Wish upon the Stars chapter 319

Waking up the next morning, I was incredibly exhausted. Between  helping Callie schmooze 'randoms' as Carl called them, and training (I  absolutely wasn't going to waste a chance to train my soul strength  nigh-limitlessly) my brain was fried, and I was still tired when I woke  up. Not physically tired, since my Vitality was pretty high, but  mentally tired. The process of constantly exhausting and refilling soul  strength was a unique kind of exhausting I'd never experienced before.

Still,  I'd made considerable progress last night. I was pretty sure I could  handle using Magma Leg without instantly exhausting my soul strength  now, which was a huge boost to my abilities. Of course, the biggest  harvest from last night was something we hadn't even known had happened  until this morning. Once we woke up we found an envelope pinned to the  door of the house with our next opponents listed inside.

We  would have been totally in the dark about who they were, except we'd  been chatting up everyone last night and had managed to dig up quite a  treasure trove of information on the other teams. The team from the  Divine Stainless Temple had been precisely one of the teams we'd heard  about.

It wasn't actually a shock that they'd come up,  because the main combatant of the Divine Stainless Temple used an  extremely weird primary weapon, and his first round opponent complained  endlessly about how stupid and ridiculous it was that he lost to a guy  using a mop.

"Ah shit." Benny said as he read it. "You  guys are fighting mop guy? He's pretty strong right? Honestly, how does a  person train mopping to a Beginner or even Intermediate Skill. And  where the hell do you get a G-ranked mop from? I still say those Turtle  Breath Monastery guys were just chumps."

Abel, who had  crashed with us at the house rather than head back to G-district, shook  his head. "Nope. Their team leader was actually decent. You get a feel  for martial arts aura. I'd say...Intermediate rank, probably somewhere  in the middle. Not a stand out favorite, but still, pretty decent. Plus I  haven't seen him fight but 'Turtle Breath' makes me think defensive  art. Those guys are always a bitch to deal with."

Jessie  snickered from her spot at the counter. "So you're saying they  got...cleaned up." We all groaned at the bad joke, though I secretly  sidled over to give her a fist bump for the hilarious pun.

Abel  rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying not to underestimate him because his  weapon is weird. Don't we have a guy on our team who can beat people  stronger than him with video game Skills? Stupid to assume other people  can't do interesting things with underwhelming Skills. Mopping is a new  one on me, but I could see how it could be pretty useful in a fight. I  mean, it's basically a net on a stick."

"No." Said Callie.  "That's a butterfly net, and it's already a thing, but I see your  point. Also I really hope we don't ever have to fight someone who uses a  butterfly net as a main weapon. I think mops are about the most  ridiculous form of weaponry I can stomach."

That set  Jessie off on another round of giggles. "You guys clearly didn't hear  about the team with the guy who fights with a mug." We all just looked  at her, and she put both hands up. "Hey, I swear that's not a joke. Mug  guy crushed his first round opponent. They were whining about it all  night."

Ignoring the ridiculousness of that, I turned to  look at Callie. "I wasn't listening to any of the other stuff they said  about the Stainless Temple." I grimaced. "Sorry, I was bored at that  point, so I started training with Seek Hidden to pass the time. It  doesn't have any outward signs so figured it would be ok." Naturally I  needed to take best advantage of the music, and while dancing had helped  using my other skills was useful too as long as I actively altered the  skill during execution.

She just smirked at me and patted  my arm. "I know sweetie. I could tell. But don't worry, no one else  could. You did a good job of pretending to be interested. If it wasn't  for the bond I might not have noticed. But it's fine. I noted everything  down. I know you aren't a fan of those kind of events and that you put  plenty of effort into meeting people for most of the night."

I  just shrugged. I'd pick up people skills eventually. Unless...were  there people Skills? Celine probably had some. It didn't matter. I had  enough Skills to deal with trying to upgrade all the subskills for DS  Mastery. "So." Callie continued. "The other members of the Divine  Stainless Temple are decent, but nothing overwhelming. One of them can  grow, which is interesting, and one of them can create swords. The last  one just uses lightning blasts, but he teams up with sword guy mostly  and they're pretty effective."

"Wait." I said in surprise.  "He can GROW? Like...make himself bigger? How does that even work? Does  he gain more Impact with size? Less? Is there a limit?" I'd heard of a  few impressive powers, but that one was kind of over the top even by  Ascendant standards.

She sighed. "Sadly, no one could say.  I can pretty firmly say no to the first. That ability would be far  beyond the scope of anything I've heard of. Even your ability isn't that  broken. I don't know if he has relative Impact or if, like you said, it  diminishes as he grows. There's obviously a limit, of course, since he  has limited stats. I'm not sure if he has a stat multiplier when he gets  bigger, but if not the power isn't that impressive. Just gives him  better reach. Smart play would be to use it in small measures, making  himself slightly larger. I'll look into it before we decide how to  handle him."

"That's a good idea." I said. "We have a few  days until the next round anyway." Speaking of which, I called Callie to  the training room, waving off the others, though they didn't try too  hard to follow. When she got down there I grinned at her. "Not sure if I  mentioned, but yesterday I officially hit a thousand points. I'm capped  for G-rank. Which means my wishes going forward are all yours. Since I  was getting all my points from the Beast Lord Garden, I'm even prepaid  on my contract with them for quite a while."

She squealed  with joy. "Awesome! I was a little worried about that. Today and four  more days, that'll put me at seventy-five points. What do you have left  of the attacks I traded you before?"

I could see how  excited she was, but I was pretty curious. "What are you going to focus  on endgame? I know you wanted to try to qualify for a stronger ability  when you synergize by making sure one stat was much higher than the  others. Still going for Perception?" That was her highest and her  original specialty, as well as extremely important for anyone who fought  with Stealth. It would even have benefits for her constructs, allowing  her top make them more detailed and make better use of her Shadow  Manipulation.

She nodded. "I have a general idea what I'm  doing, but yeah. As much as I love the extra Might, Perception is my  bread and butter. I've been able to focus so hard on other stats because  it was so high, but my fighting style is heavily influenced by my  ability to move unseen and deceive the senses, not to mention find blind  spots for my shadow attacks."

"Speaking of which." I said  with a frown. "I'm low. I can channel your ability through the bond as  far as I know though, so attacks don't seem as useful. Any ideas for  what you can use to pay?"

She nodded. "I was thinking  about that. The bond makes it tricky. My best idea was just to go out  solo and make some money. I took a few missions while you were doing  your thing with the Beast Lord Garden leading up to the first round.  Nothing crazy, but enough to save up some chits." She passed me a small  bag. Fifteen G-ranked chits. "I worked for them myself and not as part  of the team, so they should still serve as payment, right?"

I  wasn't positive, but I suspected they would. As long as they were  specifically hers and something she owned herself it should be fine.  Team goods and stuff from the Pavilion was partially mine so it wouldn't  work as payment, but money she went out and made on her own should be  fine. I nodded to her, and she grinned. "Awesome, I wish for fifteen  points of Perception. Paid for with fifteen chits of our same rank."

Wish detected. Grant wish? I  confirmed. The usual stat requirements rolled across my vision, and I  was pleasantly surprised to see that I could actually queue up wishes  like that. It made things much easier than listing them out one by one,  especially if I got the payment all at the same time. Realistically  though, it was just a minor timesaver. I still had to let the five  wishes build and grant them individually.

The  chits worked fine thankfully, each of them contained more than enough  Creation to be a viable payment, and they also weren't so valuable as to  tip the scales the other way. Callie got all fifteen points dropped  right into Perception, bringing it to two hundred thirty five points and  her full total to nine hundred of a thousand. Callie gave a happy sigh  once all the wishes were finished. "Man, it feels nice for my Perception  to spike like that. I'm pretty excited for my breakthrough when the  tournament ends."

"You  going to tell me about it?" I said with a laugh. "Or do I have to  guess?" With Beginner rank Shadow Manipulation and a high concentration  of Perception, I couldn't think of what she might unlock. Something  related to infiltration probably, but she seemed to have a specific  direction in mind. Given Jessie's Lifeweaver ability and how well if  conformed to her future goals, I wasn't entirely certain that wouldn't  affect things actually. We'd have to wait and see.

"Nope."  She grinned at me mischievously. "Not that I know for sure how it'll  turn out. I know what I'm aiming for at least. You'll just have to wait  and be surprised like the rest of them." I rolled my eyes at that but  didn't really mind. I was excited to see what she would end up with.

I  kind of wished I could synergize my ability sometimes, but doing it at  this point would be pure stupidity. The main benefit of the Wish power  was fast growth, which in the end was the most impressive power you  could have in a world like this. Stats decided everything, and getting  more of them made all my other abilities much stronger. Once I reached a  high enough level I could think about finally synergizing my ability to  get something new.

I  suspected that given the massive jump in needed stats, once you reach A  or B-rank being able to get even ten or twenty from stats wouldn't be a  huge advantage, otherwise my old man would have held off on his own  change until he became a god. I wasn't anywhere near strong enough for  that to be an issue for me though. So for now I was destined to keep my  ability unaltered. With my stockpile of attacks and modifiers from DS  Mastery though, I refused to believe I wasn't one of the best at up  front combat among candidates my level. I guessed I'd be finding out if I  fought Natalie in the tournament. I was honestly looking forward to  that.