Wish upon the Stars chapter 321

Abel stopped beating us early enough that I we were able to get a few  hours of sleep. Our match was at eleven in the morning, so we had a bit  of time to rest at least, but he wouldn't let me heal us until after we  woke up. Aside from the natural healing of Vitality, he also knew the  blast of energy from the heal burst would stop us from sleeping, and  wanted us to maximize the amount of rest we got.

I healed  us up with one heal burst each while we scarfed down breakfast, and then  the four of us headed for the arena again, the same one we fought at  last time. When we arrived, it was just as packed as before. Just like  last time there would be exhibition matches from those who couldn't  enter the tournament (we'd kind of gotten in the back door because  Natalie pulled strings) for everyone to watch after our fight, but we  were the main event.

Just like before, we waited to be  called out and entered the arena, but unlike last time, Abel wasn't  carefree and bored. He looked focused, keyed up to a razors edge, and he  had a gleam in his eye that I'd only seen a few times. No, not the same  gleam. I'd seen him enraged, interested, but this was something else.  He was honing himself for battle, truly baring his fangs for the first  time. Even against Serenity he hadn't been pressured. Her artifact had  been enough to hold him back for a bit, but nothing more than that.

As  we stepped out onto the sand and saw the other team, I felt like his  enthusiasm was infecting all of us. Like there was an invisible war drum  beating in time to all four of our hearts, and I knew that the training  yesterday was only the beginning. These people were strong, and this  battle was for real stakes.

There were four of them, of  course. The one in the center was a tall skinny man with shaggy brown  hair and a goatee. He had a long face and he was pale and almost sickly  looking, being so thin that I could see the bones in his face. He leaned  against a mop handle, with the head over his shoulder, and looked like a  strong wind might blow him over. The other three members of the Divine  Stainless Temple stood a bit back from him, as if giving him space to  attack, but I could see that the three of them were experienced in  teamwork.

They stared at us for a moment after the battle  was called to start, and then the one on the far and, an olive skinned  man with long red hair, barreled forward, expanding as he did. He went  from normal size (about five ten) to almost twenty feet tall. As he  charged, a massive sword erupted from the sand to one side of him,called  by the blue haired man with the single earring I knew was the sword  summoner. It came up hilt first, and he grabbed it and swept it  horizontally at us, even as the final member of their team, a very small  man with a yellow ponytail, hurled a massive bolt of lightning at the  shimmering blade.

Whatever the sword was made of, it  conducted the electricity flawlessly, and the sight of the massive  electrified blade might have frozen me in place...yesterday. Now I just  grabbed ahold of Callie's hand and put my other hand on Mel's shoulder,  activating Leaf on the Wind in conjunction with a Cloud Step for each of  us to get out of the way.

Abel stayed behind, staring at  the only unmoving member of the group, the mop wielding man, as he  casually slapped out a hand to each side, one creating a fist image, and  the other manifesting a palm that allowed the swing to arch over where  he was standing with a simple window wiping motion. The spatial  lubrication channeled through the image forced the sword up and over,  cleanly sliding by our teacher.

His fist though, never  made contact. The blow aimed at the supersized team member was slapped  aside by the image of a huge wooden pole as mop guy finally made his  move. The pole wasn't the last of it either, as the other side of the  mop spun up and a massive manifestation of the mop head appeared in  front of us.

I'd wondered how the hell someone could  possible get mopping to Intermediate peak, but that terrifying attack  told me absolutely everything I needed to know about the Skill. A  fucking CANOPY of tightly woven wool strands appeared around us, each  one winding itself like a striking snake to try to entrap and bind us  from a different angle. Net on a stick indeed, this was absolutely  horrifying, and I desperately tried to compensate for the attack with  another Cloud Step, but I had nowhere to go.

Another hand  image appeared around us, spatial lubrication smoothing the way along  our path and allowing us to glide through the world around the grasping  chords. Rather than a single palm, this one traced a myriad of paths in  the air with expertly twisting fingers, creating not just a spatial  waterslide for us to ride, but a series of interception spacial streams  the forcefully turned aside each strand.

My eyes were wide  as saucers as I saw what Abel was really capable of for the first time.  The fine control, the speed and dexterity. It was like watching art.  Knowing we had zero chance of interfering with those two, I Stepped  again, bringing us down on the far side of the arena. Triggering a  shadow clone, I sent it sprinting across the sand, then used it as a  focal point to cast Sucking Mud.

The clone slapped its  hand down on the sand, and the experience of working with Callie through  the bond enabled me to trigger the skill through the clone, but the  thing burst because I put too much soul strength into it. Still, the  skill worked, and the massive sword wielder's eyes widened as he began  to sink into the already fairly unstable sand. A wave of swords burst up  from the ground through the quicksand and another several arcs of  lighting lit them up, but the other two team members couldn't take the  time to follow up.

From what I could tell the sword  conjurer could manipulate his blades, and was currently doing so to help  the gigantified guy lift the enormously heavy blade. The lightning  caller had to keep a steady stream of electricity going into the weapon  to keep it electrified. Landing finally from Abel's help, Callie and I  split from Mel, who moved to attack the lightning caller because even  without paying him paying attention we didn't have much of a counter for  lightning.

We both attacked the sword conjurer, and as we  closed in he (unsurprisingly) conjured a pair of swords and came to  meet us. Mop guy tried to intervene, but in a blink Abel was there in  front of him. His fists blurred out, weaving and snaking through the air  in bizarre arcs that wouldn't have been possible without his ability,  and the sickly looking Master Candidate's expression became fierce as  whirled his mop.

Wooden staff knocking the punches askew  and writhing mop head tangling up the strikes, I saw the spatial  distortions melt under the threads of the mop, causing Abel to snarl.  This would be mop guy's ability I guessed. Some kind of cleansing,  amusingly enough. The images of fists and mop crashed together in the  void above us, but Abel wasn't able to overpower the other warrior  because he was still engaging the huge guy with his off hand.

Turning  to Callie, I indicated for her to protect me while I tried something,  and she seamlessly stepped in without me needing to speak aloud. I  stepped back and triggered another shadow clone. Utilizing all my  necessary skills, I stacked poison fire, Afterburner, Mercy Kill, a  Triple Stack tranq blow, and Kidney Blow on the clone, then, using the  connection to Callie, I hauled on Beginner Shadow Manipulation.

The  soul weight of changing the composition of the clone from 'clone,' to  'giant knife' was nothing to sneeze at, but once I did, I snatched it up  (barely able to carry the damn thing because of the size) and triggered  Double Trouble. Appearing behind the giant, I slammed the oversized  shadow blade infused with super augmented poison and tranquilizer into  the massive form, which as I had hoped was MUCH more vulnerable.

Impact  couldn't be generated like that, which meant all of his was spread out  over his body. It was why mop guy had protected him from Abel. He  probably assumed we wouldn't be able to cause harm to him on a large  enough scale to matter without Abel's Skill.

He was wrong.  The giant staggered as the G-ranked superboosted poison tore through  his body, forced to shrink back down so his Impact would return to a  more condensed state to resist it. That or he passed out from the tranq,  either way he slumped over onto the sand, letting the giant sword fall  to the ground and massively relieving the pressure on Abel, and letting  me disperse my Sucking Mud.

Unfortunately  that freed up sword guy completely, and the massive sword thumped to  the ground unmoving as he gestured to the wave of blades from earlier  and hurled them right at me. Fortunately, I still had nine charges of  Afterburner after that dagger. With the single greatest pull of soul  strength I could manage, I triggered Stone Limb, and pulled the strength  of the earth over my entire body, simultaneously using a triple stacked  density shift on my whole form.

Sand  or not, the dirt beneath me was still earth, and G-ranked earth at  that, and Afterburner's tripling effect was stacked on top of that. With  the triple strength density shift combined with the triple strength  stone limb, my entire body became a living statue too dense for any of  the swords to penetrate, which combined with my F-ranked armor meant I  took zero injury from the attack.

My  head was on fire, I was barely coherent at this point. The soul  strength needed for this was at the very edges of what I was capable of,  forcing stone limb to cover my whole body would have broken me before  the night of the gala, but all that training had massively increased my  tolerance, so I could just barely hold on.

Feet  digging into the sand from the weight, I would have probably been  swallowed up even having dismissed Sucking Mud, except I still had Leaf  on the Wind active and was able to offset some of it. I felt the sword  barrage rain down on me, pinging off my skin like sleet. These were  conjured weapons not high ranking crafted blades, and they were only as  strong as the Creation and Might of the sword conjurer himself.

He  was so distracted by the attempt to avenge his buddy that he even  ignored Callie to attack me, which was not at all wise. She pummeled him  the second he dropped his guard, creating a heavy mace from shadows and  beating him violently about the head and body, presumably in anger at  seeing me get swallowed by a cloud of dangerous cutlery.

Finally,  there was a loud snap and the image of the mop above us vanished as  Abel landed a strong hit on the mop handle and snapped it in two,  breaking mop guy's momentum. Without his weapon the Master Candidate was  helpless in front of my teacher. The whole fight had been so  interconnected that once the first domino fell the pressure overwhelmed  them and things ended within a minute or two. I let the Stone Skin (as I  was calling it) skill fade as I slumped to the ground, barely  conscious. I was grinning like a loon as I heard the announcer call the  battle in our favor. We'd gotten our second win.