Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 789
🕑 Added 2024-12-30 23:42:50 +0000 UTCAfter getting our stories straight inside the temple where we couldn’t be observed (mostly just agreeing with Sable and Dom how they would tell everyone about what I’d done when they got back), and looting Echelon’s corpse, we headed out to do our exploring, trying to maximize the impact of our time in the Fields of Strakkenthar.
Firstly, we scoured the marshes for Mournehollow Toads like the ones Bernadette had mentioned. I was shocked to see that Dom and Sable were both basically immune to the poison like I was, which was impressive considering the source. Since we were already out among the swamps we decided to scour the area for the toads to try to maximize our gains here, and we managed to find about thirty of them.
One of the little beasts was even on the edge of C-rank. Not there, thankfully, but close, and Sable was particularly excited to potentially have a beast that could eat C-rank curses, apparently witches used them a lot, even on each other.
Once we stopped finding any toads, even with Dantalion, we switched to hunting for Asphodel Flowers, the second major export of the Fields of Strakkenthar. This turned out to be a bit harder, and we only stumbled on the one meadow of the rare plants, stockpiling a decent, hundred and fifty of them.
And of course, over the three weeks we’d been there, I’d been keeping up my wishes in scroll form, and the consistent income had been just over five thousand points (five thousand and forty, to be exact, at thirty points per wish where I seem to have stalled), but that was just the icing on the cake on our last day when I finally let all the points I’d held back hit me all at once, and I was staggered by the windfall.
Aside from the five thousand from the scrolls, I’d gotten another thirty thousand from merging my forms into the Ten Demons Tome. I had no idea how, but apparently they were all kind of collecting individual renown (especially Mephistopheles) I’d have probably gotten on rank up, and the excess had sort of concentrated. On top of that Sable and Dom had spread word of what I’d done to Echelon, not to mention I’d had Callie have my grandma contact Bella (who I had no way to contact myself right now) and have her inform Ray so he knew his representative was dead and could ask for a new one.
The end result was…a lot. My mask mostly kept gods from scouting me unless they tried hard, and the temple itself was a perfect insulator from divine sight, so they didn’t know about the special circumstances behind the kill (the sacrifice of my staff) and assumed that I’d just muscled someone a full rank above me from what they could literally detect was early D-rank.
That story had spread, quickly, and to not just gods, but high rankers in their service, and to high level Ascendants another planets, and waiting a few weeks gave it lots of time to accumulate.
A grand total, all in all, of one hundred and sixty seven THOUSAND five hundred eighty six points across all my various stats. Needless to say, given it was more stats than I currently had, it knocked me on my ass. Like they’d been telling me, D-rank was a higher level, where people cared more what you did. I was pretty smug about the whole thing, until I found out that after I’d passed the inkstone and scythe to my grandmother through Callie (one to pass forward and one to keep to try to pass to my wife) that Black Sorrow had decided to fucking CLAIM me as her great grandson to get ahead of the narrative.
Wishmaster candidate status. D-rank. Ability: Master Wish- Eight times a day grant a Master 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.
Master Path of the Doom Sovereign- A Chronicle of the rise of the Ten Demons.
Might-92,410
Impact-105
Fantasy-47,606
Vitality-40,354
Focus-42,720
Perception-47,506
Creation-16,522
Progress to next rank:287,223/1,000,000
Soul strength- Amethyst Soul Body
Chronicle: Ten Demons Tome
wish scrolls stockpiled: 0 (4 in the possession of friends to be used over time)
Bonded companion: Archimedes (Life Nova Phoenix)
Stored:7 shadow attacks, 10 shadow jump (seven in reserve), 10 Stealth charges, 0 fire attacks, 10 triple strenth tranq blows (ten in reserve), 0 triple strength density shifted attacks. 10 spider leg attacks (ten in reserve), 0 heal bursts (0 reserve), 3 gravity attacks, 1 shadow clone, 18 scan heals (I-rank ability so Shane can hold more)
Pet- Wolf named Jin
Financial resources: 71 E-ranked chits 45 D-ranked(worth 100 E-ranked, past master rank is a watershed)
Skills: Master Path of the Doom Sovereign, Lesser Valtek Mastery, Intermediate Cooking Mastery, Lesser Inventing Mastery, Beginner Balam Mastery, Minor Fire Manipulation Mastery, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Minor First Aid Mastery, Expert Paired Dueling, Expert Dust Construction Mastery
DS Subskills. Monk: Stone Limb, Moonlit Night, Consecration of Flame, Ripple Running, State of Grace, Steam Arrow, Afterburner, Pit of Despair, Mountain Stance.
Rogue: Mercy Kill, Double Trouble, Touch of Tears, Flurry of Blows, Heavy hands, Marked for Death, False Fatality, Blood Curse, Creeping Darkness
Diviner: Overlay, Song of the Soil, Rhythm of the Wild, Eye of Revelation, Danger Sense, Piece of Mind
Goetia Staff Art: First form- Belial. Touch of Tears, Stone Limb, Consecration of Flames
Techniques: Abomination Engine- uses Mephistopheles flame to supercharge the magmatic body of Belial, creating a demonic machine of pure destruction
Second Form- Mephistopheles. Consecration of Flame, Afterburner, Mercy Kill, Marked for Death.
Techniques: Cosmic Collapse: condensed sphere of black flame that explodes out one side amplifying force. Mephisto's Waltz: Movement technique, Damnatio Memoriae: causes the ground iself to dissolve best used on mountains to cause avalanches
Circle of Damnation: defensive technique through destruction
Third form- Mornax. Stone Limb, Triple Strength Density Shifting (x10 F-rank stored attacks), Mountain Stance
Fourth form - Zagan. Heal Burst, Purifying Flame, Consecration of Flame, Afterburner
Techniques: Life Nova, purifying and healing version of Cosmic Collapse.Genesis Burst: enhanced version of Life Nova designed to repair soul damage.
Fifth form- Bael. Moonlit Night, Eye of Revelation (inverted), Afterburner (full effectiveness is seven times base Perception due to stacking, can only currently stack a single stat, unlike wish power which stacks them all)
Sixth form- Beelzebub. Piece of Mind, Stone Limb, Dust Construction, Shadow Clone. Create twelve copies (thirteen versions total) of Shane, each copy able to use a single form without straining Shane's soul past the strain of the original technique, which is only slightly more of a strain than a normal form and still allows one additional form to be used without overstraining. Can't remote control the forms, but can communicate with them remotely via telepathy principles from Paired Dueling. Might and Perception stacking, most versatile and well designed form yet.
Seventh form- Agares. Pit of Despair, Dust Construction, Stone Limb, Shadow Manipulation, Afterburner. Ability to mold and shape the earth, into black liquid tar, solid abyssal stone, or burning ash
Eighth form- Dantalion. Eye of Revelation, Overlay, Song of the Soil, Scent of Truth, Danger Sense, Piece of Mind, Rhthym of the Wild, Afterburner
Ninth form- Sammael. Baseline of angel trait, energy source: Enshrining Darkness. A more powerful baseline that acts as a foundation for all the other forms, allowing them to reach their true power.
Pseudo Domain:
First Circle of Hell- Limbo. Belial, Mephistopheles, Moonlit Night, Eye of Revelation. A psuedo Domain of confusion and mental manipulation, distorting the senses and controlling the body.
Recreated version: Piece of Mind, Overlay, Belial and Mephistopheles, Moonlit Night, Eye of Revelation. Uses Piece of Mind as it was meant to be used, to parse multiple timelines for Mephistopheles to destroy, forcing the victim to conform to a specific future.
Second Circle of Hell: Gluttony. Mephistopeheles, Mornax, Dark Reflection, False Fatality. Reinforces the body and uses the damage redirection skills to shift damage and pain into the pit of destruction in the stomach, consuming attacks to break them down for power. Can be used to fuel Abomination Engine.
Third Circle of Hell: Wrath. Mephistopheles and Agares. Creates an all consuming lake of burning dark ash infused with the fire of destruction.
Thirteenth Circle of Hell: Pride. The infernal library of techniques that serves as the foundation of the infernal realm. Deduce, refine, and perfect techniques. Refine and perfect Skills, albeit more slowly, and still requires a foundation of knowledge.
Fourth circle of Hell: Retribution. Dark Reflection, False Fatality, Gluttony to stockpile, Afterburner, Abomination Engine. Collects all the damage done to fuel Gluttony and inflicts it on the enemy.
I groaned at the changes, partially in pain and partially in outrage. It annoyed me to think about how much of that boost was from people learning I was related to Black Sorrow and retroactively attributing my success to being part of her bloodline. It helped that as soon as she’d claimed me, mom had done the same, though people still didn’t know who Celia’s dad was, so I only got the extra buzz off being related to one of the popes and not being triple godspawn, something I honestly didn’t mind.
Chelsea, for her part, was ecstatic, because after the truth had some out she could actually show off her newly trained Enshrining Darkness, and learn to use it in combination with her purifying flame properly.
As for me, I felt reborn. I’d been drip feeding all this renown to seemingly no effect over the last few months, but now I’d finally pushed myself up to nearly one third of D-rank. For the amount of time I’d been in this rank it was basically unprecedented, and regardless what people thought, I’d busted my ass making it happen. I felt powerful, deadly, and most of all, vindicated. My family could finally reunite, I could start preparing for the competition, and based on what I’d accomplished in this short time, there was a decent chance I might be able to hit C-rank before it started.
Marmont came to get us on the last day, surprisingly returning us to our individual worlds of origin (origin in the test) without much comment on what had happened. I expected Felicity to contact me, or summon me, or something, but to my surprise, she said nothing.
When I reached Rackham, I just called up to the Acheron, requesting they pick me up. They sent a shuttle into orbit to meet me and I flew up to get onboard, kind of wanting to show off. And when I made it onto the shuttle, I was pleased to find my apprentice waiting. “Master!” Squeaked Bella enthusiastically. “I had no idea you came from such a prestigious bloodline! I’m so lucky you decided to train me, I swear, I’m going to be the greatest staff fighter in the universe. I’ll play pool with the planets, smack stars out of orbit, do that trick where you knock a glass off a table and catch it before the water spills! I won’t disappoint you!”
I laughed, ruffling her hair. “Someone’s been talking out of turn I see. It’s fine, I’m basically finished with this identity anyway. Time for Mephistopheles to disappear.” I was planning to go pick up Sable and Dom on our way out of the cluster, and possible recruit their elders, so obviously I’d need to use my real name anyway.”
A laugh sounded from behind me, and I spun reflexively, putting myself between my disciple and whoever had snuck up on us, but relaxed when I saw the familiar young looking blonde man lounging in the seat. Nicholas Anders, the Radiant Pope himself, one of the disciples of the Red Revenant and my maternal grandpa.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said to my grandfather. “Mom send you?”
“Of course,” he laughed. “She was worried about her baby boy, but an A-ranker wasn’t going to cut it. Besides, I pulled some strings and got you a few meetings. Of course, they’re just meetings, you’ll need to prove yourself. But from what I’m hearing, that shouldn’t be too hard. So how about it grandson mine? You ready for your recruitment tour?” Judging by his smile, I wasn’t so sure, but I didn’t let that show as I confirmed I was. Time to get down to business.
Comments
GeneralTusk
If his individual forms can gather renown, I wonder if he can either use his clones, limiting and disguise them to their individual forms, to go out and gather renown on their own. Could do it secretly so that no one knows they are all him. Alternatively, he can use his fate sense to chose promising mortals and grant them the forms as abilities and build up his lieutenants from scratch.
Malcolm Tent
I couldn't really justify less than that. I was gonna do more. But after BS claimed him and with the renown from killing Echelon after a month he was bound to get a bunch of points.
CringeWorthyStudios
Nice to see Shane get some renown, though it did feel a little abrupt. That status screen is getting a bit janky though. Heck, he still has a bunch of stored abilities that I don’t think he’s ever going to use. Probably should just hide that now… A fair few typos too. Thanks for the chapter!
