Wish upon the Stars (Original Superhero cultivation sci fi litrpg)

Since we weren't the ones spinning the rainbow wheel, I wasn't too worried about missing out. I doubted Mordaunt would allow them to screw her over anyway, but this was clearly much more interesting. Macgregor was clearly here to start trouble. To her credit, the Darkling Institute elite didn't seem too pressured by the big monk. She just shot him a charming smile. "Macgregor, always good to see you. Were you looking for me for some reason?"

The big monk (seriously, he was wearing roughspun brown robes tied with a rope and everything) sneered down at her. "You know why I'm here witch. The Moonsong Glade entry slots will belong to the Twilight Order. Your abominable freakshow has one chance to withdraw."

Mordaunt's charming smile turned sharp. "Or...what? Are you going to fight me Macgregor? Going to kill the monster maker?" She casually tilted her head, calling over her shoulder. "Rahm darling, be a dear and protect your mistress." The massive bandaged form of her attendant blurred forward so fast I had trouble tracking it, appearing in front of her without hesitation.

His speed wasn't the all time fastest thing I'd ever seen, but he was also HUGE. He was at least as fast as Sloane with her wings out. When he appeared in front of Mordaunt, he let both arms hang loosely at his sides, ready to engage as he straightened his back, glaring down at the blonde monk. Rahm was at least seven and a half feet, and made even the monk, who was taller than I was, seem small.

Macgregor sneered harder. He was pretty good at that. Lots of practice probably, but he made the sneer really obvious even through the thick beard. "You think I fear your creature, witch?" I watched his hands start to glow with an uncomfortably white light, but before he could act, a smaller man with plain features and dark hair who I hadn't even noticed in his shadow stepped up and put a hand on his arm.

To my surprise, rather than just dismiss the other monk, Macgregor actually backed down. I found that odd based on what I'd seen from him so far, but it HAD only been a minute or two. Mordaunt smirked. "As your minder no doubt reminded you, this is a D-ranked planet. If we start trouble we'll be forced to deal with the Unity or gods forbid the Wish Curse Palace themselves. Even you rabid animals can't possibly be that stupid. Present company excepted." She said the last part with a sickly sweet smile and Macgregor's hands started to glow brighter before flickering out a moment later.

"Fine." He hissed between clenched teeth. "Then accompany me outside so we might solve this once and for all. It should be no problem if you have as much confidence in your creature as you claim." It was easy to hear the goading in his tone, and apparently I wasn't the only one who thought so.

Mordaunt just snorted. "Do you think everyone is as predictable and stupid as the lot of you. I'm not going to fight you, I have no reason to risk that. I won't follow you outside because you said mean things about me either. I'm going to stay here and gamble. You're free to stay and enjoy a few games, assuming you know what that word even means," She turned her back on him, facing the rainbow wheel again and pretty much dismissing him wordlessly from her notice. I snickered at the expression on his face, but kept it internal so he didn't notice.

"Coward." Macgregor bit out. "Fine. I suppose it isn't necessary anyway. A sniveling wretch like you won't be an obstacle in the tournament. I can take care of your monstrosity another time. You'd best watch yourself in the future. If we catch you outside we'll destroy you as surely as you deserve." He turned, his fucking robe actually snapping dramatically as he strode purposefully from the casino.

"Well." I said in confusion. "That was...pointless. Did he really track you down just to snipe at you and then leave?" I could have sworn he wanted to actually fight, but he'd retreated way too easily. This whole thing seemed like a waste of time in every conceivable way.

Mordaunt rolled her eyes. "He'd have fought me here if he could have, but since I wouldn't accept the challenge he decided to try to recursion lock me. Enough people hear about the fight and start talking about it like it's definitely going to happen and both of us will start making decisions that skew us toward eventual combat. It's not foolproof or anything, you can still avoid it, but the more the story grows the harder it is to stay away from it. Fucking monks." She waved at the woman behind the table. "Go ahead and spin it."

She did, and the ball landed on forty six blue, with a shrug Mordaunt turned away from the table. "Shame. But oh well. I'm done playing anyway. I'd much rather focus on making some local friends. I take it you're all going to be entering the tournament as well?" Her eyes skimmed over us all clinically, seeming to memorize as much about us as she possibly could.

Abel glanced longingly at the wheel, then sighed and nodded, gesturing for us to follow as he led us off to a side room where we could sit and talk. The room was much calmer, with no crazy lights or furniture. Just leather chairs and a nice fireplace with a flame already crackling. We slumped down into the chairs. I was kind of glad to be away from the dizzying background.

"So." Callie said, getting to the real reason we'd followed Mordaunt in here. "What's the deal with you and Macgregor?" Given we'd be fighting these people, there was no way we were leaving information on the table. The more we knew about the outsider forces the better.

"Oh, that." Mordaunt sniffed derisively. "The Twilight Order are holier than thou busybodies. Just because we use human parts in our experiments they get all bent out of shape. Our corpses are all ethically sourced from donations and criminals. It's not like we just snatch people off the street." She paused. "Well, except for that one guy, but we kicked him out as soon as we noticed he was doing it."

That was...kind of unsettling. I hadn't considered where they might be getting the parts. If people were donating though that was their business. The criminal thing was...murky, but it wasn't like I could do much about what their local government decided to allow. Still it made me a bit wary of Mordaunt. The Darkling Institute already seemed a bit shady to me, and hearing this made them seem even more suspect.

They were Conglomerate citizens though, so at least I knew they were under a Unity branch. I could call Stella and have her kick it up the chain. She might get a bit of extra prestige for reporting it, and I was sure she had connections in the Unity aside from Midknight. Callie's dad didn't strike me as someone who would care much about ethics or worry how the Institute was doing things.

Callie looked a bit unsettled too, but we could still get some information. "So why are you down here if you aren't looking to fight. Doomtown isn't exactly safe. You could find some nicer places to relax if you were looking for entertainment." Thinking about it she wasn't wrong. We were down here to start fights mostly, and get information. If Macgregor had challenged us we'd probably have accepted.

Mordaunt's smile was mysterious this time. "Well, I guess I can let you know. We're here for the Walking Silence Auction. The Institute is using the influx of forces from all over the star system to put on a bit of an exhibition. They've been stockpiling stuff for months in preparation. Even we haven't been able to get access to some of the premium goods. It's going to be held in Doomtown since the red zones are open for violence but this one is limited to prevent any overpowered participants."

I perked up at that. Auctions could be fun from what I'd heard. I'd never been to a proper Ascendant auction. "Really? What kind of stuff will they have." I paused for a second in distaste. "It's not all going to be body parts is it?" I was definitely interested, but there was no reason to go if we couldn't get anything useful.

Luckily Mordaunt just waved off my concerns. "Of course not. No point in waiting to hold a large scale auction when we're the only customers. There will be some experimental materials, but also plenty of artifacts and medicines for people to pick up. I'm sure you could find something you like. Do you want to come along? I have some guest spots and I'd be happy to bring you four with me?"

That seemed weird to me. "Ok, but..why? You don't know us, and inviting random strangers to your Institute's super high profile event seems...weird." I looked at the others. "This isn't just me right? Like this whole thing is super suspicious." I tried not to get in the way when we were planning things out, Callie had a good head on her shoulders, but this girl gave me the creeps. She'd been nice enough so far, but the casual talk of body parts just rubbed me the wrong way.

To my surprise though, the question seemed to amuse her. "Oh it's totally suspicious. But I'm mostly doing it for the same reason you're having this conversation right now. I need more information on the local landscape and you all are obviously locals. Silver mask over there is clearly comfortable here, and if he has info that I can use it's worth burning some invitation slots I wasn't going to use anyway."

Callie shot me a questioning look. I was guessing since I'd had the objection she wanted to make sure I was satisfied with the explanation. I wasn't really, but it was the same kind of political nonsense I heard from everyone else, so it was probably legit. I gave her a subtle nod and she turned a beaming smile on Mordaunt. "We'd love to come along. I take it the event isn't going to be for a few days at least?"

Mordaunt seemed amused by our dynamic, but I got the feeling she was amused by most things. Another check on the list of reasons she bothered me. Ultimately though, I was probably biased. Having an undead with her kind of bugged me given our time in the necropolis, and that wasn't really fair. I wasn't in a hurry to trust her, but if Callie wanted to go to the auction I was down with that. Some gear for our friends would really help them out.

We'd need to boost them up during the tournament to be ready for the trip to Moonsong Glade if we managed to win, and better gear meant they could show off a bunch in public for compounding gains. We talked for another fifteen minutes about local nonsense, us trying to avoid giving away too much and her trying to pry, but eventually we ran dry. Seeing that all of the business stuff was out of the way Mordaunt popped to her feet. "Well, I'm bored now. How about we go out and do some more gambling. We can talk about boring stuff later."

She hurried out of the room with all the focus of a toddler on a sugar high, and we all just shrugged and followed along. We could try to get more information from her later, but for now, we HAD come here to have fun. I wanted to check out that betting table, I was hoping we could pick up a prop bet for our rematch with Wren. I was looking forward to seeing what he could do with his ability in use, and if I could make some money while I did, all the better.

 

After we left the casino, Abel and Mel brought us deeper into Doomtown. In the inner reaches of the city, the lights weren't quite as red, bleached out by streetlamps glowing a blinding white. I noticed as we walked that the place seemed much more relaxed here. Not completely safe, but at the very least people seemed less likely to jump and kill us. I was so surprised by the shift in atmosphere I had to bring it up. "What's the deal with this place? It seems so much quieter and more restful than the rest of the town."

Abel chuckled. "This is Sunshine boulevard. It's...not exactly a neutral zone, but open conflict is discouraged. Be careful of eating anything you didn't see prepared in front of you, but you're not likely to get stabbed from behind. Even the outsiders probably won't start anything direct here. Of course, there are stealthier methods of killing and those are still more than possible, but there's far less benefit to that unless you build a rep for it over time. This is one of the few places where it's safe to sleep down here."

That was something I'd been wondering about. "So we're staying down here for the whole two weeks? Admittedly walking back up those damn tunnels every night sounds annoying. Do you guys have some old friend around here we can stay with or something?" I gestured behind me to where Sloane was leading the Beast Lord crew. "Because I'll be honest, I don't think we're going to fit in someone's spare room."

"Not at all." Said Mel. "We don't really know anyone who hangs out in places like Sunshine Boulevard. We DO know of a pretty reputable inn around here though. Even we need somewhere to sleep. We never spent enough time here to get to know the owners or anything, but the Blue Robin Tavern has rooms for rent and is pretty much the closest thing to guaranteed safety in Doomtown."

The dark stone buildings were the same design as the rest of the town as we walked, but the change in lighting made them seem much different. The red lighting had given the buildings a squat, devilish appearance, but in the much lighter (albeit still pink tinged) light from the mixed streetlights and overhead illumination of the city, the stone seemed sturdy and reliable, and all the buildings seemed just a bit taller, even if I knew they weren't.

What was more, as we walked down Sunshine Boulevard I could see bright green ivy climbing up the stone walls, artfully spread across the outside of the buildings in beautiful patterns that I was positive weren't natural. Callie smiled happily at the relaxing view and leaned against me, seemingly losing herself in the laid back atmosphere. Despite that I could feel just a bit of tension in her shoulder where it pressed against my side. She might seem relaxed but she was smarter than to let her guard down completely here.

After walking for about twenty minutes we stopped at a building that looked similar to but not exactly like the others. It was made of the same black stone, and had the same ivy, but it was much larger than any of the nearby structures. At two stories and twice as wide the Blue Robin Inn (there was a sign above the front door) stood out starkly from everything around it. The owners had clearly put a lot of time and effort into building it up.

Abel clicked his tongue. "Ugh. It's all boring and idyllic. I forgot how lame this place was. Aside from someone trying to slip me shadeviper venom in a glass of beer once I've never had any fun at this place. They even cook the food right in front of you so people don't have to worry as much."

Patting him on the shoulder, Mel said gently. "Yes, but most people like that sweetie. Besides, don't pretend you never enjoy any downtime, you ran that sausage cart for years, are you telling me you got regular assassination attempts on you during that whole time?"

"Well no." Complained Abel. "But that's not the same. This is Doomtown. It's like going to an amusement park and not getting on the rides. Attempted murder is part of the fun. I'm not here for a peaceful meal and a nice rest." He sighed. "Still, I guess the kids could use the break." He turned to us. "Plus this place is a great location to farm intel. People come from all over Doomtown to stay here, so it's got a good cross section of potential sources."

Callie perked up a bit at that, but I was pretty ambivalent. I was getting bored with constantly trying to squeeze information out of everyone. I knew it was important, but it just didn't really amuse me much. "Do they have anything interesting to do here?" I knew fighting was a no go, but there had to be SOME form of entertainment.

"Of course." Mel said reassuringly. "Don't listen to him. Even I'm not as battle crazy as he is. There are a bunch of things to do. They even have a special pool table that weights your stats a lot like our obstacle course. Beating more powerful Ascendants is always fun. You can bet on the outcomes but you don't have to."

That DID sound like fun actually. I had enjoyed playing pool sometimes as a mortal, though I hadn't been in ages. It made me think of Benny. His dad and grandfather both played when they were young and he was kind of raised to it. I went with him and his father a few times and I'd really enjoyed it. "Sounds like a blast. I'll give it a try when we get in there." I glanced at Callie. "Want to try a game?"

She shook her head. "Nah. I want to ask around about some of the local players more. You go ahead, we can meet up go get something to eat after." I shrugged. That was fair. We spent a lot of time together but it wasn't like we were attached at the hip. I could find someone else to play a game with.

I turned to Abel. "You down for a game of pool? If you're going to sit around and sulk about not fighting anyway might as well enjoy yourself while you're at it."

"That doesn't sound too bad." He mused aloud. "I don't hate EVERYTHING about this place. The food and drink is solid. You can even get Moontear Brandy here. Granted, it's stupid expensive, but it's just about the best F-rank drink you can find on Callus. I haven't had any in ages." He shot Mel a pleading glance. "You think I could get the kid a glass of the good stuff? To celebrate how far he's gotten in training."

Mel's voice as she responded was icy. "No, Abel. You can not buy yourself and one of our students a snifter of brandy that costs eight E-ranked chits per glass. We'd have to clean out the whole pavilion. If it wasn't so expensive, why do you think the Robin would still have that bottle after all these years? You're the only person I've heard of crazy enough to buy a glass of it."

"It's not like I didn't share." Sulked Abel. "I let you have a sip didn't I?" Despite his tone, my brain was still frozen on the price. I'd bought a fucking CAR that could FLY for less than an F-ranked chit. In fact, I had very little understanding of what Ascendant money was actually worth. I mean, I knew each level of chit was worth ten times the lower levels, but I hadn't really seen much about what that entailed.

I should probably get a better grip on how the economy worked given my position of power in the Pavilion. Sure, I had other people for that, but it wasn't like I would always have people like Mel around. The prices for things as far as I'd seen were pretty arbitrary, but a lot of that could be explained by massive variance in quality of goods and materials. I'd have to look into what a standard unit of currency even was. My massive windfalls and quick jumps between ranks had kind of skewed my understanding of how money worked.

Despite his obvious unhappiness Abel didn't dwell on things. He strolled up to the Blue Robin's front in and rapped on it a few times. The door opened to show a squat, dark skinned man with broad shoulders and blonde hair, a permanent scowl etched on his features. "Why are there so many of ye?" He said, in a thick accent that reminded me quite a bit of Alden. "We don't have the rooms for ye each to get one."

His steel grey eyes bored into us harshly, as if we were offending him by even standing here when there were clearly too many of us. Mel put up both hands placatingly. "Not a problem. We only need..." She turned to look at us. "Four?" Sloane nodded, unbothered by sharing a room with some of her initiates. We obviously wouldn't stuff twelve people in a room together, but six was less of a problem. "Yeah, we'll take four rooms. Do you have enough openings?"

The scowling man narrowed his eyes like he thought she was trying to trick her way past, but slowly turned his gaze to the side, clearly reading something. "Aye." He said grudgingly. "We can accommodate ye for four rooms. We're close to capacity, but we have that many rooms. I'll remind ye that this is a neutral location and that troublemakers will be punished. We have an F-ranker standing watch, so no funny business. We have enough trouble with some of the outsiders here for that blasted tournament."

We all gave serious nods and the man stared hard at us for a minute before stepping back, opening the door. Once we were inside Abel leaned in to murmur to Mel. "Wow. This place is way less friendly than I remember. Last time we were here they had a pixie at the door. She was much more welcoming."

The small, broad shouldered man spun and smacked a palm into the wall. "No complaining! Or ye'll sleep on the street!" Abel shut up, but not without a quiet snicker that I was sure the man had heard. Still, my teacher wasn't wrong, this guy wasn't exactly a customer service elite.

Once we were inside we split up. Abel and I headed for the pool table, Callie and Mel for the bar, Sloane to figure out the distribution of rooms for her crew. I was happy to see that they had a nice selection of custom cues available to use, and all of them seemed incredibly sturdy and well made. Sure enough though, as soon as we picked them up, we felt ourselves become restricted, our bodies and minds slowing down to nearly mortal levels. I knew our Impact would remain untouched, it took more than some random table to suppress that stat, so we weren't in any danger, this would just make the game more fair.

There was a sign up sheet to one side of the table with some names I couldn't read on it, and we wrote ours down. We were signed up for a game of doubles since the place was so busy, single player games were scheduled for later in the night. We wouldn't get to play against each other but that was fine, this was mostly just for amusement and to kill time. When we arrived at the table though, I froze in place, a familiar pair of amber eyes meeting mine from across the surface. "Well." Said Wren, of the Spear Legion. "This is certainly a quicker meeting than I was expecting. Do you think this counts as a rematch?"

 

I'd like to say I was surprised to see Wren. But after even a split second of thinking, I'm kind of not. Weird coincidences are part and parcel of being an Ascendant, at least in my experience. Whether it was because I was guided to exciting things by my Fantasy stat or some kind of grand recursive effect of all mortals idealizing the nonsense we go through, I'd probably never know, but if something could go weird, it would go weird.

Still, in terms of surprises this one wasn't too bad. Wren was a big scary badass with a giant spear (which he wasn't carrying) but he seemed like an ok guy for the most part. I'd shattered his ankle with poison fire and he'd just seemed excited for the rematch. Which...I guess was now? I grinned at him. "Sure, but only because I want a chance to dunk on you again before the tournament. I'm a big believer in the rule of threes."

He barked out a laugh. "Cocky little shit aren't you? But I don't mind. You and your partner earned that much. Your level or coordination isn't something I expected from a couple backwater natives." His eyes flicked to Abel. "Though it looks like you have a new companion." The laughter faded from his face as his eyes bored into Abel. "You...are very dangerous. You remind me of Lament. I'm not sure why, but I trust my instincts."

I leaned in between them. "This is my mentor, Apollyon. But no more talking about that. You don't want me to think you're fishing for information do you?" He snorted at that, dragging his eyes away, and I gestured to the table. "Now, I believe a rematch was mentioned? Do you want to break or should I?" I didn't fancy trying to find a new place to sleep if they got into a dust up and destroyed half of this room. I had seen Abel fight, and if I didn't know he was human I'd have suspected someone summoned him from the elemental plane of property damage.

Wren grinned wryly. "Going right for the throat eh? Fine. You can break. Winner should get first shot." He shot me a wink. "Just be sure to keep that in mind for our next fight after I beat your ass at pool." He gestured down to the table where I quickly racked the balls and then set up to take my shot. Pausing I turned to look at Abel, but he just waved me on, and I took a shot.

The break was clean. I was working with mortal stats so no crazy perfect shot that sunk all the balls, but I managed to get at least one in. "Solids." I proclaimed smugly, then set up for a second shot. I felt like showing off, so I hit a double bank off the far corner and tapped in another solid, a green this time. My third shot, sadly, ended the streak, but at least I didn't scratch.

Abel strolled up to stand next to me as Wren lined up his own shot. I hadn't left him with much. "That was better than I expected. Most Ascendants are useless if you strip away their stats. You play this when you were mortal?"
"Yeah, Clockwork's dad used to take us when I was younger. I'm not as good as he is, but I do ok. It's a fun game." My reminiscing was cut short by a perfect triple bank from Wren as he smoothly deposited a solid ball in one of the pockets. He lined up and pulled off three more shots in quick succession and I winced.

Wren was a master martial artist. He spent all his time working with a spear. I wouldn't say that a spear and a pool cue are the same thing, but control of of point of impact and things like that were ingrained in him even without his stats. He couldn't mobilize his Skills without stats to use, not past the Minor level anyway, but he still had the knowledge and control that gave him those Skills in the first place.

I expected him to completely clean us up, but luckily he was distracted for a second by an argument off to one side and scratched. I exhaled with relief. It was odd not having the same level of Focus as usual, even for me. My brain didn't feel sluggish or anything, but my thoughts were definitely more scattered. Focus gave raw processing power but it also helped concentration, and clearly Wren wasn't any more used to losing that than I was.

Without any hesitation I passed the cue to Abel. I might not be a master of bodily control with a genius grasp on physical movement, but he was. He grinned at me smugly. "Don't feel too bad. You are pretty good. I hadn't really counted on the crossover either. Damn weapons masters. Let me give it a shot." He winked and walked over to the table. He started pacing around it, looking at angles and setting up shots he never took.

After a minute or two Wren started looking annoyed, but didn't say anything specifically. Abel finally stopped, picking a specific spot and lining it up, then snapped off a single stroke. I watched in shock as cur ball rocketed across the table, knocking off nearly every single ball. The solids left headed right for the pockets, and the few that couldn't be directly hit were banked or knocked on course by the stripes, which were all knocked away by the solids themselves if they were too close to the hole.

Abel waited for a minute for the balls to all fall in and the eight ball came to a slow stop right on the rim of the pocket, with the cue ball about a foot away and lined up clearly. My teacher grinned over at Wren and said. "Eight ball, corner pocket." The leisurely tapped it in without much effort. He turned to me and his grin widened. "Fun fact. Learning to manipulate space makes you REALLY good at geometry and angles. Even without stats."

I hadn't considered that. I'd been paying attention to Abel's martial skills, but the stuff he did with his spatial lubrication must require an insane amount of spatial awareness. Some of that must be Focus, but the skills would be there anyway. I grinned at Wren. "Well, looks like we won. We gonna do a rematch? Or do you want to get a drink or something?"
Despite not being a big drinker, I didn't mind a bit of alcohol in a social setting. I'd ended up drinking some beer recently, and assuming I didn't get something high ranking and expensive my Vitality made it impossible to get drunk. I didn't LOVE the taste, but if I didn't need to worry about getting tipsy because I couldn't hold my booze and acting like an idiot there was no reason not to be polite.

Plus I knew from Callie's fishbowl thing that there were drinks that didn't taste as bad. Luckily for me, lower ranked drinks would be cheaper anyway, so this was a win win as far as I was concerned. Wren looked annoyed, but he blew out a breath. "Fine. But nothing crazy. I can see your buddy looking all shifty, and I am NOT paying for Moontear Brandy. Even I don't have the money to throw around to buy a round of that stuff. And even if I did I wouldn't do it for a lost game of pool with no stakes."

I snickered at Abel's curse of annoyance, and then held up a hand. "Why don't we play a few more friendly games. No need to put reputation on the line this time, no rematch. But maybe me and your buddy there can do some shooting." I gestured at the smaller man with shaggy blue hair and a goatee the same color. I held out a hand. "Sorry, got caught up with Wren there, didn't catch your name."

He grabbed my hand and shook. "Vector. And don't sweat it. None of us expect to be first priority when any of the bosses are in the room. Wren is huge and Lament is...Lament." I cocked my head in confusion and Vector just gave a rueful chuckle. "You'll see when you meet her. It's hard to describe." He sizes up Abel. "For Wren to mention a similar vibe from you is interesting. I don't feel it myself."

Wren shook his head. "He's more restrained, but there's a sort of...aura of violence that people develop when they're competent enough in combat. It's not really an Ascendant thing. Mortals can have it too. It's sort of a surety of movement and purpose. Lament's is aggressive, like she's ten seconds from butchering you. His is more...smug. It kind of makes me want to punch him in the face."

Despite the hostile comment, his tone is more introspective than anything, as if he's trying to talk out a puzzle. I had to suppress a snicker as Abel held up both hands in a 'what the hell?' gesture. "Anyway." I said decisively, cutting off a potential fight that Wren would definitely lose. "I'd love to play against Vector a bit. I refuse to believe both of you have managed to translate your spear mastery into perfect pool cue use."

We played another four games. Vector and I both shot, and I won two while he won two, but it became obvious that once I shook the rust off regular rules wouldn't work, since you could keep taking shots when you sunk one and we were both hitting ever shot. We started swapping back and forth, which dragged the games out, but it kind of stopped being fun because of how good we were.

Eventually we decided to abandon the pool table, heading to the bar for a drink, and we ran into Callie and Mel up there when we arrived. Callie was happily enjoying something brightly colored in an oddly shaped glass. I suspected more Ascendants drank for taste than inebriation given how high their Vitality was. Clearly some of them had interest in getting drunk given the high ranked liquor I'd seen and heard of, but if you were drinking something that physically couldn't get you buzzed, there didn't see a reason not to make sure it was tasty.

When they saw us Callie started calling me, waving wildly to get my attention. She stopped when she realized what she was doing and where and leaned back against the bar, nonchalantly beckoning us like she hadn't done anything a second ago. When we got close though she grinned. "Oh wow, what a coincidence. Wren, good to see you. I should have guessed you might be staying her when they mentioned the outsider factions."

Wren chuckled. "Yeah, not many viable accommodations down here. Surprised to see you around though. Locals and all. Anyway, luckily you have a drink already, I owe your partner some libations after losing to him and his buddy at pool." He rapped on the wood surface of the bar. "Hey, barkeep. Pair of drinks for my friends. Put whatever they get on my tab, but no top shelf stuff."

The taciturn woman behind the bar with shaved head and a nose ring nodded solemnly, raising an eyebrow over one copper colored eye at the two of us. I ordered a milkshake, which got a small huff of laughter, and Abel ordered a brandy, the non wallet destroying kind. She brought us our drinks and we settled in to enjoy.

We ended up staying up to talk to Wren and Vector for quite a while, learning more about the Spear Legion. Not information gathering or anything, but just the normal getting to know you stuff you talk to new friends about. What it was like there, what they did for fun, etc. They were both pretty chill guys, and I felt pretty relaxed as we headed to bed after a night just hanging out. Of course, that was just for the night. Tomorrow we would need to figure out our next move, but so far, I was enjoying my time down here in Doomtown.

 

The next day we didn't end up going to some gambling den or fighting pit. Instead, Abel brought us out to a corner of Doomtown where a large cavern lake sat, and paid a guy in a small shack a few chits to rent us a boat. As he was doing this, Wren, Vector, Sloane, the other Beast Lord Initiates, Callie and I all stood off to one side looking confused. I glanced over at Mel. "Is this...fishing? Is he taking us fishing? Because honestly I didn't think he'd scheduled leisure activities. Like...I guess the inn, but that's more necessity than anything."

I'd kind of started talking myself into the idea when Mel started to snicker. "Yes and no. Riot Bay IS a fishing spot, but it isn't the kind that you go to when you want to relax. This place is going to be good training." She stepped meaningfully away. "For you. I'm not going into that fucking lake again for as long as I live. It's wet and it smells awful. Enjoy your training though kids, here comes Apollyon with the boat keys!"

Sure enough, Abel was on his way over with a few pairs of keys. He held up one, tossing the others to Wren and Sloane. He addressed the latter casually. "I'm not buying boats for all your minions. You can all squeeze into one or some of them can stay with Mel. I don't really care. I'd recommend not packing in too tight though. Room to move is key in Riot Bay." He gestured to the boats docked at the shore, all of which were surprisingly roomy.

He pointed to me and Callie. "You two are with me. Mostly because I want to watch you flounder." He snickered at his own joke, or at least I assumed it was a joke since we were next to a lake, and then turned and strolled away. Before he got too far he turned his head, calling over his shoulder. "Big man, you and your buddy should be fine on your own, but probably stick close to our boat if you can. Worst case I can probably get over to save you if you need it."

Wren glared at him, muttering under his breath. "I don't even know what the hell is out there but I already want to kill it just to prove to that asshole I can." He paused. "Probably not the most sensible instinct, but oh well." With a shrug he headed for the shore, clicking the fob on his boat keys. There was a loud chirp like a car door unlocking and one of the boats shuddered slightly. He nodded to us. "See you both out there I guess...probably."

Heading for the boats, he dragged Vector along. Abel was already aboard what I assumed was our boat. I turned to Sloane, who was bringing Beric and Croll and leaving all the randoms behind. "You have any idea what this is about? Because whatever it is I have a bad feeling about it." I did too, but I didn't bother saying so since it wouldn't change anything. If Abel thought this was something that would be helpful to use, we'd do it.

With a nonchalant shrug I informed her I had no clue, and we separated from her and the other two to meet Abel on the boat. Climbing aboard, I could see further out into the lake, and I couldn't help but be struck by the beauty. The water of the lake was a flowing, opaque liquid, like the kind of thing you would find in some kinds of glow tubes. Still, despite that common imagery, there was something hypnotic about the swirl of the softly glowing blue substance. Looking back, I could see it rolling up and down the black sand beach to the side of the boat, and the image was hypnotic.

Callie smiled out at the lake, eyes closed as she inhaled deeply. "Ok. This is really nice. Kind of curious how it's going to try to kill us, but for the moment I'm enjoying the trip." I chuckled at that, not able to disagree on either count, and slipped a hand into hers. Asfter a minute or two staring off into the distance though, we heard a loud noise as Abel cleared his throat.

"hey." He said lazily. "It's nice that you two are bonding, but I need some help to steer this thing. A ship this size can't be crewed by one person." He paused. "Well, I guess it COULD if I was willing to actually work at it, but I'm not, so you're going to help." He pointed me over to the jutting spear of wood in the middle of the deck. "Solomon, go unfurl the lightsail. There's no wind down here, but the ships use an insubstantial energy screen that harvests the light from the lake."

Walking over, it took me a second to find the controls, but they were surprisingly uncomplicated. I pressed the button, and missed what he told Callie to do as I stared in awe at the sheet of glowing blue energy. It unfurled along the length of the mast, and I could see it pulse slightly brighter every few seconds as it absorbed the energy. Abel walked over to check on the thing. Knocking on the mast, he nodded amiably. "Good, still works. These things are discount transportation at best. They cost almost nothing to maintain, so they're profitable as hell, but they do break down regularly."

Shaking off the sight of the pulsing energy screen, I turned to Abel, who kicked the deck and stood by, watching a podiom rise from the wood. One it was up he fiddled with the controls a bit and we began to smoothly glide through the water, going from stationary on the beach to mid motion so suddenly I had trouble isolating when the motion began. "Alright." I say, tired of waiting. "What the hell are we doing here?"

Abel just chuckles, not bothering to take his eyes from the distant skyline...lakeline? Caveline? From the horizon. "We're here for the Riot Tide." He said casually. "It's an excellent training tool. Basically, when we reach the deeper parts of the lake, we'll stay put. After an hour or so, the tide will come in. A wave of lake water will carry hundreds of fish right over the surface of the boat. we should be able to stay planted fine, but the fish will pummel everything on deck."

He pointed down into the opaque water. "You can't see them, but they're pretty big. They're all G-rank...well, mostly. The F-ranked ones only come up deeper into the lake, they're too big for the smaller waves here to lift. Anyway the value of the fish varies based on color. They come fast and hard, and your job is to punch them out as they attack and then grab the tails to chuck them into a basket you'll keep at your side. The fish change color as they climb higher up G-rank, with red being the lowest and purple being the highest."

That sounded...insane. "So you want us to what? Catch a bunch of fish? How exactly will this help us progress?" I could see how this would be fun, but it didn't seem like any kind of training. I wouldn't complain if we were just screwing around, but I definitely didn't want to miss the point and lose out on valuable training if it was there. I came down here to improve, and I wasn't really confident yet we could achieve decent results in the tournament.

"Good question." Abel said approvingly. "The answer is simple. You're being graded. I'll be assigning points based on the fish you catch. Minus two for red, minus one for orange. Yellows are nothing. Green is one point, blue is two. Purple is three but those are stupid rare so I wouldn't hold my breath. This exercise is to help you judge the danger of incoming attacks at your partner without looking. It'll help with recognizing feints and things like that. Plus we can cook or sell the fish. They taste great."

Huh, that was fair enough. I could see the usefulness, plus I hadn't really had a chance to work with fish in the kitchen much. Might be fun to take some home to make fish tacos for Callie or something. I turned to see her smirking with anticipation and rolled my eyes. It was nice to know I could read her so well at least. "Alright." I said, getting into the idea. "What do we need to do to get ready. You said we shouldn't get washed off the boat? I don't know exactly what that stuff is but I'd prefer not to fall in."

"Good call." Said Abel blandly. "If you swim too deep you can run into the F-rank fish, they're mean bastards. Plus you can drown, but that's rare. Because of our higher Might we can condense way more air into our lungs on a strong inhale, plus Vitality makes oxygen use more efficient. Anyway, don't fall in, yes. I could come save you, but it would be annoying and I might not find you before you got fish slapped to death. If you DO fall in, make sure to swim for the surface as fast as you can, if you can figure out what direction that is without being able to see anyway." I winced as I imagined getting sucked in upside down and swimming for the bottom by mistake. That would be bad.

The next hour passed without much drama. I'd expected this place to be crazy even outside the Riot Tide. Riot Bay didn't exactly sound like a scenic get away, but to my surprise, it was pretty much exactly that. Staring off into the distance the swirling blue lake water was like a glowing pane of opaque crystal, flat and smooth for as far out as I could see. Despite that, the swirl of the glowing substance created a sort of shifting effect that varied the glow from spot to spot. It was almost hypnotic to watch.

Still, despite the beauty, it was hard to relax and take it in. We were about to be literally pelted with fish. I wasn't sure what that would be like but it was bound to be unpleasant. It was impossible not to constantly brace for an attack from all sides, which made the faux serenity of our surroundings even worse. This was the calm before the storm, and we all damn well knew it. I could see Wren and Sloane's boats nearby, scything through the lake water, leaving barely any distortion in the surface.

My first clue that something was coming was Abel. He'd been sitting back looking bored for most of the time we'd been out here. Between one breath and the next though, his eyes snapped open, focusing sharply on the surface of the water. He crossed the distance to the railing of the ship in a blink, looking down into the water as if to confirm something, then nodded. Turning back he walked over and opened a hatch, pulling out a series of heavy looking braided metal baskets. He dropped one next to each of us, then walked to the other side of the ship and dropped the third next to himself.

"Alright." He said solemnly. "We're about to get hit. Plant your feet, try not to move around too much. I put your baskets close enough together to let you cover each others backs. No weapons and no poison fire or any of that shit. If you ruin the fish it defeats the purpose. Stun them and toss them in the basket, it's enchanted to keep them in stasis. Any questions?" We both indicated we had none and his solemn expression melted into his usual anticipatory grin. "Good." He pointed off into the distance where the shape of a cresting wave could be seen rolling across the surface of the lake. "Because it's about to start."

 

The massive tide of blue liquid hit the ship like...well, a tidal wave. Our feet were planted on the deck firmly as the wall of water rushed at us, and I could easily see the dark forms of writhing fish riding the wave like some nightmarish parody of birds on the wing. I could vaguely make out the shapes of Callie and Abel at other points on the ship, the hunched forms of a heavy basket near each of them. Callie was especially close by since we were working together.

I could see the fish wriggling as they approached, and I knew that they were all G-ranked monsters of various levels. Still, there was no reason to freak out about it. I stopped, took a deep breath, and braced myself as the lake water slammed into me. My mask made it simple to breathe, though I suspected my Impact would have helped even if I hadn't been wearing it since Callie and Abel didn't have the same protection. Still, even without suffocating, getting hit with a wall of water was disorienting as hell.

Letting myself drift in my combat trance, I let me senses unfocus, taking in everything and nothing all at once, straining to pay attention to my instincts. I felt a slight twinge and stepped out to take up position at Callie's back, lashing out with a quick punch and immobilizing a fish headed for my girlfriend. I grabbed its tail in the same motion, turning to hurl it into my basket with a triumphant grin...until I realized the damn thing was red.

Sadly it was too late to intercept the fish, and it dropped into my basket, subtracting two points from my already negative value. I shook off the unhappiness, drifting back out of focus and started countering more of the fish attacking Callie, even as she did the same for me. I knocked out a flat dozen of the things, but they kept being swept away by the water before I could grab them because I was pausing to note what color they were.

I tried to sense some fundamental difference about them, but despite how much I focused I was completely unable to distinguish between one fish and another. Then I switch to knocking them out and grabbing them, then checking them before I threw them in, and had moderate success with that. I ended up using one of the fish as a bludgeon as I reached for the next, not being able to leave Callie undefended long enough to check each one.

That worked a bit, but not fast or practically enough. This was a test from Abel, and that lunatic wasn't one to give a task without some ulterior motive. There was a trick to this fucking exercise, there had to be. He'd said it was to sense the power of incoming attacks so we could react more efficiently, or something like that. I could see the logic. Blocking low level attacks would waste energy when they would be incapable of hurting Callie anyway. I needed some way to tell.

I closed my eyes, letting my senses fade, and focused on one that I rarely had a chance to use. The sense that stemmed from Fantasy. This was the sense that picked up on odd or interesting things and subconsciously steered Ascendants toward them. Despite not needing any more craziness, I was at a loss for how to do this, so I figured some mysterious sense I didn't understand might work better.

It didn't. I got slapped in the face by a fish I tried to catch. At the very least it didn't get to Callie. I was starting to get frustrated. I could use seek hidden, but there'd be no point. Abel didn't have that Skill which meant that it wasn't the answer I needed to find.

Suddenly I felt a slight twinge coming from a sense I hadn't really thought to use. The sense that let me measure Impact. I wasn't really sure what that sense actually WAS, but at the very least I knew how it worked. I could feel the weight of a person or artifact's soul. However, paying closer attention, I was able to pick up that despite all being G-ranked, not all these fish felt the same.

Maybe it was the increased soul strength from all the training, maybe it was the crazy environment, but I could feel DIFFERENCES in those fish. They all had 12 Impact, sure. But the weight of them varied infinitesimally. This one was heavier, that one was lighter. It seemed soul weight varied based on more factors than just Impact if you knew how to look for it. I was sure that this was the key to working out how to do this little exercise.

Keeping mt eyes closed, I tried to reach out with that same, ineffable muscle I used to change a Skill. My soul, or at least the part of it I was able to use. I pushed my sense of Impact further, harder. I needed to go deeper into these impressions. I could feel the fish coming, just like before, but with my focus on sensing the variations, I could also feel the strength of each fish differed slightly.

I lashed out with a punch at a fish, ignoring a weaker on right next to it as it bounced off Callie's coat. The one I punched I grabbed the tail of and tossed it into the basket, and seeing a flash of green as it dropped in. I almost cheered. Green was good, much better than red. It meant I had been able to sense the difference. I tried another fish, then another, carefully picking each one based on my feeling of how heavy they seemed vs the ones around them.

Some were losers, oranges, yellows. Some were greens, and I even got a purple. But as I went on, I became consistently more skilled at picking them, getting better and better results as I fine tuned this new sense.

I could see why I hadn't improved this before too. This environment was perfect for this kind of training. Lots of hostile monsters that were too strong but were still variable levels of our own rank to compare to each other. In the past even when we'd been in fights with G-ranked people or monsters there hadn't been this many coming this quickly.

Feeling my pulse pounding I lashed out faster and faster, losing myself in the process as I slowly honed this new sense. Sadly, while I appeared to be doing well, Callie wasn't picking this up. Possibly because of her lack of experience with exercising her soul. In fact this detection method acted like a very mild form of soul strengthening exercise itself from what I could tell. I was feeling that telltale strain in my head, though it was MUCH more mild than when using a Skill.

That made this even more valuable for her to learn because it would give her a way to work her soul without devolving into a gibbering pain blind mess or passing out like sometimes happened when I went too far. In order for that to happen though I had to actually let her know what to do.

While Abel's whole 'learn by doing' teaching method did work most of the time, Abel wasn't perfect. I didn't think telling her how it worked would sabotage anything, plus he hadn't told me not to mention it. Hoping we were close enough for her to hear me through the waterfall-esque blast of liquid force I waited until there was an opening and bellowed. "CALLIE!" There was no response so I waited a minute before trying again, screaming her name at the top of my lungs.

When she finally noticed, she was smart enough not to turn to me completely and ignore the fish, she just stepped back to be nearer to me and cocked her head to the aide so her ear was facing me. Knowing she would be straining all that Perception to hear me, and all her Focus to filter out the water sounds, I scaled back my screaming to a dull roar. "Try sensing their Impact! You can kind of feel a difference in their conceptual weight even without any of them being higher than twelve!"

I tried to think of a better way to describe it, but I came up short. I trusted that she would be able to detect what I mean once she had an idea where to look. With that done I went back to fighting. I got hit a bunch more by the fish, but my armor tanked pretty much all of it, and after a few minutes Callie got a better feel for at least the extremes of the weight scale, mostly letting reds and oranges through to tag me.

My own basket had been slowly filling with greens and blues since I started detecting everything, and even the odd purple. They WERE rare, but over the course of the next few hours we got attacked by THOUSANDS of fish, and I managed to identify and catch six purples. When the water finally receded it took me a second to process. We'd been in there for so long I couldn't keep track of time.

Being soaking wet and sore didn't help. While my armor was F-rank and more than up to protecting me from random fish, as I'd noted before blunt force tended to transfer through a bit. With G-rank fish that wasn't much, but tens of thousands of hits over hours started to add up, even with my Vitality offsetting it a bit. I groaned, slumping back onto the deck with a thump. "Ow. Why is it that every single time we train with you we end the day in pain and nearly unable to move?"

The comment was aimed at Abel, though I couldn't turn my head to look at him. My Vitality would repair the damage eventually, but they were made by G-rank opponents, so the conceptual weight of the attacks impeded the process somewhat. I heard Callie groan weakly from off to the side. "Yeah, and you couldn't have given us a hint or something? I'm starting to think you're just a sadistic asshole."

Abel stepped into view, standing between us so I could see him without turning my neck, he had a hand to his chest and was looking mortified. "JUST a sadistic asshole? I'll have you know my sadism and assholishness are merely two of my many endearing qualities. But seriously, stop whining. That was a nice workout, but nothing too bad. I'll let you both recover back at the inn though. You certainly earned it."

I groaned at the excitement and cheer in his voice. "How much money did you just make off our suffering? Also you know you're sharing that right? Because no way in hell did we go through that for nothing." Come to think of it, Abel looked like he was in much better shape than we were. "How many fish did you even catch? Or did you just hide behind something and let us do all the work?" I doubted it, that wasn't his style, but I was annoyed and venting a bit.

Abel just snickered. "Hide? Kid I was rerouting about half of your incoming tide with spatial lubrication. Between that and my increased skill, I caught easily three times as many fish as you did, and most of them were higher end ones too. I actually got fifteen purples this time. It was a pretty good day." Ignoring my shocked silence, he reached down and picked me up easily, throwing an arm over his shoulder before heading to grab Callie.

He carried us over to the mast to let us lean against the post. "Now. While I WILL be letting you take home a portion of the money, it won't be more than a quarter each." He said casually. "So sit back and enjoy the ride. I'll be handling the ship as we head back. Think of it as payment." If I could have moved I'd have attacked him as he turned around and walked away laughing. Since I couldn't, I just glared at him really hard. What a bastard.

 

By the time we got back to the shore, I was at least able to stand. I was still sore as hell, but my Vitality had patched me up enough that my muscles worked at least. Callie looked just as bruised and uncomfortable, but she also looked just as ecstatic as I felt. Despite the annoyance at Abel and the physical discomfort and pain, it felt GOOD to get stronger. To learn to be better and improve in a measurable way.

And measure we did. After we got back to shore Abel carried the big metal baskets off the ship for us and we emptied them out on the black rocky beach, counting our haul and the number of points. I'd managed fifty total, while Callie had gotten forty eight. Abel, though he wasn't competing, made sure to assure us he had broken triple digits, and that both of together had failed to even approach his number. The asshole.

Still as I stared down at the fish, I could see why these things were so sought after. They were beautiful. The scales were vivid and every bit as breathtaking as the colors of a rainbow. They were also all still, apparently immobilized by the stasis field long enough to suffocate. I had thought it kept them alive, but apparently I'd mistaken the point of the baskets, the devices being more to keep them fresh than anything else.

As I stared down at them, I heard a crunch off to the side and turned to see a bedraggled Wren and Vector jumping down and trekking over to stand next to us. They had obviously heard the little introductory speech Abel had given us, not a surprise on such an open expanse of water with two G-rankers. They still looked annoyed as hell as they glared at my mentor. "You know." Wren snarled. "You could have WARNED us."

Abel gave a derisive snort. "I didn't warn my own disciples." He said dismissively. "Why would I warn you two? Besides, it's good training. Don't tell me a pair of Ascendants from cluster level forces cant handle a little light rain and some relaxing fishing." We all turned and stared at him in mute horror as he described the... watery apocalypse we had just gone through as 'some relaxing fishing'. That took a serious amount of skills in bullshit to say with a straight face. Or at least what we could see of it.

Sloane, who had walked up in squelching wet boots, was glaring too. "Well, that's certainly kind of you. Be assured that I will return that kindness at the first possible opportunity. With interest." With that she stomped past us, storming over to presumably get a chance of clothes from her minions. The effect was ruined by the watery squelch of her feet as she trudged across the beach.

"Alright." I said, drawing attention back to the matter at ham. "What do we do with these fish? Where do we sell them, and for how much?"

Before he could answer, a new voice pipes up. "Hey dudes." We all turn to see the guy from the shack where Abel rented the boats standing off to one side. "Bodacious catch bros. That's a tubular multiplicity of aquatic lifeforms. Might you be interested in parting with your superfluence of fishy findings?"

I blinked at him. So did everyone else. None of us had a fucking clue what he'd just said. The man's scruffy brown hair and goatee, combined with his blank stare, made him seem like kind of a lazy, sleepy person. His speech on the other hand was confusing and in some places I was pretty sure made up. I wasn't a dictionary, but superfluence didn't seem like a real word to me.

Looking at him more closely, I tried to take in his outfit. Baggy tan shorts with too many pockets, a short sleeve t-shirt with an open short sleeve button up, and a series of metallic jewelry on his fingers and hanging from a black chord around his neck. He also wore a surplus of varied leather bracelets with metal buckles and pins on them. Abel grinned at him. "Dale! You're just in time. We were just talking about what to do with the fish. You willing to pay full rate for them? They're pretty fresh, and it'll save me some time."

Dale guffawed. "Most obviously my compatriot. I have an abundance of most radical funds to disperse for the purpose of acquiring such a delectable piscine assortment. To my eternal sorrow though, the monetary equivalency you speak of has mutated in the time since your previous embarkment. One credit of H-rank as a base for a red is a more efficacious offering to begin our fiscal negotiations."

The big dopey smile hadn't changed, but I caught a gleam of craftiness in his eye, and Abel's smile turned into a scowl. "The fuck you say. Don't pull that wasted philosopher bullshit on me you money grubbing layabout. I haven't been gone THAT long. Two and a half per red as a base. I'm not a moron, I did check prices before coming here. I'm not one of those stupid tourists you fleece."

Putting up both hands, Dale's eyebrows rose in alarm without his eyes actually opening from their lazy half lidded state. "Whoa! Your accusations of malfeasance are farcical. But alas, I am no match for such a puissant practitioner of the pugilistic arts. Spare me your erupting wrath, your monetary offer is most acceptable for such a close personal friend. Our historical dealings are more than enough to justify such an expenditure."

Abel rolled his eyes. "Oh stop it Dale. I forgot how quickly that gets old. Just talk like a normal person, there's no one around to hear anyway."

Dale's relaxed smile twisted into an annoyed scowl. "Hey man, why you gotta' fuck up my aesthetic? If the tourists hear me talking like this they'll be way more on guard. I've spent years cultivating my image. The combination of dazed moron and confusing linguistic savant really puts people at ease. If you fuck this up for me I'm gonna be pissed, I have a business to run."

Mel snorted. "I can't believe it still works after all this time." She said wryly. "You'd have thought after all the people you've ripped off someone would have warned the others."

The dopey grin returned. "I'm not sure as the the bamboozling you might be reference, lady fair. I am simply a harmless and hapless proprietor of seafaring wares who chooses to invest in the local community through the occasional acquisition of delicious carp-tacular treats."

"Those are salmon." Mel said dryly. "But point taken. That really is convincing. No clue how you keep it up all the time. Though it explains why you haven't ranked up. People pretty much dismiss you out of hand."

Dale just shrugged, resuming a normal speech pattern instead of his lazy far off drawl. "I do good business here. No reason to rock the boat, so to speak." He looked at us. "You guys keep this quiet will you? I'd normally stay in character even after being caught out, but annoying Abel is never a healthy thing to do." He glared at the silver masked man. "Not to mention there's no point since he's decided to screw me on pricing."

That got an eye roll from my teacher. "Oh please. You've been ripping off tourists for too long. Two point five is a solid baseline. The multipliers for color variants aren't even that high, except the purple at six, but there's less than twenty of those. Gods know you'll sell the damn things at a mark up anyway. What do you charge after prep, like five?"

"They're paying for labor." Dale said self-righteously. "It costs to keep my chef on retainer. Not to mention I have to pay for processing to make sure the scales are treated right. Those things sell for a decent amount in bulk, not to mention the organs and bones can be crushed up to make a pretty high end plant fertilizer."

Abel looked over to us. "This. This is why I call him a money grubber. Despite his laid back appearance this miser can't let a single chit slip through his fingers." He waved away the line of thought, literally swatting the air like the whole conversation was an annoying fly. "Whatever." He pointed at Sloane and Wren. "You two, dump your catch. This is as close to market value as you'll get, and he won't pay nearly this much after I'm gone."

They both did so quickly, ignoring the annoyed scowl from Dale. Abel looked back at the shack owner. "Well? What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? Count them up. The longer they're out of stasis the worse condition they're in, and I'm not taking a pay cut because you're a slow starter." Dale muttered something vaguely insulting that even I couldn't hear and walked over to start counting up the fish as Wren and Sloane dumped theirs on the beach.

Abel turned to us. "This was a decent haul. Two point five as a base for the reds is a solid payout. It means twenty five for each purple. That alone is going to be a pretty serious bump. I think people have been too distracted to come fish lately, because looking at the full haul laid out like this its easy to see its denser than normal. I wasn't expecting any decent payout from this, just some pocket money, but based on what I'm seeing this is going to come out to about fifteen F-rank chits."

"Why H-rank chits as a base though?" I asked cautiously. "If they're G-ranked monsters?" If we got paid in E-ranked chits instead it would obviously be much more lucrative. I wasn't expecting that to happen, but I might as well find out why that didn't happen.

He waved the question off. "H-rank tends to be base currency here, even for higher level Ascendants. The economy on a backwater planet like this is pretty limited as a whole. There's only so many chits floating around. I doubt anyone on Callus has any D-ranked chits, even if they have enough E-ranked chits to trade for them. Once you get past a certain point scarcity plays a role. Not to mention these fish are pretty common. Nobody would make any money paying out G-rank chits for catching the. Just like no one is paying G-rank chits to eat them. Five H's probably."

That was a wrinkle I hadn't considered in terms of economy. The whole money thing scaled kind of hard after the first few ranks, but if H-ranked chits were the standard of currency that would definitely drag it down a bit. Sort of like the equivalent of a credit for local Ascendants. Abel rolled his eyes. "Ponder economics later kid." He said with minor annoyance coloring his tone. "If I know Dale he's going to want us to help him carry them over as part of the fee."

Sure enough, Dale came over and insisted we help move everything. It wasn't much work, but it was wet and annoying. Eventually though, we got them all transported and he handed over fifteen F-ranked chits, three of which went to Wren and Sloane, who hadn't had nearly the haul we had even if their catch had looked impressive. Lots of reds.

With that done, we headed off the beach, walking back toward the city proper. Wren checked a scan ring for the time and looked over at us. "Well, that was time consuming. We're doing dinner with the rest of the legion if you want to tag along? I'm sure Lament would be happy to meet some challengers, even if our escorts won't let her fight you. She has problems holding back when she gets excited, so we want to save some mystery for the tournament." Callie answered for us, immediately accepting, and I just grinned in anticipation. Seemed like I was finally going to meet the Spear Legion's ringer.

 

In the end we got six of the twelve remaining F-ranked chits to split between us, and left Dale's with everyone else heading to dinner with Wren and Vector. They had arranged a meal with the rest of the Spear Legion, but I was confused about where. "So wait." I said, perplexed. "They aren't staying at the Blue Robin with you? I figured they were in their rooms or just not around. Why aren't they sharing accommodations with you guys?"

I said they, but it was more like she, since Lament was the one we were all most interested in. Wren just shrugged. "The Robin is one of the safest places in Doomtown, but Lament doesn't really care about that. Our handler is E-ranked, and got special dispensation to come down here, though he can't act except in self defense. The two of them decided to stay in one of the more...exciting areas. Some of the Doomtown hotels run by the local forces have interesting games and activities if you're willing to accept the possibility of death every time you turn around."

Mel groaned. "She's staying at the Chaotic Wombat, isn't she?" I turned my eyes to her, confused by the statement. She shrugged. "The Wombat is infamous. Abel went once, though I never bothered. The Wombat has a gimmick where every person who enters is stamped with a marking. Once every twenty four hours, at a random time, the markings all light up green. One person has a red marking and everyone else is supposed to attack them. The person who kills them gets ten F-ranked chits, and if they survive they get ten E-ranked chits, though to my knowledge it's only happened three times."

Abel grinned. "Oh yeah, the Wombat is a blast. Since the rooms are all in various wings and levels the whole mess turns into kind of a scavenger hunt. I was kind of hoping to get picked as sacrifice when I went, but it ended up being this annoying F-ranker named Kamahl. His ability was changing the size of things after touching them. He did it on a delay so he would throw like, rocks at you and they would turn into boulders. He was only early F-rank, or he wouldn't have been down here, but he still didn't last too long. I think one of Silent Dagger's people got him."

"That's horrible." Callie said, appalled. "Who would even go somewhere like that? Does everyone die when they get picked?" She looked horrified by the casual nature of the violence, and I didn't blame her. It was horrible that there were places you could die just for going. Hell, even knowing how lawless and awful Doomtown was supposed to be, the whole macabre nature of the game was just unconscionable.

Seeming to sense how upset she was, Mel put both hands up placatingly. "Not at all. Plenty of people escape. Usually the ones who get killed are unlikable. Your friends are free to intervene even if you get picked, and most people's do. You just don't get the payout if you leave the premises. The sacrifice lasts for three hours, and if you leave it's considered a forfeit." She patted Callie's shoulder to console her. "It's really not that bad."

It was easy to forget Mel and Abel weren't Unity. The WCP seemed like a quirky but stable place most of the time, but there was a reason it was considered a black market underground force. Then again, based on what Zeke had said it was probable that other factions might not be much better. The Black Sorrow Cult seemed like a pretty horrible environment based on their ruthless use of sleepers. Maybe the universe was just kind of a shithole. It was something to think about when we finally got off this planet. Being an Ascendant wasn't all wine and roses. Monsters weren't necessarily the biggest dangers.

With the knowledge that we could have friends step in though, I wasn't QUITE as opposed to going. Abel chuckled at the indecision. "It's fine kid. It's still early for dinner, and while it IS random when they do the sacrifice, it's usually when there are plenty of people around. It's what..." He checked his scan ring. "Five PM? Most people won't be eating for a few more hours. We'll be gone before they start the festivities."

I was sort of ambivalent here. With Abel and Mel, not to mention Wren, we should be fine even if one of us got picked, and if it wasn't likely to even happen, it might be safe enough. The sacrifice could happen at any time during a twenty four hour period, and it could happen to only one person. That made the chances of being there and being picked vanishingly small if we were only there for a short time. In the end, I just left the decision up to Callie, cocking my head at her so she knew it was her call.

She bit her lip, looking indecisive. In the end though, we came here for the danger, so we could improve. If we avoided dangerous situations we might as well have stayed up in G-district. I could see that same realization show up on her face. She nodded grudgingly. "Ok. Fine. But I want to make it clear that if the sacrifice DOES happen while we're there, even if we aren't picked we're not participating. I'm not hunting and killing another person for fun. That's awful. If possible I even want to help them. Is that ok with all of you? If not we'll skip it."

I beamed at her. I was so proud of her for coming to that conclusion. I don't think I would have thought to specify everyone help whoever got picked. To my surprise Abel just shrugged. "Sure. Sounds like a party. I prefer odds to be against me anyway. Still don't think it's likely to happen, but if it does I'm down to play defense."

We all rolled our eyes, because that was the most Abel answer possible and we probably should have expected it. Mel, to my surprise, also nodded though. "That's doable. I'll be honest, it's been a long time since I worried about that kind of thing. It's so common down here there doesn't seem to be a point most days. Still, if that's what you feel you have to do kid, we're behind you."

Callie looked poleaxed. "But...you're teaching us. Shouldn't you demand we toughen up and do what you think is best? Don't you think I'm being naive?" She sounded so confused at the concept of her teachers not forcing her to follow their example it broke my heard. I was pretty sure I had a guess at why.

Either Mel didn't figure it out or was too nice to bring up because she just laughed. "No. We're not trying to turn you into us. You kids are talented and you've helped us out, so we're giving you some lessons and a hand with this. Plus we might benefit, but we aren't you. Trying to brainwash someone into doing what you would do isn't teaching. You're ultimately Unity members, and doing things their way isn't always wrong. Sure, it might seem a little naive to us sometimes, but being naive is fine as long as you're smart about it."

Based on the shine in her eyes Callie looked ready to cry for a second, but she shook it off. "Thanks. I guess I didn't realize the baggage I had about teachers." She gave a steady nod. "Yeah. Like I said. If someone gets picked, we help them. Even if it isn't to our benefit. I won't stand by while someone gets hurt for no reason." Her voice strengthened as she repeated her decision, steel in her tone.

Wren cleared his throat. "So...we ARE going? As for the sacrifice you won't need to worry about us if you get picked. Lament isn't one to gang up on others. It's beneath her dignity, and she wouldn't let any of the rest of us pile on either. Though if she does get selected probably don't try to help. She would be more annoyed at you for getting in her way than anything else."

With that decided we headed back into the city, following Abel to the Chaotic Wombat. He was the only one of us who had been there, so he took the lead. once again we walked through Doomtown, and as we moved the streets around us subtly changed. Unlike Sunshine Avenue, the red light in this new area didn't fade, it got just deepened to a darker color. Not just dimmer, but more scarlet somehow.

Abel took in a deep, happy breath. "Ah, Damnation Row. Been years since I've even thought about this place. If Doomtown could be said to have a 'bad part of town' it would be here. Most of the city is anarchy, but the Row is always just a little worse. Don't you just love the smell or complete mayhem in the afternoon?"

As we walked, the stone facades of the buildings became more dilapidated and worn down. I wondered in passing what all the other buildings were. We passed dozens of them everywhere we went, and they couldn't all be casinos and fighting clubs or whatever. On second thought though I kind of didn't want to know. Considering how messed up the stuff we had already seen was, I had a feel random back alley businesses might be even worse.

When we finally came to a stop, I was a bit underwhelmed. All the other places we'd been had stood out from the outside, been taller or more ostentatious than most of these places. This one was just one of a parade of squat stone buildings. I looked over at Abel, my tone disbelieving as I said. "Really? This is the Chaotic Wombat? How can you even tell? It looks so...average. You'd think they would put up a sign around here or something at least. We could've walked right past this place and never noticed."

It was hard not to be disappointed at the lackluster exterior. I wasn't exactly looking forward to our visit, but this place seemed significant if nothing else. Abel just shrugged. "The Wombat isn't really a standout kind of place. Most of the places we took you were important or well known. The Wombat is the kind of place that only desperate or stupid people go." He paused, getting a strange look. "Or...you know. Really confident warriors who aren't afraid of death."

Mel choked back a snicker at her boyfriend calling himself an idiot by mistake and cut in. "Yeah, plenty of places don't bother to make their location easily noticeable. Damnation Row is the kind of place where successful businesses get raided. Of course, they STILL get raided by neighbors and customers sometimes, but keeping the outside nondescript stops random tourists from paying attention and joining in."

We all approached the door, but Abel stepped up ahead to pound on the dark metal. A hatch on the door at eye level slid aside. "What?" Snapped a hostile voice. I was starting to feel like no one in the WCP knew how to hire someone to watch their fucking door. Was a hello too much to ask for?

Abel just glared. "Let me the fuck in, that's what. You think anyone would come stand outside this shithole for no reason? Like I picked this one building to ask to use the bathroom out of this whole gods forsaken street? We're here to ride the Wombat, now let us in." I had to stifle a chuckle at the ridiculous password, but it seemed to work because after a few clicks the door swung open and the man let us in. As we entered he took out a stamp pad and placed a tiny mark that looked like an animal head on each of our hands. I REALLY hoped we weren't here when they changed color.

 

The inside of the Chaotic Wombat was...weird. I'd seen a lot of places, and even lived in a pretty unusual location myself. The orange dyed house we had up in Rajak proper was strange to look at the first time. Still, the Wombat took the cake, or rather...it was made of it.

Which is to say, the whole place was covered in what looked like candy. The chairs were made of peppermint sticks, the tables slabs of chocolate, the chandeliers were rock candy, and the various doorknobs and other things were all individual types of sweets. Despite her worry over an attack, Callie went ramrod stiff when we walked inside, her wide eyes raking over the bounty of delicious treats.

Abel, noticing her expression, snickered slightly. "Yeah, I was wondering how you would all react. The OWNER of the Wombat has Intermediate Candy Making Skill. Most of this stuff is higher ranked food, like H-rank maybe. Even two points of Impact can make a serious durability difference, and it makes this kind of thing much more viable. Of course, any of us could smash through this with zero difficulty, but then again, we'd be just as able to smash through normal mortal wood or even some metals. Plus I'm sure you can figure out the other benefit."

"Renown." I said without blinking. "This would definitely generate plenty of buzz. It's kind of weird, but in an interesting way..." I looked over at my drooling girlfriend, with a worried frown. "If we eat some of this will we get attacked or something?" This place was clearly crazy, the last thing we needed was for Callie to break off a piece of rock candy from a wall sconce and get us mobbed or something.

Hearing my question, Callie snapped out of her stupor and looked at me sheepishly. "What?" She said with an unconvincing laugh. "That's crazy. What kind of moron would just randomly start taking bites out of furniture." Her eyes locked on a nearby chocolate fountain made of what looked like waffle cone. "No matter how delicious it looks."

With an amused snort Mel patted her on the shoulder. "Best to avoid that stuff. This is the CHAOTIC Wombat, remember. They lace the candy with psychadelics and other strange things. You never know what eating it will do. The food you buy is fine, or else no one would buy it, but the rest of this stuff is eater beware. It's not a bad gimmick all things considered. But since we're here for a dinner, there's no need to invite trouble."

Callie looked much less interested after hearing that, shying away from one of the nearby pieces of furniture. As we walked further in, Wren noticed something off in the corner of his eye and turned to wave over at a table. "Oh, hey, Lestri! Vec, there they are, come on." He hurried off in the direction he'd been staring, leaving the rest of us to follow. Sloane, Beric, and Croll, were all sticking close to Abel and Mel, which seemed wise, so I followed after.

We'd decided not to bring the others, having them head back to the Robin, because if things did get crazy, mediocre combatants would be most likely to be picked off around the edges. Keeping our group to only real elites would make it more likely for us all to remain safe.

As we reached the table, Wren clasped hands with a short, red haired man with sides of his head shaved. He waved us over. "Hey guys, come meet my brother Lestri. He's on our team too." Looking closer, I could see that the two of them had the same amber eyes.

It was easy to see the similarities, from the olive skin tone to the red hair, but the most shocking difference was their size. Wren was a massive towering man, but Lestri looked like he was only a few inches taller than Callie. Five foot four or five maybe? Still, he was corded with muscle in a sinuous way that made me think of a coiled snake. I had a feeling he would be pretty damn fast.

One thing I had picked up over time was that being small wasn't necessarily a disadvantage for Ascendants. One point of Might translated into a thousand pounds of lifting force, but that was a static value. Someone with a hand the size of a coaster would be able to concentrate that force more effectively than someone with a hand the size of a dinner plate. With the same physical parameters, smaller people tended to hit harder. Of course, they had to sacrifice range to do it, so it wasn't like bigger combatants didn't have their advantages, but it just went to show not to underestimate anyone.

Lestri raised an eyebrow. "Oh, these are the locals that kicked your ass earlier huh? Interesting to see you met up with them again." He scrunched his nose. "Also why in the gods names do you smell like fish? It's faint, but pretty unpleasant." He sniffed a bit, realizing that Wren's hands were the culprit, then pulled out some sort of sanitizing hand rub from the pouch at his waist and handed it to his much larger brother.

Rolling his eyes, Wren took the bottle and rubbed the contents on his hands, holding them up so his brother could smell them before the smaller man nodded. Lestri shot us a small grin. "Sorry, my brother can get a bit focused and forget things so I tend to mother him a bit. Would you believe he's the younger one?" He shot Wren an annoyed glare. "I have no clue what our mother fed him to make him get so big, or why it didn't work on me. Anyway, do all of you want any?" He held out the bottle.

Seeing as his brother had just used it in front of us none of us were worried about poison or anything, and our hands DID smell bad (the impact spots on our armor had been washed clean by the water pressure, but our hands were soaked in small amounts of fish blood and smashed into the things for hours) so we decided to take him up on it. There was a pleasant tingle from the liquid and it smelled sort of pine fresh. I liked it. It also cleaned our hands INCREDIBLY quickly.

Once that was done we handed the mostly empty bottle back, and turned back to the table. There were two more people there. A small, quiet looking girl with platinum blonde hair, dark eyes, and pale skin, and a tall man with bulging biceps wearing a carved wooden mask that looked like a grinning skull. Wren gestured to them. "That's Lament, and that's our handler Master Saiten. Lament is our top contender for the tournament."

The E-ranked handler was as intimidating as I'd expected. He reminded me a bit of Abel, but his aura of violence was much more condensed. Every move he made was dangerous and it almost felt like he was constantly resonating with his Spear Mastery Skill. I swallowed hard at the realization the title Wren had just used might not be a formal political title. It might be literal. Abel, of course, just outright asked. "Wait, when you say Master..."

Saiten chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound from behind his mask. "Indeed. I have achieved the Master rank with my Spear Skill. Or course, the Skill is now simply, Master of the Spear. Master Spear Mastery would be nonsense. Once you reach the Master rank the naming conventions for Skills tend to change. Weapon masteries tend to just be called 'Master of' whatever weapon you specialize in. Though for more utility based Skills the names can differ."

I swallowed hard. Master level. I had no clue what that would require, but it was damn impressive. It also implied that Saiten might be close to ranking up to D-rank if his Spear Skill was the only one synergized with his ability. The sole requirement for an ability to rank up, aside from stats, was for all component Skills to reach that level first.

Of course, whether he was a peak E-ranker or not was mostly irrelevant to us. Any level of E-ranker could swat all of us like a fly. We all gave him our most formal greetings and he nodded courteously before summarily ignoring us completely to focus on eating. The wooden skull mask lacked a jaw so he wasn't impeded by it as he dug into the food. Judging by the gusto he ate with it must be good.

A waiter approached the table, wearing a crazy candy hat and suit, and passed out menus. I winced a bit at the prices, but Wren just told us to order whatever we wanted within reason. They had a discretionary fund from the Legion for the tournament, and anything they didn't spend would be confiscated on their return.

Since Mel had mentioned that they held the purchased food to a standard (probably how they justified the absurd prices on the menus) I wasn't too worried about getting something poisoned or that kind of thing. I scanned the menu before picking out a really delicious looking sausage gumbo. Callie got a pot pie, Abel a steak, Mel lasagna, and Sloane and her two friends all ordered clam chowder for some reason. I mean, I liked clam chowder, but it seemed weird for them to get it as a group. Maybe it was some kind of solidarity thing?

As they left, Lament finally focused her gaze on one of us. Specifically, Abel. She raised an eyebrow in challenge. "So, you're one of the local elites. The rest of them don't give me much of a feeling of pressure, but I can tell you and red mask there are different." She chucked her chin at Mel, but never took her eyes off our mentor. "I take it I'll be facing you int he big tournament?"

I saw her hand clench around the edge of table reflexively, like she was gripping a spear haft. Abel grinned back. "I'm happy to oblige you any time. Tournament or not. Feel free to attack me right where we sit." His tone was relaxed, almost bored as he spoke, but I could see a manic glint in his eye that mirror that frenzy I'd seen from him when he smashed the F-ranker from Sanctuary Hall.

Lament started to stand in anticipation, but a crushing weight smashed down on all of us, driving her back down into her seat and the rest of us harder into ours. With a lackadaisical smile, Saiten clicked his tongue. "Now children. No need to get so excited. We'll have plenty of time to battle when the tournament begins. For the moment I think we should all just relax and enjoy our dinners. Don't you?"

I'd felt worse, of course. The metaphysical weight Zeke had dropped on us the one time he decided to show off still made me shudder in remembered helplessness. This weight, in contrast, was much more...condensed. It wasn't nearly as strong, even in a much smaller area (the waiters and nearby diners seemed unaffected) but there was intent here. Saiten was TRYING to restrain us, while Zeke had just been...existing nearby. I was pretty sure based on this Zeke hadn't even fully unleashed his Impact, because a concentrated effort like this from him would probably have killed us.

He eased up and we all just sat there, panting slightly. We could have moved but it would have been a massive effort. Callie smiled. "Th-thank you, Master Saiten. No need for us to let things become unpleasant. This is just a nice, relaxing dinner among friends." Which, of course, was when all the lights went out at the same time. In the darkness, points of green light flared up all around the room as stamps began to glow. Well...almost all the stamps were green. I followed the red glow to the illuminated and frightened face of a young looking girl wearing a pair of rabbit ears at the next table. The sacrifice had begun, and it wasn't one of us, but we would still need to help. Damn it. This was going to suck.

 

With all the glows from the hand stamps and the Perception we all had, it was effortless to see in the darkened restaurant. It was sort of surreal, with the shifting glows moving along with the hands of the people nearby. Still, despite the minor confusion, we were all well trained and ready to act. Even as several dozen customers tried to mob the rabbit eared girl, they were met with a fist the size of a train car that managed to appear between them and their target without damaging the intervening space at all.

As the first responders were sent flying, Abel stood happily from the table, cracking his neck as he started walking slowly toward the girl and her companions. Mel rolled her eyes, rising herself and flooding the room with light as a nimbus of golden flame blazed into existence around her arms. Despite being older and stronger, the two of them hadn't even hesitated to listen to Callie's declaration about protecting the sacrifice.

Of course, Abel was just a battle crazy lunatic, but Mel was a rational human being most of the time, which meant she really took Callie's words as leader to heart. I, of course, stood up and slipped my cane from its sheath under my coat. I activated my Touch of Tears and Consecration of Flame as I trailed behind my mentors, Callie, Sloane, Beric, and Croll followed behind. The Spear Legion members stayed sitting for the moment, which was better than having to fight them all.

Abel made it to the girl with the rabbit ears without much trouble, after his first attack everyone was waiting to see what happened. They weren't sure what had happened, and no one here was stupid enough to risk their lives for some F-ranked chits. When he got within range, Abel grinned at the girl. "Young lady! You have an excellent sense of style! Your ears are adorable. I don't suppose you'd be interested in doing a little business?"

The girl, a pale, tiny girl with blood red hair and wide, stormcloud grey eyes, swallowed hard. "I...I-don't know what you mean sir. Thank you for the help though. What kind of business did you mean?" She glanced nervously at her friends, who all wore various types of rabbit themed accessories. To my surprise, THEY did not look worried. Most of them looked confident and ready to fight.

Wren, who had somehow appeared behind us when I'd been distracted, leaned in to murmur. "They're with the Wave Warren. Not the strongest group in the system, but definitely impressive. That's Sydney Whispervale. She's one of their ringers for the tournament. Don't underestimate her."

Due to everyone's high Perception, every person in the room heard him, and Abel cocked his head in interest. "I was going to offer to protect you for a cut, but it sounds like you might not need it, and my team leader said we have to help anyway. How about if we can escort you out of this place you buy me and my friends a drink and we call it even?" His wide, innocent smile made me want to roll my eyes. He was still trying to scam someone into buying that brandy.

Sydney bit her lip. "Well...I guess that doesn't sound too bad. If you really help us then there's no reason not to say thank you." She twisted a lock of hair around her finger worriedly. "Oh I should never have come here. I never should have listened to Megan. She said there was no way I would get picked, and everyone was so excited to try the food." She'd stopped looking at Abel and begun to mutter to herself worriedly under her breath, seemingly castigating herself for every decision that had led her to the point.

"Hey!" Callie said, after a minute."It's ok." She looked almost panicked at how badly the girl was spiraling in what was possibly the literal worst place for it. "We're here to help you. We can all just leave. I'm assuming you don't want to stay to try to win the money?"

With wide eyes, Sydney shook her head rapidly, her red hair whipping back and forth and her rabbit ears coming loose. She reached up and had to fix them, looking embarrassed. I was pretty much dumbstruck. How was this girl the secret weapon of a system level force? How was this girl allowed to come DOWN here? She was so...meek and harmless. "Of course not." She said anxiously. "I just want to leave." She looked at the others. "Can we just leave?"

One of the men in a black coat with a rabbits paw pinned to the lapel sighed heavily. "Of course, Miss Sydney. Miss Megan wouldn't have sent us to accompany you if we weren't supposed to offer our protection. We can leave immediately." He turned to us. "We appreciate your help, though if you attempt to backstab us I'm afraid you're going to suffer for it extensively." There was no threat in his voice, just a calm statement of fact.

A nearby patron of the Wombat, finally fed up with us ignoring them, piped up. "Hey! We aren't just going to let you take her and leave." A chorus of agreements rang out. His eyes pinned Sydney gleefully. "Sorry girly." he said, stepping menacingly forward. "But in your next life, you should be more careful exactly where you g-" Without warning, the mans eyes flashed steel grey, and he rolled his ankle, stumbling into the man next to him, who had drawn a wicked looking knife.

The knife drove into the mans side, and he growled, turning his own brown eyes on the person he'd bumped into, fury written on his face. He hauled back and punched the other man, fist shifting in magma as it crashed into the hapless knife wielder. Knife guy's friends decided to join in, and magma guy apparently had a group of his own. Within seconds, a miniature gang war had erupted inside the Wombat.

I blinked at the wilting form of Sydney. The grey flash in his eyes had looked just like hers. Whatever that had been, I was pretty sure she had done it. Not that it was hard to puzzle out with the physical manifestation as a clue. Ascendants didn't trip often, as a rule. Sydney clearly had some sort of ability that could effect enemies. Based on how spectacularly everything went wrong, I was kind of guessing it was bad luck.

Now wasn't the time to think about that though, because while the two groups had started fighting, their agitation had set off the rest of the people in the Wombat, who had all started to surge forward. Some attacked directly, some circled looking for an opening, but they still came at us all the same.

Letting myself shift into my combat trance, I slipped up next to Callie and neatly deflected a blow from some kind of fleshy tentacle. Callie slammed a hand into the ground, putting up a dome of condensed darkness to intercept a wave of icicles even as what looked like a swarm of purple energy bats tried to swarm over us. Mel turned the things to ash without a second glance, freeing us up, and Callie dropped the shield just as I swept out a Mercy Kill infused strike at the kneecap of one of the attackers as they clashed against a member of the Wave Warren.

The man, a red dressed guy with a winged cap and aviator goggles, howled in pain as he whirled his hands, conjuring a pair of whirling tornadoes to push us back. I used Sucking Mud, shaping the attack with my soul to hold us less deeply in exchange for speed, and the wind broke over our armor as the scarf wearing Warren cultivator snapped out a kick with a leg that had suddenly become a bladed hook, opening the red clad man's throat from the side.

More power to him, he didn't pass out or drop from blood loss though, smashing his coat against the wound to staunch the bleeding and using his wind to hurl himself away. I really needed to put some time into coming up with proper counters to the elements. A vast majority of Ascendants had some sort of element based power, especially after getting the chance to synergize.

I didn't have a chance to get lost in thought as usual though, I was forced to burn a triple stack density shifted attack, along with a Mercy Kill, to smash aside some kind of weird chain ball construct with huge jagged teeth that tried to bite into Callie from behind. The blade legged Warren cultivator bounded up into the air in a low arc, lashing out with a kick that took off the summoners arm at the elbow, causing him to jerk the ball construct back to defend himself.

There wasn't time to do more than nod gratefully at him before the crowd surged between us, and we backed up to try to group tighter with Abel and Mel, who had surrounded Sydney along with a pair of her guards and were beating back the crowd, Abel whooping with joy in the rush of battle. With our mentors at our back, we were SLIGHTLY more secure, but not nearly as much as expected. This was fucking lunacy, people weren't just attacking Sydney and her guards, I could see several Ascendants backstabbing and attacking random people in the chaos, using the action as cover for murder.

Trying to give myself a bit of room, I reached for my power, triggering a clone and a density shifted triple strength attack at the same time. I felt my head go slightly fuzzy as more soul weight than I could really handle slammed down on me, but I managed to hold up under the strain until it passed. Of course, the clones were much weaker and more fragile than I was to begin with, but with the addition of the triple strength and density shifting, the one I managed to construct was about half as durable and strong as I was.

The clone dove forward into a crowd of G-rankers, lashing out with the most brutal attacks he could manage with all the Skills and stats he had to bear. He broke a few limbs and managed to tie up several of them long enough for Callie to smash them with a bulldozer made of shadow while they were off balance, sending them flying, though not doing much to hurt them. The cloud of gelatinous acid crawling across the floor took care of that when they landed in it, and though they didn't die, they were in FAR too much pain for it to matter at the moment, at least based on the searing skin.

Unfortunately, while we were holding the line for the moment, we were also being worn down. Abel and Mel were guarding Sydney as instructed, but that meant they weren't clearing a path out of here. We were getting penned in and this was going to get worse and worse for us.

Despite the mess, it had only been about a minute since this all started, and I was already almost dead on my feet. We needed some sort of backup. Wren was helping, decimating anyone who came close with his spear, and Vector was doing the same. I saw Lestri flash between a pair of combatants, taking a limb from each in one swirl of his own long spear. Almost at the same time as I glanced over to the table to check what Lament was doing, the Spear Legion's ace finally acted.

A spear. The size of a fucking bus, flashed through the air, parting the crowd with a brutal cleave, taking limbs and even heads off multiple enemies and opening up a path to the door. I was in shock. That spear move had reminded me so much of Abel's fist attack, and I'd always thought that was just his ability. Thinking back though, Abel had mentioned being peak Intermediate in his own combat Skill. Something to look into later. Lament looked almost bored as she strolled away from the table, casting a derisive glare at the gathered enemies. "Noisy." She sneered.

From the huge bloody hole in the crowd stepped another figure, one I hadn't seen before. A man in bright yellow clothes and a top hat, with a sad face painted across his features. He shot her a grin, an incredibly odd thing to see on someone with a painted on sad face. "Well now. That was certainly dramatic." He flicked his hand and a shining golden whip unfurled in the air beside him. "Want to try it again?" Apparently this mess wasn't over. Based on the figures stepping up behind him, it was just beginning.

 

I immediately turned to Abel. "Wow, that guy seems tough." I said excitedly. "Who is he?" Lament was supposed to be on Abel's level, or close to it, so this guy must be some local bighshot, or maybe one of the outsiders I hadn't heard about yet. If it was the former, Abel probably knew who he was.

My mentor gave me an irritated look. "How the hell should I know?" He just shrugged. "I'm not a population directory. Looks decent, not sure if he's local or not, but if he is he's not someone I recognize. You can't expect me to know everything and everyone." He sounded genuinely annoyed by the assumption, but I didn't take it to heart. I had know way of knowing what he did and didn't know.

Luckily, while he might be ignorant, Sloane wasn't. "Laughing Jack. His dad is Pierrot. Luckily he didn't inherit his dad's creepy puppet making ability. He uses some kind of sunlight ability, and that whip is magic. He has a skill for it too. All in all he's pretty scary, though I'm surprised to see him down here. I've met him at a few social functions Melinda took me too, and he's not really one for slumming it."

That sounded interesting, but if Abel hadn't heard of him I doubted he was on the same level as Lament. Abel made it sound like a peak Intermediate combat Skill was something that you pretty much wouldn't see somewhere like Callus. Speaking of which. "Hey, what did she just do by the way? That spear thing? It looked like what you do, but I thought that was your ability?"

To my surprise, rather than blowing it off or snapping off an easy answer, Abel ruminated for a minute. Finally he held up a hand and waggled it back and forth. "It is and isn't. My ability is definitely powerful and often used in conjunction with my combat Skill, but the effect you're talking about is called a manifestation." He sounded like he was being careful about what he said, which was fair, this conversation was happening in public. "A lot of weapon masteries gain the ability when they hit Intermediate. My combat style is a combination of those two factors, with my spatial lubrication ability providing flexibility and options to a powerful Skill."

"Oh." I said blankly. "So that wasn't even her ability? Just the Skill part of her combat style? Because that's terrifying, she tore through that whole line of people like they weren't even there. Could you do that without using your ability?" If he could, he'd been holding back against us more than I'd thought in training. No wonder he crushed us so thoroughly even without Skills. Reaching peak Intermediate must mean his martial arts were at an absurd level of competence.

For the first time since I'd met him, Abel seemed...uncomfortable. "Probably." He finally answered. "But I avoid displays like that. Being terrifying and competent is great, but you can push it too far. If I start demonstrating Skills at that level without consideration, some E-rank might decide to take offense and come deal with me." He looked annoyed by the idea, and I could definitely understand. I hadn't come into contact with that kind of suppression yet, mostly because of a combination of my background, Zeke, and the utility of my ability.

For someone like Abel though, being able to reach the peak of an Intermediate Skill was a big deal. It meant he was most likely going to become an Expert as soon as he hit F-rank, and was potentially able to become a Master at E-rank like Master Saiten. I wasn't sure how rare that was, but chances were good it wasn't common. None of the other E-rankers would want a Master martial artist around at their rank.

It seemed like leaving for the dungeon was the best possible outcome for Abel, because once he hit F-rank people were going to start taking note of him. At G-rank the Impact suppression would make him basically a non-issue for them, but that wouldn't be the case forever.

I didn't have time to worry about that though. As we'd been talking Lament had exchanged a few words with laughing Jack, whose minions had fanned out behind him to block her path. The spearwoman didn't seem particularly bothered. Wren, however, looked upset, and stepped up to murmur something in her ear that I couldn't hear. Probably used a stealth Skill.

She grimaced but nodded, then stepped forward and vanished in a blur, appearing right in front of Laughing Jack to smash down with her spear. Wren exhaled in relief. "Ok. Good. She knows not to reveal too much. She could swat him like a fly with her Spear Mastery, but it would give away too much before the tournament. I asked her to keep it low key."
Low key was apparently fast and violent, but not super fancy. Instead of the fluid, snakelike spearmanship I'd seen from Wren. Unlike the bigger man, Lament didn't appear to be using a spear at all right now. From what I could tell, she was pretty much planning on beating the other man with her spear like a bat. Unfortunately, holding back so much meant she wasn't able to one sidedly crush him. As she lashed out Jack flicked his whip up, coiling it into a sort of tunnel.

The blow landed, and the whirling whip dispersed the impact of the blow down its length, bleeding off the damage. Abel hissed. "Ouch. Whips are always a pain in the ass. She could demolish him, but if she's not using her Spear Mastery Skill, that's going to be a pain in the ass. I wonder what her ability is?"

Despite his words, he didn't seem worried. He just took up a position in front of Sydney to make sure none of the onlookers tried some shit while we were all watching the show. As we watched, Lament probed laughing jack a few times. Despite not using her Skill or martial arts, she was clearly incredibly experienced handling a spear. Her grasp on controlling the force was extreme, even when she was just waving it around sloppily.

Laughing Jack looked serious now under his sad face makeup. His whip spun up in concentric circles, each one bleeding off the force of a strike, but despite the swirling endless river of golden metal that was his whip rotating quickly, each blow was forceful enough to offset his rhythm and he was slowly shifting to the back foot. "What are you idiots waiting for?" He shouted in panic. "Attack her!"

His minions who had grouped up behind him seemed surprised by the plea for help, but not afraid. A ghostly skeletal energy hand smashed down on Lament as a pair of snakes made of stone leapt from the ground. The third member of his group summoned a series of tiny, fluffy white clouds that tried to get in close to wrap around Lament's spear, spewing lightning bolts as they did so.

Lament barely noticed. Even as she sidestepped the smash from the skeletal hand she flicked out her spear in a slash, spinning it through the motion without even slowing down and cleaving through one of the clouds as she brought the spear up and over to bisect a snake. Two quick flicks destroyed the other one and another cloud, and she speared the last cloud with a single thrust aimed at Laughing Jack's throat.

The yellow clothed man eeped and flicked up his whip, and even as he did, the thing roared to life with golden sunfire. I felt a slight stir from Lament as she briefly engaged the slightest hint of her Intermediate Skill, and as her spear hit the whip there was a colossal crash as Laughing Jack was sent soaring through the front of the Wombat, smashing the stone as he went through in a way that couldn't possibly be comfortable.

I just...gaped. I'd been in sieges and battles, but those had mostly been lower rank. The Bone Wyvern aside, the abilities I was seeing down here were far above what I was used to. I'd know that as people ranked up and could synergize more Skills, powers would become more unique and varied, but there were some seriously scary attacks being thrown around in this fight.

Still, I wasn't a rookie. I was hardly going to just gape. I stepped back to fall into position closer to Callie, Abel, and Mel. Lament gave everyone else a hard look, but no one was stupid enough to pick a fight after what she'd just done. Not when a huge chunk of them were trying to reattach limbs from that spear manifestation. She turned to us. "Seems like this isn't a great place to eat after all. Oh well, the pre-dinner warmup was nice. You guys know anywhere near here I can get a steak?"

Her glare pinned the surrounding crowd. "Unless someone else wants to give it a try? I'd be happy to give you the same treatment as your little friends over there." She whirled her spear in a lazy, ponderous circle, slow enough that the light really had a chance to glint off the edge of the spearhead, highlighting how sharp it was in an extremely threatening fashion. None of them chose to do so, most stepping back to get further out of her range.

We all looked to Abel, who didn't look offended at being the go-to choice this time. "Nah. Not near here." He said apologetically. "Not a ton of high end restaurants down here. Doomtown isn't conducive to fine dining. The Raving Baby is pretty much the best eatery I know of down here. There are some pretty decent places in G-district if you're up for a long walk, but I don't think it's worth it."

Neither did I, considering how delicious those Enchiladas were. "Do you guys like Enchiladas? " I asked hopefully."Because we know where to get the best Enchiladas you've ever had." Aside from being free, the taste had been haunting my dreams since we went yesterday. I was already drooling at the thought of wolfing down some more, and Callie looked just as excited. Even Sloane and her minions looked ravenous at the idea of going back to Owen's place for another all we could eat buffet.

Lament just shrugged. "Sure, why not. I can always get a decent steak somewhere else." Wren just shrugged in acceptance when she looked at him, and Lestri and Saiten seemed ambivalent. I was surprised. Lament seemed much more relaxed and laid back than I had expected, at least once she got past her little threat display with Abel...and the whole stabbing a dozen people with a single spear thrust thing. Maybe my standards for laid back people had become a bit lax.

Sydney, who was the last person we checked with, was excited to try the Enchiladas, and asked if she could invite her sister Megan. Since we were trying to learn more about the external forces in the star system anyway, we agreed of course, and we all made our way through the crowd to the exit, ignoring the dozens of dissatisfied G-rankers glaring after us.

I half expected them to attack us, but they didn't. The situation here was much more complex than it looked. Rather than all of them vs. us, this was more like a team free-for-all. If they attacked, their enemies might attack them while they were distracted, not to mention Lament and Abel had both demonstrated terrifying levels of skill and power, so some of them would probably die. No one wanted to be first on the chopping block if that happened, which lead to a sort of universal hesitation. As we finally exited, the stamps on our hands winked out, and I heard a collective groan from outside. Hah. Served those bastards right.

 

Owen was not happy to see us again. He didn't bitch too much though. We introduced him to Sydney, Lestri, and Lament, and given he was still gathering information on outsiders for the tournament, he seemed at least partially mollified. I briefly felt bad for not telling her about it, but then realized anyone with any common sense would be aware that the locals would be gathering intel, as evidenced by how much Lament had held back during her fight.

After we sat down, we were joined by Sydney's sister, Megan. Who was...much different. Where Sydney was tiny and shy with red hair. Megan was a tall blonde who looked like she could do some serious fighting. She wasn't as muscular as Lament, who was built like a seasoned warrior despite being slim, but still, she was in better shape than I was. With bright blue eyes and a big cheerful grin, Megan was as outgoing as her sister was hesitant to engage.

She had her own cadre of attendants, and had them sit as a second table with all of Sydney's guards and most of Sloane's crew, though Owen refused to feed all of them for free. Lament covered their meal since the dinner thing had been her idea, and Megan jumped right into conversation. "So, I heard you helped Syd out of a jam. I really appreciate that." She laughed wryly, scratching the back of her head in embarrassment. "I...might have been wrong about the Chaotic Wombat. But come on, what are the chances of her getting picked?"

I was pretty sure that was what everyone thought, but Sydney just shook her head. "It's fine, sis. I'm just glad to make some new friends." She took a bite of her enchilada with a delighted moan. "Also, the food there couldn't possibly have been as good as this. What is in this rice?" She chewed for a minute with her eyes closed, savoring the food, before swallowing. "Sorry. Anyway, Miss. Lament was it? Thank you for the meal, and that was some impressive fighting. That spear manifestation was so amazing. Are you a Master Candidate?"

At the rest of our blank looks (those of us whose faces were visible), Wren chimed in. "Mastery is a qualitative jump in skill requirement, especially for weapon Skills. D-rank is considered a watershed for the higher ranks. People who reach the peak of the level above their own in a weapon Skill are considered prodigies who are much more likely to rank up to Master. Like Lament will be able to step into Expert pretty much the second she ranks up to F-rank. That gives her the whole rank to prepare for the jump to Master at E-rank. Master Candidates are considered elite in star system forces. Though in the wider cluster it's less uncommon."

"But wait." I said in confusion. "Don't you need to reach Master to reach D-rank at all?" Abilities ranked up when people did. So Master being a dividing like was kind of odd. If that was the case then D-rank would be much less common wouldn't it? Though thinking about it, I'd never met a D-ranker, so maybe it WAS less common. D-ranked planets (which couldn't support a D-ranker as far as I knew, just a multitude of E-rankers) were treated as pretty low ranked planets after all.

Wren didn't look surprised by my confusion. "Most people synergize some kind of Skill into their ability. People who use only their inborn power are rare. Hitting Master, or any higher rank, in a Skill is much different than hitting it with an ability. An ability is part of you, and grows as you do. It doesn't require any conditions or knowledge to rank up. Skills get more difficult as you go on. Weapon and martial Skills in general tend to be tough to reach Master in. Crafting Skills too. Of course, you have people born with a weapon Skill who can do it easily. Those are Naturals, and like people born with one of the three major crafting Skills, they're considered extremely valuable."

I hadn't even considered that actually. My own Wish ability didn't have any requirements aside from stats to rank up. Benny and the others had synergized, and needed Skill ranks to break through. But if someone had something like Inventing or Enchanting as their natural ability, then they would rank up easily like me, and I could only assume those ranks would come with the knowledge and skills necessary to put them to use. Considering how tough it was to rank up Enchanting that was a scary thought. It also made me a lot more wary of Mad Scientists in general.

Callie seemed enthralled. "So if someone was born with a Spear Mastery ability, they would just grow in technique as they ranked up, without needing to learn or upgrade any Skills? That sounds amazing. But doesn't that mean that they can't do what Lament did and rank their weapon Skill up past their current rank? Like someone with an inborn Spear Mastery could get to Master easily, but only at D-rank, right?"

"Exactly." Cut in Lament. "Naturals are tied to their rank. In the early ranks that's a huge disadvantage, because ranking up a Skill to Lesser or Beginner is substantially easier than reaching a higher Ascendant rank. Being a natural comes with downsides too." She gave a self satisfied smirk, her tone smug. "I much prefer the way I do it. I won't have an problems reaching Master, will I Master Saiten?"

The spear master just chuckled. "No, Lament. I don't suppose you will. But don't get a big head. There are people out there stronger than Master Candidates. Especially in the main systems of the five factions. Some of the larger clans and faction leadership have specialized training regimens for soul strength so extraordinary their descendants can breach the one rank barrier safely. There are F-ranked Masters your age in some parts of the universe."

Even Abel seemed taken aback by that. "That's insane. What kind of soul strength would you need in order to survive being two full ranks ahead in a Skill? That's not a temporary thing, you would have to live with that for years probably." He shuddered. "Even the thought of trying to breach Intermediate right now makes me want to vomit. My soul is already pressured just maintaining peak Intermediate. Is it even possible to beat someone like that?"

Saiten just shrugged. "Sure. There are all kinds of terrifying abilities out there. Some racial traits have absurd benefits, and there are jobs that give access to power far outside the norm. Early Mastery is terrifying, but the right kind of stat modifiers and Skills can make up for it. Not to mention just being higher rank. Still, those kinds of people are considered treasures even in big families and sects. You aren't likely to meet one all the way out here. Even things like Moonglow Dew aren't necessarily enough to rouse their interest."

At least that meant we wouldn't be fighting a monster like that. A Master Candidate like Abel or Lament was scary enough. Speaking of which, Megan seemed to have picked up on my mentor's slip. "Wait, back up. You're a Master Candidate too? Aren't you local? That's WAY more impressive. I've never seen a Master Candidate on a D-ranked planet before." She paused. "Which, ok, I haven't been to many D ranked planets. But still. That's pretty badass." She turned to Mel quizzically. "How about you? Are you a Master Candidate too?"

Our red masked teacher just shrugged. "My Fire Manipulation Skill is at Intermediate, but it just broke through a while ago. Plus Manipulation Skills are a huge pain in the ass to rank up. I'm not to worried about it though. We mostly focus on combat standards and integration. Apollyon just ranked his martial arts Skill up because he had a few years with nothing to do but train." She shot him a sharp glare at that, which he pretended not to notice as he dug into his Enchiladas with gusto.

"What about you guys?" I interrupted, trying to save my mentor. "Tell us more about the Wave Warren. We won't ask about combat specifics given we might be fighting you in the tournament, but we love hearing about the forces in the star system. You mentioned not having been to D-rank planets before, does that mean you've mostly been on C-ranked planets?"

She nodded happily. "Oh yeah. Wave Warren is based on a C-ranked planet. Granted, we aren't a C-ranked force or anything, the Warren Master is a D-ranker. But we do ok. We're not the only people from Gralter that are here either. Slime Hall managed to get invited too." She grimaced. "Damn summoners. Dealing with them is so gross. It's just the two of us from our planet though. We found out about this through back channels, and managed to keep it MOSTLY quiet."

"Slime Hall?" Callie asked with a grimace. "That sounds unpleasant. I don't know much about summoners, they aren't super common here, though I know they exist. Honestly before today I had only seen one or two. It's a pretty Fantasy heavy ability isn't it? You don't see many of those at G-rank."

That explained it. I'd been wondering where the summoners I'd seen came from. If they formed the ability through synergy at a higher level, or if they needed lots of Fantasy to be viable, they might not have been in combat much up to this point. I knew that some stats could be more easily gained through alternative routes than fights and patrols. Granted, Might was an important stat especially at low ranks, and we could still gain other stats by making an impression, but other careers like artists and pop singers provided good returns on some of the more elusive stats.

Callie had mentioned that her dad actually tried to convince her to be a pop star when she was younger. She and her mom had both put their foot down about it, and her ballet lessons had been a compromise. He figured some more artistry in her combat would help generate Fantasy, which to be fair it might have done, especially in combination with all the crazy shadow antics.

"Yeah. They summon slimes." Said Megan flatly. "Usually elemental ones, though some of them have weird trick slimes. The Slime Creation Skill is surprisingly easy to pick up at the Minor level from what I'm told. And synergy with a few other Skills makes Slime Summoning. Most of them synergize THAT with other inborn abilities to enable them to summon unique and more powerful slimes. They're a giant pain in the ass. Sometimes literally. One of their team members summons giant slimes."

This was the first time I'd heard about someone making a Skill as interesting as summoning from scratch. I knew you could learn Skills like that. Some people could teach them because they were born with an ability and took on a job, which turned that ability into a skill. I assumed you had to be able to teach those, but this seemed like a completely different thing. Kind of like a heritage a clan would have, albeit on a much smaller scale.

She went on to describe more about Slime Hall, how Wave Warren had been neighbors and competitors with them for years, and how the two of them had found out about the Moonsong Glade opening from the same source and greed to keep it secret. If some of the C-ranked forces on their planet had shown up it would have made this whole tournament infinitely harder, so I couldn't disagree with logic on that one.

We all traded stories and ate Enchiladas together, getting to know the visiting forces, and it was actually pretty nice. Sydney was shy, but extremely bubbly once you got her to open up, and Megan was pretty much a wrecking ball in terms of personality, which meant she got on well with Lament, Abel, and Callie, who were all pretty outspoken. When we finished eating, we offered to show Sydney and Megan to the Blue Robin, where they could get a better sleep. All in all it wasn't a bad night. I hoped the next day could be as peaceful, I wanted to get as much relaxing as possible done before that damn auction. Sadly, I didn't think that was in the cards. Abel was bound to have something crazy planned.

 

Before we went to sleep, I did all five wishes. I traded fifteen points of various stats for fifteen points of Fantasy. The summoners today had made a big impression, and I was interested in gaining the ability to do that kind of thing. I'd been saving my wishes for the end of the day lately, just to make sure I didn't need them for some emergency. Doomtown wasn't exactly safe most of the time, so it seemed prudent not to waste them.

At eight ninety seven, I was only three points shy of nine hundred, and I decided it was time to finally ask Abel and the others about ranking up. Or rather, about NOT ranking up. I cornered my mentor at the pool table, playing a game with Wren. "Hey boss man, was hoping we could talk. I'm coming up on a thousand points, and I wanted to know if I need to do anything specific to not rank up. Like...do I just not accept? Will that hurt me? I'm guessing you've been denying a rank up for a while. Is there some secret to it?"

He scratched his shot with a curse. "Fuck! Damn it, hold on." Wren snickered something under his breath, but Abel caught it. "Fuck you that counts. I was distracted. Put the fucking ball back where it was. I need to go have a discussion with my disciple. I have perfect spatial awareness by the way, even with my stats suppressed, so I'll know if you move it." He turned back to me, aggravation in his eyes. "Come on, lets go talk somewhere less crowded. None of this is really earthshaking info, but it's better shared in private."

Leading me back down the hall to mine and Callie's room, he kicked the door shut. "First of all." He said, turning around. "Good on you for bothering to ask ahead of time. Short answer is no. There is no penalty for suppressing rank, with the exception of being unable to gain more stats. All the stats you COULD have gotten are lost, which is why most people avoid it, but it doesn't hurt you or anything. I have been suppressing my rank, as has Mel. I did it partly for training and partly not to get attention, and she did it partly for training and partly for me."

He gave a wry snort. "Silly girl. I'd never have asked that. But she did it anyway." He sounded distant and almost sad for a second, but then shook it off. "Never you mind, it worked out in the end. Point is no, you won't be hurt by suppressing your rank. People do it all the time. Not just Mel and I, there are more than a few E-rankers who engage in the practice. How the hell do you think Moravian isn't at D-rank despite being over three millennia old? Do you know how famous he is?"

"Wait." I said, holding up a hand. "The Moravian is suppressing his rank? I thought he was just stuck because this planet can't support a D-ranker? Like there isn't enough renown for one to rank up, right?" That clashed with what I had been told badly, though to be fair Cark had much less of a reason to know details about this kind of thing than Abel.

"No." Abel said slowly. "As in, it PHYSICALLY can't support a D-ranker. This is a theoretically a D-ranked planet, but that's only because of the number of E-rankers here. It's more accurately a psuedo D-rank planet. As in, it hasn't reached D-rank yet. If one of the E-rankers tried to break through to D-rank, it would trigger the planet to attempt a rank up to compensate for the Impact increase. You know, I assume, what happens when someone ranks up without a proper foundation?"

I winced at the image. "Their soul collapses. I didn't know the whole rank thing was literal. Does that mean the planet is a dungeon then? Callie told me that places with Impact are dungeons." This conversation was a lot more complicated than I had been expecting.

Abel looked like he was starting to get annoyed. "No!"He snapped. Then he groaned. "Just...no. Dungeons are more concentrated. A planet's Impact is spread over a massive surface area, so it barely has an effect. Most higher ranked planets actually get bigger to compensate. There are Dungeon Worlds, small planets with a high rank, but they're incredibly valuable and are usually used as training grounds or heartworlds for big factions and clans."

I held up both hands placatingly. "Sorry, I don't mean to get so off track. Just one more question?" He sighed but nodded. "So why don't the E-rankers just go somewhere else to rank up and then come back? Then they would be in charge of the planet right? None of the ones who stayed would be strong enough. Or does the planet literally not support D-rankers on its surface?" I knew that wasn't the case, because Zeke was B-ranked, so there had to be some reason.

Shaking his head, Abel confirmed my theory. "No. Higher ranked people go where they want. It's complicated. D-rank is a watershed, like we mentioned earlier. The rank up to D is supposed to be...dramatic. I don't know the details, I've never seen one. Besides that the Unity runs this planet. If people were leaving to rank up and coming back it would fuck the distribution of power, so it isn't allowed. The WCP discourages that kind of thing too. It robs higher ranked planets of power concentration. When you leave a planet, you aren't banned from coming back or anything, but it's expected you won't be returning to live there."

Considering what I knew about renown being exponentially weighted as you ranked up, that made sense. Higher ranked planets were renown farms, so they would definitely want powerful people there in droves. The important thing was I'd gotten my answer, even if it came with about a dozen more questions. I nodded. "Alright, I'll suppress my rank up then, at least until after the tournament. If we do the rank up right after we shouldn't lose out on the points from the tournament itself right?"

"Right." He agreed. "No way any of the other entrants would have agreed to participate if they had to miss out on a big windfall like that. They'll probably have some kind of ceremony for the winners and let the ones who can rank up on the spot for the prestige bump. Most people joining up will be peak of G-rank about to Ascend. That's why there are a relatively low number of forces here. They needed a team that fit the conditions and was also strong enough to be a contender. Of course, not ALL of them are peak of G-rank. The prestige from the tournament will help some get there, which is why there's a wait time between the tournament and the glade opening."

That was something I'd been worried about up to this point, so it was good to have assurances. The whole planet thing was also way more complicated than expected. I'd known about the size difference, since supermassive planets had much stronger gravity to offset Might. But the Impact thing was interesting, and I wondered exactly how that effected Ascendants on the surface of that world. I also wondered if it meant Zeke was stronger here, or if he was just so much more powerful than this place that he barely noticed.

Abel chuckled at my silence, clapping me on the shoulder. "Don't worry so much about it kid. We're a long way from having to worry about things like Ascending to D-rank or how powerful people are on other planets. Take care of the problems you have before you start new ones. We have to get through the next two weeks, as well as the tournament itself, and THEN we're going to be competing with the winners of the tournaments from all the other systems in the cluster for the resources in the Moonsong Glade."

That set me to snickering. "Yeah, I guess I'm just borrowing trouble at this point huh? We have so much more to focus on." I shot him a suspicious glare, not that he saw it behind my mask. "Speaking of trouble, what exactly are we doing tomorrow? I get the feeling Sydney and Megan will be coming along, plus their entourage, and probably Wren. We've picked up quite a few passengers in our time here. I'm assuming your have something suitably awful planned we can all do together?"

Aside from spending time with new friends, which was nice, we'd also be seeing them in whatever situation Abel put us all in, and presumably learning more about their abilities before the tournament. "Awful?" Said Abel innocently. "I'd never force you all to do something awful. All of my activities are fun team-building exercises. Like tomorrow we're going white water rafting! It's going to be a blast!"

"Hold on." I said in confusion. "There's a RIVER down here?" The lake I...kind of got? I guess? Just Ascendant nonsense, but a river seemed weirder to me somehow. "But...where does it come from? Like I get Ascendants do crazy things and it's stupid to question how there can be a river but not freak out about forests and oceans and pocket dimensions that can implode. But...rapids need power? What fuels them?"

Instead of mocking me, Abel just burst out laughing. "Yeah. Everyone has those moments where they go 'how the fuck?' even with all the crazy things they've seen. The rapids aren't actually some crazy spell or anything though. The water pressure comes from Riot Bay actually."

"Wait." I said, my blood running cold. "Like...giant hate fish attacking us Riot Bay? Are there FISH in the river? Because I don't want to worry about getting smashed by carp or something again. The Bay was stressful and awful." I shuddered. "Also the smell was terrible. Plus that was just an exercise in differentiating levels of Impact on the same rank. Money aside how would doing it again even help us?"

Abel just rolled his eyes. "Don't freak out about it. There's no fish in the river. The rapids are just where all that force and energy ends up when the lake settles down again. Since there are tons of parts of the Bay that are getting those waves even when you can't see them, the rapids are always going. But don't worry. I promise there are no fish in the rapids. Hell, I can promise you nothing lives in those rapids at all."

Something about the way he said that made me worry even more, but I recognized the smug glint in his eyes. My teacher wouldn't tell us any more about this trip, because he wanted it to be an unpleasant surprise. "Alright. Fine. Well, if we're going to be doing something crazy tomorrow, I'd better get some sleep." I turned and started to head out, but stopped, looking back over my shoulder. "Also, just saying up front that if there's a fee for this insane trip, you can cover it. We made plenty of money for you last time."

As I opened the door to leave, I suddenly stopped again. "Wait...why the fuck am I leaving." I turned back to my now smirking mentor. "This is my room. Get out." I had to bite back a scowl as he burst out laughing at my stupid mistake, slapping me on the shoulder on the way out.

"I gotta admit kid." He said as he walked away. "You can be a bit serious sometimes. But you're always good for a laugh." I just sighed and rolled my eyes as I closed my door. I could do without being his comedic relief, but hey, at least the job came with combat training. I doubted I'd be where I was without Abel. Still...I was totally going to push his ass in the water tomorrow once I made sure it wasn't like a murder river or something. If only that wasn't such a strong possibility.

 

Despite the news of some dangerous river stunt the next day, I actually slept ok. I may have been getting used to living in a state of perpetual peril. Not that I would ever say that to Abel. He would probably use it as an excuse to double my training intensity or something. Still, it was hard to be worried or upset curled up with my girlfriend after a day getting to know new people and protecting strangers from crowds of Ascendants trying to kill them.

Yesterday's entire ordeal had been...fun. No one had actually died that I had seen, though I hadn't exactly stuck around to check on the people Lament cut up. It had all just been one big adventure. And Callie was right, it felt GOOD to be on the right side and know it. The WCP was so murky most of the time I'd kind of lost the feeling of just helping people. Hell. maybe I never had it. Even at the Unity I'd been running from crisis to crisis rather than taking time to just do some good.

Not that I was planning to devote myself to helping the helpless full time or anything. But Callie had reminded me that being an effective Wishmaster Candidate and being a good person didn't have to be mutually exclusive. Hell, I'd probably MADE some alliances helping Sydney out. It was a model I could keep in mind going forward. Just because the WCP existed in a grey area didn't mean I had to. Not all the time.

So it was with a weirdly cheerful demeanor that I hopped out of bed the next morning, ignoring my girlfriend's enraged hiss as she was exposed to sunlight. After an obligatory vampire joke and a quick kiss I was off to get ready, meeting up with everyone in the dining room off the front entrance.

While at night the room seemed to be some kind of gathering hall, with the pool tables in use and some darts games, during the day it was used to serve meals buffet style. They had a whole breakfast laid out in chafing dishes. To my surprise, Sydney and Megan had managed to get a room. I'd thought the Robin was full, but maybe they paid to get someone bumped or something.

They waved enthusiastically when they saw us, while Wren just sat at the table, eating some waffles and sipping orange juice with a stoic expression. Lament, Lestri, and Saiten had actually already showed up (unless they bunked with Wren at least) and were enjoying some eggs with Sydney and Megan. I fixed myself a plate of steak and eggs and plopped down across from them. "Hey guys. Morning. How's the food?" Despite asking I didn't wait and dug right in. It wasn't bad. The steak was a bit overdone, but not like shoe leather or anything, just more pink than red.

Sydney, who was clearly a morning person, took a long sip of coffee and chirped. "Oh we don't have any plans. Megan was probably going to go out looking for trouble again, and I wanted to check out the Unceasing Stairs. They sounded pretty cool, if a bit confusing." She shot a pout at the black coated man I only now realized was sitting next to her, the same on who had threatened us back at the Wombat. "Unfortunately Riley says that the place is dangerous, and that the rumors I heard were probably meant to lure gullible tourists on so people could attack them."

The dark haired man with the scruffy cheeks gave a long suffering sigh. "Yes, well it is traditionally a poor decision to announce how much you have to spend in areas such as these before asking for directions. If those young men had been any more obviously drooling over the potential windfall you represented their eyes would have been replaced with chits." he glanced to me with a frown. "I suspect your new friend may have another potential location to visit in any case."

I just shrugged. "You got me. Nightstrike and I had so much fun hanging out with your guys we figured we would invite everyone along on the trip we have planned today. Be warned, Apollyon planned it, so there's about an eighty percent chance that it involves potential dismemberment. Still, he says we're going white water rafting, and that sounds like fun to me at least." I glanced at Wren. "You guys are invited too of course, though after the fish incident I wouldn't take it to heart if you declined."

Lament cut in with a laugh. "He told us about that. It sounds fun. Your teacher seems like an interesting guy. I'll accept on Wren's behalf. Boy needs to toughen his spine a bit, and Lestri was complaining about missing out on the fun anyway." She shot a glance to Saiten. "Am I to assume you won't be participating Master?"

The big man shook his head. "Not on your life. I doubt anything your pugilist could arrange would be any significant threat to my person, but I don't particularly enjoy being wet. I'll most likely follow along on land, just in case you run across someone too high ranked to be reliably countered." Ah, so he really was like her version of Zeke. Considering Doomtown was closed to E-rankers I doubted he had reason to worry, but they weren't from around here, so being a bit wary was the smart call.

That made me wonder exactly what Zeke would DO if I was ever attacked. I knew that despite not being nearby Zeke was able to keep track of me easily. If nothing else, stats in the B-ranks were potentially in the tens of millions. He probably had enough Perception to be listening to this conversation from the literal polar opposite spot on the planet. I also suspected my mask might have some kind of Perception or conditional defensive enchantment on it.

Part of me hoped I'd never have to find out, but a deeper part really hoped I got to at least witness him cutting lose someday. Seeing what a B-ranker could do would be eye opening at the very least. I was jarred from my thoughts as a plate smacked down next to me, a rumpled and glaring Callie sitting down to my right. "Coffee." She growled. I smirked slightly as I got up to go get her some.

I made it like she preferred, then dropped it on the table in front of her with a thud. She took a long pull, closed her eyes, and let it seep into her bloodstream. Callie's morning demeanor, as usual, relied heavily on how she woke up. Getting roused early tended to make her grumpy. Coffee helped. After a few seconds to get her head straight she was fine though. The extra morning sulk was partially a factor of her trying to do things for herself and be a bit selfish like I asked, even if she never said it.

"So." She said, after polishing off the whole mug. "What were we talking about? My brain just switched on a minute ago and it had to boot first." I snickered at that, grabbing her plate and heading to the buffet to fill it up with things I knew she would like while she talked to the others. I didn't feel like rehashing, so it seemed faster. Speaking of hash, there was some corned beef hash I hadn't noticed, as well as biscuits and gravy and I added some eggs before bringing the plate back and setting it in front of her.

She almost swooned at the smell. "Thanks honey, you're the best." She never took her eyes from the plate, but gave me a perfunctory peck on the mask before she assaulted her breakfast like it had sworn vengeance on her family line. Since everyone had already seen Callie eat yesterday, they understood that as long as you kept your appendages away from her mouth she was safe enough to eat with, and didn't stare at her devouring her food with relish (not literally, thank the gods, I'd have left the table).

"Anyway." Said Sydney. "I was just telling Nightstrike that rafting sounds like a lot of fun! I doubt even Riley would complain about it, the big worrier." She stuck her tongue out at the somber, formal man, and he gave a small smile. Sydney had warmed up to us all immensely over last night's bonding, and it was jarring to see what a big difference that made in terms of our interactions. She reminded me a lot of Jessie now, actually, though still less outspoken and a bit more timid.

Megan nodded. "Rafting sounds like more fun than trolling for a fight. At least in this town. Half the idiots I met yesterday were garbage in combat anyway. If I was included in the invite I'm in. We can pay our way, and pay for our people too." She nodded to Riley and the five other rabbit themed attendants. "We brought two teams for this. Kind of like your friends over there brought three." She nodded over at Sloane, who had just come into the room with her own posse.

I almost literally smacked myself in the face with my palm. Of COURSE Sloane brought twelve people to form three teams. Why not triple your odds. Hell, Melinda was an E-ranker. She probably knew about the tournament before I did. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd sent along the twelve of them specifically so I could get them ready for the tournament in the first place. I felt like an idiot for not considering it before.

The only thing that made me feel a bit better was that Callie looked as shocked as I did. It was a little petty, but it was nice to know I wasn't the only one thrown in the deep end with all this. She was way more suited to political maneuvering than I was, but she was still learning, same as I was. Seeming to pick up on my amusement she just rolled her eyes, mimicking Sydney's earlier gesture and sticking her tongue out at me.

We all finished up breakfast, with Mel and Abel being the last to arrive and eat, and then Abel hopped to his feet excitedly. "Alright." He said with gusto. "Since we're all finished, which of you are planning to come along on our little excursion? I'm assuming the kid told you all about it and invited you. He prefers to share the pain." That got an uneasy chuckle from a few of the minions, and a middle finger from me, which my teacher just laughed off without acknowledging it verbally.

Everyone who was interested held up a hand, letting him know who was coming. He nodded in satisfaction. "Oh good. None of you are trying to weasel out of it. I knew I liked you for a reason." He clapped his hands together. "Well then, let's get going. It's a bit of a walk to the river, and we want to get there early before all the boats are gone. They run out sometimes and we'd need to wait for the next day for them to get new ones."

With that, he turned on his heel and strolled out of the room without another word. I got another ominous feeling from that last statement, but once again it mostly just confirmed what I knew. This would be dangerous or life threatening in some way, that wasn't news. The others gave me exasperated smiles for the most part, but we all got up and followed after him once we paid for our meals. As we left, I couldn't help but look forward to the coming day. This had been a lot of fun so far, even the dangerous parts. I had no reason to believe this next activity wouldn't be the same.

 

We avoided Dale's place on the beach as we approached the lake, taking the long way around the shore and circling along the edges in a direction I hadn't even realized we could go. The whole of Riot Bay was absolutely huge but it wasn't a perfect circle. After walking for a bit we came to a place where the lake let out into a river about five hundred feet across, and as we approached one very important thing became clear.

"We're all going to fucking die." I said matter of factly. I glared over at Abel, who was now grinning in satisfaction. "Like, I know you've had us do some crazy things, but that's a meat grinder. It's going to kill all of us."

He let out a happy sigh. "There it is. Your reactions have been getting so banal and sedate. I find the whole 'I've seen it all' demeanor tiresome. I love the fear and anxiety." He gave a melodramatic cackle. Hands clenching into claws into the air as he really hammed it up. "Tell me more how scared you are for your lives worms!"

Without any hesitation Mel reached out and smacked her lunatic boyfriend upside the back of his head. "Enough of that you moron." She turned to us, her tone softening. "Don't listen to him kids. It's not as bad as it looks. I know it seems scary, but don't forget how much Impact you all have. This is just water, sure, its being whipped around pretty crazily, but you're more than up to it. You got hit with spray almost as strong out on the bay when fishing. You're not going to die from getting tossed around in the river."

"Unless they get dashed on the rocks!" Abel crowed gleefully, clearly enjoying this entire performance way too much. I made a mental note never to let Abel get bored. I hadn't seen this side of him, and while some of it was probably to put some fear into our competitors, I suspected this was at least partially just how he dealt with boredom.

Mel, contrary to my expectations, didn't immediately refute him this time. "Well, yes. Unless you get dashed on the rocks. Don't do that."

We stood, waiting for her to continue, but she just gave an apologetic shrug. "That's it?" I yelped. "Don't do that? Gee thanks Auntie. I've been wondering how to improve my dodging skills too. Do you think not getting hit would work? Or maybe I can improve my accuracy by hitting the spot I'm aiming at. Sweet revenant, you can't give us better advice than 'don't do that?' You're supposed to be the sane one!" Then I paused, glancing back and forth between them. "Comparatively."

She snickered a bit. "Ok first of all, that hurts. Second of all, this isn't really that kind of exercise. I guess I can tell you the point, but it'll be obvious once you get out there. Each of you will be in a two person canoe. All you have to do is manage your oars properly so you keep upright and straight. It requires good teamwork and reaction skills." She shrugged. "Not everything is a mysterious lesson you have to puzzle out. Don't flip over. It's not that complicated."

"And the rocks?" Callie asked desperately. Her voice was almost as high and worried as mine had been. It wasn't that this was ACTUALLY any more reckless than the other things we'd done either as a group or individually, but it was so...scary. Standing this close I could see the glowing blue water crashing against itself. Hear the roar of the river even from dozens of feet away, so loud I doubt I'd have been able to hear anyone speak if not for my Perception, and even feel the bulletlike snap of droplets of water peppering my face as they were thrown free by the collision.

Intellectually I realized that the water wouldn't be a huge danger (though apparently the fucking rocks would be) but as someone who had been mortal not too long ago this was terrifying to me on a visceral level. Which...was probably the point. Seeming to get my hesitation Mel decided to actually say something comforting. "Hey, don't get so worried. It's extremely rare for people to die here. Especially with your armor, as long as you stick together you'll be fine. The chances of BOTH of you having your head dashed against the rocks and being knocked out are vanishingly small."

Well...she TRIED to say something comforting. I could see her point though. Even on the off chance one of us got knocked out (which was incredibly unlikely for me at least considering my armor) and if we stayed unconscious, the other could rescue them. The buddy system was pretty safe here. I still turned to the others. "Ok. Well, when I told you guys we would be risking life and limb I kind of assumed I was being alarmist. You can always wait here if you want, instead of wading into...that."

I gestured at the water. It was moving fast and rough enough that I was pretty sure it would at least hurt getting battered by it, even if it couldn't actually damage me. I was deeply uncomfortable with going out there, but I was also here to train, so I would suck it up now that I knew we almost definitely wouldn't die. I'd done riskier training...probably. The others had no reason to stick around though, and were free to avoid this lunacy.

"Not a chance in hell." Lament cackled. "This sounds like a blast. I'm just sad Falken couldn't make it yet. He's showing up later, and it's a shame I won't have my proper partner. Lestri, you can sit in for him if you want." I blinked, I'd thought Vector was their fourth, but it sounded like he was just along for the ride. Guessed that was my bad for assuming. Come to think of it I hadn't seen Vector in a while. I guessed he wasn't one for this kind of craziness. At least one of us was sane.

"Alright." I said, turning to my smirking mentor. "So how do we do this?" I glanced around, finally finding another small shack. It was harder to see this one because it was squat and made of stone, almost lost in the spray of the rapids. "We getting the canoes over there?" Everyone else turned to see me pointing at the hut.

Gesturing us forward, Abel headed for the shack. "Yup. No one sane wants to sit in that place all day and either get pelted with rough water bullets or listen to them drum the walls. They have it set up so that you can insert chits into a series of locks that hold the canoes in. You add the chits, the locks open, you take the canoe. There are a limited number per day, and they honestly overcharge because the damn things nearly always break. They just go with disposable ones and then refill them every day."

Remembering hearing him mention that they could run out, I understood the situation. Luckily if they were disposable at least they shouldn't be too pricey. As we approached, I could understand better what he meant. The low roar of the water and the occasional snap of water droplets had become what was basically a permanent hurricane as we got close. I was glad I was wearing armor and a mask, because even the constant drumming on the skin of my wrists and neck was driving me crazy. I stepped sideways, putting my body in front of Callie, who whether it was her legs or most of her face, wasn't as covered as I was.

She gave a sigh of relief and reached out to grip my hand tightly, and I squeezed back. Most of the others seemed fine in the spray, though Sloane and Sydney looked bedraggled as they were pelted with droplets. When we reached the hut, Abel grabbed the door and kicked it sharply as he twisted the knob, popping it open and leading us inside. As he'd mentioned the droplets stopped, but we could hear them constantly pattering on the stone outside.

The inside of the hut was much bigger than the outside, and while it was kind of damp and I could feel stray bits of sand under my boots, it was orderly for the most part. A large, metallic floor led up to walls lined with a series of sort of metal claw like devices. The claw itself was wrapped firmly around a canoe, holding it in place securely, and next to each device was a metal waist high pillar with a coin slot and a sign.

The canoes cost a single H-ranked coin, and I gave a long whistle, which got a chuckle from Abel. "Yeah, they buy these in bulk." My mentor said. "They're flimsy as hell. They're only made to last a single day and they start breaking down as soon as you get out there, so be careful how much you trust them on the water." He gestured for us to put in the coins, but I just say there and stared at him.

When he didn't make any move to insert coins I cleared my throat. "We had a deal old man. I'm not paying for your murder attempts. I'll do your exercises, but after how much you made on our work last time I refuse to foot the bill. Pay up or we bail."

Abel looked aghast at the statement, but Mel just rolled her eyes. "Oh just cover them. They have a point, you made some decent change at the bay, and I did pretty well betting on them at the Bone Arena." As Abel sighed and walked sulkily over to start depositing coins to open up the claws, Mel turned back to us. "Oh, and just a bit of friendly advice, since jackass over there is unlikely to mention it. Balance is key here. Not just staying upright, but making sure to exert the right amount of force on each side. It's too easy to flip out there, or even end up going in circles because one of you is paddling too hard."

That actually seemed helpful and we thanked her as we lifted the canoe up to carry it out to the river. Abel shouted one last bit of advice to us. "By the way! Make sure to go into the water with plenty of space between you. If you're too close you'll smash into each other and both pairs will go under. And remember, HAVE FUN!"

As we approached the shore, we all split off, Callie and I carrying our canoe. Well...I was carrying it because Callie was a foot shorter than I was and doing it at an angle would have been annoying, still. It was easy enough considering my Might. As we drew closer I shouted down to her. "So you think they were doing a good cop bad cop thing to convince us to accept the challenge?"

Callie laughed. "A really obvious one, yeah! But still, I trust them. I doubt they would go through all this trouble just to kill us. If they wanted us dead Abel could have beat us to death a hundred times in training. It's not like he wouldn't be just as culpable if we died in the river after he led us here. We have a ton of witnesses that this was his idea. No, I think this will just be another painful training opportunity."

Shifting the canoe to one shoulder I scooped her up onto my other one, earning a squeal as she was pelted with water once I wasn't acting as a blocker anymore. As she shrieked I laughed and shouted up to her. "Well in that case we should listen to our teacher and do the assignment correctly. Like he said, we should have some fun!" Then I jogged off toward the nearby shore, Callie cackling in glee as I went. I just hoped I wouldn't come out of this one smelling like fish.

 

As the canoe hit the water, the two of us slipped inside without too much trouble. We'd gotten a running start, so it wasn't too tough, we just had to be sure to land on the canoe before the water swept it away. Once we did, we slid into it and each took up once of the paddles, slamming them into the water quickly to prevent capsizing as we were swept up into the rapids and yanked out into the riot of water.

My eyes widened a bit as the canoe was jerked around and we barely managed to stabilize, having to adjust on the fly as the angles and pressure changed. It took a minute to get the hang of it, but luckily my mask kept me from gettin splashed in the face. Callie had covered her own face with a veil of shadows to prevent water from getting in her mouth and eyes, and despite how confusing the helter skelter water way was, we managed to finally get the hang of it after a bit.

I realized quickly that rowing wasn't exactly the right move here, but rather, I needed to use my oar to sort of angle the water in a way that pushed the canoe in the right direction. Callie was doing the same, and we definitely needed our combat trance to properly adjust the oars as the water changed constantly, with each of our attempts altering the course of the canoe.

Still, once I got the hang of it I couldn't help but grin in delight. This was wild and crazy, but it was also fun. Aside from the crush of water making it kind of hard to see, being thrown around was actually a lot of fun. I was so caught up in it that I barely noticed the dark shape forming in the water in time to plant my oar and jerk us out of the way, barely missing a HUGE G-ranked rock rising out of the rapids and concealed by the spray. Swinging a hard left had taken us down a fork in the rapids, but I didn't have time to pay attention to that aside from noting the others had followed us as the river changed.

Callie shouted something that I couldn't really hear, but it turned out to be a warning as we suddenly dropped and began plummeting straight at yet another huge rock. The rapids had started descending, and we had to steer with all our might as we were essentially thrown into freefall, being hurled back and forth with barely enough time touching the water to steer properly. I considered using Leaf on the Wind on the canoe, but I was genuinely worried we would be flung off the river entirely by the water pressure.

As we were hurled around I could see the other canoes being thrown into the same part of the rapids, and we had to adjust to those too. Our friends were having just as tough a time, but also seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much. As we came within a foot of Sloane, we could hear her howling with joy, and couldn't help but laugh at how crazy all of this was.

Of course, that was far too tame for a training session Abel had come up with. While this was all fun and difficult, it wasn't enough to really push us. The rocks were stationary even if the water wasn't and I was suspicious that we'd figured out the real purpose of this test. Or at least, had noticed its real form. Sure Mel told us what to do, but Abel loved nasty surprises. I couldn't imagine what exactly he would come up with though. Rapids were all the same. Just crazy waterslides with dangerous rocks and...waterfalls...at the bottom.

My eyes snapped up, focusing through the spray as hard as I could, and sure enough, when I looked hard anough I could see a cloud of more diffuse spray down the river about a mile or two from us. I nudged Callie, who turned around in confusion, barely able to react to a rock in time because of the distraction. I leaned in and bellowed. "WATERFALL!" Right into her ear.

Even our Perception wasn't suited for picking sounds out of this kind of tumult, and it took me a few tries to get it through, taking a couple seconds and a few hundred feet. Finally she looked where I pointed and screamed. "Oh fuck! Waterfall!" I'd probably have laughed if we weren't about to plummet over a cliff on a death stream.

Focusing hard I got even closer, my mask pressed almost to her ear. "What do we do?" I bellowed. No idea how to avoid this. It wasn't like we could just make a turn. We were pretty fucking stuck on this path. I doubted Abel would give us a test that would definitely kill us, but I was pretty sure it would come close if we didn't figure out how to deal with it. Based on the speed and force of the river and how fucking big it was, this drop would be a doozy too. The spray down there was being flung up pretty high into the air, if not for the steep downward drop along the way it would have been way more noticeable.

Unfortunately there wasn't really time for a plan. We'd have to just take it as we went, making sure not to get dashed on the rocks. Hell we were still trying to control our forward momentum to avoid the ones in the rapids themselves. But there were several along the top edge of the waterfall we would need to slip between to get out without being dashed on the rocks. I planted my oar in the rover, curving the water as best I could to force it to push the back of the canoe.

As I made sure my end was in line, Callie was desperately doing the same on her side, making sure we had force acting in the opposite direction to keep us straight, not to mention adjusting that force to account for all the rapid changes in pressure. It was like walking on the edge of a knife blade.

Shockingly, I noticed Lament's canoe slide up next to us, scything through the water with seeming ease. As she got within reach she looked over casually. "Hey." She shouted. "You guys know there's a watefall coming up? This place is great!" For probably the first time I saw her looking genuinely excited outside battle. I wasn't surprised, she and Abel were similar in a lot of ways, and apparently this was easy for her so she was probably treating this like a vacation.

I was confused as to HOW she was doing that, until I took a closer look at her oar. Or rather, the oar she should have been using. Which turned out not to be an oar at all. She was steering with a fucking spear. That...how did that even work? The oars were large and float, easily able to shape the water, but that spear wasn't a giant ass blade like Wren's was. Lament's spear was much slimmer and more deadly, but she was managing to somehow cut the water currents in a way the altered her trajectory.

Lestri, who was on the boat with her, wasn't even doing anything, just sitting back and enjoying the ride. I could only assume that this was more Spear Mastery bullshit. It seemed like having a high level martial art or weapons skill really could offer a lot of utility. I suspected she might have been using her ability in conjunction with it like Abel did, but still, this was just blatant cheating. I really needed to start grinding up my Balam Skill. I was betting it could do some amazing things in conjunction with my DS Mastery.

Shaking off my jealousy, I shouted back. "We noticed! Have you seen the others?" I couldn't see Sydney or Megan anywhere, and Sloane had vanished after we almost ran into her earlier. The only reason we could even have this conversation was because of Lament's craziness. Since the others would still be pinballing around it would be dangerous as hell for them if they didn't see the waterfall coming.

Luckily Lament nodded. "Yeah! They all know. I think they're aiming for the gaps closer to the banks though!. The splashback from the edges of the river neutralize some of the force! Not much, but a little. Anyway I'm heading through, catch you on the other side!" She turned back to the waterfall and struck out with her spear at the front of the canoe, apparently cutting through the water and somehow speeding up her advancement.

I hoped I didn't have to fight her in the tournament. She would fucking destroy me. My only real shot was if Abel ran into her first or we took her out in the team matches. I didn't have time to dwell on that though, because we were drawing closer and closer to the waterfall, and it was taking all our skill to try to thread the needle between those huge rocks before we went over.

Seeing the rocks flash past my eyes as we went over, I paled slightly. I'd come within inches of being smashed flat. While the water itself wasn't enough to hurt any of us with our current Impact, Abel had been right to warn about the rocks. They were G-ranked too, and hitting stone with the same Impact as we had at whatever absurd speeds this mealtrom was flinging us about would absolutely have done extreme damage. We might not have died, but getting knocked out as mentioned was a strong possibility.

As we went over, I let out an involuntary scream as we were grabbed by the mightily descending torrent of blue glowing liquid and shoved downward easily three times faster than the most extreme speed on the rapids. I lashed out with my oar as I shifted my weight, trying to angle the canoe sideways to break some of the momentum and create drag. I saw the shapes of other canoes as dark blots across the waterfall, each at different altitudes. Sharp rocks poked out of the water along the length of the several hundred foot drop.

Unlike before when my worry was being thrown clear, this was a place where being lighter would actually help. I used Leaf on the Wind, straining to cover the whole boat, and our descent slowed noticeably. It was still a rapid drop, but were were managing to resist the push of the water somewhat. The resistance gave both of us the chance to put our oars to work and steer ourselves as best we could to avoid getting dashed on protruding rocks on the way down. Not that we could see the situation at the bottom.

The spray from the water smashing into whatever was at the base of this cliff (we really should have done a complete lap around the Bay before agreeing to any of Abel's ideas) was obscuring whatever was down there. I was PRETTY sure it had to be a lake or something. No way Mel would have let Abel hurl us at flat ground and get crushed to death. Not that I thought he would. Even my teacher wasn't quite that much of a dick.

As we wove our way past several protruding rocks, we got close enough that I could see the water WAS collecting in a basin. There were more rocks, but maneuvering along this waterway was easier than doing the rapids in some weays, and we skidded along the length of the waterfall and I had to strain my skill hard to resist the pressure as we smashed into the water.

Luckily, since it was the bottom of a waterfall the constant disruption of the new water hitting constantly broke the plane of the surface of the pool. We smashed through it, the canoe below us taking all the damage and basically dissolving into scrap as we were submerged. We swam up quickly to get out of the way as another canoe made contact and crawled out onto the shore. As I slumped over onto my side, shaken and gasping, I looked up to see something interesting. A cave. Huh, those we usually fun.

 

The cave in front of us was actually kind of inviting. The subtle blue glow that emanated from the hole in the rock made it seem like it had been designed just for us. The dark rock was worn mostly smooth by the splashback of water, or possibly by something else. Regardless, I could see small spikes of crystalline material the same shade and luminosity as the water from the river lighting our way down the tunnel. Focusing on what was important, I shook Callie slightly. "Hey, Cal, you alright?"

She groaned and rolled over. "Ow." I nodded sympathetically. She had much less coverage than I did from armor. I knew it was partly for mobility, but I was also pretty sure she just liked her style. Fashion hurts I guess. She sat up slowly, reaching up to wring out her soaking hair, which was dripping with luminous water. "Shit. This isn't good. My hair is glowing, which means I can't use it as a vessel. My coat should still work because of the material."

I reached up to touch a bruise on her forehead with a scowl, and she yelped a bit and pulled back. "Damn it." I snapped. "What the hell is Abel playing at? This is too far, even for him. We could have died. The others might have been injured, I saw at least one of them hit the pool. Lament should be fine, but if that was Wren, Sloane, Sydney or Megan things could be bad."

Wren had ended up going with Beric while Croll had partnered up with Sloane, since there were only three of the Spear Legion here. I hadn't seen him near us though. I was seriously pissed we'd been sent here. To my surprise, Callie just sighed, shaking her head. "I don't think so." When I cocked my head she just sighed. "We turned during our trip down the rapids. I barely even noticed it, but right after we started to descend. I think we might have gone off track."

That...was a good point. Fuck. I hadn't considered this might not be within Abel's calculation. Thinking about it though, if he'd been aiming for us to come to a place like this he'd have tagged along. I heard noises off behind us and whirled, putting myself in front of Callie. Lament stepped forward, followed by Sloane, Croll, Lestri, Beric, and Wren. "Oh good. You all survived." She said sunnily, in a better mood than I'd ever seen her.

Sloane sighed. "Ignore the lunatic with the pointy stick. Have you two seen Megan and Sydney? Also where the actual fuck are we? I don't know anything about Doomtown, but I feel like they should mention to people that there's a big fuck off waterfall when they rent canoes. Maybe put up a sign."

I just shrugged. "I mean...could we have even read it in that mist and splashback? Hell, maybe there actually WAS a sign, and we just missed it." She seemed flummoxed by that thought for a second, but before I could continue, we heard another sound off to the side of where we were standing. I turned to check and noted with relief that it was Sydney and Megan, both of whom looked a bit bedraggled but still fine.

The others all noticed as I did, and we hurried over to meet them. "Hey, glad you guys are ok!" Said Callie. "We were worried there for a second. Pretty sure we took a wrong turn there. Though I'm surprised we all ended up going the same way."

Megan snickered at that. "You guys were out front at one point, we followed you. If everybody's fine it's no big deal though. I guess we need to climb back up then?"

"We could..." Said Lament slowly. "But don't you kind of want to know what's in that cave? My Fantasy sense is pushing me toward that thing. Plus it's a secret CAVE behind a waterfall. What kind of Ascendants would we be if we didn't at least check it out?"

I sighed internally as I saw Callie's eyes snap to the entrance. My girlfriend was a rational and logical person most of the time, but when she got even the slightest hint of loot she essentially turned into a ravenous beast. Not that I didn't love loot. But Callie took the same sort of primal joy in finding treasure that I did in finding a good fight. I was pretty sure there was absolutely zero chance of getting out of here without exploring now that it had been phrased that way.

On second thought though, Lament was right. This was a pretty limited place. G-ranked and low F-ranked Ascendants were the only ones allowed. No way the WCP hadn't swept this whole place for anything over the threshold. There might be some monsters down there, sure, but we were a pretty badass group. We should be able to handle anything we came across.

Still, I put a hand on Callie's shoulder as she started forward. "Wait." She stopped, turning to me in confusion and I slipped off a glove, spinning up my scan ring. A few seconds and Abel's face appeared on a screen above my open hand. "Oh, hey!" He said cheerfully. "We were waiting down where the rapids calm, but you guys never showed. What's the deal?"

I panned the call around, showing off where we were. "We're...somewhere? We took a turn off the main rapids and went over a waterfall. There's some kind of cave down here we were going to check out. Figured I'd see if you guys wanted to come check it out." Whatever was down here I'd feel better with Abel onboard. Our mentor was a Master Candidate like Lament, and we knew him a lot better.

To my surprise, he perked up. "Wait really? That's awesome! I didn't even know that was there. I've only done this a few times. Maybe your Fantasy senses pushed you to turn? Either way, I'd love to come, but I have no clue where you are. I'll try to figure out where the waterfall is, you guys go ahead and we'll catch up if we can." He sounded ecstatic about the possibility, and I smiled ruefully under my mask as I hung up. Fucking Ascendants man.

"Ok." I said, turning back to the others. "Apollyon and Starbreaker are going to catch up, they said to go ahead. I guess...let's check this place out." I doubted we were the first to find it. Even if it had been a Fantasy thing I couldn't have a Fantasy that much higher than everyone else. My stats were always lower. The only possibility I could think of was that only Might focused people had tried the rapids, but even so, there was no way SOMEONE hadn't been down here.

Callie squealed with joy, bouncing up and down before grabbing my hand and dragging me toward the cave. I snorted at that and eased out my cane, getting ready to deal with anything we came across. The others trailed behind as we stepped inside. The crystallized lake water (I assumed) cast a glow that let us see but still left patches of shadows along the walls. As we stepped inside, our feet echoed across the eerily smooth surface of the tunnel.

Small rocks and gravel appeared as we stepped inside though, crunching underfoot, the density of the fragments increasing as we followed the tunnel further in. We all tried our best to be quiet, Callie and I shifting into stealth, but Lament seemed to be unworried, strolling through the cave tunnel with her spear over a shoulder, looking around with interest.

The small spider that dropped from the ceiling was dead almost before I noticed it. Her spear lancing out lazily to perforate it multiple times before she stepped smoothly out of the way and let it smack wetly into the floor. I jumped. "Huh." Said the Spear user. "That's interesting. I wonder if there are any more?"

Sloane stepped forward, kneeling down next to the corpse. "Rockjacker. Nasty variant. Venom turns body parts to stone." She poked it a few times. "This one seems to be a baby. So...yes, probably a few more." She slipped out a knife and jammed it into the things mouth, levering it open before cursing. "Shit. You nicked the venom sack. They're actually worth some money. Still, let me..." She cut into the body casually, with no hesitation at all, until she shouted. "Jackpot!"

Reaching into the wound she yanked out a small lump of red that I realized was a half digested ruby. "Rockjackers refine their venom by eating precious stones, usually ones with some kind of stats." She held up the ruby, looking closely at it. "Damn. I think this had a naturally occurring fire rune, looks like the stomach acid ruined it though. Still... should be a decent few points of Might left."

Reaching out for the stone, I weighed it in my hand. It DID have Might in it. Not a lot, but enough that it could be used in crafting. She was right, I could see part of a corroded rune. Still, this thing would be worth a decent chunk of cash. "So...why did the spider attack Lament? I thought they eat rocks?"

She shrugged. "Bones are rock like. Plus they have a ton of stats when you're talking people our level. Still, it's surprising that it jumped out at a group of us. Rockjackers are usually pretty timid. Granted, it's just a little thing, but that should make it more wary not less." She frowned pensively. "Who knows though. We'll have to take a closer look. It'll be valuable though. Breeding Rockjackers collect a ton of stones for their young to feast on when they hatch so they can grow to adulthood and strike out on their own. As young as this thing is, there's no way they've finished the stockpile yet."

Callie's head snapped around. "Are you telling me." She said slowly. "That somewhere in this cave there is a giant spider web containing a huge pile of valuable Ascendant gems that we can just FIND and take?" She was starting to breathe heavier, and I could swear I saw her hands twitch.

"A spider web." I reminded her. "Presumably containing a spider. Which considering how big this thing is as a baby, is probably fucking HUGE and might be F-rank." Not that I expected that to stop her. Besides, we were all approaching peak G. We could take some stupid spider, especially with Lament here helping with her cheat level Spear Skill.
Callie had the same thought apparently because she turned to the Spear wielder. "Can you kill a beginner F-rank spider? Not alone or anything, we'll be right there helping, but we need to make sure we have a finishing blow that can put it down. You're the best shot at that."

Lament looked positively gleeful. "Hell yes I can! I've killed worse. Especially if you can pin it down for me, I'll pincushion the eight legged bastard." She whirled her staff around, spinning it dexterously between her hands as she struck out a few times to demonstrate her point, the air cracking from the speed and force of the stabs. I could see everyone was getting into this idea already.

I didn't mind doing it, but I wasn't going to let Callie get killed because she was treasure hungry. I could see her head wasn't in this. "Ok." I said hesitatingly. "But if we do this we aren't doing it with just us. We need to wait for Apollyon and Starbreaker. They'll want to be involved anyway. You know how much Apollyon loves money." Callie looked a bit impatient, but at my intense stare she nodded and I sighed in relief. I was obviously going to support her in this, but doing it without Abel was an unnecessary risk. Once our teacher got here we would be almost guaranteed to be able to handle this. But hey, at least Callie was making dumb decisions for her own happiness. Oddly, this one didn't make me feel better.

 

Luckily for me, I didn't have to wait long for Mel and Abel. The two of them were fast, and when told they were looking for a giant ass cliff, it wasn't exactly tough to find the right spot. Of course, the two of them didn't come down the waterfall, as we watched, the two of them slowly descend from the sky, held aloft by Mel's flames as they blazed up from underneath them like some kind of rocket booster.

"I didn't know she could do that." I said to Callie. "Did you know she could do that?" Seeing the two of them slowly descend from the sky on a cloud of fire was breathtaking...and also extremely aggravating. We'd had to fall down a fucking waterfall. I wasn't ashamed to admit watching them leisurely floating to the ground was pissing me off.
Abel grinned cheekily as he touched the ground, looking us all over critically. "Wow, you all look like shit. No wonder you decided to wait, everyone looks like a drowned rat." He paused. "Well, not Lament, she seems fine. But the rest of you look like something that was clogging my sink."

"First of all." Said Callie. "Shut up. Second of all what took you so long? We found a nest of some kind of gem eating spiders down here that is supposed to have a stockpile of valuable Ascendant materials." She grinned over at our Beast Lord Garden friends. "We're just lucky Sloane is a huge animal nerd, or we might have just decided the creepy spider cave was more trouble than it was worth and left." I hadn't mentioned the details on call, there were far too many valuable things in that cave for me to trust bringing it up on a scan ring.

That got a nod from Mel. "Understandable. Spiders are gross." She looked around with interest. "Seriously surprised nobody found this place before. It's pretty out of the way, and flight at our rank isn't common, but still. You'd think SOMEONE would have ended up down here like you guys."

Lament laughed lazily. "They probably did. That spider was sneaky as hell, if I wasn't so well trained it would have completely blindsided me. Sloane said the venom turns people to stone too. They've probably killed dozens of G-rankers down here. I'm guessing other than the bones which apparently they wanted, the rest of the body gets petrified and destroyed."

My face paled slightly. "There...there was a lot of gravel in that cave. Not at the entrance itself but further in. It might have been bodies." My stomach turned a bit at that. Fuck, every time I forgot how dangerous it was down here someone reminded me. "Plus there's a potentially F-rank adult spider down there too. Even before the babies were born, I have no doubt it would be able to easily kill the few stragglers who showed up."

Now I was even more glad that I'd waited for Abel and Mel. Who knew how many G-rankers had died in that shitty cave. Thinking about it, if we hadn't had Lament with us we might have gotten bitten, and even if the venom hadn't killed us, there were bound to be more of those things in there. If we'd been swarmed we would have been fucked.

I didn't know if Fantasy was the reason we'd found this place, but if so, I'd need to be way more careful of that sense. Sure, it would guide you toward things that would grow your renown and help you ascend, but things that helped you advance could also kill you. I wasn't afraid of a good fight, but it might be prudent to be a bit more cautious going into that kind of thing.

After we discussed what to do next, we settled on having Lament as the advance guard, with Abel following behind. Mel would bring up the read for wider view of the field. Her fire abilities made for great crowd control. I was pleased to see her carrying the orb we'd picked up for her too, I was glad to know it was actually useful.

Finally we began our trek inside. I grimaced at the gravel once we got a bit further in now that I knew what it was, but stayed focused. Apart from having my cane up and ready to swing, I also kept a close eye on the nearby area with my Seek Hidden skill. Granted, it worked better on larger things, but I could still see the spiders if they got close, and was able to point several of them out for Lament and Abel to kill.

More than once I had to act directly when one of them dropped from the ceiling at Callie, or was saved by her quick thinking when they tried that on me. Not every part of the cave ceiling was close enough for the skill to work perfectly, and some of the rooms with higher ceilings had multiple nasty surprises. This pattern went on for about twenty minutes, until we came to a new room with a fairly low ceiling, and I froze in place at what my skill was picking up.

The others all came to a stop when I did, the ones in front turning to look at me in confusion. I swallowed and set my feet. "Twenty. On the ceiling. They seem like they might be sleeping, but there's no way they won't notice us walking below them. Starbreaker, can you fry them?" Avoiding combat sounded boring, but fighting almost two dozen venomous spiders sounded like a huge pain.

Sadly, it wasn't to be. Mel shook her head. "Not in here. I'd fry the rest of you with them. They're G-rank, and the amount of power I'd need to use would be enough to injure most of the people here. Your armor might protect you, since you're pretty much entirely covered, but not the others." I cursed, but wasn't surprised. That had definitely been too convenient to work.

I was far from the person I'd been months ago though. Not just in terms of stats, but my Skills and combat standards were both much higher. Reaching into my store of attacks I triggered a shadow attack along with Sucking Mud, forcefully synergizing the two skills and pushing them to activate as fast as possible. Just like the last time I'd used that move, tendrils of dark mud lashed out from the ceiling the spiders were crouched on.

Five of the damn things actually got caught, the rest squealing with distress and hurling themselves off the rock before they had a chance to get grabbed. With fifteen spiders in free fall, their overwhelming advantage of having a bunch of legs and being skittery fucks was pretty much neutralized.

Wren, Lestri, and Lament, picked six of them out of the air, two stabs each finishing them off before they even hit the ground, while Abel smashed three with a series of massive punches. Mel couldn't carpet bomb the place but she was free to shoot condensed darts of flame. The blossom shaped attacks landed on the spiders as closed buds and then consumed three of them in flames as they opened.

Callie was focused on the ones on the ceiling, targeting the five I was holding with ease thanks to the abundant shadow energy already condensed into the area., she shredded them easily even as Sloane, Beric, and Croll lashed out at the last three, each taking one and reducing them to ribbons within seconds.

All in all, the whole fight took about thirty seconds tops, and we were all left staring at the absolutely decimated cavern in shock. Well, not all, Abel, Lament, and Mel seemed to be pretty calm. The rest of us though, were in shock how dangerous our combined assault had been. My head was a bit sore from the soul weight of launching that attack so quickly, but still, this had been almost no effort.

Megan, instead of looking shocked, just looked annoyed. "Damn it!" Yelled the tall blonde. "I wanted to kill some of them! Did you guys have to hog all the kills?" Turning to Sloane, she demanded. "Are there going to be more of these things? That's like thirty counting all the ones we killed on the way here, if I don't get to fight anything I'm going to be pissed."

The dark chuckle Sloane let out was anything but comforting. "Minimum egg laying size for Rockjackers is a hundred. Some of them can lay twice that many. You don't need to worry about having targets. Still, this was a good thing. Killing the bastards before they could bite us was important." She brandished her knife. "Of course, not as important as scavenging their venom sacks and checking their stomachs for gems. Anyone care to help a girl out?"

To the surprise of literally no one, Callie gleefully volunteered to help disembowel dead spiders looking for magic jewels. She and Sloane made excellent time tearing into the bodies, and managed to dig up a whole bunch of half digested gems. Some of them had apparently been swallowed recently enough that they hadn't degraded much, and even more amazingly one of the intact ones had a functional lightning rune on it.

Since this trip was turning out so lucrative we decided to sell off the proceeds and then split the credits after, so everyone was just passing their stock to Sydney, who apparently had an honest to gods spatial ring on her. Even as the heir to powerful sect that was pretty impressive and it made the whole trip way more convenient.

Once we finished with that we moved forward again, taking out the odd spider here or there as we swept through the cave, until finally we came to one absolutely massive chamber that was much different than the others.

The inside of this cavern was brightly lit. The other caves hadn't had more than a few of the crystals on the ground, so the ceiling was cast in heavy shadow. This room though, the ceiling was festooned with huge spikes of blue glowing crystal.
More than that though, between the crystal hung strands of glittering crystalline material, spun into delicate patterns and traceries that it only took a minute for me to recognize. "That's web." I said in awe. "The lake water dripped down the web and crystallized it. I don't know how it isn't breaking, but it looks like it retains its flexibility. Maybe it's the spider? I don't see i-" I stopped talking as my Seek Hidden skill finally picked up the adult spider in its spot off in the back corner.

Calling looked me with concern. "Solomon? Everything alright?" Despite my sometimes distractable nature, stopping mid sentence wasn't a habit of mine. She'd noticed before anyone that I was distressed, but that wasn't a shock given how attuned we are to each other. I didn't have any words to respond though, I was too busy pointing up at the monstrous arachnid crouched back in the darkness.

Well, where there should be darkness. In reality, the spider was glowing too, its monstrously huge form coated with a thick chitinous armor shot through with veins of the same glowing crystal as the web. Eight abominable eyes blazed blue as they fixed on our group, not advancing or attacking, but waiting. "Step into my parlor." Murmured Abel, before grunting at an elbow from Mel. I appreciated that. I'd have done it if I was close enough. Like this shit wasn't horrifying enough.

Of course, that wasn't what caught Callie's attention. When I pointed, her eyes fixed on a much denser weave of web directly under the spider, which was covered with multicolored gems of varying sizes suspended on the same crystalline strands. The light from the spider shone down through the gems, creating dancing auroras on the cave wall behind it. I recognized the frenzied look in my girlfriend's eyes as she looked at it and sighed, drawing my cane. "Alright. Who has a battle plan?"

 

As it turned out, most of the suggestions for a plan amounted to 'group up, and hit it til' it dies'. Callie, even nearly apoplectic with treasure madness, did not approve of anything that sloppy, and visibly forced herself to snap out of her trance to come up with something better.

I wasn't entirely sure if Abel really couldn't think of a better plan or was testing us, but with his bloodlust I wouldn't put it past him to really just decide to try to overpower the thing. Since that would probably be dangerous, and there would DEFINITELY be other spiders hiding around here (though I couldn't see them since they were much smaller and this cavern was too big) we couldn't just attack the thing. We'd get swarmed from behind, and I doubted even Lament and Abel could take on an F-rank spider monster solo while under siege.

Once I explained that, Sydney suggested a possible solution. "Well...I might be able to help. My ability is luck manipulation. I can curse people or animals. Things will go wrong for them if they can." I knew that was her power. I'd totally called that. Still, she grimaced. "For an F-rank...well, it'll be difficult to do much. Impact can resist most powers, but insubstantial things like luck are the hardest hit in terms of defense. If I go all out I can maybe prime it for something bad, but you'll need to provide some impetus."

At our blank stares she sighed. "Do something dramatic to create opportunities for things to go wrong. Stab it or burn it or throw a huge rock at it or something. The more it has to try to defend the more openings for things to go wrong. It probably won't be anything big, even with all my effort, but it should put us in a good position. Especially if Megan helps me out."

Her sister nodded. "I can bless people with good luck. Same basic idea, but backwards. Syd is the bad rabbit, and I'm the lucky rabbit. Our abilities are stupidly rare, so we're considered kind of like the star disciples of the Wave Warren despite not being too strong. People like Riley are way stronger in direct combat, but it's almost impossible to get luck abilities through skill synergy unless you buy some stupidly expensive Skill from one of the factions with the job system."

Thinking about it, I wasn't sure how the hell I'd make a Skill like that either. Still, it gave us some options. "So you can use your good luck aura on the person who attacks while Sydney uses hers on the spider?" I might be able to help a bit with this. When she nodded, I grinned. "Ok then. I think I might have a plan." I leaned in to whisper it to Callie, using my Stealth Skill to make sure I wasn't overheard.

She was delighted. "That might just work. Can you manage it from here? I'm not sure what your range is, but if you miss it would just set the thing off." She looked nervously at the gems in the web and I rolled my eyes. She was worried about them getting damaged in my attack.

"It's fine." I said firmly. "I'm not aiming for them, and the worst that happens is they get a bit dinged up. They're Ascendant materials." A bit of a drop wasn't going to destroy them. Stomach acid from a G-rank spider was a whole different level of harm than a few hundred feet down to a stone cave floor, if they even fell. Though on second thought I made a mental note to use Sucking Mud on the ground below them just in case. The rocks here were tough enough to hurt US after all.

Seemingly reassured, Callie turned back to the others. "Ok, when you see the opening Solomon is about to make, Lament, I want you to attack. Apollyon and Starbreaker will stick with the group to counter the spider horde with us. If you see an opening you can help Lament from range. Wren and Lestri your martial arts should be very compatible so you'll follow her to attack once the opportunity presents." She nodded to the Wave Warren girls. "You two go ahead and do your thing."

No one asked what the plan was for me, because there was no way to announce it to everyone at once without the spider hearing. It would be fine though. Once the two girls focused, their eyes both glowing, I grinned and leveled my stare at the spider. Or more specifically, at its web, where the strands were most concentrated in their connection to the wall. Then I triggered a flame attack from Cark along with Touch of Tears, shaping the blast into a long, thin area near the wall."

The corrosive green flame snapped into being with a lance of pain through my skull, and the spider reared back reflexively. This cave was much bigger than the last one so we didn't need to worry about getting cooked, but the spider was much closer and screamed in an undulating multi-tonal howl that made me want to cover my ears.

As the acidic poison fire ate away at the strands, I felt the ineffable strings of fate pulling in both directions. My flame seemed to hit all the right spots connecting the web and spider made the exact wrong moves as it jerked back. There was a crackling, ripping sound and strands on the other side started to fracture and fall away. The spider scrambled across the web toward the ceiling, but the rock was superheated from the flames and on contact it screamed again and jerked away.

Which was the absolute last bit of strain the web could take as the section it had perched on gave way. I used Sucking Mud, both to save the gems and to trap the spider when it hit, and managed to get the skill in place before the giant beast impacted the cave floor. The wet crash seemed to have set off a tidal wave though, as smaller spiders poured from every crack and crevice of the room and converged on us.

"Fuck!" I spat with worry. I had plenty of attack options, but I was dangerously low on defense. I might be able to manage a combo with Callie, but my head was already ringing. I didn't want to rely on soul strength too much at the beginning of a battle like this. It would be far too easy to overdo it and become a liability. This was going to be a marathon not a sprint. I pressed my back to Callie's, doing my best to eliminate openings for both of us, and slipped into the combat trance. At the same time I tried something new.

It wasn't too much of a strain really. The overlay had never cost any charges or been particularly difficult. Even the effort of adjusting it to work through the trance and allow Callie access wasn't much of a problem, just a tiny bit of pain. It didn't tax me overly much so I wasn't worried about burning myself out.

As soon as it clicked into place I felt everything...shift. The arrows I knew appeared, but not just for me. I heard Callie gasp as the tapestry of red and green arrows covered the world. Our Balam Skills were incredibly synergized already since she was my teacher, and the combat trance made us almost a single entity in battle. Adding on the overlay just made everything click into place. It was that last push we needed for our cooperation to become perfect.

My cane came up without thinking, following an arrow on instinct to smash past Callie and knock away a spider leaping for her from the side. A blade of shadows shredded the one trying to drop on me. I was a bit worried about the others but they were strong. We had to pay attention to ourselves. I used my poison fire on the cane and the world turned into a tapestry of blood and death as the spiders poured over us like meat into a grinder. I smashed and burned and crushed them as Callie tore them apart.

At one point I saw Lament's spear manifestation out of the corner of my eye, the spear user targeting the giant spider and creating a path with her weapon. Despite that I didn't watch long. I had enemies to kill, and this whole battle was calling to me, showing me how to move, how to react, in the most perfect possible way. It wasn't just the overlay, or Balam. It was all of it. All the disparate elements. Callie taught me my Skill, we trained together constantly.

Between one breath and the next I felt it all click into place and I had to fight back a grin. A Skill. This was all I needed to create a Skill. I wondered if even Mel and Abel had this one. I knew it was going to be wildly useful 8n the tournament. I might not know what it was called but I could tell what it was for. Teamwork.

But within seconds I knew they definitely did. This Skill wasn't unique, sadly. In fact, based on the way it worked I was pretty sure this had been the point of all the training up to this point. So many things we'd been told, some of them almost contradictory at times, finally clicked together into one whole package.

It was a strange feeling. The combat trance wasn't really necessary now, not like it was gone, but like it had become part of us, had become just another sense like touch or hearing. It wasn't just what we already had either. I could see where the building blocks were leading even as I felt it twinge and lashed out for an attack. First step predicting the other person's moves, second step sensing their peril as your own, third step abandoning defense to protect them. All of it building to this.

I didn't need to abandon my defense to protect Callie anymore, and she didn't need to abandon hers to protect me. We protected each other, and ourselves. Under this new sense our cooperation was seamless. No longer a give and take, no longer a circle, but more like two hands attached to the same mind. I could sense not just her movements and weaknesses but her intentions for her next attack.

This was how Mel and Abel were so damn good at fighting together. I could feel the name of the Skill too. Minor Paired Dueling Mastery. True seamless teamwork. I had no idea what this Skill would even look like at higher ranks, but for the moment it had completely upgraded our combat efficiency.

Before, I'd felt almost lopsided, hanging on a thread and hoping Callie would come through, but now that feeling was gone. I knew when she was moving to defend, when she wasn't going to make it, and she knew when she didn't have to try because I could intercept an attack myself. My blows and her shadow blades chained together like a whirling storm of crushing slicing death.

I felt a few of her clones form and was able to perfectly take advantage of the shell game she was playing with them, her armor covering her in a way that made it impossible to tell what was shadow and what wasn't, unless of course you were me. I smashed my cane down on one spider, and turned my back on anther to unleash the stored force on my cane to a third, not even needing to look as shadows bisected the one flying at my back.

After almost fifteen minutes of pitched battle, I smashed the last of the small spiders. It took me a second to realize they were gone because I could still hear the sound of battle. Mel and Abel had finished their section earlier and were even now helping out with the powerful F-rank spider. The thing was injured in several places, legs damaged and armor crocked, but it's blue eyes blazed with rage and hate. I looked at Callie and she returned my unasked question with a nod. We still had one more monster to kill.

 

I was shocked that the spider seemed to be handling all three of our best fighters, even with the rest of our group as support.. Megan and Sydney were off to one side, eyes glowing as they doubled up on their ability. Sydney was using hers on the spider obviously and combined with Megan's good luck aura on Lament, combined with the Master Candidate's technique and Skill, meant she was able to counter the limbs of the spider as it tried to skewer the others.

Sloane had her wings out and was flashing around the massive beast, lashing out with wing attacks, while Beric and Croll were defending the Wave Warren sisters. Wren and Lestri were backing up Lament, or rather, using opportunities she gave them to take cheap shots, while Mel was constantly hosing the thing down with fire and using her flames to maneuver out of the way when the spider inevitably attacked.

Abel was helping Lament counter the limbs, mostly focusing on one or two specific legs that were going for Mel. The spider was also much deeper into the Sucking Mud than expected, probably due to weight, and was having trouble pulling free for attacks. The combination was keeping it from smashing anyone into meat paste, but even with a pretty fantastic strategy, the cracks spreading along the spider's armor were slow to form and already healing.

I grimaced. High impact kept the wounds from being too severe, which meant Vitality was taking care of them. Given this thing could spawn a hundred kids, I was guessing its Vitality was high. I called Callie over closer to me. "We need to handle the regen." I murmured to her quietly. "At this rate we won't be able to wear it down. You up for another try with the overlay to get past its defenses? I only need to land hits on the cracks that are still healing."

My cane was still crackling with poison fire from the last fight. The ability, especially combined with some augmentations from some of Benny's attacks, should at least counter the healing facto. That would help our heavies wear the thing down. I was pretty sure with enough attacks stacked I could do one massive blow that would at least hurt it, but then I would be out of commission and the spider would still be around.

Spreading the poison fire through it and making sure Lament and Abel's moves stuck better was a much better use of my limited soul strength. Callie seemed interested. Without new Skill the two of essentially had two points of use for Perception. It wasn't anything crazy like doubling our senses, but we could Perceive things through each other and the Skill could process that.

It made it infinitely harder to sneak up on us, and theoretically should have exponential benefits to Stealth Skills once we had some time to train with it. Since Stealth relied on our own ability to find and eliminate traces of our presence, the Minor Paired Dueling Mastery Skill would have compounding effects. That was a matter for later though, for now, between the two of us and with the overlay resonating with the Paired Dueling Skill, we should be able to get past the spiders attacks.

As soon as she agreed, I triggered Leaf on the Wind. I felt like I could use the bond from Paired Dueling as a connection to cast skills on Callie, rather than needing touch. It still strained my soul minimally, but I could handle it easily enough for now. With that taken care of the two of us blitzed in toward where the others were fighting the spider, bypassing them and darting in to attack.

I whirled my cane up in a circle, triggering A triple stacked tranq blow with my cane as a medium. Since I wasn't combining skills or overclocking anything it didn't really strain me at all, and I knew I could use all ten of these hits without much trouble. The spider, sensing an attack, smashed down with one of its legs. Abel and Lament hadn't known I was going to attack, so they weren't able to counter it, but Leaf on the Wind and the overlay were a fantastic combination.

Throwing myself up over the blow, I felt the shadows beneath me push me up like a trampoline, right along the path of the arrow I was aiming for. The overlay allowed Callie to see what moves I might make, and Paired Dueling let her sense what I would do and when through our new strange bond. The combination meant she could support me perfectly from behind even without directly interfering.

With such a powerful monster we couldn't risk a head on attack, but augmenting my avoidance was just right. I brought my cane down hard on the cracked armor where Abel's most recent blow had damaged the thing. The triple strength mixture of poison fire and tranquilizer didn't seem to have much effect, but that wasn't a shock. This thing had a ton of Impact.

"Apollyon." I bellowed as I flipped away, Lament catching the leg as it came around and deflecting it with a spear manifestation. "Hit the green spots!" Then I darted around, Callie creating an aisle of shadows for me to slide on in a move I hadn't ever really seen her use before. I could sense it before she did it though, so I didn't slip as I flashed over the ground.

We came in for a second attack from the other side, and managed to score another hit. Another glowing green fracture stood out on the already glowing blue armor. The third time we went in I followed the overlay as best I could, but I wasn't able to avoid the retaliation of the spider.

The monster noticed me coming and tried to spear me with a viciously sharp attack. The only thing that saved me was my F-ranked armor and the type of blow. Piercing attacks were up there with energy in terms of my ability to tank them. If the thing had laid a solid smashing hit on me my bones would have been powder. Instead, the F-ranked spider only managed to do so nasty pressure damage in a very limited spot.

Still, the force sent me skidding back across the floor, cracking at least one of my ribs. I hit the stone surface of the cavern floor and bounced a few times, skipping like a stone. I felt my teeth rattle multiple times as I hit, and in the end, I was left on my back, staring up at the glittering ceiling gasping for air. My entire chest was on fire and I could barely move. I heard Callie scream my name, and within seconds she was crouched over me.

"Shane!" She shook me, making sure I was focused since I was staring into space. I groaned as her shaking jarred my injured rib. That spider blow had caught me in the side. It hadn't penetrated my armor thankfully, or I'd have been impaled and probably killed, but it had seriously fucked me up. I forced myself to focus, and triggered a scan heal and then a healing surge, forcing the two abilities to cooperate to maximize the recovery speed.

I expected to be flooded with energy and immediately knitted back together like usual, but the damage only began to slowly recover. The attack had been F-ranked, and the Impact difference was mitigating the effectiveness of the heal. At this rate it would take fifteen or twenty minutes for me to recover. I groaned up at my worried girlfriend. "Ow. Careful." I tried to get up, but found myself unable to right my body. "Here, help me sit up without messing up my ribs?"

"Right!" Her voice was frantic, and I could feel her distress through the Paired Dueling Skill. An echo of her intent allowing me to pick up the strong emotion. It was...kind of sweet. Knowing for sure someone cared like that. Most people never get to feel for sure what someone else thinks of them. I knew Callie loved me enough to be afraid for me, which was more than a lot of people got. She helped me sit up and waved a hand in front of my face. "Are you ok? Do you have a concussion?"

I laughed, grimacing at the pain of the motion, and slowly reached up to stop her waving hand. "That isn't how you check a concussion, Cal. But no, I'm fine. The scan heal says a few broken bones and torn muscles, and they're mending. It's just slow because of the Impact difference. Did the hits we got in help out at all? I was planning to stack a few of those to make sure it countering the regen properly."

She looked over her shoulder, then back with worry. "Maybe? The thing looks a bit slower. We might have overestimated ourselves here. Abel taking out a shitty F-ranked random is NOT the same as trying to kill a spider the size of a small house covered in plated armor. We kind of forgot that materials vary in strength even within a specific rank. Armored spider beats human in terms of durability."

Fuck. She was right. We'd been cocky after seeing a bit of success with our training. Fighting up a rank against a single person who was freshly Ascended wasn't the same as a battle of this level. I'd blame Abel, but my mentor wasn't the type of person who considered limitations. Hell, he might be able to finish this fight alone over a long enough timeline. But we didn't have that. Luckily, I had an idea of how to finish this. It was just going to suck a lot. I looked up at Callie's worried frown. "Get Abel over here. I have a plan, but I need him for it. If this works like I expect I might be able to help him put this thing down for good."

Sensing my seriousness, Callie didn't bother to argue, running over to get our teacher and bringing him back. Mel came with him, since he wasn't there to provide fire support. "Hey there kid. Nasty smack you took there. This isn't a last words thing is it? Because those are always a bummer." I glared at him, managing to muster the strength to flip him off. Then I explained my plan.

After going over the details, he blinked at me. "That...that could work. You sure you can manage something like that in your condition?" I nodded grimly and he shrugged. "Well, why the hell not. Let's give it a go. I should be able to aim it well enough to avoid the damage. I assume this will knock you the fuck out?"

"Yeah." I said with a wince. "This is going to suck. A lot. Kneel down and put your hand on the ground. The G-ranked cave material should help with power, but it's going to take even more effort from me." He followed my instruction, and I put a hand on his arm, preparing myself to not only use a series of powerful combo moves but to twist them to fit someone else. This was going to be the biggest soul weight I'd ever held up under.

Stone Limb. Consecration of Flame. Touch of Tears. Mercy Kill. Flurry of Blows. A fire blast from Cark, a triple stacked density shifted attack. I layered in every skill and move I could stand, my vision swimming and my head in so much pain I thought I would black out from it as I created a poisonous blazing magma limb of such destructive power I was sure I'd never done anything close to as strong. Abel stared in awe at the limb, which was blazing with such bright green fire that it was hard to look at.

He grinned manically at me. "Thanks kid. I'll take it from here." I had Callie help me stand up so I could watch. Without and hesitation, my teacher turned and threw out a punch. Space warped, and a massive green and black magma fist appeared over the distracted spider, smashing down into it with more force than I could ever remember seeing. The thing was flattened into the Sucking Mud, which I dispersed, trapping it in rock as Abel hammered it over and over with the enchanted limb. As the armor cracked under the repeated blows, I felt my sight dissolve into darkness. Yeah, I'd been afraid that would happen. Worth it.

 

Lament was not pleased at that big flashy death of the giant spider. "I HAD it." She groused. "I was having fun, and then you had to go be a big showoff." Which to be fair, might have been true, even if that wasn't really the point. While Lament COULD have probably killed the spider, it would have taken much longer and the rest of us would have been in way more danger.

Wren, who obviously understood that, cleared his throat. "Yeah...I'm with them. We were wearing it down, but that thing was dangerous. You can scratch your battle itch in the tournament." She glared at him, but he seemed unperturbed. While he might have been scared of her, she was also a teammate. He wasn't worried about her attacking him for no reason, and he was right about this.

To my surprise, Callie stepped up next to the spear wielder and patted her on the shoulder. "It's ok. We still have all the loot to gather. You can help me with that. Collecting treasure always makes me feel better." Her voice was cheerful and almost bouncy as she started forward to once again start gutting tiny spiders to check their stomachs for valuable materials. Lament, not having anything better to do, started helping, while I went to check on Abel.

My mentor was flexing his hand, grimacing at the motion. "You ok?" I asked as I approached. I'd never really used any abilities like that on another person. Maybe one of them or something, but not a massive stack of powerful attacks. My head was still pounding from the strain of manifesting all of them.

Abel looked almost grim. "I'm fine." He said tightly, still flexing his hand. "There are downsides to that kind of attack. It was exceptionally powerful, but using it the way I did increased the strain on my body. My hand is a little raw. It'll heal, it's just going to suck for a while." I wasn't sure what that meant, given his hand was in a glove, but to make Abel, one of the toughest people I had ever met, react like this, it must have been agony.

That was kind of a scary thought. It was easy to think of my teacher as some invincible badass, but knowing he was mortal under all that terrifying combat prowess wasn't comforting. If anything, not being able to take his invincibility for granted was going to make this tournament more of a worry, not less. I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, activating another scan heal/heal burst combo.

Scan heal on its own wasn't incredibly useful for someone our rank, but Jessie's heal bursts were incredibly effective, if unfocused. The combination let the powerful healing energy of the life force target injuries and mend them directly instead of wasting the extra power supercharging the body with extra energy. Abel blinked at me as the green life force swarmed is hand and began repairing it, though it hardly went away immediately.

My own injuries from earlier were still mending, though they'd mostly started to fade after a few minutes and another scan heal/ heal burst combo. The stored attacks were extremely useful, but at this rate wouldn't last long. To be fair we normally wouldn't be hunting down an F-ranked creature. Being able to finish it off was pretty impressive, even as a team. I glanced over at the cracked and damaged armored spider, which Wren and Lestri were trying to pry out of its protection.

"That was damn impressive though." I gestured to the spider. "Even with the augmentation from my skills. Being able to kill that thing so easily is no joke." We'd pretty much set the fight up perfectly, or else I wasn't sure we'd have won, but Abel's contribution was by far the highest. Granted, having so much hard stone to act as an anvil to that blow had certainly helped.

Abel didn't like happy though. He just shook his head. "Yes and no. We got really lucky. That thing wasn't made to fight on flat ground, and your skill restrained it. Even so, there were several times it could have killed us. I got overconfident. I've killed F-rank humans before who got in my way, and it made me confident in fighting up ranks. Seeing Lament fight though, it reminded me that I was fighting useless trash when I did that. There are other powerful people like me, and even at my own rank they might pose a challenge."

I glanced at the spear wielder where she was helping Callie. "Are you saying you don't think you can beat her?" Lament was scary, but Abel was Abel. I couldn't get my head around him being afraid of someone. Sure, I felt that kind of fear, but Abel seemed so unshakeable. He was a force of nature.

He shook his head. "No." Then he paused. "It's more that I don't KNOW if I can beat her. Which on one hand is exciting. I love a good challenge. On the other hand though, if she's here, someone else at the same level may be as well. The team match will be fine, but what if one of you or Mel run into someone like her. Not all of them will be as affable as she is. I'm starting to worry about how our team will do in this tournament."

I had my own ideas for dealing with that. "Don't worry too much about us. I have ways of keeping us safe." We'de already tested wishes for retreating and a tournament would make that kind of thing even easier to arrange. A single breach of the rules and we could be spirited off to the waiting room. I wanted to win this, but not at the cost of one of my friends. Worst case we would give up on the Moonsong Glade. It wasn't worth losing anyone I cared about in this competition.

Escape wishes were the best possible safety net, and with four of us it was entirely possible without compromising my contract with the Beast Lord Garden for even a day. I couldn't wish for a safety net myself, so that only left three, and Abel didn't seem to feel he needed one. I had two spare wishes a day, and that meant I could ensure the safety of our teammates without letting anyone know those two wishes had been used.

This was all a matter for later though. I clapped Abel on the shoulder, eliciting a small wince since it was his still healing arm. "Anyway. Don't sweat the small stuff. Just make sure you're at your best. In the meantime we should head over and move that spider. It's on top of a fortune in Ascendant materials." He grinned at me then, a quick flash of gratitude and amusement that settled into his usual mocking smirk and we headed over to where the shattered spider lay.

As we closed in, I couldn't help but whistle. The sheer size of the thing was awe inspiring up close. Seeing it on the web or from a distance hadn't done it justice. I felt a thrill of fear clench my stomach and weaken my knees as I imagine standing to face something this big and terrifying like lament had. No running or dodging, just me against the enemy head on.

At the very least, I knew that wouldn't be a problem here. This thing was dead as a door nail. Half submerged in stone, the top of the monster was cracked and broken, but more than that, the armor and meat below it were damaged and corroded. Touch of Tears, under the magnification of all my Skills and Abel's own tremendous power, had been carried along with the force and truly destroyed the spider. Even with that corrosive effect gone after I dispersed it, the remains had been seriously damaged.

Which we gave no fucks about. We weren't here for spider meat. We'd strip the armor for sale just in case, and probably the legs and mandibles in case they could be made into weapons, but at the moment it was what lie under the beast that we wanted. I activated Sucking Mud, wincing slightly but still able to do so since I wasn't altering it at all. My soul was extremely strained right now, to the point even normal Skills hurt, but they were still usable at least.

Luckily my body was fine, and the two of us had no trouble lifting the bulk of the spider and hurling it off to one side. A quick use of Seek Hidden left me able to see all of the materials, and Callie's timely arrival (she'd seen us move it and come running) to supply me with a shadow forged net, let me fish up all the gems and leave them in a substantial pile off to one side along with all the others.

Most of them were G-rank, since they needed to be digestable to the baby spiders. A few large pieces of stone were apparently F-rank materials the spider had been saving to consume itself, but they were few and far between. With the base currency in H-rank chits, it was estimated most of the smaller ones would got for a few dozen. Materials could only be worked by crafters, and unless we held onto them to sell piecemeal we were going to need to give a bulk price to unload them all.

The F-ranked stuff we were going to keep for the big auction. We were going anyway so we figured we might as well. We'd unload the spider armor and claws at the same time. Callie took great relish in totaling up the gains, figuring out exactly what we were going to get, and when she finally reported the total, even I was pretty gobsmacked by exactly how much money this trip had netted us.

Three E-ranked chits. Three thousand H-ranked coins which could be considered the base currency here. It was...a LOT of money. Even someone like me with almost no grasp on how the Ascendant economy worked was blown away. Abel looked like he might pass out. In the end, we decided on the obvious even split. Sydney and Megan got one, the Spear Legion got one, and we got one to keep for the Pavilion.

Sloane and the others felt like they hadn't done much, and I was a guest elder anyway, so my force growing was a net benefit to them. They abstained from taking a share. Which left us with a single E-ranked chit to invest in the Pavilion. Deciding that growing our new faction was the most important thing, we handed it over to Mel.

Resources were strength too, and there were so many ways spending money could help increase the power of our faction. Improved training equipment, alchemical pills and elixirs, even Skill Crystals. Those were extremely rare here on Callus. You could find useless ones around in some of the Unity branches, but nothing impressive or worth the price. The reason was that the production of the Skill Crystal itself was a closely guarded secret. The blanks had to be specially prepared to be imprinted with a Skill. Buying blanks was much pricier and much more useful to forces like ours.

I'd even considered having Callie imprint Balam on a blank for our people to learn. Not that it was a direct transfer. More like a way to watch memories and get a feel for the Skill. I figured I could try to learn enough to push my Balam Skill up to Beginner and end the geass at least. I was pretty sure paying for a wish with a Skill crystal of a Skill I made wouldn't work, but since we hadn't considered it beforehand it should be a solution at the moment. I dismissed the idea though for the moment. We'd need to see if we could even get any, it wasn't like blanks grew on trees. One more reason to look forward to the auction.

 

It didn't take too long to get back up to where the others waited. I noticed Master Saiten had stuck around up at the shore rather than come down. Knowing what E-rankers could do I wasn't sure that actually mattered, but I made a note anyway. Once we got back to shoreline we all split off to head back to our relative hotels. That gave me a chance to get the wishes for the Beast Lord Garden out of the way, giving them all five wishes again, and putting another fifteen into my Fantasy stat.

Once we got back to the hotel, Abel pulled Mel, Callie, and I aside to talk. He led us back to one of the rooms, closing the door. "So." I said once it had been shut. "We got the Skill for Paired Dueling. Does this mean we don't need to finish the training down here?" I wasn't sure if that was an intriguing or disappointing prospect. Doomtown was a dangerous mess, but it had been interesting so far.

Abel just shook his head. "The Skill is still at Minor I assume?" We both nodded. "Then we can still get plenty out of this. Minor Skills are the easiest to rank up, and a Lesser version of that Skill will serve you much better. Plus you're getting a better idea of the kinds of things you'll be dealing with in the tournament. Hell, I'M getting a better idea. Despite being experienced Mel and I are still locals. Our view of things is ultimately still too shallow."

Seeing Lament fight seemed to have excited and scared him in equal measure. I knew for his own sake he was more than enthused for a fight between them, but it had put the potential danger the rest of us might see into perspective. He wasn't the only one either. I was planning to focus on getting my DS Mastery Skill to Intermediate. Seeing what Abel and Lament could do with theirs I was interested to see if I'd notice any changes. Even if I didn't though, it would be worth it. I'd be getting another finishing move next rank.

I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wasn't sure why or from what. I didn't think it was about the tournament or Lament or anyone from the rafting trip. My Fantasy stat was higher now, and I was getting a better feel for that ineffable sense it brought. My best guess was something to do with the auction, and I didn't intend to keep that to myself. "So..." I said, trying to figure out how to put it into words. "This auction. I get a not so great feeling about it. Does anyone else feel that or am I just letting my imagination run wild?"

To my surprise, Abel's eyes snapped up to mine. "Really? How long has this been happening?" At my shrug he bit his lip. "I don't sense anything. But there's more than a few possible reasons for that. For one my Fantasy probably isn't as high as yours at this point. For another fate sense isn't really one size fits all. It tends to point you toward things that will be interesting or dramatic for YOU. Just because you'll be running into something that will get you attention doesn't mean I will."

I'd never heard it called fate sense before, but that was a pretty spot on description, and I decided I liked it. Still, it left the obvious question. "Does that mean we shouldn't go? We can always give it a miss if it'll be too dangerous. I'm sure they have some way to sell our items and pick up the money later."

I wasn't one to run away, but I also wasn't one to risk my friends pointlessly. If the others decided we shouldn't go I was fine with that. Callie was the one who would ultimately make the decision, but I knew she'd be just as interested to hear their take on it as I was. A quick glance told me I'd been right, as she nodded her interest in hearing the answer when I looked over at her.

Mel fielded this. "No. We can't afford that. Not just because of the auction itself, though there are bound to be expensive materials we can't get elsewhere, but also because if we back down the others will smell blood in the water. They'll swarm us and we won't survive. Ascendant confrontations are a matter of reputation as much as combat, as you probably know. If we get a rep for being weak, we'll be buried in half assed challengers until we get taken down by numbers alone."

That didn't sound pleasant. I could kind of see her point too. An impressive team would scare off a lot of low level challengers. I doubted we'd get many teams just giving up when we faced them in the prelims, but we'd probably see SOME. We were pretty scary, and we could continue making an impression. A bit of danger now would save us work in the future.

Plus we needed some Skill Crystals. Balam was a dangerous and useful martial art, and Callie's foundation would bring our fighters right to the edge of making their own strides in it for Intermediate. Prior to that Skills were a bit more standardized, so learning Callie's version of it wouldn't hurt anyone's potential advancement.

"Alright." Callie said with a nod. "Then we go. We have the spider armor and some of the F-rank gems to sell off, and that should give us some money to play with, even on top of what we have. I'm sure there'll be plenty of interesting items to pick up. That just means we have a few more days to kill before it's time to attend. Once that's done we can reassess. Do you have any ideas by the way? On how to get out Paired Dueling to Lesser?"

I was curious about that too. The mild situational empathy and predictive ability was useful, but I didn't know where it would go from there. We basically fought like two halves of the same whole. There was room to improve that of course, but I wasn't sure how. Then again, Minor Skills were usually pretty weak, being only mortal level. It was highly possible the main benefit of Lesser was just a more complete version of what we had. Though that made me wonder what Beginner Paired Dueling might entail.

Sadly, there didn't seem to be some special method. Abel's shrug made that clear. "Not really." He said apologetically. "Just more of the same. Minor to Lesser is just a matter of polishing. You usually see extra utility in Beginner, which somewhat prepares you for finding your own path to intermediate. Not always though, really just depends on the Skill."

That did make me a bit confused about something. "If Intermediate is where people usually start to do their own thing, how come you and Lament have such similar manifestations?" I'd been wondering why it seemed like Intermediate, which was so personalized, seemed to manifest the same for them. He'd mentioned that manifestation was a common thing with Intermediate martial arts too, so it wasn't just them.

"Utility." He said calmly. "While it's true Intermediate is mostly self determined, one of the main weaknesses of close combat and weapons Skills is range and scope. Addressing this is one of the most common steps down the path to Mastery. It's not universal, but it's compatible with a shockingly large number of combat styles. Expert level martial arts start to branch more, though there are still some themes that a majority of them follow."

Mel broke in. "What he's not saying is the similarities are only superficial. Intermediate isn't just adding a new aspect, it's about personalizing a Skill to be something more attuned to you. Perfectly adapting your martial art to your combat style and your other Skills and ability. It's why he's so far ahead. He spent years doing that anyway. Soul strength plays a big part as well of course, since as you know a strong soul is needed to modify Skills, which is an integral part of stepping into Intermediate and beyond."

I knew what she meant. "Is that why Mastery is such a stumbling block? Because people don't work their souls enough and get stuck relying on the native soul strength from rank ups?" I asked. I knew that rank ups would increase your soul strength naturally as you Ascended, but it never occurred to me when they mentioned Mastery being difficult that the two things could be related. It made sense though. It also reminded me of something else. "And is soul strength what lets you resist recursion?"

Abel shook his head. "No to the second, yes to the first. Lack of soul strength is one of several reasons Mastery poses a challenge to most people, but no, soul strength isn't the same quality that allows someone to resist recursion. It's...related? But not the same. There are people who manage to reach the higher ranks warped by their recursion. They aren't common but they exist. We're getting off topic anyway. We were talking about training. We'll be doing more generalized combat going forward. Some sparring, maybe some days at the Bone Arena for the last day or two."

Mel cut in. "That will be later though. For the moment our biggest windfall down here is interacting with and learning about the external factions before the tournament. The Wave Warren and the Spear Legion are mostly on good terms with us, but we have one other faction we don't know too well yet. We have an in with the Darkling Institute but haven't exploited that. Our best move here would be to learn more about them before the auction."

I was torn on that actually. I got a bad feeling about the Darkling Institute. On the one hand that meant I should be looking into them deeper to head off any backstabbing, but it also meant I didn't want to be near them. I wasn't sure what was tipping me off about it really, fate sense didn't work like that, so it wasn't Fantasy. The only other thing I could think of was some kind of bleed over from my diviner class. Still, that felt nebulous and ridiculous. As much as I trusted my instincts on some things, I couldn't justify depriving my team of powerful allies because of a bad feeling I couldn't even put into words.

I decided to keep quiet about my concerns for now. If we hung out with the Darkling Institute's fighters I'd have a chance to observe them up close. Maybe then I would be able to put my finger on what bothered me about them. Or maybe it was just necromancy that I had a problem with. Gods know I didn't have a nice first experience with them.

"Well." I said cautiously. "Where should we meet them then? Assuming we can get in touch. Maybe we could avoid any activities that involve water. I don't really think there's anything more to gain from Riot Bay after all the time we already spent there. Unless there's a secret water park that you forgot to mention? Because that actually kind of sounds like fun."

Abel shook his head, but his mouth was stretched into a grin. "No water park I'm afraid. But I do have a slight inkling of something fun to do. There are plenty of interesting games to play down here that don't involve water." He looked to Mel. "What about the Shatter Lanes?" Her eyes widened and she started to chuckle, before bursting into a full on laugh. Abel looked back over at us. "Yeah, I have an idea. Just our of curiosity how do you feel about giant birds? Specifically how do feel about the idea of racing on them?"

 

Sadly, being that he was a sadist who lived to torment us, Abel refused to say another word about the Shatter Lanes until the next morning when we were just about to leave. He did invite the others, but Sloane and the others had gotten an offer from some of the low F-rankers in the Beast Lord Garden to spend the day with them. Apparently they were planning to take their seniors down to Riot Bay to do some fishing, hoping to make some more money.

I wished them luck, but that left us with Sydney, Megan, Wren, Lestri, and Lament coming with us still, which would be fun. We also had the wolves with us. They weren't fans of water so we hadn't brought them to the bay but the Shatter Lanes weren't water based, and Abel insisted they would have a blast there. We'd had them wait in the rooms before, and I felt kind of bad about cooping them up inside, so it would be nice to let them run a bit.

Sydney was absolutely enthralled by Jin and Rellia as soon as she met them, and spent the entire morning at breakfast sandwiched between the big fur balls, cuddling them mercilessly. Finally though, it was time for us to head out, and Abel decided to finally fill us in on what his comment about bird racing meant as we walked.

"Alright." He said after the twentieth time I asked. "Fine. Racing. It's not a complicated thing. The Shatter Lanes are a huge dirt track in the middle. When you show up you can pay to race on the backs of giant wingless birds called Ralkors. They have scales instead of feathers and their beaks and claws are metal. Scary little fuckers if you piss them off, but they're trained not to attack their riders."

I was beginning to sense a pattern here. "Let me guess. During the race the Ralkors attack anyone who isn't their rider who gets close, and to win you need to battle your way through the pack of them to reach the front?" I should have known Abel wouldn't suggest any activity that didn't have a chance to kill us all, training or not. Still, it definitely sounded like a lot of fun, especially since Callie and I had our F-rank armor to fall back on even if we did get attacked.

Abel gasped in feigned shock, putting a hand to his chest. "What? Me? Put you in danger? Preposterous! Lies and slander! Absolutely...ok yeah. They'll try to kill anyone who gets too close, but you have to kind of nudge them. Riders can team up too, and attacks take away from running, so its not like every single Ralkor will be attacking. Some riders choose to go all out on speed, or set traps, it's fun trying to figure out exactly what people will do. I'm actually going to be taking part in this one. Personal strength is much less of a factor here because the Ralkors are all about the same. Though admittedly my spatial perception might help a tad."

He sounded genuinely excited to take part, and it occurred to me that Abel had mostly been forced to stay out of all the activities we'd been doing. With the exception of the fishing, this had been more of a supervisory thing for him. For someone who obviously loved Doomtown and all the things he was showing us down here it must have been hard to just sit back and watch, but he'd never complained. I felt kind of bad for only noticing that now.

It was easy to forget that while he was a bit older than us, Abel was still a G-ranker too. We'd been treating him more like a mentor than a friend, and during training that was fine, but he wasn't the formal type usually. I was pretty sure he'd prefer we treat him like one of the gang when we weren't mid training session. I felt kind of stupid for not considering that before, but it wasn't really too late. I chuckled lightly. "I guess that means we finally have a chance to take you down huh? Get ready to taste defeat."

"Taste the feet?" He said archly, wrinkling his nose. "Whatever weird stuff you and your girlfriend get upto isn't my business man, just keep me out of it." I heard Megan choke down a snicker even as Callie squeaked in embarrassment. I grimaced. I'd kind of set him up for that one. I would have my revenge eventually though.

Luckily the conversation was cut off by our arrival at the Shatter Lanes, a fact I was alerted to by the growls and yips of Jin, who it seemed did NOT like the smell of Ralkor. "By the way, you mentioned Jin and Rellia would have fun here?" I asked Abel, as we got in line. "Are they able to race with us or something?" That sounded like it might be dangerous, but the puppies did need some exercise, and chasing scaly hate birds would probably be a blast for them.

Abel just laughed. "Sadly not. But the adolescent Ralkors are much less dangerous, and they train them on a smaller track. The wolves should be allowed to race with them, and since they haven't developed the metal claws and beak they should be much safer." He turned to the man behind the counter we'd just arrived at. "Nine for the noon race. Plus two tickets for the training lanes." Then he paused for a second, checking his scan ring. "Actually we'll rent one of the novice pens for the next half hour if there's one open."

The man, a tall lanky fellow with dark skin and hair and bright blue eyes, just grinned at him. "Sure are. Anyone with any sense has already done all the training they need. You're free to use one. Just go around back and receive your Ralkor assignments."

We turned to do just that, but Callie called us to a stop as her scan ring buzzed. "One second. I think that's Mordaunt. She decided to meet us here." Sure enough within a minute or two, Mordaunt made her way over, the hulking form of Rahm lumbering behind her silently. Well, that wasn't fair. Rahm didn't lumber. He was a pretty graceful guy. But the whole dead person thing combined with his total silence creeped me out.

After stopping to pick up her own tickets she came around to meet us so we could walk over to get our assigned Ralkors together. As we walked, I had to ask Abel. "So...Ralkors. Is there a lot of variation? Because being assigned a bird makes it seem like some of them might be...recalcitrant." Which was a polite way to say crazy rage beasts that tried to rip apart their owners.

He just shrugged. "There are good birds and bad birds. Some of them don't like riders much, but we'll see what we end up with. They don't give the best ones to the early attendees or anything, that would just make it a matter of who showed up first. It's random."

Mordaunt looked incredibly interested. "This sounds like a blast. I'm glad you invited me. No hard feelings if I maim some of you." Her teasing grin made it clear she wasn't planning to actually maim us...or that she was? I didn't have enough of a read on her to be sure.

It didn't really matter. With our armor Callie and I would be fine, and anyone else who got hurt had the Vitality not to bleed out before I could fix them with heal bursts. When we came to the spot at the edge of a fenced off area, a bored looking woman with blonde hair in a ponytail yawned at us. "Welcome to the Shatter Lanes." She droned. "Please be aware than any mutilation or untimely deaths caused by Ralkors during the course of your visit is not our responsibility. A stipulation you will agree to before being given your Ralkor."

Since this was Doomtown, that seemed to be pretty much par for the course. We all agreed, and the woman nodded, leading us through the fence to where a series of massive bipedal birds waited. The scales of a Ralkor were much more delicate than expected, the dense coating of small plates retaining flexibility and durability regardless of thickness by virtue of overlap.

The beaks and talons, as mentioned, were metal, and gleamed imposingly in the low light. Abel nodded in satisfaction as he took them all in. "Just as scary as I remember. The Ralkor is actually a pretty cool animal. They feed them scrap metal as youngsters, letting the metal build up in their bones. When they get old enough to go through puberty the metal is vented into their beak and claws, creating the effect you see here."

There were about a dozen Ralkor left and eleven of us, so I knew I would be getting one of these. Jin and Rellia just growled at them menacingly as they tried to back away. Sydney knelt down next to them, pulling them against her an cooing softly. I rolled my eyes at them. Big babies. What kind of wolf is afraid of a giant chicken? Still, I reached down to scratch Jin behind the ears. Even if he was a scaredy wolf he was still a good boy. Besides, those metal beaks actually did look kind of scary, so I couldn't blame him too much.

The woman from the entrance had followed us in, and gestured to the Ralkors scattered around the pens. "Alright, now each of you take out your tickets and tear them." I'd been handed a ticket when I showed up, but hadn't paid it any mind. Still, it was her show. I took the ticket out and tore it, and the scraps of paper burst into green flame. The flames floated as a ball in the air before zipping over to be snapped up by a green scaled Ralkor.

When the woman made a shooing gesture I shrugged and walked over to the Ralkor. Its eyes were glowing green like the fire when I arrived, and as that faded I felt a small link form between us. Nothing as permanent or strong as my link with Callie, but similar. Some kind of empathy maybe? I turned to Abel, cocking my head, and he grinned at me. "Beast bonds." He said with amusement. "Only temporary, but they're good for learning to interact with bonded partners. Bonding Skills can be pretty similar sometimes."

I burst out laughing. "You lying ass, you said you didn't have any special training in mind. This whole thing was one big game to get us here." He'd been planning this from the start, or at least as soon as he confirmed we'd gotten the Paired Dueling Skill. He just winked at me and I rolled my eyes. Then I narrowed them suspiciously. "Wait, this doesn't give you an advantage in the race does it?"

He just chuckled. "Not much. I'll adapt faster because of experience, but the beast bond isn't a Skill I actually have. It's just as temporary for me. The training pen should give you plenty of time to get adapted before the race, so we'll be on even footing when I absolutely demolish you all with no real effort." He said that last part with casual confidence that made me want to punch him a little, but I just rolled my eyes again.

Once we all got our Ralkors we headed for the training pen he'd reserved to get used to our bonds and learn to control our temporary mounts. It didn't take long to pick it up, like he'd said, so we were ready to go by the time the race started. As we all lined up at the starting line, I realized that though we were the last twelve, there were about fifty people here. This was going to be much more chaotic than expected. I couldn't wait.

 

The bond didn't take long to adjust to. By the time the starting horn sounded, just like Abel had said, I was already pretty used to it. Thus, I immediately leaned on it to push the Ralkor into a full on sprint the second we were told to go. Though I couldn't use any active Skills, my passive connection to Callie through Paired Dueling was still there, and I had enough of a sense of her to match our speeds as we took off down the track, bringing my Ralkor close to hers as we raced ahead.

Unfortunately, as mentioned, the Ralkor distribution was random. Callie's was a bit slower than mine, and several of the enemy were much faster. Not only that, several started to drift in toward me as if preparing to attack. Ahead of me, I saw Abel, sprinting along on his own red Ralkor, and as a blue and a green drifted in from both sides, it leaped into the air and kicked out with both claws, attempting to gouge each of them in succession.

The first rider, the one on the green a lighter shade than mine, was coming in too fast, and he had to put his arm up to block and got laid open to the bone, falling back with a howl of pain. The blue rider, however, flipped up into a picture perfect counter claws clashing against claws in a shower of sparks as they were thrown away from each other.

The two trying to close on us made their own move while we were distracted by the attack, but unfortunately for them I within arms reach of Callie. I reached out and grabbed her hand and her Ralkor leapt into the air and with a heave I swung her around my entire head, her legs keeping her Ralkor under her and her mounts kicked out with a series of dangerous bicycle kicks to attack both of them.

One of the attackers got driven back, but the other dipped under the attack and managed to slip in to slash at my leg. Sadly for the tall man on the back of the red Ralkor I was wearing strong armor, which soaked the blow easily, even if it hurt like crazy. I urged my Ralkor in closer and leveled a heavy punch at his head. He dipped back and took it on the shoulder even as Callie came up around on the other side of him and executed a spinning taloned kick at his head with her own purple Ralkor.

The man tried to counter the attack, leaving him open for a hard kick from me, his Ralkor turning to dart after him as he flew off into the pack behind us, and I winced as I saw him get stepped on, though from the brief glance I got he didn't die or anything and his Ralkor managed to snatch him up.

Callie pulled up even with me and shot me a grin. The two of us had a huge advantage here even without active Skill use, the training we'd done over the last few months giving us a passive awareness of each other and what the other would do. Of course, that meant Mel and Abel had an advantage too. It was easy to see the two of them had joined up and were in the center of a crowd of Ralkors seamlessly fighting them off.

Giving a nod to them, Callie made a gesture that we'd worked out in training to indicate helping and I flashed her a thumbs up. We split up and closed in on the crowd from either side flashing a few hand signs at Abel and Mel as we came in, pincering the group of five enemies in between us. I saw Mel's orange Ralkor leap straight up about ten feet into the air as Abel smashed sideways to drive one of the five out of formation at me and I kicked low as he swung partly off his Ralkor, leg lashing out at the head of the one between us, the racing bird unbalanced and thrown behind by the dual attack.

Mel meanwhile came plummeting from the sky like the stars she was named for breaking, and when two of the others tried to move aside, Callie body slammed one into another and shoved them both into the path of our descending mentor, Ralkor claws flashing even before the heavy bird smashed into them and opening long slashed across arms and back and forcing them to retreat.

The last two Mel and Abel converged to pull the same swing move we had earlier taking them out. I saw them consider attacking us directly, but they eventually decided to leave that for the end of the race if we met up and the four of us separated. The winners would get half the entry money, but we;d use it for the Pavilion anyway, not that it would stop Abel from competing if we ended up being that last ones left.

As we belted forward at top speed, I saw the other riders avoid us completely and nodded with smugness. Sadly, this wasn't a brawl, it was a race, and we weren't winning. I didn't want to leave Callie, knowing not only would she be more vulnerable without me, but I'd have to worry about watching my back much more thoroughly. Taking a lesson from Mel's huge jump I noted the faster speed of my Ralkor and shot Callie a few hand signs that she responded to quickly before closing in.

Taking her hand I did the same swing maneuver, but instead of a circle I hurled her up and around, shooting her forward into the air alongside her squawking Ralkor, sending her hurtling into the near distance as I kicked my own bird into high gear, sprinting full out to catch up before she landed among a large group.

I managed to beat her there and smashed into them like a scaly wrecking ball, mostly clearing them out so she could land delicately, the long tough legs of her Ralkor absorbing the impact as she crashed down, only to grab her again and throwing her a second time, before sprinting all out with my much faster Ralkor to catch up to her, essentially leapfrogging forward a few times as we closed with some of the lead elements of the pack.

The furthest ahead were in a state of near constant combat even as they ran. While getting a feel for the bond was simple and martial arts experience helped maneuvering, the most advanced seemed to be old hands at this kind of racing. While their actual capabilities weren't any more impressive, their grasp on the movements that the Ralkor's excelled at were much more refined. I took a moment to watch and study, learning more about the bodies of the animals we were riding as I watched the dizzying arrays of kicks and slashes from these veteran racers.

Abel, of course, managed just fine without any of those considerations, his spatial awareness monstrous even without using Skills. Mel was doing surprisingly well too, probably from her perception of Abel through the bond similar to what Callie and I shared. As we watched some of the attacks, Callie and I refined our own techniques, noting certain kinds of explosive movement that Ralkor's seemed built for.

For instance, Ralkor's were front heavy, a fact they countered with extremely solid traction, but relied on to sprint faster. A forward flipping motion that whipped the legs up over the head and down on the enemy was extremely suitable for their physiology. With a glance at Callie, we decided to try a variation of that. Grabbing her hand, she pushed her Ralkor to flip up over me, and I swung her as she traveled along the arc of my extended arm, ramping up the speed to deliver a brutal overhead slash to the pair of Ralkor riders in front of us.

The two were so distracted by trying to outdo each other they missed the attack until it was too late, both of their backs being slashed open. With cries of pain the two split, letting themselves fall back to treat their wounds and being overtaked by the pack within seconds and passed.

It was notable that no one in this little race actually attacked the Ralkors. I personally avoided it because they were just racing animals and didn't deserve to be hurt, but I somehow doubted the people of Doomtown were nice enough to keep that in mind. If I had to guess the Lanes had some sort of rule about it. That actually gave us a distinct advantage, because due to our armor the Ralkors couldn't do much harm to us.

With those two out of the way we picked up the pace, pushing for just that little bit of extra speed from Callie's mount. I was able to keep pace, but she'd managed to eke out a bit more momentum and we started to slowly close on the mad scramble of battling Ralkors at the front. We were getting closer to catching up. The track was pretty long, though we apparently had to do multiple laps before this ended, but I wasn't sure how many and I didn't want to get screwed out of winning because the race ended early.

Despite the advancing though, we still needed to break through the line of battling Ralkor with advanced riders. Even Abel and Mel seemed to be stuck, as they'd run into a pack of five riders who worked with shocking coordination to repel them. I supposed Abel wasn't invincible after all. I was jarred from that realization by a feeling of alarm through my bond with Callie, and barely managed to weave to the side to avoid a vicious slash aimed at my throat.

Mordaunt laughed happily as her Ralkor pirouetted through the air, claws flashing right by me, actually scraping across my mask as I leaned back, though not doing any damage. I felt more than saw Callie lunge for her in retaliation, only to be intercepted by the hulking form of Rahm on a massive black scaled Ralkor, interposing himself between my girlfriend and his mistress. I cursed as I saw the two of them break past us to surge into the midst of the pack of frontrunners, slowing down to meet up with Callie.

I made a few hand gestures, and got a few in response, glad once again that we'd decided to to refine our communication during all that practice. Honestly I suspected the hand signals were much less effective than they seemed, and at least some of the understanding we developed of each other was just intuition that came as a precursor to developing the Paired Dueling Skill.

Looking ahead, I glared at all the Ralkors in front of us. I had no idea how to get past them, or if we even could I wished I could use Skills right now, but Abel had mentioned they had ways of detecting that. I scoured my brain for something, ANYTHING that would let me break through the line. At this point I didn't even care much about winning. I just wanted to beat Mordaunt. That attack had pissed me off. Armor or not it had been way too dangerous for a friendly race. Something was seriously wrong with that girl, she could've put my eye out, not to mention slitting my throat.

Finally, I had an idea. I had no shot at winning this, there were a few racers out front of the pack that were definitely going to get it. There was, however, a gap between the pack of frontrunners and the very best who were leading the charge. I shot Callie a look and a few gestures and she grinned back at me. She drifted out in front as I slowed down, and with no hesitation I steered my Ralkor to jump onto her shoulders. With a single powerful leap her Ralkor hurled itself up about twenty feet, and I had my own Ralkor jump as hard as it could using her shoulders as a playform. As I sailed over the battling crowd to land between them and the frontrunners I got a good laugh. Mordaunt didn't seem nearly as amused now.

 

As expected, I didn't win, but I did beat Mordaunt. Her glare when it happened was incredibly brief, so quick I almost missed it, but she was definitely pissed. By the time she met up with us though she was all smiles. "Wow, that was an interesting race. Wasn't it Rahm?"

Rahm, who as far as I'd heard, didn't ever really speak, just grunted. I didn't the big zombie was stupid, he, moved like someone with a brain, careful and deliberate. Even so, he wasn't exactly a stellar conversationalist, and Mordaunt seemed to use him as more of a set piece for her own chattering than anything else. "So." I said as we all made our way over to check on the wolves. "Only two more days or so until the auction. Anything special you plan to pick up there?"

Her eyes danced with amusement as she glanced at me slyly. "Actually, I'm more interested in selling. I stumbled on a great find here that one of our regular trading partners will be pretty excited about. I couldn't believe my luck. How about you? Anything specific you plan to look for there?" Once again I got bad vibes from the woman for no provable reason, and it mostly seemed to be just me.

With an internal sigh I left Callie to take over the conversation, ceding it to her as I moved to put some space between me and Darkling Institute ringer. To take my mind off things I took up a position next to the pen where the wolves were playing to watch them, and I had to admit it definitely helped.

Jin and Rellia were having a blast. Ralkors were dangerous, scary beasties, but the younger ones hadn't grown into their claws and beak yet. If I had to guess the teen Ralkors were probably more like H-rank than G. Despite that, there were dozens of them, and they definitely exhibited herd like behavior. The wolves didn't seem to mind, and were being happily chased down by the smaller birds, unable to actually hurt them at all.

The mocking chuffs of the big wolves as the darted past and the enraged squawks of the Ralkors made for an amusing picture as they led the things on a merry chase. Abel chuckled as he stepped up beside me, drawing away from where the rest of the group was chatting with Mordaunt. "They certainly seem to be having a blast. I admit, I didn't expect them to be quite so amused. I figured they wouldn't be able to do much damage to the pack with their numbers, but leading them around like this....they're stronger now than when you first got them, aren't they?"

I shrugged. "Probably? Honestly I don't know. It's not like we can check their stats. Jessie tops them up with her life force when she has any to spare, and her ability mentioned long term effects, so I think so? They certainly seem to be getting smarter. To be fair though they've also been following us around, so it's possible they got some renown rollover. I wonder if they'll hit F-rank soon?"

Abel just chuckled. "Not that soon. Did you forget my lesson at the Bay? There's variation in the feel of Impact at the same level. I'd put them at maybe three quarters of the way to F-rank, but then again, they were already probably halfway there when you got them. It'll be a while I bet." He stood off to one side of me, watching with amusement, until eventually he said. "Something going on kid? You seem off."

I was surprised he'd picked up on it honestly. Callie hadn't even noticed. Granted, our bond wasn't really empathy so much as intention, and usually more during combat, but I'd assumed that meant I was keeping it to myself pretty well. I focused on my Stealth Skill, resonating with it as I spoke to hide my words from prying ears. With my current Perception it was easy enough to wipe all traces of the sound once it went past his ears. "Mordaunt. She gives me a weird feeling. Like she's laughing at us. Is that just me?"

That got a shrug. "I don't really trust anyone I work with except Mel for the most part kid. You and Nightstrike are exceptions I suppose. But this is the WCP. People being suspicious or willing to fuck you over is par for the course. I think the Unity has you all spoiled. There are no eternal friendships, only eternal benefits." He paused. "Though, maybe I'm just a cynic. Your little gang seems pretty close. I could just be jaded after so long."

Snorting out a laugh, I turned to him with amusement. "That's it? That's your advice? 'Don't worry if she's out to get you because everyone is out to get you?' Thanks man, that's real fucking helpful." Despite my sarcasm, it actually DID help. Knowing that Abel didn't trust her made me feel better. Pulling one over on me wasn't that big an accomplishment, but pulling one over on him would be a big one.

Besides, Doomtown was limited in its admission. Low F-rank and G-rank only. As long as that was the case I wasn't worried about us being overwhelmed. I could figure something out as long as we didn't get killed instantly. With our armor we would be fine for a bit, and with Abel and Mel backing us up, not to mention our new Paired Dueling Skill I was genuinely confident we could take on anyone.

With a chuckle, Abel clapped me on the shoulder. "Come on kid, lets get out of here. With that auction coming up I think we should head back up topside for this last day of the week. We need to gather resources anyway, and we can pick up the other two and bring them with us. We can bring Alden with to help watch out for them, but they can probably pick up some useful items that'll help with their growth."

I nodded, whistling for the puppies. They seemed unhappy but broke from the pack of baby Ralkors easily enough, loping over to easily hop the fence. As for bringing Benny and Jessie, I agreed. I missed my friends, and I wanted them to see Doomtown. Escape wishes could be prepared for them just in case, and that should prevent anything bad from happening (not to mention Jessie's giant ass F-ranked bear), but this would be an opportunity for them to gain some rep too. I was curious to see how they'd grown when we were away, they weren't the type to just loaf around while we were training.

Callie meanwhile, had been talking to Mordaunt for a bit, and when I came back she shot me a questioning look. I snagged her up in a hug and spun her around, getting a surprised giggle, and then set her down, leaving an arm around her shoulders. "What's the occasion?" She said in amusement. Despite the lightness and happiness in her tone, I could see some concern in her eyes. I was affectionate most of the time, but this had been kind of out of nowhere.

I chuckled, making sure my voice was as light and happy as hers. "Oh nothing big, I was just talking to Apollyon about how much I was missing home. Figured we might take a break from the trip and go up for a visit." Mordaunt being around made me wary to just say we needed to get stockpile our cash and pick up our friends. It might have been stupid but I felt like I needed a pretense to stop the necromancer from paying attention.

Amusingly, it actually seemed to work. Though her polite smile didn't waver, I could see a look of disdain in her eyes. Once I'd started really looking, my Perception made finding evidence of her bad intentions a bit easier. I was pretty sure this was an aspect of my diviner class. Part of that particular powerset was a passive sense for intention, but I'd never really seen any evidence I had it in real life. Now it seemed that my Perception just hadn't been high enough.

It was nice to see actually, my diviner class hadn't done much for me in a while, with monk and rogue doing the heavy lifting. Seek Hidden was extremely useful, but the diviner was a support class in the first place, and most of its functions were geared towards Doom Sovereign itself. I didn't have a Skill for this yet, so there was nothing I could do to improve, but I should pick up Sense Intention as a codified active skill once I ranked up DS Mastery.

Saying our goodbyes, we headed off to the Blue Robin to pick up the others. Sloane and the Beast Lord Garden initiates
had come down with us and it would be pretty rude to leave them alone. They weren't there when we arrived, so we decided to wait, and while we did Callie dragged me into our room to question me. "Ok." She said plainly. "What's up? That wasn't really like you, and you were twitchy most of today. Is everything alright?"

I didn't really have an explanation, but after figuring out my feeling was my diviner sense at work I felt much better about talking it out. I told her about what I'd noticed, the bad impression I'd had, and Abel's unhelpful advice. Then I told her about his idea to have Benny and Jessie come down, and why I thought we should allow it. In the end Callie would make the call on this, but she took my advice into account, and once I explained myself she seemed open to it.

More than that, she seemed sympathetic. She reached up to pull off my mask, going up on her toes and pulling me down for a quick kiss. "Hey. You always support me when I feel like doing something. If she gives you the creeps I'll keep an eye out. I trust your judgement. It's not like I have some big attachment to her anyway. She's interesting enough, but she isn't exactly a close friend. If you want I can talk to uncle Alex, see if maybe he can spare a few low F-rankers from his faction to tag along to the auction just in case? I agree we can't miss it and it'll be good for Benny and Jessie, but some more firepower couldn't hurt. Plus I'm sure he'll want to snag some of that stuff for himself anyway."

I let out a breath I hadn't know I was holding. Knowing she believed me without blinking and came up with a solution nearly instantly made me feel better almost immediately. It was a good solution to, but I wasn't sure we could manage it. "Is that an option? I mean, it's pretty last minute, and F-rankers don't exactly grow on trees. Does he even have any that are even allowed in Doomtown?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Can't hurt to ask. Plus I think that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the E-ranked factions. Considering what we know about the dark districts, not to mention we've never even been to F-district, I have to assume we haven't seen most of their forces. Not everyone can be hanging out in the headquarters, otherwise how could the factions operate."

That was fair. Beast Lord Garden was the busiest of the E-ranked factions we'd visited, but I knew they'd been able to pull a bunch of elite G-rank youngsters out of nowhere to follow Sloane and join the tournament. With that decided Callie spun up her scan ring and shot her uncle a message asking about it. Sure enough, he'd heard about the auction and was planning to send some people along. He agreed for them to follow us in disguise in case we needed an ace in the hole. Knowing that made me feel a lot better. Once Sloane and the others got back we were officially on our way back up to G-district. It would be nice to see everyone again. I had so much I wanted to tell them.

 

Being back in the Pavilion was like walking out of the heat into a cool familiar house. I hadn't even noticed the shift in tension in Doomtown. Even when I was enjoying myself, I'd had to be actively on the lookout for traps or murder attempts. Up here in G-district where we could relax I was finally able to let down my guard.

The first thing I did when I got back was go see my best friend. Callie came along, and to my shock, Benny was actually at the Pavilion instead of at the Academy with. To my even bigger shock, he was currently running the obstacle course, or at least about to finish it. I'd missed most of the actual run. Judging by his combat standards against the golems, he had been putting in a ton of work too. Callie and I came over to stand next to Alden and Jessie as they watched, letting out a low whistle. "Wow, someone made some big leaps."

Despite not have gained many stats in the week we were gone, Benny's integration of the abilities that his artifacts gave him had become exponentially more polished. His density shifting, both lower and higher had been trained diligently. He appeared to be able to extend the effects of his enhancements to his whole body now, using them as comprehensive Skills. He had to concentrate hard to do it, and it was clearly taxing, but it gave him the ability to contend with much stronger opponents.

Alden, who had noticed me but not commented, chuckled. "Aye. Been putting him through his paces. He still sneaks of to see that lass of his now and then, thinks I don't notice, but a bit of down time isn't doing any harm. Still, he's been training like the devil is on his tail." He shot a fond look at Jessie. "And this little miss hasn't been far short of that. Though I admit I see less of it since she trains so much up at the fancy E-ranked faction building. Us lowly G-rankers aren't good enough I suppose."

Our perky blonde haired teammate didn't even bother to respond to him, she got so excited when she saw us she launched herself off the bench, catching Callie mid stomach in a tackle hug. I suspect she picked Callie because she was closest, and because trying to tackle both of us would be nigh impossible given the height difference. "You're back!" She squealed so loudly I thought she might shatter glass. "I'm so glad to see you!"

I chuckled and reached down to ruffle her hair, since she was already engaged in a hug. She huffed at me, blowing some of it out of her eyes so she could fix me with an emerald glare. "Stop that. Jerk." She climbed off Callie, gave me a light shove and then plopped back down next to Alden. "Also shut up, I so didn't do that. Randall just doesn't like training here. Can you blame him?"

He shrugged, conceding the point. "You lot are back early. You finish that training so soon?" His tone was casual but I saw a hint of shock on his face. Considering the Paired Dueling training was passed down to Abel and Mel by Alden, he would know how it worked. What I was curious about was where he'd learned about it. Though obviously adapted for the local environment, this whole training regimen had the feeling of a systematic teaching tool. Things like that were supposed to be important assets to bigger forces.

Had Alden been a member of some big sect or group? Had HE had a partner at one point? I was deathly curious, but that all seemed like personal stuff that might be painful to talk about. So instead of saying all that I just smirked and said. "Yeah, we got the Skill a few days ago. But we're not really done. We came to pick up some stuff. There's a big auction down there and we're going to try to buy up some training resources. We want to make sure the Pavilion can keep pumping out strong elites."

This time it was his turn to whistle. "Not bad, you two. That's damn fast. Still, fits with the two of you. Always been a bit quick on the uptake, least since I've known you." I smiled and nodded my thanks at the compliment. Alden had trained Abel, him being impressed was an honor.

"So." Said Callie, flopping onto the bench next to Jessie. "How much has he improved? I can tell he's a lot smoother with his ability. I assume that's a result of building soul strength? Using those abilities as Skills must be tough for him. How did he manage to grow so fast?" That was a good point, soul strength training was slow and incredibly difficult to manage. It was basically just work until your head hurt then stop and recover.

Alden grinned. "He's been working on some new Inventions after you left. Threw everything but the kitchen sink together, and finally came across something useful. He build a spiritual calming belt. They help the soul recover faster. They're extremely rare, even lower tier versions. Once he integrated that he started to increase his Skill training tenfold. He's been progressing quite quickly. Sadly the belt is too low tier to be effective long term. Once he catches up with Solomon I'm guessing he'll slow down."

Still though. It was a terrifying new ability. And I knew how much it sucked recovering from excessive soul weight. Even a bit of recovery would help in the future, no matter what tier it was. It really showed the absurd potential of Benny's ability. Even items of limited use would be helpful if used like a part of you. Benny would be able to catch up much faster with that capability, and I was glad to hear he'd found something that could help. We'd need to help Jessie learn to train her soul too. Based on what I'd been told it seemed like it was almost necessary to advance past E-rank.

We waited a bit for Benny to finish his fight before he headed over to where we were sitting. He had originally been jogging, but when he noticed Callie and I he bolted over. "You're back! How was the dark district? See any cool stuff? Bring me any souvenirs? I accept tribute in the form of food, clothes, and expensive Inventing materials." He paused. "Though not necessarily in that order."

I snorted. "Amateur. Why bring you souvenirs when we can bring you to the dark district. We came back to drag you down there in person." Also I hadn't considered buying souvenirs, which I kind of felt bad about now. Not that I would admit that even on pain of death.

Benny seemed momentarily derailed from our banter. "Wait...really? I thought it was super dangerous down there and all that? Aren't you worried about us getting killed down there? Because I was joking about needing new stuff. I can definitely wait on Inventing materials if it means I don't have to die."

Callie cut in. "No. I have a plan for that. We both do actually." She bumped me with her shoulder. "Solomon has an idea for keeping us all safe, and on top of that...well I won't talk about my plan here. The walls have ears and all that. Suffice to say there's a big event down there we don't want you both to miss. On the upside Agria you can take Randall for a walk finally."

Mentally I had to smother a laugh at the idea of the giant F-ranked bear coming with us. Still, he would give Jessie plenty of security, especially with the F-rankers we were going to request from Alexander. Though that actually gave me an idea. "Agria, do you have a beast bonding Skill? " I'd never heard Jessie mention anything like the bond with the Ralkors, but if there was a permanent version of that like our Paired Dueling Skill it would make Jessie infinitely safer.

She seemed surprised I'd even heard of it. "Not even close. Those Skills take forever to develop. I'm pretty sure the Beast Queen has one, and a fairly high level one too. I know you can synergize them with your ability to make some interesting powers, though I won't be doing that." She didn't say why, and didn't need to. Everyone here was well aware of her long term goals in regards to her healing ability.

Still that seemed odd to me. "It takes that long? I'd figure with how taming works it would be pretty easy to form a bond." Even easier than for Callie and I, though I was starting to think I'd cheated with the overlay somehow, based on how everyone was reacting.

"The opposite." Jessie said firmly. "Bonds require a deep understanding and connection. Animals don't think like people, so it's harder to make that connection to begin with. Beast Taming just teaches you how to train an animal and teach them certain behaviors. It doesn't turn them into partners. Bonding is also usually permanent. Tamers often find new beasts, but a bonded companion is rarely tossed aside."

That was an interesting thing to note. I also saw Callie blushing furiously under her mask at that last bit, which made me grin a bit. Not that we couldn't feel how closely we were connected, but hearing it out loud like that was kind of intense. Benny, to my delight, seemed to get what I'd been insinuating, and pulled Jessie aside to talk to her about wishing for a bond with Randall. Since I hadn't told her to do it myself my own bias wouldn't mess with the pricing so much, plus I could always use more heals.

While Callie caught up with Jessie I pulled Benny aside to check on him. "Hey, you ok man? Heard you've been working yourself pretty hard. Impressive you managed to rig up a spiritual calming belt, but don't run yourself into the ground ok? We're planning to help you two catch up before the end of the tournament so we can bring you with us into the Moonsong Glade. You've got plenty of time to train."

Benny just shook his head. "You don't get it. You and Callie are pulling farther and farther ahead. I've been making sure to spend time with Cel so she doesn't feel ignored, but other than that...we're in this together man. I can't let you leave me behind. We might be able to use wishes to get our stats filled out, but the Pavilion has shown us there's way more to combat than that. It's not just me either, Jessie has been training harder than she lets on."

That was...touching? Worrying? I didn't know. But it wasn't my place to tell them what to do. It wasn't even really Callie's, group leader or not. "Alright, but just remember that you don't need to overdo it. You both bring other things to the team. That spiritual calming belt proves your Inventing must be getting better right? No way that thing is less than G-rank. Did you get Inventing to Intermediate?"

He grinned at me widely. "Yup. I haven't been slacking as much as you thought the past few months. Even when I was at the Academy I was usually working. The hardest part was keeping financially solvent while I worked."

Which reminded me. "Speaking of finances, we're also here to stock up on chits. Not sure how much we have in the coffers, but I know Abel and Mel are planning to toss their own cash into the pot. With all of us we should be able to afford some pretty good stuff." Eager to see what exactly we had to work with, we both headed over to talk to Abel and Mel. After we finalized that, we'd just need to wait for the reinforcements Alexander was sending (hopefully) and we would be ready to head back down. Though we might be able to take the evening off too. Would be nice to have some downtime before the big show.

 

We didn't hear back from Alexander until the next day. Since we had one more after this before the auction I let the Beast Lord Initiates do another full five wishes to preload some more days for later. I'd have to work out some kind of arrangement for after I left. I managed to get the points in Might this time, which was nice, and put me at nine hundred nineteen points total.

When they F-rankers arrived in the morning I left the five wishes for that day unused, ready for the emergency escape wishes my friends would need, and went to greet them with the others. I'd been curious what Alexander would manage to put together for his niece, if anything, but I was shocked to see four fresh F-rank elites waiting for us at the Pavilion when we woke up (we slept in the rooms in the back that Mel used when she worked overnight) all looking ready for a fight.

The four people that Alexander sent were...weird. They all wore black robes and masks, and seemed pretty much indistinguishable from each other. Not just at a surface level wither, their actual conceptual weight was basically identical, and nearly everything about them made it impossible to tell which was which. Only one of them ever spoke at a time, but which one it was changed sentence to sentence, with seemingly no communication to let them know whose turn it was.

When we arrived, all four of the figures bowed to Callie. "Young mistress." Said one. "The Nothing sends his greetings." Said another. "We are the four as one. Though only recently having reached the F-rank, we are powerful for our tier. We will be your guardians on this mission." A third spoke up, informing us of their identity. It was functionally impossible to tell their voices apart.

Abel whistled. "Quadruplets I'm guessing. And they probably cultivate as a group. It's tricky to pull that off. Makes it much harder to accumulate individual stat points. Still, I'm betting they have some variation of the Paired Dueling Skill that works for all four of them. Sucks for them they're already F-ranked. They would have been a hell of a team in the tournament. Still, I see why they were available to take us down there. They're going to be at early F-rank for quite a while, having to share all the renown like that."

One of the four nodded. "You are correct." Another spoke up. "Still, we do not feel displeased. We can be of use to The Nothing, this is our honor." I raised an eyebrow at that but didn't comment. I imagined training quadruplet Ascendants would be extremely taxing. Alexander must have invested a ton into their development, in time if not resources. It made sense they would be grateful.

Mel cleared her throat. "As...nice, as this all is. We still have to discuss our resource allocation for this. We've managed to cobble together a total of three E-ranked chits for this auction, with a few F-ranked left over. That's not a small amount by any means, but some of the visiting factions will have just as much if not more. We should probably expect that we'll end up using all of our money on two or three big ticket items. We might be able to afford some smaller stuff like armor and weapons too, but we need to decide what we're aiming for, at least in general terms."

I looked over to Callie, who nodded. "I'd been considering that actually. We know we want a blank Skill Crystal. G-ranked if possible so I can imprint a Beginner Skill on it. If we can get our hands on something that can increase soul restoration like Clockwork's belt that would be good too. Hopefully something that works on an area rather than an individual. Other than those priorities we should just pick up anything we can find that can help multiple people improve. Maybe a few useful Skills if they pop up."

We'd been looking into faction building since we took over the Pavilion, but at our rank there really wasn't a ton you could do to improve the foundation of lots of people at once. Soul strength, as we had learned recently, was important, so having a way to replenish that for training would be huge, but other than that and buying Skills like Callie said, pills were probably the only real option, and those were of course limited by the elixir limit at each tier.

The only bright spot there was that while there wasn't too many options right now, any results we saw would bring prestige to the Pavilion itself, and as members our people would benefit. Once people heard about the Pavilion more, wearing its symbol and being a known member would help add reputation to those who worked under us. It would turn into a feedback loop.

That was why factions were so ubiquitous on Callus, and pretty much everywhere else. Any possible way to squeeze out a bit of extra rep was necessary. Honestly I'd been surprised by the way the cultivation worked when I'd first heard how we got stronger. I'd expected more politics and PR. But the fact was people cultivated for power, and SHOWING that power was what they did to show the results of that cultivation.

Because of that, demonstrating power was the easiest way to cut through the bullshit. Branding and PR were important, as we saw from the Academy, but when there were people blowing up cars and hurling fireballs in the streets, it was much less impressive to HEAR about someone doing that. Stories and rumors still influenced growth of course, but not as much as getting out and showing tangible evidence of what you could do. Especially since those feats spawned stories and rumors of their own anyway.

After Callie finished her list, Mel took a minute to think before nodding. "We might be able to get a bulk price on some pills too. Our people haven't hit their limits on elixirs for the most part. The way we used to run things, we prioritized combat strength over everything. I still think that's the way to go, but if we're pushing for active expansion a marked improvement in a large number of people in a short time would be best. With the Beast Lord Garden backing us we won't have to worry about standing out and getting smacked down."

I hadn't considered before why the Pavilion wasn't more well known actually. Granted, Abel had been away, but Alden had trained both him and Mel, so logically he should have been able to train more powerful Ascendants. Even if they didn't reach the same level they should have been pretty strong. Instead it had been a small regional force in the Cavalcade that no one outside the circus had heard of.

Thinking about the whole mess with the deed and the attack from Sanctuary Hall though, it was pretty dangerous to stick out in the WCP without some kind of background, even in G-district. That was easy to see when you took into account how quickly things escalated once Burning Fist and the Peace Lord became involved.

"Alright." I said. "Agria, Nightstrike, Clockwork, I had some things I wanted to talk to you about before we left if you have a second." I'd expected to be waiting longer before we left, but if we were heading back down soon we should get the escape wishes out of the way. When they followed me over, I didn't need to say anything to them. They already knew about the escape wishes from before, so the three of them naturally didn't need to be reminded.

Each of them made a wish to be able to escape from Doomtown if they were put in mortal danger, and I was able to grant them all. Given how much power was needed, I had to get five of each attack before I could grant the wishes. Since I was at my full ten after only two attacks from Callie and Benny and three from Jessie, we settled on a geass that they would let me store attacks as I used them up. I felt better having topped up my heal bursts and those density shifted triple strength attacks were damn useful, so it wasn't a bad deal for me.

Once that was done Benny and Callie headed back over to join the others, but when I moved to follow them Jessie grabbed my arm. "Hey Shane, hang on a second." I turned to cock my head at my tiny blonde teammate. "I was hoping we could try a wish. Specifically I was hoping to with for a Beginner Level Beast Bonding Skill with Randall as my bonded beast. I can pay with another...let say twenty five heal bursts added onto my tab."

Wish detected. Grant wish? I confirmed, interested to see what that kind of thing would cost. Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 36 Impact, 450 Perception, 444 Focus, 540 Fantasy. I blinked at that. Fantasy wasn't what I'd have expected for something like this, but Perception and Focus both made sense. Actually now that I considered it Fantasy did too, given the way the Fate Sense worked, Fantasy clearly had a sensory component too. Given that it didn't mention requiring compensation I supposed the payment was enough too.

"I can do it." I said slowly. "But are you sure? Wishes scale in difficulty, and not just to grant. Beginner Skills are EXTREMELY painful to receive. I'm not saying you can't survive it or something like that, but it's going to be agonizing. You sure you don't want to wish for a lower level of this Skill and work your way up?" I knew it was unfair to Jessie to worry like that, but I couldn't help it. Callie was tough as nails, and despite that she'd been devastated by receiving her Beginner Shadow Manipulation Mastery Skill.

Jessie just stared at me, eyes hard and stance firm. I sighed and nodded. "Alright. Go get Randall. Having him here for this will be necessary. He should be waiting outside for the trip right?" She nodded and lit up, racing off to go fetch her companion. Truth be told I didn't need him here. I could have granted the wish without him. But if he was here I was pretty sure he could take some of the pain, plus he actually did need to give permission at least, since he'd be getting a Skill too.

It also occurred to me that this was the first time someone had wished for a paired Skill, and she'd paid for it all by herself. No wonder the damn Skill had been so expensive. I also knew that Beginner Skills from my wish power gave a better foundation for advancement. Even if Intermediate Skills weren't really viable to wish for without fucking up your advancement, it meant that my teammates could still wish got Beginner versions of new Skills they wanted to acquire later in our journey.

When she came back with the bear I led them both off to the side where the four wouldn't see me granting this wish. A big electrified giant bear was bound to be eye catching. Once we got there Jessie explained what was going to happen, using her vital energy to convey the messages more easily. Randall didn't mind, and actually seemed excited, despite being warned of the pain.

I briefly considered Jessie's lifeweaver ability, and how consistent infusion of life energy could alter an animal. I wondered how this bond would work out for them? Regardless I'd been paid and the excuses were out of the way. As I let the electricity build across my skin, I reached out and placed a hand on both Jessie and Randall, closing my eyes as I allowed the wish to wash over them both, infusing the Skill into their brains. As they choked back screams I winced, but forced myself to persevere. This would definitely make them both much safer in Doomtown.

 

With one wish remaining for the day, I was still feeling pretty secure as we headed back down to Doomtown. "So." Said Benny as we walked. "Tell me about this place? What did you all do for the last week? I hope this wasn't some excuse for a second vacation, because if I was training my ass off while you were lounging on a beach somewhere I'm going to be pretty pissed."

I cracked up at the beach remark, because we'd gone to the beach twice, and could have died both times. "Yes to the beach no to the lounging. We spent most of the time down here either fighting or doing crazy training exercises that would have probably killed anyone else. Still, we've gotten a lot stronger. You'll see when we take part in the tournament. Speaking of stronger, Agria, how you doing over there?" I shouted over to Jessie, who was seated on Randall's back, swaying slightly as he walked.

She shook her head hard, noticing us seemingly for the first time. "Huh? Oh, sorry...this is...intense. I felt some level of connection with my ravens during the scavenger hunt, but this feels like...more. I feel stronger now, or at least able to draw on more strength. I think my Might will increase over time. Plus my life energy is pouring through the link. It feels like Randall is constantly being infused and growing too, though VERY slowly."

I'd considered that possibility, but she made it sound a bit more impressive than I expected. Having a way to get stronger like that was amazing. "You think he'll get to E-rank eventually?" That would be way more impressive than I had expected from that kind of Skill. It was only at the Beginner level, and being able to make her companion rank up like that would be HUGE.

Jessie just giggled. "Gods no. At least not anytime soon. There's a huge gap between ranks. Randall's Vitality will slowly rise over time, but unless I break through to F-rank and rank up the Bond there's no way it'll get that far. Still, the effects will get more impressive as I get stronger. This is amazing, it'll definitely cover for my specializing in healing."

"How is it so strong? Gradual growth without training is crazy." I couldn't hide the shock and slight envy in my voice. She'd gotten insanely lucky. "I mean, I'm glad you're getting so much out of it, but still, I can't believe a beginner Skill gives so much benefit."

She just laughed again. "It's resonance between the Bond and my ability. They're extremely compatible. I could probably synergize them at my next rank up if I wanted, but I'm staying focused on healing personally. Randall will handle the attack and defense stuff. Plus it's less impressive than it sounds. Randall will grow VERY slowly, probably slower than he would with just regular exposure to people, and my Might won't ever get higher than his, and probably won't even catch up."

Knowing there were limits helped a bit, but still, Jessie was going to benefit from this a ton. Her lifeweaver ability really gave her a ton of utility. It was shockingly powerful for our rank. I know if her Vitality hadn't been so overwhelmingly high for her rank she never would have gotten such an overpowered ability, but it was still staggering. I was sure someone had studied what combinations of Skills and stats unlocked what, but I doubted anyone had managed to synergize Jessie's exact Skills with such a high percentage of Vitality.

It made some sense that it would be so strong though. The combined effects of her having frightening amounts of Vitality to fuel it and the fact that the ability was almost exclusively based on that one stat harmonized to create a limited but monstrous power. With Randall to cover for her one weakness in the form of low battle potential, there was no telling how far Jessie could go, especially with me here to keep funneling Vitality points to her. If she wanted to resurrect her brother, I suspected she was definitely headed in the right direction.

Benny, meanwhile, looked exasperated. "I should have waited before I wished for my ability. Oh well, doesn't matter. With my Inventing at Intermediate I can begin to slowly steer the basic direction I want my created objects to have. Not by much, but I can at least decide on a general vibe. I might not have Agria's overpowered ability, but my own is only limited by the fantastic items I can make. I won't let the rest of you leave me in the dust."

Personally I was pretty sure that strengthening his soul was going to be far more important than the raw stats Jessie might be accruing, but he'd figure that out on his own eventually. I'd seen huge dividends from my soul strengthening over time, and definitely planned to get a belt like that if I could find one. It would be insanely useful for me, even if not quite as useful as it was for Benny.

I didn't know how not integrating it like he did would alter the effects, but I suspected it would definitely do so. We kept talking like that as we walked, discussing how they might improve, how we had already improved, and where we might go as a group in the future. The Moonsong Glade was going to be a huge opportunity for all of us, especially Jessie, considering some of the animals we were bound to come across there.

Randall being her bonded companion didn't mean she couldn't still tame beasts. Lily was still trailing behind her mistress, and Rolf was playing with Rellia and Jin as we walked. The wolves had been incredibly happy to see each other, though not as happy as they'd been to see Jessie, with her magical life force infusing ear scritches. It was sweet to see all the puppies playing together.

In general I was just happy to have the team back together. I loved spending time alone with Callie, but being in combat and going on adventures without the whole gang just felt kind of wrong. Being down here with everyone was much more fun. Sadly we had to stop talking about the Bond pretty quickly, since Sloane came over to chat with Jessie. Honestly my Stealth Skill got a ton of work when I discussed almost anything, given how many secrets I had. I had to constantly be sure not to be overheard.

Still, Sloane was just excited to see Jessie. The two of them trained together pretty often in the Beast Lord Garden, especially while Callie and I had been doing our months of training with Abel and Mel. They were pretty close, and Sloane was almost as excited to see our blonde teammate as we were.

We headed back to the Blue Robin when we reached Doomtown. We hadn't actually checked out, just missed a night sleeping there, so we were able to keep our rooms easily enough, and Sydney, Megan, Wren, and Vector were all there when we arrived to say hello. Wren was the firs to notice us as we came into the main room. "Hey, they you are! Didn't see you all yesterday. Looks like you picked up some strays."

I shrugged. "They followed us home. We were going to tell them to beat it but she has a giant bear, which is pretty cool so we figured we'd be nice." Benny rolled his eyes and smacked me upside the back of the head, not that I even felt it through my hood. I plopped down at the table with them, gesturing for the others to pull up some chairs. "So, where's Lament? She and Master Saiten getting ready for the big auction?"

Wren snorted. "They're meeting with Falken, he finally showed up. We've been waiting for that lazy moron for months now. He's almost as strong as Lament though, so he does what he wants, which admittedly is usually sleep. As for Master Saiten, sadly he can't come. The local forces made an exception for him to come down here and guard Lament out of respect for her status as a Master Candidate, but even that won't convince them to let an E-ranker attend an auction."

I grimaced, but nodded. I could see it. It would be impossible for that to go fairly. Granted, there would be external factors in any auction, but since everyone in the auction house would be max of low F-rank, Master Saiten could literally do whatever he wanted. Even if he was too honorable to actually do that (which I had no way of confirming) the other people at the auction would take a step back to avoid pissing him off just in case.

Wren seemed to know what I was thinking. "Yeah, he would compromise the proceedings. Still, he's pretty pissed about having to miss it, and he would probably have forbidden the two of them to go if the others attending wouldn't be incapable of harming them. Plus neither of them listens particularly well, even to him." He snickered at the older Ascendant's misfortune. "You know how Lament is."

I'd met Lament for like a total of three hours and yes, I knew how Lament was. I didn't even need to question if she would ignore someone because she felt like it. Jessie, who had been forced to leave Randall outside, held out a hand to Wren. "Hi there, I'm Agria, since Solomon forgot to introduce me. That's Clockword over there. We're members of his team, though not for the tournament itself."

That startled a laugh out of the big spearman, who took her hand and shook it firmly. "You're the one with the bear? Or was that a joke? Because I would love to see a giant bear. I'm Wren by the way, that's Vector." He nodded to his traveling companion.

"I do have a giant bear!" Jessie chirped excitedly. "His name is Randall! Do you want to meet him?" She turned her head to Vector. "Nice to meet you by the way. You two as well." The last was aimed at Megan and Sydney, and the two rabbit eared girls smiled back at her warmly.

They'd been staying out of our banter, but after being addressed directly, Megan spoke up. "You too. And I'm with big and stabby over there, I'd love to meet a giant bear." She tapped her sister in the ribs with her elbow. "How about you Syd? You've always been a big fan of animals. Want to meet a giant teddy?"

Sydney blushed at the obvious dig at her being childish, but she didn't say no, which got a laugh from all of us. Callie rolled her eyes at me. "See what you do? We're back ten minutes and you're introducing our secret weapons to the competition." Despite the criticism, her teasing tone made it clear she didn't really care. Jessie wasn't in the tournament anyway, so it hardly mattered.

Chatting happily, we all got up to head outside to let the others see Randall. The Blue Robin had a stable for mounts. They weren't incredibly common, but beast tamers DID show up in the WCP from time to time and some of them rode on their beasts. Plus, they could repurpose the place for other uses when there was no one in it, so it wasn't really a waste. It turned out that the stable was actually underground, which explained why I hadn't seen it when we arrived.

Everyone fussed over Randall, who seemed much more docile after bonding, though he still had that same imperious air to him. As we all talked about the upcoming auction, I considered again what might be coming. I still had a bad feeling about Mordaunt, who had invited us, but Callie had taken my worries seriously and we had four F-rankers who could probably fight twice their number, not to mention Abel, and probably Lament. Whatever would happen tomorrow, I was confident we could handle it. All I could do now was enjoy a day of peace with my friends.

 

The rest of the day passed quickly, and at the end of the night I gave my last wish to one of the Beast Lord Initiates. I got three points of Might, bringing me to an even one hundred sixty. With that out of the way we set out to meet with the others to attend the auction. Lament was coming, along with her partner Falken, Sydney and Megan were bringing Riley and the rest of their people, and we had the four with us, along with Abel, Mel, Sloane, Beric, Croll, and the wolves. Even Randall was able to come, since apparently the auction house was fucking huge.

While all the other buildings were small and squat, the auction house was a towering structure of black stone, even on the outside. Looking up at the massive facade of the building, with its dark stone columns and a pair of black stone lions perched out front, it was hard not to be impressed. I had to keep pushing my definition of impressive up a notch every time I saw something new down here.

Lament met us out front, and standing next to her was a tired looking guy with messy dark hair and brown eyes with dark circles around them. He looked pale and kind of thin, but not in an unhealthy way, more in the way of someone who never goes out or does anything. He had a spear with him that he was leaning against like a staff, and his eyes were lidded like he was about to fall asleep. I could see what Wren meant about him usually being asleep, I got the impression that he was a lazy person just from being around him.

Mordaunt appeared beside us, Rahm at her heels, so quickly I almost didn't notice that she hadn't been there all along. "You're here!" She said with a wide smile. "Oh good, I was worried my guests wouldn't show up and that I would end up looking stupid. Wasn't I Rahm?" The massive bandaged man didn't respond in any appreciable way, but Mordaunt nodded like he had. "Oh, and you brought more friends? Oh well, the more the merrier."

That set off alarm bells. I'd been pretty sure that this was a trap before, but that made me positive. Callie had explained to me when I told her my suspicions that an easy test would be bringing more people. Mordaunt had mentioned spots for the auction, and we'd clearly gone over what she'd implied she was allotted. The fact that she didn't even blink at that made it clear the slots had just been an excuse.

I could have gotten the others in anyway, I was pretty sure, given my ties to the WCP, but this had been a good test. Now we knew for sure she was up to something, and to be on guard. Luckily, the four came with us, and they would most likely be a huge asset in any fight. Maybe not quite as much as Abel, but then again, maybe they would be since there were four of them. Shooting Callie a look we followed Mordaunt as she led us in.

The inside of the place was even bigger, of course, and I was impressed by how fancy it was. Wall to wall black marble, with luxurious thick rugs and several large marble counters, behind which sat people in black and gold clothing that looked way nicer than pretty much anything else in Doomtown. "So." I said as I saw the workers. "How exactly is this place not constantly robbed? Because this looks like the kind of place someone would break into and steal everything tat isn't nailed down. And then steal the nails. Especially in a lawless shithole like a dark district."

Granted we were near the Robin, and I knew this part of town was nicer and safer, but still, this whole thing seemed to rely on a preponderance of force. Abel, of course, answered with a chuckle. "Because the WCP says not to. Don't forget where we are. This entire lawless area exists at the sufferance of the WCP leadership. If the bosses decided to clean this out they could do it in an instant. The E-rankers have enough power to raze this whole district. It's happened before. Places like this are declared neutral areas and people listen, because they don't want to die."

That...hadn't occurred to me. I still had trouble viewing the WCP in the way that he was talking about. But it made sense. They were a powerful and terrifying organization, not just at a local level, but in general. The fact that they were strong enough to force the Unity to allow them to have a presence like this in the Conglomerate, when he was a literal god and this was his territory, was evidence enough of that.

My mentor stopped talking as he noticed someone off to one side, and his eyes narrowed as I saw him tense up. I was shocked to see that, he wasn't the type to be worried about other people, especially not down here, but as his eyes focused on a tall, tanned man in worn clothing with a thick beard, his body seemed to shift unconsciously into a defensive stance. "Shit." He said heatedly. "Helix is here."

Helix was an Ascendant Owen had mentioned, one of the old Titan Twenty from Abel's day who got lost in one of Mad Madigan's mazes and had gone slightly crazy. I remembered that clearly because Abel had described him as 'scary', which wasn't a description I'd heard him use for many things. Megan cleared her throat. "Slime hall is in attendance too." Said the Wave Warren ringer, with a grimace.

One by one, powerful people were noted. Some local, some not, some we'd heard of, some we hadn't. Rayka Vale, another of Abel and Mel's old competitors, Dread's daughter, an early F-ranker named Abomina, and the child of Screaming Stevie who called himself the Wailing Win. As well as a few people we knew like Cold Snap and Macgregor. The place gradually filled with powerful Ascendants, and the combined weight of their Impact gave it a strange and worrying feel.

One of the workers, a man in a black and gold suit, stepped out from behind a counter. "Ladies and Gentlemen. We will begin the auction in a few hours, once all the parties have arrived. Feel free to chat amongst yourselves, out here, or in the main auction room. There's also a side area where you may sell some of your less exotic wares to raise funds for the main event, should you feel it worthwhile. Please remember that the Walking Silence Auction is a peaceful affair, and any attempts to disrupt it will be met with harsh reprisals."

No one looked even remotely interested in trying anything like that, given the people guaranteeing the safety of this place. You'd need to be a member of the five faction alliance to be willing to mess with the WCP and none of them had a reason to try. Not for something this small and out of the way. As he finished talking, he retreated behind the counter again, letting everyone mingle.

Which is how we were approached by someone I hadn't expected to see. Fisher, who had actually rode his motorcycle into the auction house (which I guess was fair since Jessie had ridden a bear) rolled up to us. "You." He said faintly. "Members of the Academy. Wasn't expecting to see any others at this thing. We aren't exactly at the right level. Most of the Unity members here are the children of E-rankers."

He didn't say it like an accusation, or like he even cared that much. Just like a statement of fact, like he was telling us what the weather was like. Despite being fairly scary for a G-ranker, he struck me as kind of dull in some ways. Callie, ever the politician, smiled and held out a hand. "We remember you too. I'm Nightstrike. This is Agria, Clockwork, and my boyfriend Solomon. It's nice to see a classmate here. Will you be taking place in the tournament?"

Because he seemed a LOT stronger than he had during the scavenger hunt. It was frankly worrying how quickly he'd managed to advance. Though to be fair, he did have a hundred points of elixir potential to use, so that probably helped. He gave a single sharp nod as an answer, and I had to fight a smile, this guy was not talkative. Seeming to have gotten what he wanted, he stared at us for a few seconds, then turned around and rode off without another word.

"Cool bike." Said Abel conversationally. "Weird kid. But cool bike. So you guys want to go and check out the market before the auction. I know we had certain things we needed to buy, but there are a few odds and ends we could probably pick up there. If nothing else, Clockwork may be able to find some more powerful items to use as materials." He sounded...guarded. In a way I hadn't ever heard from him before.

Still, it was a good idea, so we agreed, and headed off to the side section where the suited man had pointed us all when announcing things. We could see people setting up tables and stalls. Some with furniture supplied by the auction and some they seemed to have brought with them. I saw Mordaunt slip away, and resisted the urge to follow her. It was better to stay in a group, and trailing the Darkling Institute member en masse would draw attention I didn't want or need.

We looked around for a while, and didn't see too much. I managed to find an honest to gods space ring, but I couldn't justify buying it because it would have cost a chunk of our funds for this whole trip. Though I did manage to get a physically larger and much less spacious spatial belt pouch for the three F-ranked chits we had outside the auction funds. I suspected it would be well worth it when we got to the Moonsong Glade.

Other than that, we mostly just looked around, taking note of who was doing the best business and how much they were making, so we could see who we would be betting against. The whole affair had a feeling of tense unease to it. Nothing overt, everyone tried to play relaxed, but there was discomfort and worry bubbling under the surface. The puppies were the only ones who seemed not to care about the tension, with Jin and Rolf playing tag around the tables.

Surprisingly, Celine even showed up, though rather than Martin and Sarah, she had a dangerous looking elf in leather armor at her side, a female F-ranker with purple hair and intense glacial blue eyes she introduced as Shana. They joined up with the group, with Shana shooting suspicious looks at the four and at Abel, obviously competent enough to tell that they were threats.

Finally, after a few hours, the man in the suit stepped back out, clearing his throat. "Attention! May I have your attention!" Everyone turned to look at him. "It is now time for the auction to begin. We expect everyone to take their seats in an orderly fashion. Once all the guests have been seated, we will begin the proceedings. Thank you." He turned and headed into the large room full of seats where the auction would be taking place.

We all followed, slowly and deliberately, but trying our best to seem at ease. Despite that, I felt my stomach clench. I didn't see Mordaunt anywhere. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I suspected I wouldn't like it. At the very least I hoped we could get through the auction first. Once that was done we could worry about the rest of this. The question was, what WAS the rest of this? What could she do in a place like this? And why was I so worried, despite knowing how safe we should be?

 

The man in the suit, whose name we still hadn't been told, headed up onto the stage to wait patiently while everyone got seated. Once we finished doing that, he cleared his throat, his voice somehow covering the entire room without going above a normal speaking tone. It cut through all the chatter, silencing everyone still talking. With a wide smile, the man said. "Welcome, to the Walking Silence Auction! I am your host and auctioneer, Selwyn Carridan."

He gestured to one side, as a pair of heavy set men in black and gold carried out a chest, setting it on a pedestal that had just risen from the stage. "Tonight, you will see many items. Some will be amazing, some macabre, some simply strange. Please remember to keep your seats, as well as your wits about you. And remember that the protection the auction house affords buyers will last until you leave this district, or for three hours after the auction. Whichever comes first. Past that point, the fate of your purchases lies only on your own shoulders."

That was actually much kinder than I had expected from the WCP. Then again, their reputation for business had always been sterling. "Now." Said Selwyn, moving on. "I will begin the auction with something enticing, but perhaps not nearly so intriguing as some of you may hope." He snapped his fingers, and the chest fell open, revealing a single, blue metal glove.

It was easy to feel that the glove was G-ranked, and on the higher end of that scale. "This." Said the auctioneer. "Is our first item up for bid. The hand of a frost knight. A powerful but slow acting chill pervades this gauntlet. It isn't much use in combat, but is, happily enough, a perfect seal or container for powerful flame based materials. providing excellent restraint to such energies when the artifact is wrapped in the fist."

He reached over and picked it up, slipping his hand into it, and snapped the other one. One of the heavyset men stepped up and pulled out a bag, dumping a black and red stone that looked like a hot coal into his hand. The stone, to my shock, was actually F-ranked, but when he closed his hand around it, there was only a long, low hiss as steam wafted up, before even that faded. All traces of the F-ranked stone vanished, and all I could see was a closed blue fist.

"We begin the bidding at one F-ranked chit. Proceed." He waved a hand and a dozen people began to bid, clearly finding some use for the thing.

To my shock, I saw Cark stand up. Sage next to him. "Five F-ranked chits!" Apparently Burning Fist was bankrolling this trip, because I knew for a fact that was already nearing the limit of Cark's savings, and he seemed at ease to keep going. With H-rank chits being the primary currency standard here, each F-rank chit was the equivalent of a hundred. For someone at Cark's level (or ours honestly) it would have taken ages to gather that up in Rajak proper.

People started bidding in earnest, but Cark didn't back down, and eventually won the gauntlet for four E-ranked chits. I blanched a bit. I wasn't sure we were going to have enough to afford any of the things we wanted. Callie shot me a worried look. At the very least, we had a chance. It was clear Cark had some important use for that thing, but a blank Skill Crystal at G-rank should be much less pressing, though many more people would want it. We could only hope that it came later on the program when people had wasted more of their money.

I wanted to go over and talk to Cark, but we were all stuck sitting down until the halfway point on the program. I leaned in to whisper to Callie, using my Stealth Skill to erase the sound so no one eavesdropped. "Do you know what they wanted that thing for? I assume it was some item and Inventor made, but Cark seemed pretty focused on it. Do they have some kind of artifact to suppress?"

She just shrugged. "No idea. Probably though. Maybe something with a backlash? Anyway, the money they're spending is insane. I hope that hasn't set the standard for pricing. It's still so early." I reached out to take her hand in mine and squeeze. I felt the same. I didn't think so though. They'd bid a ton because they'd needed that for something. No one was going to overpay for an item they didn't need because someone else had bought something pricey earlier.

I was vindicated in that assumption about twenty minutes later when the next item sold, a gourd that could apparently refine and concentrate poison. There were a fair few bids, especially from Slime Hall, but in the end the thing sold for two F-ranked chits. The starting point seemed much more important to the final price than what had gone before, and we were relieved.

After the gourd was a pair of bracers that could create powerful shields, and an arm in a box that made me extremely wary to look at. The arm was, as far as I could tell, F-ranked, but it had some sort of additional aspect that made it scary, because I'd seen F-rankers before but never gotten that particular vibe. The bracers sold for eight F-rank chits and the arm for a whopping five E-ranked chits to someone I was positive was from a necromantic force, though possibly not the Darkling Institute.

When the next item was brought out, it seemed to stir up quite a bit of interest. The small black box was woven of metal and densely enchanted, and when Selwyn opened it, every person in the auction hall went silent. "Now this." aid Selwyn gleefully. "Is one of the most valuable items we have available. A runic core. Made from a specially treated naturally forming ice rune. By ingesting the core, you can mutate your natural ability to contain an ice attribute. Much like that gauntlet, this was donated by our friends at Final Frost Heaven."

Sydney and Megan both flinched at the name, and I leaned over to ask as the bidding started. None of my crew needed ice powers, besides which the bidding had started at an E-ranked chit, so we had no fucking possibility of getting it. "Who or what is Final Frost Heaven?" They sounded kind of scary, and if they had someone here we'd have to fight I wanted to know more about them.

Megan looked around warily. "C-rank force. Not just one C-ranker either. They have six Frost Lords, all in the C-rank. They're one of the top forces in the system, and even at the cluster level they aren't pushovers. There's no way at least one of their competitors isn't a Master Candidate. I hope I don't run into them in the tournament. We don't have any counters for things like that."

I tried to imagine how powerful someone would have to be for that kind of reaction, but couldn't really place it. They were clearly on a level I couldn't even hope to see on Callus. Still, people were excited about the runic core. I could understand why too. If I had a normal ability I might have been tempted. I doubted 'ice wishes' would be useful though. And even if they were I didn't want to risk losing my three times modifier by changing my power.

Callie probably could have benefited a lot from the core, but I didn't have nearly enough to compete for it. Which was why I couldn't fight back a grin as one of the four placidly big eight E-ranked chits for the thing. Apparently Alexander was looking out for his niece even when he wasn't around. He must have given them a decent nest egg.

The bidding kept increasing, but despite passing ten E-ranked chits they didn't jump to D-ranked. Abel had mentioned D-ranked chits were qualitatively different, much like D-ranked people, and said there probably wasn't even one on the whole planet. I was curious if it was closer to a one hundred or even one thousand to one ratio for those, and resolved to ask.

The core didn't go to the four, sadly, they ran out of money. It sold for eighty E-ranked chits, an absolutely monstrous amount of money, to someone from the Twilight Order. "Alright my friends." Said Selwyn. "This last lot marks the halfway point of the auction, and its conclusion will see us enter a brief intermission where you might move around and speak to other participants."

Everyone seemed pretty happy about that, but Selwyn paid them no mind. "Now." He said, raising his voice. "May I introduce our next item for bid. A summoning whistle, capable of calling an F-ranked Nether Butterfly that can be ridden by the summoner!" He flipped open the box to reveal an intricate purple crystal whistle, sitting delicately on a black silk bed and nearly glowing in the soft light of the auction hall.

A hush fell across the crowd because of the item, and I couldn't help but stare myself. This thing was definitely F-ranked, and high in the F-ranks too. I wondered how the hell it even worked. Was there a spatial enchantment on it that brought the mount from somewhere else? Did it create the thing through Fantasy? Did they somehow store it inside the whistle? However it functioned it was apparently just as interesting to everyone else as it was to me, because not a single person could take their eyes off of it.

Not that it mattered. "We begin the auction." He said quietly. "At a dozen E-ranked chits." Before he even finished talking there was an offer for fifteen, then another for twenty. The number passed a hundred quickly enough, and to my shock became D-ranked chits. I guess that answered that question. I could only assume chits at the Master level had some other requirement making them harder to make since they were a hundred to one instead of ten.

Sure enough, just like Abel said, none of the local forces were able to place a bet once it passed that point. Slime Hall, Spear Legion, the Twilight Order, they all offered multiple D-ranked chits before the thing finally sold at a price of twelve. Which was more money than I had ever seen in my entire life so far. Considering how much effort it took us to scrape together a single E-ranked chit, I could only hope a blank Skill Crystal would be too small potatoes for these monsters to bid on or we might not get anything.

At least the four were still here and willing to bid for Callie. It seemed like Alexander had given them a tidy sum. As the winner of the whistle, Final Frost Heaven, sent a low F-ranker up to retrieve the whistle, we got up and rushed over to talk to Cark. He saw us coming and grinned, waving us over. "Hey guys." He said as we got within range. "Fancy meeting you here. Didn't realize you were coming to this thing."

"Yeah." I said guiltily. "Guess we didn't actually check in during our little trip. We could have co-ordinated or something. Seems like you're doing ok though. Congrats on your...cold glove." I said that last bit with a slightly teasing tone, and he just rolled his eyes.

"Oh bite me. I have my uses for it. It's good to see you guys though. Cass has been missing you like crazy, especially Agria and the wolves. She spends time with Zeke, but he isn't exactly the most social person." We joked around for a minute, and I let myself relax a bit as I considered that I might have been silly about this whole thing. There was nothing to worry about. This auction had gone perfectly fine...until I realized something. The Darkling Institute hadn't placed a single bid. Not even on the arm. Where the hell were they? They were supposed to be heavily involved in this auction. Which was, of course, when the lights went out. And the screaming started.