Wish upon the Stars chapter 1132 (Patreon)

The next two weeks passed in a blur of activity. So much activity. Like…more activity than I had ever experienced before. Micromanaging fifty or so demons (only the ones strong enough to be useful need apply) for fourteen days was a feat of organization not even Piece of Mind could make easy. I had so many tasks to attend to, some of them repeating because I was taking all the lowest paying jobs.

I was averaging about six or seven hundred credits a day, with a few extra here and there for higher paying tasks. Cleaning gutters, hunting giant rats, getting rid of some kind of fungus infected wolf creature that had been trying to claim one of the teachers gardens as its territory, the list went on and on.

Combined with what I had, and the two days off I’d taken to keep my promise to Callie (counting today), I was sitting at a cool eight thousand credits, with only two more days of work or so until I could finally get my hands on that candle. There was only one problem.

“I’m dead,” I groaned, forehead plastered to the table. “Leave me, find a new leader. Tell him my tale of woe.”

Callie giggled. “Am I supposed to find a new husband, too?”

“Sorry, no,” I told her with a cheesy grin. “Til death do us part. You’re stuck with me. The rest of them are the only ones who have a way out.”

“It’s like prison,” Benny said brightly. “But stupider.”

I shot him a glare. “You’re stupider than prison,” I said childishly. “And you hair looks like an ocelot.”

“I…don’t know what that means,” he said slowly. “I can’t tell if I should be offended.”

“Shut up, I’m tired,” I snapped. “You have no idea what kind of strain I’ve been under. But I’m SO close.”

Sorwen chuckled at my pain. “You aren’t,” she informed me. “You’re there. I talked to Callie while you were passed out. I’m going to go in on the candle with you so you can get it immediately.”

I perked up. “Wait, seriously? You’re not screwing with me right now? I’m done?”

“Not quite,” my wife said with a wolfish grin. “There’s a catch. She’ll spot you for it…but you have to take your second day off this weekend. No training, no learning, no tasks. Just rest and relaxation and possibly spoiling your amazing wife if you’re feeling up to it.”

Rolling my eyes, I gave her an adoring smile. “Fine. I can take a break. I was going to be off today anyway, and taking off tomorrow to save two days of hard work is a good deal.” I raised an eyebrow at Sorwen. “What did she give YOU to agree to this, anyway? I know how hard it must have been to gather those credits.”

“Less than you’d think,” she snickered. “Since I wasn’t taking the lowest paying jobs. I could only do one or two a day, but I was netting more per task. Still, it WAS pretty tight. I barely made it in time. In exchange, your wife promised to help me out designing a commission for a weapon I’m having made.” 

That was interesting. “What does Callie know about designing weapons?”

“Literally nothing,” my wife said cheerfully. “But she happens to have a weapon on hand that is exactly the OPPOSITE of what she’s looking for so-”

“The Vault, got it,” I said in understanding. “Clever use of your Domain, hon.”

She puffed up proudly, before shifting her attention back to me. “Speaking of Domains, how is yours going? And how are your stats coming along. You’ve been stockpiling scrolls for a few weeks right?”

“Yeah, I’m at two hundred but I haven’t used them,” I shrugged. “I probably have another million or two points coming when I finally check them, but I’ve been swamped. As for my Domain though…here, I’ll just show you.”

Court of Gehenna:

1.Doom Sovereign- Tier 8

2.Valtek- Tier 2

3.Cooking- Tier 8

4.Inventing- Tier 2

5.Balam- Tier 3

6.Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art- Tier 4

7.Piano- Tier 1

8.Guitar- Tier 1

9.First Aid- Tier 1

10.Angelic Bond- Tier 8

11.Dust Construction- Tier 6

12. Stone Limb- Tier 7 

13.Moonlit Night- Tier 4

14.Consecration of Flame- Tier 7

15.Ripple Running- Tier 3

16.State of Grace- Tier 4

17.Steam Arrow- Tier 4

18.Afterburner- Tier 7

19.Pit of Despair/ Brad- Tier 8

20.Mountain Stance- Tier 7

21.Heart over Body- Tier 8

22.Mercy Kill- Tier 6

23.Double Trouble- Tier 7

24.Touch of Tears- Tier 5

25.Flurry of Blows- Tier 3

26.Heavy Hands- Tier 2

27.Marked for Death- Tier 4

28.False Fatality- Tier 3

29.Blood Curse- Tier 4

30.Creeping Darkness- Tier 2

31.Final Strike- Tier 7

32.Overlay- Tier 6

33.Song of the Soil- Tier 3

34.Rhythm of the Wild- Tier 2

35.Eye of Revelation- Tier 6

36.Danger Sense- Tier 6

37.Piece of Mind- Tier 6

38.Empty Spirit- Tier 6

39.Belial- Tier 8

40.Abomination Engine- Tier 7

41.Mephistopheles- Tier 8

42.Cosmic Collapse- Tier 6

43.Circle of Damnation- Tier 6

44.Mephisto's Waltz- Tier 6

45.Mornax- Tier 7

46.Zagan- Tier 7

47.Life Nova- Tier 8

48.Genesis Burst- Tier 6

49.Bael- Tier 8

50.Beelzebub- Tier 8

51.Agares- Tier 7

52.Dantalion- Tier 7

53.Sammael- Tier 8

54.Limbo- Tier 8

55.Gluttony- Tier 7

56.Wrath- Tier 7

57.Pride- Tier 7

58.Retribution- Tier 7

59.Murmur- Tier 7

60.Leviathan- Tier 7

61.Behemoth- Tier 7

62.Glory- Tier 7

63.Abaddon -Tier 8

64.Wisdom of Solomon- Tier 8

65.Promethean Fire Soul Body- Tier 6

66.Fate Sense- Tier 7

67.Scent of Truth- Tier 7

68.Damnatio Memoriae- Tier 6

69.Dark Reflection- Tier 6

70. Asmodeus- Tier 8

71. Astaroth- Tier 7

72. Azazel- Tier 8

The list was long and comprehensive, of course, as always. Callie, though, knew what it had looked like before. I’d gotten ten or fifteen demons up to tier eight now, and another ten or so up to tier seven. I’d even gotten a few of them to tier six who had been much lower. Overlay (aka Owen), was up two tiers to six, having officially reached the Master rank after half a month of training.

After we’d learned more about Mythcrafting and I had started considering potential ways to upgrade Mephistopheles without reincarnation, I’d realized that letting so many of my demons waste away at the same rank was NOT cost effective.

While I did let a few keep up their waiting, I had started pushing the mid range demons to accept tasks along with the higher rankers. Constant practice and use of their abilities had allowed them to start growing, bringing forth the true utility of my Domain for the first time since I’d unlocked it.

It was kind of surreal, honestly. That was what had drained me so much. While the Pillar offset the processing, it still needed to happen. Their growth was an invisible pressure on me, and the more I summoned them out the more they grew. When they were inside the Domain training it was one thing, but once they emerged, when they came back they brought all those experiences and all that growth with them.

Basically I was dumping huge amounts of new data into the Pillar every time the demons returned, and I was dispatching fifty plus per day. The higher ranks were less extreme, because they were just on the edge of tier eight and getting pushed over, but the earlier ones, paradoxically, despite having so much less to gain to rank up, were leveling quickly and the cumulative tax was wearing me down.

Which was part of the reason I’d agreed to the extra day off. The cost of my recent training was cumulative, and now that I didn’t have to keep it up, I was excited to just relax a bit.

“So,” I said slowly, glancing around. “Anyone seen Bethy? Did she just not come this time? I know after the first week we can take our downtime whenever, but she usually meets us here on our days off.”

Chelsea grinned wolfishly. “I talked to her this morning. She’s recovering. Apparently she decided to attempt the challenge for advanced C-rank. A hundred thousand C-rank automatons. She barely passed, but she’s been promoted. Got a fresh thousand points to play with. THere’s been a huge boom in attempts in the trait major, but no one else has managed it.”

I let out a low whistle. “Damn, that is impressive. I think I might be up to trying it for B-rank, but a failure would seriously derail my plans, and a thousand credits just isn’t worth the downtime. What does she get for pulling it off?”

“They tried to promote her to the B-rank city,” she laughed. “But she just told them no. She didn’t want to leave Dayna alone with her siblings.”

I grimaced. “Yeah, I don’t blame her. They’re really creepy. Why exactly are they even HERE? Like I know what Harrison said, but I absolutely do not believe those two are considered impressive enough to protect Bethy. Are they just Lark hedging his bets to make sure he gets his hands on the advancement thesis?”

I couldn’t remember if Harrison had mentioned what rank those two were supposed to be, but if he had assumed it was B-rank, he was wrong. They were both peak C just like Bethy, and there were probably less than a hundred people in the UNIVERSE I would be on against Bethy at the same rank. They weren’t actual guards, which meant they were here for something else, but other than killing the mood whenever they walked into a room I couldn’t fathom what.

“He’s hoping she can fix them,” Chelsea explained sadly. “Lark…he’s not a great parent. He knows that. Bethy has told me he’s admitted it to her more than once. That’s why she’s his favorite. She’s the one he didn’t manage to mess up too bad. Most of his kids are maladjusted psychos. Some of the older ones have grown out of that, but for the most part, Bethy is the most normal child Lark has.” She saw me literally flinch and grinned. “Yeah, that’s a terrifying thought, right?

“Anyway, she’s gotten a lot better since she started traveling with us,” she sounded proud and grateful all at the same time. “I know you might not be able to see it because you’re not around her as much, but she’s shed a lot of guilt and grief because of you. Lark noticed, and he’s hoping Tamsin and Will can see similar results.”

I blinked at her. “Then why didn’t he just ASK for that?”

“Because then he would owe us a FAVOR,” she said like it was obvious. “Instead he just made them our problem so we’d have to solve it ourselves and it wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Obviously.”

“This is why I hate politics,” I seethed. “So we just…what? Suppress their bloodlust like we tried to do for Bethy? Purify them with Zagan? What does he expect us to do?”

She shrugged. “If he knew that he would probably have done it himself. I guess we’re just supposed to do our best and see what happens. I’d say offer them a wish, but I doubt they’d use it for anything that benevolent.”

I glanced at Callie. “What are the chances we could convince your sister to kick the shit out of Lark a little bit. Not BAD, but just like…a black eye and a broken nose.” At her arch look, I just sighed. “Yeah, I know, bad idea. Well, I guess that’s a project to add to my list. But in two days. For now, I’m going to enjoy my downtime, and I think I’ll start by showing off my new LEGENDARY cooking skill. Now, where is the kitchen?”