Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 842
🕑 Added 2025-03-14 00:11:31 +0000 UTCThree to two was not great odds. Well, it was more like fifteen to fifteen, but we only had two C-rankers, which was all that mattered here. I mentally contacted Callie, asking her to play support for the others. Meanwhile, I flexed my wings, preparing to go all out. Callie, using her stealth and shadow powers, started contacting the others, whispering in their ears to let them know their roles in the upcoming battle.
The C-rankers were all imposing in different ways, but the tall one in the cloak was obviously the linchpin of the group. He towered over the others, not only in stature but in raw force of presence. This was something beyond Impact, a sort of charisma that most of the Ascendants I’d met lacked. People like Abel and my grandfather had that same sense of presence, and I wondered if being the disciple of a god was enough to endow you with that kind of force of personality.
Luckily the other two didn’t seem nearly as menacing. One short broad shouldered man with a mohawk and a handlebar mustache stood to cloak guy’s right, his upper body mostly bare except an animal skin draped over his hairy shoulders. His eyes were deep set and swollen, like he’d been punched in them so many times they’d gotten stuck like that, and his nose was set crooked, having obviously been badly broken and healed wrong.
The one on the other side was a tall, thin woman with white hair and pale blue skin. Her eyes were red and her ears were pointed in a way that made me think elf, even if she didn’t look like any elf I’d ever seen. She had a pair of delicate fangs peeking out from her top lip, and I could see her eyes fixated on Bethy with a frankly disturbing intensity.
Behind them, the twelve D-rankers looked to be mostly cultists. Based on the accent pieces on their armor, I was pretty sure the two non cloak C-rankers were servants of the abyssal lords. I could see some jagged symbols that looked a lot like the abyssal enchanting on the squares back in front of this place. Still, even with so many of them being local grunts, the odds here weren’t ideal at all, and I would need to proceed carefully.
Our only shot here was to pin down one of the C-rankers while we waited for Dez and Carmichael to finish their fights. I had a decent chance of holding out if I could ramp up enough, so I trigger Gluttony and Abomination Engine while I waited for Abel and Bethy to get in position.
I had a plan for this, a combination attack I was pretty sure would clear the field and scatter the enemy. Before that though, we needed a distraction. It would take me a minute to properly set this up. Luckily I had just the thing. I focused on the ground beneath them and then triggered Wrath.
The sand here was EXTREMELY susceptible to my domain, and it took almost no time at all for the ground to shift into horrifying burning ash. The D-rankers all screamed, dropping into the lake of fire, but mustache guy and fang girl were unfortunately a bit more on the ball. They each snagged a pair of the D-rankers and tossed them clear, barely having enough time to grab another pair and push off to get away.
Eight of the twelve got out, four of them plummeting into Wrath and being submerged in the burning ash, screaming as the caustic substance burned away at their flesh, I grimaced and ignored it, focusing on step two of my plan.
Wrath had been limited to the area they were standing, and I had plenty of other sand and rocks to work with for my second move, triggering Behemoth. Between us and the C-rankers, a colossal golem rose, constructed from the waist up, a winged stone icon of terrible vengeance towering over them all.
Abel stepped forward, and his eyes flashed as he released his blood sea, the figure exploding out and then overlapping my stone titan, Bethy following up with her Domain, condensing it into the blood sea and merging the three abilities into one siege engine of awful destruction.
I pushed Gluttony and Abomination Engine through the connection I had with the domain, imbuing the titanic construct with the ability to absorb damage and convert it into strength, then I triggered Mephistopheles and Piece of Mind to give it remote controllability and then relinquished control of the whole thing to Abel through the blood sea.
The whole process, done at nearly the speed of thought, took me seconds, but I still barely managed to get the attack in place before the cloaked figure hit the construct like a speeding train, propelled forward by crackling black electricity. He smashed into the armored chest of the golem and I felt the blow as a physical strike, sending me stumbling backwards from the impact despite taking the hit to a giant manifested stone figure. I hadn’t expected the feedback, but I suspected it might be because of the parallel and how closely I was connected to it.
I hissed in pain as I felt my armor buckle and my sternum groan, about to crack under the pressure, but Mornax was part of Behemoth and the defense was nearly impregnable, especially inside a Domain and imbued with Abel’s power.
It was immensely satisfying to see the look of shock on the godchild’s face when he bounced off the figure, having incorrectly assumed that being a C-ranker would let him punch through any D-rank ability regardless of stacking. It left him completely open in midair as Abel started hurling punches at top speed.
The massive fists exploded with black flame as they rained down, and I saw Gabe and Chelsea each split off to deal with one of the eight remaining D-rankers, with Serah and Holly, each taking one, Sable and Dom doing the same, and Dayna running splitting her attention between backup for Daysia and Bella and a solo fight as Callie manifested a sea of shadows to support.
Dez and Carmicheal had engaged the C-rankers, Dez conjuring a storm of swords to rain down on the mustachiod bruiser and her father engaging directly with the elfin woman who appeared to be some kind of ice wraith or something based on her powers.
After making sure everyone was alright I focused back on the main battle. My golem was hammering down blow after blow with Abel’s signature brutal efficiency, and the power had multiplied exponentially after the chest strike it had soaked. With Gluttony funneling the strength directly back into the construct I hadn’t even noticed it at first, but as I focused in I could feel the towering strength.
Gluttony was a powerful ability, but Abomination Engine was limited by the capability of the physical body. While the golem wasn’t C-rank, it was a LOT of D-rank material reinforced by a complete Domain and Abel’s absurd Solid Path ability. Combined with Behemoth’s inherent durability, the cap on the physical power the thing could contain was massively boosted. Every second, stray shots and retaliatory blows from cloak guy were charging it even further, and I could feel the power approaching the limits of D-rank.
Abel’s punches were shattering the air, the force creating winds across the cavern and kicking up sand. Cloak guy, body flickering with black lightning, finally got his head on straight and started trying to dodge, but unfortunately for him, when Bethy’s Domain manifested into the blood sea, it was more than just additive. The power of the two overlapping effects was warping space around the golem, and the punches were pulling the C-ranker in like the construct had its own gravitational pull, warping the space to force a confrontation.
Unfortunately, no matter how hard we were hitting him, there were no serious injuries showing. Self-destructing my staff had given me a mistaken impression of exactly how big the gap was between D rank and C-rank. At over one hundred and fifty Impact, there was almost a fifty percent difference between the two levels, even all the stacking power we had at our disposal couldn’t bridge the gap. We could MATCH the enemy, but we couldn’t HURT him.
Luckily I didn’t need to hurt him. I just needed to stall him. As I watched, Dezcarta finished overpowering mustache guy and put a sword right through his eye, dropping him where he stood and wheeling to help her father finish off the snow elf. As soon as she saw the tide turn though, she bolted. In an explosion of icy wind, she scattered throughout the cavern, vanishing who knew where as she escaped in the form of frozen air.
With those two neutralized, Dezcarta and Carmichael blazed forward, ready to team up with us against the godchild. He glared around, snarling in frustration. “Don’t push me!” He roared. “I can take you all with me if I choose!”
I vaguely recognized the attitude, or at least the sense of superiority, and I couldn’t help but ask. “Damian?”
He blinked at me in surprise. “I…yes. That is my name. Why do you as-” he was so distracted he completely missed the massive sword that appeared behind him, spearing him through the chest. He choked, glancing down in confusion, blood gurgling through his fruitlessly working lips. Abel’s fists snapped up, smashing on either side of him in an explosion of black flame.
The sword was C-rank, and therefore capable of killing him, and the D-rank attack had softened him up enough to impede his regeneration.
He toppled from the air, slamming into the sand as I waved my hand, dismissing the golem now that my Danger Sense had gone silent. I strolled up to where he was laying, and shook my head sadly. “Shouldn’t have gotten involved. What a waste, falling into Black Sorrow’s trap just to die a pointless death.”
“Who was Damian?” Callie said as she stepped up next to me. “I don’t think we knew him.”
“He’s the C-ranker those dicks at the Ghost Bone Tower were waiting on,” I said with a shrug. “Sucks for them. I hope there aren’t a lot of these bastards. That was gruelling.” I turned to check on Bethy and Abel. “We all alright?”
Abel nodded. “Sure. Make sure to grab the body. Even partial credit for a kill like that will give us a huge bump in renown.”
I wasn’t sure that would work, but we could at least give it back to his fellow initiates for burial. It wouldn’t hurt anything, and if we scared the shit out of them by handing them their biggest backer dead, well, that was two birds with one stone.
Dom grabbed the body without asking too much about it, and we all approached the wound in the world. “Aright, stick close. We don’t know what’s on the other side. Just that it’s supposed to be ocean. Take a deep breath.” I took one myself, inhaling deeply before checking on everyone and then stepping through.
There was a flash of green light, and I found myself in a very similar place. Sand, coral, rocks, all there waiting. What was not waiting was the WATER. I paused, looking around. “Ok, weren’t we supposed to be in the ocean?” I glanced at Callie. “Can we leave now? No water means the bangle will work, right?”
She shook her head grimly, pointing up. I realized when she did that I could feel tiny drops of water falling around me. I looked up, and above us, in the sky, was a giant ocean of dark clouds, raining dark water down across the entire visible horizon.
“That,” said my wife. “Is where the ocean went. Apparently they’ve been stockpiling it for this exact purpose. Saturate the land with it and completely convert the dungeon into the Shallow. We won’t be able to use the bangle to leave. We need to find someone who knows how to stop this, or every person in this dungeon is VERY screwed. Especially us.” Huh, it never rained but it poured.
