Wish upon the Stars 95

Since Celine was helping Jessie, Cark was patrolling the clearing,  and Martin and Sarah were tagging along with their boss, Benny, Callie,  and I were completely alone when we got to the top floor. We'd put the  strap guy and all the H outside, and Benny was keeping them doped until  after the fight, when we could hopefully come up with something to free  them, once there was no one to trigger them or blow up their heads out  of spite.

Luckily with enough taps that tranq ability  lasted quite a while, so Benny just had to dip down and check on them  once an hour, or twice an hour for the G ranker. Which gave him some  time to come sit in on our brainstorming between re ups. Sadly, before  he could be of help I had to actually get him to understand the premise  of the plan. He seemed to be missing the core concept. "So you're saying  you want us to wish for like, weapons we can use against the  Heartrippers? Some kind of secret ace in the hole?"

I  sighed, rubbing my temples and looked to Callie. "I swear he isn't  stupid. This is just a bit meta for him, he tends to be a mostly  practical thinker. Clearly I'm having zero luck with this, probably  because I'm trying to be vague so I don't influence his wish too much  and invalidate it. Can you explain this to him?" I was almost definitely  being too cagey about my explanation, but my power was kind of a  stickler about fair compensation. If I was weighting the wish it would  invalidate any payment.

Callie, as it happened, had no  such limitations. He's talking about wishes outside a physical context.  Stuff like wishing for the right weather for our combat style, or  wishing for good luck, or for them to come in from a specific direction.  Maybe even some kind of animal that naturally counters psychic  abilities in a radius. I think there was a mention of that during my  monster research..." She trailed off, flicking her scan ring and sifting  through pages. "Ha! Found it!" She turned to me triumphantly. "I wish  we a Circadian Dream Bat!"

The usual words of flame appeared across my vision. Wish detected. Grant wish? I confirmed. Insufficient  stat points for summoning- Circadian Dream Bat. Requirements: NA Expert  level summoning beyond the capacity of Beginner Wish ability. I  clicked my tongue at that. "Nope. Sorry Cal, looks like that one is an E  ranked creature. Or summoning abilities work weird, hard to say." I  looked at Benny. "Still, those are the kinds of wishes we were talking  about. I can't go into specifics but just keep it in mind."

He  nodded thoughtfully. "Got it. I see what you're going for. Thinking  about it in that context we've been kind of under using your wish  ability huh? I guess once we figured out the secret thing we just  decided it couldn't solve problems like that. In reality I can do fine  with short term solutions, though it seems to be ill suited for big  overarching issues because of scale."

I rolled my eyes.  "First of all, you mean YOU have been under utilizing my ability. I  can't make wishes, only grant them, and I can't make suggestion because  it invalidates them. So any failure to exploit my abilities is your  fault, since you've had access the longest. Secondly, any issues of  scale are short term, once I get strong enough I imagine I can grant a  wish for basically anything, provided I can get someone to actually make  it." I came pretty close to actually sticking out my tongue at him, but  since we were around Callie I decided to be the bigger person and wait  until her back was turned. It had nothing to do with wearing a full face  mask. Honest.

Benny had no such  compunctions, nor a full face mask, and I heard Callie snicker as he  made a face at me. Despite us both being grown men on the larger side,  we were childhood friends and that tended to bring out some immaturity  when dealing with each other. Callie decided to break it up. "The POINT  is that now we have another avenue of attack. If summoning something  directly effective is out this time, how about something a bit  more...ephemeral. "I wish we would have good luck for the upcoming  fight."

Wish detected. Grant wish? As usual I confirmed. Insufficient stat points for extended duration. Requirements: 100 Fantasy, 50 Impact, 100 Creation, 100 Might. I  whistled at that. I wasn't sure why some wishes were just beyond the  capability of my power at the moment and some were so expensive they  were FUNCTIONALLY beyond it, but at the very least this one gave me a  direction. "Ok that one technically worked, but it's too expensive to be  feasible soon. However it specifically mentioned duration. I think luck  is on the table, just not that much."

Which  blew my mind really. Luck was a fundamental force of the universe,  being able to effect it at all was crazy. Benny gave it a shot this  time. "I wish that I could have the longest streak of luck possible for  you to grant me, at exactly the right time during the upcoming fight to  have the most effect." I whistled at that. Benny was pretty good at  wording those, that one was tight enough on specifics to minimize cost.

Wish detected. Grant wish? After confirming I waited with bated breath. Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 50 Fantasy, 10 Impact, 75 Perception, 75 Perception. Compensation required.  I grinned behind my mask. "Ok that worked. Just need to actually pay  for the damn thing. Pricey but doable. Doesn't actually say how much  luck or when, but then I guess you kind of got what you asked for. Now  what the hell are you going to actually use to compensate me for it,  because anything this expensive will be pricey."

He  scowled. "Shit. I didn't consider that. How about consistently keeping  the prisoners sedated? It requires tons of work and lots of attention.  Without me you'd have to beat them unconscious. I know I'm already  keeping down the ones we have, but I can commit to doing the same for  all the others that are incoming. It'll basically be a full time job,  but it should help manage them until we figure out a way to remove their  programming. If that's even possible I mean, I know it's not something  anyone else has done."

I  waggled a hand. "I don't actually know that. In fact the opposite is  true. Zeke said specifically it can be removed it just takes abilities  that aren't really found in small places like this. At least not at a  level high enough to matter. Which means my Wish power should be able to  do it, assuming we have the stats for it. I imagine cost will vary with  how long they've been affected. Anyway let me give that a shot." I  focused on granting the wish, and luckily I was able to feel the  confirmation work.

The  static charge I always got built up, but this time I felt no need to  touch Benny to transfer. Instead it built and built until it finally  exploded out of my skin, vanishing into the air around me like it was  being discharged into some ethereal force I couldn't see. Effecting  luck, it seemed, wasn't something you did to a person, but something you  did to the world around them. It made me wonder how the delivery method  worked. Was I putting out some sort of ever present field that hung  around Benny, or was that discharge moving through time as well as space  and actually effecting him during the fight itself.

Benny  stood there, waiting for the wish to take effect, head tilted back,  arms out like he was about to receive divine revelation. He didn't move  for like a minute or two, eyes squeezed shut. He peeked one open,  looking around and then slumping in disappointment. "Damn. I was  expecting something crazy to happen. Bit let down. Ok second wish. I  wish that they would take the logical path of least resistance when  coming in at us and it would just happen to be right into our traps."

I waited and got the usual message. Wish detected. Grant wish?  After the confirmation I go a message I'd been hoping for. Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 75 Perception, 12 Impact, 96 Creation, 63 Fantasy, 84 Focus. I  assumed that the two Impact was to offset some sort of short in the  other stats, but I could see how the rest of them would come into it.  Perception to dampen their ability to notice things, Fantasy to create  illusions, Focus to mess with their minds, and Creation to make any  solid obstacles needed to make it all work. I imagine individually it  would have been more expensive, but I was pretty sure the actual  manipulation would be subtle.

It  brought up a question though, how solid was the wish? Did they always  work? Like if I wished for it there was no way it would fail? Or was my  earlier supposition a reality and this was independent of time or space.  Was it effecting them in what seemed like real time to it. It would  explain the absurd point cost of some of the earlier wishes. It would  also imply that if something was beyond me it would tell me up front.  Unless there was some way to counter the wish. Would another Wish  ability be able to grant a wish to nullify mine? Would it make one or  both of them too expensive to grant if they conflicted?

Every  thing I learned about my ability opened up new questions. I was in awe  of the first Wishmaster. I couldn't imagine the kind of genius needed to  refine a power this complicated. The number of skills he'd probably  needed to master to complete it. I wondered if he had some skill that  let him predict and tinker with the result of synergies or something, or  if that was even possible. Hell maybe he used the Job system, I knew  this whole ability based cultivation thing was recent. That made me  curious how the Job system worked at S rank when a person would normally  make a bloodline.

I  shook off the thought. "Sorry, yeah that works, you just need to pay  for it." I could spend years going down the power rabbit hole. I planned  to exploit the shit out of my ability going forward, but I needed to  finish this mess first. This opened up some very interesting options for  me at the Academy, and even during the scavenger hunt. Secrets being  what they were I doubted we could just with to know where things were,  and these were G ranked items so conjuration was probably out, but I was  betting we could wish for some kind of seeking object or ability that  would work even better than Seek Hidden.

Benny  bit his lip. "Ok, payment. How about another Inventing altered building  to be owed in the future. I'm sure a second one will come in handy, and  we can even get some better materials." He paused. "Hey I wonder if we  can wish for materials that will produce a specific result? I mean it  would probably be insanely expensive to wish for the stuff for a high  ranked building, but if we build it weak and let the thing get some  exposure to rank it up...actually that begs the question can you rank  buildings up with Wishes?"

I  had no idea. I triggered the wish, letting my static charge build again  as I considered it. I had no idea how places with ranks worked. I knew  Impact was what gave rank, so they had to have that, but it was  notoriously hard to raise Impact. Would items and places rank up with  enough stats? Could I transfer stats to buildings or materials to rank  them up forcibly? Because that would be a solid way to make money. As  the purple arcs of lightning were swallowed by the world around me I  grinned in excitement. I had so much research to do.