and all attacks. The result is that it makes blocking attacks very tricky/difficult. The ascenders are forced to dodge much more than they are used to. Stage 3. The minions and sub-boss focus on the light of a flame. They use swarm attacks that change colors (like flames). The attacks visually blend into the colors of the surroundings. While the individual attacks are not that powerful, it becomes easy to get hit by attacks the ascenders didn’t see. And the sheer number of attacks drains health rapidly. Stage 4. The final boss takes advantage of heat haze. The boss attacks normally but they have an invisible twin hidden in the heat haze. As the boss launches flamboyant attacks, the heat haze twin launches strategic pinpoint assassin-like attacks at vulnerable targets. The twin, when not attacking, becomes intangible in the heat haze. The ascenders have to figure out how to beat them both. I think the above would be an interesting fire rift.
Lukas
That’s brutal I love it. Lol. But wasn’t there a chicken early? I think it ate his sword or some such. But maybe domesticatable flaming chickens Then the boss riff isn’t repeated but still get the flaming chicken.
A Flashy BR
Rift Idea - A rift that is more like a minkalla challenge room where the challenge is climbing like a fire based "tower" trope from other littrpg it would allow you to leave at each floor, but is "infinite". It could be something like you technically "clear" it at 20 floors but keeps getting progressively harder. Themed kinda like a Bowser tower. You could even make it be where individual floors could include puzzles/challenges other than just fighting, but ofc plenty of that. ? Maybe thank you for the chapter love this series!! <3
Psykohamster
I LOVE that there is at least one other person out there that understands the difference between sentient and sapient.
James Faulkner
Tftc!
Kasamuri
Thanks for the chapter
Jason Hardman
Out of the frying pan jokes are a must.
Lonnie
Cultivation and fighting alongside friends. All is right in the world
Jason Hardman
I'm feeling a diabetes debuff coming on just reading that 😂
Alex
When Matt is introduced to Ra'thala's skills earlier in the arc, he says that he has an interesting time-distorting skill (I honestly can't remember what the skill was, and I'm too lazy to check right now) but it'd be interesting if Matt accidentally stumbled upon time-related skills while he was making fire rifts. Imagine a fire rift where instead of burning things, the flames cause things to age at an accelerated rate. I think that would be a good kicking off point to explore time magic more closely. The biggest issue with the upcoming True War is time: the Empire needs as much time as it can get to take advantage of Matt's mana generation before the other Great Powers jump on them - ideally, they'd want to push the time acceleration on high Tier Rifts so that they could churn out high-Tier cultivators faster than the other Great Powers could kill them. It'd be cool if Matt found some game-changing advancement from a temporal fire Rift that could allow that to happen. It would also be the first instance of Titan's Torch finding something that Manny wouldn't allow the guild to release to the public. When Titan's Torch is first being set up, Matt says that Manny warned him he might have to step in and classify things the guild discovers if they're too game changing: that hasn't happened yet, so it'd be interesting to see how that plays out, especially if the guild is still dealing with a mole problem at the time.
Celas
Agreed a frozen fire rift plus a Fire fox rift just to mess with Aster.
Jason Hardman
You'd kind of expect a phoenix type monster in an environment like that.
Jsar
Rift. A sun. Just a flat out sun, the boss is the core. Work your way in fighting the environment or puzzles with a few guardians.
Corwin
A rift full of red headed beautiful people. And it requires dancing to move forward. Think dance dance revolution. And when you screw up the dance you get whipped by fire whips. And have to restart the scenario. Totally not practical or desirable but certainly hilarious. Matt being a crappy dancer and having to dance to get out of a rift. Actually how many of ascenders are good dancers
Nick O'Gara
I would like to see them delve a rift that was a giant blacksmithing on an anvil the size of a mountain. Sparks from his strikes send fire/metal elementals scattered throughout the rift. As he pumps the bellows coal/fire/wind elementals escape the forge. With the goal to let the giant finish its project before running out of fuel or ore.
Throngler In Chief
Better yet, 2 mini bosses and a main boss. 1st one - A Fire Sparrow 2nd - A Dragon Main boss - A flaming Chicken that creates exploding clones that blow up with sound effects.
Tsorov
One idea would be the standart fire dragon rift. Another would be a sort of MarioBros castle like rift, where the rift has an unstable ground and higher tiered lava is coming out in big fountains. The monsters would live under the normal ground in the lava sea, and come out with the fountains.
Keegan Moss
The Endless Sudoku Rift, essentially a bunch of 9x9 rooms where each room has a teleport that randomly teleports you into another room in any of the sudoku boxes, and every so often the teleport targets get scrambled again, making it so that going through any particular room can’t be tracked, but if you didn’t know what was going on, you through you were in an endless labyrinth of rooms. And because there would be a circle or something at each door that acts as the gateway/teleport, the monsters would activate it too, so ultimately you can walk into a room of monsters without knowing it, or get accidentally ambushed. Then”resource” of the rift could be essentially a sudoku game, but where it’s some passive mana manipulation training device
Sebastiaan B
That kinda already was done in Minkalla wasn't it? Edit: an ant rift would be a nice nod to the ant arc in Solo Levelling thats being animated and released around those chapters' dates.
Lukas
also, great chapter. thoroughly enjoy the books and look forward to these every week.
Lukas
it would be kind of funny if the ultimate boss of the rift were either a flame sparrow or a dragon. because both have meaning and could piss off Liz.
Tommy
Since it’s a fire aspected rift on a fire aspected planet - I’m thinking something that would be fire multiplied by fire. So some sort of plasma being? Fighting inside a star? Heat upon heat upon heat! TFTC!
Ryan Berends
What about a massive volcano that they have to dive down the empty lava tunnels to get to the boss a lava elemental that’s at the heart of the volcano. Maybe have the tunnels fill with lava here and there and they have to hold it back or make safe rooms.
Tommy
I was just about to comment this. Same example in mind too! Hahaha
Dallin S
A maze of lava tubes that have tides of lava. Also if it is high enough tier that they can’t go through the lava or manipulate it due to some reason they would have to backtrack. Different times make getting to the exit different. Also it could have lava leeches that absorb heat.
BagFullOfLizards
A puzzle rift where everything is made out of different colors and types of fire. Oceans of fire, trees of fire, buildings of fire, etc, each made of a different type. The puzzle is that different fires can burn each other, so you need to figure out which ones to use to clear barriers and structures, carrying them back and forth across the rift to try it on different things. Maybe the flames have different sub mana aspects that are clues to how they’ll interact. The center of the rift is a giant pyramid of colored fire, covered in ornate carvings, and each time you burn away a layer it reveals a smaller pyramid until you get to the boss or exit at the center. The hidden clear condition is to ignore the exit and keep clearing things until you finally find the fire that will burn away the ground itself, dropping you into a hidden boss fight at the core of the planet.
Sawyer
A steam and Napalm fire mana that has magma golems that shoot compressed super heated steam that sticks like Napalm
yannick schwende
"inherently fully sentient instead of just sapient" - I think you should switch sapience and sentience in this sentence, as sapience is usually used to describe consciousness and the ability to reason while sentience is the ability to feel emotion. Sentience doesn't need self awareness while sapience does. Or at least according to what I could find on Google.
William Howe
Rift idea: Swarm type, but the best result comes from *NOT* killing the weaker mobs until after the boss has been killed. *AND* the weaker mobs are particularly squishy.
KnivesNInk
Sacrifice rift but lava golem themed? Something with the same feel as the old snake god rift that gave them a hard time back in the day.
Daniel B
I raise you one fire ant Volcano planet!
Cameron Kispert
Fire rift idea: wildfire rift. A very green lush rift that just so happens to be very flammable. Massive bursts of flame turn most the rift to ash regularly but it regrows quickly.
Alex
Back in Minkalla, Aster got a Freezing Fire Concept ability from Folded Reflections. It hinted that there's an underlying concept to "fire" that isn't necessarily just "hot red burny stuff", and I like that: I think magical fire should fundamentally be about the concept of change, and it should come in many forms - normal fire changes things by generating heat and increasing entropy, Aster's Freezing Fire essentially does the opposite. I think it'd be cool to show a rift that had some really weird variety of magical fire (maybe it could be a nature-aspected fire rift, where the rift started off as a barren ash-covered wasteland with raging firestorms that left behind forests or something along those lines). Something like that would be a good opportunity to start exploring the conceptual nuances of 'Fire' more closely, which would be a good segue for Liz to start progressing with her Aspect. If she starts exploring weird fire types now, that could be a solid foundation for her to make a Bloodfire Aspect later on.
C_Mantis
The worst part is that was even noted before the chapter went out and I swear I swapped it but apparently not lol
C_Mantis
Sold! I like it.
Havokk
a rift in the region that has snow in which creatures inside actively turn any ice based spell into fire and any fire based spell into ice. this would be fun to see Aster complaining about and may get Liz complaining too. Or maybe not the monsters themselves but an effect of the rift ?
NiceTryMate
Tftc! Funny mixup: “they were one of the rare few who could become inherently fully sentient instead of just sapient” Sapient and sentient seems to be swapped. We are homo sapient, not sentient ;). Sentient means feeling while sapient is wise thinking. It’s a gradient though. If you’re sapient, you are sentient. So many sci-fi stories say “they’re a sentient species”, which makes me chuckle. Dogs flying spaceships.
Throngler In Chief
A "Chocolate lava" rift. Think Pyromaniac Willy Wonka, where the center of the rift is an ever erupting volcano that's producing high tier fire-aspected molten fudge. Terror birds made of cinnamon, gingerbread gorillas, gumdrop grizzlys, hard candy hawks, and more. Forests of coco trees with exploding fruit and beans that act like shrapnel. A civilization of Feral Leprechauns that harvest the beans, the fudge lava, and other rift resources to throw into rainbow aura cauldrons that turn it all into coins of various precious metals that are edible and taste like the ingredients used to make them. Maybe have functional cauldrons be a rare rift reward, or possibly have a rare coin be a natural treasure that allows whoever eats it to ingest precious metals/rare earth minerals. Suggested skill drops: "Fudge Packing" "Chocolate Manipulation" "Candy Crystalization" "Explosive Flavors"
Kerradeph
Ahh, yeah, if it were untiered lava then that would make sense.
Tom
Wasn't that because the lava was untiered? I feel like above tier lava wouldn't be safe to bathe in... except for Liz perhaps
Bob Bryan
Phoenix Rift, if that is possible. Also maybe some combo rifts of fire and other elements. Maybe a low tier plasma Rift that matt and crew find that could give him and liz a new skill to use. Or even a Rift with rare fire aspected plants for them to use?
Jacob Cox
A rift where they are ingredients being cooked/baked, and they have to fight their way from pot to pot until they make it off the stove top. The enemies could be other ingredients, like cookie people, veggie monsters, or giant crabs/lobsters. Mat would love it. You could have spices fall from the sky to debuff them, and other enemies like living knives. Each stove top or oven could be hotter than the last. You could even have a secret room that is the fridge or ice box to unlock with ice cream monsters for Aster.
Xavier Belmont
You could have a burning gas. That is a lot like hydrogen so it's inevisible
Kerradeph
They were able to immerse themselves in lava when they're were tier 15, would they be able to safely do that in an at or above tier rift? Just picturing an underwater rift, but lava instead. Possibly they need to plan around this and have something to counteract the buoyancy. I don't recall them encountering too many elementals, could have a dungeon that is entirely populated with flame elementals. I think there was a comment about the sub-type of fire mana related to speed from people painting flames on stuff, could have a rift built around that sub-aspect where everything is unusually fast.
Noshei
Fire Ant Colony! A huge ant nest where it is just continuous waves of ants attacking them with little or no downtime. Fire-breathing ants, tunnels with lava alongside.
