Wish upon the Stars chapter 949

“That armor is badass,” Benny said enthusiastically as he studied my new suit. “I mean, obviously, but like…the craftsmanship is insane. In fact, it’s ALMOST as good as my new piece of gear. Well…pieces. I just finished my most recent project. Want to see it in action?” I’d called everyone together to tell them about Arcadia, but I had to admit, given how much time my best friend had spent on his newest project, I was excited to see what he could do.

Callie sighed. “Shane, I feel like you had something important to share,” she tried feebly. She knew it wouldn’t matter, but she always at least tried to keep me on task. 

And as in most cases, she failed. “Nah, it’ll keep. It’s not like we have to be anywhere in the next ten minutes. Come on Benny, lets go out to the training yard. My armor is sturdy enough to take anything you can throw at it, so you can give me a live demonstration.” Not to mention I was about five times as strong as him, so I wasn’t worried. 

Clearly he was confident in his new equipment, because he didn’t even bat an eye. “Hell yes, you’re going to love this.”

My wife didn’t look appeased, so I took out a couple pages of information I’d scribbled down about Arcadia and held it out to her. She squinted suspiciously but finally took it with a sigh, nodding for me to go off and have fun.

Everyone else filed in behind us as we left, eager to see Benny’s new gear. His ability had changed in ways we didn’t all understand, and he’d been working hard on the soul weapon he was creating. It had been built around the axe we had gotten from the siege back when we first arrived on the heirworld, and included infinity crystal and the gods knew what else.

When we arrived outside, Benny was practically bouncing with excitement. “This is going to be good. You ready Shane?”

Celine, who was among the close friends who had followed us, looked worried. “Ben, this might not be a good idea. I mean, his staff and armor are both B-ranked, right? I know your new item is strong but…”

“It’ll be fine,” I assured her. “We’re sparring. I’m not saying I’m not going to throw him a beating, but I wouldn’t actually hurt him.” I grinned tauntingly at my friend. “As for hurting me…well, I don’t see that happening. But hey, if you can surprise me maybe I’ll apologize. You seem pretty confident.”

As expected, the fire in his eyes blazed brighter. Benny wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to be coddled or babied. His new gear needed testing, and he wouldn’t have enjoyed the process if I didn’t talk a little shit about it.

Amusingly, I could feel anxiety from Callie, and my sister looked uncomfortable at the taunts. The two of them were familiar with our dynamic, but they hadn’t seen Benny ever get REALLY passionate about something before. It was sweet of them to worry, but unnecessary. “So, before we start, why don’t you introduce your new invention?”

“Inventions. Plural,” he corrected. He held up both hands. “The axe got split in two. I put one blade into each hand, and they’re infused with infinity crystal dust.” He straightened his hand into a flat blade and jerked it through the air. I heard a soft hiss as it split the air itself, and I could see the disturbance behind the attack. It looked surprisingly intimidating. “My phantom blades can ALSO be channeled through weapons. They’re soul items, so I can use the abilities within them a lot easier than I used to. Not to mention they can grow alongside me.”

I grinned at him. “Sounds like fun. How do they pair with that Dance of the Dracolich you created. You get any better at that?”

His eyes lit up with a manic energy. “Why don’t you come find out.” His hands flicked and a pair of swords appeared in them. He’d withdrawn them from his spatial ring, only…I blinked at him. “Wait, did you integrate your space ring?”

“Yup, left forearm,” he preened. “Along with the two axe blades I’m at seventeen of my twenty slots. I’ve mostly been upgrading the stuff I have to my current rank the last few months as best I can. Getting my hands on the souls is proving tough, but I’ve gotten pretty close. I was considering swapping everything out with new gear but honestly stuff like my triple multiplier boosts is too rare to get rid of, so it didn’t seem worth it when I still had a bunch of empty slots left. Now I’m down to three, but I can always remove something later if I need to.”

I nodded, but wasn’t too worried. Triple his stats for a few minutes was damned useful, but I was pretty much five times his total at this point. I was pretty sure triple his Might would be more than mine, but I was also aware that numbers weren’t everything. Between forms like Sammael and my Path I was more than used to taking on stronger opponents.

Behind him, a figure wavered into existence. A colossal bone dragon with eyes of burning green flame. I’d seen it before, but it had changed somehow. Rather than the same white as the rest of the bone, the empty wing skeletons were darker now. They had a sort of striated metallic look at the end, black along the length and then fading to metal. Like an axe head. The metallic talond at the end glimmered with an almost unnatural coruscation of colors, rainbow metal shimmering as the light struck them.

Benny had his pair of swords up and in front of him in a strange spread stance. One blade low and at an angle away from his body and the other high and at a diagonal across him for protection.

His feet started to slide, first forward, then back. Not like walking, but more like he was trying to build up a charge of static rubbing them on carpet. His body tilted…and then he vanished.

I whirled, my staff manifesting as I spun, and the ends licked out in succession, slapping aside his blades on the flat. His eyes widened, and he stumbled back. I pressed the attack, my staff blurring as I started flicking probing strikes at the openings in his form.

Dantalion activated. I could have done more, but I wanted this to be close to even at least. It wasn’t about winning. I could do that a lot of ways. I was stronger. It was about helping, showing Benny where he needed to improve. He’s integrated the new tech to improve his technique, but he hadn’t adapted the actual sword art yet. “Did you just teleport?” I asked him casually as Dantalion deconstructed his sword technique.

He chuckled through gritted teeth, vanishing again. My Danger Sense pinged and I reacted with a waltz, vanishing in a flash of black flames as I appeared behind him, attacking in return. “Nope,” he gritted out. “I cut the space. It’s one of my many new tricks. Like THIS!” There was a flash of dark metal, and the six spider legs built into his back shot out, attacking at multiple angles. They spread like wings, and the Dracolich power infused them, dyeing them the same colors as the wing tips.

Cursing, I waltzed again, avoiding the attacks, but my lips were peeled back in a grin. Then I blitzed forward, flashing through a series of waltzes to try to trip him up. His swords sang, somehow in perfect harmony with the spider legs, all operating as a whole under the influence of his Path. He wasn’t engaging the manifestation to attack directly, I didn’t think he could yet, but he was using it to create a sort of structure for this fight, and it was helping him operate multiple limbs at once.

More than just that, the limbs and blades were cutting into the air in a way that made it clear that I did NOT want to experience them head on. The swords flicked at my throat and leg, and my staff lashed out to deflect them, and I detected a surge of discomfort from the Ten Demons Tree when they landed. It wasn’t enough to do much real damage, but it DID cut some faint grooves in the surface, even if they faded almost immediately.

It was an impressive showing…but sadly it wasn’t enough. We kept up the fight for several minutes, but the stat boosters he have only worked for five minutes each. Once his Might dropped back down below mine, the coordination couldn’t offset the difference in power. I took his feet out from under him with a sweep and he hit the ground with a thud.

I dismissed my staff and offered a hand to help him up. “What the hell was that last thing? How did you affect my staff?”

It was a B-rank weapon, and while he hadn’t been able to do much to it, he had done SOMETHING. I wasn’t sure what rank those axe blades were, since the soul of the person used to make them had probably been higher than his actual rank and I didn’t know how that worked when crafting, but it couldn’t be more than C. It was impossible for Benny to use a B-rank weapon without a Chronicle.

He waggled a hand. “I didn’t exactly. I kind of cheated. Those slashes cut space, kind of, but it’s more like…shaped portals. It teleported a layer off the outside of your staff. It took a second for it to register as an attack, and then it bounced off the Impact. But there’s a bit of wiggle room with that kind of thing. It has to do with how you perceive threats. Now that you know it won’t work again. But it’s a good trick. I THINK I could cut into a C-ranker with that attack. It’s hard to do it though. It involves…well, it’s hard to describe. When I do that teleporting trick it eats space. Then I use it to form the portals. It’s a Dracolich thing.”

I shrugged. I was sure it made internal sense. Path bullshit was complicated and hard to track if you didn’t have access to the full story. Adding and tweaking internal consistency to align the effects with your motivations, personality, AND the way people saw you (because the stats that made up the Solid Path were formed from your mythology) made the whole thing a very personal and deeply complex manifestation of a person’s power and self.

Though I still didn’t know the exact details of how a Domain was formed, I was pretty sure it was based on that unique combination of factors. Benny’s sounded damned impressive. “Anyway,” my best friend grinned. “I just thought you seeing what I could do might tweak things in my favor on the next leg of the journey. I take it from the meeting request that we’re leaving soon. And based on how serious you sounded its going to be on an important mission.”

I laughed at that, but he didn’t join in. I stopped. “That- are you serious? You did all that to get a spot on the assault team? We’re moving up to the next zone, everyone is coming with. You didn’t need to-”

“Bullshit,” he said bluntly. “You have a lineup. A core group of frontliners. And I’m not one of them. Not anymore. You bench me every chance you get. Which I understand, I’m not the strongest fighter here. But this is a dangerous technique. I’ve spent months working on all of this, doing everything I can to get stronger so I can help.”

“And we’re going to need it,” Callie said as she emerged from the boarding house, holding up the papers. “I was going over the details in this, and I think we have a problem. There are very exacting standards to build the Void Ladder. I originally assumed they would use the fire cage somehow, but from what I can tell, this staircase would work just as well. Maybe better. Which means…”

I sighed. “Which means that the Void infiltrators will be scrambling to get in if they aren’t already there. Our trip up to Arcadia is going to be about ten times more dangerous. Great.” Because of course. It never rained but it poured.