Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 457
🕑 Added 2023-09-22 16:58:43 +0000 UTC"Benny!" I greeted my best friend as he finally made he way into the manor we were staying in. "How was training?" Killian had lent it to use as our traveling accommodations, and everyone had long since gotten used to it. Callie and I were laid out on the couch waiting for everyone to get back before picking a movie, and my friend groaned and tiredly dropped into a seat nearby as he arrived.
"Painful." He said with a grimace. "But useful. Between the considerable help you've given me over the last few months and my new piece of tech, I put up a much better fight."
Callie hummed with interest. "What are your stats actually at by the way? You've been pretty secretive about the whole thing. Even Celine doesn't know. Granted, she told me she hasn't told you hers either, but that's just retaliation for being so secretive."
He shrugged. "I've been avoiding saying anything because it feels like I'll stop making progress if I talk about it. I know it's stupid, but it's like a hot streak or something. Secrecy is my lucky underwear. If we're going to slow down on training for the remainder though, might as well tell everyone. Once Cel gets here I'll share my progress, as long as you guys do the same."
We both agreed, since it wouldn't be a bad thing to let people know where we were. Some of our team members weren't at the point where they were comfortable sharing that stuff, but Jessie, Callie, Benny, and I didn't have much to hide. Probably had something to do with the drastically different environment we'd come up in compared to the others, plus the speed. Honestly whatever we shared would be out of date in a month or two anyway.
Celine, Nat, Perit, Valk, Abel, Cark, Cass and the whole rest of the team showed up, and once we all settled in, we decided to show off how awesome we were before the movie. Benny, being the one of us with the biggest change recently, went first.
Benicio Cortez- F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Mechanical Embodiment- Allows the integration of existing inventions into the users body for the purposes of strengthening and enhancing them.
Might-1405
Impact-35
Fantasy-56
Vitality-141
Focus-1683
Perception-282
Creation-171
Progress to next rank: 3773/10000
soul strength: Orange 25%
Pet- Wolf named Rolf
Current integrated tech. 10/10. Torso: G-ranked intangibility for short bursts. Right fist: triple punch. Left forearm: F-ranked energy barrier or variable shape. Left fist: minor slow acting tranquilizer effect. Right foot: Density shifting to create heavier kicks and more powerful jumps. Left Foot: momentum neutralization to allow stopping instantly. Head: slight cognitive boost to allow more thinking time. Back: ability to grow a shell to tank damage. Chest: Pair of golden G rank spider legs that arch up from the shoulders. Waist: Belt of spiritual calming. Heart: Illusionary double
Skills:Minor Cooking Mastery, Intermediate Inventing Mastery, Minor Haggling Mastery, Minor Stealth Mastery
Everyone just stared in shock at the numbers. I grinned, buffing my fingernails on my shirt and then blowing them clean. "After the big jump from the godslaying incident, I can do seven points per wish now. Twenty two hundred of my three thousand seven hundred and eighty total points for the last few months went to Benny. We didn't just put them into his mains either, though most of them went there. Two hundred of it was rollover from the battle, but he didn't get quite as much attention as the rest of us."
Benny grinned. "Plus my new heart device which lets me create an illusionary double. It's twice as effective because the double is technically me, which means it can access my abilities despite not being corporeal. The spider legs have physical presence because they're an effect, which means some interesting possible combinations."
Callie whistled. "Damn, you really have been putting the work in Shane." She raised an eyebrow at my friend. "The invention is neat, but it's not really the same amount of effort." He rolled his eyes and flipped her off, and she just snickered, before turning to the rest of us. "As you know, I've been making steady gains since the battle, and I've hit the halfway point, though it's starting to slow down."
Calliope Reynolds F-rank Abyssal Infiltration- Enter the shadows and emerge where you will within range, shape the darkness to your call, moving it as if it were part of your body, and even extend your senses through the shadows to spy on your enemies.
Might-1250
Impact-35
Vitality-342
Fantasy-1105
Focus-108
Perception-1875
Creation-485
Progress to next rank: 5200/1000
Soul strength- Orange-16%
Pet-Wolf named Rellia
Skills: Minor Tracking, Minor Dual Dagger Mastery, Beginner Stealth, Beginner Trap Mastery, Beginner Disguise, Lesser Balam Mastery, Beginner Shadow Manipulation Mastery. Lesser Paired Dueling.
"Well...a bit over half." She admitted cheerfully. "Most of it went to Perception though. My Might gains were mostly from people who were there, my stealth and Perception abilities got hyped a lot in the aftermath, apparently people are making it sound like a backstab." She didn't sound particularly upset about that, which I could understand given her truly ridiculous gains.
"Guess it's my turn then." I said with a grin. "While twenty two hundred of the wish points went to Benny, I also spent a portion of the time doing point rebalancing for some of the other people on the ship, resulting in a substantial gain for me."
Wishmaster candidate status. F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Wish- Six times a day grant an Intermediate 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.
Might-975
Impact-35
Fantasy-500
Vitality-720
Focus-720
Perception-704
Creation-260
Progress to next rank:3914/10000
Soul strength Orange-50%
Stored:7 shadow attacks, 7 shadow jump, 10 Stealth charges, 0 fire attacks, 10 triple strenth tranq blows (ten in reserve), 10 triple strength density shifted attacks (ten in reserve). 10 spider leg attacks (ten in reserve), 4 heal bursts, 4 gravity attacks, 3 shadow clone, 21 scan heals (I-rank ability so Shane can hold more)
Pet- Wolf named Jin
Skills:Intermediate Path of the Doom Sovereign, Minor Valtek Mastery, Lesser Cooking Mastery, Lesser Inventing Mastery, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Lesser Balam Mastery, Minor First Aid Mastery,Lesser Paired Dueling
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
Diviner: Overlay, Song of the Soil, Rythym of the Wild, Eye of Revelation, Danger Sense
"Fifteen hundred and eighty points from that, and another five hundred from the battle over time." I said smugly. "Not to mention all the soul training from working on my Path, which has put me up to a full fifty percent. Callie may be way ahead on stats, but I'm not exactly being left in the dust." I was damned proud of my progress actually. Though it made me wonder about our last original team member. "How about you Jessie?"
She shrugged. "The complete Vitality focus left a big impression. I got about a thousand off the battle in the last few months. Plus about five hundred rollover from the Bond with Randall. My soul is up to about eighteen percent now."
Jessica Evans- F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Lifeweaving- Infuse living things with life itself and direct their actions while the users power flows through them. Control had limited effect on sapient entities. Prolonged exposure to life energy may cause lasting effects in controlled subjects.
Might-875
Impact-35
Fantasy-78
Vitality-2292
Focus-55
Perception-65
Creation-58
Progress to next rank: 3458/10000
Pet- Wolf named Lily and bear named Randall(Beginner Beast Bonding with Jessie)
soul strength: Orange- 18%
Skills: Beginner Horticulture,Beginner First Aid, Minor Herbalism, Minor Flower Arrangement, Minor Beast Taming Mastery, Beginner Beast Bonding, Intermediate Shape of the Wild
I whistled. "Benefits of hyperfocusing. That Bond is kind of bullshit too. Still, barring our resident godslayer, we're all pretty similarly far along. I admit I expected Jessie to lag a bit, I was planning to dedicate some wishes to boosting her for a while, but it seems like that won't be necessary."
She nodded. "Might from Randall aside, I'm WAY overpowered as a healer for my level, which makes a big impression. I'm not surprised a lot of those people I saved were talking about it. I've also spent the last month healing everyone who needs it on the ship, so there's been some renown from that too. Probably not much but you know what they say, ABH, always be healing."
"No one says that." Said Benny with an eyeroll.
Jessie grinned at him cheekily. "Well they'd better start if they want me to heal them next time they get their teeth kicked in by an army of ghosts." He gave conciliatory shrug at that, and the rest of us laughed. "Now I believe there was some talk of a movie being chosen?"
Cass, who had been unusually quiet (practicing her damned katas again) began to bounce with excitement. "Oooh! Let me pick!"
"No." Said Cark shortly, glaring around at all of us. Despite Cass being like a little sister to the whole team (I'd even caught Nat sneaking her candy a few times) she was Cark's ACTUAL sister, and we deferred to him when it came to making decisions for her.
"I think I should pick." Said Callie loftily. "I AM the strongest F-ranker in the group."
"In terms of stats." I said with a scoff. "I have the strongest soul." Abel cleared his throat and I rolled my eyes. "Or whatever. You know what I mean. You don't count, you're a monster."
Benny groaned. "Oh gods, can we just take a vote please? Everyone's submission counts for the same amount. Otherwise we'd have to just let Zeke pick." He shuddered. "Which would be a tragedy. He has absolutely terrible taste in movies." He glanced at me for backup. "Remember that six hour romcom marathon when we were eleven?"
I ALSO shuddered. "I don't think it was possible for me to forget that BEFORE I had seven hundred plus Focus. Voting is better."
"I like romcoms." Said Callie in an affronted voice. "They're not so bad."
Shaking my head, I corrected her emphatically. "Except he doesn't watch regular romcoms. He watches THEMED romcoms. Zombies and werewolves and aliens and shit. The production values are always awful and the writing is trash. I have no clue where he even finds them. I've never heard of half the movies I was forced to watch growing up anywhere else. It's like he conjures them or something." I shot him a suspicious look.
He just grinned. "I don't. Nor are they wish based or anything. I just have a pretty decent sized collection. Granted they're in an alternate format, so I had to have them converted into scan files, but it was all worth it. Besides, it's not my fault anyway. Your mother was the one who got me into those. Eli hated them, but Sasha would force him to watch them every time we had a movie night."
The geas didn't activate, presumably because that bit of info wasn't related to cultivation. Still, I ate up every syllable. I just couldn't picture my ice cold dad being bullied into watching bad movies. That sounded like something Callie would convince me to do. What had my parents relationship been like? I always envisioned it as like a marriage of convenience or something. Mom had left when I was too young to form many memories, so I hadn't seen them together.
It was just another in the long list of questions I had for my mom about why she left us. About why she took my sister away. I was getting really sick and tired of being in the dark about my own life. I tensed for a minute, but then forced myself to relax and enjoy the bickering from my family. I would find out the truth soon enough, for now I should live my life as it was now. No use dwelling on the past when I couldn't get the answers I wanted until later.
Comments
Malcolm Tent
Oh he would if he needed to. Really though, between the massively altered timescale and all the horrible shit that happens to Ascendants over their lifespan (especially strong ones) Zeke has a fairly warped perspective. He's more proud of how well Shane is handling things than anything else, since to him, the incredibly short window of time Shane has to suffer is literally a blink of an eye. It's the reason Zeke isn't furious at Eli. A geas you're stuck under for a decade or two is a harmless prank to someone at their level, and it's incredibly hard for him to conceptualize things from a mortal perspective.
Baconwargod
I have to wonder what it must be like for Zeke to see how much a throw away comment he made affected Shane. He has been with Shane his whole life, and has so much perception he could probably see individual molecules if he so desired. He definitely saw him tense up and certainly understood why. One must imagine it would be frustrating to see just how much the deprivation of his family has affected him. I always love thinking of how Zeke sees things because for all intents and purposes hes a demi god walking around mortals. Everything must look so small and yet hes so limited in what he can provide Shane. Its probably a special kind of pain having to simply watch him struggle because while he definitely has an altered perspective because of recursion. There isn't a doubt in my mind he would destroy planets for him.
