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

dxdragon · Sep 21, 2022

So, is there any way to consolidate some of Solomon's skills without changing his ability (Wish)?

Like, he has so many miscellaneous skills that could probably easily be merged into 1.

Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Minor Singing Mastery

Just make that a Lesser Music Mastery.

And what about his idea of getting memories of people's skills and stacking them up to get Lesser? He could be making contracts to rank up his skills to be more useful.

Also surprised that at no point the MC didn't get the Minor Woodcraft skill to go along with his "expected" ability to manipulate wood.
He could even merge Woodcraft and Music to "Sing" to the Trees just like Elves do, and shape them into what he wants to craft. Maybe he could do the same with Inventing? "Sing" with the same Harmonic Frequency Inventing uses to create stellar inventions?

Malcolm Tent · Sep 21, 2022

dxdragon said:
So, is there any way to consolidate some of Solomon's skills without changing his ability (Wish)?

Like, he has so many miscellaneous skills that could probably easily be merged into 1.

Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Minor Singing Mastery

Just make that a Lesser Music Mastery.

And what about his idea of getting memories of people's skills and stacking them up to get Lesser? He could be making contracts to rank up his skills to be more useful.

Also surprised that at no point the MC didn't get the Minor Woodcraft skill to go along with his "expected" ability to manipulate wood.
He could even merge Woodcraft and Music to "Sing" to the Trees just like Elves do, and shape them into what he wants to craft. Maybe he could do the same with Inventing? "Sing" with the same Harmonic Frequency Inventing uses to create stellar inventions?

You can synergize Skills with each other to make custom Skills yes, but it makes them infinitely harder to rank them up. Since custom Skills are kind of a personal thing it would mean even wishing for them to get stronger (if he could make wishes for himself which he can't) wouldn't even be an option. He's been focusing hard on DS Mastery in recent chapters, and more custom Skills (which DS Mastery is at this point) would just slow him down. He'll get to doing more with them later, but he's just had other stuff to do lately.

Leroidumonde · Sep 22, 2022

F rankers are more powerful than E, I think that may be a typo.

Malcolm Tent · Sep 22, 2022

Leroidumonde said:
F rankers are more powerful than E, I think that may be a typo.

Nah, they have protection from E rankers from Zeke. F rankers are stronger but withing the two rank tolerance limit so they have to actually fight them.

TheArgentOne · Sep 25, 2022

is it the wish girl? Is his daughter a wyndham who's trying to oust him because of things happening? We've only seen male wyndham's other than her so it's not impossible for there to be a female one we haven't met yet, who's her mother.

Edit: clarification.

Malcolm Tent · Sep 25, 2022

TheArgentOne said:
is it the wish girl? Is his daughter a wyndham who's trying to oust him because of things happening? We've only seen male wyndham's other than her so it's not impossible for there to be a female one we haven't met yet, who's her mother.

Edit: clarification.

Nah, it's more to do with the whole mess with Abel. She's not his daughter though, more of a childhood friend.

Ranan · Nov 17, 2022

Malcolm Tent said:
She was a teenager who got manipulated by someone much more powerful than she was. The difference in Focus and Perception alone make the entire thing pretty shady on his part. I personally sympathize with her, but enough people disliked it that I scrapped the redemption arc. As far as I'm concerned he was the one who broke his vows, all she did was have sex with a guy she liked. Sure he was married, but that's his business not hers.

I've been cheated on before, and I didn't have any particular animosity toward the guy who did it. He didn't know me or have a reason to give a shit. I know that's not the average view on things, but I only really think people are responsible for themselves. The person in the wrong is the person who agreed to stay faithful and didn't. If my partner doesn't respect our relationship why would I expect a stranger to do it?

Regardless like I said people weren't fans so I scrapped the arc. She's mostly kind of faded into the background in the recent chapters.

I honestly think the people who have been complaining are fairly insecure and immature, I'm of the belief that most of the fault lies with the person in a relationship. Also as of Chapter 101 nothing has been revealed as to what exactly Midknight may or may not have told her to convince her, ignoring the massive stat difference which even with a few dozen point difference has made Shane many times more intelligent so I assume Midknights high stats made manipulating her easy, we have no idea what lies he may have told or anything else. The people complaining obviously have little experience with real world relationships because they are trying to lay the blame on a victim rather than the perpetrator and are completely ignoring her own perspective and possible reasonings

Malcolm Tent · Nov 18, 2022

Ranan said:
I honestly think the people who have been complaining are fairly insecure and immature, I'm of the belief that most of the fault lies with the person in a relationship. Also as of Chapter 101 nothing has been revealed as to what exactly Midknight may or may not have told her to convince her, ignoring the massive stat difference which even with a few dozen point difference has made Shane many times more intelligent so I assume Midknights high stats made manipulating her easy, we have no idea what lies he may have told or anything else. The people complaining obviously have little experience with real world relationships because they are trying to lay the blame on a victim rather than the perpetrator and are completely ignoring her own perspective and possible reasonings

Yeah, that was pretty much my own take on things, but enough people disliked her as a character that I just scrapped it. Royal Road readers are way more conservative than people on QQ anyway, if it bothered people on there it would go over even worse on RR. She's around, but I nixed the plans for the redemption arc. Shame too because I like her.

Pef · Nov 26, 2022

I keep thinking about that F rank dagger...
Sure it would be useful during most of the adventures, only we never learned what happened to it, since it should have belonged to the MC as a loot from his kill. Plus some other loot for disguise, detection and so on.

Fema · Dec 8, 2022

eh, kinda dissapointed it turned out to be Stricture The loner that no one likes. I was rooting for Jessie the spymaster with high social skills and cute face no one will suspect, maybe it would have taught a lesson to Shane about not taking people at face value and thinking with his dick like he often does. Love triangles being trite and Harems so cringy.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 8, 2022

Fema said:
eh, kinda dissapointed it turned out to be Stricture The loner that no one likes. I was rooting for Jessie the spymaster with high social skills and cute face no one will suspect, maybe it would have taught a lesson to Shane about not taking people at face value and thinking with his dick like he often does. Love triangles being trite and Harems so cringy.

I mean, there's not a love triangle or a harem. A lot of people made that leap on RR too, but he wasn't ever really pursuing Jessie. He thought she was kind of cute, they hung out once in what could have eventually become something romantic but it didn't end up working out that way because she vibed with Maria. Maria is basically the little sister Shane never had, so he backed off.

Fema · Dec 8, 2022

Malcolm Tent said:
I mean, there's not a love triangle or a harem. A lot of people made that leap on RR too, but he wasn't ever really pursuing Jessie. He thought she was kind of cute, they hung out once in what could have eventually become something romantic but it didn't end up working out that way because she vibed with Maria. Maria is basically the little sister Shane never had, so he backed off.

Thats cool, I am so done with harems outside of Porn, the wishmaker power its very cool and the universe setting is incredibly original and intriguing but I am afraid I am dipping out anyway, I just cant with reading all that sympathy for Annie(maybe you mean it in another way in your head, but by reading the text its most like "she is hot and sad and I have Daddy Issues so I am totally okay with her disgusting behaviour and will try to push Callie to forgive her eventually".

While the dad does gets the bigger share of the blame, unless Annie was outright mindcontrolled or blackmailed, fuck her. Her surprise and wounded act at Callie not wanting to sing Kumbaya with her, makes her incredibly Stupid(which I admit does deserve some pity) or super self centered(which I find utterly revolting), at least the Dad is openly dastardly and not trying to gaslight Callie into believing that poor Annie is the biggest victim that totally suffered the most, like Annie is doing with her victim act.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 8, 2022

Fema said:
Thats cool, I am so done with harems outside of Porn, the wishmaker power its very cool and the universe setting is incredibly original and intriguing but I am afraid I am dipping out anyway, I just cant with reading all that sympathy for Annie(maybe you mean it in another way in your head, but by reading the text its most like "she is hot and sad and I have Daddy Issues so I am totally okay with her disgusting behaviour and will try to push Callie to forgive her eventually".

While the dad does gets the bigger share of the blame, unless Annie was outright mindcontrolled or blackmailed, fuck her. Her surprise and wounded act at Callie not wanting to sing Kumbaya with her, makes her incredibly Stupid(which I admit does deserve some pity) or super self centered(which I find utterly revolting), at least the Dad is openly dastardly and not trying to gaslight Callie into believing that poor Annie is the biggest victim that totally suffered the most, like Annie is doing with her victim act.

I was heading that way but people in general disliked the idea of a redemption arc so I dropped it. I personally feel for her, as for outright mind control, having the Perception to read any microexpressions she makes and the Focus to process that information like a supercomputer, on top of being literal decades older really throws off the power dynamic there. Still, like I said I dropped the redemption arc because it was an unpopular direction.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 12, 2022

Book for goes live on Amazon Monday May 6th 20124, and as such I had to stub the chapters (they don't let you have them up elsewhere). Hope everyone is excited about the book and thanks so much for reading!

Once we got everything worked out with the contracts and we got our wishes granted, we went our separate ways, agreeing to meet up and discuss the details of the tournament soon. Even as I walked away though, I officially regretted the wish I made. I could have asked for anything, and I would have been able to get it. Rare Skills, items, some more stats, there was just so many options to pick from. Instead I'd gotten an upgrade to a Skill I already had and could have upgraded manually anyway. It just seemed like such a waste.

Despite the second guessing though, I knew deep down it had been the right call. Beginner Enchanting Mastery at the level I got wouldn't just get me to the next rank, it would be a crazy solid foundation that would let me get to Intermediate much more easily. It already doubled the number of charges I could use per day, putting me at forty eight DS Mastery skills in a twenty four hour period, but brought me within spitting distance of doubling that number again once I put some more work into it.

I had enough tricks in my arsenal, another Skill wouldn't make or break me, it would just split my focus even more. I used DS Mastery in all of my fights, and recently I'd been hitting the wall on the number of times I could do that. With my whole stored attack thing I could churn out damage like a rainstorm if I needed to, but I needed my DS Mastery to augment and amplify those.

I wasn't second guessing my choice not to upgrade that Skill though. Getting a one off wish might help me get DS Mastery to Intermediate, but that would make getting it past that level all the harder without the same wish to rely on. Sure, it would be reasonable to do that with a more common Skill with lots of source material to pull from, but aside from being stupidly expensive (if I could even do it) upgrading DS Mastery would just mean I had less of an understanding to upgrade it myself later. Eventually I wouldn't be able to just wish it higher, even if I did find someone to make the wish to, because there would be no information to source at all. The cost would shoot up so high that it wouldn't even matter.

It didn't matter though. I'd made it back to the tent, and I had to shake off my second guessing now as I got back to the others. They seemed relieved I was safe, but not relieved enough for another group hug. I guess they'd gotten past the worry when I was gone. Callie was the only one who put her arms around me when I got back, and I gave her a tight squeeze in return before stepping back with a long sigh. "Alright. Since that issue is taken care of for now what's our next move. I have information but this isn't the place to talk. We can save that for later."

Callie just nodded. "Sure. Sounds good. In that case I think we need to go and have a chat with Cicero. Probably best to do it while the others are here. just so he doesn't try to weasel out of it." I blinked, having forgotten the whole 'we get our own territory if we helped him out' thing. Hell, we were technically done once we figured out who was doing all this, but realistically collecting the prize before making sure the entire place wasn't going to be burned to the ground wouldn't have been useful.

So we all headed over to where Cicero was standing next to Abel, looking a bit pale but otherwise unharmed. The two of them were in a quiet conversation, with Mel standing off to the side glaring at the top hatted man, when we finally came close enough to hear and they stopped talking. It was weird that we couldn't hear it before given our Perception, but I guessed they'd been using Stealth, which was a use for that Skill I had never even considered. It was definitely the right tool for the job.

Abel saw us come up and gave an exhausted smile. "Sorry you lot, probably not the best time. I'm arguing with my idiot brother. Apparently the genius here wants to expel the Pavilion from the Cavalcade. Never mind that the majority of the G-rankers in the circus are dead now, and that the Pavilion has more than the rest of the circus put together." His words made it pretty obvious the exhaustion was from dealing with this shit and not from the actual fight, which even with the heal burst was impressive as hell.

Cicero actually snarled at Mel, ignoring the rest of us and his reputation in favor of venting his frustration. "She fucked all of us over. Stabbed us in the back. This entire thing is her fault, and everyone knows it. If she hadn't been fomenting insurrection like a sneaky little backstabbing harpy no one here would have died! I won't have her in my circus, I've put up with her nonsense for too long. She goes. No discussion." He was snarling the words at her, and to my surprise, Mel was flinching as he said them like she was being hit.

For the first time since I'd met him, I saw Abel do the one thing I hadn't thought he was really capable of. He got mad at his brother. The eyes behind the rabbit mask hardened into a stony flatness as the aura of danger and violence he wore like a bloody mantle in combat fell over all of us. He took a step toward Cicero, and the mustachioed man paled and stepped back, visibly terrified of his enraged brother.

Despite the fury painted across his face, when Abel spoke, his voice was calm and quiet. Almost a whisper. "That's enough. You brought this on yourself. You spent years after I left shoring up power and playing your political games, and you ignored the needs of the people here. Mel was just doing what she thought was right, and seeing you acting like this, I'm not sure she wasn't right. I've spent far too long enabling your power plays and ambition. I love you little brother, but Mel isn't going anywhere, and if you try to make her I'll toss your ass out the front gate myself."

The calm, soothing tone of his voice made the threat much more visceral as he spoke it, ensuring we all knew exactly how serious the masked man was. He wasn't dealing with this anymore. Despite the heavy vibes, Callie actually put a hand up. "If you boys are done measuring, I might have a solution that works for both parties." They turned to glare at her, but she just blithely ignored Abel and strode up to his brother, poking him in the chest as she planted a fist on her hip. "You. Asshat. You owe us a territory within your borders as payment for this whole mess. We want the Pavilion."

My jaw fell open in shock. That was...perfect. Holy shit that was absolutely perfect. Why the hell hadn't I even considered that? I'd been trying to figure out a way to ally with Mel and the others without getting in bed with Cicero, and this was absolutely the easiest way. Even if the Pavilion was part of the cavalcade physically, if the place was handed over to me, a guest elder of the Beast Lord Garden, it would politically removed from Cicero's sphere of influence completely. Hell, even Abel could stick around, because he'd be spending his time in a protected area under the aegis of an E-ranked faction.

Cicero, naturally, was far less impressed with the idea. "What? That isn't..." He trailed off as Abel turned his icy gaze back on his brother. "I mean...that's a large and incredibly lucrative portion of the circus. I promised you territory, but that's going to cut into my bottom line." He hurriedly raised his hands placatingly before Abel could respond. "Not that I won't do it. I'm just saying that while it's not technically outside the parameters allowed for territory in the contract, it violates the spirit of our deal, so I would require some...additional commitments from you both. "

Callie looked genuinely floored. "Spirit of our deal? You dropped us in a potentially fatal labyrinth to pick up the deed to this place and tried to claim it was a test of capability. Fuck you! It would be within the 'spirit' of our deal for me to let Solomon break your kneecaps like he was hoping to do in the first place now that this is all over. You're lucky we're both under the impression your brother would intervene, or I'm pretty sure you would already be mid assault."

For effect, I cracked my knuckles menacingly and drove a fist into my palm, which I was proud to see drew a harsh swallow from the top hatted man. I was a big guy, and while there was no way I was fighting Abel, this asshat had almost gotten my girlfriend and I both killed, so I had zero compunctions scaring him a bit. He wisely chose to shut up and Callie turned to check with Mel. "How about you?" She said to the older woman. "I know that's not really ideal for you, but what do you think? We wouldn't interfere in your leadership or anything."

Mel stared for a minute and then gave a long sigh. "That's...probably the best we're going to get, isn't it? You're good kids, and despite a rough start I think we get along. Plus if you don't take the Pavilion you'll just get some other part of the circus, and I'd still be stuck figuring out what to do next. So...what the hell. Sure. The Starburst Pavilion officially accepts Nightstrike and Solomon as co-leaders provided you sign a few documents ensuring our people positions and certain levels of treatment."

Callie glanced at me and I nodded, I could put together an employment contract no problem. With that our of the way we all headed out back to the Pavilion to talk over details. Cicero insisted on it, probably because once the Pavilion was officially ours he wouldn't have to deal us being in his circus and could just leave. As we walked though, I finally let myself truly relax. We'd done it. Repelled the invaders, completed the job, even inherited our own faction, which was pretty crazy when I thought about it.

The amount we had been through in this short time was staggering, and there was still so much to do. The tournament, the Academy, and we still had the Jerks to deal with, even if we had cut off this one avenue. I somehow doubted Sanctuary Hall was going to let this go, even if they probably wouldn't try anything else in G-district. We'd have to be on the lookout in the city proper, in the other districts, and maybe even back at the Academy. We also had the Academy mission to collect points for, given we thwarted the invasion.

Aside from that I was betting we'd all gotten more than a few points for this and I wanted to check in with everyone to see where they were at before we went any further. Before any of that though, I just put an arm around my girlfriend as I walked, enjoying the drained tension as I processed the lull in my crazy life. I loved getting stronger, picking fights, and finding treasure, but it was nice to just take a breath sometime. I might as well do it while I could, because I had a hell of a lot more crazy coming based on the looming threats. I gave Callie a squeeze. Yeah, a quick breather was enough, my life was crazy, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Hyperion47 · Dec 13, 2022

This is one story I will always want more of.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 13, 2022

The whole 'checking on stat gains' thing, didn't really happen until the next day. We talked a while about the Pavilion, but eventually I caught Jessie starting to nod off and we decided to head home. She'd been life force juicing us all for most of the battle, so I wasn't really tired yet, but I knew I was going to be. Jessie's ability was damn convenient, but it wasn't infinite or free. The energy could be supplied, the life force healed you and energized you, but it didn't really fuel the actions you took with that energy, just repaired the damage from them.

It sounded like a meaningless distinction, until the charge ended, and you crashed. It wasn't too serious after just one or two boosts, but I'd been spamming those damn heal bursts all day, and I was going to drop like a rock when we got back. Which I did. We made it back to the house just in time for me to collapse in bed and sleep for about eleven hours, thankfully completely unbothered by any outside forces as I recovered from an extremely emotionally and physically taxing day of combat.

When I woke up I dragged myself out of my room, yawning loudly and waving to Cark and Cass, who were in the living room watching some cartoon or other. Cark waved back, looking as drained as I was, probably from constant power use. Benny was curled up on the other couch, and Jessie was sitting on the floor next to Cass, watching with her. As I headed into the kitchen I found Callie sitting on a stool, sipping a cup of coffee and looking haggard.

I leaned down to give her a quick kiss, and she pulled back. "Gross." She moaned in annoyance. "Morning breath. Brush your teeth first." I plucked her cup of coffee from her fingers, took a sip swished it around in my mouth, and spit it into the sink before giving her a wide grin. I handed it back to her, but she pushed it away. "Ew, no thanks. I'll make a fresh cup." Her eyes narrowed. "Unless you're planning to replace that one?"

"Oh come on." I said with a laugh. "Spitting it in the sink means I didn't backwash." She glared at me venomously and I put my hands up in placation. "Sorry, sorry. I'll make you a new one. It was just a joke." I probably should have felt that out first. I knew some people were weird about drinking after anyone else, and that had maybe been a bit far since I didn't know if Callie was one of those. I made a point of putting extra effort into her coffee, giving her a huge mug with exactly the sweetener and amount of cream she preferred.

I passed it to her, and she took a long sip. "Not terrible." She intoned gravely. "I guess I can let it slide this time, but don't do it again. Your jokes aren't funny when they're at the expense of my coffee." She shooed me toward the stove. "As your final act of penance make me an omelette. Goat cheese and fennel sausage. Five eggs."

That got a laugh from me. "Oh I see how it is. Play up your emotional trauma so I'll be forced to be your personal chef. Fine. Since I was in the wrong, I'll play along just this once." Which was bullshit. I was always happy to cook for Callie and we both knew it, but we were just bantering. I took out a full dozen eggs, deciding to make one of me as well. "So. I didn't get to ask last night, how many points did you get after the fight? I'm assuming you got some like I did?"

She grinned. "Yup. Twenty points of Creation, fifteen points of Might, ten of Perception, ten of Fantasy, and weirdly five of Vitality. I'd guess that we weren't the only ones either. Though I suspect Abel and Mel were the subject of more of the stories about what happened than we were. My totals are up pretty high, I broke eight hundred points overall, which means I'm only two hundred away from F-rank." Her voice was nearly shaking with excitement at reaching the same height our Guild Master had been at back home, and so much earlier than she had ever imagine.

Calliope Reynolds

Beginner Shadow Embodiment- The ability to control and shape shadows either molding them into
constructs of imbuing them into specially prepared objects to enable enhancement and control.

Might-198
Impact-12
Vitality-142
Fantasy-85
Focus-58
Perception-175
Creation-132
Pet-Wolf named Rellia

Skills: Minor Tracking, Beginner Stealth, Beginner Trap Mastery, Beginner Disguise, Lesser Balam Mastery, Beginner Shadow Manipulation Mastery.

I whistled at the numbers. "Damn. Your Might has almost broken two hundred. Are you sure you want to rank up like that? From what I can tell, the result of synergizing takes into account a lot of factors, and stats are one of them. You have that Shadow Manipulation Skill to mix in, and if your Might is so high you're going to end up with something physical and close combat when you do it. With Might already so high, it might be a good idea to put the rest of your upcoming points into Perception or Creation."

My girlfriend let out a sigh. "I'd considered it. Might is damn useful, and it makes fights insanely convenient, but you aren't wrong that its not the main aspect of my combat style. Still, a more physical ability might not be as unsuited to me as you're thinking. I'll probably push Creation and Perception like you suggested, but don't be surprised if having high Might pays off in an unexpected way. I have some ideas for what I may get from the mix, and it's something I've never heard of a shadow manipulator getting, at least not around here."

I tried to pry at that statement, but she refused to say any more. I just rolled my eyes. If she wanted to keep it secret until rank up that was her call. "Anyway. I got a solid boost too. Thirty points to Vitality, probably from all the heal bursts, twenty five to Might, twenty to Focus, and ten to Creation. I kind of wish I'd gotten some Fantasy, but it seems like none of my tricks really push my legend in that direction. I have other ways to pad that number though, so it hardly matters." The stats had applied in my sleep, much like the first time I'd gotten them. So I hadn't had some big dramatic stat dump.

Wishmaster candidate status. G-rank. Ability: Beginner Wish- Five times a day grant a Beginner wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics.

Might-122
Impact-12
Fantasy-21
Vitality-101
Focus-108
Perception-90
Creation-92

Stored:3 shadow attacks, 5 triple strength tranq blows, 2 triple strength density shifted attacks. 1 spider leg attacks, 2 heal bursts

Pet- Wolf named Jin

Skills:Beginner Doom Sovereign Mastery,Beginner Enchanting Mastery (four charges per point of Impact), Lesser Cooking Mastery,Lesser Inventing Mastery, Lesser Stealth, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Gymnastics Mastery, Minor Swimming Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Minor Singing Mastery,Minor Poker Mastery, Minor Archery Mastery, Minor Boxing Mastery,Lesser Balam Mastery, Minor First Aid Mastery, Minor Herbalism Mastery

My stats were looking fantastic. I'd officially made it past a hundred in three of them, was only ten points from that milestone in two others, and had broken the five hundred point barrier already on the way. I was actually at a level where I wasn't much weaker than your average G-ranker in individual stats. At least not in their unspecialized stats. Not that it would matter for long. "So." I said with a sigh as I started the omelette. "My cousin says this tournament is a big deal, and that it's aimed at the peak of G-rank."

Callie made an interested sound. "Yeah, when is it going to be? Even for us, breaking through too soon isn't going to be simple. I mean, granted, we all have some elixir capacity left, most of us a decent chunk. But still, Jessie and Benny are both pretty low in the G-ranks. I'm not sure if we can rank them up in time for them to combat viable if it's too soon. Hell, I'd say we couldn't rank ourselves up in time and still be able to put up a fight, if not for how specialized I am and your new tricks."

I sighed at that. "Two months, from what I can tell. You're right though. I don't have the capacity to rank all of us up that quickly. Especially not with three of my wishes promised to the Beast Lord Garden." I was already kind of regretting that decision, but in the end it didn't actually hinder me so much as force me to dedicate three of those wishes to myself daily. Still, it left forty or so wishes for me to use to continue boosting Benny and Jessie. Not nearly enough to get them to F-rank in time for the tournament, but enough to get started.

I felt a poke in my ribs and turned to see Callie smiling up at me. "Hey, stop being such a worrier. Even if they can't participate in the tournament we can still have them up to speed by the time we have to go to the actual dungeon, right? It's not like a tournament that size is going to be quick and painless. We'll need to deal with plenty of bullshit to get through it. That just leaves us entering as a duo. Which is fine with me. Though it's also possible Mel and Abel could be entering. Hard to say with them."

That was a good point. Abel seemed to want to be left alone mainly, but how much of that was just trying to avoid giving his brother a chance to start trouble and drag him into it was hard to say. The man had a natural inclination for battle that couldn't be common even on higher ranked planets, and a genuine love of combat. With the Pavilion severed from the circus and his own return to his former home, not to mention Mel's involvement in the place. It wasn't exactly out of the question for Apollyon and Starbreaker to return to Rajak in style.

I was reminded of my first rank up, and how I'd had to accept it. I couldn't remember hearing anything about suppressing your rank, but then again, who would bother? Maybe they'd reached F-rank a long time ago and just decided to stay where they were. It certainly fit Abel's whole foundation building strategy. It would be convenient if nothing else. Assuming they even wanted to enter. It also opened up the possibility we would be facing other G-rankers who had done the same thing.

Either way, we had plenty of training to do before the tournament, stats to gain, combat to master, and attacks to stockpile in my case. I had forty eight charges per day to use for my DS Mastery now, or any Enchanting I needed to do, with the foundation to double that again sometime down the line. I still had to upgrade all my subskills in DS Mastery to reach Intermediate with it and unlock new ones too.

There was more things to do than I could possibly count, and more ways to get stronger than I could imagine. Part of me felt overwhelmed at the idea of it, and part of me was just excited. For now I would just focus on making breakfast for my girlfriend, and then we could check in with the others about their own gains from the big blowout. After that, I was thinking a trip up to the Academy was long overdue. We should check in with Grimmengap and invite them to the Pavilion, and collect the points from the mission we had completed. I was sure our rankings had dropped, might as well get them back up. At the very least, I doubted we would be bored anytime soon.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 14, 2022

After breakfast we went and got the others, It was decided we could do the debrief on how they'd grown on the way, so piled into the car after saying goodbye to Cass and Cark and headed for the Academy. As usual Jessie drove, because we wanted to arrive at our destination via landing and not smash into the ground in a horrifying explosion of twisted metal. Callie had mostly gotten used to being forbidden to operate the thing, so she hardly even pouted, though I was secretly glad she hadn't stopped completely because she had a gorgeous pout, not that I would tell her that to her face.

Benny, being the one who wasn't driving, was the first one to catch us up, after hearing about our own growth. "Damn, that's an impressive jump for both of you. I went up twenty five Perception, twenty Might, and shockingly twenty Creation. That last one kind of confused me, but I have to assume someone was talking about the origin of my ability being Inventing."

"Only real downside is that I guess I got Creation instead of Focus." He said. "Which is what I needed, but I can always trade some attacks for more points in that." He shuddered at the idea. "Those spider leg attack hurt a ton, but it sounds like you got some serious use from them. I might be willing to try again sometime. Anyway this was what I ended up with."

Benicio Cortez- G rank. Ability: Lesser Mechanical Embodiment- Allows the integration of existing inventions into the users body for the purposes of strengthening and enhancing them. insignia is a half gear in the shape of a C

Might-84
Impact-12
Fantasy-10
Vitality-31
Focus-75
Perception-42
Creation-30

Pet- Wolf named Rolf

Current integrated tech. 9/10. Torso: Extending rope. Right fist: triple punch. Left forearm: long range attack attraction. Left fist: minor slow acting tranquilizer effect. Right foot: Density shifting to create heavier kicks and more powerful jumps. Left Foot: momentum neutralization to allow stopping instantly. Head: slight cognitive boost to allow more thinking time. Back: ability to grow a shell to tank damage. Chest: Pair of golden G rank spider legs that arch up from the shoulders.

Skills:Minor Cooking Mastery, Beginner Inventing Mastery, Minor Haggling Mastery, Minor Stealth Mastery

It was solid gains. Now that I had those three mandatory wishes reserved for the Beast Lord Garden, an attack stockpile was the best way to help my friends grow from here, and I needed it badly myself. I'd burned off most of mine during the battle but they'd been indispensable to the fight as a whole. Plus Benny's stats were so low already that the additions to Creation and Perception provided at least a solid baseline for him to work with. No matter how specialized, it was a good idea to have at least some foundation on the other stats, especially something like Perception.

Jessie's cheerful voice rang out from the front seat. "Wow, not bad at all. I got a huge points dump into Vitality, obviously. Fifty points directly. I also got twenty five in Focus, probably for the mental component of beast taming, and oddly fifteen points in Perception, most likely from using my raven to scout out Cicero's tent before we went in." I could hear the annoyance in her voice. "Once again I'm absurdly specialized without even trying. Though it's nice I at least managed to get my last two stats unlocked. It feels...strange. Hard to describe. I ended up with this though, stat wise."

Jessica Evans- G rank. Ability: Beginner Lifeweaving- Infuse living things with life itself and direct their actions while the users power flows through them. Control had limited effect on sapient entities. Prolonged exposure to life energy may cause lasting effects in controlled non sapient subjects.

Might-52
Impact-12
Fantasy-28
Vitality-191
Focus-25
Perception-15
Creation-8

Pet- Wolf named Lily and bear named Randall

Skills: Beginner Horticulture,Beginner First Aid, Minor Herbalism, Minor Flower Arrangement, Minor Beast Taming Mastery

It was staggering how high Jessie's Vitality was given how low her total point count was, but then again her power WAS life. I couldn't think of anyone whose ability exemplified a stat so perfectly anywhere else I had seen. It was truly staggering. It also explained how fast she was growing. Fifty points was a crazy amount, but it made sense. Our world tended to favor big flashy feats, and Jessie's healing had always been staggeringly effective whenever it was used. She was naturally suited to rapid growth whenever she was in battle, especially with a tamed beast like Randall.

I was honestly wondering if we should bring her with us to the tournament anyway, but it seemed unlikely to go well. Even if Randall could keep up she wouldn't be able to, and I had no way of getting her to F-rank fast enough to be viable. Hell, I wasn't sure WE would be viable. We were bound to run into people just as established in the F-ranks as Abel was in the G-ranks. Could we even take someone like that? They wouldn't BE Abel obviously, because then we would just get crushed, but we had a long way to go, and I had a feeling I would need every advantage to make it through.

Still, we'd all made great progress from this, and it was nice to hear. I was particularly glad that Jessie and Benny had slept through their gains too. Given how large the percentage jump had been, I was guessing it wouldn't have been pleasant to experience awake. It made me wonder if letting the points slowly come in your sleep was the proper way to do things and the Academy had encouraged us to take the points dump to scare us away from rushing too fast. If so, it was a pretty effective method, even if it hadn't actually worked for us.

I decided to change topics though, because we had a big one to discuss. "What are the chances there are other jobs to do with what we found? I mean, it was a pretty big conspiracy. With all that information already out it's only a matter of time before it leaks, might as well cash in on the points before it hits the grapevine."

"Should be decent." Callie said contemplatively. "I mean, we'll need to talk to Celine about the details since she knows the place pretty well, but there's no way we haven't moved up the scale on what missions we can take. We might need to do some of the tests over and crank our rankings a bit. But that might be a good idea anyway. If nothing else, Jessie has a pretty amazing Vitality stat. I don't actually know what the Vitality test entails but getting her rank up will give her some regular points that should boost her overall ranking."

I groaned a bit at the thought of all the numbers needed to calculate the rankings. There were so many factors, it really boggled the mind. The only upside to this whole mess was the the tournament was going to be far more important than the local one that usually took place, so we didn't need to bother with trying to rank up to join. I was pretty sure the Moonsong Glade tournament was one you could just join, though I should probably learn the details soon.

All of that was a problem for future Shane though. I decided to tease my best friend instead. "So, Benny. Haven't seen your girl in a while huh? Think she's going to be mad you haven't been around? Or have you been sneaking away for long soulful phone calls every night to check in?" He had, and I knew that, which was why I said it in the most irritating way possible. In reality I thought it was sweet, but I also remembered him constantly harassing me about Callie, and I was owed vengeance.

My best friend narrowed his eyes at me. "A joke about me being too attentive? How clever. Did you come up with that this morning while you were making your girlfriend her extravagant breakfast?" Callie smirked a bit at that, though whether it was from amusement at the barb or happiness at the memory itself I had no idea.

I brushed off the shoulder of my coat. "Extravagant? Oh, I'm sorry, is an omelette a difficult meal for you to prepare. I'm happy to do things for Callie but it was hardly necessary to put myself out for such a simple recipe. I think you're confusing my effort with your own incompetence." My faux haughty tone got a legitimate laugh from my girlfriend this time. Alone with an eyeroll.

"Alright you idiots." She said through her laughter. "You're both stoic badasses who don't wear your hearts on your sleeves and remain a mystery to those around you. Can we get back on topic now? I swear, going anywhere with the two of you is like herding cats." Despite the mocking words her tone was fond as she curled against me, and I put my arm around her as I laughed along.

Benny snickered a bit too. We both knew we were being stupid, but familiar childhood rituals were comforting. We spent the next hour or two talking about possible missions we could do to improve our rankings, provided we had enough time to squeeze them in. We wouldn't obviously, but it was nice to just go over some of the tasks we'd seen when we were first at the information hall from the perspective of someone with much more strength and ability than we could possibly have imagined when we first got to the Academy.

Part of me wanted to go challenge Fisher or one of the other heavy hitters from the scavenger hunt, just to see what they were capable of and how their growth stacked up to us. I dismissed it immediately, it seemed pretty unlikely they had managed to keep up Though Fisher in particular had been pretty terrifying and had a hell of a reputation for a freshman. Maybe he would surprise us. Plus there were always elixirs. Even if he did though, I doubted he would have the combat ability of members of the Titan Twenty. Looking back, Beat and Sever were exponentially scarier than any of the freshman we had come across, and they were the weakest of that lineup.

When we finally arrived at the school, we headed straight for Grimmengap's dorm. Sarah answered, and beamed as soon as she saw us. Stepping forward to give us each a hug. "Hey, guys! It's so good to see you. Been busy lately? We haven't heard from you in a while." She shot Benny a wink. "Celine has been extra quiet lately, and that's saying something. I don't think she's mad or anything, but she always seems happier when you're around."

My best friend's face lit up a bit at the thought that the pretty elf girl was so affected by his presence, and even I didn't have the heart to tease him about his obvious excitement. Jokes aside, I was really happy for Benny. I hoped he found with Celine what I had with Callie, and I reached down to lace my fingers with hers at the thought. She didn't look away from Sarah, but she squeezed my hand, her cheeks flushing slightly.

We headed inside to chat with the others before heading down to the information hall, and as we walked in I looked around with a wide smile. It felt...strange, to be back. It had been such a short time really, but we'd changed so much. Still, it was comfortable. We hadn't spent much time in the dorm, but it had been warm and welcoming for the time we had spent, it was nice to be back. I hoped not too long from now our friends would feel the same way about the pavilion. Until then it was just nice to be back.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 15, 2022

Celine and Martin were both thrilled to see us, though with Celine it was hard to tell. Still, I had enough Perception to pick up the minute signs of her excitement to have her boyfriend back. Not that it was at all obvious from the sedate way she approached him for an admittedly warm but brief hug. Jessie all but tackled her in a hug of her own after that, then hugged Sarah for good measure because she hadn't had a chance to do so earlier, and it was hard not to smile at our shortest team members enthusiasm.

We dropped into chairs around the room after the greetings, none of us in too big of a rush to get to the information hall. The points weren't going anywhere. I never stopped enjoying the moments of relaxation, mostly because I knew how few and far between they were. "So." I said jovially. "What have you all been up to while we were getting involved in political bullshit that was way over our heads? I get the feeling it was way more sensible than what we were doing for the last week or two."

I was curious what a 'normal' few weeks of advancement looked like for an average G-ranker, as much as that term could apply to any hero. Though I supposed some of the only job type cultivators on the planet were a bad example if I was looking for someone typical

Celine, who sat down next to Benny with graceful and remote poise (though not without slipping her hand into his surreptitiously) spoke up with a small smile. "Mostly we just did missions for the crafting hall. They aren't as lucrative as the ones at the information hall, but they're safer on the whole. Still, we haven't been lax. We've been developing quite the reputation among our classmates for efficiency and effectiveness. We've all made some decent gains from some of the feats we've accomplished. Nothing huge like the scavenger hunt, but enough small tasks add up."

"I bet." I said in interest. "I imagine that's a more stable way to progress. Don't you stop gaining points for the small tasks eventually though? Not that I know what kind you were doing, but I know that gains are based on the spread of your legend, and when people expect something from you, your renown doesn't exactly grow. Does doing the same level of task repeatedly really pay out over and over?"

Celine's placid expression broke into a shark like smile. The flash of teeth appeared and vanished too fast for most people to even notice, but none of us had trouble spotting it. "They might, except they seemed to be under the impression that we were suited to much lower level tasks. We may have been the first place team in the scavenger hunt, but people weren't sure how much progress we made. We started missions only slightly above the level of the last one we took, and people were shocked at how quickly we completed them."

Callie's jaw dropped open. "You sneaky bitch!" She said admiringly. "I would have never thought of sandbagging so I could put on a show of rapid growth." She cursed. "Shit. That would have been a great plan. I'm pissed you didn't share, not that I can blame you. Still though, I wouldn't be too smug about it. We might not have been as clever, but we made some damn good progress during our time away. You'd barely even recognize us if you saw us in battle after all we've been through."

It was hard to read her, but I was pretty sure I saw a flash of competitive interest in Celine's normally tranquil eyes. Benny, who probably DIDN'T want to have to deal with his girlfriend being annoyed when we unilaterally curb stomped her team in a friendly sparring match, interrupted before things got too far. "By the way Cel, did you guys hear about this new tournament for this special F-ranked dungeon? Apparently a ton of the strongest fighters from the whole star system are heading here to compete in it."

Whether he actually wanted to share, or had told her last night on the phone and was trying to change the subject I had no idea, but if he had she hadn't mentioned it to the others, because Sarah looked intrigued. Tournament? I knew there was a regular one around here, but it sounds like you're talking about something a bit bigger. What can you tell us about it? Sounds like you guys are signing up, and if you're in we might have a shot too." She gave us a wide grin at that last part, obviously meaning it half in jest, though also being half serious.

I picked it up from there, figuring I'd help my buddy out with his distraction. "It's aimed at peak G-rankers. Apparently the participants will be expected to break through after the winners are decided before being allowed to actually get in. I've been thinking over the reason, and while supposedly it's to prevent the larger forces from using their foundations to bully the smaller ones, I'm pretty sure it's meant to be an equalizer of sorts. Ranks can span a wide range of stat totals. By making sure that only newly Ascended F-rankers enter, they ensure that the fighters all have around a thousand points total."

I didn't mention that this was Callie's theory, though my girlfriend gave me a slight smirk for taking credit. I didn't care though, I would have come up with it eventually. It wasn't my fault she was a sneaky political mastermind. Besides, she got credit for all the stuff-punching I did. We were a team, which meant we should share all of our accomplishments equally. I paused for a second before sighing, even I couldn't think that with a straight face. So I added. "At least that's what Callie thinks. It sounds legit to me though."

She gave me a look of surprise tinged with gratitude, and I was suddenly much less embarrassed to be giving up credit. I'd have given up plenty more of it to see that look on her face. I don't think it really would have bothered her if I took credit, but it definitely meant something to her that I didn't. I kind of felt like I'd just passed some kind of boyfriend test that neither of us realized I was taking. I wasn't going to question it. If I'd made her happy that was good enough, no need to think too much about it.

Celine, coughed politely, drawing my attention to the fact that we'd kind of been having a moment that excluded everyone else in public. I cocked my head inquiringly, not bothering to feel abashed or self-conscious about that. She smiled slightly. "That certainly sounds like an interesting event to participate in. Do you know any of the details of how it's going to work?"

"Sure." I said casually. "We know that much like the majority of Ascendant events it's aimed at groups of ten. The winner gets ten slots to the Moonsong Glade. We have an agreement for slots with another group, so if we win we'll need to give up three. You guys can sign up as well, I'm told that it's an open tournament. There's going to be G-rankers from other planets all over the system though. I think there will be more than just the ten entering, maybe from other systems, but I haven't had a chance to confirm that."

I made sure to point out that they could sign up, because we weren't going to be inviting them to come with us. As much as I'd have loved to bring them, there was no chance they were at a level that they could help us actually win. With possible access to powerhouses like Cark, Abel, and Mel, it would be stupid to team up with relative newbies like Grimmengap. Of course, I didn't say that directly, and Callie could change her mind, but I knew my girlfriend well enough to understand how pragmatic she could be.

They didn't seem to take offense at least, Celine looked intrigued and kind of excited, and the other two just looked interested in the event. I breathed an internal sigh of relief at the fact that I hadn't accidentally started a fight by excluding them. I flicked my eyes to Callie, mentally passing the ball now that the explanation was done, and she stood, clapping her hands once purposefully. "Well! We can look into that more on the way, but I'd love to hit the information hall. We have a mission to turn in, and I'd really love to see how high it pushes our ranking up."

Everyone stood at that, not bothered to be done relaxing. We still weren't in a hurry, and I doubted we would run or anything, but where we all hung out didn't matter, and advancement was always at least partly on all of our minds. Besides, we could still talk on the way, being around others would just limit the topics a bit. We headed for the information hall, and as we went, Sarah dragged Jessie ahead and started asking her all about our adventures, and catching us up on theirs.

Grimmengap had been on several interesting missions while we had been away, I had to admit. Hunting a red cap tribe, a village of goblins out in the wilderness, an actual fucking minotaur, and tracking down and capturing an Ascendant with a specialized racial trait (a lamia) who had been poisoning search parties recently. Sarah's priest abilities left her able to neutralize poisons pretty well ( the church dealt with the black sorrow cult often, and the cultists LOVED poison) which made them an ideal party to track down the G-ranked devil.

The more monstrous bearers of racial traits were often lumped in as devils, while the more abstract ones were often called spirits. Not that devils should be confused with Devils, who, as we had been told, were a subspecies of that overarching group that were a whole other level of scary. The Wendigo had been a devil, and the lamia was the same, making it really impressive Grimmengap had managed to subdue one. I was pretty sure it hadn't been as scary as the one we fought, but even being in the same category made it terrifying.

In turn, Jessie filled our friends in on us joining up with the Beast Lord Garden, and a sanitized version of our adventures in G-district, minus any sensitive information. That left her more room than I'd have suspected. It always amazed me how clever Jessie could be while keeping up that same impression of cheerful obliviousness. She was sharp as a knife when she needed to be.

By the time she finished talking, she'd managed to tell most of the story without giving away any secrets, and had roused Grimmengap's interest in the Starchaser Pavilion as a whole, getting them to promise to come visit after we finished our business on campus. Considering how small the Pavilion currently was it would be amazing to have them come check it out and possibly join up. Especially if word got out about the place and some of the other Academy students got involved as well.

As a guest elder, I was allied with the Beast Lord Garden, but not exactly part of it, which meant the Pavilion had the unique benefit of being a new and completely separate G-ranked force with explicit E-ranked backing. We were too new to matter to the old timers, and too powerful to be messed with by upstarts, and I looked forward to seeing what we could do with a faction like that. Especially after we kicked ass at the tournament, I had a feeling people would be hearing all about the Starchaser Pavilion in the future, and I couldn't wait.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 16, 2022

The trip to the information hall was a short one, just getting our missions out of the way. We managed to find a second one that we had accomplished by accident, which was nice, and between the points my own ranking jumped up to two hundred forty five thousand eight hundred and six. Ir probably would have been a bigger jump, but a week or two with no progress had caused a serious ranking drop for us, and honestly I was lucky I managed to get higher than I had originally been at all.

Once we got through that we headed for the pavilion as we'd talked about, and once we arrived, Callie, Benny, and Jessie took Grimmengap to be introduced to the others while I got the wishes for Sloane and co. out of the way. I actually managed to get some Fantasy this time, fifteen points bringing me up to a grand total of thirty six. Apparently Croll had a surplus of the stat, which crossed off one thing on my list.

Finally, I joined back up with the others, who were being introduced to Abel, Mel, and Alden. Everyone noticed me when I appeared and I gave a short wave. "Hey all, sorry had to check in with our people from Beast Lord Garden. How goes the introductions? Did you show them the obstacle course yet? Because seriously, that place is pretty fantastic." I had been floored my first time seeing it, and it was amazing for training, even if it made me a bit uncomfortable while it was actually in use.

Sarah was looking around in awe, clearly the most excited of the group. "No, but that sounds interesting. This whole place is amazing. I saw funnel cake on the way in. I love funnel cake. I'm definitely going to get some as we're leaving. I can't believe I missed it when I was here before." She was practically bouncing in excitement, and I had to fight down a smile at the enthusiasm.

"Actually." I said with amusement. "I had wanted to check in with Mel and Abel about a few things." I glanced at the red bearded man whose leg I still had to offer to regrow. "Alden, can you show our friends around?You're the only one Cicero probably isn't too annoyed at right now. I wanted to talk to you as well, but it can wait until later. " I really didn't want to regrow his leg in the middle of the Pavilion while everyone was around. I'd offer him the wish later when we had a chance to talk in private.

He just chuckled. "Aye. The boy may have irritated his brother a bit with his earlier bullying. I can show them around." He turned a welcoming smile on Sarah. "You mentioned funnel cake, little miss? I know the best stall for it, and perhaps a few other delicious treats you might enjoy." He gestured for her to follow, and Sarah trailed after, already excitedly listing some of the things she hadn't gotten to try last time we were down here.

Celine and Martin trailed behind, the elf girl dragging Benny along by the hand stoically enough that if I couldn't see her gripping him I wouldn't have thought she cared one way or the other. Jessie decided to tag along with them, leaving Callie and I alone with Mel and Abel, which had been what I was aiming at. I turned to the rabbit masked man. "Ok, first thing. Did you hear back about the ransom yet? Is the Pavilion allowed to keep that? We did capture them in the first place, and the negotiation is through the Beast Lord Garden."

Abel laughed. "Hello to you too Solomon. But yes to both. We made the exchange. We forced them to cough up a hundred F-ranked chits per person. Sanctuary Hall are stupidly wealthy so I figured I'd really put the screws to them. We have the funds earmarked for faction development, but we didn't want to actually spend them before consulting you." He grimaced. "Damn, I hate being a person who says things like that now. I can't believe I have a...BOSS." He shuddered theatrically.

"You always had a boss." Mel snorted. "I just wasn't paying you for your services." Ignoring her boyfriend's mortified look that she had said that in front of us, she continued. "As for the funds...I can go over options with you if you want, or I can invest it in growth for you. I've been running this place for years. I don't have a problem with you kids taking over if it means I'm finally free of Cicero's nonsense, but that doesn't make me any less experienced at the day to day."

I glanced over to Callie, giving her a nod, and she shot Mel a warm smile. "Hey, we aren't stupid. We don't know anything about this place. We put you both in charge because you knew what to do better than us. Invest the money how you want. Maybe talk to Sloane though. Beast Lord Garden are allies of ours, they might be able to set you up with some tamed beasts or something." She paused. "Actually we might be able to do that. Agria is a hell of a tamer." She waited a bit then shook her head. "Nah, stick with the experts. I think Agria needs to be around consistently to make that arrangement."

Mel looked intrigued. "I'll ask them about it. Even if we don't go that route, I'm sure they're in touch with some useful people. In either case, thank you for trusting us. This whole thing kind of came out of left field, but I appreciate you trying to work with us on this more than you can know." Her voice softened as her eyes turned to Abel. "It's one of the many amazing things that I can hardly believe are happening right now. My life has gone through quite a few changes, and all for the good."

Returning the smile I could hear in her tone, Abel reached out and took her hand. Knowing how long they had been apart neither Callie nor I could bear to cut things off when there wasn't some urgent crisis coming so we gave them their moment, which admittedly dragged on for longer than was really comfortable for us (though taking my own girlfriends hand and squeezing tightly certainly helped, as we stared at what might be future versions of us, hopefully without the long time apart in between).

Finally he let her hand fall. Neither of them cleared their throat uncomfortably or tried to redirect attention, they just moved on from the moment, no indecision or embarrassment like a less stable couple might have had. As they refocused I turned to Abel. "So, with that out of the way, we had something we were hoping to talk to you both about. Something we think will help with the Pavilion's reputation as well as all of our personal power. What do you know about the Moonsong Glade?"

The rabbit masked man shrugged. "Never heard of it. Doesn't exactly sound local, but to be fair, Callus is big, so there's a non zero chance that it could be some small faction or location no one has ever mentioned to me. Still, if it was somewhere important I'd think I would know about it. Am I to take it this is some newly discovered spot that could be a benefit to us?"

"Not exactly." I said uncertainly. "Or maybe? I'm honestly not clear on that. I know it's a dungeon, a very important one. I know that there's a tournament that involves everyone in the system that's coming up. If we win we get ten slots to enter. I doubt we'll be the only ones, but I'm not sure who else might be there? Maybe people from something bigger than the star system? Whatever that is. Point is I don't know if Moonsong Glade is NEW but I know it's new to us."

He waved a hand casually. "Same thing. Dungeons are all old as dirt, but recently rediscovered is the same thing as new for our purposes. It's a star cluster by the way. Star systems are smaller portions of star clusters. There are usually ten of them in each." He paused. "I've never been sure why they divide them like that. Someone out there really is really obsessed with the number ten. Anyway, that means a hundred people will be entering, if it's a cluster event. I take it you want to enter this tournament?"

I nodded. "Exactly. The place is apparently able to spawn resources that let people increase Impact, which is huge. It would give us a massive boost against anyone our own rank, and help bridge the gap fighting up ranks. The only issue is that while the tournament is aimed at G-rankers, the dungeon itself is F-rank exclusive. If you wanted to participate you would need to rank up. I know how long you've been at G-rank, I wasn't sure you would be willing."

"What?" Abel asked, tone confounded as he blinked in confusion. "Why would I not want to rank up?" I blinked back. I'd been expecting to have to convince him, and had about a dozen arguments lined up for reasons that this would be a good thing for the Pavilion and him in particular.

Cocking my head, I cautiously said. "Because you spent years at G-rank, and went out of your way not to gather any extra attention or break through, presumably so you could reinforce your foundation and become stronger at your current level? Asking you to throw all that away for my own plan just seemed kind of shitty, but I'm not sure we can win without you so I decided to give it a shot."

The gale of laughter that came out as a response to that was NOT the reply I had expected. Abel doubled over cackling at something I didn't think was that funny, but I patiently waited for him to get the laugh out of his system. "Oh wow." He said, wiping away a tear of laughter. "I needed that. Thanks. But no, I'm not some kind of eternal G-ranker who wants to become skilled enough to take on the whole universe without ever Ascending. There are limits to even my hubris. I had reasons to stick to this rank, but they're pretty much all gone at this point."

Mel shrugged. "I mostly stuck around at this level because I wanted to take care of the Pavilion while he was gone. If I ranked up I would have been leaving them under Cicero's control when I inevitably ended up heading to F-district. Now that we aren't a member of his faction anymore, and our new one has ties to E-district, we have a lot more leeway to control how things go down here without stepping on toes even if we rank up. I'd be down to fight in a tournament if you guys need me. It would be a nice way to break back onto the scene."

"Hell yes." Abel said excitedly. "So many people have forgotten me. Now that I'm not living in self imposed exile I'm itching for a fight. Plus, if we're talking foundation, early Impact advancement is the best foundation build up you can do. No way I'd miss something like that." He looked us over. "You do realize that in order to do this you're going to need to be at the edge of a breakthrough when we go into the tournament? You're also nowhere near tough enough to manage against most of the Titan Twenty."

Chuckling, I just said. "Yeah, that's kind of the other reason we came here. We'd been training with Alden, but I'd be pretty interested in getting some lessons from you two. Especially on cooperative combat. The two of us work well together, but you guys are like magic. It'll be tough to squeeze in, since the tournament is only two months out, but we have confidence we can manage. So, what do you say, you two up to do some team training?" Somewhere deep down, a part of me that had mostly died out after all the craziness of my life whispered to me that the vicious grin Abel gave at the question probably boded ill for us. That was just paranoia though, right?

Malcolm Tent · Dec 19, 2022

"Ow!" I yelped as a rock smacked into the back of my skull. The stone turned to powder on impact, having been thrown hard enough to break on my higher ranked head. I reached up to grip my head with a hiss of pain, spinning around to try to spot the person who threw it. Something I had no luck doing while wearing this gods damned blindfold. I heard a chuckle to one side and whirled to face that direction. "How is this a useful training exercise?" I snarled at Abel, who was completely hidden from my sight.

Abel's voice echoed around us. "I already told you this. When you're working with a partner, you need to be able to function as if you're two halves of a whole. It's not enough to just cover their back. You need to abandon your own defense and dedicate yourself solely to theirs. A proper partnership means you can unleash your full attack power at all times with no thought to defending yourself. Protecting your partner can be done offensively, but in order for that to work, you need absolute trust."

I whirled uselessly in circles, listening for the sound of stones flying. Not near me, but off to the side where Callie stood. I couldn't resist pointing out the obvious though. "Yes, but there has to be a better way to do that than...THIS. This is ridiculous-" My eyes widened behind my mask as I heard a sound, shooting out to attack the spot I heard the stone split the air. My fist hit nothing and I heard Callie yelp in pain as the sound of a rock being destroyed against a human skull rang dully in the air.

I winced. "Sorry baby." I got a snarly of annoyance in response, but Callie didn't speak. It was my turn now anyway though, so it wasn't like it would matter. Still, I had to admit, I HAD actually noticed that attack, if belatedly. I groaned. "Ok. I get the basic idea, but can you explain the actual mechanics of this bullshit again? Because if you can't make it make sense, I'm going to assume you just like throwing rocks at us."

That got a snicker from our teacher. "Fine. I'll explain it one more time. When you're operating as part of a team, you are half of a whole. Concentrating one protecting yourself and working with your partner are TWO tasks. Separate tasks that detract from each other. However, when you abandon self defense and dedicate yourself completely to cooperation, you reach a level cohesion impossible when you're just two independent entities supporting one another."

There was another whoosh of air and a crack against my skull as I staggered under another rock blow, yelping in pain. I wasn't allowed to block his attacks on me. Only the ones aimed at Callie. I also wasn't allowed to fucking SEE. Apparently the point of this was to hone our instinctual response to danger aimed at the other to work indistinguishably from our own survival instinct. By making it perfect reflex to defend the other person, we would have deeper integration in combat.

Being able to see the attacks coming would make this a conscious effort rather than a reflexive action. So we both got to wear fucking blindfolds and try to defend the other person in darkness based on intuition and the brief instant of noise when the rock was launched. I sighed, devoting myself to perceiving...everything. I really needed to get this down, since we apparently wouldn't be allowed to stop until we managed it.

I closed my eyes (not that it mattered with the blindfold, but it just felt right) and focused on my senses. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch. Literally anything that could function in a helpful way. I could have used a skill obviously. Seek Hidden would be perfect here. But despite my complaining I was mildly interested to see if this would work. I already felt like I was seeing some results, and I didn't want to ruin my possible gains by cheating. It would defeat the whole fucking purpose of asking for their help if we just ignored them.

A sigh of air split the space a few feet to my side, and I lashed out at the spot as quickly as possible. At the last second though, I altered my course, aiming instead right in front of where the thing had been when I heard it. I didn't manage to actually land the hit, but I DID manage to slightly graze it. I heard a grunt from Callie, but it sounded different. "Time out!" Mel called. "That was actually close to a proper hit. Not exactly reflexive, you're thinking too much, but it's progress, so you can have a break."

I took off my blindfold, glancing over to see Callie brushing grey dust off her shoulder. The slight graze had changed the trajectory slightly. That wasn't bad. Still. I had to question the process. "Ok. Being able to properly predict attacks is great and all, but I don't think this is having the effect you think it is. I'm just learning to predict attacks, and there are less stupid ways to do that."

Mel snickered at that. "Do you think so? Quick question then. If you just heard the sound of the air being disturbed and reacted, how did you know what direction it was heading? You didn't just predict where it was going, you managed to perfectly match that prediction to where your partner was standing so you could properly react to it. You showed an innate grasp of exactly where Nightstrike was positioned without needing to call out to her or bother with verbal
communication."

Abel stepped into view, tossing a rock up and down casually. "She's right. You might not think you're learning anything, but your baseline awareness of each other IS improving. It's just a slow and irritating process to go through. Trust me. We did this training too. It's never fun." He paused, catching the rock. "Well, that's not true. It's fun actually DOING it to someone. But experiencing the training is never fun."

"I get it." I said with annoyance. "I just wish I felt like we were managing this effectively instead of stumbling through it. Can we take a minute though? I need some time to kind of mentally reset." Abel looked dubious for a second, but finally nodded, and I exhaled with relief. There was such a thing as too much training. Sometimes your brain needed to shift back to a receptive state before you could learn more.

Producing a small case from his coat, he gestured us over to the edge of the ring to sit down. We were in the Pavilion, using some sort of training setup that he'd had on hand, bracelets that partially suppressed Perception, and probably did other things I didn't notice.

When we all sat down he opened the case and started pulling out what looked a bit like energy bars, passing one to each of us. I took mine, sniffed it experimentally, then took a bit. I was pleasantly surprised by the taste of strawberries and cream, and chewed happily. Eventually though, I swallowed and turned to Abel with a question. "Can I ask you something? It might be a little abrupt, maybe even personal depending how you look at it?"

He just shrugged, seemingly uncaring, and I paused to figure out how to frame my next words. "How do you do it?" I asked. "How do you kill people so casually? We killed a bunch of people in the sige, I killed them. I know it was necessary, that they would have killed or hurt us, but it still makes me sick just thinking about it. How do you learn to ignore the part of you that recoils at that?"

Rather than be offended, Abel just made a noise of understanding and interest, like I'd asked something very interesting. "I suppose to answer that I would need to really know when it happened. My case was a bit different though. Cicero and I lost our parents young, and I think that triggered our abilities sooner than was normal. We were still children when our powers came to the forefront. We ended up down here, where Alden took us in, and we were raised for this kind of life from a very young age."

He looked at Mel wistfully. "Mel was already here when we arrived. She awakened even earlier than we did. I never asked why. Didn't seem right. I suppose none of us ever had the resistance to ending others that normal people develop and Ascendants unlearn. For other Ascendants, I suppose part of it is recursion. Cultivation is brutal, we all know it deep down, we all know that there are only so many stories to tell, and that for ours to continue others must end, even if we fight it."

"But." He said. "If you're asking how to turn that off, how to stop caring when you take a life...don't. It's inconvenient, and messy, but caring like that makes you better. It's a little bit of humanity that other Ascendants mostly don't have. Touchstones like that are, somewhat counterintuitively good for holding off other forms of recursion as you grow. If nurtured properly, you can use that as a foundation to build the person you are in such a way that you'll come out stronger for it." He sighed. "I'm explaining this badly, but it isn't something you can understand without a decade or two of recursion behind you. Just trust me. Don't stop caring. Not until you have to."

It was strange talking to someone at the same rank as me that was already so much further into their life as an Ascendant. Even stranger because he felt so much further along the process of becoming a legend than I was. We had the same Impact, but it felt like he'd left behind so much more of his humanity. Was it the time? Was I somehow avoiding recursion by sprinting through the ranks? But then again had I really? I'd changed so much since becoming an Ascendant.

Maybe it was the fact that I was a superhero. Abel wasn't exactly a villain, the WCP didn't really delineate that kind of thing, but he wasn't considered a hero even back in the day. Abel was closer to a pure cultivator than a heroic cultivator. Hell, I didn't even know if he used the job system. That wasn't the kind of thing you asked someone who was already going out of their way to help you. The subject of recursion never failed to unsettle me when it came up.

I just sighed. This shit was complicated. I finished my power bar and popped to my feet, putting the wrapper in my pocket. "Alright. I think that's enough philosophy. I believe you two still have rocks to throw at our heads. I'd like to get this training out of the way so we can move on. You said this is a necessary first step right?" I was now mostly convinced it wasn't just an excuse to beat on us, but I couldn't help but ask one more time. My questions couldn't possibly be more annoying than the training itself, so I hardly had a reason to feel bad.

Abel stood up, stretching casually despite having been doing nothing but throwing rocks at us for like two hours. "Once your awareness of each other has reached an instinctive level we can begin combat training. I'm not going to start teaching you when you'll just develop bad habits you'll need to unlearn. This is the first step, we need to get it right so the following ones will be built on a stable foundation." He tossed a rock up and caught it, giving me a vicious grin. "Now, blindfolds back on. We have work to do." Joy. My head was aching already.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 20, 2022

It took us the whole day to manage to properly internalize each other's positions to an instinctual level. I was almost positive we were doing it in a way that shouldn't even be possible, though I suspected the senses we got from the Fantasy stat were playing a part. Once we managed that, we were allowed to go home, with instructions to come back the next day bright and early.

When we did return, I got my wishes out of the way first thing, another fifteen points in Fantasy to shore up my biggest weakness, and because I was starting to see how valuable that stat actually was. I'd been using all five on the crew from the Beast Lord Garden, despite being able to spare two a day, because I really needed the points for the moment. I had to do three minimum, but I wasn't limited to three wishes for them. I'd be free to use those spare two wishes a day for Callie soon enough, just as long as I didn't push her past G-rank.

Today, the exercise had changed. The blindfolds were gone, in exchange we were expected to fight against ten Pavilion fighters without using any active Skills. Balam Mastery for example was fine, as was Gymnastics, but DS Mastery was out. I'd expected the training from the day before to be immensely useful for our battle, and it definitely was, but not quite as much as I had hoped. I was able to intuit and intercept blows aimed at Callie, but only when I could reach them, which with so many different points of attack wasn't all the time.

Abel, to my surprise, didn't seem even remotely disturbed by this. During one of our breaks, I asked him about it, and his response shed some light on things. "Of course you aren't keeping up." He said with exasperation. "I told you that the rock exercise was only step one. I also told you step two would involve combat. This would be that. Learning to integrate your combat style into a whole is about more than keeping in mind where your other half is and reacting when they're attacked."

"How to explain this?" He asked rhetorically, stopping to gather his thoughts. "What you have right now, is the beginnings of an instinct. You react when your partner is attacked, by that isn't true cohesion, it's just a learned reflex. You've spent years training yourself and being trained by experience to protect your own body first. Your instinct is to survive, and then to react after that. You still need to unlearn that. The reflex you gained yesterday is the beginning of that process, but not even remotely close to the end."

He didn't bother allowing me any more questions, just sent me back out to fight, but as I experienced things, I understood. Deflecting an attack against Callie was beginning to be instinct, but that was still limited. I was reacting, but it was because I was prepared to react. I was waiting for it. This was all still a conscious effort on my part, even if that was fading. It would take more than a few hours of training to completely abandon all of my survival instincts in battle and learn to rely entirely on a partner.

Even thinking about it like that felt...dangerous. So much could go wrong. That was the point though. Trust. Absolute knowledge of and faith in your partner. I'd seen what it led to during the siege, seen what that kind of combat style could become. Mel and Abel were monsters alone, but they were a force of nature together. Granted, the instincts couldn't be completely abandoned. I knew that. Abel fought alone at times, as did Mel, and if they had just thrown away all survival instinct at those times they would probably be dead.

I assumed that would be covered later in the lessons though. For now, we just had to focus on being part of the whole, on knowing each other better than we knew ourselves. As we fought though, that seemed to become easier and easier. The training we'd done together over the months and the awareness we had developed blended together into one cohesive whole, letting us operate on a level that was already far beyond what we'd been able to do before.

It wasn't enough. Not yet. These were Pavilion warriors, powerful and skilled combatants who focused on martial prowess above all else, and they were a unified fighting force. Not like we were trying to become, but they knew each other, and they weren't liabilities to each other. Our biggest advantage was in the Balam Mastery Skill actually. Callie and I both used Balam for our combat style, and the circular nature made a shifting front much easier to manage. Circling each other and taking advantage of this new defensive sense we had.

The longer it went on, the more sense I made of what Abel had said. I was waiting for Callie to be attacked even now, but it was an action I was taking. The downsides to that became apparent under the barrage of attacks. After I intercepted one, my body began to relax because I'd accomplished my goal. I wasn't in danger, and I'd defended Callie like I planned, so my task was done. It left me vulnerable for the followups and to attacks from other angles.

I had to continue to polish this instinct like he'd said, to become more in tune with danger to my partner and less in tune with danger to myself. It didn't help that my normal survival instincts were screaming at me to react to attacks on my person. Trusting Callie to protect me mentally was great, but it was harder to force my body to ignore danger, which slowed me down and interrupted my flow of battle as my muscles tensed. That might not be much normally, but against attackers this good, it was a big problem.

Which was the point. Making sure we had to perfect the skills they had started us learning to advance. I desperately wanted to use my overlay for this training, but I knew that having an instruction manual would actually be a liability here. I was supposed to be training my reactions, and being able to see attacks coming would make me dependent on that skill. So I just kind of...unfocused. Let myself completely relax and just take in information.

I winced as a hammer slammed into my ribs. "Sorry!" Shouted Callie, even as I reacted to an attack aimed at her back without even seeing it. My cane whirled up to smack into a metal ball at the end of a long chain before it could hit her skull, my instincts adding up all the little signs of the attack and reacting to them flawlessly. I shot my girlfriend a thumbs up, which she returned with a happy smile...at least until the end of a staff slammed into her eye, sending her stumbling back, cursing in pain.

I cursed alongside her, and followed after, knowing they would attack while she was distracted. "My bad honey. I'm having trouble sticking with this whole thing. After blocking the first attack my instincts are just turning off." I scowled over at Abel, shouting to my mentor. "How long is it going to take before we completely convert our instincts in to protective instead of survival?"

That got a laugh from the rabbit masked man. "What? No, that isn't what we're doing. You're learning to stay in that state for the duration of the fight. Completely abandoning your survival instincts would be crazy, and it would also take literally years to learn. That shit is hard coded into your body, it would take more than a few training session to get you to abandon that. Think of this more as a state of meditation you're learning to enter."

Blinking slowly, I nodded. That made much more sense. Thinking back, none of his speeches had mentioned abandoning that intuition completely. Just changing it. I probably should have figured that I'd be learning to do this for short periods of time. It made so much more sense, and it was much less daunting to think about too. I'd been worried deep down about the viability of doing something so drastic in such a short time. This seemed like a more feasible goal.

That was all the distraction I could manage before I took a blow to the side of the head. Abel laughed, calling over. "Do you really think holding a conversation right now is a good plan? You're having enough trouble with this as it is. Adding another person to take up your attention is bound to ruin the flow of battle. Not that you won't need to learn that eventually, but ignoring distractions is the next lesson. You have to walk before you can run kid."

Letting out a growl of annoyance I stepped closer to Callie. I couldn't defend myself, and if she didn't do it I'd be screwed, which meant I had to defend her and stop getting distracted by Abel's nonsense. I was distracting her too, which was just making all of this worse. My cane flashed out, knocking a pair of blows away from her and then whirled the other way, intercepting another blow from that damn chain ball.

I had to stop myself from freezing at that. I'd done it. Only for a second, but I'd been so distracted I hadn't had to focus at all on ignoring my survival instinct, just losing myself in the task of protection with no interruption. Callie's fist smashed into the hammer I'd been hit by earlier, defending me before I even noticed the attack, and I gave her a nod of thanks. That had been exactly what was supposed to happen here.

Which was frustrating because now I couldn't tell if Abel was fucking with me to see me get my ass kicked or if he was actively doing his job. I was beginning to regret this decision. Abel was an effective fighter, but as a teacher he was kind of an asshole. Alden was nowhere near this sadistic. Probably. Ok I still didn't know how many of those training techniques were real and how many were just him messing with us. But if he was as sadistic he was at least better at hiding it.

I lost myself in battle after that. The feel of the occasional painful strike enough to sometimes bring me back to myself enough to note when an hour passed here or there. I managed to fall into that meditative state he mentioned a few times, but every time it happened I noticed it and got excited, knocking me back out of it and usually causing me to freeze up and get hit. I really needed Jessie to patch me up, but Abel had forbidden us to use her ability, saying that the euphoria from the supercharge would unbalance us and skew the results of the training.

Finally he called a halt to the session. "Alright that's enough." His voice rang out over the Pavilion ring with authority. Mel wasn't here for this part, saying she had paperwork to do and that it wasn't necessary here anyway. As everyone filed away, Abel jumped down and strolled over to look down at where Callie and I were slumped, panting, on the ground. "Decent effort you two. I'd say at this rate you'll need three more days of this before we move onto the next phase. You have the rest of the day off, but be back here at dawn tomorrow."

He turned and walked away, missing my middle finger being aimed at his back. I probably could have told him what an asshole he was, but I was too tired to muster up a sentence, so I just let it go. I slumped against Callie, who groaned lightly but didn't push me away. Then I just lay there, sore and exhausted as my girlfriend reached up to play with my hair. I smiled slightly. I had to admit, this part was kind of nice. Still wasn't worth it though.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 21, 2022

A week. A week of constant ass kicking, three days of the group fights alone, then four more days of group fights while Abel did his best to actively distract us. That week got me seventy points, as well as seven attacks to stockpile. Thirty five wishes. The seventy points were distributed to my stats mostly evenly. Fifty to Fantasy, bringing it up to a hundred and one, and then ten each to Perception and Creation bringing them to one hundred even and one hundred and two respectively.

Knowing I could get to that point without dedicating every wish to stats, we started letting Callie make the two remaining wishes after the contractually obligated three for the Beast Lord Garden for the last two days, as well as giving her one for the third to last. The seven shadow attacks brought me to an even ten, and Callie dumped all thirty five points into Fantasy as she'd been considering bringing her to an even hundred and twenty.

It was a truly staggering windfall for us, rounding us out in multiple important ways, and we saw the benefit of almost none of it during our training. Abel refused to let us use Skills, and had made sure to engage suppression to prevent us from abusing our stats to compensate for the numbers, so while we were growing more powerful, it didn't have a pronounced effect on our combat abilities as it happened.

That wasn't to say our combat abilities didn't improve. They definitely did. Even with the suppression, our cooperation for smoother and more intuitive as we went on. As we progressed, Abel started throwing us curve balls to distract us. Making us switch to fighting alone against half the attackers, then staggering the numbers, and at one point throwing ACTUAL curveballs at us from behind when we were mid battle to try to ruin our focus.

We reacted to all of them as seamlessly as possible, making some mistakes at the beginning, but slowly growing more comfortable slipping into our 'teamwork trance' and then back out of it. Even the curveballs weren't landing by the end of the week, Callie and I able to defend each other even from Abel's absolutely monstrous sense of spatial awareness and eye for weaknesses. He wasn't using his power to attack us or anything, but we had definitely come a long way and I was proud of our progress.

Which is why I was deeply concerned when we showed up to the Pavilion and I found not ten people, but two, standing in the circle of dirt waiting for us. Mel and Abel were standing relaxed, seemingly unconcerned with our arrival as they waved us over without looking up from a game of chess they were playing at a small table. Abel held up a finger to ask us to hold, and then continued the game, effectively ignoring us for about twenty minutes as the two of them finished up their game, not appearing to hurry at all.

When they finished, I expected them to stop, but again, I was thrown for a loop as they reset the pieces. This time though, Abel began to speak. "We've been working with you for a bit over a week now, and you've gotten much better about your awareness. Your instinctive grasp over each other's position is passing now, at least when you try. In the process of that, however, your combat styles have both changed from what they were. The version of you that fights next to your partner, and the version of you who fights BESIDE them, react to things in different ways."

He made a move, and Mel clucked her tongue in annoyance before picking up the thread of the conversation. "What my cryptic ass of a boyfriend is trying to say, in the most pretentious way possible, is that you need to relearn each others habits. You know how your partner fights, but that's changed. Proper cooperation is built with trust, and trust is built with knowledge and communication. The better you know someone, the more at ease you can feel when putting yourself in their hands."

I raised a skeptical eyebrow behind my mask. "So...you want us to play chess? I assume that's where this is going and that we aren't just here to spectate your own games? Because I don't think even you two can convince me that watching you play a board game is a viable training method for team combat." Mel glanced over at me with a chuckle, which faded into a curse as Abel made another move.

"No." She said. "You will be playing. As for the reason...well, chess has lots of correlation with real battle. It's limited and constrained enough not to be a great representation of combat, but that serves our purposes perfectly here. We WANT limited and constrained for this part. You need to build your understanding of each other back up slowly. Of course, you aren't going to be playing to a win. Beating another person is easy. Fuck, who uses an en passant anymore?" She cleared her throat as she realized she'd trailed off. "Sorry, as I was saying, easy. What we want you to do is play to a stalemate. Well, one of you. The other one will be trying for a win. That'll alternate."

That was...harder. I knew the rules for chess, my dad had taught me as a kid. He hadn't exactly been around, but he sent tasks for me to do and contacted me remotely often enough as a child. Chess was easy to play over long distances, and it fit well with his mindset. Still, she was right. Winning a chess game was MUCH easier than trying to force a draw. At least against an opponent trying to beat you. I could already see how annoying this was going to be. Still, I saw the logic at least, and I was pretty sure Callie did too.

It took about a half hour for the game to finish and when it did they stood up and gestured to us to sit down. "Ok." Said Abrl. "Solomon is up first, you're going to be the one trying for a draw. Let's see how well you know Nightstrike. Pay close attention to her play style and how it compares to the way she acts in combat. Learning the way that kind of thing translates is the key to being able to predict her moves. If you can't learn to do it with something as structured as chess you have no shot in a real fight."

I sat down and started to play, going slowly and taking my time. Unsurprisingly, Abel didn't stop talking as we had our game,continuing to wax philosophical. "If it helps, this isn't just a benefit to combat. It's really good for your relationship to learn how the other person thinks. Being able to intuit your partners emotions is the key to a successful courtship." His tone was distant in a way that implied he was trying for wisdom, but it was cut off by his ear being grabbed roughly. "Ow, ow, ow Mel that hurts!"

The red masked woman was glaring down at her boyfriend. "Are you really in a position to be giving these kids relationship advice after running off on me for years? If so, maybe you can educate me too. Tell me, what kind of emotions are your intuition picking up from me right now?" The half of Abel's face exposed by the mask paled as his eyes widened like a deer in headlights. Seeing a guy that powerful cowering like that was pretty sad. I would have laughed at him for it, but I felt like Callie might get upset at me for being petty.

I very deliberately ignored the irony as I chose to focus on helping Abel out. "So, is this the last step in this hare brained training you have us doing? Because I'm anxious to get to the point where we can train with actual Skills." I was lucky I had so many points to give to Callie actually, because I would need a LOT of shadow attacks for all the training we were planning on doing. Just a shame she needed them more than the others, I really could have used some more fire attacks. I would be sure to get some from Cark before the tournament.

Abel's eyes snapped from fearful to suspicious so fast it became clear he had mostly been playing up the patheticness for Mel's amusement as he glared at me. "First of all. No rabbit jokes. You're better than that, and if your aren't, I have MUCH more intense training I can subject you to until you are." He pulled away from Mel. "Second of all. No. There's another step after this before we allow Skill use. But it's combat oriented so I'm sure you'll enjoy it quite a bit." The way he was grinning at the thought made me pretty suspicious of that prediction, but I couldn't spend too much time watching because I was busy.

The game itself ran for about an hour. Playing for a stalemate was weird. I'd learned chess with the express purpose of victory, and playing against someone to essentially make sure no one won, was a radically different mindset. Rather than playing for position, I was aiming to exchange as many pieces as possible just to free up the space to box her in. Lots of amateurs played that way even in serious games, but rapid trading was actually an incredibly stupid way to play in the early game, at least if you wanted to win.

I'd also never played chess with Callie before. Abel's nonsense turned out to be accurate again though, because when I paid attention, I COULD see similarities between Callie's play style and her fighting style, and I could somewhat reverse engineer those similarities to predict her moves. Despite how weird and absurd that had sounded, I'd neglected to remember that I was now at over a hundred Focus, meaning my brain was processing approximately a hundred times faster than even a genius mortal.

Focus was...a weird stat. It came across in the day to day as improved memory. Most of the rest of the time it wasn't really obvious how it effected you save for offsetting Perception overload. It was just a ton of raw processing power, but in the same way a scan box would have a massive processor. I didn't USE that much processing power most of the time, so it didn't have a marked impact on my daily life.

At times like this though, when I was cranking my deductive skills as hard as I could, I really drew on those reserves. It showed me more than anything how deeply stats could effect you without you noticing. There were so many aspects of stat gain that I never bothered to try to tap into, still constrained by my mortal mindset. I suspected people like Abel had a much more holistic grasp on their stats and how to make the most of every point at all times. I made a mental note to try to put some effort into that when I finally got the chance, but I knew for the moment it was just another thing on the pile.

I lost the game, and Abel made us reset. This time I was trying to win, which I did. We played back and forth for hours, constantly switching which of us would try to stall the other. By the end of the day we'd each managed at least one win, with me managing a second. Once the training was done, Abel called a stop to it and began to put away the board. As he did, he gave us both an approving nod. "Good. You learned what you needed to. I want you to keep doing that exercise nightly, one game for each of you. As for here though...well, like I said, the next step is a bit more physical. Make sure you wear your armor tomorrow." He gave us a wide grin. "It's time for me to take a...personal hand in your sparring matches."

Malcolm Tent · Dec 22, 2022

We got in early the next day, as requested. Well, day was a strong word. We arrived in what was technically the morning, despite the lack of sun and any waking people to interact with. We caught the Beast Lord Garden initiates going HOME for the night when we got in, and I used all five wishes for them to bump up my Perception, since it was my lowest stat. Fifteen points onto an even hundred was simple enough that I didn't have to actually think about it, which was good because thinking wasn't really my strong suit right now.

Callie was NOT pleased with this turn of events, and was not a morning person when someone woke her up instead of letting her wake naturally. So, when we arrived to find Abel waiting for us alone, she had no patience whatsoever with the nonsense games he liked to play, and just flat out asked. "Where is Mel? I thought we were supposed to be sparring with you two together?"

Abel chuckled at her waspish tone. "No. I said that I would be taking a personal hand in your training. Which I will. You're going to be getting that personal hand upside your heads for the rest of the day. Just me for now though. Get out here and get in position to attack. No Skills or abilities." We both groaned, shuffling out into the dirt ring to take up our place together across from our teacher. Once we were standing adjacent he nodded. "Good. Now fight me."

Then he just stood there. I blinked. "Ok. But...what do you want us to learn from this? We won't know what to take away from this fight if we don't know what aspect of teamwork we're supposed to be training. You can't just tell us to fight you and then not tell us why."

"Really?" He asked archly. "Why not?" I opened my mouth to respond and then trailed off, earning a smirk from Abel. "Exactly. This is training. It's my job to teach, and your job to learn. I don't need to spoon feed you every lesson. This particular training has two purposes actually, but I'm not telling you either of them. You need to figure it out yourself. Now hurry the fuck up. I want to go and get some pancakes on our first break, and I won't be stopping until neither of you can stand."

That was annoying. Hell, much of what Abel did and said was annoying. Now we had a way to respond to that. He literally told us to beat his ass. So I shrugged and lashed out with a whirl of my cane. He stepped away, towards Callie, but came up short of entering her space. I started to react to his attack, but when he didn't actually make one I kind of...froze up. Abel just stood there, looking bored. "You figure some of it out yet?" His tone was dry and somewhat mocking.

I grimaced. "Well fuck." Callie looked over at me, quizzically. I'd taken priority though, so she hadn't really noticed it. I turned to my girlfriend and sighed. "Reaction. He's trying to point out that as a team, our combat style is currently entirely reactive. It's instinctual, but instincts are responses. We don't know how to integrate in joint attacks except in response to openings we see during battle."

"See." Abel said. "I told Mel you weren't stupid. She gets caught up in that brains vs. brawn thing. Thought you wouldn't get it just because you let your girl do all the planning. I think you're a bit like me though. Combat intelligence and day to day intelligence aren't the same thing. Essentially correct, at least for the first part. You don't act, you react. Defense is great, but you need to be able to take the initiative. That SHOULD show you the second reason for this training, but somehow I doubt it will. Try again."

I looked over to Callie, gesturing subtly with a hand, and we started to circle. We might not have a way to integrate both of us into an attack directly, but some training with my wolf method could polish that weakness out. That was the reason he had banned Skills, I suspect. All of our combination attacks were Skill based. He was right that we hadn't integrated physical combat initiative into our style. Luckily for us, if we both attacked together, anything he did in response would trigger our defensive instincts.

I lashed out at the back of his head with my cane, Callie whirling out one leg to sweep his feet out from under him at nearly the same instant. Abel ducked my blow without even looking, stepped over hers, and reached up to grab my cane, pulling it slightly forward and unbalancing me as he did. I started to fall, and scrambled to catch myself by putting a foot forward, only to step into the way of Callie's foot and get my load bearing leg taken out from under me, sending me spilling to the ground.

Instead of backing off this time, Abel stepped in and aimed a stomping kick at the back of my neck. Callie tried to intercept it with a kick of her own, but Abel shifted the position of his back foot slightly,turning the stomping blow into a snap kick from the side and smashing it into Callie's head while I was on the ground, staggering her. He reached down and grabbed me by the jacket, picked me up, and physically fucking hurled me at my currently off balance girlfriend without a second of hesitation.

He stared down at us dispassionately. "You figure it out yet? Because I just gave you like four hints." It was infuriating how casual he sounded, like he'd just come back from a nap rather than kicking the living shit out of us. I groaned as I got to my feet, holding out a hand to help Callie to her feet.

She answered this time. "I got it." She was wincing and rubbing her head. Apparently Abel could hit like a truck even without his ability. Not exactly a shock. "It's cohesion. We know how the other person thinks, how to be aware of them, but now we need to put those things together. Uneven training in the two areas is making it impossible for us to operate smoothly, and you're exploiting the gaps." She sounded frustrated, but honestly I was just impressed she got it so easily. I would have needed much longer to understand that lesson.

Abel had no problem confirming the lesson once we'd gotten the second one. "Exactly. The single biggest flaw in any team combat is lack of cohesion. The gaps between where your styles overlap. I'll even give you a freebie. The point of this training isn't just to make you aware of your limitations so you can fix them, it's also to teach you to spot that same kind of gap in other teams cooperation. In this tournament, we'll be fighting plenty of other teams from what you said. Being able to break formations and cooperation is going to be a vital skill."

We'd seen that before, when dealing with some of the enemies during the scavenger hunt, so I could definitely follow his train of though, but it left one glaring flaw in this whole training regimen. "What about you guys? How are we supposed to work with you when all our training is going to be on working with each other? Can't they exploit those same weaknesses in our cooperation?"

Abel smiled at that. "Now you're thinking. And the answer is no. Or at least, not easily. For a few reasons. First of all, we're training you on how to work with each other, but you can apply these lessons to others, since we've already learned all this, learning to cooperate with us will be simpler by far than learning to fight beside someone who wasn't your teacher in the first place."

"Secondly." He said with a grin. "You're neglecting to remember that we're going to be actively watching you train and learning your combat styles. We have much more experience with this style of fighting, and after training you we'll be able to integrate ourselves into your teamwork pretty easily. All you have to do is work with each other and trust us to handle the rest. Now, enough talking. Back to work. The lesson is far from over just because you figured out how it works."

He stepped back, leaving himself open again, and I grimaced. This really was a pain in the ass. I met Callie's eyes over his shoulder and made a circle with my hand. She cocked her head for a second, and then her eyes widened as I made a biting gesture with my hand. Wolves. She got it. With a solemn nod, the two of us began to circle. Abel didn't even react, seeming to be staring casually off into the distance, not even paying attention to our obvious attack preparations.

We rotated for a while, gauging his reactions and waiting to see what he would do in response to the few feints we tried. Nothing, he was just relaxing and staring off into the distance. Finally, after three consecutive times ignoring my feint, I drove my cane at the back of his knee in a stabbing blow meant to buckle his leg and dump him on his ass. As I did, Callie launched herself at his chest with a punishing strike aimed to plow her fist right into his sternum.

I was sure it was punishing, because it caught me right in the solar plexus as he nearly shifted his body on one foot, leaning back a bit so her punch grazed past him even as my cane sailed through the spot his leg had been. I saw his hand snake out like a viper and clamp around Callie's wrist, and barely had time to register it before he yanked her up and over his head, bringing her full weight down in an arc right on my back where I was bent forward from the low blow with the cane.

I fell to my knees at the impact, and Callie barely managed to yank me out of the way of the kick aimed up at my chin from the ground like he was kicking a ball. We both stumbled back, and I shot her a nod of gratitude. I'd gotten so lost in the danger I'd let my instinctual defense of her slip. I should have deflected that grab. Abel watched us scramble away without any special interest.

Which is when it clicked. "Oh you asshole!" I turned to Callie. "He isn't ignoring us, he unfocused his fucking eyes to take in more of the battlefield, he's probably hyperfocusing on Perception right now, processing every tiny indication of what we do to predict our attacks. How did you see me coming from behind? Or did I make too much noise?"

That drew a snicker from our teacher as his eyes finally focused on us. "Reflection in the pupils. It's why we spent so much time teaching you to operate without looking at each other. When partners constantly track each other's movements it makes it too easy to predict what they're going to do. You should really watch that."

I growled as I took up position next to Callie. Abel simply let his eyes unfocus and waited. Ready for anything and nothing all at the same time, body relaxed and hands hanging loosely at his sides. He looked like he was wide open, but having seen the bastard move I knew that couldn't be further from the truth. Forget landing a hit, we would need perfect teamwork to avoid getting brutalized. I sighed before gesturing for Callie to circle around the other side. If at first you don't succeed I supposed. Still, I had a feeling this was going to be a long fucking day.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 23, 2022

I was in pain. So very, very much pain. I was considering inventing a new word to describe this sensation actually, because pain seemed like it was underselling exactly how much this sucked. Not even agony was enough. I raised my head from the dirt to glare at my tormentor, seeing his ever present grin shining down at me as if in mockery of the state he'd left me in. I peeled my lip back in a snarl. "Die."

Well, I tried to say die. It come out more like "duuuuuh". I like to think my eyes made the message clear though. My hatred was clearly visible. It had to be. I rolled over as best I could to check on Callie, who was lying on the ground staring up at the ceiling. "Ugh." I moaned, finally managing to speak language again, even if the attempt was hoarse and barely understandable. "How are we in this much pain? And why can't I heal us?"

The snicker Abel had been holding back finally burst forth, the rabbit masked man howling with laughter at our pain. "Impact. Vitality has less effect against higher ranked opponents. We're the same rank, so it's not so exaggerated, but there IS a wait, and that shit adds up. I've just hit you so many times today that your bodies literally can't keep up with the repairs. I didn't use any Skills or anything, so it'll fade. As for healing, because it disrupts the learning process. No pain no gain and all that."

"Listen." I said seriously. "I hate you." He glanced down at me quizzically, clearly expecting my declaration to have more to it. I just stared at him for a second. "That's it. I hate you. Message over. Die." That one got enough howling attack of laughter as he turned to walk over to a small table off to one side, picking up a bottle of water. My sore throat convulsed looking at it. "That look's...good. Can I have some?"

"What?" He said in confusion. "But you hate me? I can't share water with you since I'm supposed to be dead." I just glared at him so viciously it probably would have killed him if it had been an attack. He rolled his eyes. "Oh fine, you huge baby. Here. Drink up." He walked over and stood above me, I opened my mouth to ask what he was doing and he poured the water right down my damn throat.

I hacked and coughed and gagged, rolling over and pounding the ground as my soaked face dripped into the dirt. He sucked his teeth in sympathy. "Pretty sure you're supposed to swallow that stuff. Doesn't do much if you spit out. It's your show though. You do you." I turned to fix my furious gaze on him, only to see him walking away. I caught a slight smirk on his lips as he turned, but I knew that it didn't matter.

He came back a second later with a towel he tossed me, and I groaned hard as I sat up. Then I mopped my face clean as Callie sat up with a loud groan. Abel chuckled at the performance, but eventually trailed off. "Alright you two. It's just after noon. I want you to go and have some fun. Enjoy your day. No training. As important as working is, you also need time to adapt to the changes. Especially for your awareness of each other, spending time together casually will be a huge help as you learn. You earned some downtime anyway. Go enjoy yourselves."

That hadn't been what I was expecting him to say. "Oh. Um...ok? Sure. We can do that." I turned to look at Callie. "What do you say babe? want to go on a date today?" Callie let out a wheezing puff of air that couldn't be described as a word or grunt of affirmation even by the most generous of people, but I decided to assume it had been a yes. I rolled over a few times, back and forth, to build up the momentum to get up on my hands and knees so I could crawl over to her. Slowly. I moaned. "Oh gods, please let me use some healing."

"Nope." Said Abel callously. "Enjoy your downtime. I suggest going to get food. It should help. Trust me, you should be glad I didn't let you eat when I had breakfast. You'd have puked it all up ten times over by now. Never do really hardcore exercise on a full stomach. Anyway, I'll leave you to it. Meet me back here tomorrow. You should be healed up by then, and we can move on to fighting team vs. team."

I refused to think about that as he left. The idea of Mel joining that beating was too awful. I dragged myself over to Callie and pulled her head into my lap, stroking her hair. "Hey love. How are you feeling." She wheezed out another small sound, that may have been the word 'bad'. I winced. "Yeah, I think he went harder on you to compensate for your higher Vitality. Never been so glad I don't focus on that stat enough." She glared at me. "Sorry. Here, lets sit you up, maybe that'll help."

I pulled on her, ignoring my body's groans of protest. Luckily lifting something human sized was literal childs play, even when I was this sore. It was such an infinitesimal effort that my condition literally didn't matter. Huh, I guessed the suppression was gone. Which made sense since we were allowed to leave. Guess he wanted our Vitality patching us up so we didn't die.

"Ow." Callie said as I get her vertical. "Ow. Ow." She paused. "Ow, wait, no. I meant bastard. I need to relearn the words for things. Ow is for how I'm feeling, bastard is for Abel. How about you sweetie? How are you feeling? You don't look much better than me."

I grinned at her. "Well you look like a goddess, so that leaves me in great shape. But to answer your question ow works for me too." I forced myself to my feet with a wince, helping pull Callie up by the hand and letting her fall against me. "I decided if we were going on a date, I didn't need my mask, and she didn't either if she didn't want to wear it. "So, before we leave, I figure we split up and change into our civvie clothes. The pavilion keeps work out gear around, we can change into that and take a walk around the circus. What do you think?"

Callie was thrilled at the idea, even if the execution was tough, and we both hobbled off to the locker rooms to get showered off and changed. Being a giant clubhouse for battle maniacs, an area to change and clean up was essential. It was one of the many spots we'd discovered when looking around when we first toured the Pavilion after we got control of it. The place was much bigger than it looked at first glance, with large sections underground (well all of it was technically underground, but large chunks were under THIS ground).

So I knew where to go to find the shower and rinse off. It only took me fifteen or twenty minutes to get ready, stash my gear in a gym bag, and bring everything back up to the ring to meet up with Callie who looked...amazing. Granted, Callie always looked amazing, whether it was an Ascendant thing or she was just naturally beautiful, my girlfriend was kind of a shock every time I looked at her. Something about her now though, in workout clothes with her wet hair up in a ponytail, just made me stop and stare.

She noticed me there and raised an eyebrow. "Come on, I don't look that gross do I? I cleaned up at least, so I know I don't smell." She gave a sniff. "Neither do you, which is impressive. They must have good soap here. You usually smell like guy." At my offended gasp she just gave me a warm smile. "Downsides of high Perception. It's not noticeable unless you look for it. But we should find out what kind of soap they use. Most of the ones that are thorough enough to counter high Perception are overwhelming. This is kind of neutral, I like it."

"Okay." I said helplessly. "I'll see if I can get a few bars. For the record though, YOU don't smell, and you look gorgeous, that's why I was staring." I frowned down at myself. "You could really smell me all this time? I don't see how that could not be in a bad way. Nobody wants to smell."

She limped over, wincing at the motion, before standing on her tip toes to give me a quick kiss. "Stop that. It's not some sort of weird character defect. Everyone smells like something, unless they use special soap like I mentioned. Your scent isn't bad or anything. Kind of...papery. With some ink maybe? And leather from the armor. It's hard to explain if you aren't at the point where you pick it up. Scents are kind of unique. I don't focus on it much. I know people who literally track using scent, but I'm definitely not one of them."

I waved her off. "Ok, this is getting off track. We can do the smell lesson later if you want. For now, I'm clean and showered and ready for a day out at the circus with my girlfriend." I put an arm around her, starting us toward the entrance. "You got the worst of it today, so why don't you pick what we do? Anything you want, as long as I'm spending time with you I don't care one bit." I paused. "Well, nothing physical obviously. But other than that."

She let her head slump against my shoulder softly as we walked. "I don't care much either. It'll just be nice to be together. But I am pretty hungry. How about we hit the corn dog stand. They have those pancake and sausage ones. I know it isn't exactly breakfast time, but who cares?"

"Seriously." I said with derision. "I'll eat breakfast whenever I want. Anyone who has something to say about that can suck it. I'm a grown ass man, no one but me decides the timing with which I consume whatever food I see fit at the moment." I stared off into the distance stoically for a second before winking at her to show the pompous declaration was just a joke for her benefit.

She rolled her eyes, but her lips were quirked in a smile. "You aren't nearly as funny as you think you are. But despite what a huge nerd you are, I still love you." She poked my side. "Being a giant wall of muscle DOES help kind of offset the terrible sense of humor though. Just don't start making bad puns and we should be fine."

I gave her a scandalized look. "There are no such thing as BAD puns, you philistine. But fine, I see how it is. I can lower myself to your level for the sake of my affection for you." She giggled at that and I pulled her close, reveling at the sense of serenity in my heart. Something about being here with her, especially when I was so fresh from training, just felt...right. This was where I was supposed to be.

I'd expected to be nervous or anxious about the coming tournament, but oddly, I wasn't. I'd been training my ass off non stop, and I hadn't even realized how exhausting it was because it had been so engaging. This though...this was relaxing in a way I hadn't know I needed until now. I smiled down at Callie and then around the busy circus as a whole. The tournament was months away, for now, time with my girlfriend was the order of the day, and I had absolutely no problem with that at all. My stomach grumbled a bit. Those corn dogs were definitely the first thing on my list though. I wondered if they had syrup for dipping?

Malcolm Tent · Dec 26, 2022

"Ow. ow. ow." I punctuated each step with the word as we limped away from the corndog stand, laden down with pancake and sausage stick treats, as well as large cups of syrup. We staggered over to a picnic table nearby, slumping down onto the peeling and cracking wood with a groan as we let our food drop onto the table. We had paper plates, so I wasn't worried too much about it being dirty, and I was able to leave it there as I let my head slam into the wood, no longer strong enough to stay upright. "Ow."

Callie giggled, a sound which cut off with a whimper as the motion jostled her sore ribs. "Ow." She echoed. "Don't make me laugh. Or cry." she paused. "Wait, am I already crying? I can't tell." I cracked open an eye and looked up at her questioningly. But confirmed she wasn't and shook my head. I didn't raise it before shaking, so my face scraped across the surface of the table. I didn't care. She sighed in relief. "Oh, good. That would have been humiliating. Crying from just a little workout."

I snorted at that. "A little workout. I've been hit full force by a dullahan that was trying to kill me, and this was so much worse than that. Abel is a sadist." I forced myself to sit upright, since I had to eat anyway. "Still. I feel like it's getting results, don't you? Like, there's no way we would have lasted that long if we fought him a week ago. He would have crushed us. I never realized how lucky we were that the vision of him down in the labyrinth was so bored. Or maybe the years made him tougher? I have no idea."

Callie gave a vague nod as she dipped a corndog in syrup and took a hearty bite, moaning in joy at the taste. I decided that seemed like a good idea, and picked up one of mine, biting into it with gusto. I groaned in ecstasy as the sweet syrupy flavor melted into the fluffy pancakes and the steaming sausage. "Oh gods." I said through a mouthful of food. "How is this so good? What rank is this food?"

Having better manners than me despite eating much more voraciously, Callie finished chewing and swallowed with a groan. "G-rank of course. It just tastes better because we're both starving. Still, that is delicious." She continued eating, finishing the first corndog and starting on the second. Between bites, she resumed talking. "So, aside from insane hardcore training, what do you think we should do with our time until the tournament. Abel was right, downtime is a necessity."

I nodded, choosing to swallow before responding this time like she had. "Well." I said after a mouthful. "I was thinking we could do some bonding with the wolves. They've been kind of backburnered since we got back. We can go camping and take them with us, just enjoy the outdoors with puppies. Benny and I used to go camping in Valen, or at least nearby. It was always a lot of fun."

Callie bit her lip. "I mean...we could try it I guess. Especially if we invite Grimmengap. Their wolves would probably enjoy it, and having an elf along in the woods is bound to make things easier." I nodded enthusiastically at that. She seemed uncertain though. I didn't feel the need to push, just waited. Eventually she flushed and admitted in a low voice. "I've never really been camping. I don't count the hunt, because we had a building. Real camping though? Like with tents and stuff? I never had anyone to take me."

Her eyes were distant as she stared off into the crowd. She clearly had something she wanted to talk about, so I didn't interrupt. "My dad was never really around." She said without missing a beat. "You know about that. Spent all his time at the office or out on patrol. It was just me and mom, and she never had any abilities. The wilderness isn't ALL too dangerous for mortals, I think you and Benny were mortals when you went, but mom...my dad did a number on her."

"Not physically." She hurried to say. She sounded like that mattered to her. I was starting to get really pissed off, but obviously not at her, so I kept quiet as she continued. "It was more like...dismissal. He acted like she was less than he was. He was mostly patronizing about it, making comments about how mortals never understood us, or how her ideas were bad but it wasn't her fault, but looking back I see how completely toxic he was to her all the time."

I reached out and put my hand over hers. Her eyes snapped to mine and she coughed. "Oh. Sorry. Camping. Sounds fun. We should go. I was just thinking about that offer you made. About my mom. I just...gods Shane, I can't tell you what that would mean. How important it would be." I leaned over the table to give her a quick kiss and pulled back with a wide smile.

"It makes you happy." I said firmly. "It's worth it. Besides, it's not like I'm giving her something for free. My power doesn't work like that. She'll need to come up with some kind of payment. I can't really be involved, but I'm sure you can help her think of something that would work." I didn't want to make too big a deal about the gratitude. It was nice she was happy, but I didn't do things for her because I wanted her to be grateful.

She seemed to sense that, because she shifted to the subject I brought up. "Payment will be tricky for sure. I'm positive we can figure something out though. And it's a mortal wish, maybe she can pay in credits or something? Never mind, not involved. Point is, it's something I'm excited about. Maybe we can make our visit back before the tournament, provided we manage to get all our training done early."

She sounded excited about that, and I didn't mind. "If we get our goals met no reason not to take a break. Hell we can ask Abel to arrange it for us ahead of time if you want. I'm sure he could squeeze in some time between our training without messing up our schedule too much. He seems like he would be good at finding time to be lazy when he wants it." I said that last bit with a snicker.

When we finished eating, we decided to go for a walk. It wasn't as crazy as it sounded. The pain was worse when we were sitting still, and we figured a nice leisurely stroll would get the blood pumping. Well, leisurely in this case being an arctic crawl as we dragged our dead limbs across the grounds, but to be fair, we were both tough enough to hide the signs and make it at least look like we were walking casually.

As we strolled arm in arm around the circus, I took a long, deep breath. The smell of the food and the rides and sounds of excitement were everywhere, and I loved it. The lights burned in the darkness, creating a tapestry of emotion and sensation I had never seen anywhere else. I was just as poleaxed by this place as I had been the very first time I'd come here. Maybe more. "You know." I said. "I really love this place. Just being here makes me happy. Doesn't it just make you feel so...alive?"

Callie said her head on my shoulder. "Yeah. I've always felt comfortable in WCP honestly, but more than that this place is ours. At least part of it. I've never had anything like that before. Something permanent and mine. Like I know we won't be staying forever, but still, it's like we own our own house." She flushed a bit. "Or whatever. That sounds weird. But you know what I mean."

And I did. I'd lived with Zeke in our apartment in Valen for ages, and now we had the house in Rajak, but neither of those were mine. There was something really amazing about having a home that belonged only to you, about being able to do whatever you wanted to a place because you felt like it. Growing up I'd been able to decorate my room however I wanted, but it wasn't really mine completely. It was an apartment, and it was Zeke's. I could paint my walls, but I couldn't rip them out or install a nice shower in the bathroom.

Not that I wanted to do either of those things at the Pavilion. But I COULD do them. It was a heady feeling. Having a place that I controlled completely and that no one could take away from me. Once again Callie and I were on the same page here. I pulled her closer to me. I loved the atmosphere of our talk right now, but I'd been wondering about something and I thought talking about it would be good. "So, have you talked to your uncle lately? You never mentioned how things went there."

The two of us spent a ton of time together, but we weren't around each other twenty four hours a day. Well, not usually, the training had us bonding me. Still, she had tons of time to herself and I wasn't sure if she'd ever called her father's twin. She stiffened a bit before relaxing, letting out a long sigh. "I haven't been in touch. I've considered it a few times, but it's...hard. He looks like my dad, obviously, and there are so many issues there. I know that's not really fair to him, but I can't help it."

I blew out a breath. "I can't really claim to get how that feels. I'm not sure how I'd react if I met my dad's twin. Granted, the situation isn't the same anyway. Still, if you don't mind me giving my two cents I do have an opinion." I shot her a searching look, and she gave a solemn nod. "I think you should reach out. If it's too much you can always just cut contact, I'm sure he would understand, but if you don't at least try I think you'll regret it for a long time."

Looking down, I saw here glaring at me. There wasn't much heat in it, but she looked annoyed. "You know, you aren't always supposed to give me good advice. Sometimes you're just supposed to say 'yes dear, I think you have the right idea'. Just because I'm doing something dumb doesn't mean I want you to correct me." Her tone wasn't harsh or anything, just a little sulky, and I could tell she was half joking, though not completely.

"Yes dear." I said woodenly, my voice deadpan. "I think you have the right idea." I looked her right in the eyes as I said it, making sure to keep my voice as devoid of inflection as possible. Her glare intensified for a second, but I saw her lips twitching a bit at the edges for a second until she finally broke down and lost it, bursting out laughing so hard I had to actually hold her up.

She finally got control over herself with a marked effort, and still took a second of gasping to regain her ability to speak. "You're such an asshole sometimes. Fine, I'm being stupid, I'll call him and at least say hi, happy?" I grinned at hear and leaned down for a kiss, which she accepted with an eye roll. "I have to admit, you're weirdly good at cheering me up. I'm already feeling better." Then she paused. "Although, not that much better." She stopped and looked up at me ponderingly before walking around behind me, and without any warning, jumping on my back. I caught her, hands under her knees as she forced me to carry her. "Ok NOW I feel all the way better."

Malcolm Tent · Dec 27, 2022

Abel had been right. The next morning we both felt so much better. Eight hours of healing was enough to fix us up and I was good as new when I got out of bed. I got up and headed to the kitchen to cook breakfast for everyone while I considered exactly what we would be doing today. More fighting with Abel if I had to guess. We usually didn't move on until we'd learned our lesson at each step, and we were nowhere close to keeping up with that monster as a duo. Even without his skills or abilities, his raw stats and sheer combat prowess let him pick us apart.

Still, it wasn't hopeless. Abel had been teaching us for over a week now, and we'd gotten markedly better. At this rate, we might be up to snuff in this tournament. I'd made the mistake of thinking it would be easy at the start, but Abel had quickly disabused me of that notion. Even if he and Mel were the two strongest of their generation, number three hadn't been that far behind, and their teamwork, while impressive, had never been the best among the Titan Twenty. Not that we would be fighting their peers for the most part, it had been years, but still. This would be far from easy, and that was without acknowledging that the people we were up against were from all over the Gloryfire System.

Which meant we really needed to know as much as possible about this whole thing. As I started cooking, I spun up my scan ring and placed a call to a number I'd never used before. My cousin packed up. "Hey little cousin, to what do I owe this pleasant surprise? I figured you would be too busy with training for the tourney to call upon little old me? Hoping for some words of wisdom to help you get closer to that smokeshow you're dating?"

I rolled my eyes, having to fight back a smile at how...normal, this felt. "No Nat. I don't need your advice on my dating life. Callie and I are doing great. Sadly I'm calling about business. Though we could catch up first if you want? Our teacher is letting us come in late today because he kicked the shit out of us so hard yesterday." That actually wasn't the real reason. It was more that Abel had overestimated the amount of time we could last in one on one training with him, and adjusted the time we needed to arrive to compensate. He didn't like getting up at dawn either, and since we'd ended up with half a day leftover anyway he just figured he'd let us sleep. We'd gotten the text about it on the way home.

The image of my cousin pouted. "Lame. I totally have sage wisdom to share. But oh well, we can talk about boring stuff I guess. I assume you're calling about the tournament?" I nodded. "Well, I'm not sure how much I can help. I don't have the sources to suss out all the players showing up, though I suspect I do know enough to tell you who everyone is once we meet them. The layout itself is pretty simple. Team elimination matches until there are only a hundred and twenty eight fighters left, and then it's a single elimination bracket. Winner gets all ten slots to distribute themselves."

I whistled at that. "Holy shit, final one twenty eight? How many contestants are there going to be in this thing? Also, wait, single elimination? Does that mean I'm going to have to fight my teammates?" Because there was no way in hell I was going to be able to beat Abel. I MIGHT be able to pull off something against Mel, if I managed to pick up an appropriate set of attacks before the tournament. But I had no clue what ability I could stockpile to help me counter whatever spatial nonsense my rabbit masked teacher used.

"Yup." She popped the P as she said that. "Which is why I made my alliance with you. My chances were originally three in one twenty eight, now they're seven in one twenty eight. Well...probably a a lot higher actually. Between my guards, your girl, and that monster in the rabbit mask and his partner, I don't hate our chances of scraping out a win no matter who shows up. Hell, even you'll probably put up a good showing. Though I admit, you took a different route than most of do."

That was intriguing to hear. "I figured I wasn't the first to stockpile attacks, but why isn't it more common? It's damn effective, and I figure it would be a pretty common method of combat." It had seemed like such a perfect idea for me, it was hard to understand why any of my relatives wouldn't use the same strategy.

She chuckled. "Because it requires an absurd amount of soul strength, and training that hurts like a bitch. The attacks are all pretty static, and using them strains your soul, which most of us don't bother to improve. It's much easier and less painful to just contract a bunch of minions you can boost, or to get paid in cash or artifacts and show up ass deep in firepower. Most of us aren't the hands on type. Don't get me wrong, we're all dangerous as hell, and most of us have trump cards you won't find anywhere else, but still, we aren't the punch it till it dies type."

I blinked. That...made sense. My soul strength was high because of my DS Mastery Skill. It DID suck to train it, and if I wasn't so pumped about the Skill itself I might not have gotten into the habit. I remembered how muddled and in pain I felt after my fight with Beat. I could definitely see the advantage of just buffing a bunch of guards. Still, it wasn't my style. I liked being in battle, micromanaging everything from the back would drive me nuts. Plus it was one of the factors in punching up ranks.

More than that though, it felt...important. The strength of our souls grew when we ranked up, sure, but I couldn't help but think that more of it would be better. I was pretty sure having a strong soul would be useful later on, even if I didn't know why. Maybe it was Fantasy pushing my instincts, or maybe if was wishful thinking. I grimaced at the unintentional mental pun and Natalie raised an eyebrow at me. "I mean, it seems to work for you." She said. "But not all of us like getting up close and personal."

Realizing she thought I was grimacing at the fact that more of us didn't use my style I chuckled and shook my head. "Not that, sorry. Got lost in my own thoughts. I do that. I was pretty sure it was a factor of my Perception being much higher than my Focus, but apparently it's also just part of my personality. Remind me to make sure word of that doesn't get out. I'll end up having some nonsense 'wisdom' aspect added to my legend and spend all my time daydreaming. It would be thematic at least, if nothing else."

She snickered at that. The Focus will probably help, but yeah, I'd keep a lid on that around enemies. I think you should be fine though, unless you go into a daze mid fight, in which case we might need to have a discussion about our alliance." She winked to let me know she was kidding. "Anyway, don't worry too much about the tournament. Not that it isn't a big deal, but I can tell you're working your ass off, and you can't do more than your best. We'll win or we won't. That's the best part of living in this crazy universe of ours. Even if we miss out, there's always another big event somewhere else if you're willing to look for it."

That actually made me curious about something else. "Do many of us travel like you do? Not the usual upward trajectory but moving around on D-ranked planets like this one looking for interesting things and people? I never really considered leaving Callus just to go to another planet the same level. It just seems like a waste not to get as much as I can from here and then head up to the next level."

She shrugged. "You aren't the first to think so. And no, it's not common. But I'm in no real hurry. We grow the fastest out of all the divine clans, it's what we're know for. The Wyndham clan has the most S-rankers, though ours don't tend to be as powerful in a straight fight. I can always catch up later, but making sure to get as much as I can out of this System, hell this Star Cluster, is bound to pay off down the line. People forget that this competition is aimed at building connections. People tend to be easier to befriend when they're in the early stages of growth."

There was so much information in that statement I didn't know where the hell to start. I could guess at some of it. I knew clans were a thing, divine clans obviously being the clans founded by the six gods. I hadn't known we had the most S-rankers, though it made sense given my own growth. I was pretty sure I was growing faster than most because of my starting point having all my stats unlocked, but still, I had no illusions about the usefulness of my power in encouraging growth. But there were so many smaller, less obvious questions I had. "Ok. That's...wow. How many clans are there exactly?"

She shrugged. "Who knows. A few dozen. The universe is a big place, and anyone who makes it to S-rank can found a clan. Though if it's an inherited power like ours they have to make do with a branch clan or oust the original founder. The branch founders are all on a clan council that makes decisions absent the founder's decree in our clan. Our grandfather is on the council actually. Not that we ever see him. Grandpa Malachai rarely interacts with anyone below S-rank himself. Once you hit that point you don't need renown to grow anymore."

I wondered what that meant exactly, but it didn't seem like the time to get into it. She'd already given me a ton to think about. I resolved to talk to her later about possibly learning about the divine clans and any others she knew about, but I had a feeling it would be a long conversation, and we DID still have training today. It would need to wait. I had the information I wanted about the tournament, and I'd finished cooking as I talked (cooking one handed was remarkably easy with stats like mine) so I went ahead and said goodbye.

I called everyone else in to come eat, and sat down to enjoy the cheese blintzes I made. I sat next to Callie as I ate, but didn't talk much. I was thinking over my conversation and how much information I still didn't have. I could always find out that stuff later, and I likely wouldn't come into contact with it until later, but still. There was so much in this world that I hadn't even scratched the surface of.

Oddly that didn't upset me at all. It excited me. So much to do, so much to see. I had so many things to learn and experience. I put an arm around Callie who leaned into me a bit while still shoveling food into her mouth. I gave her a kiss on the top of the head, chuckling at the fervor with which she was eating. Yeah, the world was big, but if you had the right people to see it with you, the journey was probably the best part.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 28, 2022

Between the date and the conversation with my cousin, I was feeling recharged enough after breakfast to get back to training. I decided to forego doing all five wishes for the Beast Lord Garden folks, and knocked out one of them with Cark before we left so I could top up my fire attacks at least a bit. The great thing about that was that Cark exclusively cared about Might, and that increased his firepower, so the attacks got stronger with every wish, and since it was entirely to his benefit it was totally valid.

I saved one wish and did the three contractually obligated ones for Sloane, topping up my Fantasy to an even one hundred and ten before going to find Alden. Our mentor was sitting in the stands in the Pavilion, relaxing as he waited for your training to start. He'd apparently decided to watch this one. I waved to him as we approached. "Hey old man, haven't seen you around here for a week or so, why didn't you sit in earlier?" I dropped onto the seat next to him, reclining to watch the mostly empty ring.

"Watch?" He snorted. "Watch what? The two of you getting your fool arses kicked in creative ways by the boy? This training course was my creation lad, I know what the first week or so is like. Today is the sweet spot. First time against your real instructor after you've had the humility beaten into you. Mel and the boy couldn't even walk by the time the gave in on that first day. The next day though...that's when you see something. Had all the stupid smacked out of you enough to be halfway competent."

I was beginning to see how Abel had ended up the charming and compassionate person that he was. The poisoned apple didn't fall far from the man eating tree. Rolling my eyes at the bearded man, I continued with my point, though I stopped to have Callie put up one of her stealthed shadow domes. Most people here knew, but no point in advertising. He arched an eyebrow in concern when the dome went up, but didn't complain, just waited for us to explain.

Mulling over how best to phrase this, I decided to just come out and say it. "I can offer you a WCP wish. I have access to a source." I very carefully did NOT mention or look at his leg. It was obvious what he would wish for, and I didn't want to invalidate the wish by tampering with the compensation. "So..." I said lamely. "Do you want a wish?"

Alden burst out laughing. "Lad, that was the worst sales pitch I've ever heard, but I suppose when you're selling gold you ain't gotta hype the merchandise. Am I to assume this source is the reasoning behind all the support from the Beast Lord Garden? E-rankers don't much go in for lavishing gifts and aid on little do-nothing outfits like this. I was wondering how you got them to commit so many resources."

He looked down at his leg. "Now forgive me, but wishes take payment right? What might this old man have that would be worth a new limb? I already work for you lad, and I don't have much money to offer. The boy is already training you, and I trust him to do that much properly."

Callie, knowing I was reticent to comment on wishes because I was worried about skewing the results by biasing the recipient, cut in from where she had been quietly holding the shield. "Well you could pay with some of your attacks. Regrowing a limb for someone at our rank isn't just about normal stats though. It would require Impact. The payment for something like that would probably be more than just one attack."

That was true, I'd used Impact in most of my wishes as a stand in for other stats I was lacking, but I'd only ever granted an Impact related wish once. When I gave Benny his powers. I was pretty sure I had the stats to do it, but even I was under the impression that it would take more than one attack, even one as impressive as Alden's, to offset that cost. It was just a matter of how I perceived things. A few points were fine for an attack because attacks were made up of hundreds of points, the raw value was there and then modified by my need for combat ability.

Alden didn't seem worried though. "Alright then. If I do this the way I think, then I wish for my leg to regrow. I'm willing to pay with ten attacks, paid our over ten days. Does that work? I figure the delay means I should pay more of them, and it'll be a hefty price for a leg in any case." He raised an eyebrow at me questioningly.

Wish detected. Grant wish? I confirmed. I was interested to see if this worked. It would be less of a priority day to day since points only took one attack to pay off, but it gave options for things like Skills if my friends needed them. Stat points sufficient. Requirements. 36 Impact, 330 Vitality, 350 Might, 306 Creation. Damn. That was a hefty chunk. I'd seen more expensive wishes, and granted this was essentially a Beginner rank limb. I wondered if souls strength played a role in determining the value or even effected it at all.

Wish the dome still up I decided to just get on with it. I reached out and put a hand on Alden's shoulder as I accepted. "I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to hurt really badly." I said apologetically. Big changes made to others usually hurt, and a physical one like this was bound to be even worse. Alden just nodded as the purple electricity began to build along my skin, until finally it hit a breaking point and rolled out of me, into the other man with the force of a tidal wave.

His body locked up, and I saw his jaw clamp shut tightly to prevent a scream as all his muscles tightened. The electricity seemed to gather in the stump of his leg, funneling down to where it was needed. As we watched, the bone speared out of the flesh, extending out to grow into the smaller bones of a foot, held together by tendons, with muscles knitting themselves together down the length as skin split and then grew down over the appendage. Finally, nails popped out of the toes and Alden was sitting there, a fully grown, if completely hairless leg.

The electricity faded, and Alden slumped back against the seating behind him, panting in exhaustion and pain. Before he could really relax though, the still fading electricity gather in his hand and Gravity started to warp into a sphere of disrupted space. The power condensed for a minute, electric arcs of purple dancing over the outside, before it popped like a soap bubble, and the electricity arced to me. It ran through my body, though not nearly as painfully.

I was kind of shocked. That was a pretty unique way of transferring an attack. It was different than Benny's physical attack, or Callie's semicorporeal shadows, or even Jessie's life energy. Regardless though, it was done, and Alden groaned slightly as he lay there, still panting. "Ok. Ow. You mightve undersold it a bit with 'hurt really badly' lad." He grinned tiredly. "Pain isn't much though. Thank you for this. It means a lot that you would trust me with this, and I know you did it because I was injured and needed it, which means even more."

We helped him sit up. "No problem." I said cheerfully. "Also, that was fucking gross. I've regrown limbs before, but it's usually faster than that. Watching it in slow motion was weird. Not sure why it was like that. Maybe because the limb was higher Impact so it needed more time to form. Still, glad I could fix it."

He snickered a bit at that. "Yeah, well I didn't have much time for admirin' what with being paralyzed with mindsearing agony, but I don't doubt you." He looked at Callie. "You can let down the shield now lass. If anyone asks about the leg I'll just tell them you got some kind of medicine from the Beast Lord Garden for me. Don't you worry. I won't let on you have connections to the WCP."

Callie let the shadows drop, and I was pleased to see she hardly seemed effected by the effort. She must have been working on her soul strength. We both stood up, stretching. I wasn't tired from the wishes, I rarely got exhausted from the easy ones, and it took more than one huge wish to wear me out with my current Vitality. With Callie still feeling fine the two of us were more than ready to get back to our training with Abel. Well...physically. Mentally we weren't ever going to be prepared for that sadism, but oh well.

When we reached the ring, Abel was waiting for us. He'd seen us come in and watched the dome go up, but hadn't seen the need to bother us. "You fixed his leg." His voice was quiet. "I...appreciate that. We were already planning to arrange it, but it would have taken time. Regrowing Ascendant limbs isn't a common ability, and tech that can do it is expensive, especially for someone as high up in the G-ranks as the old man."

"Of course." I said stoically. "He's done a lot for us, even before he really had a reason to. I'm glad we could help." I grinned unapologetically behind my mask, humor leaking into my voice. "Don't suppose this means that you're going to go easy on us today? Give us a break on the asskicking as a thank you for helping him out?" My tone was wry, because I had no illusions of the likelihood of that happening. Still phrasing it as a joke made asking pretty much nothing but potential gain.

Abel just chuckled warmly. "Oh, buddy. No. We're training. Taking it easy on you isn't a favor, it's a disservice. The less I push you the less you grow. You don't want me to hold back. We're already on a tight schedule. " His grin became sharper. "In fact, I think that this favor is going to earn you a more...thorough training session. I'll be sure to put my all into making you the best fighters you can possibly be. Doesn't that sound nice?"

It did not, as a matter of fact, sound nice. It sounded terrifying. But under the sadism I could tell he really was trying to help, even if I wished he didn't enjoy it so much. Besides, I was pretty sure trying to talk him out of it would only make things worse. I gave him a weak thumbs up as I sighed tiredly. "Oh sure. Sounds like a party." I chuckled uneasily to match his own enthusiasm, shooting a sidelong glance at Callie, who met my eyes worriedly.

Abel rolled his eyes a bit. "Oh don't be such babies. I'll even let Agria heal you up after. The point of the first day's training was to leave an impression. Now that you've had you ineptness drilled into you, just the pain of actually fighting me should be enough for you to learn from. Normally I would have waited another two days to allow healing, but since I'm doubling down today, I'll be nice and allow it early." We both relaxed a bit at that.

We got into position across from Abel, ready to try our hardest not to get demolished. I adjusted my stance to complement Callie's, ready to intercept any attacks that came her way as we both lapsed into that special state where we fought as one. As Abel blurred toward us my last coherent thought before violence overtook us was 'gods, this fucking dungeon better be amazing'.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 29, 2022

It took several hours before we were beaten enough to be considered finished. Abel apparently didn't subscribe to Alden's theory that giving up was enough, and forced us to keep going. Luckily we had Jessie to heal us up after he crushed us. Speaking of being crushed though, we were substantially better prepared than last time, and did pretty well for the first hour or so. We barely got destroyed at all for a while, but eventually the damage started to add up, and slowing down produced a vicious cycle.

Once we finished our day off, we headed home, and I proposed probably the weirdest possible date. "Hey, I was thinking of logging in to Doom Sovereign." I said in a faux casual tone. "I'm hoping that playing a bit will help me get some ideas for alterations to my sub skills to help me rank it up. Do you want to try it out?" Callie had never played to my knowledge, which made sense. I'd mostly played as an escape. Callie had reasons to dislike her life when she was younger, but she'd just LITERALLY escaped from them rather than playing video games. I kind of thought her way was better.

She chewed her lip. "Oh yeah, I've heard Benny and you talking about playing that a few times. I haven't heard you mention it lately though, so I kind of assumed you quit. You were pretty into the game before Ascending right? Why hasn't it come up before?" Her tone was curious, but also kind of flippant, like she was trying to let me know I could blow it off or change the subject if I wanted to.

I smiled at her softly. "Mostly a mix of not having time and not really having a reason. I can use most of those abilities in real life now. I played it for adventure and fun, but my life is plenty adventurous now, and I have fun with you. I've also been like...on the edge of death for a large portion of the last few months, so there wasn't a ton of spare time. I still won't get much from it granted, given my Beginner Skill makes me the best player who has ever lived, but I want to see if I can get ideas on how to guide my subskills as I upgrade them."

"Huh." She said in interest. "Virtual reality date. I can dig it. Sure. I'm in." She shot me a wide grin. "But you can't peak when I design my character. I want to have fun with it." I agreed and she hopped up from the couch and ran off to find one of the scan boxes around the house. I considered inviting Benny, but he was at the Academy with Celine, and I doubted he wanted me interrupting girlfriend time any more than I wanted to give up time with Callie. I promised myself we would do something just the two of us soon though.

I waited about ten minutes before I got a text with a screen name for the game and headed to my room to boot up my own scan box. I booted up the game and waited, logging in to my old character for the first time. The world of Doom Sovereign faded in around me, and I found myself standing in a familiar house. I pulled out a magic mirror and contacted Callie at the address she gave me, giving her directions to get here. It didn't take too long, she skipped the tutorial under my instructions. I could give her lessons better than the game itself at this point.

When she finally knocked on the door I let her in with a smile that froze on my face when I opened the door. I tried my hardest to suppress a grin, but failed as I took in her avatar. "You're playing a giantess? Really?" Callie looked...well, like Callie, only about twice her size. She had to stoop to come into the house. I rolled my eyes. "Did you specifically agree to this so you could be taller than me? I thought you liked the height difference."

She snickered. "I do, but this is fun. I wanted to be the one towering over you for a change." She grunted. "Callie want manling. Callie drag manling back to cave." Her gruff, faux cavewoman voice was ridiculous and I rolled my eyes so hard I briefly worried they would get stuck that way.

I turned to head back into the house. "Ok, first of all, I think that's speciesist. Not that I know if giants are real. But if they are, not cool. Second of all, I was planning to give you rogue lessons, but it doesn't work so well if your physical dimensions are dramatically altered. Your legs go up to my collar bone. Anything I show you is going to be completely useless."

She snorted. "Um, no? This is my actual dimensions, just doubled. The giant race on here has like, a thousand different physical modification options. Seriously, if I didn't have the Focus I do, I'd have spent about an hour going through the options. Regardless, I'm the same size I am normally, just...like, bigger. Anything I learn will still be applicable. But why teach me rogue skills? Do you think I can get the DS Mastery Skill?"

I shrugged. "The Minor Skill maybe. It's kind of personalized past that. Might not even work, I've never asked anyone if you can teach Unique Skills. I feel like you have to be able to, but most of my knowledge won't translate up to Lesser for you. It's all pretty personalized. Still, I mostly just want to have some fun, and teaching can be a great way to understand the finer points of your abilities, right?"

"Well." She said contemplatively. "I guess that's true. Learning seems like it might be neat, and even if I don't get the Skill, it'll help me understand your abilities better, which should help with team combat." She shrugged. "I'm in. Show me what I'm doing, little guy." I glared up at her. Oh I was not enjoying this at all. I made a note to never grant her any height wishes. I ALSO liked the height difference.

So we spent the next hour or two working on Rogue skills. I tried to teach her some of my basics. Touch of Tears, Double Trouble, just whatever came to mind, and as I went I started to pay more attention to how all of my skills built on each other. How they interacted and how that interaction played into my fighting style. I started to alter my skills slowly like I'd been planning, letting Callie practice on her own as I worked on them. First up was Mercy Kill. As a finisher it was strong, but it was also limited. It was useful as an add on, but it wasn't the final blow it used to be.

I considered how to make it more useful, and decided to extend the time. I started warping the skill, the soul weight difficult to manage, but not impossible. I had plenty of charges, forty eight of them at the moment, and I took my time, trying different configurations. I tried making it a persistent effect, but it almost crippled the boost. I tried increasing the boost. I tried doing both, but the soul weight was too much for both me and the skill, and I got the feeling if I kept pushing I might break one of us.

I cast the skill again and again and again, I let myself get lost in the pain and the concentration, until finally, I found a configuration that worked. Once I'd done that I started casting it over and over again. Each time was painful and difficult but each one got easier and easier until finally, I could cast it easily with no weight on my soul and I felt that click of recognition from the skill. Mercy Kill had changed. Instead of one bulk attack I'd managed to split it into three separate fifty percent boosted attacks.

As soon as I finished it I dropped to the ground, exhausted, head swimming with pain. I might have rushed it a bit. Callie said my name a few times and then cut the game off to run across the house to check on me. I closed my own game down and lay there on my hands and knees eyes closed as I tried to make the pain go away. Callie arrived and held me as I shook on the ground. I needed to be careful. Having more charges meant more chances to strain my soul, but it didn't mean my soul was up to that strain in the first place.

Eventually, the pain receded, and I was lying there in Callie's lap as she shushed me and stroked my hair, telling me things would be ok. I opened my eyes with a groan. "I resent past me for agreeing to wake up today. Existing hurts. I think my hair aches." My voice was rough and even my own words sent spikes of agony through my head, but they were lessing in severity as I went/ I hadn't pushed TOO far past my limits. Just a bit. It was a relief feeling myself recover.

Callie chuckled softly, which felt like knives in my brain, and helped me sit up. She kept her voice quiet as she responded. "Alright you giant baby. You're ok. You had me worried there you know. I've never seen it that bad before. What the hell happened? Your head gets a bit sensitive when you work on your soul strength, but you don't black out from the pain." Her blue eyes bored into mine intensely, as if trying to scan my brain for damage, and I felt like shit for making her worry.

I leaned down to kiss her gently for a minute, pulling back with a tender smile. "I just misjudged something after a rank up. It was my bad and it won't happen again. I'm sorry to worry you, but I'm glad to know how much you care." I pulled her against me and she rested her head on my shoulder, closing her eyes as she sat there and drank in my presence. I'd really scared her this time.

She'd seen me hurt before, but we had a healer for that. Soul damage wasn't something you could heal. If I accidentally shattered my soul I'd be fucked, and there was nothing Jessie could do. Seeing me black out like that must have been terrifying. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, apparently ready to resume talking. Her eyes pinned me in a harsh stare. "Be more careful in the future. Ass. I love you, and..." She looked away shyly. "I don't know what I'd do without you." She cleared her throat. "But, so I can keep an eye on you I think you should sleep in my room tonight."

I gave her a lopsided grin. "Hey, don't worry so much I'll be fine. I'm right down the hall and...oh." I froze as the meaningful look she was giving me sank in. She meant sleep in her room. Or like. Not sleep. That was...well my headache was suddenly much less of a priority. I swallowed hard. "I...um, are you sure? Or like...not that there's anything you need to be sure about if you don't want to be sure or anything because we're just going to be sleeping unless sleeping isn't what you mean-"

She reached up and put a finger to my lips, trying not to snicker as she stood up and strolled over to the door after cutting me off, she opened the door. "Well? Are you coming or not? As for sleeping..." She shrugged, giving me a wicked grin. "We don't have training until later tomorrow. We can afford to sleep in." I blame the pain for tripping as I scrambled to my feet and bolted after her. That was definitely the reason.

Malcolm Tent · Dec 30, 2022

I stepped out of Callie's room the next day around eleven in the morning and was immediately assailed by the sound of clapping. I rolled my eyes as I turned to glare at Benny. "Can you keep it down please? It's early." I was blushing a bit, which he knew, because he was my best friend and he knew how to get a rise out of me. Making a big show of my first time was one such way, and I absolutely did NOT want to give him the satisfaction of letting him know it was working.
He leered at me anyway. "What's wrong. The blushing virgin can't bear to face the consequences of his carnal shame?" I grimaced. Benny always got extra wordy when he was smug. Which he wasn't for much longer because Jessie reached out and smacked him upside the head.

He yelped and shot her a betrayed look, only to get an eye roll. "My gods, are you five? 'oooh, Shane likes a giiiiirl, girls are gross'. Stop being a dick or I'm going to tell Celine about your apparent distaste for people hooking up out of wedlock." Benny's face drained of blood and his mouth snapped shut, which was a hilarious sight. I shot Jessie a thumbs up and she returned it with a wink.

The door behind me opened and my previously sleeping girlfriend came our wearing one of my shirts, which kind of looked like a dress on her four foot ten frame. "What's going on here?" She demanded imperiously. She put an arm around my waist, pulling me against her. "You giving my man a hard time Benicio?" Jessie made an 'ooooh' sound as Benny recoiled from someone using his full name.

I rolled my eyes at my friends' antics. And Cark just sat to one side and snickered. Right up until cas looked at Callie and cocked her head. "How come Callie is wearing your clothes? Did you guys have a sleepover? That's her room though? Shouldn't she have clothes in there?" We all froze like statues, looking down at the small girl who gazed up at us with innocent confusion.

Zeke, who was seated off to one side eating cereal, snorted the milk out of his nose as he tried to choke down his snickers. Cark glared at my uncle, who didn't seem to actually care but at least had the good grace to pretend to be cowed. He raked us all with his glare and we just kind of stood there, waiting to see what he did. He shot Cass a wide, strained smile. "Well I think today is Callie's laundry day. She must have spilled something on her last outfit so Shane lent her his shirt. That's why he was in her room."

I shot him a thumbs up for quick thinking as Callie started nodding frantically. "Yeah, that's right! I'm super lazy about doing my laundry. I'm just lucky Shane has such big shirts, or I'd have to hide in my room all day while I washed my clothes." She gave me a squeeze. "He's such a good friend." I was having trouble not bursting out laughing, but Cark's face promised murder if we didn't stick the landing on this so I just nodded along amiably.

Cass gave an 'oooh' of understanding, and the realization dawning on her face was so perfect that I would have assumed she was fucking with us if she hadn't been mortal and in a room full of people with Perception in the hundreds. If Cass was trolling us, she was so good at it that the rest of the universe should be quaking in fear because this girl was going to be the most terrifying spy who ever lived.

I cleared my throat. "Anyway, I feel like making breakfast. How does everyone feel about french toast? If enough people want some I'll even throw in some bacon." Cass was distracted from her line of questioning by the promise of sweet breakfast foods, as I've found most people to be, and cheered in excitement, requesting powdered sugar on her toast, a request I obviously already planned to fulfill.

I headed for the stove as Callie dipped back into her room to put on pants and conveniently avoid the death glares from the only person in the house who could literally light us both on fire with his mind. When she came back though, she grabbed Jessie and dragged her off for a conversation I very deliberately avoided listening in on. Benny came over to lean against the counter next to me. "You know, as much as I like to give you shit, I just wanted you to know. I'm happy for you. Not just last night, but just...in general. She's good for you. I've never seen you as alive as you are around her."

"Well....thanks." I said awkwardly. "I mean, yeah. She makes me happy. Just being around her is like being on an adventure. Even when we're just sitting around and doing nothing. We're just so in sync with each other, and it's...nice. Having someone who understands me and who makes me so excited to start my day." I cut my eyes at him, narrowing them in annoyance. "And what the fuck do you mean alive? You saying I was dead before?"

He snorted. "Only socially, you shut in. I just mean that you seem to have an excitement you didn't before. A sense of anticipation. It's nice to see you getting so worked up over things. I love you like family man, but you were so damn passive before you got your powers. Things happened TO you. She's made you more assertive. Bolder. You happen to things. It's cool. I always knew you had that in you. Seeing it is nice."

I gave him a smile, but inside my heart clenched. I knew what he meant, and I wasn't totally sure it had much to do with Callie. I had a feeling it was more recursion than relationship, but I didn't want to say that out loud. I was pretty sure I had a handle on it, and I didn't want to ruin a nice moment with my best friend over nothing. "So, how have things been with Celine? Are you two actually officially dating yet?"

Despite my tone being neutral and interested he scowled at me. "Don't you dare become one of those guys who gets all preachy about relationships because yours is going well. Yes, we're dating. Sort of. Elves are weirdly formal about this stuff. She's accepted my intentions, but I'm supposed to write to her mom and make an official request to court her. I did, and I haven't heard back, but Cel says that elves don't tend to rush in matters of politics. Which this apparently is despite me not being politically motivated in the least. Fucking nobles man."

Wincing, I clapped on the shoulder in commiseration. In a way I was lucky Callie and I bonded over having shitty absentee dads. Meant I had one less parent to meet. Her mom also sounded really sweet, so I wasn't as worried about that as I could be, and that was without the whole "giving her superpowers" thing. I gave his shoulder a squeeze and got back to cooking. "So have you talked to Maria lately? I haven't heard from her, but I've been busy as hell. I really need to make time."

He sighed, letting his head drop back against the wall. "Yeah, she's been chafing at being stuck back home. She and Zach broke up, so that's good. Apparently she's been carrying a torch for Jessie, and they talk when possible, though that hasn't been as much as either of them likes. She did mention you not calling, and says if you don't get around to it soon she's going to come down here and break the water heater. See how you like taking your showers cold."

I flinched back in disgust at the heresy he'd just spouted. "Cold? She...she would make shower in the cold? That's sick. Your sister needs help Benny. What kind of deviant would interfere with a mans shower time? I've never had anyone threaten to do anything as heinous as that to me. If she gets abilities she'd better be watched. She clearly has a twisted and ruthless mind that the rest of us can only dread."

Benny rolled his eyes. Hard. "Shane, a group of fanatical sleeper assassins literally threatened to murder you. I can't describe to you how stupid it is that the idea of cold showers scares you so much. Hell, knowing you, cold isn't even the worst. Lukewarm is probably your nightmare." I nodded, shuddering. He was right. Showers should be so hot they almost hurt, lukewarm showers were even worse than cold ones. At least with cold there was health benefits. A lukewarm shower was just a heartless taunt to the person taking it.

"You know, It's nice to see." Said Benny. "As much as you've changed since meeting Callie and getting your ability, plenty of parts of you are still the same old weirdo I made friends with when we were kids. I'm glad you've grown into yourself a bit, but I'm also glad you're still you. Oh speaking of growing, any chance I can come watch your training today? Jessie said you guys are basically just being beaten mercilessly for hours and that makes me smile."

I groaned. "You were doing so well there for a second. But fine, I guess you can tag along. It's not like we'll be any more injured with you watching, plus I can be happy knowing you couldn't possibly do any better. Maybe I can even talk Abel into giving you some...'lessons' of your own." I gave him a vicious grin and it was his turn to shudder.

"No thanks." He said forcefully. "I might do some work with Alden today, but I've seen Abel fight. Some things just aren't worth the price of admission. I'd love to be an invincible badass, but there are limits to what I'll do to get there." He smirked at me. "Besides, you nerds might need your big muscles and combat ability, but brilliant Inventing geniuses like myself know that knowledge is power. Also trial and error. Trial and error is power too." Hearing my childhood friend sound like a proper mad scientist made me want to laugh, and I turned to focus on the french toast so he wouldn't see that his stupid humor was getting a rise out of me.

I settled back into cooking. Last night had been...crazy. I felt so damn serene it was absurd, and I was honestly a little worried I'd lose my edge against Abel, or I would be if I didn't feel like Callie and I were more in sync than ever. Still, it was like this constant knot of fear and worry had just...melted away. It would be back I was sure, but for now it was just nice not to feel like I had literal months of stress piling onto me, and I hadn't even really noticed it was happening until it was gone.

I whisked some cinnamon and sugar into the eggs that I dipped the toast in, along with a bit of cream, and pulled the bacon from the pan, using the leftover grease to keep it from sticking. For the moment, I was happy, relaxed, and looking forward to the future in a way that was altogether different from how I had been for a while. Callie came back in with Jessie, both of them chuckling about something I had no desire to learn about, and shot me a soft smile when she saw me.

Once I finished cooking we all sat down and ate together, and Cass told us about the most recent episode of one of her cartoons as we all made fascinated noises and smiled at each other about how cute the kid was. Finally though, our family breakfast was over, and it was time to get back to work. I donned my costume and we headed down to G-district to meet up with Abel at the Pavilion. Unlike yesterday though, I was looking forward to my training. It was going to be a good day.

Malcolm Tent · Jan 2, 2023

The next three weeks were more of the same. One hundred and five wishes, sixty three of them being given over to the Beast Lord Garden and forty two of them for personal use, all of which I traded for attacks. I'd started pacing myself on stats given the cap coming up. I was already starting to get close to it. For the stats I got a hundred and eighty nine points out of those sixty three wishes, twenty to Vitality, forty to Focus, forty to Creation, forty nine to Fantasy, twenty to Might, and twenty to Perception.

A total of eight hundred fifty nine points for me across all my stats wasn't bad. We rotated through all twelve of the Beast Lord Garden elites that had been send out, since Sloane, Beric, and Croll only had so many points to give, but that had always been the plan. The forty two other wishes I'd traded for attacks. Ten healing bursts (I'd used up the two I had), nine fire attacks, five more triple strength tranq blows from Benny, eight more triple strength density shifted attacks, nine more spider leg attacks, and Callie had even given me access to one of her shadow clones made to look like me.

I'd also collected all ten of Alden's gravity attacks, so I was pretty much completely stocked up in the direct stuff, though the shadow clone thing had opened up the possibility of Jessie giving me taming or animation abilities, something I was eager to look into in the coming days. Still, all the attacks had helped my friends out a ton too. Benny had put thirty of his sixty six points into Might, thirty into Focus, and six in Fantasy just because it was so damn low bringing them up to one hundred fourteen, one hundred five, and sixteen respectively.

All twenty seven of Jessie's points went in Vitality of course. Callie put her three into creation, bringing it up to one hundred thirty five, and Cark put all his into Might, though I still hadn't really asked what his stats were. I'd even gotten three of my subskills modified over time. Touch of Tears and Consecration of flames had both been boosted to ten minute durations instead of five, and Double Trouble let me teleport behind someone and leave an illusion without needing to be restrained any more.

I'd been insanely busy the whole three weeks, not even mentioning the whole Abel thing. We'd spent that first week getting our ass kicked by just Abel, and when we were finally able to start actually taking some of the punishment and even landing glancing blows back, he brought Mel in to 'really start our training, and we officially began the process of getting truly brutalized. They didn't use Skills, which was the only reason we were probably still alive, but they put us through the ringer.

Shockingly though, Abel had informed us that we actually had this week off from training. There were three weeks left in our two month deadline, (there had been a few days before and after that one week of training, which was a week in itself, and then three we'd just done) and when I brought this up, my teacher just shrugged. "You can't train nonstop, I told you that. Everyone burns out, even Ascendants. Plus you don't want to get a rep for being a grinder. That shit follows you for life. But you also don't want your edge to be dull when you get to the actual tournament. Take the week off now, and the last two weeks before showtime we'll drill you into the ground."

Despite his wolfish grin, which normally would have terrified me, I actually smiled back. I turned to Callie. "So, I'm thinking we might be able to take that trip back home we've been talking about, if you think it's a good time." I'd actually considered that this might come up and talked to Melinda about it, we'd agreed that any wishes I'd done for them past my contractually obligated three would roll over, with about ten days of those and one spare I was at twenty one extra, which would give me a week off from that too, so it worked out.

Callie hadn't been granting wishes, but she'd been constantly training with her shadow manipulation, and had actually reached out to her uncle a few times. She was running on fumes too, and it occurred to me that Abel had a pretty decent grasp on what we were up to doing. Her shoulders seemed to sag in a relief I hadn't even known she needed to feel. "Oh gods, yes. That sounds amazing. I'm so damn tired. Not physically obviously but...mentally I'm just friend. Healing just doesn't do anything for mental fatigue."

It didn't. My own stomach was unclenching at the sudden lack of the stress that had been plaguing me for weeks. Sometimes you couldn't even feel the weight crushing down on you until it was gone. I honestly think if it wasn't for my time with Callie after training (I'd taken to sleeping in her room pretty much every night now, though most nights it really was just sleeping given the exhaustion) I'd probably have snapped. The more I thought about this the better it sounded for everyone, we could all use some down time.

Callie stepped up and pulled me against her, seeming happier than I had seen her in a while, at least at the Pavilion. "I'm sure mom would be so excited to have us. She's been talking about you visiting for ages. She really wants to meet my first serious boyfriend. It's honestly been getting kind of annoying lately, so this will really help me out." She shot me a wink as she looked up at me, her beaming smile more than enough to make the whole idea worth it. I loved seeing her smile like, and loved being the cause even more.

I paused as I had another thought. "Wait...why the hell did you make us come all the way down here to tell us we didn't have to come in? You could have just texted us this?" I was wearing my mask, but my annoyance must have been audible, because Abel's smug grin made it clear he knew he'd gotten to me. This asshole. Even Callie turned and glared at him a little as Mel lounged at the table they'd been playing chess at, trying not to snicker at us too obviously and failing even while wearing a mask of her own.

Abel just shrugged. "Because it was funny? Honestly how was I supposed to know you were going to take a vacation? Still, if you're leaving there are a few things you should iron out here anyway, so it's not too bad you ended up here." He looked over at Mel. "You had paperwork for them to sign right? Might be your last to chance to get anything done if they're going out of town." I grimaced as he clearly just came up with a reason off the top of his head, and even more as he tried to make work for me.

I reached up and placed a finger to the middle of my mask. "Not it." I said seriously. Callie's eyes widened with shock which quickly turned to annoyance. She glared at me but I just waved it off. "Don't be a spoil sport. Nose goes is a sacred code of honor. It's not my fault that you weren't fast enough to notice what I was doing. Aren't you supposed to be trained to be attuned to every movement I make?"

She growled at me, which was more cute than scary since I knew she wouldn't hurt me. "Only during combat. You're a bastard. But fine, you called it so I suppose I have no choice. I'll have my revenge someday though. Be on your guard." I snickered as Mel led her away. Abel was just looking at me quizzically. I shrugged. "What? Nose goes is sacred. It's like dibs, or shotgun. They're the basis of the modern concept of honor."

Chuffing out a laugh, my teacher shook his head. "You kids are all crazy. But whatever. Since I don't have to train you today I'm going to go take a nap on top of one of the tents. No one ever finds me up there." He shot me a grin and a cheery wave and headed off to find some building sized circus tent to climb. I assumed he was using his ability to get up there, but still, it was an impressive amount of effort to go to to avoid being woken up.

I stopped to let Alden know we would be gone for a while, and he waved me off with a congratulations on my vacation. Once that was done and I let the Sloane and the others know I'd be gone a week and to tell Melinda when I'd be back. Then I went to go track down the others to let them know what was going on. Jessie was excited to go home and visit, happy for the opportunity to see Maria and to check in with her brother's old teammate Lindsey, with whom she was extremely close.

Benny was the last person I went to talk to, and I found my best friend relaxing on the benches. He hadn't gone to visit Celine today luckily, and I sat down next to him, staring out at the pavilion. "Hey man, you look bored. You didn't have to come with today. Could have gone to hang out with your girl." I poked him in the ribs, earning a light grunt and an annoyed glare before he rolled his eyes with a chuckle.

"I could have." He said easily. "But absence makes the heart grow fonder. Not all of us are part of a co-dependent battle couple who spend all their time together. It works for you and Callie and that's great, but Cel likes her privacy too. Being underfoot all the time would only bug her. Not that she would ever actually SAY anything about it, but still. Taking some time to hang with you guys lets her decompress, and makes our next time hanging out more fun. Don't want her to get sick of me."

I shrugged. "We're not codependent, we just love each other's company. I spent years alone. It was fine I guess, but Callie...being with her doesn't feel like being in a crowd. We're both happy to be alone sometimes, but we can be alone together if we want to." Benny just rolled his eyes good naturedly. "Anyway, I didn't come over here for your opinion on my relationship. I wanted to let you know that we're planning a trip back to Valen. I wasn't sure if you were in. You can bring Celine if you want."

He jerked upright. "Wait. Really? Fuck yes I want to go home! I've been missing my family like crazy, and I want to introduce them to Cel. When did you want to leave?" He stood up and started to pace. "Shit, I have to get presents for mom and dad, and something for Maria to shut her up so she doesn't bitch I skipped her. Plus I need to buy something nice to wear, I've been in my costume for ages and mom will expect me to be dressed to impress when I introduce my girlfriend."

It was hard not to chuckle at his frantic muttering given his lackadaisical attitude just a minute ago. I didn't think he had much to worry about. Amber was a social butterfly and a big fan of high society. Bringing home a pretty, noble, elf girl would thrill her. If anything Benny would have trouble getting her to leave them alone. Still, I let him ramble, enjoying the comfort of the familiar voice of my best friend. Pretty soon I would be home again. I wondered how everyone was doing. It would be nice to see them all.

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

Experienced.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Know what you're doing yet?

Monkey with a typewriter.

Know what you're doing yet?

Monkey with a typewriter.

Not too sore, are you?

Monkey with a typewriter.

Versed in the lewd.

Getting some practice in, huh?

Monkey with a typewriter.

Getting some practice in, huh?

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Titan of the east.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Monkey with a typewriter.

Users who are viewing this thread