Wish upon the Stars chapter 293

Lament was not pleased at that big flashy death of the giant spider.  "I HAD it." She groused. "I was having fun, and then you had to go be a  big showoff." Which to be fair, might have been true, even if that  wasn't really the point. While Lament COULD have probably killed the  spider, it would have taken much longer and the rest of us would have  been in way more danger.

Wren, who obviously understood  that, cleared his throat. "Yeah...I'm with them. We were wearing it  down, but that thing was dangerous. You can scratch your battle itch in  the tournament." She glared at him, but he seemed unperturbed. While he  might have been scared of her, she was also a teammate. He wasn't  worried about her attacking him for no reason, and he was right about  this.

To my surprise, Callie stepped up next to the spear  wielder and patted her on the shoulder. "It's ok. We still have all the  loot to gather. You can help me with that. Collecting treasure always  makes me feel better." Her voice was cheerful and almost bouncy as she  started forward to once again start gutting tiny spiders to check their  stomachs for valuable materials. Lament, not having anything better to  do, started helping, while I went to check on Abel.

My  mentor was flexing his hand, grimacing at the motion. "You ok?" I asked  as I approached. I'd never really used any abilities like that on  another person. Maybe one of them or something, but not a massive stack  of powerful attacks. My head was still pounding from the strain of  manifesting all of them.

Abel looked almost grim. "I'm  fine." He said tightly, still flexing his hand. "There are downsides to  that kind of attack. It was exceptionally powerful, but using it the way  I did increased the strain on my body. My hand is a little raw. It'll  heal, it's just going to suck for a while." I wasn't sure what that  meant, given his hand was in a glove, but to make Abel, one of the  toughest people I had ever met, react like this, it must have been  agony.

That was kind of a scary thought. It was easy to  think of my teacher as some invincible badass, but knowing he was mortal  under all that terrifying combat prowess wasn't comforting. If  anything, not being able to take his invincibility for granted was going  to make this tournament more of a worry, not less. I reached out and  put a hand on his shoulder, activating another scan heal/heal burst  combo.

Scan heal on its own wasn't incredibly useful for  someone our rank, but Jessie's heal bursts were incredibly effective, if  unfocused. The combination let the powerful healing energy of the life  force target injuries and mend them directly instead of wasting the  extra power supercharging the body with extra energy. Abel blinked at me  as the green life force swarmed is hand and began repairing it, though  it hardly went away immediately.

My own injuries from  earlier were still mending, though they'd mostly started to fade after a  few minutes and another scan heal/ heal burst combo. The stored attacks  were extremely useful, but at this rate wouldn't last long. To be fair  we normally wouldn't be hunting down an F-ranked creature. Being able to  finish it off was pretty impressive, even as a team. I glanced over at  the cracked and damaged armored spider, which Wren and Lestri were  trying to pry out of its protection.

"That was damn  impressive though." I gestured to the spider. "Even with the  augmentation from my skills. Being able to kill that thing so easily is  no joke." We'd pretty much set the fight up perfectly, or else I wasn't  sure we'd have won, but Abel's contribution was by far the highest.  Granted, having so much hard stone to act as an anvil to that blow had  certainly helped.

Abel didn't like happy though. He just  shook his head. "Yes and no. We got really lucky. That thing wasn't made  to fight on flat ground, and your skill restrained it. Even so, there  were several times it could have killed us. I got overconfident. I've  killed F-rank humans before who got in my way, and it made me confident  in fighting up ranks. Seeing Lament fight though, it reminded me that I  was fighting useless trash when I did that. There are other powerful  people like me, and even at my own rank they might pose a challenge."

I  glanced at the spear wielder where she was helping Callie. "Are you  saying you don't think you can beat her?" Lament was scary, but Abel was  Abel. I couldn't get my head around him being afraid of someone. Sure, I  felt that kind of fear, but Abel seemed so unshakeable. He was a force  of nature.

He shook his head. "No." Then he paused. "It's  more that I don't KNOW if I can beat her. Which on one hand is exciting.  I love a good challenge. On the other hand though, if she's here,  someone else at the same level may be as well. The team match will be  fine, but what if one of you or Mel run into someone like her. Not all  of them will be as affable as she is. I'm starting to worry about how  our team will do in this tournament."

I had my own ideas  for dealing with that. "Don't worry too much about us. I have ways of  keeping us safe." We'de already tested wishes for retreating and a  tournament would make that kind of thing even easier to arrange. A  single breach of the rules and we could be spirited off to the waiting  room. I wanted to win this, but not at the cost of one of my friends.  Worst case we would give up on the Moonsong Glade. It wasn't worth  losing anyone I cared about in this competition.

Escape  wishes were the best possible safety net, and with four of us it was  entirely possible without compromising my contract with the Beast Lord  Garden for even a day. I couldn't wish for a safety net myself, so that  only left three, and Abel didn't seem to feel he needed one. I had two  spare wishes a day, and that meant I could ensure the safety of our  teammates without letting anyone know those two wishes had been used.

This  was all a matter for later though. I clapped Abel on the shoulder,  eliciting a small wince since it was his still healing arm. "Anyway.  Don't sweat the small stuff. Just make sure you're at your best. In the  meantime we should head over and move that spider. It's on top of a  fortune in Ascendant materials." He grinned at me then, a quick flash of  gratitude and amusement that settled into his usual mocking smirk and  we headed over to where the shattered spider lay.

As  we closed in, I couldn't help but whistle. The sheer size of the thing  was awe inspiring up close. Seeing it on the web or from a distance  hadn't done it justice. I felt a thrill of fear clench my stomach and  weaken my knees as I imagine standing to face something this big and  terrifying like lament had. No running or dodging, just me against the  enemy head on.

At  the very least, I knew that wouldn't be a problem here. This thing was  dead as a door nail. Half submerged in stone, the top of the monster was  cracked and broken, but more than that, the armor and meat below it  were damaged and corroded. Touch of Tears, under the magnification of  all my Skills and Abel's own tremendous power, had been carried along  with the force and truly destroyed the spider. Even with that corrosive  effect gone after I dispersed it, the remains had been seriously  damaged.

Which  we gave no fucks about. We weren't here for spider meat. We'd strip the  armor for sale just in case, and probably the legs and mandibles in  case they could be made into weapons, but at the moment it was what lie  under the beast that we wanted. I activated Sucking Mud, wincing  slightly but still able to do so since I wasn't altering it at all. My  soul was extremely strained right now, to the point even normal Skills  hurt, but they were still usable at least.

Luckily  my body was fine, and the two of us had no trouble lifting the bulk of  the spider and hurling it off to one side. A quick use of Seek Hidden  left me able to see all of the materials, and Callie's timely arrival  (she'd seen us move it and come running) to supply me with a shadow  forged net, let me fish up all the gems and leave them in a substantial  pile off to one side along with all the others.

Most  of them were G-rank, since they needed to be digestable to the baby  spiders. A few large pieces of stone were apparently F-rank materials  the spider had been saving to consume itself, but they were few and far  between. With the base currency in H-rank chits, it was estimated most  of the smaller ones would got for a few dozen. Materials could only be  worked by crafters, and unless we held onto them to sell piecemeal we  were going to need to give a bulk price to unload them all.

The  F-ranked stuff we were going to keep for the big auction. We were going  anyway so we figured we might as well. We'd unload the spider armor and  claws at the same time. Callie took great relish in totaling up the  gains, figuring out exactly what we were going to get, and when she  finally reported the total, even I was pretty gobsmacked by exactly how  much money this trip had netted us.

Three  E-ranked chits. Three thousand H-ranked coins which could be considered  the base currency here. It was...a LOT of money. Even someone like me  with almost no grasp on how the Ascendant economy worked was blown away.  Abel looked like he might pass out. In the end, we decided on the  obvious even split. Sydney and Megan got one, the Spear Legion got one,  and we got one to keep for the Pavilion.

Sloane  and the others felt like they hadn't done much, and I was a guest elder  anyway, so my force growing was a net benefit to them. They abstained  from taking a share. Which left us with a single E-ranked chit to invest  in the Pavilion. Deciding that growing our new faction was the most  important thing, we handed it over to Mel.

Resources  were strength too, and there were so many ways spending money could  help increase the power of our faction. Improved training equipment,  alchemical pills and elixirs, even Skill Crystals. Those were extremely  rare here on Callus. You could find useless ones around in some of the  Unity branches, but nothing impressive or worth the price. The reason  was that the production of the Skill Crystal itself was a closely  guarded secret. The blanks had to be specially prepared to be imprinted  with a Skill. Buying blanks was much pricier and much more useful to  forces like ours.

I'd  even considered having Callie imprint Balam on a blank for our people  to learn. Not that it was a direct transfer. More like a way to watch  memories and get a feel for the Skill. I figured I could try to learn  enough to push my Balam Skill up to Beginner and end the geass at least.  I was pretty sure paying for a wish with a Skill crystal of a Skill I  made wouldn't work, but since we hadn't considered it beforehand it  should be a solution at the moment. I dismissed the idea though for the  moment. We'd need to see if we could even get any, it wasn't like blanks  grew on trees. One more reason to look forward to the auction.