Wish upon the Stars chapter 521

Four months. We'd been in space on the road for four months. One  hundred twenty days, seven hundred and twenty wishes. Of course, I  hadn't focused all that on myself. While training was out as per my  promise to myself (any my girlfriend), it was a big ship, and there were  lots of people who WERE training. People who got injured doing said  training, and I was more than happy to heal them with the charges I got  from Jessie.

This  enabled me to rack up a sizable nest egg by charging healing fees, as  well as continue helping Jessie boost her Vitality, since she was the  furthest behind out of all of us statwise.

Half  of my wishes went to actually boosting my stats, of course which  totalled out to twenty five hundred and twenty points each for us. I  still had a bit of bleedover from the godslaying incident ( though not  nearly as much as Callie ) which got me up to a solid three thousand  points of added stats over the trip. I was officially over nine thousand  total and closing in on E-rank which was pretty solid for not putting  in any effort.

Aside  from Jessie and I, Benny spent a no inconsiderable amount of time  inventing, and sold most of it to Nat for wishes to keep up. While I was  unwilling to train for the trip, my cousin was much less sanguine, and  spent all her time either fighting or granting wishes, except on the  rare occasions we were able to drag her away. Benny got a full two  thousand points out of her ( Might and Focus, of course), and Callie had  her godslayer renown still coming in, which netted her a thousand for  doing nothing.

All  in all, Jessie and Benny were both right on the edge of seventy five  hundred points, with Callie and I both over nine thousand, and I had  thirty six hundred F-rank chits (or thirty six E-rank) as a nest egg  stashed away from healing fees.

More  importantly, I got to spend time with my sister, my girlfriend, and my  friends, just enjoying life and NOT worrying about being impaled alive  on spider legs or eaten by wolfhornigators. Sadly, all good things must  end, because according to Killian we were rapidly approaching  Stratholme, an imperial C-ranked planet where would be joining up with a  local force.

Vinnie  had already left by the time we tried to get in touch, so hopefully  we'd see him again at some point. This particular planet had been picked  by Zeke after talking to some of his contacts (since this was about the  war and not the candidate competition it didn't trip his geas) and  would apparently be perfect as an entry point.

So  we all gathered up at the house, where Callie and Chelsea had put  together an information briefing on Stratholme based on research and  preexisting knowledge.

"Welcome  everybody." Callie said as we all sat down. "As you know, we've been  heading for the Empire, planning to join a noble house for military  training. Now, obviously we aren't signing up long term, this is more of  a mercenary contract. It'll be for less than a year, but plenty of  these places have high turnover, so it shouldn't be too tough to find  someone to take us. Before that though, we thought we'd give everyone a  breakdown on how the Empire works."

Chelsea  nodded. "Most of you are from the Conglomerate. Which, while relatively  established, is much more recent than the Empire. Because of that fact,  and the structure of the Empire itself, it's a much more rigid and law  abiding place. Individuality isn't quite as prized as in the  conglomerate, even among Ascendants."

"How  is that possible though?" I asked, a bit confused. "Renown is how  Ascendants rank up. If nobody is doing anything interesting how does  their legend spread?"

Callie  chuckled at that. "First off, I think our standard for interesting is a  bit skewed. But secondly, because they work on the job system. Much  like the Church and the Cult, who you may have noticed tend to be mostly  pretty uniform rank to rank. That's because the job system allows you  to funnel large amounts of belief to specific roles, rather the people  filling them. In the Empire that's nobility. There are other jobs, and  those are managed by the Empire's roles, where he keeps records of who  does what."

"Basically,  the Empire is incredibly stratified because it lets the Emperor funnel  renown to all the imperially accepted roles." Said Chelsea. "As a god  whose domain is concerned with administration and the running of a  nation, he has the power to do that kind of thing. It's why the Empire  has MANY more possible jobs than the Church or Cult, which have less  than twenty or so each."

Reaching  out for a piece of paper, Callie sketched out a quick pyramid. "The  Emperor, as a god, doesn't need renown anymore, but as the symbol of the  empire it all feeds to him. He funnels it from there, first to the  kings, then the dukes, and so on down the line. Each noble is  responsible for funneling renown to those in their own territory, a duty  heavily monitored and managed by the imperial court. Bakers,  candlestick makers, even guards. Everyone gets some."

"That's...weird."  I said after a minute. "But if it works for them whatever. How will  this affect us? We don't have jobs, is it possible for us to get renown  this way?"

Callie  shrugged. "Somewhat. There's always excess, and the Emperor can't  access of distribute renown outside the imperial scope. It won't be much  though. Just not how the Empire works. Not a huge problem for us, since  that's not why we're here, and you can always get a job officially to  gain renown that way. But we've gotten off track. I mention this  particular fact because it means there's actually LAWS in the Empire.  More than just the haphazard random 'hey probably don't do that'  guidelines we had back home."

To  my surprise, Celine cut in. "She's right. The Conglomerate, especially  the edges where you were, is chaotic. The Empire is a more regimented  and lawful place, so we'll need to confine any issues we have to  specified combat areas. Costumes should be fine, they're not the norm  but there are people from all over in the Empire so they're hardly going  to shock anyone."

"Speaking  of costumes." I grimaced, glancing down. "I need a new one. I tried  patching that big ass hole where Travis shivved me and nothing will  stick. I have zero Skills for tailoring, and honestly I'm almost  outgrowing the things anyway. They were really nice when we got them  from Cicero, but it's been months, and I really need to get something a  bit more suitable before I hit E-rank."

Abel  snickered at that. "If anyone back home heard you say that they'd  probably stab you again. Your progression is absurd. I'm lagging way  behind at this point. If it wasn't for Nat I wouldn't even be at the  halfway mark. Hopefully I can get a temporary military role while I'm on  Stratholme and pump my numbers."

I  hadn't even considered that Abel and Mel might be lagging. They were  the strongest of us, pretty much. It just made it even more obvious how  terrifying my mentor was, though I suspected he was also heavily focused  in one area like Jessie was, and that probably helped.

"ANYWAY."  Said Callie loudly, bringing us back on topic. "Stratholme is our first  C-ranked planet. It's going to be pretty rough. Our stats are going to  be suppressed by the native Impact, though everyone else's will too.  There are certain areas like cities and special residences that are  exempt, places where children are raised and such, but they're under  heavy guard and the actions you take inside are tightly restricted."

She  pulled out a few more papers, covered in tightly packed scrawls. "We  looked into the various factions on Stratholme, and as a C-ranked  planet, it obviously has C-rankers. In the Empire that's an Earl. The  Earl in charge of the planet is Earl Nevius. His family pretty much runs  things, though there are Viscounts, or D-rankers, of various factions,  and each of them is in charge of several Barons, or E-rankers. Those E-rankers mostly field armies of F-rankers, or Lords, which is what we are. Any lower and they pretty much can't function on a C-ranked planet."

Which  meant we were probably going to be the next best thing to mortals on  this planet. With the weight of the Impact we were going to be under  serious strain, luckily, we were at least HIGH F-rank, we'd probably be  stronger than most. Good for training, bad for everything else. Joy.  "I'm guessing there's a lot of political bullshit going on behind the  scenes?"

"Tons."  Said Callie with a grimace. "But the basics are this. The Earl is peak  C-rank. He did...something, and the Emperor censured him, which means he  stopped his renown gain. He's stuck unable to enter B-rank, but still  isn't someone anybody wants to mess with. Because of that, he doesn't  micromanage much, just lets the Viscounts do whatever."

I sighed. "Which means their Barons  are probably fighting like a hundred cats in a five foot bathtub. We're  going to be avoiding working for any of the big power players right?  Because I don't need to get mixed up in imperial bullshit. We're here  for training and possible faction building, not to get sucked into  regional nonsense."

She nodded, circling a few names. "There are a few Barons  that are essentially free agents. They call them Robber Barons. They  don't answer to the Viscounts for anything more than lip service and  taxes, and fight amongst themselves. Territory there changes hands  semi-often, they don't actually lose TOO many fighters, and there's a  high turnover as people prove themselves and use the reputation to join a  reputable faction. Low commitment, medium risk, high intensity."

"That's  perfect." I said with delight. "Let me see that list?" She passed me a  piece of paper with a series of names and descriptions, rank,  approximate level with that rank, personnel reviews. She'd really dug  into this. It was a good thing the Empire was on the scan ring network.  "Tell me about this one." I pointed at a Baron three quarters down the list.

She  found him quickly enough. "Camden Tolbert. Father is a Viscount from  the Tolbert family, big money in the Empire. Camden hit Baron young,  decided to go out on his own. Bit rough around the edges and a tad  battle crazy, but supposedly an honorable guy who takes care of his own.  He was on my shortlist too." She read over her notes before nodding  again to herself in confirmation. Before we moved on though, she reached  over and put a hand on mine. "Are you sure about this Shane? This is  going to be rough."

"I  know." I said grimly. "But you heard Nat before. This will help us run  our own faction when we reach that point. And mercenaries like this will  be perfect for recruiting. Is everyone else still good?" I asked my  friends, looking around for confirmation.

They'd  all been quiet, listening to us talking and memorizing the information.  Benny spoke up. "Honestly, I'm kind of looking forward to it. Being  just another face in the crowd sounds nice. Like I'm sure you and Nat  will tell this Tolbert guy about your powers when you can trust him, but  until then, we're going to be bottom level grunts. I'm even looking  forward to being normal levels of strong again."

I  laughed at that, but nodded in agreement. We'd been getting so  powerful, getting involved in such crazy shit. Having to prove ourselves  and fight our way up would be a nice change of pace from fighting gods  and their crazy fanatic worshippers. Of course, I was just as sure that  was going to change quickly when we got to Stratholme. For now though, I  just settled in for the rest of the briefing. I wanted to learn as much  as I could.