Wish upon the Stars chapter 1192 (Patreon)

The inside of the Promethean Library was a unique sort of place. We landed on a platform floating in the center of the supernova, a wide, flat base of dense brown stone. When we touched down, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the environment, given where we were, but once I hopped out and looked around, I found myself absolutely stunned.

Under the sea of fire, I’d expected to be blinded by the glaring lights, but instead, the formation seemed to restrain the light to a manageable level. Within the swirling blue, silver sunbursts and explosions of gold flickered and danced, creating a twisting watercolor tempest of glorious dancing light. The visuals were stunning, but the intensity had been restrained to the point where it was only about as bright as a normal blue sky, and I found myself unable to look away from the sight.

“It’s beautiful,” Callie breathed in wonder as we held hands, staring up at the gentle inferno. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

My grandfather grunted. “It’s fine I guess,” he said sourly. “Rainbow’s always been a show off.”

“Yeah, what is the deal with that?” I asked wryly. “I wasn’t aware you were on bad terms with any of the other popes?”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing too serious. Rainbow is the third oldest of the disciples, and he always considered himself a bit of a big brother. Especially to Celia, he was very protective, and when we started dating, he made all kinds of trouble for me. Except he’s a pure researcher, and I’m a combat savant. So that didn’t work out too well for him.”

“A combat savant?” I asked with skepticism. “How so?”

Snorting, he shook his head. “I’m one of only five or six Demigods among the five factions. Don’t look at how that’s technically still a part of S-rank, the difference between a Demigod and a normal S-ranker is qualitative, not quantitative. Lark being able to challenge Unity as a Demigod was shocking, but as an S-ranker it would have been impossible. You need real talent to become a Demigod, or everyone would do it.”

El clicked her tongue. “Well…I mean, mostly it’s just a matter of understanding the mechanics, same as godhood.”

“Yeah, but most of us don’t,” my grandfather said bluntly. “We just did it through sheer talent.”

“Especially Lark,” I shuddered. “I’m not sure how he’s as strong as he is. Like I get the basic mechanism, but I’ve seen him do some really scary things. That can’t exactly be normal, even for a Demigod.”

“It isn’t,” Elonwy admitted. “But it’s not unheard of. Singularities do exist. Outliers who reach absurd levels of power for their rank.”

I nodded. “Like the Monstrosity?” I asked, referring to Dean Wallace Harper, the powerful Overgod who ran one of the twelve departments of the Frozen Moment Academy where we’d met.

“Like all the Deans,” she said bluntly. “The requirements to reach Overgod are stringent. Only true geniuses ever manage to attain that height. When you’re talking about Overgods, a certain level of brilliance is sort of implied. It’s like the height limits on one of the roller coasters Bethy took me on. You must be at least this tall to enter. Except that minimum required height is about ten feet tall, metaphorically speaking. Some of them are bigger, but they’re all at LEAST that tall.”

I snorted. “That does make sense. So you think Lark might manage to become an Overgod someday?”

“Like I said,” she responded flatly. “At least. That level of talent is the minimum requirement to reach the height of Overgod. You still need a whole bunch of lucky opportunities on top of that. I think assuming anyone is going to manage Overgod status is foolish. Even the gods you already have. They’re all talented, they had to be to reach their current stage, but while their achievement of managing to form Worldforce blindly is impressive, it also means their foundations are shaky. They’ve got a lot of work to do to build themselves up. More than they would have if they’d stayed S-rankers by quite a bit.”

That would need to be dealt with in time, too. Specifically, the fact that with Mythcrafting, we would be seeing more gods soon. Too many and we’d ascend the entire universe, and no one wanted that. However, we had a solid workaround already. Namely, the Void. Hanging Lands and the realms of the Void based gods gave us a solid template for managing that extra Impact.

I was pretty sure most of the six were in talks to create staging grounds in the Void with the help of our allies, using the war as an excuse to found new beachheads into the space for younger gods of their factions to be stationed at when they ascended. It not only took care of a potential issue with Impact management, it also prevented any potential insurrections by keeping the younger deities out of proximity, which was a win win.

Given how many S-rankers we had, I was better I’d be getting a call about that from the old man soon enough. Especially given the utility of my Peaceflame. I got the impression my current position at the warfront, as much as it was my own choice, was supported as much as it was to test my effectiveness against the Void spawn.

I shook off the intrusive thoughts. That had been happening more and more lately. My Perception and Focus had gone out of balance, and I really needed to get it fixed. I had quite a few scrolls to use still, so I knew where to put them. More importantly though, I was here specifically to find myself a new type of Phoenix template, and I should be able to find a Perception based flame to help balance things out.

Forcefully refocusing my attention on the task at hand, I pulled Callie after me toward the large brown stone building in the distance. While the sky was an aurora of shifting colors and lights, the Library itself was a lot more subdued, though no less impressive. A shocking amount of detail had been put into the building, with each stone lovingly smoothed and carved to depict images of heavenly fire, flame beasts, and rising suns. In all honesty, with the columns and the low pitched, gabled roof, it looked more like a temple than a library.

To my surprise, we weren’t going to be waiting long for an escort. When we approached, I found the same large, blocky red haired man from the screen waiting, beaming at my grandmother. “Celia,” he said happily as he stepped forward for a hug. “It’s been too long. And you brought your grandchildren, how lovely. I knew Shane was coming but Chelsea as well? I’m honored.” He turned to me and bowed slightly at the waist. “It is a pleasure to host the Wishmaster of this generation, and such an accomplished one at such a young age. A-rank before twenty five is certainly impressive, even Aiden didn’t manage.”

I cleared my throat, offering my hand. “I appreciate the praise, but I’m just a product of circumstance,” I said dryly. “Too much going on at once. I’m just reaping the whirlwind, so to speak.”

Callie opened her mouth, then froze. “I…I was going to say that isn’t what that phrase means, but it kind of is? It’s usually negative, but you have been sucked up into crazy consequences.” Of course, I could feel from the bond that she didn’t believe I was an innocent bystander for a second, and blamed me for our interesting lives (even if she didn’t begrudge me) as much as most of my friends did. She just also realized I was trying to avoid recursion making it WORSE when people associated me with crazy happenings and was helping out.

The big man laughed boisterously. “Humble too. What a rarity for an A-ranker. In any case, I’ve been fascinated to hear about your research, and I can’t wait to pick your brain about the various unique flames to which you have access. You’re truly at the forefront of our field in terms of practical application. I too considered cultivating the Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art, you know, but the requirements were simply too stringent.”

I knew what he meant. Nine Phoenix had been grinding away at his tier for months now and had only just caught up with the others. Without his hard work, not to mention the other demons to act as templates, I’d have had to put in about seventeen times as much work to make progress on the Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art.

Still, I was impressed at the depth of his knowledge. The old man had made it seem like that body tempering art was nearly extinct in the world. The fact that the Rainbow Pope had heard of it and considered pursuing it himself spoke to how thoroughly he’d invested in his passion.

“Now, I know we have several goals during this visit,” the Rainbow Pope said as he escorted us inside. “But I hope you won’t feel too rushed during your time here. While we’re certainly in an urgent state of being, this research will be critical for the war effort, so it is our solemn duty to provide the best possible environment for learning and experimentation, which means time for relaxation as much as study.”

“Translation: he wants to use you as a lab rat so he’s going to give you some cheese and a wheel to run on so you stay happy while you let him study you like a petri dish.” My grandfather said dryly.

The other pope sputtered in outrage, but despite making offended sounds, never actually contradicted him. After a moment and the realization that he couldn’t claim that truthfully, he cleared his throat and changed gears. “Yes, well, what’s a bit of research between friends. I’m sure Shane, may I call you Shane? You must call me Terrence. I’m sure Shane would be thrilled to contribute to my research and the common good of all mankind.”

“I don’t see how turning fire pretty colors does that,” my grandfather said bluntly. “I mean, I have my own flame, and it’s useful, hell, most of master’s students went in that direction, but your weird obsession with finding every possible variation of fire is pointless.”

“It is NOT pointless!” snapped Terrence wildly. “It is, in fact, the most essential direction of study, as you well know.”

My grandfather groaned. “This again? There is no “primal fire” from which all flames descend. That’s just normal fire. Cross referencing all the flames in creation isn’t going to help you develop a super flame, it’s just going to get you normal run of the mill flames.”

Elonwy looked up with interest. “You’re planning to reverse engineer commonalities across your samples to discover a primordial strain of flame?” she asked with interest. “That’s a brilliant conceptual model. Especially for an Ascendant, your belief in such a flame makes it much more feasible to discover it.”

She strode up to join Terrence, and the two of them started talking animatedly about his research. I grinned at my grandfather as he fell back to walk next to me. “You’re a little hard on him, aren’t you?” I asked quietly.

He just shrugged. “It’s good for him. He fights harder to defend his position when he’s challenged. We’ve been doing this a long time. You saw his reaction when I apologized. He’d be more upset if I DIDN’T give him a hard time. I’ll try to ease up a bit though. It’s mostly habit at this point.”

I just snorted, shaking my head as we headed inside. Soon enough, it would be time to begin the search for my next flame, but before that, I wanted to try to balance out my Focus and Perception a bit with all the scrolls I had on hand. So my next step would be to check my stats again. How fun.