Wish upon the Stars chapter 66

Trolls, unfortunately, lived in sewers. They didn't like the sun  apparently so we had to wade into the dark and muck to find the  bastards. Arriving where the sewer tunnels had their entrance, I could  see why the Troll population was left alone. Aside from the insane  regeneration, no one in their right mind would want to wade through  literal rivers of dumpster water to track down something that wanted to  kill them. Which didn't really say much about my own sanity, but hey,  there you go. I turned to Callie. "So boss, which way are we heading?  Can your tracking power pick them up?"

She shook her head.  "No, sadly not. The environment here is so dirty and mobile I can't  pick up a trail." She bit her lip. "What about your Seek Hidden ability?  Can you find them with that?" It was a reasonable question to ask, that  power would be pretty beneficial in most tracking situations. Sadly  this particular instance was not one where that ability could shine, so I  had to let her down there.

I shook my head. "Not really. I  mean...yes. I can track them fine, but labyrinthine tunnels are a bad  match up for Seek Hidden over long distances. I can see exactly where  the target is, but it doesn't show me how to get there. I can give us a  heading at least, but we're still going to have to find our own way to  their location. Since this a sewer we can't just blast our way through  either. This is why people mostly use this skill to find mineral  deposits from ground level. Once they find them they have a direct path  to get there."

She sighed but nodded. "That's fair. It's  better than just searching blindly though. most people who show up down  here have no clue where they're going. Jessie are you all stocked up on  gear?" She glanced at our green clad teammate who gave her a happy grin  and a thumbs up.

She pulled her  cloak aside to reveal a belt lined with wands. Not permanent wands, I  didn't have the materials for that, but I had made her better versions  of the disposable one I'd given her before. I'd been making them in my  spare time since they required so little in terms of daily charges. She  had eight of the things, which should more than last her the day, and  hopefully keep her combat viable until we had a chance to get some more  mats for her permanent weapon.

She  was clearly happy with the wands because showed them off proudly. Benny  threw his hands up in a gesture of questioning complaint after her  earlier comments about her Might and she shrugged. "What? I said I could  function in combat without my wand, not that I wanted to. Besides I  plan to keep using them as we go on. The more people see me spamming  rapid growth and binding plants the more Vitality and Might my  reputation will bring in. I would think you of all people would  understand the benefits of being well geared in battle."

Benny  sighed. "Yeah, I know, but I was looking forward to a more even fight,  and based on how OP those plants were even the last time we fought I  doubt I'm going to do nearly as well this time. I'll have to find some  kind of escape item before our next sparring match." He sounded sulky,  but only on the surface, it was obvious he was just teasing her, and it  made me smile to see they'd gotten closer, especially with Jessie  talking to Maria long distance lately. I wondered how that was going? I  hadn't had a chance to ask.

My  musings were cut off by a loud voice bellowing "HAND OF GOD!" There was  a roar of energy and a bright golden light, quickly cut off by a much  more bestial roaring. I looked to the others  and Callie nodded, clearly  planning to find out what the hell that was. The four of us took off at  a sprint toward the sound, and when we came around the corner spotted a  group of three surrounded by a bunch of tiny green skinned creatures  with red eyes and needle sharp teeth.

The  three people were in costume, and obviously ascendants, but their  costumes ran more towards old style adventuring gear from history than  hero outfits. Which was fair because honestly so did ours in some ways.  At least mine and Jessie's, what with our cloaks and all. The group was  fighting off the small creatures well enough, with a big man in gleaming  metal armor was swinging a big ass sword in tight arcs to push them  back, and a pretty blonde in a red and white dress was standing behind a  girl who I was pretty sure was an actual elf, dressed in green leathers  and holding a pair of short blades.

The  blonde girl was the one who had shouted the phrase earlier, because she  did it again and a massive hand made of golden light appeared and swung  in an arc, knocking away all the little monsters and giving the armored  guy a chance to reset and catch his breath. I nodded to Jessie who  reached down, plucked a wand, and flicked it out with one hand while  tossing a handful of seeds with the other. The difference in Might and  Vitality showed in spades as the carpet of vines swallowed the tiny  green monsters.

The  group froze, turning slowly to look at us. The two girls looked wary,  and I couldn't see the guy's face, but I was guessing from his posture  he wasn't exactly happy to see us. Callie stepped up, raising her hands.  "Sorry to cut in but you folks looked like you were having trouble. No  kill steals here or anything, and we won't spread it around. We just  figured you could use a reprieve. You seem pretty strong, are you  students at the Academy too?" She gave a friendly smile, and after  hearing we weren't here to steal their bounty they relaxed.

The  dark haired girl with the pointy ears stepped forward and nodded,  bowing slightly at the waist. "We are. I am Celine, leader of the  adventuring group Grimmengap. These are my companions, Sir Martin, and  Sarah. We are recent additions to the Academy. I thank you for your  assistance. We will of course take your aid in the spirit it was given."  Her tone was formal, but not arrogant, she gave off a dignified air.  Benny was staring.

Sir  Martin, her companion, must have noted the confusion on the faces of  those of us he could see, because he laughed behind the helmet. "Sorry,  Celine is from the Fairieland. They do things different there. She  decided to kind of stick to what she knows. Still, working for her has  given me skills needed to synergize the Lesser Knight ability, which you  can only really get working for someone like Celine. Sarah is a devotee  of the Red Revenant Church, but since she's already a a Cleric  so the group really helps her get recognition."

I  blinked. That...was an interesting gimmick. I hadn't considered doing  theme groups, and having a literal elf as the leader was bound to draw  some attention. It also made me much more curious about the Farieland.  Benny stepped forward, holding out a hand to the pretty elf girl. "Hi,  I'm Clockwork, it's nice to meet you. I hope we see each other at the  Academy."

I  had to bite my lip to keep from breaking down laughing as my friend  lowered his voice an octave to try to sound cooler. I rolled my eyes.  "Well, it was nice meeting you all, but we have some trolls to hunt. We  were heading back to the Academy in a few days though, maybe we could  meet up then." I was dying to learn more about the Faerieland, and I was  pretty curious about the Church too, given their enmity with the Black  Sorrow Cult, it might not be a bad idea to reach out to talk.

Sarah  looked a bit timid, clearly not used to being around so many higher  ranked Ascendants. Still, that glowing hand thing had been really cool. I  wondered how that kind of power worked. I asked about it and she smiled  brightly. "Oh, the Church has it's own cultivation system based on  ranks of the clergy. There are certain skill combinations that can steer  nearly any power towards that path. I started at H rank with an ability  called helping hands. It lets me make light based hand doubles to help  me with complex tasks. When you take up a clergy role your ability is  folded into it, so when I became a cleric my helping hands ability  became a skill called Hand of God."

I  hadn't realized you could even do that. There were some really  interesting factors in other cultivation systems. I couldn't wait to  hear more about that. I gave her a grateful smile. "Sounds interesting.  I'd love to hear more about that back on campus. Do you guys want to  meet us at the crafting hall when we head back in a few days? We have to  make a trip up to get some new materials anyway."

Celine  smiled and nodded. "That sounds good. We have to harvest the goblins  and bring them in to sell in any case. Their eyes are an excellent base  for night vision enhancement, and their bones are naturally suited to  lockpicking." I nodded wisely, obviously bullshitting because I knew  nothing about goblins at all. We exchanged scan ring numbers and then  headed deeper into the sewers to continue our search for the trolls.

Seek  Hidden pointed the way, albeit pretty slowly, and finally after an hour  or so of searching we managed to find a path to where one isolated  troll could be found. There were other groups of more of them lurking  around, but we wanted to test out a single opponent first to get a  better idea of how doable that would be for our junior teammates.

When  we entered the chamber the first thing we noticed was the smell. Rotten  meat and garbage and other things I really didn't want to think about.  The flipside of having high Perception was that you could get blindsided  by strong smells and things like that. You could offset that with Focus  by concentrating on other things, and it usually balanced pretty well  in day to day life, but in situations like this where we were just  walking silently through an area we had to pay attention to it was  pretty rough.

The  troll itself was...hideous. Huge and ugly rough grey skin like stone.  Moss grew over it's body and its huge bulging belly hung down almost to  it's knees. It's eyes were golden and gleamed in the darkness,  illuminating it's face with a sinister glow as slit pupils flicked over  us. A huge distended purple tongue slid out and licked the sides of its  mouth, where a complete lack of lips framed an odd collection of sharp  and blunt teeth that seemed to be in no particular order, just an odd  collection of dental work jammed haphazard into a gaping maw.

Seaweed  hung from it's head, draping over it's whole body like a cloak and  hiding large portions of it from view. All in all, it was hands down the  ugliest thing any of us had ever seen. I turned to Jessie with a grin.  "Huh. Any chance you can control that seaweed?" She blinked before  focusing with her wand, and the long strips of green plant lashed out to  grab onto every part of the troll they could reach. I nodded  approvingly. "Seems like a good start." Then the troll broke free and  the fight was on. I was really looking forward to seeing what my friends  could do after their upgrades.