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

"Well that was anticlimactic." Said Teague with a frown. "I was expecting this to be some huge ruckus, but SOMEONE." He glared at Abel. "Wasn't leaving any enemies for the rest of us."

My mentor snickered, but the rest of us just rolled our eyes. None of us were surprised by that observation. Abel was a Master Candidate. If they had someone below F-rank that could take him out they wouldn't be hired assassins, they would be their own faction and probably IN the tournament. The more pertinent information was that Teague and the others were willing to throw in with us without blinking, which was pretty cool of them.

Callie cleared her throat. "As unfair as the rest of us find Apollyon, we still have to thank you. This would have been harder on our own, though the most credit has to go to the four." She looked at the black robed quadruplets. "I realize that looked easy to the rest of us, but I also know as someone who fights with a partner how difficult it is to execute a four person stealth attack like that. If any of you had been even a split second off you'd have alerted the enemy and one or two might have gotten away. Thank you."

The four nodded. They rarely spoke in front of other people, so that was probably the best she would get. Some kind of edgy assassin mystique thing probably. I looked down at Miles, who was moaning weakly on the ground. We'd taken him apart without much trouble, I'd expected him to be strong, but Callie and I together could take down a new F-ranker, which put us in the odd position of being much too strong as a duo for most G-rankers, but not good enough to fight up ranks on our own.

I walked over to the burned but already healing mercenary and kicked him in the most damaged spot I could find. He whined and jerked, eyes opening blearily as he glared up at me. I grinned at him, not that he could see it behind my mask, but I'm sure my voice conveyed my amusement. "Aww, don't look so mad. I stopped you from bleeding too much, you should be thanking me."

He practically snarled as he gingerly climbed to his hands and knees. "You CAUTERIZED them. With POISON. And your stab happy harlot was the one who-" I swung my cane down sharply, smashing it into the ground close enough to his head to send chunks of rock at his face. He squealed and backpedaled, looking up at me in fear.

"You." I said calmly. "Should watch your mouth when you talk about my partner. We might need information from you, but we can always hire a necromancer to get it out of your corpse." That was a bluff. I wouldn't kill someone for bad mouthing my girlfriend. I WOULD kick the living shit out of him if he didn't watch his tone though, and putting the fear of me in him might make this whole thing go faster.

He seemed almost...offended. "Fine. I'll be polite then. Honestly, no one has any etiquette anymore. Can't even let a man bemoan his own capture." He snorted, waving me off. "Well, go ahead. Ask what you want. Not that it'll do you much good, I'm on contract, and my NDA is nearly iron clad. Unless you have an Oathbreaker on staff you're out of luck."

I looked at Callie, sending my impressions through the bond so she knew what I wanted. She nodded, trusting me to take the lead. Good. I had ways of handling this. I turned back to the man. "See, I believe you. I believe that you can't tell me a single thing about your client. Anyone with common sense would have made damn sure of that. I ALSO believe that you would have known that going in, and that you wouldn't be so naive as to trust your client completely."

The smug amusement that had been bubbling up after he deflected me with the NDA comment was replaced with wariness. "I don't know what you're talking about." He said flatly.

"Sure you do." I responded cheerfully. "I'm talking about insurance. You're a local boy, I can tell, and you might work with local forces on their own credibility. But this mess is ass deep in tournament politics, which means some of the parties involved are decidedly NOT local. A smart guy such as yourself wouldn't trust strangers as far as he could throw them. Maybe not even that far."

I crouched down next to him, chucking him under the chin with a finger. "See, I know a thing or two about contracts, and one of the biggest flaws in a contract is that it only covers as much as the author can think to add. That's what loopholes are, things people forget to mention. That NDA for instance, would prevent you from talking about your client, but if, say, you were a very paranoid person and followed that client and happened to see who they might be meeting with, THAT person wouldn't be covered under contractual confidentiality, since the client would have no reason to add them."

Despite our involvement in political messes I had no desire to expand my political toolbox, politics annoyed me. But dealing with sneaky shit like this was becoming second nature to me. Spending so much time in the WCP was helping me expand my worldview, and combined with my contracts skill I was figuring out all sorts of new ways to deal with people.

Miles's face had paled noticeably, which meant I had hit the nail on the head. "If." He said quietly. "And I do mean if. I had done such a thing. That information would simply be insurance in case of difficulties with the client. It wouldn't be for sale. If it got out that I was collecting and passing information on clients the mercenary union would have my head."
I paused. "Mercenary union?"

Abel piped up from off to one side. "Mercs traditionally don't manage to get to E-rank and when they do they tend to join a faction because of the offered terms. A few decades ago though a particularly dangerous mercenary who called himself Rattling Bones established an organization for mercenaries in the city, topside and bottom. Over the years six more E-rankers have joined the union. It's nowhere near enough to be on the same level as the major factions, but very few of the subfactions have the muscle to make trouble with the union."

Which meant Melinda and Alexander didn't. I hadn't expected that, but it wasn't like I didn't have an answer for it. "The same logic applies. The information isn't covered in the contract, and the insurance was only necessary because you were misinformed of our capabilities. Your client screwed you, simple as that. Did they tell you that one of your targets was directly representing the Wish Curse Palace as a candidate?"

Telling him that was a calculated risk. Now that we were working with Frostbite word would spread up here soon enough anyway, might as well get something out of it. His face paled even further at the words, so clearly they hadn't mentioned that. Hell, I wasn't even sure whoever hired him had known, but it was enough of an excuse that he could tell us without compromising his reputation.

"You'll let me go if I tell you?" His voice wasn't confident or even resigned anymore. He sounded scared. Like someone who had just found out the pool they were swimming in connected to the ocean, and there were sharks in the water.

I looked to Callie, and she nodded. She didn't want to kill some random mercenary either. This guy had come at us to injure, even if he'd been a dick about it. I genuinely believed that he wasn't trying to kill us. "Yes." I said reassuringly. "We'll let you go if you tell us." He started to relax but I cut in sharply. "Assuming you have actual information. If you're stringing us along we'll hand you over to the Unity and let them deal with you."

That was the furthest I was willing to take the threat, and it seemed like it was enough. "I was approached by...a certain party." He said carefully. "A few days ago. The job was quick and easy, but I knew that a lot of other mercs in the city had been contacted. Outsiders showing up and then a massive operation going down? That stank of trouble. So I did what I do. I reached out to an associate of mine and arranged to have my client followed discretely. I didn't TELL him what he was doing, obviously, that would have violated the NDA, but we've worked together on jobs like this before."

He groaned in pain as he sat up, but settled down after a second. Callie gestured to Jessie and she stepped forward, Benny at her side, to start patching him up a bit, since he was helping. "They were paranoid, of course." He continued after he got a bit of relief. "Most people I work with are. But the big trap about paranoia is that it's self congratulating. If someone thinks they're being follow and takes precautions, once that's done their own bias tells them they must be safe. We've been at this a while. My guy stuck to them, and eventually they led us to who we needed."

I groaned. "What are you, hourly? This glimpse into the inner workings of the life of a mercenary is fascinating, but I don't need all the set up. Get to the point."

He chuckled. "Sorry. Right. Anyway I put my guy on their trail and he followed them for a bit, and he eventually ended up following the target back to a meeting at the Academy. He met with one of the students and exchanged an envelope, then chatted for a while and left. My guy couldn't hear what they said, they used Stealth Skills, but the client didn't go anywhere else until our next meeting."

"Ok." I said slowly. "That helps a bit, but there are a million students at the academy. Plus we know that the faction behind this is most likely one of the five, since any smaller group would be insane to try to bully a bunch of representatives from the largest forces in the universe. Must be someone else." I sighed. "It's fine though, you gave us what you had. You can go."

He shook his head. "No. That's just it. The person my client met with wasn't a member of the Unity at all. They were a student at the academy, but they were there on some kind of diplomatic mission or something."

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach as he said that, and desperately hoped his answer to my next question, wasn't what I was pretty sure it would be. My voice was rough with shock as I forced myself to ask. "Did...did he give you a description of this contact by any chance? Maybe some distinguishing features that could be used to identify them if we run into them later?"

"Oh sure." He said casually, unaware he was throwing a lit stick of dynamite into the morale of my entire team. "He was actually pretty excited about it. There aren't many of her kind around Callus after all, and definitely almost none at the Academy. Like I said diplomatic mission or something. Guess you don't forget the first time you see an elf."

We all turned to look at Benny, and even with his mask I could see my friend's face paling. We only knew one elf at the academy, and she was indeed on a diplomatic mission. So the question was, why had Celine just arranged to have us attacked by mercenaries?

 

Benny was, understandably, not at all thrilled to find out his girlfriend hired people to assault and possibly murder us. I was still shaky on what their orders had been, but regardless of whether the intent was to take our lives it had clearly been to at least screw us over, and my best friend was devastated.

We debated over what to do for a short while, but in the end, we only really had one option. We headed for the Academy to talk to Celine. I wasn't sure what she might have to say, but in the end, she deserved a chance to speak her piece, and Benny deserved a chance to hear it.

Jessie, to my surprise, was livid. She and Celine had bonded during the siege, and she and Benny had gotten closer waiting for us during our time in Doomtown. For her own sake I hoped the elf had a good explanation for all this.
We were all unusually quiet during the ride, arranging to meet up with Teague and the others later while we went and handled what could only be described as personal business.

I expected Benny to hang back when we arrived, let Callie and I take the lead since this would already be hard on him, but my friend was the first one out of the car. We had to hurry to catch as he purposefully strode through the campus, ignoring everyone as he approached the dorm where Grimmengap lived. When he arrived,he pounded on the door calmly, still and cold as he waited for someone to answer.

Sarah was the one who opened the door. "Oh!" She said happily. "Hey guys. I thought you had your match today? How did it go?" The soft spoken blonde was as happy and upbeat as usual, but when she saw our faces, her smile wilted a bit. "Ah, not so good then?"

That was a reasonable conclusion to come to, but Benny just shook his head. "They did fine. Is Cel here? I need to talk to her."

"Sure..." Sarah said slowly, seeming unsure what to make of this sudden and apparently unpleasant visit. "She's in her room. She's not feeling well today. Guess she had some trouble sleeping last night."

Benny seemed to ALMOST react to that, his eyes flickering with a bit of hope before he squashed it down. "She'll want to see me. It's important. Tell her we met some friends of hers outside the arena and wanted to talk about them." His voice was thick and raspy, as if he was slightly sick, and I felt my heart clench for him, knowing how awful this must be.

Benny hadn't been in Doomtown with us, hadn't been in the tournament or involved in our dueling training. He'd been doing his own training some of that time sure, but he'd also been spending most of his time with Celine. Been getting closer to her and getting to know and care about her. I tried to imagine how I would feel knowing that Callie had potentially been planning to stab me in the back for our whole relationship, and I just...couldn't.

Clearly sensing my best friend's seriousness Sarah nodded and turned, hurrying back inside to ask her team leader what to do. She came back a minute later looking worried. "She says you guys can come back." She paused. "Are you sure it needs to be right now? She looks really bad."

I bet she did. But we just shook our heads and pushed past. Abel and Mel hung back, since this wasn't really their deal, Mel intercepted Sarah, asking the girl about the wolves they had sleeping around the dorm, while Abel started chatting up Martin, much to my relief and gratitude.

We headed back to Celine's room, and when we knocked on the door, a faint voice told us to come in. Celine was sitting at the mirror, brushing her hair, and Sarah hadn't been kidding, she looked...bad. Dark circles under her eyes, sunken cheeks, and a dull expression somehow different from her normally placed countenance. Her eyes stayed locked on the mirror for a second when we entered, before dragging dazedly over to us.

"Oh." She said in a quavering voice. "Hello everyone. I was glad to hear about your match going well. Sarah said you met some friends of mine?" Her tone was high and kind of unsteady, like she was trying not to cry, and I noted that this was probably the most emotional I'd ever seen her. Benny had been coldly furious this whole time, but I could see real concern on his face, and I didn't blame him.

He didn't let it deter him though. Forcing himself to focus on the pain he was feeling. "Yeah." He said lightly. "We met some people who mentioned knowing you. Guy named Miles, and a few people from the mercenary guild. They're friends of a friend apparently."

She swallowed hard. "Ah. Those friends." She closed her eyes, taking a shaky breath. "That's...unfortunate."

"Unfortunate?" Said Benny calmly. "Why is it unfortunate Celine? Is it unfortunate that you betrayed all your friends and had us attacked? Is it unfortunate that we found out? Or is it unfortunate that you had to waste all your time pretending to give a shit about me to accomplish your mission? Maybe it's unfortunate we didn't just die and save you from this conversation."

Her eyes snapped open as she whirled to stare at him frantically. "No!" I was shocked by the vehemence in voice voice, and from their reactions so were the others. She was...well I wasn't sure what she was, but it was certainly dramatic. "No one was supposed to die. No one was supposed to even get seriously hurt. I was VERY clear about that. I hired FIVE F-rankers to counter your minder, made sure that they would strike when you were in a small group and overwhelm you."

She was almost pleading as she said it. "There were so many of them so they could handle you without any danger. You weren't in harms way at all. I made sure of it. I know that doesn't make it better, but I did my best to make sure you would be as safe as possible."

Benny laughed coldly. "Oh, I guess I should be grateful. My girlfriend hired a bunch of thugs to beat me and my friends, but only a LITTLE bit." He threw his hands up. "All better! That fixes things."

The groan of frustration that came out of her mouth was almost animalistic in intensity. "I didn't WANT to do it. But if I didn't one of the others would have handled the hiring and they might have sent people to actually kill you. I was TRYING to keep you safe." Her eyes frantically scanned over all of us. "Please. I didn't want anyone to get hurt. I was trying to protect you all. I DO care about you Benicio. That's why I made my sister give me this assignment."

"Ok." He said casually. "So you care. Not enough to be loyal to me. Not enough to pick me over your family, but sure, let's say you care. How long have you been planning this?"

Callie cut in. "From the beginning." She said solemnly. "That was why they sent you here. For this tournament. You enrolled here at the academy to wait for this. Is it really that big of a deal? Like Impact is important, but a few points of it can't make that much of a difference."

Celine just shook her head sadly. "You're wrong. The competition between the younger generation in the galactic centers is horrifying. A few points of Impact could be the difference between one of the faction heirs claiming glory and resources in several of the major competitions. There's almost nothing the Queen wouldn't do to get even a small advantage for one of her sons or daughters. It's the same for any of the major factions."

Her eyes pleaded with us almost as fiercely as her voice did. "This isn't going to get better. It's going to get worse. This was the best thing for all of you. If you had agreed to drop out of the tournament early they never would have paid any attention to you." She looked at Callie. "You were thinking about it already. You TOLD me that. It would have been so much safer."

"The Fairieland was preparing for this for a while, to invest so much manpower." I said slowly. "They set things up so they could attack all the major factions and weed out as much competition as possible. You mentioned your sister. Is she the higher up that's responsible for all this."

Celine's eyes were filling with tears. "Yes." She whispered. "My sister Nalia had been here for quite some time. She has special equipment to prevent herself from being noticed, it suppresses her aura constantly.

Benny snorted. "Well, guess that explains why I never met your mom. She didn't need to meet me not to approve. Bet your sister told you to dump me as soon as you stuck the knife in huh?"

"I wouldn't!" She snapped. "She told me to end things weeks ago. She said I had enough information, that I'd made inroads with your other friends. She said your training was enough of an excuse to break things off without alienating me, but I wouldn't do it." Her tears were flowing now, but she wasn't sniffling or anything. Celine was a quiet crier.
"I feel so flattered." He said woodenly. "I meant enough to you that you wanted to really drag things out before you threw me under the bus. Glad to know I was at least a good distraction."

Celine looked like she wanted to pull her hair out. I reminded myself not to feel bad for her. This could all be bullshit. She was a courtier, putting on the waterworks and pretending to be upset was her bread and butter. Her shoulders slumped as her eyes dropped to the ground, and I found myself struck by how...defeated she looked.

"I know. I know I can't fix it. I know it's too late. But I am sorry. I just...I thought it would all work out." The desperation leaked away, leaving only hollow emptiness and shame. "I thought I could keep you safe and do my job at the same time. I just...I've never had friends before. I wanted to keep you. All of you, but especially you Benicio. I realize that was selfish and stupid."

Her eyes snapped up, emotion filling them again as she forced herself to look him in the eyes. "But if you ever cared enough to listen. Listen now. You don't understand how bad this will get. The Fairieland tried to make the first as devastating as possible, but if you drove off your attackers than the less effective groups will have failed as well. Retaliation will be swift and brutal, and it will not be targeted. Please. PLEASE drop out of the tournament." She aimed that comment at Callie, obviously. "Please don't get yourselves killed playing above your paygrade."

Benny just shook his head in disgust. "How am I supposed to trust that? How are any of us? How am I supposed to be sure you aren't manipulating us, AGAIN."

"Because I love you." She whispered. "Because I don't want you to die. I don't want you to lose your best friend, or to see Shane lose Callie, or to see Jessie die. Because I care." She sighed brokenly. "But you have no reason to believe that. Or anything I say." Her eyes never left his though. "But...do you?"

The anger went out of Benny, and he just looked...tired. Just as tired and sickly as she did. "I don't know what I believe anymore Celine. Thanks for that." Then he turned and walked out of the room, and the elf lost her composure and finally broke down into wracking sobs. We all left then. As much as we might be angry at her, some things shouldn't be seen by other people.

 

Benny didn't look so good. That was to be expected. I left Callie to talk to the others about what we'd learned and deal with next steps (sometimes it was really nice not to be in charge) and pulled my best friend aside to talk. Since we'd left the dorm he'd been quiet and almost listless. I hated seeing him like that, and I knew if it was me he would have been right there to talk me through it, so I did the same.

Or rather, I DIDN'T talk. I just sat, and waited. We were out behind the house, sitting down and staring off through the yards of the places nearby, and he wasn't saying a word. That was fine, I could do quiet too. I'd leave him to his thoughts until he was ready to say something. He sat there, staring off into space for a while, before finally saying. "I want to just ignore it."

I shrugged. "Then do that, it's your relationship."

He scowled at me. "What are you? Stupid? She lied to me, almost got us both killed, or at least seriously messed up. I can't just forgive that!"

I looked at him levelly, and his shoulders slumped with a sigh. "Which was your point. So, what? I never talk to her again? I can't even imagine that. I miss her already you know? It's been like an hour since we left and I want to call and hear her voice again."

That I could understand. "I don't think you should just never talk to her again." I said carefully. "Hell, I won't tell you not to forgive her. She was thinking of you at least a bit during all this. But she's also way too subservient to her family and that's going to go badly for you long term." I shrugged. "Which is to say...I don't know? This isn't exactly my area of expertise. I've been in one relationship and I basically won the lottery."

He nodded. "Yeah. I know. I want to forgive her. But I don't want to forgive her because I want to forgive her, you know?" I cocked an eyebrow at him (I'd taken off my mask when I sat down) and he rolled his eyes. "I MEAN that I want to decide based on the merits of her actions, and not be influenced by how much I care about her."

It took real effort to hold back the snickers, and when he looked at me I just lost it and burst out laughing. He just glared at me. "Are you stupid?" I asked incredulously once I finally stopped cackling. "It's a relationship. How much you care about her is all that matters. You're not a robot Benny, even if you sometimes swap your parts like one."

"You're a dick." He said flatly. "But...you're not wrong. So what the fuck do I do man? Do I call her up and try to make things work. Do I cut all ties?" He sounded a bit scared.

"I'd say you wait." I said with a shrug. "Give it time. Let yourself cool off, let her think things through. If things are going to work out you both need to approach it from a place that isn't so...fraught."

"That." Came a voice from behind us. "Is actually surprisingly good advice." We turned to see Zeke leaning against the wall casually. "Better than I'd have expected from you. That girl of yours really is good for you. Color me surprised, I thought you'd never grow up."

I stuck my tongue out at him, not at all proving his point. Benny looked up at him calmly. "What are you doing out here Zeke?"

My uncle shrugged. "Heard about your bad news. Wanted to offer my condolences. Also wanted to say not to hold it against her too much. From the sound of it she tried to shield you more than most would. It can be hard to ignore a family like that when you grow up in it." He sighed. "I dated an elf girl once. Fucking nobility get their claws in deep. They have a long time to practice."

Benny looked troubled. "If it was just me I could probably get past it. But it wasn't me, was it? I'm not on the team for the tournament. She tried to hurt Shane and Callie. I don't know if I can get over that."

Zeke nodded, walking over to sit down next to us, leaning back against the wall. "You know. I've known you almost your whole life. You were just a little thing when you and Shane became friends. And I've always thought you were good for him, got him out of his comfort zone. But I never really thought you had what it took to stick it out once he got his ability. I thought he'd leave you behind, that you wouldn't be able to keep up."

"Gee." Said Benny sullenly. "Thanks."

"My point." Said Zeke firmly as he rolled his eyes. "Is that what you just said was probably the first time I've considered you an actual companion rather than a freeloader. Not that I'm saying it was right or wrong. But it makes me think you're the kind of person who might make it out of all this alive."

I looked at him oddly. "I always figured you thought of Benny like my version of you. You and dad were close when you were younger right? And he was raised outside the family, so when the two of you were friends before you became the scary badass you are today, right?"

He stared off into the distance, nodding slowly. "Yeah. Yeah we were. But do you think we were the only one?" He asked sadly. "All the candidates have friends, kid. They all consider bringing them along. Hell, the whole Candidate process is aimed at cultivating strong allies over time, it's natural to make sure that your earlier and staunchest allies are the ones who come along with you."

That made sense to me, but Zeke wasn't done. "But it usually doesn't happen. Most of them can't keep up. They get left behind, or just decide not to follow. I'm the exception, not the rule. It takes...a certain kind of person, to abandon everything you have to follow a friend into the unknown. It's not an easy life." He looked down. "I don't recognize myself some days. The prices I paid weren't on Eli, but they were steep. Sometimes I'm not sure if they were worth it."

I looked at him in concern. "So you regret it then? Leaving your planet? Following dad back to the clan?"

"No." He said thoughtfully. "I guess I don't. If I had regrets I wouldn't have made it this far. Most of them were diluted as I became what I am, if they ever really existed." He looked at Benny. "My point is that you're going to have to make sacrifices for this if you want it. I did. I wasn't sure you could do that before. Now I'm a little more convinced. That said, it might be wise to consider what's going through your head as I say all this. Consider the attachment you feel to your family and your reticence to leave, and then consider that Celine might be feeling the same things."

Benny's eyes widened, as he realized what Zeke was saying, in a roundabout way. "What happened to making sacrifices?" He said wryly.

Zeke shrugged again. "Giving some things up is one thing, but you don't need to give up everything. I'm not saying to get over it or anything, I'm just saying if it's this hard for you to let go of your family, imagine how it must be for her. The fact that she did as much as she did is pretty damn impressive."

That got a thoughtful nod from my best friend, and he drifted off into silence, but I felt the need to ask another question, once that didn't have to do with any of the drama with Celine. "What about you? Do you still have a family? You said you had to give up a lot. Have you seen them since? What were they like?"

A wistful smile crossed his face. "I was part of a small clan on a C-ranked planet called Rossus. Elijah's guardian was a crabby old bastard named Edgar, one of his uncles. Malachai always took care of his kids, and Eli and his brother and sister are among his favorites. Edgar was B-rank, like I am now, though much less personable. He ignored Eli mostly, and Eli grew up at my place."

His tone was somehow sad and happy at the same time. Like he missed those days, but thinking about them hurt him. "I lived with my parents, two sisters and three brothers. I was the only one close to Eli. My mother stopped talking to me when I told her I was leaving. My younger sister cried. My older sister told me she understood. My brothers said they hated me."

He chuckled glumly. "I checked in on them a few decades later. Cassia, my older sister, became the matriarch of our clan and reached C-rank. Olena, my younger sister, got married and had three children. My youngest brother Cyrus became an elder in the clan. Cassia boosted the two of them to peak E-rank with pills, and the other two died in a border dispute with a rival family."

I was stunned. Zeke, my uncle Zeke, had nieces and nephews. "I'd like to meet them sometime maybe." I said quietly. "If you're interested in letting me."

Chuckling, he patted my back. "Maybe someday, kid. But probably not soon. I stay away from them. You know how Fantasy works. Draws us toward things that are...interesting. I'm real interesting, and having me around might draw them into something more interesting than they can deal with."

Benny was still quiet, but he was looking at Zeke a bit differently. My uncle smiled at him. "Thank you." He said sincerely. "For being there for him when I can't. And for being a better friend than I gave you credit for." He stood up. "Anyway. I won't bother you all. I'll just leave you with a bit of advice. I don't have any regrets about leaving home, but I DO have regrets. I can tell you one thing for sure. I regret the people I DIDN'T give chances to a hell of a lot more than the ones I did, even when it didn't turn out well."

With that uncharacteristic bit of seriousness Zeke turned and strolled away, leaving Benny to stare thoughtfully off into the distance. I clapped him on the shoulder and got up to go inside. He'd talked, he'd listened, now he needed to process. Benny had always been like that. Once he heard what he needed to hear he needed time for it to sink in. He wasn't going to call her right now or anything, but he would think about everything at least.

I headed back in to meet up with Callie, who was talking to the others, and slipped my hand into hers, twining our fingers together. She didn't stop talking, though I caught a flash of a smile at the corners of her mouth as she squeezed back. Seeing how bad Benny was feeling over Celine did one good thing at least, it reminded me how lucky I was.

Sadly being romantically lucky didn't make me lucky in other ways. We knew more about this mess now, knew the main antagonist from the Fairieland was a female E-ranked elf named Nalia. She didn't seem to know I was a Candidate though she almost definitely knew about mom given Grimmengap had been there for Aiden's explanation about that. Which meant she didn't know about Zeke. We still had advantages, but we had to move fast. First step was figuring out where the hell she was.

 

I wished we could have taken the next day off so I could keep Benny company while he thought things through. Sadly, that wasn't in the cards. We had to start looking into our next opponent immediately. We only had the day to prepare for the fifth round, and after the next fight we wouldn't even have that. With three hundred arenas in the city the fifth round would take place in a single day, as would every round until the eighth. Which meant our downtime was officially gone.

After granting Rime her wishes and passing the elixirs to Benny (all Focus based bringing him up to one hundred eighty three focus), we headed out to meet up with the other teams in we knew in the tournament. Since we had no leads on a new source for the tournament, our best bet was to talk to the other teams, especially the ones who lost, so we could start compiling information on the groups that were still in.

Since any of the winning groups would only have information on defeated enemies talking to people like Lament but Silent Dagger's team and Beast Lord Garden would be easily able to share some info. We had them meet us at Deva again, because the food there was fantastic. Rime decided to wait outside, not feeling up to a big social event, so it was just Callie and I after Jessie headed off to do some errands.

When we arrived, Sloane and Abigail were sitting on one side of the table, and their teams were mingling on the other. They'd saved seats for Callie and I, and we both plopped down next to them, stopping to order our meals before pleasantries. Once we'd done that Callie gave the other girl a hug. "Hey, Sloane, good to see you. I was sorry to hear you guys got dinged out."

The Beast Lord Initiate frowned, sighing deeply. "Not just me. All of our teams got bounced. Mine was the strongest and with us losing the other three didn't have much chance."

Callie made a sympathetic sound. "I'm sure you guys did great. Winning isn't everything, you'll definitely get some stat points out of the match for putting on a good show." Her tone wasn't conciliatory, more upbeat and positive, and despite seeming to appreciate it I didn't think Sloane was buying.

"No." Said the other girl. "We didn't. We got crushed. The Burning Heaven Abyss is one of the factions with a Master Candidate. Their gunner absolutely destroyed us. From what I can tell they built their whole team around him. Two augmenters and a heavy to play defense up close. Their defender is tough too. Wren and Falken double teamed him and couldn't leave a scratch."

Abigail made a sympathetic noise. "I can sympathize with such sentiments. My own heart grows dark with sorrow as my mortality eclipses my hopes for the future. Curses and malaise on the heads of the swine who divert the paths of our bright destinies, leading us down the road to ruination."

I stared at her blankly. "I...have absolutely no idea what the hell you just said."

Sloane snickered. "Don't sweat it. You pick up Abby speak pretty fast when you're around her long enough. She basically said 'sucks to be you, I'm pretty pissed at the assholes who beat us too'."

Callie raised an eyebrow. "Is the whole super formal archaic speech thing really useful? Or is it just a preference thing?"
Abigail smiled serenely. "Tales fly swiftly on wings of whispers of the maiden with the transcendant speech. Worthwhile? Who can say, but the paths we take lead ever to the same peaks, naught a one walks them with less alacrity as can be managed at their utmost."

I tried to puzzle that out, but Callie picked it up first. "Translation, we all do crazy shit to get stronger." She said with a smile. "Fair point. So what about you guys? Who did you lose to?"

Sloane cut in before Abigail could respond. "Whoa there." She said before the other girl could respond. "Sorry sweetie, but I don't think any of us will get a word of that. They fought the Night Demon Throne. Super creepy group of berserker nutcases. I was actually at their fight. Those weirdos attack each other to boost their power before the fight. They have some kind of ramping ability that makes them stronger the more injured they get."

That didn't sound great. I was about to ask more about them, when the scan ring on my finger vibrated. I left Callie to talk things out with the others as I stepped away, answering the call to find a surprising face. "Celine." I said calmly. "Wasn't expecting to hear from you any time soon. Anything I can help you with?"

The elf girl looked awful. Her eyes were bloodshot and the dark circles around them were deeper, her skin was sallow and waxy, and her gaze was hazy like she was too tired to really function. Her voice was a rasp when she answered. "Benny wouldn't answer my call."

"Can you blame him?" I asked gently. I was at least slightly pissed at her myself, but being an asshole to someone clearly in this much pain seemed like beating a dead horse. That did NOT mean I was going to humor her. "I don't have anything much to say to you either Celine, so if you don't have anything you need to talk about I'm going to go."

Her eyes cleared, focusing on me as they widened. "NO!" She yelped desperately. "Please. No. Wait. I have information. I checked with some of my sources and found out..." She paused, looking around. "Information you can use. I can't talk about it over an unsecured line. It's important though. If you can meet me I can give it to you. I promise it'll be worth your while."

I could only think of one obvious bit of information we could use on short notice, our next opponent. The question was why she would give that information to us when it would be directly counter to the interests of the Fairieland. That very question made this extremely suspicious. "Why would I trust you enough to meet?" I asked blandly.

She sighed. "You shouldn't. I know that. But I had to offer. I used all my resources getting this information. If you are going to use the it you need to do it quickly." The look of frustrated agony on her face was kind of heart rending, especially from the normally taciturn elf. "I...I just want to make things right. I wanted to use the resources I had to do something to help all of you."

"I believe you." Came a voice from behind me. I jumped, whirling to find Callie behind me. She shot me a warm smile. "I felt your shock through the bond, this seemed important so I excused myself." She looked back to Celine. "I believe you." She repeated. "But we aren't coming to you. That would be pure idiocy. Coming to see you on campus was a calculated risk because you wouldn't have had time to hear about us finding out and you were in Unity territory, but with prep time I absolutely won't bring my people to a place you'll have an advantage."

Celine's head drooped. "It's fine." She said quietly. "I'll come to you. I can meet you at your place to hand over the info. That way you'll be under the protection of your strongest backers and all your defenses. Is that acceptable?" Her tone was formal in a way that reminded me of the old Celine.

Smiling, Callie nodded, her tone gentler than I'd have expected. "It is. We'll meet you there immediately." I looked at her sharply, but she just ignored me, saying goodbye. Once I shut off the screen her smile dropped and she gave me a worried look. "I know. He might not be ready to see her. He can wait inside. But we need this information. Not to mention this is a good chance for her to show him that she wants to make amends."

I pulled her into my arms, smiling. "You big softie. You just wanted to give them the chance to start to reconcile." She shrugged coolly. Smiling, I let her go and stepped back. "Alright, we should go then. We don't want her to beat us there." I texted Jessie who was looking at plants nearby to come pick us up, and then Benny to fill him in on the situation as Callie went to say goodbye to the others and apologize for cutting things short. She also paid for the meal, since it had been our invite.

Once Jessie showed up we headed back to the house, filling her in on the way. She was a bit suspicious, having taken Celine's betrayal to heart more than any of us, but when we explained everything she seemed to come around. "Well." She said tightly. "If she's coming to the house where Zeke and the ice queen over there are waiting I doubt she can cause much trouble." She nodded to Rime, who was in the back seat either pretending to sleep or ACTUALLY ignoring us. "I'm sure you already told Benny about all this?"

"Of course." I said. "He wants to sit in on the meeting actually." She glanced at me in the mirror with concern and I shrugged. "I don't like the idea either, but it's his decision. It's not my place to tell him how to handle his life."

She sighed. "I guess. I don't know. I'm not happy about all this of course, but based on some of our conversations maybe I'm not TOTALLY surprised." Catching our glances in the mirror she gave a guilty shrug. "Looking back, some of the things we talked about back when we were working on the perimeter for the siege might have hinted a bit at how beholden she was to her family. I just didn't notice it."

She snarled, slapping the steering wheel. "Which is my fault. I'm the one who is supposed to puzzle out stuff like that. The one who gets people to say too much and listens when they do. I dropped the ball, and now Benny is hurting and it's all my fault."

Her voice was raw, and I felt a pang of sympathy for Jessie. We hadn't really checked in with her about this because Benny was so much more affected. Seemed like she's taken it to heart more than we'd thought she would. Callie leaned forward and squeezed her shoulder.

"Hey." Said my girlfriend softly. "Stop that. This is not your fault. It isn't Benny's. This is Celine's mess, and further up the blame chain it's her sister and mother's fault."

I nodded sagely. "It's true. You mess up more than enough. No need to take credit for someone else's mistakes on top of that."

Jessie giggled, rolling her eyes as she flipped me off in the rear view mirror. As she did that, we finally turned the corner heading back to the house, and we all braced ourselves for the upcoming mess. Regardless of intentions there was a lot of raw emotion involved here, and this was going to be dramatic and painful for SOMEBODY. As we pulled up, we could see Celine standing outside the house across from Benny.

Annoyed we hadn't beaten her here, we hopped out of the car and made our way over to where they were talking. Benny's face was closed off, but not cold, and as we approached he nodded to us solemnly. "Hey guys. Glad you're back. Celine stopped by. She says she has information we can use." He turned back to her, saying flatly. "Go ahead."

She swallowed hard before turning to us. "I've been digging into it and I've discovered the identity of your next enemy. I wanted to tell you as soon as possible so you can prepare for the fight." She took a deep breath. "Your next battle will be against the Burning Heaven Abyss." Ah. Well. I could understand why she would think that was urgent. Shit.

 

After doing Rime's wishes and handing over the elixirs to Benny (officially maxing out his elixir cap and bringing his Might up to one eighty nine and his stat total to five hundred and three) we headed for the arena to wait for the match to start, and we went over our various strategies for the fight in the waiting area.

The plan for going up against the Burning Heaven Abyss was pretty much "Abel fights the Master Candidate" again. I had zero delusions that I could beat most Master Candidates, but even less of a hope of taking down a fucking gunslinger who could use the terrifying abilities I'd seen from Abel and Lament. Which left us going up against the other three that Sloane had mentioned.

Two augmenters. Callie and I should be able to take them, but it would be stupid to assume they didn't KNOW that. More likely than not at least one of them would probably be buffing the defender, who was apparently already a total monster. Hell, both of them might be doing that, you don't really NEED more raw power than being a Master Candidate in a tourney like this. Either way, the defender would definitely be sticking close enough to protect those two as well as the gunner.

Unfortunately we had no idea what the gunner's ability was, since Sloane hadn't been able to push him to use it. As a Master Candidate her spear skill was enough that it had taken a full team to push her into using her lightning power, and one with a HUGE terrain advantage to boot. We would most likely be enough to force the gunner to use his, but that still left us blindsided.

When they finally called us out we moved into the arena slowly and with extreme caution. I was half expecting to be ambushed, but when stepped onto the sand we found the other team waiting for us calmly.

Burning Heaven Abyss were...impressive. They wore what looked like black leather armor accented with gold, hoods over their heads and the top halves of their faces hidden by black metal masks that glinted almost like mercury. The cloaks themselves were lined with bright red silk, and a few tassles of red were strategically placed along the armor. They each wore a mantle over their shoulders, and gloves, leaving their arms bare from mid bicep to mid forearm, and lined with black tattoos that matched the golden traceries of symbols on the armor.

There were two women and two men, the women almost identical short brunettes, and the two men being a study in contrasts, one tall and muscular with olive skin and one incredibly short and pale with pitch black hair. Based on the holsters on his hips the shorter one was the Master Candidate, but it was jarring to see them standing so orderly and relaxed waiting for us.

The tall man was the one who spoke when we stepped out. Based on the MASSIVE F-ranked shield on his back he was the defender, and I was kind of annoyed that shields counted as defensive equipment because I was sure he could and would smash us over the fucking heads with that thing. "Greetings." He said in a resonant baritone.

Callie nodded. "Hello. I'm Nightstrike from the Starchaser Pavilion, these are my teammates Appolyon. Starbreaker, and Solomon."

"Of course." Said the man politely. "I am Raka, these are Sult, Truva, and Forn. We represent the Burning Heaven Abyss." He had an indefinable accent I'd never heard before, something crisp and formal, it put me in mind of nobility of some kind.

Forn, the gunner, smirked. "I doubt they know what that is Rak. Remember we're talking to hicks here. Admirable they made it this far, but even among the wider scale forces we're tougher than most." He sighed, as if he was being given a chore of some kind. "Tell you what. How about you all just concede. No reason for us to slap you around just to be mean. This way you save some face and we don't have to waste the energy stomping your teeth in."

Raka put a hand to his face with a sigh. "Forn, I've told you that making offers like that is counterproductive. They WON'T be saving face now, because you just put it like that, and will be almost obligated to fight us. Not to mention your antagonistic and condescending tone."

"Oh." Said the smaller man conversationally. Then he shrugged. "My bad." And his hands blurred as he drew both guns and leveled them at us.

The bark of firing pistols filled the air as he unloaded them at us, though I noted he mostly aimed at limbs and other nonlethal spots. Regardless, it didn't matter that much because Abel was just as fast and his own hands blurred. My eyes widened in shock as my mentor pressed his fingers in the air and created a series of finger width spatial slipstreams, one in front of each bullet.

Watching each of the bullets slide around us like that was shocking, especially since something in those guns was propelling them at ABSURD speeds. Forn looked genuinely shocked at the response, telling me he hadn't done much research on us, but he calmly ejected the magazines, letting them slip to the ground, and, letting go of his guns midair, withdrew a pair of new ones and calmly reached up to grab one gun after another to reload them.

Abel, not one to let an opening pass him by, stepped forward, vanishing in a blur of warping space and appeared in front of the group, throwing a punch at the gunner. Instead of throwing a bus sized punch this time though, he stopped right before he reached them and raised both arms. Space warped and a series of smaller images of his arms were left behind, and when he punched out, the six blows overlapped in a way I'd never seen him do before.

Raka reacted FAST. Managing to get his shield out and slam it into the sand in front of his teammate. There was a catastrophic BOOM as Abel's superimposed blow smashed into the shield and the fucking F-rank artifact CRACKED. Granted, it was a really small crack, but still. The explosion of sand and force would probably have blown him away, if Sult and Truva, the twins hadn't lashed out a hand each to augment his power.

Still, even with the boost, the explosive pressure of that single punch hurled the team apart. Raka was forced to dive for the twins, who were the much weaker part of their party, leaving Forn open as he brought his now reloaded guns back up to bear on Abel.

A pair of train sized barrels appeared in the air, and Forn blitzed a series of shots at Abel, absolutely monstrous bullets tearing through the air at my teach. Abel raised both hands, manifested a pair of palm images and neatly redirected the flurry of bullets, taking a step closer with each movement.

Sadly I wasn't able to watch too closely because I had to back up Mel, who was in the midst of attacking Raka as buffed by the two girls. The big bastard was strong enough to tank what I was pretty sure was the first serious punch I'd seen Abel ever throw and sure enough, when we got in close we realized he was MUCH stronger than any of us individually.
Mel, being a fire user, was monstrously stacked on Might, so she wasn't exactly helpless, and combined with the flames themselves was able to at least get his attention, but he'd condensed the sand around him into some kind of earthen battle form and the heat wasn't getting to him.

He swung the shield forward at her like a club, and I lashed out with my cane, touching Mel's shoulder and focusing as I triggered my strongest defensive ability over her whole body. The strain of using Stone Limb across a whole person and triggering a density shifted triple strength attack and a Mercy Kill, along with Consecration of Flame just for the boost, was almost too much for me on such short notice, but I felt the bond flex and Callie take on some of it, allowing me to get away with the move with only a quick burst of head pain.

Even with the huge increase in power from the gala training that had been rough, but it was enough that the powerful blow of the shield stopped, only slamming Mel back instead of seriously injuring her. As she caught her footing again, she roared with effort, and a massive wave of flames appeared behind her, before condensing into a huge fire avatar of herself. She snarled and slammed her palms together and the avatar condensed, layering over her body and turning the magma covered figure into a living statue of flame.

She hauled back with a roar of rage and, driving her fist forward with almost as much power as I'd seen from Abel, smashed it into the cracked shield.

There was a tortured groan from the metal as the already fractured artifact was superheated and the crack widened. Before the man could adjust, a MASSIVE hammer or shadow slammed into him, sending him sprawling. I triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind him and swung my cane, which I'd spent all of yesterday charging up a blow for, at the shield, triggering another triple strength density shifted blow, and a Mercy Kill as I released all that stored up power.

Two things happened when I did that. First. The still fragile shield finally broke under the immense amount of power I'd had stored in my cane. Second. My cane fucking EXPLODED. Without even thinking I released the thing and triggered Double Trouble as fast as I could, just in time to MOSTLY avoid the fucking conflagration of toxic flame as the shattering cane released not only the stored force, but all the power inside it at once.

I cursed, dropping to my knees and holding my currently charred arm, which had been flash fried even under my armor, though the F-rank defensive item had mostly spared me from the poison aspect of the flame. I triggered a healing burst and scan heal, and when that wasn't enough did two more for good measure. I almost groaned with relief as my skin started the repair itself.

Once I attended my injuries I looked up and around, trying to figure out what had happened. Raka...looked bad. He wasn't dead, and I dropped the poison fire skill instantly so he wouldn't die, but he looked like a melted action figure. I winced at the twisted rock armor that had warped onto his very badly burned flesh.

The twins we staring in horror, and at my glance immediately dropped to their knees, putting their hands behind their heads. I felt kind of bad. I could hear the booms of Abel dealing with the other Master Candidate but I didn't have the spare attention for it as I sprinted over to where out opponent was. Kneeling down, I started peeling off the rock as quickly as possible.

There was...a lot of skin and muscle that came up with it, but I used scan heal again and started dumping in healing bursts. I couldn't do more than five apparently, because his body just wouldn't accept more life energy at that point, but that seemed to be enough.

It took me a few minutes, but I got all the rock off him and his skin had healed enough to cover all the exposed muscle. Knowing he was going to live I exhaled in relief, and found a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see the others around us. Forn was beaten pretty badly but he looked more focused on his teammate. I couldn't imagine what this must look like to them, but I was just glad I hadn't accidentally killed someone. Still...I guess this was a win. Gods I hoped the prize was worth all this.

 

The first thing the other team did was check on Raka. Which was completely reasonable given how terrible that had to have been. "I am so sorry." I said quickly. "I don't know what the hell happened there. I wanted to win but I wouldn't have done...THAT. Hell, I couldn't have done that. I have no idea how or why that even happened."

Abel sighed. "Not your fault. I was going to tell you to get a new weapon, but I didn't expect it to be an issue. Figured you'd make the jump after rank up. Wear and tear are inevitable, but it was the combination of that cane having a MASSIVE amount of power stockpiled and slamming it into a higher ranking artifact. It was a freak accident." He looked down at Raka. "You ok?"

The big man had woken up and one of the twins was helping him sit up. He nodded. "I'm fine. That was...truly unpleasant. But it was clear it was unintentional and the healing you gave me is helping immensely. I'm not exactly in perfect shape now, but I'm on the mend."

Forn looked relieved. "Good. And don't feel too bad about it. That was pretty brutal. But we wouldn't have won anyway." He nodded to Abel. "Their boy over there is a straight up monster. I didn't even know planets this low level could HAVE Master Candidates."

Helping Raka up, he waved us over to their waiting area, and we followed them in. "So." Callie said as we trailed behind them, giving Raka some time to walk a bit slower. "I'm guessing the lot of you got attacked before this round same as we did? Not that I know which faction you're with, but it seems pretty universal."

I missed the days when I could just assume we were dealing with the Unity or WCP. This whole tournament had become a mess of epic proportions.

Raka nodded. "We were. As for our interests...well that isn't a secret anymore I suppose. We were representing the Black Sorrow Cult. They contacted several rim factions about contracts to sign over the spots if they won. They might be lunatics, but they're well funded lunatics."

I grimaced. "They can afford that? Blowing a sizable bribe on presumably dozens of teams to stack the deck just in the event one of them wins?" I really didn't like when my enemies showed themselves to be competent. Competent and wealthy seemed like an even worse combo. They were a massive faction, but their border outpost should have been the main force behind this push. I wouldn't have expected them to have that much cash to throw around.

The big man snorted. "You don't get the stakes here. These resources are rare on a universal scale. Regional power games aren't the only thing at play. The Moonglow Dew will be funneled to their main heirs, and will be a huge benefit during the coming years. The major factions are constantly at odds, anything that will put them ahead for a generation is a new benefit. This tournament could very well be the deciding factor for the lineup of the next Unlucky Thirteen."

I hadn't considered that. It made a lot of sense though. The Wishmaster was an automatic pass to the Unlucky Thirteen, but knowing what I knew about cultivation I imagined those other slots were fiercely fought over. Universal infamy would skyrocket the cultivation of anyone on that list.

"Well damn." Said Callie with a grimace. "That makes this a bit wider scale than expected. How is this planet not crawling with ringers then?"

"Because it's one of many." I said slowly. "This is the smallest most backwater system in the cluster. With that many points of attack it's no wonder most of the larger forces didn't bother with us. They went for the bigger systems where they would be able to exert more pressure."

Internal system politics were one thing, but there was no way that the Black Sorrow Cult could have sent, say, a B-ranker like Zeke, to put direct pressure on the proceedings. The stratification of power was an important factor of how the universe ran. Pushing and bending rules was one thing, but the only real reason Zeke was able to move into his spot in Callus was the unique neutral reputation of the WCP.

Callie sighed. "This is just going to get worse. This round is only going to have three hundred teams, which means we're at the point where we'll be fighting every day. The closer we get to the endgame, the more frantic the other factions will get. We'll definitely see some kind of attack tonight."

"We have Rime and Frostbite already involved though." I pointed out. "Can we arrange for them to meet us? They haven't attacked yet, so clearly they have some kind of limit on what they'll do." I didn't relish the thought of trying to fight another hit squad with my head thumping like a bass drum.

To my surprise, Raka cut in. "They can't ambush you again. Not so soon. Rajak is a major metropolis with a huge Unity presence. They would have needed to make arrangements for the attack on us the other day. People would have needed to be bribed to ignore signs and leave gaps in security. There's no way anyone can pull something like that off again a few days later. There will be too many eyes on it."

Callie nodded thoughtfully. "That's...probably true. But it means we're going to have to deal with an attack later tonight or tomorrow morning. Probably tonight." She stared at him curiously. "Considering we know who the last faction to move the next round of attacks might very well be from the Black Sorrow Cult themselves. Wouldn't tipping us off probably be a violation of the terms of your contract? Why help us?"

He shrugged. "Our contract only lasted until we got booted. Plus I'm not a fan of the lunatics. We took their money because it was beneficial, that doesn't mean we're loyal to them." We talked for a bit longer before they all said goodbye and left, getting their scan ring numbers to keep in contact.

After we headed outside we met up with Rime, and filled her in on what might be coming down the pipe. She grimaced at the news. "An assassination attempt? Are we going to be seeing them attack the house tonight? We might want to invite your E-rank friends over just in case."

I shook my head, making sure my Stealth Skill was keeping my voice from spreading past our little circle. "No. The house isn't just my place, Zeke lives there. The geas prevents him from helping in most circumstances, but attacking the house involves him directly and opens them up to his direct intervention. They might as well kill themselves and save us the trouble at that point."

"So the question is." Said Abel in annoyance. "How are they going to hit us? Because it doesn't seem likely they'll ignore us given the Black Sorrow Cult's...contentious relationship with you. If they can't attack at the house or outside the arena then what are their options?"

"What if they could." Said Callie quietly. We all looked at her, and I saw a contemplative look on her face as she went over options. "What if we let them attack us, lined up a trap and used it to sweep up as many of them as possible. We could potentially take out a bunch of their teams before the next round."

I made an uncertain sound. "Assuming we could set it up so we had no chance of losing, what's to say they would even attack us directly? Taking out a bunch more mercenaries isn't likely to affect the outcome of the tournament one way or another."

She shook her head. "No. They'll send their own people. Mercenaries are A, less likely to take the job after we beat the last ones, and B, not going to take this as seriously. Especially after taking out Pietro. This is personal. They'll take the shot if we give it to them, we just need some way to make sure they go down when they do."

That was easier said than done. Without Zeke, we still had some serious firepower, but there was no way they wouldn't be expecting our E-rankers. They'd have counters in place for them, and assuming the dumb assholes weren't stupid enough to jump me personally we'd have no way to counter if they tried to drown us in bodies.

Then I got an idea. "What if they couldn't send anyone above G-rank." I said slowly. The others looked at me quizically and I grinned. "Abel, when the guardian enchantment on the labyrinth under the Cavalcade faded, did the place collapse?" I didn't remember if Cicero had mentioned that or not, and honestly even if he had it might have been bullshit, I didn't trust that asshole as far as I could throw the Unity building.

My mentor looked thoughtful. "It...shouldn't have. But that's a dangerous thing to try. It can't take any F-rankers. Our E-ranked backup can prevent them from entering, but it isn't impossible that a bunch of E-rankers might gang up and collapse the thing to kill us all without worrying about it at all."

I shook my head. "They can't. Being inside means my health is tied to the labyrinth being whole. That means if they try to collapse it with me inside Zeke will need to step in directly. Even if they wouldn't know that, he'd warn them like he did with the Cultist."

"That." Said Callie with interest. "Isn't a bad plan at all. We might even be able to talk Raka and the others into leaking the information before they sever ties. The Cult wouldn't even question it. They would need to jump on the chance to get in an attack. We might be able to take out a bunch of teams."

I had to point out the obvious. "How would that affect the tournament? Would they condense the rounds? Also we need some way to keep them locked up. The teams directly from the Cult will be murderous assholes, but they won't come at us light either. Some of them will probably be the local teams under contract with them. I don't want to kill some faction like the Burning Heaven Abyss."

"I can help with that." Said Rime. "Attacking outside the matches is a direct violation of tournament policy. In my capacity as a local executive, or at least the representative of one, I can order their arrest. You'd need to knock them out and hold them until the authorities arrived, but it's more than feasible."

That sounded complicated, but I knew that the Unity could operate in WCP territory unless they were intercepted, and I could make sure that didn't happen. Shadowthorn had come down to save us when we almost got murdered in the underground arena in G-district after all. The labyrinth would keep the big fish off us until the local muscle arrived, and even the cult wouldn't be stupid enough to engage in a full on war. They would need to run or get dragged into a huge conflict.

Callie nodded to Abel. "Alright. I know you aren't exactly on good terms with him, but give your brother a call and see if he can give us access. You had that thing built in the first place right? So it should be within your rights to use it. Unless you think he'll give you trouble?"

Our mentor snorted. "He won't if he knows what's good for him. If he does try it I'll lean on him. He's caused enough trouble. He can be a little generous for once." With that settled, we headed home to get in touch with anyone we thought would be able to help both in or out of the Labyrinth. It was nice to be the ones luring someone ELSE into a trap this time.

 

"So." Said Mel to Abel. Her tone dripping with relish as we walked into the Cavalcade's entrance. "Did you have to threaten him to get him to cave? Because I loved seeing you do that last time, and watching him get all whiny and stomp his feet would make me smile."

My mentor smirked at that. "No, I didn't threaten him, I just reminded him that it was my labyrinth and that he threw you two in there and I doubt you were the first. Once I implied I might charge him for damages if I found any he decided pretty quick to help out."

We hadn't been attacked yet, though it was only a matter of time. It had been hours since the match, and we'd gathered most of our G-rank friends here to help out, as well as Rime, Frostbite, Melinda, and Alexander to wait outside and prevent any F-rankers from just shattering the labyrinth with us inside.

The rest of our team was Cark, Lament, Teague, Abigail, and a few other former competitors we had managed to get on board. When we arrived at the tent, Cicero wasn't around, apparently he'd decided discretion was the better part of valor and chosen to have his assistant let us in. Probably smart given Mel's extreme dislike of him. Barring intervention from Abel I had no doubt she could easily set him on fire.

Once we arrived, we hopped down into the labyrinth, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the lack of pressure once we did. This team was more than overkill for a bunch of cultists, or even powerful G-rank mercenaries. We were basically untouchable in our level, and I was really hoping to take some of the enemy out ahead of time.

"Wow." Said Cark with a whistle. "This place is a dump. Look at all the damage." He kicked a small rock across the hallway, and we could all see the burns, scrapes, and holes from all the traps we'd set off.

"Imagine actually BEING in it." I said in annoyance. "This place was a giant unnecessary pain in the ass. Shame we triggered all the traps though. We might be able to use some of them." It would be pretty convenient to be able to take some of them out without any effort. We'd picked this place clean for the traps when we'd built up the trap alleys during the siege from the Sanctuary Hall though, so we didn't have anything down here to use to reset them.

Abel shrugged. "I designed it to be too annoying for a normal G-ranker to get through. Otherwise Cicero would have just kept sending people in. Honestly if you didn't have a Trap Skill there's no way you'd have made it. Most people would have needed to run it cold, and they'd have died."

Which made me wonder something. "What about Mel?" I said hesitantly. "Not to bring up a bad time, but she was here when you weren't. For years. Why didn't she run it herself and get the deed?"

"Because she knew I wouldn't want her to." He said with a smile. "She also knew it was safe down there. Without anyone to run the maze Cicero wasn't going to advertise where it was because he didn't want someone stealing it. He guarded the place and kept an eye out so she didn't have to."

Mel chimed in. "Plus I had no desire to be in charge until much later. I only started making moves to oust that asshole once I felt he'd taken things too far."

"This is a really interesting design." Commented Teague from off to one side. "Who designed this place? I'd love to get them under contract?"

Abel chuckled at that. "Mad Madigan built it. He isn't around anymore. Fun fact, designing unstable pocket spaces that can fall into the void at the slightest touch doesn't do much for your life expectancy." He paused. "Well, I mean people assume. No one was there when he died for obvious reasons."

Cark shook his head ruefully. "Crafters. All of them are nuts." He glanced over at Callie and I. "Speaking of crafters with a screw loose, where are Clockwork and Agria? I'd have figured they would be all over this."

I shook my head. "Too dangerous. They're not high enough into G-rank. If this had been a few weeks from now it would have been a different story, but as they are now Clockwork is only halfway into G and Agria isn't even that. If not for the nature of this place we might have brought them anyway, let them work with Randall, but since F-rankers are a no go they wouldn't be safe down here in the middle of this mess. I expect to never hear the end of it, but we managed to convince them to stay with Cass."

Which was unnecessary since Zeke was there, but we'd cheated and had Cass ask them herself, and Jessie had melted instantly. Benny had pretended not to care, but he'd caved way easier than I'd expected too. Guess it had been long enough since Maria was a kid of him to lose some of his puppy dog eye resistance. She'd been a menace when she was younger, and those eyes got her out of a fair amount of trouble with both of us.

Lament looked bored. "When are the enemies going to show up? I want to see what I can do in this kind of place. With such small corridors I bet I won't have space for manifestations. Not in most of it anyway." She turned to Abel with an intrigued look. "Want to have a fight in here? Might be interesting without full use of our disciplines."

"No he does NOT." Mel snapped. "I don't know what your teammates will let you do, but he isn't fighting a Master Candidate in the middle of the tournament outside a match. If you want to fight him you'd better make it to the later rounds so you can get matched up with him."

Lament rolled her eyes, but didn't comment. She took a few steps and then froze. I'd have assumed she took a second to think of a come back, but Callie had frozen too, and I had enough knowledge of her stats to realize what was going on. I clenched my fists, wishing I had my damn cane, but all I could do was plan to pick something up with the money I'd been saving. I'd hoped to let Jessie and Benny pay me out a bit more before I bought one, but I guessed it wasn't in the cards.

Callie's eyes were scanning the hallway, and the bond was telling me exactly what she was looking for. As I felt a twinge of panic I reacted seamlessly, spinning and releasing a burst of fire from my stockpile behind me, stacked with a Mercy Kill to boost it.

The dark robed form caught in the flames roared in pain, distracted just long enough for Abel's fist (only the size of an engine rather than a bus) smashed into him and sent him hurtling into the wall behind him. Callie's shadows leapt from the ground as she raised a shield to protect the rest of us. We'd all been on the lookout so there was no chance of serious injury, but that one had been sneakier than expected. I was glad we caught him early.

I cast a dispassionate glance at the robed figures appearing along the hallway. The hoods cast a shadow so deep I couldn't see their faces, sort of like I'd seen from Natalie when I first spotted her. I guessed that kind of disguise was common in larger forces. "You all look like idiots. It's like ninety degrees out. You must be sweating like pigs."

Callie snorted out a laugh. She turned to Abigail. "Is the secondary force in position?" The girl's eyes glowed for a second before she nodded. "They have the way blocked off. No one is getting out of here. Our backup has already started pinning down the others and the authorities have been called. Their choices are either abandon the ones in here or fight the entire Unity security team for the planet."

Frostbite being able to call up Unity forces was a big win for us, since she could get local security to head down here. Just because they were capable didn't mean they'd do so easily, even with us smoothing things over. When an executive of their faction said jump though, the only answer was how high.

The closest figure, the one who seemed to be in the lead, snarled. "You seek to detain us? No name trash. We alone will be more than a match for you, and your strategy will prove fruitless if we kill you all and remove ourselves from the situation before the local Unity branch can arrive."

Another figure snorted at that. "The fuck you say." The first looked at him. "We're out. We came on contract with you guys, but the stipulations were only for the tournament. I'll return the bonus you paid for this little operation, but I categorically refuse to stick around and get arrested. We'll take our chances with their rear guards."

He turned to leave and the first figure flicked a hand and hurled a wave of pitch black flame at him. A figure to the side of the target waved a hand and a cascade of purple bubbles filled the hall. The flame hit the bubbles and the black fire tore them apart, but the water inside created steam, blocking the passage from view. When it cleared the target and seven others were gone.

I wasn't too worried about it. Either the rear guard WOULD catch them, or they'd get outside and probably get picked up by out backup. I turned to face black flame guy. He spun back to us and barked. "Kill them all!" Before throwing out his hands again and coating the whole hallway in a sea of pitch dark fire.

Cark roared and hurled a wall of blue flame back at him, but the dark fire clearly wasn't your run of the mill flame. I didn't have time to engage though as the golden fist of one of the other figures flashed toward me. I flicked on the overlay, sidestepping as Callie swept in at his feet. He stumbled and fell forward into a stomp kick to the head reinforced by Mercy Kill, down in one shot as we moved on to the next.

I saw Abel clash against three other fighters while Lament took on four, Mel joined Cark in pushing back the black flame guy and Callie and I closed on another man, whose hood had fallen back to reveal some sort of man-zebra. I prepared for an attack before there was a bang and a howling purple jackal head smashed into the animalistic man, driving him off his feet.

Teague tipped his hat to us as he reloaded and we were free to move on. Between the bond, the overlay, and Balam, we wove through the crowd of hooded figures like striking cobras, taking them down wherever we hit. I used Touch of Tears sparingly, given my lack of a focus, but it was devastatingly effective when I DID use it.

Finally, we finished off the last one, turning to see Mel and Cark subduing the black flame wielder. Once we finished we pushed his hood back, and Teague confirmed he WAS one of the Cult's team leaders, which meant we'd taken out at least some of the competition.

I sighed in relief as we subdued and started to cart them out. Callie sidled up next to me, raising an eyebrow. "Everything ok?"

Shaking my head, I stared off after the others. "Not really." I said. "This will get worse before it gets better. We need to fight another team tomorrow and we have no idea who." She just took my hand and squeezed it. She didn't need to say anything after all. We'd been here before. All we could do was move forward best we could.

 

We made it home earlier than expected all things considered, but it was still relatively late. Since we had a battle tomorrow we decided to knock out early, but before we did, I went to go check on Benny. My friend was sitting outside staring up at the stars, and I sat down next to him.

"So, want to talk to me about your meeting with Celine the other day?" I said casually. "I didn't ask because I wanted to respect your privacy."

His lips quirked up in a small smile. "So my privacy isn't important anymore?"

"Nah." I said solemnly. "It was never important, I just forgot that for a minute. Now I remember that I don't really give a shit when you don't want to talk about stuff so I figured I'd check in." I shot him a smile to let him know I was messing with him, but I didn't offer him an out. If he actually didn't want to talk about it, he'd just tell me to get lost. We were close enough not to need to walk on eggshells.

He snorted. "Thanks for that, dick." He went silent for a bit, obviously choosing his words, but I didn't rush him. "It was...weird. I know we weren't you and Callie with your constant affection and PDA, but I got used to us being...close, in our own way. Seeing here right there and acting like she was a stranger sucked."

"Then why do it?" I said seriously. "You know she wants you back. She turned on her family to help us out for you. Why not just...treat her like you always do?"

Shaking his head, he let out a long sigh. "Because it wouldn't be fair. I don't know if I can get over what she did. I want to. But I don't know if that's going to be enough yet. If I start being affectionate and acting like nothing has changed it'll make her think that I'm already over it all. That'll hurt her more. I may not be happy with her but I still care about her. I don't want to make her suffer for no reason."

I reached out to put my hand on his shoulder. "That's...shit man, that's so much more mature then I would ever be. When the fuck did you get so much more adult than I am?"

My best friend put on a profound expression. "One such as yourself can never understand my journey. Don't beat yourself up over your failure, someday you too will be as wise and farsighted as I." His faux condescending tone made me snicker, and I flipped him off.

"I've heard people shrink as they get older." I said with an annoying smirk. "Maybe there's some inverse correlation between wisdom and height. Did this new maturity start to show up once you noticed I was taller than you?" My tone was saccharine and it was my turn to get flipped off.

We talked a bit longer about how he was feeling, and I helped him work through a few things, but mostly it was just an excuse to vent. A lot of feelings had bubbled up for him when he saw her and he needed to let it out, banter and venting both played a big part in that process. Finally we said goodnight and I headed off to my room. Callie welcomed me with open arms (literally, the woman clings like a python in her sleep and I'm fairly sure she would have long since choked me to death if I wasn't so much bigger than her) and I finally drifted off to bed.

The next morning everyone seemed quite a bit more relaxed. Sure, we had a fight today, but we'd managed to take out three full teams from the tournament, which wouldn't change the round numbers, but DID mean that there would be three potential automatic wins available next round. Who knew, maybe we would get one of them.

I granted Rime's wishes, and she paid in Vitality Elixirs that I passed to Jessie, since Benny had hit his cap last time, bringing her Vitality up to a whopping two hundred sixty three. She ALSO had twenty five spare points of Might, presumably from her bond with Randall, allowing her physical strength to somewhat keep up with her stamina. At four hundred twenty eight stat points total, she was closer to the midway point of G-rank than I'd expected.

Once that was out of the way we headed in to the arena. We had a wait once we got to the ready room under the stands so I decided to ask something I'd been wondering about. "So once we get through round eight we're starting individual matches. Are they going to be the rapid fire daily setup like these are starting to be? Because with forty teams breaking down to one hundred sixty contestants there are more than enough arenas to hammer them out one day at a time."

Callie, who of course had done her homework on the tournament. Shook her head. "No. They'll be using four arenas for the early rounds. Ten matches per arena per day. Helps concentrate the audiences in preparation for the finals and semi finals. That means there'll be a four day break between the ninth and tenth rounds, assuming we get sent out at the beginning which seems likely."

I sighed in relief. I needed to get Jessie and Benny as close to the cap as possible before the tournament even ended, since that final month wasn't going to be nearly enough on its own. I'd be able to get them close, and with Randall helping Jessie an extra week or two might get me over the edge. Especially since once I ranked up again I'd have another daily wish. They were already taking jobs together to try to save up for the stats, and that was convenient since I needed cash for my new weapon.

Which I didn't have yet. Unfortunately. I had a few stockpiled contingencies that could help out here, but without my cane to act as a focus my combat capability had dropped drastically. Finally they called us out, and all of us filed through the gate, walking out onto the sand to find a familiar face.

The blonde haired, blue eyed captain of the Heavensong Tower gave us a friendly smile as we stepped out. "Oh. Hello all! Good to see you. I have to say I wasn't expecting to meet up with your lot so early." I froze at the sight of him, my veins filling with a cold sense of dread.

I had no idea why, honestly. Alec wasn't particularly tall or intimidating, and I doubted he was a Master Candidate or we'd have heard about it by now. Something about him was just...terrifying, though. He reminded me of Abel the few times I'd seen him upset, this sort of predatory edge to his amused gaze that made it seem like he could kill me without blinking.

Behind him stood the rest of his team, who I'd made the mistake of ignoring up to this point. A smaller blue eyed blonde girl with twin pontails, a tall dark haired girl with olive skin and serious brown eyes and a dark skinned man with a shaved head and an intense green stare, who was about the same height as Alec, but twice as wide at the shoulders.

Callie kept her cool, despite me feeling through the bond that she was just as wary as I was, and smiled back. "It'll be an experience I'll tell you that. Anyone who made it this far must be strong. I'm looking forward to our match. Hope you all don't disappoint us."

The blonde girl with the twin tails giggled. "Oh I doubt that'll be a problem. I bet this match won't last long enough for you to be disappointed."

"Lena." Scolded Alec lazily enough to make it clear he wasn't really scolding at all. "There's no need to antagonize our friends here. I'm sure they're very strong. I've heard of some of the teams they've beaten. I have no doubt that they can give us a decent work out." His tone was dripping with sincerity, and despite being almost sure he was mocking us, I couldn't really prove it. Alec was just one of those people that ALWAYS sounded like they were making fun of you.

The taller woman snorted. "Doubt it. Some backwater Master Candidate isn't enough to stop us. Besides, we can't lose any face for the church. We've kept ourselves out of the political nonsense so far, but if we don't make an example we're going to bring shame on the faction."

I grimaced at that. Fuck. The Church was involved here too. I'd been wondering where the last of the five factions was in all this, but I'd hoped we were lucky enough to miss them. Apparently not. I looked at Callie, using the bond to ask her if we should share about my mom.

There was no way to be sure that my mother's position would buy us any good will, but it certainly bought us BAD will amongst their opposition. She shook her head in a short, sharp motion. Which was fair, there were still cultists here, and finding out I was a 'heretic' was sure to make me a target. Though it made me curious. "If you're with the Church why haven't the cult members targeted you more specifically?"

I was sure they'd been attacked when we all had, but that wasn't the same as being hunted down like me. Granted a Saintess was pretty damn high up in the heirarchy of the church, but still.

Alec shrugged. "The lunatics do what they will. If I had to guess it would be because the Heavensong Tower's affiliation with the Curch is distant. We're raised to its tenants, but we're nominally in the Unity's sphere of influence. They probably don't count us. The Church doesn't have many teams here either, because we don't work with mercenaries, and there aren't many legacy factions like ours in this system."

Yeah, that sounded about right. Shame, I'd been hoping we could get some backup. Even if sharing in public like this wouldn't work I was sure Callie and I could find a way to tip them off to my bloodline without everyone and their mother finding out.

The muscular guy with the green eyes sighed. "Can we just start this? I don't feel like sitting around bantering. I didn't get near enough sleep last night. Having to do these every day is such a drag." His complaint was said with such soulcrushing boredom that I felt tired just listening to it.

The others just rolled their eyes. Lena, the blonde, pointed a finger at him. "Damn it Carlos. Can't you play along? We're supposed to be making an impression here. We'll never be taken seriously if everyone thinks we're lazy bums like you!"

Before he could respond, Alec cut them off. "Enough." The edge of amusement faded for a moment, replaced with a sharp edge. "We're in public. Deal with your nonsense later." He nodded solemnly to Callie. "Sorry about that. They can get carried away sometimes." He smiled menacingly. "To make it up to you, I'll end this quickly so we can all go home."

He tensed and was clearly about to move, when Abel's fist smashed straight out at him. He snarled and a tornado condensed around his own hand and he lashed out with a four fingered chop. The wind formed a massive blade and as it did, his hand caught fire, creating a slashing wave of golden fire. It didn't look like peak Intermediate, more like he was using wind and fire manipulation at the same time, but something was off about those flames. Whatever was going on, it split Abel's fist manifestation in half. Huh. Guess I was right. This was going to be a tough fight.

 

I was in shock. Alec had managed to break one of Abel's punches. Seeing as Abel was a Master Candidate with an extremely complimentary ability (albeit one he hadn't really been using just then) it was crazy to me that someone who definitely WASN'T a Master Candidate had countered his attack.

That giant flame chop hadn't been Intermediate manifestation, it had just been a wide scale wind burst that he somehow set on fire. The really weird thing was that he was using wind AND fire. Either he had two abilities (extremely unlikely since my dad's cousin Aiden, the current Wishmaster, was the only person I'd heard of with that distinction) or that had been a Skill that he'd combined with his ability. Or two Skills, since it also seemed like some kind of martial art had been used.

"Hey Starbreaker." I said seriously. "Any feedback on that attack? You're our resident firestarter." Something about the flames just then had seemed...different. Not the color, Mel's flames were golden too, but something about the energy that made them up struck me as odd. They looked weird, like I could see a strange shimmer in them.
She sighed. "Those aren't pure flames. I can't tell you what kind of flames they ARE, but they're mixed with something. Maybe a unique Skill."

Abel nodded. "That was impressive. I think the wind is his ability, but whatever that Skill is synergizes well with it, and it's REALLY strong." He cocked his head. "He isn't a Master Candidate, but he's amazingly skilled at using that Skill and his ability in conjunction." Abel reached up and fluidly stripped off his coat, letting the fabric flutter to the ground as he lashed out with a flurry of massive fist images. He didn't use his spatial ability this time either, but it was clear he was being much more serious about his Ragam.

Alec clapped his hands together, and when he drew them apart he was holding a sphere of warped air. Inside the sphere was a single flower made of golden flame. Alec spun the sphere up onto the tip of his finger and then blew on it lightly. It floated up like a soap bubble until it came in contact with one of the descending fist images and then the whole thing destabilized.

The bubble warped, and the flower inside followed suit, becoming unstable and then exploding. The wave of golden flames fluctuated inside the bubble for a second, before it popped, and a colossal burst of fire swallowed the air in front of the Heavensong Tower team, consuming the fist images before they got close enough to do damage.

My eyes widened in shock, but Abel just nodded. "Purification." I looked at him quizically. "The fire purified my fist energy from the blows. My manifestations use a Fantasy base with a heavy Might percentage. It makes them easier to control. The fire eroded the Fantasy, and the Might was consumed to fuel the flames, since fire is almost entirely Might. Annoying."

I stared at him. That explained a few things I'd been interested in knowing. I knew Master Candidates could create manifestations, though he'd implied those were just the most common form that high Intermediate took. Still, those manifestations were standardized, and Intermediate was about branching out and making a technique your own. Finding out the manifestations were created custom from various stat mixtures made a LOT of sense.

It also wasn't really important right now. Purification fire wasn't ideal, but I DID have a counter for it. I cracked my neck, stepping forward. "Hold on, I'll try next." I wasn't sure why they were letting us attack, but it felt like a provocation. It didn't matter in the end. We just needed to beat them and it would be fine. Closing my eyes, I pulled up a flame attack, a triple strength density shifted attack, Mercy Kill, Touch of Tears, and Consecration of Flame, unleashing them all at Alec in a massive burst of dark green fire.

I'd never tried density shifting an actual fireball before, and apparently it was REALLY effective, because the flames seemed to have become ten times more toxic when condensed like that, and combined with all the boosts even Abel looked impressed.

Alec's previously casual impression turned stoic and annoyed and he lashed out with a quick series of punches. Each punch created a wind based explosion of air that fueled a bigger golden explosion of fire. The series of attacks eroded my fireball, eating away at it until it dispersed, but it took him dozens of attacks, and the blast got much closer than I think he was comfortable with.

Callie gaped at me, and even Abel looked surprised, but Mel nodded. "Smart. Purification flame is diametrically opposed to something like toxic fire. It's like trying to burn water. It's possible to turn it into steam, but it isn't an efficient process. How many more times can you do that?"

I grimaced. "Myself? Not nearly enough, but I can imbue that skill into your orb so you can throw toxic fire like that." She nodded and held it out, and I placed a hand on the orb, triggering a second Touch of Tears and Consecration of Flame. That should increase her actual flame power too, which would be a big help.

Sadly, showing that we could counter his attack without just relying on Abel mean the spectator sport portion of this was at an end. Lena, the blonde girl, inhaled and then let out a scream of challenge. As she screamed a bank of angry red mist spewed forth from her mouth right at us. Abel reacted immediately, cupping his hands in a dome and creating a shield of hand manifestation over us.

The red mist hit the shield and stopped, but Abel hissed in pain, and I could see his hands starting to burn under the touch of the corrosive mist. I closed my eyes, using Mistwalker for the first time in a while, and I triggered ANOTHER triple strength density shift, creating a hyper dense extra powerful mist.

As my mist manifested outside the shield, it began to mix with and disperse the red stuff, both types of mist dissipating as they consumed each other, just like I'd been hoping they would. Lena looked pretty much enraged. She screamed again, louder, and vomited another wave of red mist. The tall dark haired clapped her hands and the mist condensed into a rain of sharpened red ice spikes.

The last member of the team, Carlos, snapped, and the spikes all randomly changed direction, then he snapped again and they shifted back after traveling some distance. Effectively that trick had spread the spikes across a wide area and then reoriented them on us, and the momentum never stopped, so we had a hundred plus acidic ice shards heading right for us, attempting to turn us into pincushions.

I reached out and grabbed Abel, using triple strength density shifting and Stone Limb on him, focusing it through the medium of my mentor's skill, or at least trying. He could have obviously resisted, soul manipulation of another person's skill is REALLY easy to counter, especially when your soul is much stronger, but he didn't because we were on the same side.

The folded hand manifestations shielding us (which were touching the sand of the pit) were covered in earth as stone limb effected them, then reinforced by the density shift. It was a really weird thing to see, because for some reason between the sand and the intangible nature of the manifestations, the stone versions weren't actually opaque. I was able to see as Alec deployed another huge attack.

As the ice spikes hit the manifestations and stopped (though based on Abel's grunt it was painful for him to experience) Alec lashed out with a hundred plus punches. Each punch created another one of those flame flower wind orbs, and they spread along the arena on an unseen wind, circling around us and bearing down on us.

Though he couldn't use manifestations or create giant version of that attack, using it a hundred times would accomplish similar things. I knew he wasn't peak of Intermediate since he couldn't manifest, but if the Skill he was using wasn't early Intermediate at least I'd be shocked.

Mel snarled, having been focusing her fire energy into the orb for a while for some reason. I was pretty sure she was charging an attack or something, but since she usually used shapes or bursts I wasn't sure why she didn't just launch the attacks directly instead of saving them.

To my shock though, when she made that snarling sound and I turned to watch, I saw her inhale, sucking all the fire energy she'd been condensing into the orb back into her body. She reinforced her physical body with the flames (which made sense since they were technically Might I guess) and her whole form turned green gold. She hissed in pain and I started, realizing she wasn't immune to my poisoned fire.

"Why are you-?" I started to ask, but I was cut off when she turned to Abel with a nod. He unfolded his hands, letting the shield around us dissipate, and closed his eyes to concentrate. It took me a second to realize what he was doing, but I finally figured it out as HE began to glow green gold.

It was their bond, he was using it like Callie and I could, to channel a Skill or ability. I was pretty sure he couldn't just USE her fire, but he COULD use a single attack, which happened to be what she'd stored. She had internalized it despite the pain because otherwise he wouldn't have had access, since the orb was a tool and not an innate part of her he wouldn't have been able to channel that.

The air around us filled with hundreds of floating golden flowers in soap bubbles, gently bobbing through the air down toward us. Abel clenched his fists, condensing his spatial energy along the lengths of his arms, and then shot out a few dozen rapid punches. The manifestations in the air were green flaming fists the size of busses, but as they began to move they touched off the flower spheres, which detonated in a chain of explosions.

Callie slammed her hands into the sand, a dome of shadow raising above us as I triggered another density shift and Stone Limb again, reinforcing the shadow dome to withstand the chain reaction.

The area shook as Abel's massive fist images clashed with hundreds of golden flame flower spheres, and while I expected them to be extinguished fast, I hadn't realized how much the poison fire would help with that until the dome came down and I saw the rest of the arena.

The other team were standing, barely, and torn to shreds. Based on the area around them Lena had used her acid mist and the taller woman, whose name I hadn't gotten, had condensed a shield of ice. There was a ton of shrapnel from where the dome had been busted before melting, but from what I could see Carlos had interfered with that weird, momentum shifting power and prevented them from getting pincushioned by their own protections.

Alec looked pretty dead on his feet, but when he saw that we were all completely unharmed, his smug smile became bitter. "Ah." He paused for a minute. "Fine. We concede." He sounded unhappy, but I respected him for making the call. In their current condition there was no chance of them beating us, based on the way he was swaying Alec had nothing left in him to use anyway.

As the match ended I headed forward, deciding to heal them up like I had the last group. Since they were in the Church they might be allies once I mentioned to them about my mom, and if not...well we beat them once, we could do it again. I could feel Callie's pride as I approached too. Seemed like she was happy with how this went. I was too, but I also had a LOT of questions for them. Once they were healed up we'd need to meet with them, it was time to clear some things up.

 

We didn't get attacked after the fifth match, which I attributed to how many of the cult got cleaned up in the raid last night. Since the other forces were busy recovering (or trying to exploit the Cult's weakness) we were safe enough to bring Alec and crew back to the house with us. Zeke was already gone when we came out, as were most of the others, so I assumed he'd beaten us home.

With Rime along I wasn't worried about an attack and the house seemed like the safest place to discuss my mother. I was kind of excited honestly. I knew very little about my mom, and these people were actual MEMBERS of the Church. Granted they were external members, but any A-ranker should be more than well known, and they definitely had some idea about what she was like.

As for why I was so enthusiastic? I guessed deep down I didn't blame my mom as much as my dad for leaving. Seeing what happened to Zeke made me suspect my dad had forced the issue, plus I spent so long thinking she was dead, so there was a part of me that was still in shock that I even had the chance to eventually meet her some day. I tried to temper that excitement with pragmatism though, she was an A-ranker, and that meant not really a human with an understandable mindset. What that meant for her specific case wasn't clear, but it would mean something.

We texted Zeke on the way, and he said that he WAS back at the house waiting, since the house was his territory as much as ours and the rules for interference was a bit weaker when his own stuff was threatened. I was pretty sure that wouldn't be true if I outright told him I was skirting the rules to bring them there, but since I left it up in the air it shouldn't matter.

"I appreciate the heals." Alec said as we sat in the back seat of the car. "Where exactly is this place?" All of us were able to fit pretty easily, but the atmosphere was a little weird. None of them knew exactly what was happening. We'd invited
them over to meet, but they weren't exactly close to us. I think the only real reason he accepted was that we'd already said yes to his party invite and gone in blind, plus we'd healed him and I was pretty sure he warned his own faction before leaving.

It was a gutsy move, and I liked him a bit more for it. "Not far. We should be there in a few minutes. Can I get you guys something to eat or drink when we get there?"

Callie beamed. "Solomon is a fantastic cook, you should take him up on it. He can whip something up pretty fast too."
Which was true, as long as I wasn't pushing. Making higher leveled food with better materials was time consuming, but if I wanted to cook up some mortal snacks it wouldn't take long. The combination of my Focus, Perception, and Might meaning I could handle things like frying pans quickly and with extreme precision.

They waved us off, thanking us but saying they weren't hungry. We chatted a bit about earlier matches in the tournament and just general facts about the planet before finally arriving and going inside. I was glad they seemed to know that we wouldn't speak about private matters until we were somewhere more protected.

Once we were inside, I took off my coat, though I left the mask on for now. I wanted to relax a bit but I wasn't comfortable showing my face, even if that was stupid because dozens of powerful people saw it in Doomtown. Cass and Cark weren't here, having vacated when we texted just in case, and the animals were in their own building, so it was just us and Zeke, who wasn't visible despite me knowing he was here.

"So, what's all this about?" Asked Alec. "We appreciate the heal, but if you're hoping to question us or something we'll have to shut that idea down. You did us a favor, but we're not like those mercenaries the other factions have hired." He seemed on his guard, like we would just attack them to force them to tell us their secrets.

I wasn't planning that, and I knew Callie would follow my lead here, since this was mine to tell. So I considered how to explain. "No." I said definitively. "We aren't going to try to force you to tell us anything. In fact, I'm hoping you'll listen while I tell YOU something."

Alec raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything, waiting for me to continue. I decided to give him a bit of background. "Did you know." I asked conversationally. "That I had all my stats when I awakened? I was told that's uncommon, and the main reason it happens is that the Ascendant in question had powerful parents. Now I know my dad is powerful, but he isn't someone for you to care about. My mother though, she's A-rank from what I know. And she might be of interest to you all."

"How so?" He said calmly, but I could tell he had at least an idea where this was going. He wasn't an idiot, and for them to care about who my mom was, she'd either need to be a total monster or someone from their faction.
"My mother is a Saintess of the Red Revenant Church." I said matter of factly. "It's something that's brought me into conflict with the Cult at least once or twice. I figured if they cared enough to try to murder me over it you might care enough to be willing to be friends?"

Alec's eyes had widened, and his pupils narrowed to pinpricks. He was standing VERY still, though whether out of fear or some other emotion I had no idea. "There are several hundred Saintesses." He said, his voice radiating an obviously forced calm. "Which one, might I ask, are you related to?"

I shrugged. "My mom's name is Sasha. I'm not sure how many Sasha's might be in the higher ranks of the Church, but one of the crazies who tried to kill me mentioned she was the youngest Saint the church had, if that helps."

Lena, who had been letting her captain do the talking, SQUEALED in glee. "Sasha the STAR QUEEN? The Fist of the Radiant Pope herself? Oh my Revenant, are you serious? Can you introduce us? Can I get an autograph? Do you have any pictures?"

She was gushing like I'd told her my mom was her favorite pop singer, which given we were all Ascendants might not be too far off the mark. "Maybe one or two." I said calmly. "She left when I was young, and I'm not sure why. But can you tell me more about her? What do you mean the Star Queen? Who is the Radiant Pope?"

Alec held up a hand to stop her. Giving the excited blonde a disapproving frown. "Sorry. Solomon, Lena can't always read the room. I can tell your relationship with your mother isn't exactly close, and I apologize if my teammate was insensitive. I can answer your questions for you, if you'd like. Since SOMEONE has the social skills of a blunt battle axe."

Lena pouted at him. "Shut up. Just because mom likes you better doesn't mean you can be mean to me. Daddy says that as the oldest it's your job to help guide me and teach me when I do something wrong. Scolding me in front of new friends isn't very teacher-y of you."

He rolled his eyes. "That isn't a word. And dad cuts you too much slack because you inherited his ability."Huh. Guess they were siblings. He turned back to me. "Ignore Lena. I can answer your questions since I'm the CAPTAIN OF MY TEAM." He said loudly, clearly aiming that at his sister.

"The Radiant Pope." He started with. "Is one of the S-ranked Popes of the Red Revenant Church. Most of them are the original disciples the Revenant took in as he was rising to power millennia ago." He paused. "Anyone who hits S-rank attains the Pope Job, but most of the most powerful were personal disciples, since they inherited some of his powerful Skills. The Radiant Pope is the youngest of the original disciples."

Lena nodded enthusiastically. "He's also the Star Queen's DAD. She inherited his ability, which most people think is some kind of photosynthesis that makes you physically stronger by absorbing light, but she altered it as she progressed. When she fights, she glows like a star and her physical power is unparalleled. It's crazy, and some people claim it's an entirely separate ABILITY, like she might have two, which almost never happens."

She sounded...terrifying. And amazing. I wondered what she was like as a person. I didn't remember her at all. Maybe she was intense and driven? Or maybe she was kind and had a core of steel underneath? Maybe she had a temper, like I did sometimes. Gods knew I didn't get it from dad. The idea that she had two abilities like the current Wishmaster just made her seem even more mysterious.

I paused at that, looking at Alec as I processed all that. "Speaking of which, do YOU have two abilities? Because I saw you using wind and fire in that fight. Was one of them a Skill?" I was pretty sure it was, but he must have been using a bunch of different Skills to get those effects, which made me curious how strong his soul actually was, because that would be exhausting.

To my surprise, Zeke answered. "He was using the Fist of the Red God." Everyone jumped as my uncle appeared on one of the couches. I wondered why he waited, but maybe he stayed out of the conversation until they told me more about my mom so he didn't need to risk being involved.

Whatever the reasoning, I was pretty curious about his comment. "What is the Fist of the Red God?"

"It's a martial art the Red Revenant created personally." At our shock he snickered a bit. "That doesn't mean he taught it personally. It's a unique Skill but he took it far enough to make a systematic training regimen. Still, it's overcomplicated and notoriously annoying to learn. I'm surprised you bothered." He said to Alec with a nod of approval.

The shorter guy sighed. "My personal ability was too weak. The Fist is extremely powerful and synergizes extremely well with wind abilities. I could achieve power with it using only one Skill that I'd have needed several to accomplish with normal synergies."

Zeke shrugged. "Not a bad idea, and it clearly worked for you." He looked at the other team, clearly searching for something in their faces. "That said, I didn't come meet you all because I wanted to compliment your fighting style. I came because I have another question."

That didn't seem to be a surprise to Alec. "You want to know if we'll support him because of his parentage." I'd been wondering that too, and not having to ask was definitely helpful.

To my surprise though, Zeke shook his head with a small smile. "Children. Always so quick to jump to conclusions. No, kid. I don't want to know if you're going to back him. I want to know if you have the qualifications to do so." Alec looked confused, but I understood what he was doing. It skirted the edge of what was allowed because it showed more than they knew, but if he put it that way I was pretty sure it was allowed by the geas.

Callie must have felt it through the bond, because she braced herself as I did, grabbing my hand because I was sure we weren't going to be excluded. Looking Alec right in the eye, Zeke released his aura, letting is smash us all down into the cushions. I felt like I was drowning, being crushed by a million tons of rubble, and as I lay there looking at the other team I smiled a bit internally. If they passed this test, they'd remember this. Remember what Zeke really was. My uncle really did do the best he could to help where was able.

 

I'd been under Zeke's aura before, but this felt...different. of course, I'd know that he hadn't been trying last time. Given that an E-ranker's unleashed aura had been able to seriously pressure a whole crowd of us in the scavenger hunt I was pretty sure if he felt like it Zeke could have crushed us all to death with this kind of attack.

Instead, it felt JUST strong enough to overpower us, and his extreme precision and power made it easy enough for me to figure out what exactly I was feeling. This was soul weight. It was more direct than what we went through when using Skills, but it was definitely the same thing. I wondered if this was what it felt like for your soul to shatter under the weight of your own stats when trying to rank up.

As expected, none of us were immune, but Abel was doing surprisingly well resisting the aura, managing to come partway to his feet against the massive force being exerted on all of us.

What I didn't expect was that Zeke wasn't sparing any of us, nor was he letting up. This test wasn't just for them, it was for me, and I could feel that resisting the soul weight, while exhausting, was also viable training, and since he was putting as much weight as my soul could take (no more and no less) at all times, this was wearing me out fast, but I felt like it was also helping soul improve at a much faster pace than just sporadic Skills would.

"Why..." Alec gritted out. "Why is someone like you in this place? This level of control over your soul isn't something an E-ranker could have. Manipulating the weight across all of us individually at the same time. You're a monster. There's no way you're less than D-ranked." His voice was rough and his face pale, he looked genuinely terrified. "Are you some bodyguard the Saintess left with him?"

It took me all of ten seconds to realize the point of him doing this. He was setting the stage for me to tell them about my dad. Zeke looked at me inscrutably, clearly leaving the choice in my hands. I could see why he'd do it this way too. The combination of me getting them out of this, me healing them already, and my own potential strength down the road made this whole thing a perfect combo of carrot and stick, and one only possible for him to even do because I'd brought them into his space like this.

"Not my mother." I gritted out, making my decision. I mentally rolled my eyes at the fact that Zeke didn't bother to exclude me from this bullshit. "My father. Specifically Elijih Wyndham an A-ranked former member of the Wish Curse Palace. The person I inherited my own ability from."

Even under the pressure, I saw Alec flinch back in shock. "What? That's...I mean I wondered what your ability was, since you used such a crazy variety of attacks. But if it's THAT ability... I mean, I know Wishmaster candidates are known to gather a variety of Skills. It explains all the variety. I'd just assumed you made some really crazy unique Skill that did all of that, kind of like my Fist of the Red God."

"I have questions about that actually." I admitted. "But first I need to know what you plan to do with this information. I admit, I wasn't expecting the test, but I WAS hoping to recruit you all to work with me. Unless that's against your arrangement with the Church. I'm not asking you to join the WCP of course, just my personal faction. If you agree you could become members of my Starchaser Pavilion if you want, or we could just make a personal alliance."

Alec made a pondering sound. "I...I'm not sure. It isn't against our vows to the Church. The Wish Curse Palace isn't a rival to the five faction alliance, they exist among and around us. That position makes dual employment possible in a way it wouldn't be with other factions. Granted, the Church isn't the CLOSEST faction to the WCP, but we still use their services and have a decent relationship. None of the higher ups are stupid enough to alienate the only source of wishes in the universe."

That didn't sound like a no, but it also wasn't a yes. It took me a second to figure out what he was saying and I rolled my eyes when I did. "Really? You're being crushed under the weight of a B-rank soul and you're trying to negotiate for compensation?" I said it derisively, but honestly I kind of respected the hustle.

It was still hilarious seeing the even more sever flinch from Alec when I mentioned Zeke's rank. "I-I'm just looking out for my team. Even if he's B-B-rank that doesn't mean we'll be bullied. You wouldn't want to work with us if you thought we'd fold so easily anyway."

With a chuckle, I looked to my uncle. "Hey Zeke, ease up on them? I don't know if that's a pass in your book but it's definitely one in mine. Any longer would just hurt our negotiations going forward." My uncle raised a brow, but fast as it had descended, the pressure vanished. When it did, we all gasped and our bodies went limp. While there wasn't really a physical aspect to the pressure, the way our bodies REACTED to the soul weight was another story.

Abel, who had been trying to stand up, fell over when he muscles went limp, and crashed through a flimsy table next to the couch he'd been sitting on. We all stared at him in shock for a minute, before he groaned out. "Ow." And that opened the floodgates. He wasn't hurt, couldn't be from something like that, and seeing our brutal mentor make a fool of himself set me and Callie off into a storm of mad giggles. The others stared at us for a second, but they needed to release all the tension, and one by one they started laughing too.

Our mentor just laid there in the wreckage of the table, sulking, until our bodies started working again. I groaned as I sat up from where I'd been slumped. It was extremely uncomfortable, all my muscles felt like they had been cramping at the same time. I triggered a heal burst, bringing me to fifteen total stockpiled including my reserves. Since the damage was done by a G-ranked source (me tensing up) it healed straight away.

I considered healing the others, but their Vitality should patch them up soon, and I didn't want to waste the heals on minor annoyances. "Thanks." I said to my uncle. "Can you give us the room?" It was a useless gesture, since he could eavesdrop on things happening across the planet, but I thought it would at least make us all more comfortable.

Callie was glaring at Zeke, and flipped him off as he left, something that made me smile and the members of the Heavensong Tower's team blanch. Abel had gotten back up on the couch and was doing what I could only describe as pouting while Mel sat next to him trying to suppress the giggles the rest of us had gotten past already, which I imagined didn't help his irritation.

Turning back to Alec, I gave him a smile. "Now, I figure we can talk a bit more openly without all the threats. Don't mind Zeke. He's my guardian and he tends to be a bit protective." I neglected to mention his complete inability to actually ACT on that protectiveness most of the time of course, but it wasn't like they needed to know everything. Since talking shop when they were sore and shaky seemed stupid, I figured I'd let them recover a bit by finally asking something I'd been wondering about. "I was curious by the way, can you tell me more about the Fist of the Red God?"

He nodded slowly, seemingly happy to have something to focus on other than just being in the presence of someone who could casually destroy his home planet with a disapproving look. "I...yeah. Of course. It's not a secret or anything. Fist of the Red God is a true martial art. The high level ones don't just include movements and themes, they incorporate other Skills that give the techniques direct effects. Like my peace blossom barrage. That's one of the lower level techniques in the Fist repertoire. Of course, the wind spheres are my own twist that make it more effective, but still."

That...that was interesting. I briefly wondered why Callie hadn't gotten some high level shadow art, but then I realized she'd wished for the 'best martial art for her' in that situation, and presumably the inability to learn something like that due to a weak soul and the complexity of progressing had made stronger martial arts a bad fit, not to mention the inability to teach it to me since she'd intended it for both of us.

It at least opened up some interesting new options, specifically for Jessie and Benny, who were much lower in G-rank. I supposed a Minor Skill would work for Callie too, but given our bond and its connection to Balam, I doubted my girlfriend would upgrade like that. She might try to synergize the Skill with her Shadow Embodiment or whatever came after it manually though, to make her own version.

I refocused on the opposing captain, but before I could bring it up, Lena spoke. "So...you can really grant wishes?" She sounded uncharacteristically somber, based on what I'd seen of her. "Like, you can give us anything we want?"

Shaking my head, I decided to clarify. "No. Not anytime soon. If you want Skills or items or other things around our rank then sure, but big wishes require big stat pools. The crazier the wish is the longer you'll need to wait to have it granted. I take it you have something in mind?'

Alec cut her off. "We don't. Not in the short term if that's the case. But it's something we'd like to address later on, if you're willing to commit to that eventuality." Based on their demeanor, I was pretty sure this was a Jessie scenario. They'd lost someone, or someone they loved was ill or something. They must be strong if they didn't think it would be anything I could help with soon. Future consideration wasn't a problem for me though.

"I can do that." I said carefully. "I can't make any promises without finding out what the wish is in terms of when, but it shouldn't be too long from now. A few years at the current rate. Is that ok?"

Lena exhaled in relief, looking at her tall dark haired friend. "See Ella, I told you they weren't so bad." She winked at her. "I have a great eye for people. You should listen to me more often, instead of always acting like I'm a total airhead." She leveled a finger at the taller girl. "Respect your elders!"

Ella rolled her eyes, but she was smiling slightly. "Whatever you say Lena."

The smaller blonde puffed up her cheeks. "That wasn't even remotely sincere! Call me big sis! I don't think you take me seriously enough as the older member of this team."

Alec pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing heavily, and I smirked under my mask. I liked them, all of them so far. I walked out of the room to grab a piece of paper and start writing up a contract that would benefit both of us, letting the captain give his input as I worked. I was thrilled with how this had gone down. These guys were strong and tons of fun to be around. This round couldn't have worked out better for us. Only three left in the team matches though, and I had a feeling things would only get harder. I didn't mind. All I could do was be ready for anything.

 

The next day saw another round of wishes for Rime, and another round of elixirs for Jessie. Our healer was up to two hundred seventy eight Vitality, and with only half of her elixir limit used up. She hadn't quite made it to the halfway point, but it was close. Sadly that was the easy part of the day, because after that we had to head in to the arena for our now daily match.

This was the sixth round, meaning we had two more after it before we switched to the solo fights. Upon arrival, we made our way down to the room under the stands to wait to be called out into the pit.
We sat for about twenty minutes, approaching the guy who was assigned to wait with us for a hint, but getting shot down and told to just wait. Finally we were called out into the arena, and on reaching the sand pit, were greeted by our next opponent.

"Greetings!" Said the short man in the huge hat with kelp green hair. "My name as Albai! I am the current representative of the Magnificent Fable Forest. You must be the team from the Starchaser Pavilion! We were warned about you all, so we won't be taking you too lightly."

Callie froze. "Oh shit." I looked at her quizically, and she swallowed hard. "They have Fable in their name, and they were warned about us. I'm guessing this is one of the teams sent in by the Faerieland, probably a legacy team like the Heavensong Tower." She turned back to Albai. "I take it Celine's sister was the one who warned you, and that warning came with instructions to show no mercy?"

He nodded cheerfully. "Of course. Lady Nalia was most displeased at her sister's defiance. She's instructed me to be extremely rough on you to prevent such an affront from occurring again. Lady Celine has been refusing to respond to meeting requests, and Lady Nalia's ability to punish her while under the purview of the Unity is unfortunately curtailed, so you'll be the instrument of her discipline, as it were."

The tiny red haired girl in the ponytail and the blue dress scowled at us. "I don't see what's so impressive about them that the Lady would be willing to forsake her family. They seem pathetic to me."

Another woman to her side, one with literal metallic gold skin and bronze hair, clicked her tongue. "Don't underestimate them Roxy. They must have something going for them to get this far. I hear one of them is even a Master Candidate." I was a bit surprised they didn't have any up to date information, but then I remembered that we'd been befriending the teams we went up against.

Sure you could watch the matches from the stands, but experiencing an attack was much different than seeing it. Like Alec's Fist of the Red God used golden fire, and so did Mel, but the two attacks were radically different in effect and application.

Roxy snorted. "I call bullshit. You're just too cautious Fiona. If they had a Master Candidate who was any good we'd have heard of them from before the tournament. I bet they're just hyping him up for the reputation."

"Enough, you two." Said the last team member, a huge rotund man with a bald spot so large he only had tufts of hair on either side of his head. "We're her to beat them, not insult them. Lady Nalia wants them used as a lesson, but that doesn't make them less worthy of our respect."

Albai nodded. "Right you are Garret, they've shown extreme talent and skill to get this far. We'll do them the courtesy of demolishing them with our full power." He spread his arms wide. "Now, to begin the match, I dislike this dreary sand. Let's change the scenery a little bit." He tilted his head back a bit and whistled.

As the sound split the air, there was a ripple behind him, and the air above his head and back a few feet started to swirl. As it swirled, color began to mix into the nothingness, green specifically. The whirlpool of color and space accelerated, dragging more space into it, and the entire field around us blurred momentarily before returning to normal again after a second of disturbance.

Well...not normal. Returning to being clear. The area around us was much different, specifically the whole sand pit had been replaced by what looked like a giant forest clearing full of colossal mushrooms. Roxy, who was staring at us, giggled.
"Welcome to Wonderland." She said maliciously. Her eyes, which were shining with ruthless glee, began to ACTUALLY shine, and they transformed into a deep gold from their originally normal hazel. As they did, her body shifted, taking on the form of a massive wolf creature that bounded into the surrounding treeline, somehow vanishing into the shadows between.

Garret reached out and snapped his fingers, calling up a humongous caterpillar beast, and Fiona laid a hand on the monster, coating it in a casing of solid gold armor that looked much tougher than normal gold. Abel snorted, stepped forward, and cocked back a fist. He lashed out at the caterpillar monster and...nothing happened.

We all froze. "What's wrong?" Said Callie quickly. "Why aren't you attacking?" She sounded nervous, which I didn't blame her for given the circumstances.

Abel growled. "I can't. My ability isn't working and neither is my manifestation. The space here is being...restrained. I think this is a Domain ability. I've never actually seen one before. They're much more common in the Faerieland. This guy's Fantasy stat must be HIGH for it to restrain me like this. Probably a few boosting Skills between them too."

Cursing, Callie started looking around. I triggered Seek Hidden, expanding it to her through the bond, and looking for the wolf girl. As we searched, she grilled our mentor. "What is a Domain ability exactly? What does it do? Aside from..." She gestured around us. "This."

Unfortunately, that didn't seem like it would do us much good. "No clue." He said flatly. "I only know a bit about it, it's not a common style of cultivation here. It's not even a universal thing there, as I'm so you remember your elf friend uses something closer to the Empire's nobility cultivation. All I know about it is that it can lock down space in a way that makes it effective against Master Candidates and that to take it down you need to take out the caster or overwhelm it in some other way similar to a Domain."

I scowled. "Well how are we supposed to do that? If you can't use your ability or your martial art how the hell are we supposed to beat THAT." I gestured wildly at the massive metal caterpillar. " Nevermind the wolf thing Roxy turned into?" I was still scanning the treeline. "Speaking of, Nightstrike, do you see her yet?"

"I didn't say my Ragam wouldn't work." He said calmly. "I said I can't make manifestations right now. I'm still a Master Candidate, I'm just more limited in my range. Starbreaker, take care of the wolf girl, I'll handle the metal bug. Nightstrike, you and Solomon can handle Albai, just be careful. I have no clue what he can do in here."

One of my favorite things about Callie's leadership style was that she had zero compunctions about letting other people take charge if it was needed. Abel was by far the more rational choice to come up with a plan since he knew even a tiny bit more than us, and she had no issues letting him.

Albai and the others seemed content to play defense, with one exception. I felt a buzz through the bond as Callie noticed an incoming attack from behind me and spun to finally catch sight of Roxy, who had been hiding but was uncovered by Seek Hidden. She'd already committed to her assault so she only slowed down for a second before barreling toward me anyway despite losing the element of surprise.

Callie and I turned and moved even as Mel appeared in front of her, propelled forward by her flames like a damn rocket booster in a move so fast I could barely track it. I DID notice her seeming to tense up when she got there, presumably unable to handle the strain, but she quickly moved into a hand to hand fight, mobilizing her massive Might and coating her punches with flame.

As we turned to head for Albai, were shocked to see the massive caterpillar in a crater, with Abel already on top of it, fists driving into the plated shell like drop hammers as the summoner and metal woman tried to interfere in a panic. Grinning, I activated Leaf on the Wind, grabbed Callie, and hurled us forward with a long, low leap, right at the captain of the enemy team.

We came in fast, and I once again wished I had a weapon, because this bastard had somehow used his Domain to expand himself into a series of illusions, surrounding us and staying just out of reach. Callie lashed out with a hand, trying to pincushion all of them with her shadows, but nothing came of it.

I dismissed and retriggered Seek Hidden, and was pleasantly surprised to see the glow of a locked on target on one of the bodies, able to alert Callie through the bond without needing to say anything.

My girlfriend, well practiced at deception in battle, created another wave of shadow blades, and I triggered Flurry of Blows, funneling it into her attack to speed up the stabbing shadows. Since it was an area of effect attack, Albai didn't notice we were onto him, and I watched him use his Domain to somehow swap places with one of the illusions.

Once he did, Callie redirected ALL her shadow spears at him at the last second, and Albai snarled, agitated for the first time. He clicked his fingers and Roxy appeared in front of him, the wolf girl seemingly unsurprised at being summoned as she braced for the blades.

The giant humanoid beast shifter took all the blades head on, getting torn apart by the shadows with a snarl of rage, but even as she pulled them back they began to heal. I planted a foot, activating Stone Limb as casually as possible, stacking a triple density shifting blow with Consecration of Flames and Touch of Tears to make a poisoned version of my Magma Leg.

I waited for Callie to launch an attack again and Albai to swap out, and as soon as he did I triggered Double Trouble. I was already whirling off my back foot and swinging my leg around with the full rotation of my body when I appeared behind him. Apparently his spatial bullshit didn't prevent a Skill as weird or obscure as my DS Mastery.

Using my Balam Skill I'd built up the strongest kick I could manage, and a Mercy Kill at the last second made it even stronger. I aimed for his lower back instead of his head because I had no desire to kill someone over some stupid tournament, especially not someone who had made a point of mentioning he wasn't aiming for my life (even if he did it by telling me he wanted to kick my teeth in).

When the kick landed, Albai let out a low scream as I felt a crack, and he toppled forward, the domain shattering as the poison fire and damage to what I was pretty sure was his spine completely destroyed his concentration. Roxy turned on my to attack, but was unable to do anything due to the train sized fist manifestation that straight up smashed her into the ground like a bug on a windshield.

Walking over to kneel down I looked around to confirm the match was over, and once I saw everyone subdued I used a heal burst to fix the spinal damage as I released my Touch of Tears. Albai shuddered, finally going limp as his pain ended and I sighed. That had been a rough one, but it was over now. Only two more to go.

 

We didn't try to recruit the Magnificent Fable Forest, mostly because they were working for a faction that was currently actively pissed at us. While technically most teams could be part of the WCP or the Starchaser Palace and whatever faction they were in at the same time, Callie and I didn't see any upside to trying to recruit someone who had already admitted they had orders to teach us a lesson.

So once I finished fixing up Albai's spine, we just left, heading home to talk without any meetings or networking for a change. Which was a good thing, because as soon as I got there my first order of business was tracking down Zeke to find out what the fuck had just happened, and everyone else came with us.

Zeke, of course, had been there to watch the match, but had come home right after his own way, bypassing the hour of travel time with what I assumed was either an artifact or some stupid broken Skill. Well, or he just flew home. I knew that traditionally once your Impact passed one hundred (D-rank in other words) you could literally step on air and fly by manifesting the Impact onto the air under your feet. At Zeke's level he could probably fly insanely fast.

Either way, when I found him he was in the kitchen eating...enchiladas. I glanced down at the take out container on the counter and raised an eyebrow. "Did you somehow get down to Doomtown, order enchiladas from the Raving Baby, and then come back in the time it took us to get home?"

He stared at me for a second, taking a bite, and pushed the bag off the counter into the trash. "No." He said through mouthful of food.

Mel actually giggled at that, while Abel was glaring at my uncle with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns for picking up his favorite food and not bringing enough for him (not that I blamed Zeke, given the amount of those things my mentor could pack away).

Callie sighed loudly. "Right. Moving on. You saw that fight, so what exactly happened? We have a basic understanding since Abel knows that Domains can nullify abilities like his, but it isn't exactly something we've seen before. Are you allowed to tell us about them?"

He looked at her with narrowed eyes, chewing as he hummed speculatively, then swallowed loudly and burped, making all of us grimace. "Sure." He said casually. "This is considered common knowledge, since so many people have Domains in some parts of the universe. What do you want to know?"

I rolled my eyes. "Everything?" I had to hold back a sigh, because of COURSE he had to make things difficult.
"No." He said firmly. "THAT would be interference. I'll give you the crash course. Domains are a special type of Skill or Ability that allows a person to impose their power around themselves in a radius. They're kind of the opposite of a high level Intermediate combat skill, since you're offloading a large portion of the stress onto the space around you, so they don't require quite as much in the way of soul strength."

I blinked at that. "Wait...then why doesn't everyone use them? If they can counter a Master Candidate they must be really strong. Shouldn't they be way more common?"

Zeke shook his head, taking another bite and talking as he chewed. "Nope. There are downsides. Domains are kind of complicated, but the basics is that there are two kinds. Personal and Fable Domains. Fable Domains are based on stories like that Wonderland Domain. They're well explored, but that comes with its own issues."

"Oh." Said Callie in understanding. "Fable Domains aren't unique, so they would be pretty boring to anyone who knew how they worked. Especially if there's a lot of overlap, that means you would rank up really slow right?"

He pointed his fork at her. "Give the girl a cookie. You guessed it. Fable Domains are incredibly standardized, and unlike the nobility cultivation the Empire uses, there are enough variations that it dilutes the mass renown that they might have as a singular concept."

That made sense. I'd wondered why, say, a Count could funnel belief from the entire concept of that rank of nobility and it didn't work the same for Fable Domains. "Ok." I said curiously. "What about the other kind. Personal Domains? I'm assuming that's a less well known story suited to the user?"

"Yup." He said cheerfully. "But much like Unique Skills those are monstrously hard to rank up. They're still based on stories, but lesser known ones." He paused. "There's...other ways to apply the concept, but that's higher level stuff. Regardless. Domains are the nemesis of spatial Skills and abilities, and manifestations count. It isn't something you'll come across."

That was vague, but pretty much meant I wasn't getting any more. Luckily I had another question this whole thing had brought up that I hadn't had a chance to ask. "I'm curious though. Do you use heroic cultivation? I've never asked, but I know the Unity is the youngest god, and I don't know how old you are. Did you come from the Conglomerate?"

He actually stopped eating to look up at me cooly. "I was wondering when you would get around to asking that. No. I was born in the Empire, though I won't tell you how old I am. I use the job system. I'm currently a Legendary Voltomancer. That's Volto like the style of mask, not Volt as in electricity. Most people in the Empire use the job system. After all, if everyone was a noble it wouldn't exactly be efficient."

I nodded thoughtfully. "Like how some people in the Fairieland use the nobility system, but some people use Domains? I guess there's more variety in the other factions."

"Of course." He agreed. "Heroic cultivation is considered fairly new and untested. It has limitations and benefits like anything, but Ascendant culture is old, as are most Ascendants who are in charge of it. Most of them are taking a wait and see approach and consider the Unity's whole guild and this entire faction as an experiment."

"An...experiment?" I said blankly. "The Conglomerate as a whole and the Unity guild has to be centuries old at this point, how the hell does anyone consider that a passing trend?"

He just shrugged. "High end Ascendants have more than three or four hundred Impact, and you know that high Vitality keeps you in good health for long into the natural lifespan, while a person only ages a single biological year for the number of chronological years that equals their current Impact. Since people can live a hundred to a hundred and twenty or so natural years, multiplying that by Impact means high ranking Ascendants can live for tens of thousands of years. On that timescale, a few centuries isn't anything much."

When he put it like that I could see his point, but it was still a staggering thing to think about. It also kind of explained why he didn't want to talk about his own age. Who knew exactly how long he'd been around. I'd probably avoid thinking about it too. "Do...do you think we should switch to the job system? Would that cause me to lose my modifier for the Wish power?"

"Short answer is no. You CAN switch over if you want, your job would just need to use Wish as your Base Skill. It's not something I really want to get into unless you actually go through with it. But the Wishmaster position has existed since well before this particular cultivation system, and obviously the original Wishmaster didn't use it. He created the Wish Skill and then used it to create the Wishmaster job."

That said some interesting things about how the job system worked to me, not least of which that the Base Skill probably worked at least a bit like an inborn ability. I didn't know much about jobs, though from what I did know they insulated you somewhat from recursion at the expense of some of the speed you got from heroic cultivation.

I had no real desire to change my cultivation style though. It might be a bit safer, but it would also be slower, which would draw attention. Maybe I'd change my mind later, but at the moment I was fine with the way I was doing things. Plus I was pretty sure that making Wish my Base Skill would end up giving me the same limitations as I currently had, so there wasn't really a point, with the added problem of needing to somehow TRAIN my Wish Skill, and gods only knew how I'd do that.

This was the naturals vs. Martial Arts Skill user argument, and I had no desire to get rid of my free rank ups in Wish out of some misguided faith in my ability to understand the damn Skill well enough to grind it past where I currently was.
Zeke didn't seem interested in talking more though, since he put his head down and focused on his enchiladas. I knew him well enough not to expect any more from him. I could see a faint glow from his forehead under his hair, so I suspected SOMETHING he'd just told me or been about to tell me had been counter to the geas. Callie must have felt my guilt and also backed off, turning to Abel.

"So. Did you have fun during the match? I didn't get a chance to see what you did, but clearly that caterpillar thing wasn't able to take it."

The grin that split his face was one of the most ferocious I'd seen on anyone in my life. "Nope. They made the mistake of assuming hamstringing my reach made me useless. But Ragam is about pinpoint precision and focusing force into a small area. Bigger opponents aren't a weakness, they're a strength. Took me a few dozen blows on the same spot but I punched through the armor on that summon like an awl. When you dropped the Domain I was finishing up with the summoner and the metal girl."

Mel piped up. "The werewolf was surprisingly fun in a fight. Her regeneration was nuts, some kind of racial trait thing I think. Even cauterizing the wounds as I made them wasn't enough. Good thing I was strong enough to muscle her with all my Might. Though she was definitely a marathon runner and not a sprinter, so the help from Abel at the end there saved me some serious time."

"What do you think we'll have to deal with tomorrow?" I asked hesitantly. "Seems like they're getting tougher and tougher every round as people are eliminated. Only two more left, so our next opponent will probably be a monster."
Abel just shrugged. "Who cares. You got me don't you? You shouldn't worry about the next two rounds." His grin took on an edge. "You should worry about the five rounds after that." He paused. "At least unless you get one of the by spots. But somehow I don't think you have the luck for that."

I just shook my head with a laugh. "Well, good to see you don't have confidence issues." I turned to walk past where Zeke was still eating quietly. "Now, why don't I make us all something for lunch, since SOMEONE didn't think to bring enough for everyone else."

Zeke just flipped me off without stopping his food rampage and I rolled my eyes as I started taking out a pan to start work. I would have asked what they wanted, but given Abel was here I didn't need to. He always picked the same thing if he had the option, and honestly the enchiladas smelled good anyway. Now, I just had to find out if I could make them as good as the ones at the Raving Baby. Probably not, but it never hurt to try.

 

The morning of the seventh match was the same as the ones before it. Five wishes for Rime, five elixirs for Jessie, and she officially reached two thirds of her elixir limit even as her Vitality broke past three hundred. On top of that she got another ten points of Might from her bond, bringing that to eighty seven on top of the insane three hundred and three Vitality. Specializing definitely had upsides, since her entire skillset was based on Vitality, compounding that stat allowed her to see INSANE returns on her stats.

I could see now why people with my power usually had bodyguards, funneling all of someone's stats to one point could create absurd levels of power in compatible abilities. Like Cark having almost all his points in Might. Sure, he already had most of them as a fire user, but that was MOST. Having almost a hundred percent stat allocation reinforcing your main skillset was incredibly broken, and not something that happened naturally even to people with heavily skewed powers.

The further behind a stat was the easier it got to raise, and the other stats started to climb quicker when you got too focused on one, unless of course you cheated and did it like I did with wishes. Given how strong her healing already was, not to mention the enhancement abilities of her energy infusion on her animals, I was terrified to see what that power would be able to do at next rank.

I knew that focusing your stats was one way to change your ability without synergizing so expected at least some kind of change when she hit F-rank. Once again we found ourselves back at the same arena. Rime was waiting in the stands with Zeke, who would as usual be gone by the time we came out. By this point everyone had other things to do, and no one but them had time to go to every single one of our matches, not that we would ask them to.

Stepping out onto the sand, I was prepared for anything. From what I'd seen, we usually got one of two situations when facing new groups, either a widely varied set of enemies, or four people in a uniform or some sort of identical concealment attire.

This particular group of opponents were the latter. "So." I said musingly. "Exactly how many factions use the whole shapeless dark robes ensemble? This is what? The third we've seen? You would be figure it would be counterproductive given how big a role attention plays in cultivation. Like, doesn't the uniform defeat the purpose?"

Callie shook her head as we made our way into the pit towards the other team. "No. I asked The Nothing about that. He said they're usually limited within a region, and they make enough of an impact as a group to justify the choice. Being members of that faction gives each person a similar amount of prestige, sort of like Raleigh's Raiders back in the scavenger hunt."

One of the figures nodded slowly. "She is correct." They said with a voice like a creaking door in a haunted house.
"Yes." Said another in a voice like claws scraping over a dead tree. "Most correct. The Hate Demon Convergence is indeed such an organization."

I sighed. Wonderful, they were total creeps. Callie remained calm as ever as she said. "That's a...nice name. Any chance you could give us some sort of individual moniker we could use to identify each of you? I respect the whole...group mentality, thing you have going on, but it would be nice to put a name to the lack of face."

Because the hoods were completely dark, full of nothing but bottomless shadow...of course. One of them nodded. "We are Skell. We are also Veck, Stang, and Ruk." It announced this with a voice like metal screaming as it shattered, clearly a different one than the other two.

"Right." Callie said flatly. "Very helpful, thank you." Apparently the 'Hate Demon Convergence' didn't teach sarcasm, because the figure nodded again despite her clear implication that announcing the names of the...convergers, while using the collective we made the introductions functionally pointless. "You haven't attacked yet, are you waiting for us to start things off?"

The four of them shook their heads in unison. "It begins." Said the fourth one in a voice like cold water hitting hot stone. I was a bit confused as to what that meant...until I looked up.

Four circles of red symbols, all slightly different but close enough to be recognizable as a similar or identical Skill or ability, floated above us in a square. Red light connected the four circles, and through that square of darkness I could see a giant red hand manifesting.

"Fuck." Spat Abel as he saw it too, and lashed out with punch at the fist, a massive manifestation of his hand slamming into the demonic appendage.

The red hand clenched into its own fist, meeting the blow with a similar punch, and the explosion dispersed the manifestation, causing Abel to stumble back with a growl of pain. I stepped over and put a hand on his shoulder, triggering a heal burst, and he groaned in thanks.

As we watched, another hand came down through the square, the two of them latching onto either side of the square and beginning to tear the space wider with brute force. Through the hole I could see a massive red face with glaring yellow eyes and a huge mouth packed with razor sharp teeth. Rams horns curled back from a brutal looking face as the monster grinned down at us.

"What the actual fuck is THAT?" I yelped in terror. Whatever the demon was, it was F-rank, which shouldn't be possible here.

Abel groaned as he flexed his fist. "THAT." He said distastefully. "Is a cooperative invocation. looks like they're summoners. Most invocations have a primary caster, they modify the Skill and offload the power and soul requirements onto others. Cooperatives are what happen when multiple people use an invocation when they all have the same Skill or ability."

The monster's foot smashed down on the sand as it finally crawled free, a pair of giant red wings spreading out behind it as it threw back its head and roared in triumph.

Only to have it's roar cut off by another massive fist as Abel slammed a huge punch into its jaw. The beast reeled back as my mentor shook out his hand. "Ok, this is going to be rough." Despite the grim words, his face was plastered with a massive grin as he stripped off his coat and started to limber up. "Mel, an F-rank enemy is going to be a mess, especially one that size. Mind if I borrow a bit of your power?"

Mel shook her head. "Of course not, but be careful. You know the bond has limits at our rank."

He just waved her off, then closed his eyes. The summoners all seemed pretty much motionless but they were behind the damn demon so no way we were getting to them fast. Calli still nodded for me to circle around and we started moving slowly, letting Abel and Mel keep the monsters attention.

I'd never seen them use their bond for anything like Callie and I did. Abel was the main attacker and had never needed to tap into her powers. As I stared in awe, a massive avatar of Abel's fists manifested above us, condensed from golden fire. I'd seen Mel use that ability before, taking advantage of the physical aspects of Might to enhance her body with her condensed flames, but seeing it on this scale was...terrifying.

More than just the size, the sheer presence of those fists was staggering. There was a shift in the air and the space began to warp around the hands as Abel moved them through the air, warping the space to leave behind afterimages until there were six distinct manifestations in the air. The left fist flashed forward, the other two images condensing on it, then the right followed, each blow coming down with triple the force.

The demon roared, hurling its own fists out in a flurry of punches, but unlike last time Abel didn't budge. His blows met the punches from the demon head on and the beast reared back in pain, but the damage to the hands healed almost as soon as it happened. Summons were a bitch to take out if you couldn't one shot them, since the summoners could repair them.

I had no doubt Abel would get the thing eventually, and seeing him get serious and actively work with Mel for the first time in the tournament I was blown away, but this was a team match, which meant he didn't HAVE to do that. Callie and I had circled around to within range for me to use Double Trouble, but I held back, kneeling down to condense Stone Limbs on both my hands, as well as poison fire, just in case.

Waiting for the perfect timing, I stood stock still, staring at the nearby figures as the giant demonic summon and the massive flaming fists boxed it out above us. Finally, there was a shift near their feet. Callie had flooded the ground with shadows, triggering a Sucking Mud through the bond. The distracted figures had no chance as they all got snagged by the shadow tendrils of the Dark Swamp combination technique, slowly being dragged into the mud.

Sadly that didn't end the summon, so I activated Double Trouble. A Cloud Step to prevent me from sinking allowed me to lash out with a pair of Mercy Kill boosted punches and then spin off to slam both hands down on the third one's head and dropping an elbow on the last, all imbued with a triple strength tranq blow, using four of my stockpiles.

The figures all slumped, obviously unprepared for a random teleport into their midst. The unconscious bodies were dragged into the muck, but Callie cancelled the skill leaving them all buried in the now solid sand. I felt a shudder in the air as the massive summon dispersed, showing the major weakness of summoners in general better than any other example I'd ever seen.

Flaming hands faded from the air as Abel released the fire empowerment Skill. I checked on the hooded figures, and they were all breathing, unharmed mostly since the poison fire had faded when I released the skill, since they were buried underground. Seeing they didn't need any healing I turned to check on Abel, who was nursing a pair of seriously damaged hands.

I put a hand on his shoulder and used a heal burst, hearing my mentor's sigh of relief as I did. "Ok. Ow. Haven't pushed that far in a while. Bit bummed you ended it so early though, that was the best fight I've had in ages." He shrugged. "Oh well, I guess I'll have to hope someone better comes along in the solo matches."

Mel snorted. "You would have been hard pressed to beat that thing without me. If someone better than that comes along when you're alone you're screwed. Though I guess the damn thing WAS F-rank, so who knows." She glanced at the unconscious figures. "We going to do the meeting thing?"

Callie shook her head. "No. They give me the creeps, I don't really want them hanging around the pavilion. I'm sure we can find some other people who can do cooperative invocations. That summon was scary but Rime would crush it for instance, they just aren't worth the investment."

I agreed, though more for the first reason than anything else. I found them all pretty unsettling. With a sigh, I turned to make my way out of the arena with the others following behind. Next match was the last one in the team segment, and assuming we got through that we might be forced to fight each other. I was going to have to do some work on my DS Mastery to prepare for fighting alone. I had a feeling things would only get harder from here.

 

After the match we went straight home again and I secluded myself. This next part was going to be an important step, and I wasn't willing to have anyone sitting in. Even Callie might be a competitor later in the tournament, and as much as I loved my girlfriend, I wasn't going to make it easy on her. We were finally on even footing, and unlike out sparring up til now this tournament had real stakes.

Granted, it would be fine if either of us won, but we both had our reasons for wanting to advance, so if we ended up fighting I wasn't going to do any less than my level best to win. She knew it too, could sense my resolve, even if she couldn't sense what I was going to do about it.

Which was, of course, get stronger. My stats were maxed, but I had plenty of room to grow, and my DS Mastery was my best chance to do that. I had ten or more subskills to upgrade still, and I needed to make sure to grow them in a way that would let me fight one on one without relying on backup from Callie or Abel or even Mel. I had to use my room to grow to make myself a legitimate threat, and the best way to do that was to get back to my roots a bit. It was time to min-max my build.

Or at least the aspects of it I could. The Fatewalker build was fantastic for DS, but it was less than ideal for a frontline combatant. Specifically my divination, while useful, had yet to unlock any of the combat applicable skills I could get later in the tree, and as such was much less of a priority. I had a few tricks like the overlay, but that wasn't really even a skill so much as an interface. Seek Hidden was useful, but wouldn't be combat applicable in most situations.

Which meant my upgrades should be aimed at the most compatible of my subclasses. The monk. Granted, the rogue subskills were hugely useful, but I'd upgraded most of them already, and I had no weapon anymore, at least for the moment. After tomorrow I would finally have some breathing time to get a new one made, but until then leaning into the monk abilities and their synergy with martial arts was going to be the key to making me stronger. Even after I got my weapon this would be a useful path to take.

Now, I'd upgraded several of my monk skills already. Consecration of Flame, Stone Limb, and Afterburner. Which meant I had five more left. Mistwalking, Sucking Mud, Boiling Cloud, Cloud Step, and Leaf on the Wind. Two water skills, an earth skill, and two wind skills.

Four skills didn't give me any groundbreaking options exactly, but it gave me some, especially if I used them in conjunction with each other. Which meant I needed to figure out ways to alter each of the skills to they would work in harmony with each other, or at least a few of them. I was pretty sure I couldn't jail break them completely, but by making multiple skills different enough to work as part of an overarching whole I should be able to manage...something.

Then I stopped. Skills could be used in conjunction. Part of a whole. They could also be SYNERGIZED. While I wasn't sure if I could synergize full Skills into my subskills, I didn't see why not. I had plenty of bullshit Skills that did nothing, and combining them into aspects of DS Mastery could improve its function.

I considered my options. First up was Stealth. It was still at Lesser, which meant it was well within tolerance for synergy. Mistwalking was designed to help me hide in a cloud of mist, but there was viability for something much more powerful. I might lose Stealth by doing this, I didn't know since it was my first synergy, but even if I did I had stored charges and I could use it through the bond.

So I closed my eyes and reached down into myself. I used Mistwalking, filling the room with mist that would let me move more sneakily. It was a pretty basic and uninspiring ability. But I focused on a specific part of it. The hiding aspect. I focused on the stealth element of the skill, trying my best to shift the skill as I did with any skill, using my soul to sort of highlight a path for it.

Instead of just altering it over and over until it became effortless though, I altered it as far as I could and HELD it. My head started to pound, but I ignored it as I focused on my Stealth Skill, and holding the Mistwalking skill I resonated Stealth as hard as I could. I felt something catch, felt the two skills begin to harmonize as my skills did sometimes, but instead of letting it go, I focused on the harmonization.

It felt...simple. Not easy mind you. My head was throbbing, but simple. Like it was meant to happen. I held it like that, letting the resonance get stronger and stronger, and in the same way a skill eventually became different when I upgraded it, there was a sort of...click, inside me and the two skills blended together.

I fell over, letting myself breathe as I tried to tamp down on the pain. It took a few minutes for my head to clear, but it eventually did, and when it was done, I mentally checked over my Skills. They were mostly the same, except two small differences. First, Stealth was gone. I hadn't been sure that would happen, but this was a Skill and not an ability so it didn't shock me. I knew most Skills synergized with an ability didn't vanish since you had to keep ranking them up to progress, but it looked like Skill synergized with other Skills did.

Second was under my DS Mastery skill. I could dive into that if I needed to, and it listed my subskills, but Mistwalking was no longer one of them. In its place was an entirely new skill. Moonlit Night. My subskills and skills didn't have descriptions or anything, but I didn't need them. It was MY skill. I knew what it did, and this one was pretty fucking amazing.

Moonlit Night did what Mistwalking had done, filled the area with fog, but with Stealth included that fog did a few new things. Aside from obscuring sight, it also obscured me specifically from other senses, like hearing and smell. On top of that, because Stealth was doing a lot of heavy lifting, the Mistwalking skill was able to get back to its roots as a monk skill, which meant it amplified the force of my blows when I was hidden by the fog. In other words, I got a fucking sneak attack bonus. Every blow I made undetected inside the fog caused double the damage.

I wanted to do more, honestly, I couldn't wait to find some new way to improve my DS Mastery. I could feel it becoming...more. Evolving as a Skill not only because I had upgraded a portion, but because I had included more Skills in it. What that would do I had no idea. Maybe it would change the Skill when it upgraded, that was certainly how abilities worked, but either way I was excited to become more powerful.

For now, my head was still throbbing and I decided the best move here was to test out my new ability. I headed down to the training room, making sure it was empty before starting my practice. I closed my eyes, triggering Moonlit Night. When I opened them...I could see.

I hadn't considered why it would be called Moonlit Night, but standing in the fog I could understand perfectly. Light. The fog itself wasn't opaque, rather, to my eyes it looking like softly glowing phosphorescent liquid. That was interesting. I had a full understanding of the mechanics of my new skill, but apparently not how it would physically manifest.

Other people, based on what I knew about the skill's function, wouldn't be able to see, or hear, or smell me. Granted some special tricks like my Seek Hidden would make it possible to detect me anyway, but detection abilities weren't exactly universal, especially among the enemies I'd be facing. They would all be pure combat types.

I strode forward in the fog, silent as a ghost, it was amazing, like being inside a giant Stealth Skill. I couldn't wait to do this with my last few subskills and make DS Mastery really mine. I shifted into my Balam stance moving undetected among the targets on the edge of the training room. As I got within range of one I spun off my back foot, scything out with a kick at the nearest target.

There was a bang as my kick fulfilled the condition of a sneak attack, namely, that no one was perceiving me actively within the fog. Double the force was expressed through the blow. I triggered Mercy Kill, inflicting three blows at half again the strength, a grand total of two hundred fifty percent damage. I'd been hoping those would stack instead of combining but I supposed it kind of made sense since they both came from the same skill.

Looking at the target, I didn't see any particular damage, but that was fine. These were peak G-rank targets, and my Might was two hundred and twenty. Five hundred and fifty points of Might wasn't anything to scoff at, but it wasn't peak of anything. Then again, it didn't need to be. I could deliver these all day, and this was without any enhancement at all. Stack this with some of my triple strength punches and I was throwing blows hard enough to be F-rank.

Now I knew, of course, that it didn't really translate exactly like that because of the way Impact worked, but against someone my own rank I'd be able to do some serious damage, and everyone in the tournament was G-rank, even if some of them would have F-rank defensive gear like I did. I got back in position again, readying myself for another attack, and proceeded to spend a few hours focused on utilizing every speck of Might I had perfectly, finding the optimum usage for my Balam Mastery for sneak attacks and mist based combat. I kept going until I could barely stand, ignoring the pain in my head as I practiced.

Finishing up my training I slumped down, head still pounding, and closed my eyes. Sadly the pain didn't fade quickly, but that was ok. I hadn't strained my soul too much, this was within my tolerance, it was just at the high end of it. I would be right as rain tomorrow before the big match. Not that it would matter because there was no way I was going to show this new skill off in the team battle. I'd save it for when I needed it.

Once I stopped feeling like a pack of boot wearing rat kings were playing hop scotch on the inside of my brain I climbed to my feet and headed upstairs. I climbed into the shower and slumped down on the bench, letting the boiling water wash away the soreness and sweat from the hard workout. I wasn't exactly invincible now, but I still had another four monk skills and at least one rogue skill to upgrade before the solo fights. I was going to make sure that I was a completely different fighter by the time that all came around.

As I stumbled into bed and dozed off, I felt Callie climb in after me, and I drifted off to sleep happy with the progress I made. Tomorrow was the finals of the group matches, and I couldn't help but be excited to find out who we would be facing. Whoever it was, I was sure this would be a hell of a fight.

 

"So." I said as we arrived in the waiting room below the arena. "Last team battle." I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the pounding of my pulse in my ears. "Who do you think we'll be up against?" Not that it mattered. I was barely thinking about this fight. I was more worried about the next five. Because any one of them could be against one of my own teammates.

On the one hand that was exciting. I was almost positive if I fought Abel I would lose, but I had a decent chance against Callie and possibly even Mel if I pulled out all the stops. But still, I'd gotten so used to us all moving as a unit. Especially Callie. She was my partner. Fighting with her at my side was almost like breathing at this point. It was going to be jarring switching from that mindset, never mind actually fighting against her.

Which...was what Abel had told us during training. That we would need to be able to keep that mindset separate from our normal outlook so we could turn it off. In some ways I was pretty sure that was the point of making Paired Dueling a Skill. By doing it that way we kept it as a separate part of our lives, which made it easier to do without. As opposed to making every aspect us codependent.

Callie sighed, and I could feel through the bond she was just as hesitant. I couldn't feel the REASONS for that, but I knew her well enough to assume they were similar to my own. "Nope. But if they made it this far they must be tough. Each of the teams has been pulling out some crazy trick that we've never seen, so we should assume the same of this one. Whatever it is though, I'm sure we can hang with whatever they've got."

Abel seemed pretty much at ease with everything, but that wasn't surprising. I'd yet to see him go all out for real. Sure, he'd tapped his bond with Mel in that demon fight, but that was just a raw power thing. Given Mel's comment that he only ever got serious when he took off his mask, I was positive that Abel had other tricks. The rest of us weren't as...invincible.

Mel was pretty calm too though, and while I didn't think I was as strong as she was, I was closer to her in power than my mentor, especially now. Strangely, hearing Callie's fear about what was coming in her voice made mine seem inconsequential. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into a hug.

"I know you're not worried about this fight. Not really. And neither am I." I felt her stiffen against me as I touched on something she hadn't brought up. The bond was useful and positive a lot of the time, but empathy was a tough thing to get used to. "We're going to kick ass in the solo rounds. We've been training constantly, and we've learned a ton. We can do this."

She nodded against me. "Yeah. You're right. I'm just letting this get to me. Besides, even if I lose it isn't the end of the world. Four of us means four times the chance of victory. And that isn't even counting your cousin." I'd almost forgotten Natalie was going to be taking part in this. I wondered who her fourth would be. Callie sighed, stepping back. "Alright, well for this to matter we need to win the current match. Like you said, I'm not worried, but we should focus.

"Oh definitely." I agreed. "Being confident doesn't mean being stupid." I heard the call from outside as we were summoned for our match. "Speak of the devil. That'll be us. Whoever it is, I'm sure we can figure something out. We just need to make sure to take our time and work out what they can do, right?"

She grinned at me. "Of course. I'll come up with a plan as soon as we know what they can d-" She stepped out of the gate onto the sand and stopped. "Oh. Well shit." I was a bit confused as to what had stopped her, but when I stepped out myself I realized what it was.

"Sanctuary Hall." I cursed. Beat, Sever, Carl, and Serenity. Four of our old enemies who were strong enough to be a serious threat. I turned to Abel. "I don't suppose you discovered some secret weakness of hers in battle and will be able to shut Serenity down quickly?"

"Nope." Said my mentor. "And with Carl added on this is going to be tough. Neither of you are a match for Beat or Sever one on one, and Mel can't handle them two on one either. We beat them all last time because of our distribution, but with one more person this is going to suck." He scowled. "I hate fighting her. It's like punching cotton. There's no fun if she just no-sell's everything I do."

Because almost everything Abel did was brute force, and Serenity was the closest we'd seen to a hard counter to him. We stepped forward, and the calm looking girl nodded to us. "Well now." She said lightly. "I wasn't expecting you to be our last group opponent. But maybe I should have." She smiled warmly. "I have to say I don't dislike the symmetry. We'll make sure to pay you back for last time."

Seeing that banter would be pointless, and not wanting to deal with Carl's bullshit, I knelt down, triggering stone limb on both arms as well as my poison fire. Coating them in toxic acidic magma. "So, who am I up against." Ironically, despite being unarmed and therefore more bulnerable to Sever, my armor was better at tanking sharp force trauma, so Beat would be the bigger threat.

"Carl." Said Callie firmly. "We can handle the other two, but Carl has who knows how many tricks up his sleeve. We need our most versatile fighter on him. I'll deal with beat, Starbreaker is on Sever, and Apollyon will handle Serenity as planned. Go."

She moved as soon as she finished talking, clearly planning to overwhelm them with surprise as a wave of crushing shadow smashed down at Beat. Mel expelled a burst of golden flame, appearing in front of Sever in a flash and then releasing a burst of fire right in his face. I sighed and triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind Carl and launching a flurry of magma infused punches.

To my shock though, when I arrived my punches were countered, as a pair of huge hairy arms pulled free of the ape tattoo on Carl to slap them aside. Despite the knowledge that he would have tattoos that could protect him courtesy of his dad, I had no idea where the things were until now. They weren't VISIBLE at a glance, which would have been obvious since Carl didn't wear a shirt.

Now I saw where they came from though. I could see the tattoos fading into existence, not from nothing, but as if they were coming from a great distance, a trick of perspective as his skin was flooded with colorful images that he hadn't had a second ago. I backed off watching him closely as the writhing images adjusted themselves across his skin.

Behind him, I saw a massive golden shield form in the air, defending against a storm of massive punches as Serenity channel her ability through what I was pretty sure was an F-ranked artifact, nullifying them with hear pacifying power on impact. I could hear my mentor's groan of frustration as he accelerated the punches, weaving them in from new angles only to have the shield intercept them all.

I could feel Callie was tense but safe, and I didn't have time to look over everyone as I prepared for Carl. I triggered Flurry of Blows and Mercy Kill, three augmented super speed punches to test out what Carl had going on. Another tattoo, this one a small monkey, dashed off his skin and split into a chain of monkeys, each throwing one of the others into the path of one of my punches and exploding into fucking confetti of all things, though luckily this stuff didn't cut me.

Seemed like the tattoos had individual abilities, though I wasn't sure about how varied they were. Carl grinned at me, flexing his muscles ridiculously. "First stage of my tattoo boom, Primate Parade! You think your stupid lava punches can hang with my monkey madness Solomon? Punchin Carl spits on pathetic hand to hand bullshit! Only nerds throw hands."

It took all my effort not to literally groan aloud in pain at how stupid he was. "Your name is PUNCHIN Carl. You're saying you think punching is beneath you?"

Carl snarled at me, flicking his hands to hurl a pair of snakes at me. "SHUT UP! Real men don't punch with their fists, they punch with their brains! I have the most badass bare knuckle brain in the world, so I don't need hands to punch!"

I just...stared at him as I easily sidestepped the snakes with the help of my now active overlay. That wasn't how ANYTHING worked. At all. "That...made no godsdamned sense, you lunatic."

Rather than hurl more snakes, Carl reached behind him with both hands. He let out a grunt and hauled up what looked like a fucking boar made of rocks, holding it over his head like a championship belt as he roared. "I'll punch sense in the FACE!" And hurled it at me in an overhand toss.

Activating Leaf on the Wind I pushed off the sand, my foot coming down on the boar as it arched through the air, and I pushed off the thing, hurling myself further up in the air. Glaring down at the crazy gangster, I triggered a spider leg attack, pointing both legs above my head to form a sort of arrowhead. Using Cloud Step to reorient myself, I aimed the point down at Carl, triggering a gravity attack, a triple strength density shifted attack, and Mercy Kill as I plummeted down at him point first.

I aimed for the shoulder and arm, because I didn't want to murder Carl for being a fucking idiot, but limbs could be regrown. Sadly, it didn't really matter. Carl saw me coming and knelt down to slap the ground. As he did a shape erupted from his back, an absolutely huge grey form, it took me a minute to figure out it was a literal steel elephant, and it crouched over him to tank the attack before it had a chance to hit him.

The pointed spider legs propelled by their enhanced density and the gravity attack slammed into the back of the elephant, and there was a thump as the tattoo beast stopped as the body proved too dense for the spider legs to punch through. I dismissed them, kicking off a cloud step platform to hurl me out of the way of the wounded elephant (which bled mercury apparently) as it lashed out with its trunk, trying to break me in two.

I touched down lightly, Leaf on the Wind preventing my impact from being too rough, and aided by the sand. I'd had to strain the skill a bit to prevent it from stopping my attack altogether, but I'd managed, even if my head was twinging a bit. As I stood up I looked over at a glaring Carl. Behind him I could see Abel coming up blank against Serenity, and I growled with annoyance.

This was the last fight of the team section, it should have been easy fighting people we'd beaten before. But from what I could see someone (probably not Carl) had done quite a bit of research. They knew what to expect from us and had covered all their bases. I cracked my neck as I took up a Balam stance. That was fine. I'd just need a home run.

 

Carl was scowling as he put his hand on the metal elephant. "Hey! How dare you hurt McRuffles. He's one of the best tattoos my old man gave me." Looking up at the elephant I actually did feel a little bad, but I didn't believe that the tattoos being harmed damaged them long term. I was, however, concerned about another part of that statement.

"Your old man?" I said dubiously. "M-Jack's tattoos have to be above G-rank, how are you even using those? If they're F or higher then they would be illegal in the tournament because they would count as offensive weapons." I wasn't actually sure they would, but I'd at least bring it up. Honestly I couldn't tell what rank the tats were, their Impact came from Carl rather than being part of them, so the manifestations of the tattoos didn't give it away.

Carl snorted. "Nuh-uh. They're G-rank for sure. My old man isn't just a tattoo user, he's a tattoo artist, and he can tailor his work to the person he's working on." He made another ridiculous flexing motion. "And with an awesome canvas like this he made some badass tattoos. You're just trying to confuse me with your rules bullshit. Do you think I'm stupid?"

I stared at him for a second. "Oh! That wasn't rhetorical." I paused. "I feel like the answer you're looking for is...no?" My condescending tone was obvious enough even Carl couldn't miss it. The shirtless man roared in rage and reached up to slap the bottom of the elephant.

The massive metal form dissolved, shrinking down and recovering Carl, except this time it didn't imprint itself onto his skin, it covered him like some kind of armor, giving him a metal suit with an elephant head helmet and a long hanging trunk, as well as gleaming metal plates along his arms, back, and shoulders, though it left his chest and stomach bare.

His arms, hulking with muscle and metal, started lashing out at me in a series of punches, and between my overlay and my Balam Mastery, avoiding those blows was completely feasible. Roaring with outrage, Carl started flinging his head around, trying to smash me with the metal trunk.

Gritting my teeth, I triggered a triple stack density shift on my arms, which were still coated with toxic magma. Holding up my limbs, I got them in front of my face, tanking the trunk whips with my armored forearms as I waited. It sucked. A lot. I triggered a heal burst to begin healing the damage and to overclock my energy reserves as I weathered the storm.

Despite the pain and constant barrage of attacks from both arms and the trunk, I had to admit he was holding back though. Carl could have tried to gore me on those tusks, and he didn't. He obviously didn't want to kill me any more than I wanted to kill him, though apparently he had no such compunctions about tenderizing me.

Waiting for a gap, I took the punishment, finally seeing an opening via the overlay. I triggered Flurry of Blows, enhancing my speed as I slipped through the gap, letting my armor tank the hits (though since they were blunt force I felt a rib crack, only to be healed up by my still surging life force) and hit Carl with the heaviest right cross I could manage, using my Minor Boxing Mastery along with Balam and Mercy Kill to land the heaviest punch I could.

The elephant armor dissolved as Carl staggered back, head spinning from the punch, which I followed up. I had two more hits with Mercy Kill of the three, and I triggered a tranq punch with each hand as I used them. As that happened, I tagged him with a gravity attack from Alden, making sure he could feel the obvious change.

Certain that the sluggishness from the tranq punch was the increased gravity, Carl started flailing around, not bothering to try to resist or counter the tranquilizer or even the poison fire that was still spreading from all of my strike points carrying it.

As I kept up the punches his own arms came up to try to stop them, but they couldn't do shit about the spider legs raining down short sharp stabbing blows from above. Granted they weren't imbued with poison fire, but they were G-ranked metal spikes stabbing into bare flesh from above which I didn't imagine was fun.

Despite the advantage, I waited. I could see him getting more and more dizzy and unstable. Finally the overlay gave me a tip off on an opening, and I triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind him and leaving behind a fake image of me as usual. When I did that though, I decided to try something new.

I had tranq blows, but I'd imbued other kinds of attacks with certain abilities before. Feeling my head split open I used a tranq blow, but instead of a punch I slipped past his guard from behind and locked him into a sleeper hold, imbuing the choke with the tranquilizer attack.

Carl stiffened, slapping my arm and struggling, but I could feel the tranq working with the stuff already in his system, after about twenty seconds he was out, and I let him go, dropping him the sand as I doubled over, hands on my knees, to process the intense head pain. I'd strained my soul with that little trick, it had been a big change very quickly.

That had me down to four tranq blows and three density shifted ones. I needed to top up soon, luckily Jessie was almost done her elixir limit and I'd be back to buffing Benny. I waited for my head to clear and then stood, turning to look around at the rest of the battle.

Abel was still stalled fighting Serenity, but I doubted I'd be either useful or appreciated there. Mel was dealing with Sever and Callie with Beat, so I decided to go help my girlfriend with the blunt force user. Without waiting I spun and triggered Double Trouble again, appearing behind Beat mid rotation, bringing my elbow around into the side of his head with another Flurry of Blows.

Callie, who had been barely keeping up with the powerful force user, felt a surge of relief that I could clock through the bond, but it turned to horror when the hoodie wearing younger man bent at the knees, leaning back to let my blow pass over his head and planting his hands on the sand behind him, feet coming up to smash into me.

His lead foot slammed into my chest, and the other hit the back of his first shoe, smashing his initial kick into me like a chisel driven into stone. The energy from his punches gathered on his feet and slammed into my chest like a car going full speed, and I felt my sternum crack as I was sent sailing off into the distance, my head blurry with pain as I hit the sand and rolled like a stringless puppet.

I used a healing burst, then another just in case, and I felt the bones in my chest begin to knit together, though my head didn't stop spinning. I rolled over, propping myself up on my elbow, and panted with pain as I tried to right myself. I could feel Callie's rage through the bond, and hear the roar as several of my abilities were funneled through the bond, Touch of Tears, Consecration of Flame, Stone Limb, all channeled through my girlfriend and the soul weight born solely by her.

I raised my head, seeing the massive shadow magma dragon construct bear down on Beat, who was hurling explosive bursts of concussive force to keep the monster from reaching him. Staggering up to my feet, I nearly fell over, having to catch myself with the spider legs, and tried to walk towards to the spot I'd been at before.

That had been my bad. I'd tried to engage a fucking member of the Titan Twenty in close combat, one who almost definitively specialized in Might. I'd gotten cocky after beating Carl and fucked up, but I couldn't let Callie lose this. As I tried to step forward and almost fell again, I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Enough, kid."

I looked up to see Abel standing next to me. Serenity's golden shield was nowhere to be seen, though the woman herself was lying in the sand near where they'd been fighting. "I have to help."

"No." He said firmly. "You had your fight. I'll mop up the rest of this. She was only supposed to slow him down anyway. It was my fault this took so long. The two of you are pretty good, but handling someone like him is still a little ways off. Sit your ass down and let me handle it. Might as well take advantage while you can."

Of course, right at that minute, the spider legs finally gave out, the attack collapsing and my body going with it, falling back into the sand. "Ok." I said calmly, ignoring my spinning head. "You go ahead and take care of that. I'm just going to rest here for a second."

He laughed at that, grinning down at me. "Good work on taking out Carl, kid. For future reference, you are NOT a frontline combatant, even if you're physically inclined. Next time pick your moment better if you need to take on someone like that in close quarters."

I already knew that, so I just gave a grunt as he vanished, appearing behind the distracted form of Beat. He didn't bother with manifestations, he just got in close and started throwing hands. Callie let the construct drop, sagging herself as she did, but her soul had clearly grown since the last time, because she didn't pass out, just seeming exhausted.

Beat...he lost. Bad. I'd forgotten after seeing Abel fight how brutal he could be, and I guess he was annoyed at the force user for hurting me so bad too, because he fucking DISMANTLED the guy. Every blow Beat threw was turned aside or minimally dodged, and every blow he took was somewhere vulnerable and painful.

Short ribs, kidney, every punch was brutal and aimed at the worst possible spot. I had to give Beat credit, he lasted much longer than the F-ranker had, though admittedly Abel was much less driven this time. Still, he actually landed a few punches in return, though my mentor mostly diverted them with his ability.

Finally, the younger brawler couldn't take it anymore and missed Abel slipping around with spatial lubrication to nail him in the kidney. He gasped in shock, and my teacher wrapped an arm around his neck in the same sleeper hold I'd used on Carl and choked him out, waiting until he wasn't moving and dropping him in the sand.

He turned to where Mel was still fighting and cleared his throat. Sever, who was burned in several places, looked up to see the rest of his team totaled and sighed, before dropping his knife and folding his hands behind his head, getting down on his knees.

And just like that...it was over. The fight had ended, and now we were officially past the team matches. From here on out, it wasn't us vs .them, it was ME vs. them. I had a few more upgrades to make to my abilities before my first round, and after. My major plan was to make sure I got to Intermediate in DS Mastery before I hit anyone scary, because I had a few incredible skills coming next rank.

Callie staggered over, dropping into the sand next to me, too tired to leave but not too tired to get over to me to make sure I was ok. I smiled at her and pulled her close, dropping a heal burst on both of us to combat the side effects of a hard battle. Then I leaned back and sighed in relief. We were one step closer. That alone was worth celebrating.

 

"So." I said as I slumped back onto the couch. "How long exactly until the next round starts? I know there's going to be a few days between rounds nine and ten, but I didn't bother asking how long until nine actually starts." I was sitting with the others, Jessie, Benny, Abel, Mel, and Callie. We'd decided to have one last team meeting before this whole thing became a mess of conflict.

Callie, who was leaning against me on the couch, gave a groan of despair. "Three days. They only gave us three days off. I'm so tired, and my head is killing me. My damn eyelashes hurt."
I chuckled and pulled her against me. "Well that's what happens when you go ape shit on your opponent without caring what it takes."

She glared at me. "I did that because he hit you so hard I was afraid he killed you for a second. The bond sort of...fizzed out. I couldn't sense anything but pain and fear and I was terrified."

"I..." I stared at her. "I didn't know. I swear. It's a low level bond I guess the feedback from the attack was too much for the empathy portion of it. Or maybe I was in shock and you felt that. Either way I'm sorry. I didn't know how scared you were."

Abel groaned. "Can you please save your soulful staring into each others eyes for later when we AREN'T having a meeting? Because if this is just going to be you mooning over each other like usual I don't think we need to really have this one. So what exactly are we doing here?"

Callie groaned again and sat up. "We're here." She said. "To discuss what happens if we end up fighting each other, and exactly how soon that might be coming. They won't be pitting people against their own teams first round, but after that we could easily run into one of our own at any time after."

"She's right." I said grimly. "Granted, early game it probably won't happen. There are one hundred and sixty fighters left on the final bracket, five rounds will bring us to the top five, and they'll be handling it as a separate issue from the current lineups, a big main tournament competition in front of the whole city. Until then our odds for running into each other are slim to start with, but with each round it becomes more and more likely."

"I hope you two aren't expecting me to take it easy on you." Abel said with a smirk. "Because it would be a disservice to my training not to come at you as hard as I can. If we win you get the slots to distribute like we said, as long as the two of us can come along, but which of us actually gets the win depends on who is stronger."

Callie grinned at him. "Which is what I wanted to confirm. We're a team, and we're friends, but from this point on, we're all competitors. Don't share your new abilities, don't share your plans, don't tell us about your tricks." She looked at Benny and Jessie. "And that means no help from you two for any of us. If we're keeping this confined to the tournament we need to do it fair and square. No outside assistance."

Abel's smile couldn't have been prouder. "Well, well, well. Looks like the kids are finally growing up. Agreed. This is going to be one on one. Anything else?"

Shaking her head, Callie called the meeting to a close, and we all headed off on our own. As I walked, I considered what she'd just done. Some might think that little meeting was pointless, but I knew that doing it that way was not only intentional, it was important.

This tournament wasn't just sparring, this would be our first time up against our friends in a battle with stakes, and because of that all of us had our own ideas about how it would go. By setting the standard now she was confirming that none of us were going to hold it against the others if they won, and set a standard of combat so no one felt like they had been taken advantage of.

That said, now that that was all taken care of, we were well and truly on our own. As a fighter who was used to working with people, and one with a support based ability, I was at a disadvantage here, which meant I needed to take the next step on creating my cohesive combat style.

I stepped into the training room, and considered my options.First up was the skills I'd get on my next rank in DS Mastery, which admittedly wouldn't be before next rank. I'd have three new abilities, one in each of my subclasses, and they were all pretty impressive.

Danger sense was an extremely useful divination ability that did exactly what it said on the tin. For my rogue ability I was getting a finishing move, which I only got every other rank, and this one was called Marked for Death, and gave me a single undodgeable hit that landed with twice the damage. Finally my monk ability was called Mountain Stance, and tripled my defense as long as I was standing still on solid ground.

For now though, I needed something to get me through the NEXT fight until my rank up. With Moonlit Night, I had my concealment and some of my combat taken care of, but within that fog, I still had plenty of things to improve on. So with attack and concealment handled, my next big move was going to be mobility.

My main mobility skill was Leaf on the Wind, and since I'd had so much success with my last attempt to merge in an outside Skill, I decided to do it again. I closed my eyes and crossed my legs, breathing in deeply as I triggered Leaf on the Wind. I felt my body...lighten. like I was soaring through the air despite being landbound. Focusing on that sensation I tried to envision moving with Leaf on the Wind. The unbound motion, the speed.

I held that image in my head, and as I did, I began to resonate my Minor Gymnastics Skill. It was weak, but it was also something I associated with motion, something that would let me move about as I wished. I felt the two skills begin to blur as my head started to ache. Strain, just like last time, though not as bad since I had the practice now, began to pound through my brain.

Pushing through, I ignored the pain focusing on recreating what I did with Moonlit Night, and suddenly, I felt the skills give, and then there was that same click and the skill just...changed. Checking my Skill list to make sure, I confirmed that yes, the Gymnastics Skill was officially gone.

Focusing on my DS Mastery, I searched for the subskills and found the one I was looking for. State of Grace. I grinned widely as I felt what it did, and understood I'd gotten exactly what I needed from this one. State of Grace free me from the bonds of gravity, but it also freed me from my natural limitations. It enhanced my speed to double what it was during the five minutes I spend under the skill, allowing me both weightlessness and enhanced movement speed during that time.

It was perfect. With this I would be able to move around inside the mist perfectly and deliver incredibly fast, incredibly powerful strikes. It also meant I only had three more upgrades until I reached Intermediate, and no one else had a clue. I hadn't been keeping anyone up to date on my alterations to this Skill since it had so many parts, and not one of them would see this coming.

I sighed and slumped to the ground, exhausted and in pain. Again. I maybe should have waited until I recovered from the fight to do this, but I'd gotten so fired up by Callie's proclamation. I wanted to win through the tournament and get to the point where I'd be fighting all of them. I wanted to make myself strong enough to beat them all. To beat Abel.

For the first time since I'd started this I felt like I might actually manage to go all the way. I not only had my new powerful subskills, I had stored attacks and the power to use them alongside my skills. If I could create a synergistic system of powers, I could win this. Or at the very least show everyone that I had what it took to get close.

I hadn't realized how much the assumption that Abel would crush me had colored my perception of this whole tournament, because knowing I might possibly be able to win this made my already decent amount of anticipation explode into a bonfire of excitement and restlessness.

Reaching down for my scan ring, I spun it up and called my cousin. Since we couldn't have outside help, I wanted to check and make sure that she and her team actually got in before this all started. After all, they were supplying part of our forces here, since if they won we'd get to go too.

Natalie picked up with a smile, her face appearing with no hood or mask in the floating screen above my ring. "Shane! Judging by the slight smile I'm guessing you made it, and judging by the wince I'm guessing you already started training for the big show."

I laughed. "Good guesses. I was calling to let you know my team made the cut, and to let you know that we decided on a non interference pact, so I won't be able to be in contact much. Aside from being shady I'm going to need all the time I can get to train if I'm going to make it very far on my own."

"I feel that." She said, blowing out a heavy breath. "I have tricks of my own, but I'm not very confident in myself for this. My teammates however, are definitely going to be strong contenders. You better watch out if you fight any of my people. They don't play around."

I laughed at that, and we spent the next few hours just chatting, relaxing and discussing family business and our histories, and just generally getting to know each other better. Aside from time spent with Callie, it was hands down the most fulfilling time I'd spent in a while. Actually bonding with my family, getting to know one of the few people who could understand me.

All good things must end though, I had to say goodbye, and since the call had been to inform her I wouldn't be in contact, I might not speak to her again anytime soon. My best shot would be during the Moonsong Glade trip if we made it, and I made a note to get to know her better when that happened, and maybe to let Callie get to know her too if there was time. It couldn't hurt.

My head, thankfully, had already stopped pounding because of the down time. I climbed to my feet and headed over to the track on one side of the training room, getting ready to get back to work on this. Moonlit Night might be conspicuous to train, but State of Grace would just look like Leaf on the Wind to an outsider, and I needed to be as prepared as possible.

Using my new skill, I felt my body free itself from the bindings that kept slow and chained to the earth, and I grinned as I blurred forward, beginning a mad dash around the track, bouncing off every possible nearby surface as I tried to acclimate myself to high speed three dimensional movement. This was going to be so much fun.

 

Three days wasn't nearly as long as it sounded. Each of the days was its own project, and exhausting in its own right. The first day I finished granting Rime's wishes, and got Jessie her last twenty five Vitality worth of elixirs. She also got another eight Might, bringing her Might to ninety five, her Vitality to three twenty eight, and her total points to five hundred and eleven.

The same day I also managed to upgrade my Cloud Step to Ripple Running by synergizing it with my Minor Swimming Mastery Skill. One step became ten, and combined with State of Grace, I became a much more mobile and dangerous combatant.

Day two saw me going back to working with Benny. He traded me five triple strength density shifted attacks for twenty points of Focus, bringing himself up to two hundred and three. I also managed to upgrade Kidney Blow to Heavy Hands, my first passive subskill. By using my Minor Boxing Mastery as a sacrifice to add armor penetration to every single one of my blows (albeit not very much of it).

On the third day Benny paid five triple strength tranq blows for twenty points of Might, bringing it up to two hundred and nine and his total up to five hundred forty three. My final skill was created by merging Boiling Cloud (a skill I barely ever even used) with Minor Archery Mastery (another Skill I almost never touched) to create Steam Arrow. Which would give me a usable ranged attack among my options, something I was sorely lacking up to this point, leaving me only my divination skills and Sucking Mud to go before I could rank up the skill to intermediate.

Training with these new abilities took up the rest of my time over my three days off, and by the time the morning of the ninth match came along, I'd officially gotten as far as possible, even scheduling in some downtime the night before to allow myself to enter the match at my absolute best.

Jessie drove me to the arena again, though it was strange going without Callie. Rime tagged along, as she would when Callie had her own match (we were in different rounds). As I entered the waiting room under the new arena, I couldn't help but stop and take stock of what was happening.

It felt...weird, being here alone. Knowing I had an opponent coming up who I would have to deal with all on my own, and that said opponent would be a member of a team that made it just as far as we did. When they called me out onto the sand, I stepped out of the tunnel and groaned aloud at the person I found there.

Of course my first round would be someone I knew, who was strong as hell. Wren grinned wryly at me, offering me a cheerful wave as his giant bone spear sat over one shoulder. "Morning Solomon. Lovely day we're having, don't you think?" My friend's amber eyes were twinkling with amusement, but they were also twinkling with something else. Eagerness.

I felt my pulse pick up. I'd wanted this rematch as bad as he did, and I'd put in a lot of work in my training. I'd beaten him last time, but that was with Callie, and I hadn't forced him to use his ability. "Seems like it." I replied cheerfully. "You must be pretty confident. You know what I can do."

He waggled his free hand. "Yes and no. Logically I know you're much less of a threat without your partner, but you have a habit of doing the impossible. I'm not stupid enough to go into this underestimating you." He started to spin his spear slowly, passing it back and forth hand over hand, letting the metal coated tooth atop it drag in the sand. As he did, I could see water start to gather from the air around him, coating his palms and flowing down the bone haft of the spear.

"Fair enough." I said casually. "I won't hold back either." The water thing wasn't ideal. It meant even if I was willing to expose my Moonlit Night skill the option was off the table. That said, I'd made plenty of other preparations. I triggered Ripple Running and State of Grace, then knelt down to coat my arms in toxic magma. I half expected him to come at me while I prepared, but he didn't, he just kept spinning up his spear.

As he passed it back and forth, the water accumulated along the spear, turning it from a wet stick to a pillar of liquid. I could sense some extreme power from that thing, and I was kind of looking forward to seeing what it could do. Knowing any more talking would be pointless, I used Double Trouble, appearing behind Wren and triggering Flurry of Blows, increasing the rate of my already massively enhanced movement speed as I unleashed a flurry of sharp punches at his back.

The spear, which was still being passed slowly, sped up, the water shifting around it, and suddenly I was faced with a fucking shark made of water bearing down on me, it's gaping jaws surrounding the head of the spear as it chopped down on my arm. I used a triple strength density shift on my left arm without thinking, massively enhancing the density and power of the magma.

There was a loud clang and I bounced backwards, skipping off the air like a rock across a pond, using the mobility of State of Grace to enhance the speed and distance I was able to travel with Ripple Running so I could withdraw nearly instantly.

I sucked my teeth, shaking out my left arm, which hadn't been cut, but had been smashed pretty heavily by the damn spear. My armor was probably the only thing that had saved me from being disarmed in a much more literal sense than when I lost my cane.

"Impressive. You're faster than I remember." Said Wren as he went back to spinning. The longer that went on the more water was condensed. I was pretty sure that shark would get bigger and nastier as it did. Which meant I needed to break that buildup. The burden of initiative was on me, not on him. Joy.

I shrugged, trying not to let him see me sweat. "I'll be honest, I thought I'd have to earn that ability. I'm honored I impressed you enough to pull out all the stops."

His smile was predatory. "Did you think you were the only one who went to see a friend's match? I've seen what you can do Shane. I came here to win, and I'm not holding back. Seems like you're not either. I'm curious though. Exactly how many tricks do you have up your sleeves? Are they enough to make up for not having your partner? Your teammates? You're a scary guy, but I'm not exactly a pushover myself."

Reaching into myself, I unleashed a series of techniques. Double Trouble, a shadow clone, and a stored Stealth attack from Callie. I stepped back and vanished as a doppleganger took my place and a dark copy appeared behind Wren. As I did, I bounced off the air with Ripple running and circled around to the side as Wren seemed to detect the clone. I wasn't sure how he was doing that, but it was something I'd counted on.

I triggered Double Trouble again on myself, and I saw Wren's shoulder stiffen as the shark spear tore apart the clone, dispersing it into darkness as I appeared behind him. Before he could attack me directly, I triggered my new Steam Arrow skill, spitting a boiling steaming jet of water right at his face. His eyes widened and he stumbled back, bringing up his spear defensively to deflect the attack.

With all the water concentrated in one place, I triggered Afterburner to massively increase my power. Then Mercy Kill, then a gravity attack to slow him down before finally releasing a fire attack combined with a Balam empowered punch right at the water around the spear.

A massive roaring cloud of toxic fire enveloped my punch and when it hit the water steam exploded out, but I kept up the attacks, using up both of the other fire attacks the same way to take advantage of Afterburner. Seven attacks left, I grabbed the spear in both hands and channeled a gravity attack directly into it, combined with e density shift as I jerked it out of his grip and sent to spinning away.

Continuing that whirling motion I lashed out with a series of punches all six of them imbued with triple strength tranq attacks. Wren grimaced, arms coming up to tank the punches, and winced as my magma coated arms imbued with tranquilizing poison, smashed into his forearms as he did his best to tank the attacks.

Which he did, unfortunately. Even with all the tricks his Might was much higher than mine, and I was forced to rely on Ripple Running again to disengage, two more steps ending the skill and forcing me to recast it. I was about twenty feet from him now, and I was panting as Afterburner faded, sapping my strength. My head was pounding from the massive repeated skill and attack usage, but I wasn't the only one who was unsteady.

Wren was wearing a hauberk from what I could see but he hadn't been protecting his arms, probably to prevent anything from slowing down his spear. His arms were coated in poisonous cracks as the toxic fire burned away at him imbuing the tranquilizer into his system even faster. He was barely standing, eyes starting to flutter, but I saw him haul back and slap himself hard across the face, which seemed to temporarily stave off the effects.

We were both weakened by that last flurry of attacks, and as he spat his blood on the sand he gave me a wide grin. "That...was sneaky. A double decoy. And you'll have to tell me how the hell you disarmed me after this is over." He shot a glance at his spear, but I'd tossed it across the arena pretty hard. He wouldn't be able to reach it before I could reach him. The water had been boiled away, and though I saw him try to condense some more, the droplets wouldn't stick for some reason. Maybe the lack of concentration.

I didn't respond, waiting for any sign of weakness. His eyes fluttered again, and when they were closed for a second I triggered Double Trouble, then blitzed him with another barrage of punches from behind. He spun, somehow detecting me again, and put his arms up, but I dipped back, allowing the punches to peter out as I put a bit of distance between us, and kicked a cloud of sand right up into his face.

Unlike the Steam Arrow, there was no way to clock a cloud of sand. He panicked and inhaled, sending himself into a coughing fit, and as he dissolved into hacks and wheezes I dove forward and ducked under his flailing arms, smashing a right cross into his jaw and sending him stumbling back before I followed it up with a stomping kick to the face, finally laying him out flat on his back as the damage combined with the tranqs to knock him out cold.

I doubled over, panting, head blazing with pain, but I grinned down at my friend as I let the skills fade. Leaning down, I put a hand on him and triggered a heal burst before turning to stagger out of the arena. No way I would be able to carry him in my condition. Besides. I wanted to look cool after my first victory. I couldn't be more pleased with how it went down. I couldn't wait to see who I'd be fighting next.

 

"So." Said Callie with a grin as I walked into the house. "You made it through huh?" Despite her light tone, I could feel through the bond that she was happy for me. "Who did you end up against?" We'd agreed not to come watch each other's matches because it would tip our hands if we revealed any new tricks.

I slumped down on the couch, peeling off my mask and dropping my head her lap, barely giving her time to move the book she'd been reading. She rolled her eyes at that, but smiled, reaching down to run her fingers through my hair. She was wearing sweat pants and a tank top, and her face looked almost surreal without the mask. I smirked at her. "Wren."

She whistled at that. "Well damn, no wonder you look so tired. I can't believe you won. If I hadn't felt your excitement through the bond I'd never have believed it. That's pretty impressive. I remember how hard to beat he was when we fought him together." She paused. "What was his ability anyway? Since he's out it won't effect the tournament if you let me know, and that was driving me nuts."

I snickered a bit at what a nerd she could be. "Water manipulation of some kind. Turned into a giant shark. I handled it. He was no pushover though. When is your first solo match?"

She sighed in annoyance. "I'm up on day three. I'm going stir crazy sitting here alone." She held up her book. "This is the owners manual for our car."

I gave her a flat look. "You realize you aren't allowed to drive no matter how well you know how the car works, right? The tournament is enough life threatening danger, thanks."

"You don't drive either." She said with a pout. "You don't need to act like I'm some kind of monster."

Deciding it was best to change the subject, I made a noncommittal noise and then said. "Oh, by the way. Granting wishes for attacks doesn't count as outside interference does it? It IS my ability."

I was pretty sure it didn't, but I had wishes to grant today anyway so asking would be a good distraction. Sure enough she waved the question off easily. "Of course not. The point of this is not to make people feel like they're being cheated no matter who wins. You're behind us all in raw stats and that's how you keep up."

Sighing in relief, I sat up with a groan. "Fair enough. Then I should get that out of the way. You should go have a day out with Jessie or something. You can't just sit around and worry for two days."

She gave me a soft smile. "Pot and kettle. But as long as we don't work on training that wouldn't be a big deal. In fact, it's such a good idea that as team leader I order you to spend the day with Benny tomorrow after you get your wishes done. Assuming he's free."

"Free?" I said with a snort. "If he was anymore prone to brooding alone we'd need to build him a bell tower. I wouldn't describe him as free of anything except the compulsion to bathe regularly."

"That rings a bit hollow from the guy who feels the need to shower three times a day." She said with an eye roll. "How your hair isn't basically straw at this point I'll never know. If you weren't an Ascendant your skin would be parchment by now. Regardless, his brooding is kind of the point I was trying to make. He needs to get out. I get you want to give him space to figure out things with Celine, but at this point he's just spiraling."

I let out a long sigh. "I know, Cal. Trust me. But I also know Benny. He needs time in his own head. If I don't let him sort through this himself he'd going to second guess the decision fifty times after he makes it and neither of them deserve that. He doesn't let much get to him, but when things do he needs to wallow in them." At her arched brow I held up both hands as I sat up. "Fine. Tomorrow. But only for an hour or two. Nothing that'll take away from his thinking time for too long."

"Fine." She said with a sigh. "You know him best. Not like Jessie hasn't been trying and failing anyway, so I might as well listen to the expert. I just feel...responsible. I'm the leader, I'm supposed to vet our allies. Celine completely fooled me and Benny had to pay for it."

Leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead, I leaned mine against it right after. "Contrary to your own warped worldview, being leader doesn't make you responsible for everything. Benny decided to pursue her, and she was the one who went through with it. I hope they work things out, but even if they don't, it's no ones responsibility but theirs and Celine's sister's. Feel free to tell her off when we meet her. I'll get in her way if she tries to murder you."

Standing up, I let go of her hands, which I'd been holding. "Sadly, if tomorrow is a day off, today is a training day as usual, which means I'd better go get started." Not to mention I need a re-up on some of Benny's attacks badly. At least it meant he could keep his money for the moment.

"Whatever." She said in a faux-condescending tone. "Some of us have important and interesting work to do. Off with you. You're distracting me while I'm trying to learn." I chuckled at that and rolled my eyes, heading out like she said and leaving her to her weird reading choice. We still wouldn't be letting her drive. The only one of us anyone trusted behind the wheel was Jessie.

With that done though, I decided to head off in search of my best friend. It wasn't a long search, Benny spent most of his time outside staring dramatically off into the middle distance these days. I didn't mess with him about it. I was pretty sure if I found out Callie had been lying to me our whole relationship I'd be equally miserable.

"So." I said dropping down next to him. "You ready for your wishes today? Because I'm pretty much tapped on density shift attacks again. Wren is a bitch and a half to fight. Not that it stopped me."

He chuckled at that. "You won? Nice. Only four more rounds to go, huh? You realize every round you fight after this is one round closer to having to fight one of our own?" I grimaced. He was right, and I was pretty damn sure it would happen sooner than later. Fantasy tended to push us toward dramatic and unusual situations, and that wasn't just me. The person who drew the names would have a high Fantasy too.

Seeing I wasn't enjoying the conversation, Benny smiled and changed the subject, making his wishes for the day without much fuss. Four density shifted attacks and a tranq blow, bringing me up to ten of the first and four of the latter. Benny's Focus jumped to two hundred twenty three, and his overall stats hit five hundred sixty three, after which I made plans with him for the next day and left him to his brooding, heading downstairs for the training room.

With only Sucking Mud and my divination abilities still needing to be upgraded, I technically had four to go.

Earthseeking, an old skill I almost never used that let me find things like mines and ore. Pulse of life, which let me find rare plants, and which I also never used, and Seek Hidden, which I used all the time and would need to make sure remained useful, if not making sure to give it a flat upgrade.

It would have been useful if I could synergize Sucking Mud with Earthseeking, but sadly it wasn't in the cards. They were both subskills of DS Mastery, and you couldn't synergize a skill with itself. I could use two charges to use multiple abilities, and even use them in conjunction, but that wasn't the same thing.

Though that made me wonder if to finally upgrade the DS Mastery Skill I might need to synergize it with Enchanting once I finally finished upgrading all the components. It was something to think about at least. That might be what I needed to push it to a completely new level, and since DS Mastery was my most powerful offensive ability and I barely used Enchanting anymore, I could think of worse options.

For now though, I decided to focus on synergizing another skill. My head wasn't exactly up to anything crazy. I'd rested but this fight had taken a lot out of me in terms of soul strength, so there was no reason to push things past where they needed to go. I'd do a small Skill, and I had just the one in mind.

Focusing on Pulse of Life, I felt barely any strain, it was a first level divination skill and not one I almost ever used, so it wasn't much strain on my soul. Neither was the other Skill I decided to synergize with it, Minor Herbalism Mastery. The combination was so obvious that I couldn't see a reason NOT to use it, and even clicking them together took almost no effort relative to my last to synergies. Both skills were designed to do similar things, so I barely had to push them.

The resulting skill was...stupidly useful. Rhythm of the Wild was a new ability that let me not only FIND rare plants, but identify them through the interface as long as they were my rank or lower. The utility of a skill like that somewhere like the Moonsong Glade was staggering, and it made me seriously think about how skill synergy worked. While I could make amazing and unusual abilities when synergizing off the wall combos, I could make powerful and useful ones when the two skills in question were of a similar nature.

Power vs. utility was an interesting conundrum, though utility still mostly won out considering my stockpiled attacks and how the meta abilities of DS Mastery affected them. Sadly, based on how much thought I had to put into this one, I was running out of easy synergies, and I needed to come up with a basic idea for a skill before making it. I probably wouldn't hit Intermediate before the tenth round, though I might before the eleventh, depending on if I even made it there.

Slumping back on the ground, I realized that with plans made, a new skill done, and wishes finished, not to mention the fight over, I was officially free for the day. No more responsibilities that needed to be taken care of. Just me and some much needed downtime. I could work with that.

I let my eyes drift closed as I pushed worry about my next match out of my mind. My fight with Wren had been an immense amount of fun, and I was sure the next one would be just as great. Whoever it might be against. We were so close to the end. I wasn't sure how they were going to handle the last five people standing (Benny insisted it would be a free for all but that just seemed like a mess to me) but however it was, I'd be ready.

As I felt sleep consume me, my last thoughts for the day weren't about combat though, or Benny, or even Callie. They were about me, and how happy I was with how far I'd come. I was standing on my own two feet now, and proving to myself I could do that. I had to admit, that felt damn good.

 

I slept for like nine hours. It was amazing. I didn't even tweak my back sleeping on the training room floor because of my high Vitality. The luxury of just slumping down and sawing logs like a layabout was just...perfect. It felt so good to have some downtime that I decided not to work on my wishes or training until later in the day today, so I could ride the relaxation wave through the morning.

Hopping to my feet, I set off for the kitchen, shooting Benny a text to tell him we'd be doing breakfast here before we went out for the day, and starting the process of making eggs benedict. I was feeling fancy this morning, and I was going to show off a bit.

Callie, of course, basically floated into the kitchen on cartoon smell illustrations, and when she saw what I was making she squealed and tackled me. "You're making breakfast! You've been so busy lately its been cereal and premade meals. Real eggs benedict. I think I'm in love."

"With me or the eggs?" I said with mock concern. "Because the former has been established, and the latter might give me a complex. I refuse to share your affections with breakfast food."

She gave an exaggerated wince. "Oooh, sorry. Breakfast had me first. You're pretty decent, but if I have to choose I'm afraid breakfast and I have too much history to ignore." She winked at me. "Besides, are you telling me I don't have to compete with long hot showers for your affections?"

I shot her a grin. "I'm happy to share any time." I looked around for Cass before I said it, because I absolutely didn't want another 'why Callie and Shane do things you can't know about' discussion.

Sadly, it wasn't to be. She just patted my cheek fondly, resting her head against my back and putting her arms around me. "Sorry love, you shower for way too long. It would ruin my hair. Even Vitality can only prevent so much dehydration. Maybe if you can cut down your shower time a bit." At my appalled look she just giggled. "I thought so. Anyway, what's the big plan for today? You're having a guys day out with Benny right? Because Jessie and I are hitting a flower nursery and a swap meet."

"One thing for each of you huh?" I said wryly. "Does she know the very concept of loot turns you into a drooling lunatic? Because if I were her I'd keep you on a leash." She wasn't able to give her undoubtedly suggestive response though, because she was cut off by Cass barreling into the room excitedly.

"Shane is cooking!" She cheered. "I love your food! I'm so sick of eating cereal all the time. What are we having?" The little girl was practically bouncing in place as she grilled me on what I was making, but she too was interrupted as her brother strolled in behind her and pushed her lightly toward the table.

He gave her a stern look. "Cassidy, let Shane cook. I'm sure you'll like whatever it is we're having. It's not nice to bother him while he's in the middle of cooking."

"But Callie is doing it!" She whined loudly. "She's giving him a hug and he doesn't even care. My questions are probably way less distracting than that." I snickered slightly at the comment as Callie groaned softly and let me go, turning to walk over and plop down in a seat next to Cass.

She gave the younger girl a warm smile. "I was just saying good morning. We should let him cook for now. He's making eggs benedict, and that's really good, I think you're gonna love it. So, I didn't see you yesterday? Do anything fun with Tony and your Uncle Zeke?"

The girl gave a put upon sigh, informing her that Zeke had been busy and that Cark wasn't nearly as fun, and then giving a thorough if slightly disjointed account of her entire day, skipping around to different parts when they were more entertaining. By the time Benny made it to the kitchen, she was telling us about the new episode of her favorite cartoon for the third time, this time from the point of view of a side character with a cute dog that she really liked.

My best friend wandered in but didn't interrupt, yawning and dropping into a chair before resting his head on the table and starting to snore. Sadly for him, I finished cooking about then, and so I woke him up by slamming a plate down in front of him, startling him so much he fell out of his chair with a shout of alarm, sending Cass and Callie both into a fit of giggles, though my girlfriend had the decency to try to hide it at least.

"So." I said as he picked himself up, glaring at me. "Thought we could hit a couple local markets to look for some stuff for your Inventing. You haven't made anything new in a while, and I know you still have some cash from working that job to pay me." Since he'd been paying off wishes with attacks when I needed them, he had a small stockpile of cash, which would work well for buying Inventing materials.

He took a bite of the benedict, mollified by the delicious taste, and nodded thoughtfully before swallowing. "Yeah, I could probably use some new gear. Some of my merged artifacts are losing their punch. Some of them are great and plenty useful still, but stuff like the gut rope are pretty far past their best buy date. Plus with my Inventing at Intermediate I have a bit more influence on what I get, and I can work with much better materials. Where are we going to look around?"
I shrugged. "Not sure, but I asked around and heard about a few places. Maybe junk island would be fun. It sounds like an interesting place."

We chatted a bit longer, but Cass finished eating and got bored, wandering away with Cark trailing after her, lecturing her about not saying thank you as she ignored him as usual. Jessie had shown up and grabbed a plate, presumably after a bad night, because her face looked haggard and her eyes ringed with dark circles. She ate quickly and then went to go get ready.

Callie finished last, having taken her time to enjoy the meal, as well as having seconds, but as she finished she rinsed her plate and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "Have fun on your day off. Try to relax a bit. I know I can't convince you not to train later, and I wouldn't if I could, but rest is an important part of improvement, even Abel admits that."

I grinned at her. "I know. I promise we'll waste tons of time and do many things that are pointless and unnecessary today."
"Well." She said wryly. "As long as you're sure." She looked at Benny. "Look out for him for me? You know how he tends to get into trouble. I swear he can't leave the house without getting wrapped up in some kind of dark conspiracy. " She giggled at my affronted look and bolted from the room before I could protest, leaving me to sulk as I finished my own food.

Benny looked...sad. I cursed at myself, because us being affectionate probably made his own situation harder. Not that it was something I did on purpose. It just...kind of happened. Shoveling my food in I stood up abruptly, announcing while still chewing. "Alright. Time for us to go. We need to get to the bus stop since Jessie is going with Callie."

My best friend half grimaced half laughed at me talking with a full mouth, and started teasing me as we took off. We walked to the bus like we had as kids, talking about anything but his relationship or cultivation, which admittedly didn't leave many options in our current lives.

When we arrived at junk island, I had to admit the place was interesting. It was an entire closed off island on a lake, full of hundreds of run down shacks and buildings piled with random junk.

There were weapons, tires, machines, appliances, furniture, and dozens of other things. Some of it was old and looked valuable, some was just trash. Some of it was heavy in the way that let me know it had Impact, even though visually it looked se destroyed as to be completely worthless.

Benny dove into the shopping with gusto, picking up items and exclaiming excitedly what they were, or trying to puzzle it out based on context. His Inventing Mastery was a wish granted Skill, so he had an absurd foundation, but that only went up to Beginner, because you had to tweak skills in Intermediate to your own use to progress them, so wishing for Intermediate Skills did more harm than good.

"So." I said as we sifted through random junk. "Any ideas on what you're hoping for? I know you can only really do so much to predict what the outcome will be, but you have to have something in mind right? For what would help you most?" Inventing was annoying to deal with, but even if he couldn't control much about what he made, he could predict what certain things would do based on the attributes of the material I was pretty sure.

He shrugged. "If I could pick, I'd probably go with some kind of mobility artifact. I'm thinking I'll try using this." He held up what looked like a corroded dark yellow metal wrench. "I'm almost positive this is a gravity artifact of some kind. It's so busted and rotted through it probably won't ever function again, but the best thing about Inventing is almost anything can be used in production."

I reached out and took it, noting that it was heavier than expected. "So what? Just melt it down and throw it in with some other stuff?I'm not sure if I love the randomness of Inventing or hate it."

"Tell me about it." Chuckled my friend. "But there's something...amazing about it. Mad Science is just pure chaos. Sure, you can make something useless or even dangerous, but really, that's the fun. You're offering your fate up to the universe, putting yourself at the mercy of the whims of random chance. Isn't that what being an Ascendant is about? Seeing where the future takes you? Getting swept along by the current?"

I nodded contemplatively. "That's a decent point. I can see the appeal, and I know you can make some pretty crazy stuff. Stuff that enchanting wouldn't be able to make at anywhere near the same level. The randomness is balanced out by power. Risk and reward. I guess that is kind of a microcosm of what it means to be a cultivator."

He pocketed the wrench, paying the stall owner a few chits, and then we moved on. We spent hours there, combing through garbage to find a few worthwhile items. Benny spent a surprisingly small amount of money, given how hard some of the stuff was to find the people selling it didn't always know what it was worth. They were here to bulk sell random trash, if some people got lucky that was on them.

Once we finished shopping we went out for dinner, eating somewhere relaxing and then heading home to begin training and working for the day. The bus ride back was just pleasant. We'd relaxed and calmed down, let ourselves recharge, and not it was time to get back to the grind. With the downtime behind us it was almost exciting to get back to training, and I couldn't wait to see what my next skill would be.

Once we got back Benny did his wishes, five tranq blows for twenty points of might, bringing him up to two hundred twenty nine Might and five hundred eighty three total stats. With that out of the way we each set off to do our own thing. I was happy for Benny especially. Seeing him so excited about Inventing instead of worrying about Celine was a nice change. Plus it would be cool to see what he came up with.

 

The next two days passed without much incident barring a missing dessert I'd picked up for myself. I kept up training, but between my daily improvements I made a point to relax and spend some time with my friends. Jessie and Benny weren't in the tournament and had been left mainly to their own devices, but seeing how dangerous things were and how much work we were doing had them worried.

Benny I mostly tried to distract. Callie might have had a point about letting him stew. I'd wanted to leave him to think things through, based on personal experience, but the reason that usually wasn't necessary was that we were usually inseparable. I'd neglected to note that this time was different because I wasn't around, and our time hanging out had seemed to help a lot, so I decided to spend more of my time being around my friend, to give him a bit of relief from the constant soul searching.

In between that though, we did his wishes. Twenty Might, twenty Focus. He paid mainly in chits, bringing my personal stockpile to one hundred thirty six chits, as well as topping up my tranq blows to ten. I'd considered stockpiling some extra attacks, but honestly with the tournament ending soon I really needed to save for my weapon. Hell, even not being able to use it I would have still probably bought it if I hadn't been waiting for the new skills I was developing.

For now though, it was the last night before the second round, and I hadn't been able to come up with a proper Skill yesterday, being stuck on Earthseeking. I'd tossed it around for a while, trying to come up with a proper mix, but in the end had ended up wasting two days on it. Today, I had decided to try something else, and was planning to officially switch to a different skill. Specifically, today I was going to be trying to tweak Seek Hidden.

Seek Hidden occupied a strange place in my arsenal, being both extremely useful and extremely useless. When it made a difference it made a big one, but because of the nature of the skill I didn't find much use for it as it was meant to be wielded. Seek Hidden was meant to be used on large objects over great distances. It could be used on smaller ones closer up, but that wasn't its real purpose.

Not to mention it only picked up one thing at a time, which was a huge downside to a skill like that. What I needed was the ability to look at everything around me and see the hidden and concealed. I also used it for investigation, so I needed to be able to pick up small clues with this ability.

It took me quite a while to puzzle out exactly what Skill I needed to mix it with to get what I needed, but after spending some time on it, I made the connection that was obvious if you were paying attention. Poker.

So I went through the process of combining my Minor Poker Mastery with Seek Hidden, to create the skill that I needed. Unlike the last couple times, where I kind of guided them to the point they were close to what I wanted and then smashed them together and let them do as they would, this time I decided to try to guide the formation of the new skill more carefully.

In the spirit of that, I decided to define the skill as I wanted it to be. A new skill to let me see what was hidden, to find what was lost, to discover the traces of that which would conceal. I resonated the two skills, doing my best to use the aspects of both that I wanted to see.

Despite being prepared, I almost passed out. Micromanaging skill synergies was apparently EXTREMELY soul intensive. I felt like I was trying to lift an engine block with the power of my mind, focusing so hard I was worried I'd blow blood vessel or something. It hurt. A lot. More than any other skill merge, but I pushed on. This was exactly what I wanted, exactly what I was hoping for.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, I felt the click that I'd been waiting for and the burden vanished. I slumped over backwards, shaking and sweating, as I tried to get my heart to calm down. I breathed heavily for a few minutes until I finally had the strength to check my Skills.

Minor Poker Mastery was gone, as expected, and when I checked on my subskills I noticed the new one I wanted. Eye of Revelation.

Eye of revelation was perfect. It wasn't a passive, only lasting for five minutes, but while it was active it allowed me to find the hidden and disguised, as well as discover traces of things missing. The tradeoff was that Eye of Revelation had an extremely low radius of effect, only being able to see things within twenty feet or so. Still, what it lost in distance it made up for in versatility, and it would be ten times more useful as it was.

I grinned, forcing myself to my feet, and staggered over to the track where I'd been training. I prepared to start...and then realized that I had nothing to actually find. I considered what to do with this, and then decided that I might as well have some fun with it. I headed upstairs, opening the refrigerator and peered inside at an empty spot. I'd picked up a slice of cheesecake on the way back from junk island, and someone had eaten it. I didn't know who, but with my new skill I could find out.

Triggering Eye of Revelation, I watched as the world kind of...darkened. Everything got kind of dim, with the exception of a few brightly lit items that I was pretty sure were hidden or clues. I could see some candy hidden in the cabinet behind the fridge, a bag of cookies shoved into the back of a cutlery drawer, and what looked like a plastic monkey under the oven mitts, the last one presumably belonging to Cass.

Along with that, I could also see footprints, leading off into the distance. Well, twenty feet into the distance. I stepped forward and picked up the next set, following them down the hall, stopping, to my complete lack of surprise, outside my girlfriend's door.

Rolling my eyes, I rapped on the wood, and she opened it, looking out at me with a pleasant smile. I smiled back, then slipped around her into her room. She looked confused, until I followed the trail to the back of the room, dug around in a drawer, and pulled out a styrofoam container.

She giggled nervously. "That's...not mine?" I just looked at her for a minute, and then she pouted and looked away. "You didn't get me anything. That was rude. It looked really good so I are it. Its not like you put your name on it or anything." I opened the container, showing her the inside, where my name was printed in black marker. She clicked her tongue. "Yeah, ok I don't know why I even tried that."

"No cooking." I said flatly."For a month." I didn't actually care that much, but I liked cheesecake, and I wanted to make an impression so she didn't do it again.

Her eyes widened in shock. "Wait. What?" She crossed the room in a blink, clinging to me. "That's not fair. Come on, I'll buy you another slice. I can't go back to eating materializer meals and I don't have the money to pay for takeout. I spent it all on wishes!"

"Want to make it two months?" She jerked back, sulking but unwilling to risk it. I actually felt a little bad but if I caved every time she gave me puppy dog eyes I'd never stick up for myself.

I flopped down on the bed. "So, you already had your second round right? What was it, yesterday?" It had been day three of the first round which would mean two days after my own match.

Snorting a laugh at the subject change she thumped down next to me. "Yup. Next match is tomorrow. I won, in case you were wondering."

"I wasn't." I said with a smile. "But I'm curious why you're up again so soon. Shouldn't you be in a later round?"

She shrugged. "Guess not. Since there are so few people left the rounds won't be as consistent. Not everyone will fight at the same point in the rotation. I don't know who I'm fighting this time, or even where yet. They're sending out locations the morning of."

"Makes sense." I admitted. "If they told us where we would be fighting it would be easy to figure out our opponents by process of elimination. This way the surprise is fresh." I was still worried as hell about who I'd be fighting, but I had to admit that the first round had been a blast.

She rolled over to cuddle up next to me. "I guess. I'm just worried one of us will run into someone really scary. I know there are safety measures, but this is still battle. If someone like Abel decided to kill you, do you really think you would survive? And now we have Celine's asshole sister putting bounties on us, which granted, she was nice enough to specify shouldn't cause our deaths, but..."

"But." I agreed. "But there's still the cult. But we have enemies here. But the tournament is the perfect opportunity to kill us without allowing for interference."

"Do you really think that would work though?" She asked cautiously. "Like...Zeke is bound not to interfere, but after you died..." She sounded uncomfortable bringing it up, but I got her point. Hell I couldn't argue it because I'd asked him the same thing once.

I mulled over my wording. "I think that the person who kills me is going to have a bad day. Or century. But I also think that won't mean much to me since I'll be dead. If it makes you feel better, I'm not planning on dying, and I've made some serious preparations for the next round."

She looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. "Oh really? And what would those be? Inquiring minds want to know." She fluttered her eyelashes at me so fast it looked like she was trying to blink morse code, and I cracked up at her, which earned me a poke in the ribs and another pout. She didn't push for my answer though, she knew I wouldn't give it. After all, we might be up against each other at some point.

We chattered for a bit about nothing, not wanting to give away anything about our preparations but still wanting to spend time together. She tried to convince me to cook for her early, and I resisted, leading to lots of bargaining for one or two weeks taken off despite my steadfast refusal.

Eventually, we drifted off to sleep, and I couldn't help but smile as I dozed off, loving that we were still able to relax together even though we might be enemies if things went a certain way.

I was woken the next morning by my scan ring, and Callie by hers, and I groaned and sat up, flicking open the screen. Callie was yawning and doing the same, and as the screens came up, we each noticed what the other person's said and we froze, staring at the information. Nothing too complicated, mind you. A simple address. Very simple, in fact, because it was the exact same address on both screens. I glanced up to find Callie looking at me in worry. We'd both gotten our assignments. Our tenth round fight would be against each other.

 

We didn't freak out or anything. Though we did kind of shut up for a while. We both got ready and Jessie drove us to the arena. We didn't say much on the ride, and I admit to being a bit nervous. My emotions were a jumble, really. I was excited for a good fight, upset I had to fight Callie, scared she would resent me if I won, scared I would resent her if I lost. My head was swirling with all these different thoughts, and I had no idea what to do.

Then she reached out and took my hand. I looked up into her eyes and she gave me that dazzling smile I only ever saw on her face when we were alone, and...I felt better. My worries weren't gone, I could still feel them, twice actually because the bond was still open. But I could also feel how much she cared about me, and that in the end this fight wasn't going to mean anything we didn't want it to.

I squeezed her hand back and then turned to look out the window, to watch until we arrived at the arena. Once we arrived we both climbed out and headed for our respective waiting rooms below the arena. This was another new one I hadn't seen. There would be two matches here today, ours being the first. One hundred and sixty fighters over ten arenas. Four per day for four days for the first round, and two per day for four days for the second.

Sadly for Callie, I'd gotten lucky. I'd had my first match at the beginning of the rotation, so I'd gotten the full four days off. Since she had hers midway through she only got a day or two of downtime before her second match with me. I wasn't going to go easy on her because of that though.

Despite my worries about her resenting me or me resenting her, I'd never considered softballing it. She deserved better than that, and so did I. We were competitive people, and we both had a lot to prove. Holding back would be an insult to both each other and the audience, and I could feel through the bond that neither of us had any intention of doing so.

The wait before the match felt much shorter than normal, but that was probably just distraction. The guy watching the waiting room ushered me out when it was time, and I walked out onto the sand to stand across from Callie. She looked back at me, and I got ready to shut down the bond. Before I did though, I took in the sight of her.

Seeing her like this, like an enemy, was strange for me. The mask, the flowing black hair, the doll like features, the coat, the leotard, the boots. I got so used to the sight of her like this, in her costume, as my partner, that I lost track of what it looked like to take her in all at once like this. As a threat. Because she was a threat. Maybe one of the biggest I'd ever faced.

Callie wasn't an F-ranker, or some kind of combat genius like Abel. But she KNEW me. Knew me in ways most people never would. We had a fucking Skill that proved that. Even without the bond active she wouldn't be easy to beat. Not least because she was the one who trained me in close quarters combat.

Speaking of the bond, I decided to take one last glimpse at it. I focused hard on the connection, and found her doing the same, and for a split second, before it shut, I saw myself. I saw me through her eyes, and felt her own trepidation. She was seeing me the same way as I saw her, as a threat for the first time pretty much. And it was jarring to see myself like that. Despite the tinge of affection, there was a sense of wariness, but more than that, a sense of pride. At how far I'd come. What I'd turned into.

Then the bond snapped off, and it was just me, looking at her, seeing myself in her eyes more literally now, as I looked at the reflection off her irises. The whole experience had felt endless, but it took us about thirty seconds tops. She grinned at me. "You ready? Because I'm not holding back. I'm gonna kick your ass. Not that it'll be hard considering the size of you."

I bit back a little trash talk of my own, because if I got sucked into banter, I wasn't sure I'd be able to commit to fighting at my best. So without responding, I triggered Moonlit Night. Fog billowed around us, filling the arena with dense mist that occluded the sight. At least, it occluded HER sight. Mine was fine, since the fog was luminescent and partially translucent, just like last time, making it easier to see, if anything.

Next I triggered State of Grace, giving myself the ability to move more freely and quickly, then Ripple Running, so I had three dimensional mobility. With that done I knelt down, planting my hands on the sand and using my Stone Limb, along with Touch of Tears and Consecration of Flames, to coat my arms in toxic magma.

Callie was standing in the middle of the arena, not moving, eyes fixed forward. I grinned, and without delay triggered Double Trouble. Appearing directly behind her, my eyes widened as one of her boots flashed up at my head, ducking back as she dashed forward, blitzing me with attacks so fast I couldn't figure out how to counter.

I blocked them easily enough, between the speed boost and my magma limbs, I was more than up to defending, but she was launching attacks so quickly that I couldn't find time to respond. Cursing, I triggered Double Trouble again, but instead of attacking I dashed forward, Ripple Running allowing me to avoid impacting the sand until I reached twenty or so feet away.

Shaking out my arms, I gnashed my teeth. Callie giggled. "You use that Double Trouble skill too much. It's predictable. I knew you wouldn't want to come at me head on, so I just listened for the displaced air. Don't forget how much higher my Perception is."

Which was probably how she'd been able to siege me down. She could hear my movements and use them to detect me, even without seeing, especially at close range. Moonlit Night made me harder to detect, so further out I should be fine, but her Perception was so much higher that the Stealth aspects of the ability couldn't keep up when I was right next to her. Joy.

Of course. I had other options, but before I could employ them, a massive wall of shadow spikes erupted from underneath me. Ripple Running was still active, so a quick step on the air and State of Grace let me blast upwards. I planted my foot midair, kicking off to the side, and touched down warily, waiting for another attack. This time she didn't speak to me, and I cursed internally when I realized what she's done.

She figured out I used Double Trouble, which made me appear right behind her, and then attacked in a straight line. She probably used the damn shadows to burrow under the ground, and then told me how she's beaten my attack to distract me while she felt around for my weight.

The stealth aspects of Moonlit Night would keep her from hearing me touch down, but they didn't prevent me from putting weight on the sand. Ripple Running could do that, but without a heading finding me would be near impossible, and I wasn't wasting the soul power to create a platform that would hold me the whole fight. I did, however, have other options.

I triggered Sucking Mud, which would normally be too slow, and then used a shadow attack with it, forming the Dark Swamp that used grasping tendrils to drag my enemies down. The darkness spread across the sand, but as it closed in and the tendrils lashed out, Callie narrowed her eyes and darted back and up. I saw the tendrils move slightly, changing direction in midair, and I snarled in annoyance as I figured out what had happened.

Callie had shadow manipulation, and the Dark Swamp use her very own shadows. She'd detected the attack and overriden it slightly. She couldn't use it against me or anything, but I was damn sure not going to catch her with it. Close combat would bring me within range of her Perception, which was strong enough to override my stealth, and the Dark Swamp was out.

I triggered Sucking Mud again, but followed it up with a gravity attack. Callie buckled, looking surprised as the crushing force of gravity started mashing her into the sand. She snarled, hands lashing out as a wave of shadow tore through the ground below her, pushing the Sucking Mud aside as she dropped into the hole. Sand wasn't hard to move for people our level, and I'd seen her do the underground thing before.

Without any hesitation, I triggered Eye of Revelation, just in time to see a dozen forms erupt from the ground and rush out in all directions. She'd used the time out of my sight to spam those damn clones. Unfortunately for her, my Eye of Revelation told me which ones were clones and which was real.

I dashed forward again, hoping that all the noise from the clones and exploding sand would keep her from detecting me once I got close enough. As I came in I bounced off the air with Ripple Running, spinning off into a switchback kick aimed right at her head. Her eyes widened as she picked up the sound and hit the ground, which was what I'd wanted. I stepped on air again, redirection myself as I used Touch of Tears and a tranq blow on my leg, slamming myself down on her back and triggering another gravity attack to pin her.

My fists slammed down on her coat, and the blunt force traveled through. It wouldn't have done anything, except Heavy Hands allowed partial armor piercing, which let the effect of the poison fire bypass her coat. Not completely, but enough that a few dozen blows made within a split second stacked enough of it up to hurt, and it combined with the similarly small percentage of the tranq poison that bypassed her coat.

She groaned, but kept her head, reacting with a shredding blitz of shadows aimed over her back where I was standing. I jumped straight up to avoid it, and stepped on air as I waited for the blades to retract. Then I triggered another gravity attack and smashed the same leg with another tranq attack down on her back again, missing as she rolled aside, expecting the attack.

I could have grabbed for her, but grappling was the worst possible decision when she was stronger than I was, even with the poison. So I just backed off. She staggered to her feet, looking unsteady, and I remembered the boost from Moonlit Night, which would have improved the amount of the poison that penetrated her defenses.

The rest of the fight was just wearing her down. Using my steam arrow to pick at her, mixing it with poison and tranq attacks. I used have my tranquilizer stockpile, but finally, she couldn't hold out any more and dropped to the sand, unconscious.

I let Moonlit Night fade, the fog rolling away, and walked over to her tiredly. This had been an intense fight, even with me having most of the momentum. I knelt down, dismissing the poison, and triggered a heal burst on her, patching up all of her wounds. As she woke up, I was somewhat worried about how she'd react, but she gave me that same big dazzling smile and I laughed. I picked her up in a princess carry and walked out my own entrance. She just rolled her eyes and leaned against me, and I felt grudging acceptance through the bond, now active again. Only three more rounds to go.

 

"You made me work for that one." I grunted as I slumped down on the couch. We hadn't talked much on the drive home. "I was worried a few times there. Your main stats are so much higher than mine. Can't believe you could see through my Moonlit Night. Even close range."

She shook her head. "Not see. Sight was gone. I was going off hearing. You almost got me with that. Some kind of Stealth element I'd guess? But you forgot that Stealth is about using Perception to erase all trace of yourself. Someone with a high enough Perception can overpower someone else's stealth. Even with nearly triple yours though, I could only pick you up when you got close."

I winced, pressing on my ribs. "Being able to read and react to every move was pretty impressive. Fighting me blind must have been tough, even with your Balam Skill. Honestly I'm shocked I even won with your advantages. I kept expecting to get pincushioned."

That got a laugh from Callie. "Honestly, you just have too many options. Especially with the new tricks, you were able to counter everything I tried. Several of those were new right? Stuff you've been working on during the tournament? I was on the back foot the whole time. I had no clue how to react."

"I guess that's the downside to us knowing each other's fighting style so well." I said with a shrug. "Changes are harder to keep up with." I massaged my side. "Though you made a damn good effort." I could have healed it up. Used a healing burst to fix things. But I didn't want to. I'd earned the bruises in that fight. Callie had earned them. Plus they were light and they would be gone by the time I woke up tomorrow, no use wasting a healing charge.

She sighed. "So, with that out of the way, I guess we can talk about the tournament now. If you want. The closer we get to the end the more likely you'll be fighting Mel or Abel. What do you think your chances are?" I could see she didn't want to talk about her loss anymore, and was trying to move on to discussing the tourney like someone who was just a bystander. She couldn't give me tips, because while she was out, I wasn't, and we still had an agreement with the others, but getting my opinion on it wasn't too much of a problem.

"Honestly." I said with a frown. "Not great. I have some more options for possible upgrades, and I might be able to take Mel if I prepare for it right, but I have no clue which one I'll face, if either. As for Abel...I'll do what I can. I'm not sure I can beat him, but at this point, even if I can't, that still means someone from our team will probably enter the finals. That's enough for me."

Not that I wasn't going to give my all to beat Abel, but I just...couldn't think of anything that would get it done. He was too strong. Too versatile. Too...Abel. If he did beat me though, I was going to make him work for it. I wouldn't be just another crushed enemy. He was going to remember our fight, even if he won the whole damn tournament.

The chances of me fighting him next round weren't high though. Statistically, running into two teammates in as many battles wasn't exactly likely. Knowing that she still needed time to process, and that being under foot wasn't helping, I took off my mask and leaned down to press a kiss to Callie's forehead. "I have to go check in with Benny about today's wishes. Especially since SOMEBODY needed half my stockpile of tranq blows to take down."

That got a smug grin from my girlfriend. "Well, you didn't think it would be easy did you?" Rolling my eyes, I headed off to find my best friend, but internally, I was happy to know she wasn't too upset. She'd put up a hell of a fight. It had taken me finally utilizing my stockpile of Skills to their utmost to have a chance at winning. If nothing else, Heavy Hands had been a hell of a weight on the scales. The passive ability was the only way I'd managed to do anything with her armor in the way.

Honestly, the way that worked out in combination with my other abilities was amazing. The augmentation from Moonlit Night boosted the force enough that even ten percent of it could have a real effect, and I hadn't even used Mercy kill during this fight. Or Afterburner. I'd be keeping those in reserve for dealing with Abel.

When I found Benny, he was sitting in the kitchen eating cereal. He gave me a mute nod as I came in, shoving another spoon full of sugar coated corn flakes into his mouth and chewing. I always thought it was funny seeing Benny eat while tired. It was so...bovine. Staring off into the distance, jaw moving in a circular motion as his teeth ground up the food, the sound of it like a metronome. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

"Stop comparing me to a cow." He said without looking up, mouth full. I grinned, about to ask why he thought that, but he cut me off. "You always do it when I eat tired. I'm not in the mood this morning. So tell me how your match went or get with the wishes. Either way, shut up about my breakfast."

I scoffed. "Buzzkill. But fine. I won. It wasn't easy though. My match was against Callie." He stopped chewing, swallowing his food as he looked at me sharply.

"You ok?" He asked slowly. I smiled at the fact that he knew me well enough to ask, but...I was. I hadn't expected it myself, but Callie and I were in a good place. This hadn't hurt us. My smile must have made that obvious, because he nodded. "Good. Could have got messy."

I know he doesn't want to talk about this, because it reminds him too much of his own situation, so I change the subject. "Well, if it helps, I need another five stored tranq blows. Callie didn't go down without a fight, and I blew through half my stockpile. That's today's wishes paid up if you want to get them out of the way. It's a Focus day today, right?"

He chuckled. "They're even so either works, but sure, Focus is usually first on the rotation. I wish for four Focus, in exchange for a triple strength tranquilizer attack."

Wish detected. Grant wish? Confirming, I reached out to put my hand on his shoulder, ignoring the list of necessary stats because I'd seen it dozens of times. A growing charge of electricity broke over me and poured into my friend, our eyes both glowing purple, though I could only actually see his.

I couldn't help think back to that first wish all those months ago, for a steak dinner in a park. This used to be so difficult for me. The effects of the power drained me every time I used them, and it felt insane doing it. Now...big wishes still hit me hard, but stuff like this didn't even wind me. A side effect of having such a high Vitality probably. Benny wished for his next four wishes, topping up my tranq blows again as he got the last of his twenty points of Focus for the day.

Two hundred and sixty three Focus, and six hundred and forty three total stat points. Not bad for someone who had hit G-rank so recently. At this rate, I'd just barely manage to get he and Jessie both to F-rank before we left. My healer friend was stockpiling cash for it as we spoke, so when I finished up with Benny I'd have a nice influx of money and I could buy a much nicer weapon before we actually left.

Once that was done, Benny slumped back with a sigh. "Man. That never stops feeling weird, you know? Not the wish itself, though...that too. But the sensation of just being...different, one moment to the next. Twenty points in a minute or two is just nuts, as I'm sure you remember. Like, yeah it's a smaller percentage now, but having my brain work that much faster and better out of nowhere is still jarring."

I nodded. "Yeah, the huge stat dump after the scavenger hunt was nuts. Glad we don't need to go through that again anytime soon. Even big events in the future won't hit us as hard without that insane ratio." I paused. "Does it ever bother you?" He looked at me quizzically. "The feeling that this eating away to who we are. I don't think it ever bothered me really, I wasn't too attached to my humanity. But I've always been a bit weird that way. Looking back I think I might have been raised with that disassociated view on purpose. But you..."

He shrugged. "Maybe? A bit. The idea of something external changing me like that was certainly weird for a while. But in the end...it's for the better right? Like I can mark notable improvements as my stats go up. Sure, I'm changing, but so is everyone else. I'm not becoming another person, just...more of myself. Recursion makes it a bit worrying, but in the end, don't we all change because of the world around us? It's a bit more literal for you and me, but it's not like not becoming an Ascendant will mean I get to freeze the person I was in time forever and never be anyone different."

"True." I said, slumping back on the couch as I mulled things over. "I guess for me, it just never mattered in the first place. My sense of self has always been a bit weird. Physical alterations, mental ones, none of it feels like it's changing me. Just making me into the person I want to become. I guess it's the same thing in the end. More of myself. That's a good way to put it."

"What about Callie?" He asked quietly. "Do you feel like your relationship with her is changing who you are? Making you different in a way the stats aren't?"

I could tell the question meant a lot to him. "Of course." I said immediately. He seemed...thrown. "I'm different because I'm with her. But like you said, everything changes us. The changes from being with her are ones I like. Is this about your recent training mindset?"

He'd been very focused, and while a lot of that was us being gone and him worrying, at least some of it had been inspired by Celine. "Yeah." He said quietly. "It is. How much of that was because of her? Do I want to undo that? Does NOT wanting to undo it mean I want her back?"

"Nope." I said. He looked up in surprise. "It doesn't. I'm not saying you don't want her back, or that you shouldn't, that's not my call. But even if she inspired the changes in you that doesn't mean that she's necessary for them to stay. We're all made up of nothing but constant changes. The people in our lives, both the ones who stay and the ones we leave behind, are the most of those changes. They don't go away, even when the people do."

His eyes cleared, the haze of doubt I hadn't even really registered lifting. "Yeah." He said pensively. "You're right. That's a good way to look at it." He shook his head. "I'm dwelling on this too much. Let's go watch something stupid on the scan box. I want to decompress."

I nodded, clapping him on the shoulder. "Of course. There's a new reality show where they make people with poor balance try to walk down a long beam with a wedding cake as a hat. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds just stupid enough to numb our brains for a while." Benny laughed as we headed for the living room. He'd given me a lot to think about, but that was for another time. For now, I just wanted to be dumb with my best friend.