Wish upon the Stars (Original Superhero cultivation sci fi litrpg)

[Malcolm Tent]

Surprisingly, the other two were able to cross to my side of the floor pretty easily. The…formation? I didn't know what it was, but the trap floor seemed to sense directions, and it didn't take us long to notice that crossing AWAY from the exterior door was perfectly fine, and the other two decided to take me up on my offer.


I made one of the Abyss Wyvern steaks, making sure I still had plenty for Callie and I, and cut it into strips, grilling it in a slightly sweet sauce and serving it over a high quality cloud rice. Callie had been eating well with my grandmother, and insisted on snagging ingredients to stash in the companion rings.


"Anyone want a drink?" I asked as I fished out some recent beverage options. "I have a few types of soda, some high quality juices, and this stuff is called VOLT!!, it's an energy drink. I haven't tried it, but it's supposed to work pretty well. Apparently it's like lightning in a can."


I was wary of this stuff. Callie had passed it on from Benny, and my best friend had a nasty sense of humor. Dominic seemed like a tough guy though, so he should be fine.


He seemed intrigued, then popped the top and fell over backwards with a yelp as electricity surged into his face. "Shit!" he snapped. "What was that?" He looked into the can, but apparently saw nothing, searching the room for his 'drink'.


"It was lightning," I said helpfully. "In a can." I took the empty canister from him, checking the front. "Oh, my bad. That doesn't say like." I paused apologetically before asking. "So, how was it?"


He glared at me for a second, then shrugged. "Kind of spicy. I didn't hate it. I feel a little energized."


"So, since we're on the same team, what ARE you guys looking for?" I did my best to seem as calm and approachable as possible, which was admittedly tough when you're a giant in edgy black armor with a horrifying demonic visage. "And have you seen any of the others around here?"


Sable shrugged. "I thought I saw someone using birds to scout nearby. Might have just been local fauna. You?"


"Just this guy." I jerked a thumb at Dominic. "But good to know. But you didn't answer. What is the Peaceful Mourning Wreath?" These people couldn't be much more versed in Felicity's lore than I was, so they must have either been tipped off or done some specific research to find her dad's temple info.


"It was the wreath the goddess gave her father when her mother died," said Sable solemnly. "It has a number of abilities, not the least of which is the ability to draw emotional pain out of a person, healing deep emotional wounds that otherwise might never go away. These wounds are on a layer of the soul so deep most never even notice them, but they DO effect condensing a Saga. The Wreath provides a similar service to the rebirth that was offered in the selection, but for A-rankers."


Dominic nodded. "Which mean's it's fucking PRICELESS. Anything that can help an A-ranker condense a Saga is worth more than most star clusters. Power at the level tips the balance of whole factions. Most of the five faction alliance don't have more than ten or fifteen S-rankers."


I was well aware. The WCP were able to stand equal with the alliance because we had more S-rankers than any of the other factions. While the Wish power had almost no effectiveness at making Path or soul difficulties go away, it lowered the standard for accruing renown by a laughable amount. At the end of the day, the Path and soul were things you could only really deal with yourself, but there were fixes for them, the biggest barrier to ranking up had always been stat acquisition.


It was one of the reasons I focused so hard on stat points with my wishes. Especially now, when I had such a monumental amount of them to gather. I could get through D-rank faster than anyone else could come close to, and if I managed to become the next Wishmaster, that amount would expand exponentially.


Shaking off that tangent, I forced myself to focus. My worries about my progression speed had been substantial recently, but it wasn't the point here.


This wreath was powerful, and admittedly very useful, but it didn't seem like it was what I was here for. Whatever Black Sorrow wanted, it wasn't a trinket that the Lady had made for her father when she was younger. It had to be something related to Strakkenthar himself.


"Is there anything else here?" I asked them cautiously. "Some other artifacts that might be important?"


Sable nodded. "Three total. But the wreath is the only one we can touch. The other two are infused with Strakkenthar's power. It's highly corrosive and will kill anyone who comes near it. The Frightlord Scythe and the Disquietude Inkstone were two of his items of power." I hadn't heard of those before, so I cocked my head in confusion, indicating she should continue.


Sable shrugged. "The Saga can only take an S-ranker to five hundred Impact. Once you hit that level, the soul can't handle the strain anymore. Four other artifacts are needed to achieve godhood. Of course, the Saga is the sum total of an S-ranker's soul and body. If it's not strong enough to reach five hundred, godhood is impossible, but past that, more artifacts are needed to withstand the weight."


Fascinated, I asked her to elaborate. "How does that work? And how do you know this? I've never heard anything concrete about the process of achieving godhood, aside from needing a thousand Impact."


"My great grandmother was a priestess for Verdyn back when he was still alive," she said with a shrug. "It's why I'm here. I'm a legacy. But Verdyn was never really my kind of deity. As for the objects, basically when you reach five hundred Impact you condense your Saga into a Domain. Any flaws or imperfections in your power and your Saga can't hold it all." Her tone was casual, like she wasn't literally telling me the secrets of the universe.


"Once that's done, you create a Domain seed and imbue it into an artifact, then water it with Impact. The more perfect your Domain, the more Impact each artifact can hold. Four is considered perfect, with five artifacts being a perfectly balanced Ascension to godhood. Once divinity is reached, all five parts of the Domain combine, and the objects of power become divine alongside their god."


I considered that. "Wouldn't less objects mean more power per object? What if you only made three objects? Or even two? A total of three domain bases would be more stable than five right? Assuming that less is more here."


She shook her head. "The strength of the original Domain is what establishes the seed. Your initial Saga would need to be exponentially stronger than anyone else's. The body and soul can't handle more than five hundred points of Impact regardless, but your Domain itself would need to be MUCH stronger than anyone has ever managed, and the Saga is the third part of that triad. It would need to bear a much larger burden, which means the deeds in it would need to be MUCH more impressive.."


My mind flashed back to a black fortress under a blood red sky. Was that why Lark had spent such a long time building and reinforcing his Domain? Why he'd destroyed all the other Vampires. He'd been able to contain a hundred S-rankers. Was the Vampire trying to Ascend with fewer than four objects of power?


While fascinating, this was something for future Shane to worry about. "Sorry, distracted. Really want to hear more later if there's more to hear, but can you tell me about the two objects that are here?"


"I don't know much," she shrugged. "Strakkenthar himself died a long time ago. I was able to get some information from my family library in some old books about the Lady. She and Verdyn were peers, so she's mentioned. Her father was before Verdyn's time though. All I know is that those two objects contain part of his power. I'm not sure what they actually do."


"What about Strakkenthar himself?" I asked hopefully. "I don't know much about him."


That seemed to perk her up. "I know a bit about him. Strakkenthar was the god of Endless Night. His Domain was based around the inevitably of darkness swallowing the world after the sun passed. His whole creation myth was about the unstoppable tide of darkness that would someday swallow all the stars in creation."


"Charming," I said with a grimace. But my mind wasn't on Strakkenthar anymore. Black Sorrow's Enshrining Darkness sounded eerily similar to that. Did the Domain seed have that much influence on her power?


Come to think of it, was that how she'd gotten the seed? Taken it from one of his artifacts? I could see how using someone else's seed as one of your four might help you Ascend, though the exact mechanics were a bit hazy to me. I just didn't know enough about the process. But what would she do with another? I didn't have nearly enough information about what was going on right now, and I didn't like it.


I didn't even know which artifact I was supposed to take. And what about the corrosive energy? Would the stone counter it? There was no reason to send me all the way out here to die, if she wanted to kill me she could have just done it. Which meant this really was a chance to get free of the sword hanging over my head, even if it was a casual and dangerous one that I didn't think she cared if I survived.


More and more I was seeing how little I understood about the world at large and my own situation in specific. Being D-ranked had seemed so huge and important before I got here, but now I just felt helpless and ignorant. Mastery really was where the real world of Ascendants began, and I was in the deep end.


In the end though, it didn't matter. I was sent to do a job, to help keep my family safe. I'd get it done, and worry about consequences later. Black Sorrow being slightly more powerful wasn't going to effect me in the short term, and in the long run…well, I'd learned quite a few things today, and I had a new goal. I wanted to create the strongest Saga I could, create a foundation for a colossal and powerful Domain, and outdo every other god who had ever Ascended.


I had a unique opportunity to create and lay the foundation for a powerful Domain by perfecting all thirteen of my pseudo Domains and merging them together into something truly terrifying. If I did it right, I might be able to do what I suspected Morgan was doing. Ascend with only three artifacts of power, a four part Domain, or even better, with only two, creating a three part Domain that my instincts told me would be the perfect configuration.


But I was getting ahead of myself. I only had three pseudo Domains finished, and I had a long way to go until my Saga. I'd need to focus on perfecting every aspect of myself before I reached that point.


For now, getting one of those artifacts and getting it Black Sorrow would give me room to grow. So I finished my food and stood up, brushing myself off. "Alright, well, I don't think the wreath is what I'm here for, so that's good for our agreement. You two can work out who gets it once we're through this. Until then, we work together." I gestured to the grid of floor squares. "Now, either of you know how the hell to get past this? Because trial and error is going to take forever."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"I have a few tricks that might help," Sable admitted as we stood at the edge of the grid. "I practice nature witchcraft. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept?" Her tone was businesslike and she didn't even bother glancing our way, as if she was sure we would be up to speed. Which…I kind of wasn't.


I glanced over at Dominic, who shrugged back, and then tentatively informed her. "I mean, not really. I know Witchcraft is an ability that lets you affect things through links. Thaumaturgical links make things that happen on a small scale happen on a large one. It's really versatile, and one of my mentors growing up practiced Cosmic Witchcraft, but I never really got the details of how it worked."


"Basically like you just said. Small scale changes bring about large ones. It's a flexible ability that can mix well with most things." Reaching into a pouch, she pulled out a handful of seeds, scattering them on the floor in front of us. As I watched, the seeds started to crack open, buds extending out and intertwine, winding together as they grew to create some sort of root golem.


I wasn't sure how that was witchcraft, but clearly she'd done something. She gestured her golem, a humanoid figure made of densely packed wooden roots, onto the grid, and it stepped forward, taking two steps…and bursting into flames.


"Was it supposed to do that?" I asked cheerfully. "Because I feel like maybe you had other plans."


Dominic snickered, averting his eyes and actually whistling when Sable turned to glare at him. She sent another root golem forward, this one taking a different path. This one got impaled. Then one got cut up by wind blades. The next one got struck by lightning. One of them turned into a ghost and just sort of…faded away.


By the time she ran out, she was panting and glaring at the grid. We'd identified a path about halfway across (some of them needed to be jumped) but Sable had been spending her own energy on growing the plants, and it seemed like her power was reaching a limit.


I considered my options. I was keeping a low profile, but even on top of my mask, this temple was a divine structure that blocked at least my own senses. Chances were good scrying into here was a no-go, and I was so close to the end. With a sigh, I reached over, put a hand on her shoulder, and called Zagan.


A wave of bright green life fire washed over her, drawing a shocked gasp from the other Ascendant, but I ignored it channeling the power through her. Her haggard appearance receded, shoulder straightening and skin flushing with vigor. "That's…" she gasped. "I feel so alive. How did you do that?" Her eyes snapped to me, confusion evident on her face. "I thought you were a brawler?"


"What, was it the name?" I asked jokingly. "I'm a complicated person. I contain multitudes. Will that help, or not?"


She laughed breathlessly. "I feel like I could fly just by flapping my arms right now. So yeah, that'll help." She cracked her neck, glaring at the floor. "Round two. Let's see who gives out first."


She reached into the pouch, casting more handfuls of seeds. Great heaps of the things this time, splitting and intermingling and creating a fucking thicket of roots, from which sprang more and more golems. She rushed them forward, eyes blazing green, cackling madly as they hit the squares. One after another they were destroyed, wrecked by the defenses, and one by one they showed the way through the trap, giving us the squares we needed to proceed.


We started doing so, slowly following the path laid out, and Sable would throw her seeds onto the next empty square. Luckily the black and white marble squares of the floor weren't small, and all three of us could stand inside them easily enough (though I had to fold my wings). Seeing the endless wave of root golems spawning because of a few casual bursts of Zagan was kind of intimidating.


My healing and purification form, for all its limitations, was easily one of my most powerful forms, and having it boosted by Sammael made it even more terrifying. Working with an Ascendant who drained their own life force (I was pretty sure) to create plant golems, I could essentially fuel her army forever.


Of course, everything had limits. While her energy reserves were able to be topped up indefinitely, as I'd recognized with Jessie's power when I was starting out, mental strain wasn't something life force could treat. After about forty minutes, I noticed Sable swaying on her feet precariously, and we decided to stop in a middle square and sit down to recover a bit.


This was made even easier by Dominic taking out some kind of bowl and setting it on the ground, then just…stepping into it. Sable and I shrugged at each other and followed him in, finding the inside to be some kind of cave dwelling.


"Welcome to my Den," said Dom proudly. "D-rank portable dwellings are hard to find, because they have to be incredibly stable to hold multiple Ascendants of that rank, not to mention the material requirements for supporting that foundation. I got this one from the family when I reached Master."


I whistled as I looked around. "This is cool. What happens if the bowl breaks?"


"We get ejected," he shrugged. "It won't though. I told you, the material requirements to support this much Impact are crazy. It's still technically D-rank, but higher up the ladder. We're fine in here for now. The rest we can worry about later. For now, Sable, why don't you get some rest. You're stumbling around like a drunken bumblebee."


She snorted, but nodded. "Fine. But I don't know either of you, so forgive me if I don't trust you with my safety. Last thing I need is to get knifed in my sleep because I thought you big meatheads were too stupid to betray me and didn't take precautions."


"You're mean when you're exhausted," I said in a faux hurt tone.


She rolled her eyes, then took out more seeds, scattering them around. She winced a bit at the effort, but soon enough a big dome of roots wrapped her up, completely shielding her from sight. The layers kept stacking too, interweaving to create and extremely dense shield. I didn't take it personally, I didn't trust either of them that much either. I still had my C-rank plate to keep me safe though.


Dominic, to my surprise, didn't seem to worry about it either way, just flopping down on his back and going to sleep. With a shrug, I sat down, crossed my legs, and trigger Piece of Mind so a parallel could monitor my body while I took a nap. The parallel could hear and react, so it would be able to wake me up if anything suspicious happened, and at my rank, having my eyes shut wasn't exactly an impediment anymore.


Unsurprisingly, I was awoken what seemed like minutes later by Dom letting out a loud booming yawn. My eyes shot open, my parallel alerting me immediately, and my head snapped over to track him, but he just gave me a lazy wave.


He reminded me of kind of a weird combination of Abel and Punchin' Carl. Just a big simple battle maniac who wanted to fight. He wasn't as crafty as my mentor though, though he might be as ruthless. He HAD tried to sneak attack me when we met. Still, I was a little bit biased towards liking him because of the similarities.


Sable, meanwhile, didn't remind me of any of my friends. She'd been mostly pretty aloof and semi-formal until her power boost, then she'd been a lot more blunt. I didn't really mind either, but I had to admit her power was impressive.


I was also sure she wasn't showing me even a tenth of what it could do, because making plant golems wasn't Witchcraft as far as I knew. Chances were good she had some kind of doll or puppet she'd made that she was connecting to them. Maybe the seeds were from the same tree as the doll.


I'd tried doing some research into Witchcraft back in the day after we met that witch at the Conclave, but the fact was, it was so vague and versatile that it could do basically anything. Witches could heal, control, curse, enhance. Any connection two people or even a person and a thing could have could be amplified or subverted. At higher levels witches could be fucking SCARY, but it was a resource heavy ability set. You needed special materials that could withstand the linking and be used for symbolic avatars.


Because of that, and because Ascendants were glory hounds and Witchcraft tended to express itself more subtly and from a distance, it had fallen out of favor in the mainstream. My mom had been surprised to see it for that exact reason.


With our nap out of the way, we all emerged rested and ready, and resumed our journey through the grid shaped room. With some rest, Sable was able to withstand the boost from Zagan much more easily, and it wasn't long until we made it across the room, emerging on the other side of the grid none the worse for wear, though presumably minus a LOT of seeds.


"Finally!" groaned Dom as we stepped off the grid. "That was fucking tense. I kept worrying one of them would have a delayed trigger and blow us up or something."


I'd actually worried about that too, but I'd decided to trust my instincts, Fatewalker might not be perfect but it was better than going in blind. I hadn't gotten a particularly bad feeling, though my Danger Sense had obviously been screaming the whole time, given the pervasive risk of just being in this fucking place.


On the other side of the room, there was only a single thing. A door. Or rather a set of large double doors, carved from the same stone as the temple. Unlike the smooth glassy walls, the stone had been etched with intricate designs, a story actually, and a quick glance told me that it was about Strakkenthar.


It was also almost definitely propaganda, based on the very optimistic tone, portraying the psychotic night god as a benevolent savior arrived to save the universe from war and sorrow (I was paraphrasing, because it was all images, but the last thought made me chuckle at the irony).


So we ignored the doors, placing our hands against the dark stone and pushing as hard as we could, revealing the room behind.


Inside was another water chamber, and I braced myself for another puzzle, but to my surprise, it didn't seem like there was one. The chamber was full of peaceful, tranquil liquid, and in the center, equidistant from each other and the walls, were three islands.


One island held a massive two handed scythe. It was jagged and menacing, and floated in a beam of light, rotating slowly as if displaying itself to the world. In the center was a pedestal on which sat a single night black stone, and opposite the scythe was a black plant wreath covered in white flowers.


Even from here, I could feel some sort of heaviness in the air. Not Impact, that was being restrained, or we'd probably have been crushed, but just a sense of weight and meaning beyond normal objects.


Taking out my stone, I held it up, and to my complete lack of surprise, the arrow spun and stopped on the central pedestal, where the ink stone sat. "Well," I said wryly. "Good news. I can definitely confirm we aren't after the same thing." The question was would Strakkenthar's corrosive energy make it impossible for me to accomplish my mission. I supposed we'd have to find out.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So…I heard there was supposed to be some kind of energy poison or something?" I said, gesturing to the islands in front of us. "You guys see anything?" I'd triggered Dantalion, but there was no trace of defenses, or at least not ones I could actually detect. This whole place was pretty much a dead zone to me though, so it would be stupid to ignore any potential hidden traps.


Sable nodded. "Of course. I wouldn't have come here without something that could help." Reaching into her ring, she withdrew a small lamp. It had a porcelain white base with intricate blue traceries on it showing scenes of hills and valleys with lifelike trees. The top was a curved glass cylinder, widened at the base with a much smaller lip, and the inside of it burned with a white flame that seemed to purify the air…a very FAMILIAR white flame.


"I got this from a black market dealer, who stole a sample from the Promethean Library. This is an S-rank "Flame of Purification" refined by a Pope of the Red Revenant Church." Sable sounded smug. "It's the best possible counter to corrosive dark powers. Granted, this is god ranked corrosive dark, but the god it came from has been dead a long time."


I just stared at her, moth ajar behind my mask…and then a whole bunch of shit finally clicked into place.


Why Black Sorrow had given me that pass for my family if I did this, why she'd picked me out of all the possible D-rankers. A whole bunch of little things started adding up, and they added up to one and one and I got two. This fucking place was caked with Enshrining Darkness. Nothing active, or the lamp wouldn't do shit, just a sort of lingering presence. And I was betting that being Black Sorrow's bloodline descendant, even if that bloodline was inactive, made me a legacy practitioner and immune to the passive field.


I cursed internally. I'd had leverage over Black Sorrow. She'd needed me to do this, or she'd have had to send Chelsea, and Chelsea was valuable to her. But on second though, wiping out a blood debt with my family members was a pretty ideal payment. I was satisfied with what I got.


"Do you know if it works?" I asked levelly, pretending I hadn't just realized that I could stroll over and take all three of those things without a problem.


She snorted, stepping forward, and set the lamp…in midair. It just hung there as she took out a handful of seeds and dropped them on the ground. They grew quickly, twining together, and she took out something I hadn't seen. A puppet. Like an actual wooden marionette on strings. As I watched, she pulled the strings taught, letting it hang, and controlled the hands to reach forward.


The newly formed golem followed the movements, taking the lamp, and then she walked it to the stone path through the water corresponding to the wreath, and then across to the island.


As it walked, the lamp flared, the purification flame casting a wild light. Flickers of white drove back the dark, and tiny whisps of shadow hissed and steamed around the puppet. Finally, the golem reached the island, and she walked it up to the wreath, setting the lamp on the air beside it as the wooden hands reached down to lift the object.


When they came within about a foot, the lamp flared so bright it was hard to see, and then exploded. The golem, which had crossed unharmed, was immediately consumed in a swirling cloud of corroding darkness, wasting away to dust in moments.


We all just kind of stared at the empty spot where it had been, and Sable swayed, her face white with pain. Apparently the destruction of that golem had hurt her. I wasn't sure why the others hadn't, but my guess was that connecting directly to it to puppet the construct made it more effective but was also riskier. In her hands, the wooden puppet in the string had also been consumed, and her hands were withered and sick looking.


Stepping up next to her, I put a hand on her shoulder and flexed Zagan. The enhanced purifying flames of my healing form, especially under the influence of Sammael, were far too much for some unconscious residual darkness to deal with, and her hands quickly recovered, color returning to her face.


Despite that, I felt a serious drain on my reserves, my physical strength dipping as the purification sucked out a massive amount of my power. I'd never seen anything that required that much energy to purify or heal before.


I'd always kind of taken Zagan for granted for its supreme badassery. Made from my grandfathers fire, amplified by Jessie's life force, and empower by my own Afterburner technique, Zagan was the strongest form I had in terms of raw efficacy, even if it wasn't much good in combat outside a few specific circumstances.


It was clear now though that Zagan's absurd effectiveness was due to qualitative differences in energy level, and that wasn't going to cut it here. I'd have to overpower the taint of the enshrining darkness in a brute force contest if I wanted to cleanse it.


Which would have been a problem…if I needed to do that. As I cleansed the energy from Sable, I felt it try to flow into me, and I also felt it basically slide through me directly into the ground. Because of either my Sammael form or more likely, my unrealized Black Sorrow bloodline, the energy completely ignored me.


"I think I can get these for you," I said confidently, pretending to be unsure. "But I need you to do something for me. I have a faction of my own I want you to join. I need you to sign contracts to that effect. If you do I'll get you the wreath, though you'll need to figure out exactly what to do with it."


I kind of wanted it, truth be told, at least for Zeke or mom, but I also knew that getting my hands on it directly would be complicated. Disappearing with the ink stone would be hard enough. If I could get Dom or Sable to come under my banner though, I could use that connection to borrow it later, not to mention I'd have two powerful D-rankers with strong backgrounds that would be able to give me a direct introduction to possible strong Ascendants I could recruit.


Though it was anyone's guess if their ancestors were still around, I could still have Zeke or mom try to make contact. Convincing the Church to extend a welcome to A or S-rankers should be easy, especially once I was able to own up to my parentage, and even if the lines had declined, it sounded like Dom wasn't the strongest in his family.


Clearly, they understood from my comment that I'd purposefully been vague here. "Show us the contract," said Dom eventually. "If we don't see anything wrong with it I'll sign."


"Same," said Sable with determination. "If you can get me that wreath it'll be worth it." Her tone made it seem like that comment was more personal than ambitious, and I made a mental note to ask her what that was all about later. In the meantime I withdrew a standard employment contract, rewriting a few sections quickly to match the situation.


Obviously no one would sign a lifetime contract, even for that kind of artifact, but at D-rank, a hundred years wasn't too much lifespan, so I set the contract for a century. By then I'd either be too strong for it to matter or dead, so I didn't mind the wiggle room.


After a few minor alterations we settled on the wording, binding them to my service but leaving an out for them to refuse tasks that were morally reprehensible or literally impossible, as well as negotiating for time off. Finally, we finalized the contracts, and I manifested Zagan before approaching the wreath.


I didn't need the purification, but I didn't want to tip my hand about that, and it didn't actually require any energy to keep it going without using it. I flew over the water easily, landing on the island, and strode up to the wreath, barely hesitating before I snatched it up.


Then I flew to the next one to grab the inkstone. It was staggering how simple it was. I could feel the energy flowing through me, feel the concentration of enshrining darkness floating in the air above the water, but it did nothing to me. The Wreath itself didn't actually contain any, since it wasn't Strakkenthar's, but I was pretty sure anyone but me who had tried to move the scythe or inkstone would have died.


When I got to the scythe, I lifted it easily, spinning the weapon a bit. As a staff user, I had a bit of practice with long weapons, but this one felt unwieldy. Still I like the style, and decided I could give it to Callie. She could use it as a Domain seed when she formed her Domain, if she wanted to.


Turning to head back to the shore, I froze. Sable, who was watching eagerly, noticed my stillness while Dom mostly just ignored me, lying down to nap. And behind them…I saw birds.


Crows, actually, and ones I'd seen before. I remembered a comment they'd made before about someone scouting with birds. "Sable, on guard!" I snapped, bringing the girl to attention. She flicked out a few dozen seeds, all of which bound together into a large skeletal golem, or the top half of one, the ribcage acting as a defensive emplacement.


Dom, hearing my tone, snapped out of his lazing and whirled, eyes glowing gold as his body shifted into a more lupine form, though still bipedal. His fur was streaked with silver white, and his body got even bigger, hungry eyes searching.


A laugh carried across the room as the birds poured out of the openings, coming together in a swirling vortex of feathers. A figure coalesced from the whirlwind, a cloaked figure of a familiar stature, and my new companions whirled to face him, clearly waiting for an attack that never came.


"Echelon," I said in disgust. "I should have listened to Bella. Can't fucking trust birds. But then, you basically told me that when we first met. Such a stupid thing to lie about. But then, deception is just making shit up, right?"


He laughed happily. "I was wondering if you would get it. I wasn't going to TELL you, obviously. But clues and hints make the game fun. Impersonating a priest of my Lord's brother is always child's play. Just act as stuck up and condescending as possible and throw in a little mystery. It's what everyone expects."


Sable, clearly enraged, flicked her fingers, and the colossal wood golem torso attacked, woven root fists smashing down on the cloak, only for the birds to scatter, harmlessly avoiding the attack and coalesce again on the other side of the room.


I wanted to help, but was pretty sure he'd been waiting for me to leave the water portion of this room. He wanted one of the objects, probably the scythe, and if I left, he might get them.


While my new friends might need help, I couldn't let an enemy get his hands on one of these objects of power. Especially not an enemy god. I'd known something felt off about Raxus, and now I knew why. He'd been involved in this mess since I'd arrived, infiltrating the trials to keep tabs on me. Did he know who I was? He clearly knew something.


I gripped the scythe, wishing I had any clue how to USE the damned thing, but sadly it might as well be a big pointy stick for all the good it did me. What the hell did I do next?

 

[Lone-sith]

Reminder about who the dude is?

 

[Quenster06]

Reminder about who the dude is?

Click to shrink...

If you mean Echelon, he was the representative of the God of Secrets. Except we have now been informed that he's a fake.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The first thing I needed to do was to establish the degree of threat. My Danger Sense was screaming at me, and I felt all my instincts insisting this guy was dangerous. Dantalion couldn't tell anything about the temple, but it could read a D-ranker easily enough. Except when I focused on him…


"You're at C-rank," I said flatly. "Were you hiding that too?"


That meant Solid Path, at least, and way more Impact than I had. No wonder he seemed so confident. I wasn't sure if I could take a C-ranker. I knew up to this point it had been basically impossible for me to cross that divide. But with Sammael boosting my other forms…it might be doable. If I played it right.


He just chuckled. "Not hiding it, no. Suppressing it. My Deception Path is strong, and with my Lord's blessing I can accomplish plenty, but fooling the senses of the divine in regards to Impact is functionally impossible, even for someone like me."


His gaze flicked to the others, and even from the depths of his hood I could see the implied threat. He couldn't hide from gods, but he could hurt Dom and Sable.


Which obviously wasn't allowed. Aside from me liking them, they'd just signed extensive employment contracts, and I wasn't letting two valuable supporters get killed in front of me even if they hadn't been new friends.


"So, this is the part where you wax eloquent about your evil plan right?" I asked with faux boredom. "I mean you clearly put a lot into it. Might as well share."


"See, I know you're stalling," he said gleefully. "But you're actually kind of right. And since I can crush you any time you decide to come over here, I suppose I'll enjoy myself. Deception is always so much more clever in retrospect, don't you think?"


I shrugged. "Sure, whatever you say. So, I take it you knew who I was from the beginning?"


"My Lord did," he admitted. "While the god of secrets may not be able to pierce the veil of ongoing subterfuge, that mask of yours is still a form of Deception. But of course, it was child's play for him to deduce the thoughts of a toddler like Black Sorrow. Your heritage is no secret from anyone of import anymore."


So they'd been letting me slide and maybe even helping me go unnoticed so I'd come here and retrieve the objects. "I don't buy it," I said with a shake of my head. "I don't believe you knew everything from day one. Otherwise you wouldn't have needed to scout anything with the birds. You were looking for me. Which means you had some way of track-" I froze. "Oh you son of a bitch. The pendant."


That fucking tracking necklace. Ray hadn't been able to steal it, he'd needed to ask me for help. I'd thought the task seemed a little harsh for such an early trial. Because they KNEW he'd come to me. Hell, Echelon might have been the one to give him the trial and he might have steered the conversation towards me subtly. He WAS a priest of a Deception god.


His laugh this time was colder and more smug. "Took you long enough. Yes, touching it when you retrieved the stone was more than enough. Your energy signature was imprinted on it. We used it to track you from there. You vanished a few times, oddly, but we always reestablished contact. See, we knew about the fields, but they're D-rank exclusive. You can rank up here, but can't come in at C or above. And this temple is fairly well hidden if you don't know the general area to look in."


It wasn't, really. I mean, the marsh was legendarily toxic, so I guess people might avoid it, but it probably would have been my first guess for the location of a place like this. Plus with Dantalion I could have found it even without the stone, even if it might have taken longer. The sharklings had been more help than anything, though admittedly the stone had gotten me to a tribe close by.


More than anything though, I was fucking annoyed. Ray was my friend, and he'd been used by this complete asshole. I knew he hadn't been aware of what was happening, I'd been trapped in a room with him in Dantalion form for like a week. No one was that good a liar.


So this dick had hijacked my friend's trial (albeit the trial of a god who was obviously terrible and he was probably better off not working for) to mess with me, and it had worked.


This was also an important lesson on the limits of Dantalion. Knowledge was power, but I didn't know what I didn't know. Things that were hidden from the people I was looking into or that had been removed from the situation by other means wouldn't be picked up. Dantalion was powerful but not foolproof.


Clearly having worked himself up to a full head of steam, he continued explaining, bragging about how he'd manipulated all of us, how brilliant he was and how he was in line to be the next high priest.


As he spoke, I considered my options. I was already active in Sammael, but I let Zagan fade. It had been covered by Mornax so he didn't notice when I replaced the form with Mephistopheles, maximizing my power output. Just to stack on top of that, I also triggered Belial. Three forms was theoretically my limit, but Sammael was such a minimal drain that it didn't really count, and actually kind of helped with the strain a bit.


I started towards the platform, stashing the objects of power in my ring, and he took notice as I jumped from rock to rock, but he clearly assumed he'd already won and didn't bother to pay more than cursory attention to me. He DID slowly drift toward Dom, the more accessible of my two companions.


He definitely was NOT expecting me to appear behind him, staff blurring forward into a storm of explosive thrusts.


Snarling, he scattered into pieces, crows bursting out, but I'd been expecting that. With a quick flare of Dantalion to confirm something, Limbo exploded out around us, each thrust destroying a possible route of escape as I poured my most destructive power out through my staff. To my concern, the wood of the weapon groaned slightly at the output, but luckily didn't actually break.


An explosion of black corrosive fire swallowed one of the crows, then another, and I hit a third before the rest were too far away to catch and coalesced on the other side of the platform. I laughed spinning my staff around me in a slow circle, winding up for a possible attack.


"How did you do that?" hissed Echelon. "You don't have the power to damage anyone at the C-rank!"


I grinned under my mask. He was wrong. I didn't have the power before, but he'd just told me he was BARELY C-rank. The gap was substantial, but between my domain, Sammael, my techniques, and the sheer power of my corrosive flame energy after combining Mephistopheles and Belial, I'd managed to bridge the gap.


Of course, there was another important factor. Echelon used a sort of coalescing body ability that let him turn into birds. But while each of those birds might be nominally C-rank, they were actually slightly below that level. The dispersion of his body created vulnerabilities in the individual pieces.


My shots had infected not just three birds. But the three WEAKEST birds. After analyzing them with Dantalion it had been simple to identify the three most vulnerable of the constructs. Whether it was because of what part of the body they had been or just uneven distribution, the three I'd picked had been enough to seriously throw off the newly minted C-ranker. Who had revealed his face when he coalesced, not having time to re-don his cloak in the hurry.


Sure enough, one of his eyes was crackling with horrifying black energy, the destructive power radiating out from the socket to chew away at his face. I couldn't see the other two spots I'd struck him, but I could tell from the way he was holding himself that they had fucking HURT.


"Shame you don't worship the Lady," I taunted him. "That kind of pain wouldn't even make you blink. But I guess being a priest of a god of lies is useful when you want to convince yourself you don't really suck." I flickered again, Double Trouble bringing me behind him, my attack aimed right at the base of his skull.


Unfortunately, he must have just not noticed me teleport before, because his Deception Path allowed him to see right through the illusory me and he whirled with deadly speed, fingers extending into razor sharp talons as he swiped at my face.


My Danger Sense warned me ahead of time, so I triggered my Waltz and vanished, but he was fast enough to catch me on the way out. I heard a grinding screech and sparks flew up, my mask perfectly stopping his attack and possibly even damaging his claws. With the extra time, Sable dropped her root cage for a second, the arm of the giant upper golem snagging Dom and hurling him into the cage with her before it closed up.


"How's that eye doing?" I smirked at the enemy priest. "Probably barely works. Your depth perception must be going to shit."


In reality, his eye didn't seem to be degrading as much as it should. The combination of energies was hyper corrosive and Sammael amplified it massively, but despite how hard I was trying to play it off, the rank gap from mid D to C was substantial. I'd gotten lucky and scored a serious hit and he was wary, but he was going to figure out how hard I was bluffing soon.


I considered my options. I could try to use the scythe…but I hadn't inherited my great-grandmother's power. My bloodline made me resistant to the passive lingering energy in the air, which was probably left as some sort of blood lock, but it didn't make me a fucking practitioner of Enshrining Darkness. My sister could probably do some damage with the scythe without needing training, but if I wanted to access it, I'd need lessons.


The inkstone had a similar problem, and I wasn't sure what good using the wreath would even do me, considering it was apparently designed as a fun and exciting new method of soul torture that just happened to make it easier to reach A-rank.


My powers were impressive, but they weren't enough to bridge the gap. Not really. I needed more. Needed to be stronger. My story wasn't over. Not here. Not after so much time and effort. I wouldn't die forgotten in some bullshit temple belonging to a long forgotten god. I was better than that.


I wished my friends were around to help, but even if they weren't with me, I wasn't alone. Not really. I wished I could call Callie for help. Could call Zeke. Could call anyone. Even my fucking DAD would be an acceptable source of aid against this bastard.


And then I felt it. That strange little click. I'd experienced it before. Like someone had shoved a lever under my consciousness and shifted it about an inch to one side, and suddenly it slotted into place in my brain in way that just hadn't lined up before. Flames exploded across my vision, not black or green, but the familiar purple.


My sight was consumed by the fire, and when it cleared, I wasn't in the temple anymore. I was in a pitch black void, and the only other person there was the person I'd just been thinking about. My father, sitting in an armchair reading a book in the empty void of nothingness. When I appeared, he sighed and shut the book, looking up at me with annoyance. "Well. It took you long enough."

 

[Bezarius]

My sight was consumed by the fire, and when it cleared, I wasn't in the temple anymore. I was in a pitch black void, and the only other person there was the person I'd just been thinking about. My father, sitting in an armchair reading a book in the empty void of nothingness. When I appeared, he sighed and shut the book, looking up at me with annoyance. "Well. It took you long enough."

Click to shrink...

Damnit Eli, must you be such an asshole.

 

[SilverEagle2121]

Well I must say I was not expecting that.

 

[Hyperion47]

Really was not expecting this. But then,his father loves him and must have done something with the wish power to protect or support him when he WISHES to be helped by him.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Now, I'd gotten used to the crazy bullshit of my current world. Ascendants do weird nonsense, and I'd accepted it. But even for me, this was extremely odd. I just stared at the representation of my dad, red skin, horns and all, sitting in a chair and looking at me apathetically.


"What do you mean it took me long enough?" I demanded. "What took me long enough? And where the hell are we? I can't be sitting around chatting I'm about to get murdered."


"You soul," he said lazily. "Or part of it anyway. The exact construction of the soul is a bit complicated and not something you need to worry about at this point. And this is where you'll condense your Chronicle. Eventually. We'll get to that. And don't worry about the outside world. Think of this as a time out."


That, at least, was a relief. Knowing I wasn't about to get butchered while I sat here and listened to my dad condescend, I sighed, then looked around. There was nothing, obviously. But there was a chair. Him being here might be some crazy bullshit, but the chair didn't seem like something he would bring. I decided to see if I could do something similar. More specifically, to see if I could make one with some kind of technique. This WAS my soul.


I focused on the air next to me, imagining the chair. I created a backstory, constructed a mental image, and just generally fleshed out the concept of the chair like I would a technique, and then…nothing. I had no base to use it from.


From that perspective, I could probably manage something. I focused on Agares, and before my eyes, a cloud of ash manifested, condensing into a surprisingly cushy black chair.


I dropped down onto it, enjoying the comfort and turned to look at my dad, who for the first time in my memory was smiling at me. "See, that's why I think this is going to work," he said with a chuckle.


"What's going to work?" I asked again. "Now that we have time, I'd like an explanation of how you even got here. This feels a lot like the kind of interference you said you wouldn't engage in."


He shook his head, sighing. "To understand what's happening, you'll have to understand quite a few other things. Namely the reason I decided to become a devil in the first place. Do you remember one of the first lessons I taught you as a child? The elements of a contract?"


"Of course. Offer, Acceptance, Awareness, Consideration, Capacity, and Legality," I recited from memory. "Why?"


"Well, those elements are the basis of the Wish power. Offer and Acceptance you get, I'm sure, because the Skill announces them. Consideration is obvious, that's just the payment you receive, Capacity is addressed directly, and Legality is the restrictions of the laws binding the Skill itself. They're exceptionally complicated and detailed, they have to be in order to make it function.


I'd never seen him so animated talking about anything, but his eyes burned with intensity as he talked. "Being a devil, however, allowed me to create an altered version of that capability. Devils are known to be sneaky tricksters, dedicated to the letter and not the spirit of their agreements, and this implicit understanding allows me to flout one of the contractual elements. In your case, Awareness."


I blinked. It took me a minute to sort through it. I put together a hundred different tidbits of information. The way my power was delivered in a scroll instead of unlocked naturally, the way my mother claimed to have sold it for her second power which had always seemed shaky to me.


"So…" I said, feeling things out. "Mom didn't sell you my first eighteen years of powers. I did? Just without knowing because you took some random thing I did as consent like you did to that guy you were fighting last time I saw you. And this is…what? Payment? Because I imagine you would need to pay a lot for eighteen years of Wish."


He beamed. "Now you're getting it. When I found out your mother had to leave to protect Chelsea, I was devastated. But when you developed the family power, it was pretty much inevitable we'd all be separated anyway. Candidacy is hard to turn down. You know how the family is about their cuckoo bird nonsense. But I also knew you had no chance of winning. And if you were going to reunite us all, like you're doing now, you needed something really special."


"You can't honestly tell me you expected all this?" I asked incredulously. "You're scary, but you're not THAT scary. Predicting this whole thing would be impossible."


He waved his hand. "Oh I didn't. This moment was always going to happen. When you formed your Chronicle, this fragment of me that was left in the scroll that gave you back your powers was always going to be here to explain, but most of this has been well outside my calculations. Granted, I couldn't have possibly planned it better, but the only real prerequisite was that this needed to happen after you hit D-rank, when outside interference wouldn't matter."


"Ok, so…what's the point?" I sighed. "Why bother with all this? Is there some way for you to help me condense my Chronicle?"


"Do you know how the Wishmaster made his Skill?" he asked me, seemingly as a complete non sequitur.


I shrugged. "He was a genius. Master of Skill construction and able to learn Skills absurdly quickly. He combined them all into the massively powerful meta ability that is Wish, which he passed down at S-rank, like any other bloodline."


"All of that is true," he admitted. "But his most powerful tool for doing that was a technique. An absurdly powerful technique. More of a pseudo Domain really. He calls it the Great Book Heavenly Library. It's an internal manifestation inside the soul. A library where every skill and technique is recorded in book form for him to peruse as his leisure. It lets him alter his Skills and techniques more easily. He told me about it in passing when I was younger. The requirements for technique talent are absurdly high, since it's a pseudo Domain and being able to form any sort of Domain before you have a Saga to act as a foundation is vanishingly rare.


"But you can do that," he said. "Your talent for techniques is monstrous. Nearly unmatched in anyone I've ever met. What most people need to struggle and scrape to do, you do as easy as breathing. Did you ever wonder why?"


"You're saying it's because of you?" I asked, almost annoyed he was taking credit for my natural talent. "That was the payment for my eighteen years of sealed power?"


"Oh you always had a bit of talent," he assured me. "I needed something to build off of. I think it's some kind of soul physique, but honestly I'm not well versed in those kinds of things. Regardless, it gave you the tools needed for this exact moment. When you condense your Chronicle, you can condense the library around it. You know that you can use it as a foundation for your pseudo Domains, like you've been doing with your mask. It'll work like that."


I stared at him, conflicted on what to think. "You know this doesn't fix things with us, right? If you're trying to say that the way you treated me my whole life was some sort of diversion so that I could grow enough for this…"


"Some of it," he admitted. "I won't pretend this has all been some grand plan and that I'm secretly a great father. I abandoned you. I felt it was the best way, but I still did it. This isn't an apology, it's payment for the years I took. Because the inheritance competition is coming, and you won't have a chance if you don't get stronger. Much stronger. This will help. Even the Old Man didn't condense his Library this early. His talent for techniques was never as good as it was for Skills. He was into the A-ranks when he finally perfected it."


"And you expect me to manage it now?" I demanded. "Is all this talent you gave me really enough to outdo the WISHMASTER? He's a GOD!"


He shrugged. "He wasn't back then. Just a man with a knack for Skill creation. I've been collecting information for years, finding every scrap of mention of the Great Book Heavenly Library. Wishes, deals, trading." He held up the book he'd been reading when I arrived. "And all of it is in here." He tossed it to me. "Whatever you decide, I can't help more than this. Chronicle condensation isn't something even I can really muck about with. I can only give you the tools."


I stared down at the book, the worn leather cover seeming almost familiar despite never having seen it before. "So that's it. You show up, pass me a book full of bullshit, and now you're what? Leaving again? And I can't even punch you this time."


He chuckled. "Maybe the next time we meet. I'm not even really here Shane. This was a dormant fragment of my soul that I inserted into the scroll through the power of the contract. Only a small one, mind you. Once this ends it'll disperse and return to me. I just felt I owed you an explanation. Talent and information, the terms of the contract I made with you as a baby, fulfilled at last."


I thought about all the things I'd been through. About all the close calls, about the ways my life had been warped and twisted by his influence. And then I thought about the way my techniques had saved me. Had formed the foundation of who I was now as an Ascendant. My forms, my domains, all of it had helped get me where I was. Meet my wife, protect my friends, survive my trials.


He hadn't been there for me the way he should've…but he'd been in a different way. It didn't fix things between us, but it helped. Made me feel less alone. And when I finally got the chance to punch him properly, I might not put as much of my back into it.


"Alright. How long do I have in this time out? Was this something you did or is natural?" I asked as I put the book under my arm.


"Bit of both," he said with a shrug. "Chronicle condensation can get a little weird. It's a flexible process because of the nature of Ascendants and how varied they can get. Pushing yours to form this space was my last little bit of outside help. I thought having an obvious void to use as your starting point might help. The time dilation was really just a happy accident. Should last as long as you need it, though once you leave it'll end, so make sure you're ready."


I paused for a minute, weighing my words, then finally said, "Thank you."


He didn't answer, just shrugged, vanishing along with his chair. Then it was just me, my own chair, and the book in my hand. Flipping it open, I quickly recognized my dad's spidery handwriting, densely packed into the pages. Page after page of random notes he'd gotten his hands on about the Great Book Heavenly Library. A thousand casual mentions and offhand remarks from people who had heard about it from a friend of a friend.


Sighing, I settled in to read. Once I finished the book I'd begging the process for myself. Deep down I was excited about how this might work, about what I could do with it. I didn't have my ancestor's talent with Skills, but with this, I could perfect my techniques, my forms, and all my subskills. Create a real foundation for my future Domain. My abstract goal of becoming the strongest god by only forming a three part Domain might actually be feasible. I got to work.

 

[Lone-sith]

I love this so much