Since Celine was helping Jessie, Cark was patrolling the clearing, and Martin and Sarah were tagging along with their boss, Benny, Callie, and I were completely alone when we got to the top floor. We'd put the strap guy and all the H outside, and Benny was keeping them doped until after the fight, when we could hopefully come up with something to free them, once there was no one to trigger them or blow up their heads out of spite.

Luckily with enough taps that tranq ability lasted quite a while, so Benny just had to dip down and check on them once an hour, or twice an hour for the G ranker. Which gave him some time to come sit in on our brainstorming between re ups. Sadly, before he could be of help I had to actually get him to understand the premise of the plan. He seemed to be missing the core concept. "So you're saying you want us to wish for like, weapons we can use against the Heartrippers? Some kind of secret ace in the hole?"

I sighed, rubbing my temples and looked to Callie. "I swear he isn't stupid. This is just a bit meta for him, he tends to be a mostly practical thinker. Clearly I'm having zero luck with this, probably because I'm trying to be vague so I don't influence his wish too much and invalidate it. Can you explain this to him?" I was almost definitely being too cagey about my explanation, but my power was kind of a stickler about fair compensation. If I was weighting the wish it would invalidate any payment.

Callie, as it happened, had no such limitations. "He's talking about wishes outside a physical context. Stuff like wishing for the right weather for our combat style, or wishing for good luck, or for them to come in from a specific direction. Maybe even some kind of animal that naturally counters psychic abilities in a radius. I think there was a mention of that during my monster research..." She trailed off, flicking her scan ring and sifting through pages. "Ha! Found it!" She turned to me triumphantly. "I wish we a Circadian Dream Bat!"

The usual words of flame appeared across my vision.

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I confirmed.

Insufficient stat points for summoning- Circadian Dream Bat. Requirements: NA Expert level summoning beyond the capacity of Beginner Wish ability.

I clicked my tongue at that. "Nope. Sorry Cal, looks like that one is an E ranked creature. Or summoning abilities work weird, hard to say." I looked at Benny. "Still, those are the kinds of wishes we were talking about. I can't go into specifics but just keep it in mind."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Got it. I see what you're going for. Thinking about it in that context we've been kind of under using your wish ability huh? I guess once we figured out the secret thing we just decided it couldn't solve problems like that. In reality I can do fine with short term solutions, though it seems to be ill suited for big overarching issues because of scale."

I rolled my eyes. "First of all, you mean YOU have been under utilizing my ability. I can't make wishes, only grant them, and I can't make suggestion because it invalidates them. So any failure to exploit my abilities is your fault, since you've had access the longest. Secondly, any issues of scale are short term, once I get strong enough I imagine I can grant a wish for basically anything, provided I can get someone to actually make it." I came pretty close to actually sticking out my tongue at him, but since we were around Callie I decided to be the bigger person and wait until her back was turned. It had nothing to do with wearing a full face mask. Honest.

Benny had no such compunctions, nor a full face mask, and I heard Callie snicker as he made a face at me. Despite us both being grown men on the larger side, we were childhood friends and that tended to bring out some immaturity when dealing with each other. Callie decided to break it up. "The POINT is that now we have another avenue of attack. If summoning something directly effective is out this time, how about something a bit more...ephemeral. "I wish we would have good luck for the upcoming fight."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

As usual I confirmed.

Insufficient stat points for extended duration. Requirements: 100 Fantasy, 50 Impact, 100 Creation, 100 Might.

I whistled at that. I wasn't sure why some wishes were just beyond the capability of my power at the moment and some were so expensive they were FUNCTIONALLY beyond it, but at the very least this one gave me a direction. "Ok that one technically worked, but it's too expensive to be feasible soon. However it specifically mentioned duration. I think luck is on the table, just not that much."

Which blew my mind really. Luck was a fundamental force of the universe, being able to effect it at all was crazy. Benny gave it a shot this time. "I wish that I could have the longest streak of luck possible for you to grant me, at exactly the right time during the upcoming fight to have the most effect." I whistled at that. Benny was pretty good at wording those, that one was tight enough on specifics to minimize cost.

Wish detected. Grant wish?

After confirming I waited with bated breath.

Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 50 Fantasy, 10 Impact, 75 Perception, 75 Perception. Compensation required.

I grinned behind my mask. "Ok that worked. Just need to actually pay for the damn thing. Pricey but doable. Doesn't actually say how much luck or when, but then I guess you kind of got what you asked for. Now what the hell are you going to actually use to compensate me for it, because anything this expensive will be pricey."

He scowled. "Shit. I didn't consider that. How about consistently keeping the prisoners sedated? It requires tons of work and lots of attention. Without me you'd have to beat them unconscious. I know I'm already keeping down the ones we have, but I can commit to doing the same for all the others that are incoming. It'll basically be a full time job, but it should help manage them until we figure out a way to remove their programming. If that's even possible I mean, I know it's not something anyone else has done."

I waggled a hand. "I don't actually know that. In fact the opposite is true. Zeke said specifically it can be removed it just takes abilities that aren't really found in small places like this. At least not at a level high enough to matter. Which means my Wish power should be able to do it, assuming we have the stats for it. I imagine cost will vary with how long they've been affected. Anyway let me give that a shot." I focused on granting the wish, and luckily I was able to feel the confirmation work.

The static charge I always got built up, but this time I felt no need to touch Benny to transfer. Instead it built and built until it finally exploded out of my skin, vanishing into the air around me like it was being discharged into some ethereal force I couldn't see. Effecting luck, it seemed, wasn't something you did to a person, but something you did to the world around them. It made me wonder how the delivery method worked. Was I putting out some sort of ever present field that hung around Benny, or was that discharge moving through time as well as space and actually effecting him during the fight itself.

Benny stood there, waiting for the wish to take effect, head tilted back, arms out like he was about to receive divine revelation. He didn't move for like a minute or two, eyes squeezed shut. He peeked one open, looking around and then slumping in disappointment. "Damn. I was expecting something crazy to happen. Bit let down. Ok second wish. I wish that they would take the logical path of least resistance when coming in at us and it would just happen to be right into our traps."

I waited and got the usual message.

Wish detected. Grant wish?

After the confirmation I go a message I'd been hoping for.

Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 75 Perception, 12 Impact, 96 Creation, 63 Fantasy, 84 Focus.

I assumed that the two Impact was to offset some sort of short in the other stats, but I could see how the rest of them would come into it. Perception to dampen their ability to notice things, Fantasy to create illusions, Focus to mess with their minds, and Creation to make any solid obstacles needed to make it all work. I imagine individually it would have been more expensive, but I was pretty sure the actual manipulation would be subtle.

It brought up a question though, how solid was the wish? Did they always work? Like if I wished for it there was no way it would fail? Or was my earlier supposition a reality and this was independent of time or space. Was it effecting them in what seemed like real time to it. It would explain the absurd point cost of some of the earlier wishes. It would also imply that if something was beyond me it would tell me up front. Unless there was some way to counter the wish. Would another Wish ability be able to grant a wish to nullify mine? Would it make one or both of them too expensive to grant if they conflicted?

Every thing I learned about my ability opened up new questions. I was in awe of the first Wishmaster. I couldn't imagine the kind of genius needed to refine a power this complicated. The number of skills he'd probably needed to master to complete it. I wondered if he had some skill that let him predict and tinker with the result of synergies or something, or if that was even possible. Hell maybe he used the Job system, I knew this whole ability based cultivation thing was recent. That made me curious how the Job system worked at S rank when a person would normally make a bloodline.

I shook off the thought. "Sorry, yeah that works, you just need to pay for it." I could spend years going down the power rabbit hole. I planned to exploit the shit out of my ability going forward, but I needed to finish this mess first. This opened up some very interesting options for me at the Academy, and even during the scavenger hunt. Secrets being what they were I doubted we could just with to know where things were, and these were G ranked items so conjuration was probably out, but I was betting we could wish for some kind of seeking object or ability that would work even better than Seek Hidden.

Benny bit his lip. "Ok, payment. How about another Inventing altered building to be owed in the future. I'm sure a second one will come in handy, and we can even get some better materials." He paused. "Hey I wonder if we can wish for materials that will produce a specific result? I mean it would probably be insanely expensive to wish for the stuff for a high ranked building, but if we build it weak and let the thing get some exposure to rank it up...actually that begs the question can you rank buildings up with Wishes?"

I had no idea. I triggered the wish, letting my static charge build again as I considered it. I had no idea how places with ranks worked. I knew Impact was what gave rank, so they had to have that, but it was notoriously hard to raise Impact. Would items and places rank up with enough stats? Could I transfer stats to buildings or materials to rank them up forcibly? Because that would be a solid way to make money. As the purple arcs of lightning were swallowed by the world around me I grinned in excitement. I had so much research to do.