Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 562
🕑 Added 2024-02-16 23:43:11 +0000 UTCI was walking on air after my duel. Not literally, though I COULD do that, but emotionally. I was finally getting to the point where I could be considered a real contender at my rank. All the training, all the Skills, all the adventures, it was all finally paying off. Pound for pound, I was able to fight it out with real powerhouses at E-rank despite my stats being markedly lower.
And it felt good. Not just being strong, but the way I was doing it. Not unlike Callie, I’d always felt sort of…overshadowed, by my dad. Elijah Wyndham, a man they apparently called ‘The Wish Devil’, someone even other members of the family were wary of.
The comparison wasn’t a pleasant one, but between the contracts and my powers, I felt like I’d been aping him for a while. Following the path he laid out of me, even if I took some small detours wasn’t something that made me happy, especially after finding out more about the mess that was my childhood.
Now though, I WASN’T like him. I was like Aiden. The current Wishmaster had two abilities just like me, and he was considered such a monster that even my dad looked bad in comparison.
No, more than Aiden, I had a SOLID Path for my second ability. I wasn’t completely certain where Aiden had been at when he was my age, but I somehow doubted he was that far ahead. I might not be the strongest person in the younger generation of the five factions, but I was only coming up on my nineteenth birthday. For my age I was definitely a real powerhouse.
But that wasn’t what this was about. We were meeting with Camden today, because in four months we were going to be ass deep in alligators. Even as we spoke, the next member of my team was getting new armor, but that wouldn’t be enough.
The main issue was that we had a whole bunch of people we needed to boost fast and only two people who could grant wishes. I’d been saving mine up, doing an extra two a day for Camden and keeping the rollover for out of contract stuff, but that wasn’t going to fly anymore. Those twenty points a day might not be much, but over four months they would help.
After explaining this to Camden, and informing him of my goals of getting all my people up to E-rank before the big fight, he agreed to meet with Callie, Celine, Nat, and I to help. I laid out the dilemma after getting my cousin’s permission to tell him about her identity, and he nodded along.
“Interesting.” He said. “I’d normally say what you’re going for isn’t possible, but there’s some glimmers of hope here. How far off are they?”
We’d been planning for Nat to help Abel and Mel, but Benny and Jessie were a ways off too, and between the four of them we needed over fifteen thousand points. Even if Nat got up to the point where she could do ten per wish she wouldn’t reach half of that, we MIGHT be able to scrape ten with my contribution, and with another thousand each from elixirs we’d be CLOSE, but still not quite there, assuming we could even get them.
Abel and Jessie still had rollover from the godslaying incident, but Mel didn’t, not to mention Nat as she was probably topped out closer to seven points per wish instead of ten. And that wasn’t even taking payment into account.
Most of the rest of our party were pretty much peak of their rank, having come from larger forces, except Celine, who while working with Nat nonstop was still only about halfway there. Our elven friend would be getting plenty of renown once she registered as the owner of the new territory, so she wasn’t as much of a current priority since we couldn’t risk her in battle anyway.
The numbers were making my head spin, and Camden gave me a sympathetic chuckle as he listened. “I think your best bet is to leave your mentors to Natalie. One of them will be gaining points still from past exploits, and between that and her wishes she should be capable of squawking by. If she can’t manage, there are still other options. You should focus on your teammates.”
I nodded along. “What other options? And that’s fair. Jessie has some Might and Vitality coming, both from her bond with Randall and from reputation. Just over five thousand remaining, and between elixirs and two wishes a day I’ll be at forty four hundredish. Should be able to squeak by.” Luckily I didn’t have to supply points to Randall. I had no clue how he broke through but Jessie seemed sure he was right on the cusp, and when he did it would help speed her up even more.
“Tournaments.” Camden said bluntly. “Renown allocation is strict in the empire up to the point of everyone getting their due. Past then, as you’ve seen, nobles can get a bit more…creative. Tournaments with stat based prizes are an excellent way to draw in new talent and increase the renown generated by ones own territory, which has a direct impact on expected payout.”
I blinked at that. “Can outsiders participate in those? I’d have figured you would need to be on the empire’s roles.”
“Like I said, it’s good for drawing in new talent.” He said with a shrug. “Because of that, there are loopholes for citizenship. Entering an imperially sanctioned tournament temporarily gives you a ‘Gladiator’ Job, allowing you to count as a member of that noble’s territory for the length of the tournament. They have to be registered with the imperial council, and they’re taxed, but they’re fairly common. Most of the larger cities have them monthly.”
I grinned. “So we have Mel and Abel clean up in the tournaments to boost their stat gain, making up any shortfalls in Nat’s wishes. Between that, Abel’s godslayer income and the elixirs that should be enough. The only major issue there is payment. Abel and Mel will need some way to compensate her.”
“I’ll take care of it.” He said with a wave. “I can dip into my coffers. You’re all staying to help me, and funding a bit of advancement is the least I can do.”
I nodded, sighing. “Alright, did you manage to acquire the land near the well? I assume you’ll want to work on building up the defenses in that area? I was planning to actually start putting up some structures by hand. It’s good practice, and my actions outside wishing aren’t as limited. Though a lack of stockpiling means less wishes for me to build up my own territory faster after the battle.”
Not that I was sure that would even work. I was pretty invested in that plan, and it might not be possible to compensate me fairly without my power deciding I was double dipping.
“I can help with it after this is all done.” Nat said with a shrug. “I can’t do wishes for you directly without raising a fuss, but since Celine will own the territory on paper there’s some wiggle room. I do plenty of business with her already. This will just help her grow indirectly.” She raised an eyebrow at the elf. “Sound good to you?”
Nodding slowly, Celine smiled. “I believe that works for me. Freeing up Shane to help Benny advance is going to be worth it anyway.”
“Alright. So I keep up my training with Demia, focus on helping my recruits improve, and work with Jessie and Benny to rank them up. Camden can use his wishes for whatever, including territory reinforcement, since I don’t own any of this personally and the contract already took care of payment. Any plans for that?”
He pulled out a scroll, unfurling it and then pinning it to the table with a few throwing knives he apparently pulled from secreted away sheaths. Alister winced at the damage to the wood, muttering something about carpenters, but Camden ignored him.
“So as you know, the well is going to be the exit point for the lions when they come up. There are so many of them some will undoubtedly take other paths, but most will focus on the path of least resistance.” He drew a big square around the well entrance. “Now what we need is a durable palisade that will not only provide cover, but deal actual damage to the lions.”
I nodded. “I can do that. I’ll need a lot of supplies, preferably E-ranked stone. How are the specialized spears coming along?” i had some ideas for possible enhancements to the defenses, since I had so many wishes from Benny coming up I could pour a ton of density shifted attacks into the project improving on my already powerful stone constructs. Being as I had more Impact than any E-rank stone working them should be more than possible, even if I hadn’t tested it. I had a feeling things would be harder if I tried to mess around with anything higher.
“I’ll have the stone brought to you.” He nodded. “Raw stone isn’t particularly valuable, even at higher ranks, so we should be able to meet your demand. As for the spears…I see your idea there, but sadly we won’t have the materials. Outfitting the whole force with them is going to be prohibitively expensive, and I’m going to have to leverage resources I don’t even have yet to do it.”
That was unfortunate, I’d been hoping to use them as spikes on the palisade, arranging it so the walls themselves could destroy the stone…I froze.
“Do you think Sonia could help me with a project?” I asked slowly. “Or assign someone to? I have an idea.” If she could imbue Belial into my armor, whose to say she couldn’t imbue it into the walls I was making. Or Mephistopheles? I had no idea what that would require, but even if it was too much, even just finding a way to enchant the spikes with Touch of Tears would help a bit.
We’d presumably need compatible material, but she might be able to help me find rocks that I could condense that resonated with the skill. The actual enchantment cost could be handled by a group of low level enchanters I bet. Poison walls would be a huge asset, especially ones I could presumably control at will with my Dust Construction if I got it high enough.
I had to push down amazing visions of a huge sentient wall with spikes set like jaws in the base, chewing up thousands of stone lions as I stood atop it laughing like a maniac. I blinked…that was a new impulse. Destruction in a small scale was common for me to daydream about, but that mental image had been…kind of maniacal.
Pushing away the worry that recursion was turning me into a demon lord or something, I gave a barebones concept of the idea to Camden, who had Alister head down to question his blacksmith, much to the seneschals distaste. I doubted she’d have time to do it herself given her workload, but I was hopeful within a week or two I might have some enchanters at my disposal.
For the moment, Camden agreed to send out the stone to the areas he’s already acquired, and I could start condensing it as much as possible to build up my skill before we started the real work. I grinned excitedly as I thought about how much work I had ahead of me.
While most people disliked hard work (and I was no exception in a lot of cases) I’d always loved building things. Creation in general was a lot of fun, and hell, maybe I could score some points in that particular stat when I demonstrated my Skill. Creation was always a hard one to raise, so I’d be killing to birds by making one stone. Time to get to work though, I had so much to do.
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