Wish upon the Stars chapter 863

There were a lot of people surrounding us. Our group was a hundred and fifty people, and they had us outnumbered two or three to one, at least. I grimaced. Someone had sold us out. But the weird thing was, I didn’t FEEL any danger. Even now, my Danger Sense wasn’t going off. I could see the threat, but I didn’t feel threatened.

Of course, I wasn’t stupid enough to assume we were safe. Maybe they had a way to block my danger sense, but at the very least I felt a bit less panicked than I normally would have. Trust, but verify, as they say.

“Who are you?” I asked the man with the candle. “And why are you waiting here for us? Skartaris sent for us, we’re supposed to clean a nest of Crang Beetles out of the sewers. If those things get loose, he’s going to be pissed.” I decided the easiest thing to do here was to lie my ass off. They probably wouldn’t buy it, but it didn’t hurt to try.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “What exactly is a Crang Beetle?”

I huffed in annoyance. “Gods,” I glanced at Callie. “This guy, works in the palace and doesn’t know what a Crang Beetle is. Can you imagine anyone being more oblivious. Crang Beetles are a tier three invasive species, Mr. Silver Spoon. They’re one of the biggest worries us mere mortals have in these tunnels, and you have a rank six infestation. There’s a nesting mother down here, and we’ll all be ankle deep in the bastards by lunch if we don’t kill it.”

He stared at me, lips twitching a bit. “You know, I think I’ve heard of Crang Beetles.” I blinked. He definitely hadn’t, I’d made them up five seconds ago. He glanced around at the others. “I think it’s clear these people are here to take care of a pest problem. We’ve obviously come to the wrong place.”

The big guy next to him, a bearded man with a shaved head, shot him a confused look. “I…what? Boss, that guy is obviously lying. None of us have heard of these things, and there’s no way Skartaris would hire a hundred and fifty hardened soldiers to kill bugs in our basement and not tell us.”

“Oh, so he has to tell you everything he does?” The boss asked archly. “Because last I heard, he was in charge. These people are clearly here in force because the infestation is a real danger. We need to let them through. In fact, I bet they’re already recognized by the wards. Not only should we not kill them, if we try it would probably backfire.”

The man looked confused. Then his eyes widened. “Crell!” He roared. “What are you doing?”

Crell Preost, the Master of Ceremonies, the Legendary Skill user who could disarm people’s abilities by talking them out of thinking they would work, just smiled apologetically at him. “Sorry Baldwin. Nothing personal, you understand. You’re part of the problem, and I’m in the solution business.”

He flicked his wrist and the man choked, clutching his throat to try to stem the flood of blood from the wound that appeared across his neck as Crell snapped the straight razor that had appeared in his hand closed.

As he spoke, roughly half of the enemy soldiers turned and laid into their companions, tearing into them with weapons, abilities, and in a few cases, bare hands.

Within moments, half of the enemies, at least a dozen of them C-rankers, lay dead. The other half had taken up a position behind Crell, standing at attention. Crell smiled winningly, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a familiar stone, tossing it into the air and then catching it. “Like I said,” he chuckled. “You’re here to help with the pest problem, right?”

I stared at the stone. “You’re THE boss. The Tower Master. The one who made the cloaks.”

“Oh good,” he chirped. “You aren’t stupid. That’ll make things so much easier. I was afraid you might be a total blockhead. I think it was that wooden expression that convinced me.”

Serah, standing next to my sister, her face as impassive as ever, had been just as floored by that ridiculous comment as the rest of us. She had also been extremely amused. The taciturn angel snorted, and in a complete reversal of everything I’d seen from her up to this point, dissolved into GIGGLES.

We all stared at her, and she snorted a few more times, forcing her face back into its bland expression. “Sorry,” she said flatly. “That was funny.”

I rolled my eyes, then turned back to Crell. “Ok, well, I don’t suppose you have ANOTHER team of powerful turncoats? Because an extra ten C-rankers and….what, a hundred D-rankers, will definitely come in handy, but it’ll be kind of moot if an actual team of enemies intercepts our second group.”

I wasn’t relaxing my guard. The lack of Danger Sense made me lean toward trust, but it was too soon to tell. I’d also noticed he hadn’t actually CONFIRMED my statement about him being the boss. He’d just sort of avoided the subject. Maybe that was a coincidence, or maybe it wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to be letting down my defenses until I knew for sure. I had Mornax and Sammael active, and Abomination Engine running alongside Gluttony, just in case.

Callie, meanwhile, had drawn a pair of daggers and coated them with her blue flame. They hung relaxed but ready at her sides. “Afraid not,” he said with a shrug. “Sadly we’ll need to invite them to our little party personally. And we’d better hurry up. Like you said, if they get taken out before we meet back up things will get much harder. I assume your exit strategy can accommodate my friends here?” He nodded to the ten new C-rankers.

“Of course,” I reassured him. “It’ll need to wait until we’re at the exit. Can’t be wasting any emergency measures in case we need them. I’m sure we can cobble together ten from everyone’s stock though. None of my group have used theirs yet.”

He nodded genially. “Fair enough. Shall we get going then? Time is the fire in which we burn, and all that. Chop chop, off we pop.”

I stared at him tightly. Crell was FAR too casual about all this. The way he just lazily killed the guy he’d been talking to a second ago. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t a premonition or anything, he just rubbed me the wrong way. But sadly, sometimes you had to work with people you didn’t like. He was here to help, and our chances of surviving without him were much slimmer. So I followed behind him, making sure to put myself between my friends and the tower master, just in case.

It might not have accomplished much, but it made me feel better. I would have some warning, most likely, if he turned on us, and between Mornax and my armor, I was the tankiest member of our little group, even including the C-rankers.

But my Danger Sense remained mute. I very carefully avoided bringing it up or discussing it with him at all. His power was based on persuasion, so as long as I didn’t engage with him on the subject it SHOULD be fine, but I triggered Dantalion as we walked, just in case. I refused to be caught off guard in such a dangerous situation.

More than that, even once we got OUT things wouldn’t be safe. This whole thing was a trap. For WHO I was still unclear on. I didn’t believe my great-grandmother would let her daughter show up here if she genuinely expected anything bad to happen. She was pretty casual about life and death, but not when it came to my grandmother.

But still, SOMETHING was going to happen. I wasn’t going to assume she’d foreseen all of this, but who the hell knew. Enshrining Darkness seemed to have some connection to the Abyss. Maybe she’d set all this up to trigger the void break, who knew with her?

Whatever was going on, I was assuming that it would be dangerous and crazy, since that was kind of her MO. Which meant the real risk wasn’t the push to get out, but what happened AFTER we got out. The vanished gods knew we were here anyway, and we were about to steal a bunch of their best. We were jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. 

I forced my mind off of that topic. It didn’t matter. There was nothing we could do. The plans of gods were far out of my reach, frustrating as that was. I could only take it one step at a time.

Crell led us through the halls like he was watching live camera feeds. Twists and turns helped us avoid patrols that I only knew were there because of Dantalion, sharp turns led us into hidden passages that were invisible to even our Perception, ones not even my information gathering form picked up.

It took us twenty minutes to arrive at a large spacious hall. Our second force, Delilah and Argaunt and most of the godchildren, were being seiged down by a fucking ARMY of people in heavy robes. It was an easy aesthetic to recognize.

Crell stepped forward, ready to attack, but I held up a hand. He cocked an eyebrow but nodded, motioning for me to go ahead. Closing my eyes, I triggered Wrath.

Now, Wrath was a dangerous ability, but it was very situational. The ash from the lake of fire needed to come from the surroundings. In a place with such high tier materials, doing that weas difficult. But I was confident I could manage it for two reasons. First was that I’d been using Dantalion to analyze the composition of the stone, and second because I had a B-rank staff.

The Ten Demons Tree was heavily linked to all of my forms, and after ranking up, channeling abilities through it was much easier. It didn’t make my attacks B-rank, but it did push them to a high enough level to affect the C-rank stone of the floors here.

With the ability to dissolve the rock and a thorough UNDERSTANDING of the rock from Dantalion, the speed with which Wrath hit was much higher than it had been in the past. The rock under the feet of the enemy shifted into burning ash, and they all screamed as they dropped into the incredibly fine sea of blazing dust.

Once they were fully submerged, I cancelled the attack, then staggered as I felt a wave of vertigo roll over me. Callie appeared beside me, catching me as I swayed. “Whoa there, careful.” She sounded concerned, but I could hear the pride in her voice too as our forces converged on the now helpless enemy, all of them trapped in C-rank stone.

The staff simulating higher tier versions of my forms was a massively useful ability, but it was also extremely taxing. I realized with a start that Dantalion, Gluttony, and Mornax had all shut down. I was still in Sammael, but I was completely bare of any other forms at the moment. I’d have to watch that one. I noticed Crell heading towards the enemy, and I straightened up, heading to cut him off. “No.” I told him bluntly.

He looked surprised. I explained. “We leave them. They’re helpless and this will be over too soon for them to get free. Killing them serves no purpose.”

I had long since gotten used to putting down enemies, but executing a hundred people who were literally incapable of resisting was wrong. The casual way he’d killed his Skartaris’s men had bothered me, but this was his world. He had set this up and he knew what was what. There was too much going on for me to just decide he was a bad guy and call him out based on that.

This, though. This was a hard line for me. He seemed to know it too, because he stared at me hard for a minute or two, then nodded. “Alright. Then lets gather the others and find someplace more private. Now that our forces have convened, it’s time for the final push. We’re getting the hell out of here.”