Wish upon the Stars chapter 1139 (Patreon)

Sparring with my wife was always a lot of fun. We’d been together for years now, and we knew each other in a way I didn’t think would be possible without our bond. My combat instincts, my thought processes, my moods, she knew everything about me and vice versa. Which meant that despite being a rank weaker, she was able to find and exploit weaknesses in my combat style that might be impossible for anyone else.

Which was why I was only playing defense this time. I knew Callie well enough to know she’d be concerned about hurting me. Her blades were both B-rank themselves, and with her Adherent fire playing with space, she had a decent shot at doing damage. The best possible option had been making myself literally invulnerable to her attack so she could really cut loose.

Taking up a firm stance, I dropped my knees a bit, lowering my center of gravity and planting my staff behind me to increase my stability.

Callie grinned at me, Oblique and Gossamer drawn and ready for the battle. I honestly wasn’t sure about sparring inside her Domain, but considering all the other nonsense I did in Domains, it was hardly the most absurd use of time I could think of. “You ready?” I asked her with a grin. “This isn’t going to be easy. I went all out on defense so you didn’t have to hold back, but you won’t be able to do any damage when I’m like this. Might be a bit discouraging.”

She rolled her eyes, then her shoulders, loosening up her arms as she swept her blades in a figure eight. “You talk too much,” she laughed, teeth bared as she stepped forward, her blades flicking out.

Adherent flame blazed up inside Gossamer, even as Oblique filled with the black flames of Heretic Fire. I watched carefully as she stepped forward and…vanished. A blaze of black fire consumed her, and for a moment I thought it was something similar to my Waltz. I quickly realized though that she hadn’t exactly teleported, she’d more folded the space. Condensation, as her teacher had called it.

With my current stats, I was more than up to the task of matching her speed, but with a three times modifier on her Might, Callie’s physical ability was actually higher than my Perception. Combined with her spatial movement, she’d actually managed to appear in my blind spot, and I only noticed her attack as it came within a hairs breadth from my throat. I ducked my chin, letting the attack clang off my mask, my staff coming around to parry Oblique as Gossamer rebounded from my face.

Callie vanished in a blur, another flicker of black flame. Apparently the Heretic Fire was more suited to condensation, whereas I already knew her Adherent Fire could tear space easily. Callie seemed to notice my slip earlier with the blind spot, and I saw her back off, eyes narrowing as she studied me. I watched, waiting patiently, and she vanished again. When she appeared again, her blades lashed out in a dizzying storm of strikes. I deflected them easily, but the few clangs off my armor and mask made it clear I’d underestimated her.

She was using her spatial condensation to create some kind of weird multi attack that allowed her blade to take multiple paths simultaneously. It was an unfinished technique, and clearly a spur of the moment idea. Only one in five of the visible attacks was actually a real blow, but still, it showed an absurd amount of adaptability. Sadly it wasn’t enough, and my stats won out. My Might was just too damned high when I was able to see her coming. Lower Perception or not, I currently had more than two and a half times as much Might as Callie had POINTS. It wasn’t a gap she could close.

I eased up as I realized I was getting too into the battle and ignoring my defense only premise. Callie, luckily, was just as excited as I was, and just as uncaring about holding back. She flicked out Gossamer, blue flames rolling, and I blinked in shock as I felt the world shift around me, inverting as I fell out of the sky from about a hundred feet up.

Callie appeared behind me again, but her advantage was negated by the spinning of the room, and I calmly deflected her attacks as I reoriented midair, landing in a crouch with a low boom. The room warped again, and suddenly, I was inside a storm of change. Appearing across the Vault, manifesting in the air, on the ground, and even halfway up the walls, Callie appeared from fire each time to attack, hammering at my weakest points as she became more and more skilled at moving me.

“Stop,” I finally called, holding up a hand. She did, and I cracked my neck and looked her over. She looked tired, but not “moved a B-ranker with A-rank defense” tired. “What the hell was that? How were you able to teleport me, my Impact is way higher than yours. You shouldn’t be capable of moving me an inch.”

She grinned at me. “I know,” she said proudly. “That’s why I didn’t. I couldn’t move you at all. So I moved the space around you. I used Tearing to rip a hole from your location to another and let you fall through it. Impact can’t protect you from the absence of space.”

I blinked. “That…holy shit I didn’t even consider that. That makes perfect sense.” It reminded me of the void cloaking that Anna had shown us back during our army training. Using space to seal off Perception by literally removing the source to another spatial dimension. Except this was an attack that allowed her to bypass even my footing.

In fact, I was lucky I was so much stronger than she was, because the teleport had cut my connection with the ground, and without my wings out, that effectively severed my defensive form. Luckily I was still in the Seal and my mask, not to mention all the Impact I had on her, so I was able to make up the difference, but taking a closer look, I did find a few small knicks on exposed parts of my body with blood smeared over them, even if my regeneration had long since closed the minor injuries.

Still, it made me smile. “That was fantastic,” I said enthusiastically. “With those crazy weapons of yours and your new skills, you could probably kill a B-ranker. The question is, will that be enough to get through the advanced student trial? A hundred thousand enemies is nothing to sneeze at. Even if you have the raw power, you might not be able to keep it going for long enough.”

She snorted. “Did you forget where we are? My manifestations inside the Domain are a bit limited, but if we were outside, I could manifest both any item in here AND its exact opposite. And it barely takes any energy. I’ll drown those robots in weapons. Here, come take a look at my collection. I’ve been working hard to fill it out every chance I get. The Asura have been contributing quite a bit of manpower to it, actually. Doing jobs for credits and to earn me weapons directly.”

I laughed at that, because I’d kind of forgotten that the Asura served Atlas, and that made her basically their princess. She proudly dragged me over to one wall of the vault, where I could see a huge collection of hanging weapons of various designs. Swords, maces, axes, spears, arrows, flails, and even some farming tools all hung carefully from the walls of the Vault, placed gently on subtle brackets to show them off in the most favorable light.

“So how many of these are…y’know, useful?” I asked her as I scanned them slowly. “Because I can tell they’re all C-rank items, but I can’t tell what they do, and with this kind of quantity, I’m somehow doubting they’re all super dangerous elite weaponry.”

She shrugged. “Depends what you mean. Part of the reason for getting them was to test the inversion effects of the vault. Like that hammer over there has a minor repair enchantment on it. But the inverted version has a minor DESTRUCTION enchantment on it, which is a lot more useful to me. Some of them are functionally worthless in their base state. Like that spear is cursed to inflict a fear effect on the wielder. But when I invert it, it actually grants courage when used, which is pretty great. A lot of that stuff is cursed, actually. Cursed items are dirt cheap and they work perfectly with the vault.”

I blinked. I hadn’t seen a cursed item in ages. I remembered finding some on Callus, and Zeke had been excited to explore the curses, to the point of trading me for one that he said was a little bit odd. I hadn’t really bothered looking into them again since then because…well, curses were bad. My gear was always custom made, and I wasn’t a loot goblin like my wife, so I mostly didn’t pay attention to items we found when we were out and about.

But now that I thought about it, curses were exactly the kind of thing Callie could make use of now. “You don’t get affected by the curses anyway?” I asked curiously. “Having them in here?”

She shook her head. “Nope. This is the vault. Vaults are for collecting and isolating. Part of the nature of my Domain is keeping negative effects off of me. Still, even with the Asura helping, I’m bumping up against the limits of what I can do within the time I have left, especially given my need to train. I think this ought to be enough to deal with the advanced trial, but I want to polish my skills a bit more before I made the attempt. I’m also considering waiting to take it until after mid terms. I have to look into the benefits at the different ranks. If advanced will get me a higher score I’ll hurry my attempt.”

“Good point,” I nodded. “I get you there. I feel like it should help. I really want to try it out myself, but it’s not even close to time yet. The B-rank trial is a lot harder to get through, especially since I’m only a quarter of the way in.”

I frowned at myself. I had been repeating that a lot lately. In my head, out loud, I kept making that same excuse. Honestly it was starting to grate. I knew I wouldn’t die in the attempt, was it really such a wise move to avoid it. Given how much stronger my demons had gotten, and how much stronger I’d gotten myself, I could probably do a lot better.

Of course, I still needed to train. I made a promise to myself. Once I finished rebuilding my three time demons, I would give it a try. I wanted to find out what I was capable of BEFORE learning the skills I was sure would propel me to the peak of my rank in terms of combat power.

Callie, feeling my decision through the bond, beamed at me. “Seems like I’m not the only one who’s getting all fired up.” She winked, letting the black Heretic flame blaze up for a second on her sword as she said it.

Rolling my eyes, I scoffed fondly. “That was a bad pun and you should feel bad for making it. Now, why don’t you show me where you keep the food in this place. I know you wouldn’t have a vault with no ingredients. I want to see if I can cook for you inside your Domain.” Given my experiments with cooking in my own Domain I was betting I could. She lit up like a sunrise, grabbing my hand and dragging me deeper into the vault and I laughed. Guess she was hungry.