Wish upon the Stars chapter 333

The next day we had...nothing to do. Not absolutely nothing, granted,  we had training pretty much daily, but there were no big important  tasks other than getting ready for the following day's match. We slept  in late, got up and had a big breakfast, and then had a big meeting with  the others to catch them up on what they might have missed, as well as  making sure they all knew Rime (Cark hadn't met her yet).

Once  that was done I granted her all five of her wishes, confirming that  while I could do four points of stats for a G-ranker, I could only do  two for an F-ranker, and it would be impressive if I could manage even a  single one for an E-ranker. Still, ten points of stats was nothing to  sneeze at, especially daily with no big requirements.

In  repayment for her wishes she put up elixirs as requested. Each wish of  two points was paid off with a G-ranked elixir worth five, and she was  easily able to supply the Focus elixirs Benny needed for the day,  bringing his focus up from one hundred thirty three to one hundred fifty  eight, his total coming up to four hundred and twenty eight points. At  this rate it might be possible to finish getting him and Jessie up to  F-rank before it was time to leave.

"I have to say." I  told Callie as we sat on the couch with the others, strategizing for  possible enemy fights based on the opponents we were sure had passed the  third round already. "I kind of wish the elixir limit wasn't a thing.  Like, I understand it, but this is WAY more convenient that bartering  individual points. It would have made ranking up a snap." I looked at  Zeke. "Any chance its possible to integrate elixir points perfectly with  wishes?"

He sawed a hand back and forth. "Anything is  possible, but it's not cost effective. It's an Impact thing, so it only  really work on people lower ranked than you are, which kind of limits  your options. That's a much bigger change than you might think, so even  in those circumstances the cost is prohibitive. The only ones who really  bother are incredibly rich cultivators who can pay MUCH stronger wish  granters to get their kids back on track."

Rime nodded at  that. "I could see how that would be a rare and valuable commodity. It  can be pretty enticing to be able to constantly get stronger like that.  There are plenty of people who don't believe they can ever rank up and  just decide to ignore their elixir limit entirely and artificially pump  themselves up to their next rank limit."

I froze. That...I  went back over what I knew about elixirs in my head. That would  actually work. The elixir limit wasn't an inherent thing, it was the  formula for what part of your core self could be artificially inflated  before your soul would be too weak for a rank up. Which meant it WOULD  be possible for people to pump themselves up to the edge of a rank. "Ok,  I hadn't realized you could do that but that makes sense. Why don't all  the E-rankers do it then? Shouldn't they ALL be at the peak of E?"

Rime  shook her head. "They can't. We don't have nearly enough E-ranked  Alchemists or materials to supply all of them. Hell, we have almost  none. Any time E-ranked elixirs show up they get snatched up almost  immediately, and usually not by the same person."

"True,  it's much more common elsewhere." Chimed in Zeke. "With D-rank being a  watershed, E-rank is as high as a lot of people manage to get, so you  see a lot of people who completely abandon the hope of advancement to  artificially pump themselves up to the peak of E. Happens all the time  on real D-rank planets where materials like that are much easier to  get."

Rime sighed. "Even F-rank pills and elixirs can be  hard to find here. I hit my cap, but I'm in the minority. Frostbite had  to put in quite a bit of effort to boost me up so much. Luckily, G-rank  is low enough that there are plenty to go around. We had a stockpile for  some of our lower level members, and I didn't even clean the whole  thing out."

Well that was good for us. Honestly even once  the twenty five wishes were past I would probably work with her for a  while if possible, since at that speed Jessie would still have seventy  five points left on her cap. I also cursed myself for never trying to  give more points when they were lower ranked, since I'd had no idea it  worked like that. I probably could have gotten them to G-rank much  faster. Assuming they could pay for it of course. I hoped that Callie  had mentioned her whole part time job thing, since they would need cash  to pay off the points blitz especially in the last month. At the very  least once I broke through to F-rank getting Jessie ready in time would  be much easier.

Focusing back on the matter at hand, I had  to point out the obvious. "As nice as getting everyone to G-rank on  time is, it's not exactly going to matter if we can't win this. We  really need to know who we're fighting."

Benny snorted.  "Anyone else amused at the irony of us doing our level best to get the  leak busted when we could really use his services?" He looked at Rime.  "Any chance he's still active and they're like...gathering evidence or  something?" He said hopefully.

She just smirked. "We're  the Unity. We don't need to do stings on flunkies." Her smirk dropped  off into an annoyed scowl. "He was picked up right after I called in and  is currently having...words, with some of our interrogation  specialists. Probably won't lead anywhere sadly. Either he's a greedy  opportunist or whoever was pulling his strings did it carefully, but  either way he's apparently not going to give up anything of value. Not  the best outcome I admit."

That was  unfortunate, but it could have gone worse. Still. "Does that mean  there's not a high chance of him going down for this?"

"Oh  that's already happening." She said casually. "He's screwed, it's just  that he's the ONLY one who's screwed. The threat is a lot weaker if she  just wrecks the one guy. Since we couldn't get his bosses, anyone else  who wants to leak info through a cats paw will be emboldened to try it  for themselves. Though Frostbite is having people put in place to keep  an eye on all the bigger names who have access to things like fight  info, so at the very least they won't be quite so overt about it next  time."

I  slumped at that. "Does that benefit us at all though? Getting our hands  on some random minion isn't likely to actually scare off the people  behind him."

She  shook her head. "Nope, but you're not thinking of this the right way.  Whoever was backing him won't dare act a second time. While some of the  middle management might risk it, whoever he got that information from  has to be careful now that everyone is being watched. One data point  means nothing, plenty of people could have given him that little tidbit,  but the more times it happens the more vulnerable they are. They won't  dare try it again while being watched. Which means whichever faction  bought that information lost their main connection in management."

Callie  cut in, bringing us back to the point. "Anyway, we need some kind of  plan on what we'll do, and since we don't know what we're actually  facing more than one plan would be best. Something general, maybe some  formations we can use or something." She looked at Abel, who was leaning  back on the couch nearby with his eyes closed, though the angle of his  head and his breathing showed us he wasn't sleeping, just relaxing as we  talked. "Any ideas there, Apollyon?"

His  eyes opened, focusing on me. "Maybe." He said with deliberation. "I'm  not sure exactly. Honestly I think we have enough figured out in terms  of roles that we don't need too much more work there. Our best bet is to  continue the training we were working on before, forcing you all to  react to my attacks and try to survive them. That's training that will  give you instincts you can't get from studying a teams win record."

I  grimaced. I'd been afraid he'd say something like that. I'd hated that  training. Callie didn't seem thrilled either, but she nodded. "That  might be best. Realistically, not knowing the opponent isn't too much of  an imposition as long as we're in top form, and your...special training  is nothing if not effective." She shot Benny and Jessie a jealous look.  I completely sympathized. Those lucky bastards.

Abel  popped to his feet, moving almost too quickly to track. "Well then,  guess we have a plan." He grinned at us wickedly. "You two might want to  get warmed up. Wouldn't want you to move too slow and get hurt." I was  pretty positive given the massive strength difference Abel wouldn't  accidentally kill us, but he might PURPOSEFULLY maim us, given Jessie's  presence here as insurance.

Speaking  of which, I looked over at her. "Hey Agria, can you do me a favor and  stick around for this? Even if he doesn't break our knees or something  we don't want to fight exhausted tomorrow. If you patch us up we can  train hard and still be in good condition."

She  shrugged. "Sure. I was planning to go visit Randall and the wolves, but  I can do it later." With Randall coming up here we realized the house  wasn't going to cut it for keeping the animals, so we'd cleared out a  shed behind the house that Zeke hadn't bothered telling us about. The  wolves had claimed it as a den pretty much, and Randall mostly just  slept in the back and let them do their thing unless they woke him up.

With  a sigh, we headed for the training room to prepare for the fight.  Realistically, I knew this was a smart move. Abel was a monster in  battle, and learning to react to him even in training took our ability  to avoid attacks to a whole new level, but I was getting cold shakes  remembering the last time we did this. The feeling of his fist whistling  by me so fast I could barely track it was something I would never get  used to.

When  we got down there, I saw that Rime had come along with us, deciding to  sit off to one side and watch, and to my surprise Mel walked over to sit  with her. The two of them had started chatting and apparently hit it  off. I found the dichotomy amusing, since they literally couldn't be  more different. The red haired fire user and the blue haired ice user  were a study in contrasts, but it couldn't be a bad thing for Rime to  get better acquainted with everyone.

As  we took up position and started warming up, Abel strolled into the ring  we were going to be using and stripped off his coat. He left the mask  on, which we were thankful for, since Mel had told us that Abel was only  ever REALLY serious in battle when he took off his mask. But still,  knowing he was going harder this time was terrifying.

I  triggered the overlay for both of us, making sure we'd have the best  chance to avoid the attacks and to learn from this, and focused on the  bond between Callie and I. Once he saw that we were ready, Abel gave us  that same bloodthirsty smile that had been seared into my brain last  time. "Fight." And then all I could see was fists. This was going to be a  long day.