Wish upon the Stars chapter 1123 (Patreon)

My mind was whirling with all the new information as I let myself into my residence. Without much preamble, I flopped into my bed and descended into Gehenna to consult with my court. I might not be able to work through all the angles all at once, but I wasn’t alone. This information concerned everything that had happened to me since I had started my journey, and I wasn’t planning to ignore the implications of everything I’d learned.

Sure enough, Oz, Dom, and Sam, my three ministers, were waiting for me on arrival. Alongside them was another figure, and it took me a moment to realize exactly why it was, because I was so unfamiliar with the features after all this time.

“Overlay,” I said after a moment of searching the face. “Yeah, you should probably be involved in this chat.”

Overlay looked…like me. Honestly, most of my demons KIND of looked like me. Some were bigger, or mutated, or older, because they had been changed by living full lives of their own, but they still looked a little like I did in some way. Overlay though, Overlay looked like ME. Like the me I used to be. 

He was a little shorter than me, not having traded for the extra inch of height, and his features were softer. He didn’t have the same air of command or combat experience either. He just looked like an eighteen year old kid who grew up in an apartment in Valen.

It was honestly kind of jarring. Looking at him like this I almost couldn’t see myself. I hadn’t thought I’d changed that much in just a few years. Sure I was stronger, and more ruthless, and maybe more confident. But we looked more like siblings or cousins than the same person. Comparing the two of us was like comparing night and day, and I wasn’t sure which was which.

Of course, he was more than I had been. Overlay (Owen for short, it always felt impersonal referring to them by skill names) was a tier four demon. He hadn’t grown much, which went to show how little he’d been training. Gehenna made advancement easy at low levels, and the only demons that remained stuck there were the ones who were angling for reincarnation to become something more effective.

“Walk with me,” I told the others as I headed into the chamber behind my throne room. “Now, I assume you all heard all that? I’m not sure exactly how much you perceive from in here, but I think Azazel has access to my senses unless I block it.”

Oz nodded. “I do. And a general sense of when it’s appropriate to access them. This meeting was portentous, so yes, I was listening. I filled the others in as well.”

Sam hummed with interest. “Yeah, it was definitely fascinating to listen to, but I’m not sure how applicable it is to me specifically. You DID design me based on a powerful racial trait. Speaking of, how does that work? She said skills are just like…a lesser tier of power, right? What about the old men, and other bloodlines?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Oz said cautiously. “I believe this is a matter of pure instinct. Powerful skillcrafters like the ancestor have an innate understanding of the mythology of their skills. I believe, and this is pure speculation, that the powerful bloodline meta skills of people like the Wishmaster serve as a sort of proto Worldforce. An accidental template that steers the power into the form that the ascendant wishes. There are other complications to the theory, such as Domain seeds, but all in all it does hold water.”

“Assuming the old man and the other gods aren’t keeping their mouths shut about Mythcrafting to prevent the proliferation of more gods, which is a possibility, there has to be some way to brute force the creation of your own Worldforce.” I mused. “Not that I have any interest in DOING that. Now that we’re here, we can learn to Mythcraft properly. Considering that Mythcrafting is how you author pages from your Chronicle, I have a feeling we want to make sure each of them is as well constructed as possible. Speaking of which, Oz, did you finish that project I set you?”

My first minister nodded excitedly. “Thirty miles,” he said confidently. “Almost exactly. Sadly we weren’t able to measure before the rank ups. My best estimate is that entry to B-rank pushed you to twenty, and the other ten were from a combination of cosmic phoenix strengthening and the rank up from the Pillar of Goetia. I don’t have many other Domains to compare it to, so my math is somewhat half baked, but I would probably assume based on Callie’s Vault that your Domain is unusually large for your rank.”

“I figured,” I said with a wry smile. “And denser too. Having an A-ranked pillar supporting it, not to mention whatever benefits the Myriad Demons Manual gives now, makes it safer to use my Domain in battle, and that’ll only continue to be the case as it expands. Were you able to get any definitive information on the benefits of that?”

“Nothing specific,” he grimaced. “Best I can tell it aids the creation of a Domain Seed somehow. My only source for the knowledge would be Dantalion, and only what he managed to pick up passively during our travels. He’s been working with Pride to construct and ACTUAL library in the castle, though I’ve been asked to invite you down to peruse the royal collection. Apparently all seventy two of us are still linked to the library, and each of us still has a book.”

I blinked in surprise. “I…kind of assumed the library was gone after the Domain condensed,” I said blankly. “That could be incredibly useful though. The old man’s library was a skill crafting technique, but mine was aimed more at Mythcrafting, even if I didn’t know it. I bet I can learn more about attributes by studying the books, and I’m sure the Mythcrafting techniques I’m going to learn will help me improve the foundations of the various demons manually.”

One of the first things I’d learned about my Domain was that the demons could still be altered just as easily as they could grow. I didn’t do that, because the staff’s simulation made stronger and more lifelike constructs. Knowing what I did about Mythcrafting, that was probably to do with the well worn intent behind them and the firm foundation of the story, but even if that was true, the staff and I were connected. Learning Mythcrafting would help optimize ITS abilities as well as my own. 

That was a matter for another time, though. Once I’d actually LEARNED some Mythcrafting. Speaking of, I turned to Doom Sovereign. “What are the chances we can get a complete list of all the attributes I have access to?”

Dom, ever the taciturn member of my council, just shrugged. “Not great. There’s a lot we don’t understand. So far the only real confirmation we have is time, and it’s only really our assumption it comes from Overlay. We have a few strong guesses, like Destruction for Mephistopheles, and we know at least a couple for sure, like Purification from your grandfather. But all in all, there are seventy two of us, and not all of us were even formed exclusively from your own skills. You mixed in a bunch of stored techniques during creation.”

I sighed deeply. “Yeah, I was afraid you were gonna say that. It’s fine, this is a Mythcrafting school, there almost HAS to be some kind of identification method for attributes. We know I have Space and Life because of the major invites at least. Maybe more if you need more than a single attribute to be invited. Which I have to assume you do, because time can’t be THAT rare.”

“Speaking of,” I turned to look at Owen. “Are you sure you want to be involved in this? There are other options. Limbo could take your place, I’m almost positive. I figured it was fair to give you first shot at being my go to demon for this course, given you’ve been stuck at tier four and clearly want an upgrade. Plus I like the symmetry. But you don’t HAVE to do anything. This is entirely up to you.”

Most of the people here were working with a totally different system than I was. They all had abilities and skills with time attributes, and were going to be using that to make techniques. For me, the better call was to incarnate one of my demons with time attributes and treat them like a form, learning to manipulate time more directly and maybe even baking that into the demon as I went. It had advantages and disadvantages, but I suspected it would allow me to wield my time attribute with less training.

Owen, for his part, didn’t even flinch. His eyes locked with mine, and I saw a stubborn set to his jaw that I recognized from the mirror AND from seeing it on my mother and sister. “I want to be stronger,” he said firmly. “I want to be more. You don’t need me, not the way I am. Haven’t for a long time. But now I can DO something. Be important. Be honest, do you really think I’ll ever achieve godhood at this rate?”

I thought it through. He was right. Theoretically, all my demons could be gods, and they could grow passively so they would mostly get there eventually…but realistically, tiers became exponentially harder to get through as you went up. It had taken me months to push my top demons to tier eight. And that was with direct intervention. That was why so many of the lesser demons were keeping their ranks low in hopes of reincarnating. They could all be gods eventually…but eventually was longer for some than others.

“No,” I admitted. “Not anytime soon. Even if you started training as hard as you could, you’d hit a wall at rank seven or so. The Pillar only has so much processing power, even at A-rank, and it gets prioritized by utility. The demons that I work with the most need that processing power to keep up with the demands I put on them.”

“I know,” he shrugged. “That’s why me and the others have been waiting. We all want to find a purpose, something unique and powerful that will make us necessary. Will push us to grow. This is mine, I can feel it. So, how does this work? You just…reincarnate me?”

I shook my head. “Nah. No catalyst. I need to learn some Mythcrafting, and then we can consult your book in the library. We’ll take it slow. You don’t have to have a qualitative upgrade like Brad or the Nine Phoenix Art. My talent in Mythcrafting is immense. It’s the deal my dad made with me in exchange for eighteen years of my power. He didn’t even know what he was doing, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste that kind of ability.

“I have faith that a gradual iteration process with intent and knowledge will eventually push you to heights well past where a freak accident or a powerful material could get you,” I assured him as his shoulders drooped. “Mythcrafting is going to be integral to my progress to godhood, and you and I are gonna go on that journey together, ok?”

I held out a hand, and I saw the look of determination kindle in his eye as he reached out to shake. It was hard not to admire the kid, and then it was hard not to wonder if that was egotistical because he was kind of me, but I decided I’d never been shy about my ego anyway. “Alright,” I said with a laugh. “Now, I need to head out and check in with Callie, I want to hear all about her trial.” I was pretty sure I knew what major she had picked, at least.