Wish upon the Stars chapter 1184 (Patreon)

I woke up weirdly energized. My brain had been running nonstop since Callie told me the news, and I couldn’t help but feel…hopeful. Yes, the universe sucked and terrible things happened all the time, but we were getting stronger every day, and we had so many powerful relatives to provide a safe space for our child to grow up.

Hopping out of bed, I stocked up on my scrolls for the day, woke Callie (who was sleeping peacefully nearby) and then headed out to get her coffee and breakfast while she showered.

I sent a message to Elonwy before I left, asking her to come over and what she wanted to eat, and by the time I returned with breakfast, my friend had arrived and was chatting happily with a surprisingly bright eyed Callie.

“You’re back!” Callie said excitedly, rushing over to me. I opened my arms for a hug, but was disappointed when she dove sideways to snatch away the bag with the danishes.

“You see what I have to deal with?” I complained to Elonwy. “She’s the most important thing in the world to me and I’m, what? Third on the list? It goes loot, food, and then me. Or it used to. I feel like food is moving up the list.”

Callie rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly, my feelings for you are all twisted up with food, so you share second place. That’s what you get for making all of our dates five star meals when you were wooing me.” She leaned up to peck me on the cheek. “And thank you for getting extras of my favorite flavor.”

“Those are for me,” I said sourly. She pouted and I rolled my eyes. “I mean yes, extras. Of course.”

Elonwy giggled at that. “You two are honestly kind of adorable. Congratulations again on the baby. Or babies, if your sister was right about that. I assume you thought it over and are interested in the blessings from the Deans?”

“Overgod Sanctification DOES seem like the way to go,” I admitted. “Even with only nine of them available, Callie will pass the benefits on to the baby for each one, right? What exactly does that entail? You said it increases talent, but in what sense? Is it just a flat benefit for Mythcrafting that specific attribute?”

As someone who had personally experienced the benefits of enhanced talent from birth, I understood the basic concept, but I wasn’t sure exactly how a more specific version of that would manifest.

“Basically,” she shrugged. “By washing the body in Overgod Worldforce, you acclimate to the attribute. It makes it easier to perceive and shape. I think the underlying logic is that it attunes your will more deeply to the attribute. It’s kind of like the way recursion is weighted more heavily for higher ranked Ascendants. Except it's more specific to the types of attributes that compose those specific Worldforces.”

Which meant that my dad’s wish had essentially attuned me more deeply to all attributes of Mythology. I wasn’t sure how that worked, but it really underscored how unusual my ancestor’s bloodline ability and the things that came from it were. Even at this level, it consistently seemed to accomplish things it shouldn’t be able to.

The more I learned about it, the more suspicious it made me. How the hell had he managed to create this ability? What kind of foundation would you need? I knew he was a genius, but out of all the absurd meta abilities I’d seen since becoming an Ascendant, the Wish power seemed…unique. Not to mention how unusual it was for gods to ascend without understanding Mythcrafting. Black Sorrow and the Revenant had used a Domain seed from other gods, but my Ancestor had just freehanded his Worldforce and still ended up with…this.

I made a point to ask him about it when I got back. I wanted to know where our power came from, where he’d gotten the idea for it and how he’d managed it. Some of it was bound to be the Great Book Heavenly Library, but even that was strangely unique as far as I could tell.

There was a thwack and I felt a ping off my mask. I looked down to find my wife glaring at me. “Stop pondering the mysteries of the universe while we have company. Elonwy’s time is valuable, and we asked her to come here to talk about how to spend out contribution points, remember?”

I winced. “Ah, right, sorry, hon.” I turned to Elonwy, giving her an apologetic nod. “Didn’t mean to space out on you, El. Sanctification is fine, but that’s only nine hundred. We still have six more. What about the other stuff you mentioned? I want to save at least five hundred for elixir costs for everyone, that leaves a hundred left. What about soul enhancement? You mentioned that, and I can’t imagine a more useful thing for our baby to have.”

My grandmother had been naturally born with a Mirror Soul Body, and the sheer convenience of it for her rise to S-rank had been staggering. If my kid could have that, I wanted it.

Sadly, Elonwy shook her head. “Soul enhancement needs to be done once the mother is further along. The sanctification uses the mother’s body as a medium and passes down through the bloodline, but soul enhancement needs to be applied TO the baby. But honestly, given the utility of the sanctification, I suggest you use those hundred for yourselves. Force multipliers are great, but you still need to completely bind your chronicles before A-rank.”

I blinked. I had actually forgotten that was a requirement. I was a quarter of the way there, but I did still have a ways to go. I’d heard they had materials to help with the binding here, but I hadn’t looked into it. It just seemed…distant.

“What kind of options do we have for that?” I asked with interest. “I assume you wouldn’t have brought it up without some method to solve the problem.”

She grinned. “Of course. In fact, our major in particular has a method to help with binding pages. All of the majors can supply you with items that can help condense more stable pages, sort of scaffolding that can be added to your chronicle, but we do it a little different. There’s a place here where you can step out of the timestream and view your past achievements. Time becomes malleable and you can bind pages with events that have long since passed like they were occurring in real time.”

I blinked in shock. “That’s a THING?” I asked in shock. “How come I haven’t heard about it?”

“Because it’s absurdly expensive,” she said bluntly. “Most of the people who need it can’t afford to use it, so it doesn’t get brought up much. The Strange Aeons Ship is one of the Dean’s personal projects from years ago. I only know about it at all because I was given full exchange access and went poking around for you.”

That sounded perfect, honestly. Callie had a lot of time to work on hers because she was nowhere near done with B-rank. Even with the massive boost from the credit for taking out the Void Child, she was a ways off. I, on the other hand, was VERY close to peak B-rank, and I really didn’t want to get stuck there once I hit it. I remembered Zeke spending quite a while at the peak of B before he took the leap during his fight with the Duke way back when.

I supposed I could do what he’d done and try to frontload some feats, but that was reckless and dangerous and only really worked for taking that one last step. This sounded like a safer, more measured way to make it to the next rank in a timely manner. “So how does it work?” I asked slowly. “Do I pay per page?”

“Nah,” she said casually. “By the hour. How much you can get done is up to you. It’s a million points per hour on the ship. Though that’s not really indicative of much, considering how it works. How the time passes tends to vary.”

I winced. That was ten points per hour. No wonder no one used that thing. The binding of a chronicle needed to be done in real time, for the most part. Once you hit A-rank you could author your pages, and that could be done later (obviously). So an A-ranker had no need of the ship, and I doubted ninety percent of B-rankers ever came close to accruing a million points, much less SEVERAL million.

Turning to Callie, I frowned. “I don’t want to burn all those points just for me,” I said uneasily. “You earned some of them too. The stuff we’re spending on the others is one thing, and the stuff we’re spending on the baby. But you could use this ship as much as I could. You have some amazing feats you could use for binding.”

Honestly, thinking back I felt stupid for not binding a few pages when we saved the academy, but in my defense, between almost dying and finding out I was going to be a father I had been a little distracted.

Callie looked unhappy at the suggestion. “I don’t need it,” she said bluntly. “Between my dad and my sister I’ll have plenty of opportunities to bind pages once we’re back. But you’re almost to the peak of B-rank. If you don’t find a way to get those pages bound and fast you’ll be stuck there. Hell, that was part of the reason we even came to this place, even if we both got way too distracted by all the nonsense happening here.”

I sighed. That was true. Part of the selling point for this academy had been help binding pages. I frowned for a bit, then my face smoothed out. “Alright, compromise. I’ll take ninety of those hundred and do nine hours on the ship. You take ten AND whatever we have left over after we get everyone’s elixirs. I’m sure that they’re not going to take up all of that five hundred, I just wanted to make sure to allocate enough just in case.”

Honestly, the A-rank elixirs would probably be the majority of the cost. My future supply, Callie’s, and our few A-rank friends. All the B-rankers would probably only cost a couple points each, though we had brought quite a few with us.

“What would I even do with them?” she said in exasperation, despite knowing that I had an answer ready.

I rolled my eyes. “You know you always need new gear. A few custom A-rank items from the crafting majors could be a gamechanger for you. Or maybe there won’t be enough leftover for that. Who can say? Anyway, I’m not doing it unless you agree, and you can’t make me. I’ll just wait and grind through the pages the slow way. We can break through to A-rank together. It’s no fun being ahead of you anyway.”

She glared at me in exasperated fondness. “You are the single most stubborn human being I’ve ever met.”

“Well, I did get chosen to be the champion of a torture goddess,” I said reasonably. “Probably not something you manage if you can’t stick to your guns. But that’s not an answer, yes or no, love, do you agree?”

“Fine,” she huffed out around a laugh. “I’ll take whatever points are left over from the elixirs and the ten you aren’t spending and invest them in my Vault. Happy?”

I beamed at her, leaning down for a quick kiss as my mask peeled away. “Ecstatic,” I said in a not at all smug tone. Then I turned back to Elonwy. “Alright, that’s our selection. Nine sanctifications, nine hours on the ship for me, and whatever is left after we get everyone elixirs  goes to Callie for artifacts. That work for you?”

She laughed. “I’m sure we can make that work. Now, let’s talk about those elixirs, because I think you’ve all got some choices to make.”