Wish upon the Stars chapter 119

After getting the wishes out of the way (Callie paid four Vitality  for four Might putting her literally one point short of a hundred) we  all took a break in that huge room to once again search for any loot  that might be around. As everyone looked around for possible gear or  materials the zombies may have dropped, I was taking a short break and  checking my stats for the first time in a while.

Wishmaster  candidate status. G-rank. Ability: Beginner Wish- Five times a day  grant a Beginner wish in return for proper  compensation. Wish must be  feasibly   achievable by the candidate's own  efforts within a three day  period  with  current statistics.

Might-58

Impact-12

Fantasy-21

Vitality-29

Focus-38

Perception-40

Creation-32

Skills:Beginner  Doom Sovereign Mastery,Lesser Enchanting Mastery, Lesser Cooking  Mastery,Lesser Inventing Mastery, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Gymnastics  Mastery, Minor Swimming Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Minor Singing  Mastery,Minor Poker Mastery, Minor Archery Mastery, Minor Boxing  Mastery, Minor Balam Mastery

I'd made some  serious progress since we'd arrived out here, but it drove home more  than anything how much longer I'd be spending at each successive rank.  The trek to F rank was a slow grind, and I wasn't even halfway there. Of  course, I expected a nice bump when this hunt ended and all the footage  got uploaded, but it would still be a while until I got there. It made  it even more imperative that I spend as much time as possible on combat  training, because those skills would be what kept me safe against other  opponents at my own rank.

Callie was having a field day  sorting through the revenant corpses looking for possibly valuable  stuff. Looting was one of her favor parts of fighting monsters, morbid  as it sometimes was, and I had to admit it was cute how excited she got  when she picked up some cursed dagger or something. We didn't find many  pieces of gear either here or in the skeleton chamber, but we had found a  few.

A knife, a cup, a ring, two rubies the size of golf  balls that may or may not have been Ascendant materials and weirdly, a  top hat. We had zero idea what any of the stuff did, but we'd packed it  all up to be identified later. I was kind of hopeful that Zeke had an  identification skill we could pay him to use to help us figure out what  everything was. At the moment my girlfriend had dig up an extremely  creepy looking doll she seemed ecstatic to have found, and I couldn't  help but wonder how the hell something like that ended up down here.

Unfortunately  along with her glee came a lack of caution, and I had to walk over and  physically take the doll away from her because I was worried she might  activate some kind of awful curse. "We talked about this. You need to  let Sarah use her holy hand skill to move any treasure we find down  here. She said there's a good chance that some of the stuff might be  infused with dark energy." I dropped the doll on the ground. Neither of  us touched it with bare hands, but even with gloves it wasn't a smart  risk.

Callie just huffed. "Fine. I still say it's ok, but  since I was outvoted Sarah can stow it in the pack with the other stuff.  Still, the thing is obviously only H rank. No way some stupid curse on  it will be able to do anything to me." Knowing what my poison could  theoretically do if stacked enough I wasn't willing to risk it. The  whole curse thing could get nasty, and everyone else had agreed with me  about it. "Anyway, this chamber was a pretty good haul. We found a few  objects, and even a box of gold coins. Not that the coins are really  useful to us since they're just moral money, but the box is bigger on  the inside which is amazing!"

I blinked at that. "Holy  shit really? They had a legit spatial artifact down here and they were  using it to hold gold of all things? Seems like kind of a waste, but  hey, big win for us. How big is it?" Spatial gear was rare and tough to  come by at our level. Mostly it ended up being buildings or vehicles. A  box like that could be carried in a backpack and would be crazy valuable  to us for storage.

She just shrugged. "I don't know,  probably about a hundred square feet. Hard to tell without someone to  appraise it. We dumped the coins out to get an estimate and then put  them back in. Celine says you can sell gold coins for chits to certain  types of fae, though the exchange rate sucks apparently." I imagined it  was probably like I rank chits too, but still better than nothing. I'd  been convinced we'd have to leave the gold strewn across the floor of  our rooms or something as a decoration. Mortal stuff just wasn't really a  viable trade good.

That was a really decent sized spatial  container though, and it was a worth a bunch of cash even if we hadn't  had a use for it, which we did. Callie sighed happily and slumped  against me, surprising a laugh from me as I caught her. She nuzzled  against my chest. "I LOVE finding treasure. This is so much more fun  than shady back alley crime fighting. We should totally do more stuff  like this." Given the pressure she'd been under it was really nice to  see her so happy, and I gave her a squeeze before stepping back to help  everyone continue looking.

There wasn't anything else  around that we could find, I tried Seek Hidden, and despite not being  able to scan for 'treasure' I did use the ability on revenant corpses  and then sift through everything for anything NOT glowing red. Still,  there wasn't anything else useful for us to find, and we finally packed  up, ready to move on. When we got to the exit we verified that this  cavern was the last of the tunnels before we reached the main cave area  we'd been looking down on when we arrived, and everyone retreated to  talk over out next move before we committed to the next leg of the  journey.

It wasn't a long talk, we  already had a plan, we mostly just wanted a second to take a breath and  get on the same page. After that we headed out into the main cavern to  see what was going on. Once again, the second I stepped inside I noticed  the thick black grass carpeting the stone, interspersed with glowing  blue flowers. In the distance I could see small banks of fog drifting  around in strange patterns, with dark shapes moving among them. Callie  lowered her voice to talk to us all. "Ok, we need to be careful about  noise down here. This is all one big chamber, so if we're too loud  taking out the next group we might pull way too many of them."

We  all nodded solemnly at that. I did have a suggestion to help though. I  lowered my own voice to an identical murmur. "What if we don't fight  them in groups. If we pull one or two at a time it would be way slower,  but ultimately safer for all of us. Sucking Mud would be perfect for  this actually, given how slow they move for the most part. I could snag  one of them, and since they're all mindless killing machines and there  wouldn't be a target for them to focus on they wouldn't group up and  attack."

There  was no way to tell if that would actually work, but it seemed  reasonable, and Callie thought so to, so we decided to give it a shot.  We all headed into the fog, moving incredibly slowly to try and avoid  any attention. We'd considered letting just Callie and I go ahead since  we had stealth, but decided there was a better shot at a quick noiseless  kill if everyone was there, so we moved as a group and just tried our  best to be careful not to make any sound. The black grass was  suprisingly good at muffling noise, and we did a decent job of moving  unnoticed until we finally closed in on one of the shapes.

A  small pack of wights was stalking their way through the fog ahead of us  when we finally got within range. We stopped behind a small hill that I  was pretty sure was just a big rock covered with black grass. I had no  clue what the stuff was or how it was growing but it seemed to be  everywhere. Regardless once we got close enough I focused on a ten foot  radius around the edge of the pack and triggered Sucking Mud.

The  ground started to give way, dragging at the wight that was closest  before it could get free. It started to struggle a bit, but the others  didn't pay any attention to it and by the time they were out of range  the skill wore off and the ground solidified, trapping the wight  temporarily underground. I knew it would tear free pretty easily if  given a second, but Benny zipped forward and grabbed it with his tranq  hand. He held on as the thing slowly stopped struggling and fell still.  Cark stepped up and grabbed it around the head, tearing it off easily  without making a sound.

The  wight obviously had no treasure on it or something, but it was good  proof of concept. Making sure the others were out of range we all  circled up. "Ok, that worked, but it seems a little greedy to expect it  to keep happening that smoothly." Callie was pleased with the results,  but obviously saw the flaw in that plan. I had to admit it had an  element of luck to it that repetition could really screw with. "Sarah,  what's the range on that holy hand skill? Like if we wanted you to grab a  straggler and drag it back here could you do it?"

The  blonde cleric nodded thoughtfully. "Probably yeah, if I had to. It  might alert the others though. The holy energy would start eroding the  undead flesh and it would definitely scream. I'm not sure I could pull  the thing back in time." Despite the frown on her face she held up a  hand, and with some concentration a second hand made of glowing  white-gold light manifested above it as she flexed her main skill. I had  to admit the thing was pretty cool looking. I wondered what it would  look like when it burned an undead.

Callie  was the one frowning at that, but her face lit up as she got an idea.  "Well what if you grabbed it by the throat. It wouldn't be able to  scream and you could just haul it off into the fog. Assuming you have  that kind of range or mobility? I don't know how the hand works?" I was  curious to see the thing in action too, but I figured if it was strong  enough to use directly in melee she would have mentioned it. An ambush  might be possible, but I was betting that depended heavily on what her  Might stat was at. Admittedly the wights were H rank themselves, so it  was a possibility.

They  got down to talking specifics, whispering furtively as they planned out  our next attack, and I gave them space, wandering to the edge of a  small radius to look out into the fog and keep watch. I wanted to make  sure we didn't get ambushed just in case another patrol came through.  Staring out into the fog I could just barely make out the shape of the  dark fortress out in the distance, and I was more than ready for our big  infiltration mission. I wondered what we would be doing while Callie  broke in to raid the place? All I could do was hope it took more than a  day to get there, a few wishes would make sure my girlfriend was as safe  as possible.