Telling the girls was...problematic. Mostly because they would be able to tell that I had ranked up, and that Benny had a power, and that those things happened pretty much simultaneously. They probably wouldn't ask about it out of courtesy but it would be pretty obvious. It might have been a better idea to wait on the whole power unlock thing, but I could be impatient at times, sue me.

It was a moot point now though, and I was probably going to tell them eventually anyway, so all would be explained in time. I wasn't planning to take that step yet, despite liking them it had only been a few weeks, but the option was on the table. So we decided to just tell them about the rank up now. Rip the bandage off as it were. Jessie ignored it, because she was too nice to poke at us, but Callie just stared at us both. "So let me get this straight." She said, deadpan. "You finally ranked up to G rank, and literally within the hour your formerly mortal friend is suddenly an Ascendant?"

I shrugged. "Coincidence?" It wasn't. She knew it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. Jessie knew it wasn't. But Callie and I had been through a lot together in the weeks since I'd met her and Ascendents tried not to pry about secrets for the most part. So she just rolled her eyes and moved on.

She turned to Benny. "Well then congratulations are in order. What did you end up with? Also don't feel too bad if it's weirdly specific or almost useless, most baseline abilities are. Almost all the useful ascendants synergize something when they break through to H rank." She paused. "Or just go full skill focus, but that's mostly only crafters. Anyway, I'm curious what you ended up with." I shot her a grateful smile, which she ignored.

Benny looked pretty proud. "Nothing useless. I ended up with Minor Iron Hide. I can turn my skin metallic. Should get stronger as I get more Might. How does that work though? I was pretty sure Impact was the only thing that could really make you sturdier." I'd been wondering myself, this was the first time I'd seen a defensive ability. It seemed like it might let him fight up ranks if he put enough into Might, which was a pretty cool concept.

Callie held up a hand and waggled it side to side. "Yes and no. There are defensive abilities, but they usually get synergized into something else. Impact renders defense pretty meaningless between ranks. At the same level it makes you pretty hard to hurt, skin like metal will stop a lot of things. Someone hits you with an I rank baseball bat for instance." She raised an eyebrow at me. "You can tank that pretty easily. Someone hits you with an H rank bat and it's like hitting aluminum with titanium. It's metal, but one is still much harder than the other."

That...did seem like it might be useful, at least on the same level, but I could see why people would try to synergize that into something better. I turned to Callie. "So...what do we do? Do we register him with the guild? Do they have intakes here?" Honestly I would prefer to just skip that and get him into the Academy with us. He would probably rank up faster that way.

Callie was one step ahead of me, shaking her head. "There are, but it's pointless. We'd be better off boosting him to H and getting him the same kind of contract you had, then helping him get into the Academy. Signing a seed contract in the capital will make him eligible to register there. The whole G rank by twenty thing, as you know, it for out of towners. Anyway we should be able to rush him to H within the three week grace period pretty easy."

I grinned at her. "I was thinking the same thing. Now that I'm at G rank, I was thinking we should take one of those monster hunting contracts. We can give Benny the credit as an I ranker and I bet he'll get a ton of stats off it." Plus I wanted to fight a crazy Ascendant monster. I'd tried out my poison skill on the golem and it had worked great, I was betting it would work even better against something that didn't have uber regen.

She bit her lip contemplatively. "That's not a bad idea. We could get some good materials too, sell the stuff you don't need for some quick cash. Hold on." She stood up and went to her room, coming back with a map. "Ok, I looked into the monster hunting a bit. You find monsters and then turn in the kill or some proof later on, but there are some areas that are known to have more creatures than others." She pointed out various sections of the map that had been shaded red, green, and yellow.

Zeke had mentioned he suggested waiting on hunting critters, but I HAD already ranked up, so technically I did, besides, I'd gotten my money's worth out of the academy for the day anyway. I gestured to the map. "So I'm guessing green is I, yellow is H and red is G? Because if there were F ranked monsters in town I figure there would be a lot more screaming." It made sense a place this big would have cracks for things to slip through, but Zeke mentioned a security web which wouldn't be very secure if there were super monsters inside it.

She nodded. "Yeah, for the most part. Sometimes you get higher or lower but those areas are environments where certain kinds of well known monsters tend to group up." She pointed to the green spot nearest to us. "Like the sewer rats that live in this area." She moved to a yellow spot. "This is a tightly packed residential area with lots of megaplex buildings. Bigger on the inside and all that, makes trash build up around the outside a bit excessive even with regular pickups and you run into a particular species of raccoon monster there pretty often apparently."

I considered our best path here and decided to play it safe but not too safe. At G rank we should be able to tank anything that could hurt Benny or Jessie with ease. I pointed to the yellow area. "Let's hit the trash pandas. I to H is the shortest gap Benny will get in terms of Impact, and with the two of us playing chaperon no H rank is going to lay a finger on him. Jessie is H herself and I'm sure she could use a few points from a combat mission."

I looked at the other two and got nods of approval. I grinned in response. The only question now was pretty obvious. "Does the tower have stores of gear we can use? Because Benny is going to need protection not to mention a costume so he can start building his rep." I wanted to fight critters and I was confident but I wasn't going to risk my best friend's life if I didn't have some assurances.

Like I expected though Callie nodded. "Oh sure. Replacement and temp gear is available in plenty of places around here, especially I grade stuff, the rookies make that trash for practice." I winced slightly at her description of a grade of gear I'd been pretty proud of until recently, but honestly it was fair enough. I knew from fighting Callie my strongest attack at H rank wouldn't even scratch me at my present level.

I gave her a list of things we needed, including some daggers for me if she could find any the right rank, and then we split up, Jessie and I heading for the garage level to try to get a ride, and Benny and Callie going to find him some gear. Without Shadowthorn checking out a car was going to be a pain in the ass, but it would help to show up early and get in line. I even showed off my coin from the Academy which got us moved along a bit faster but still, it was a bit of a wait to get to a car.

By the time we finally got a skyride and were ready to go Callie was back, escorting a guy in a black mask and hood that was obviously Benny. He looked generic as hell but hey it wasn't that much worse than my original WCP goon outfit. I grinned at him. "Well look at you. First day out as an Ascendant huh? What are you going to call yourself?" Having his name in order before we started would probably help link the two identities, since he didn't need to worry about having them connected like I had.

He shrugged. "I couldn't think of one on the spot. Not like we're introducing ourselves to the raccoons anyway." He had a point, and honestly it didn't matter too much how far this spread. He would get some points for sure, but he would also be getting some from me. I hadn't wanted to give him more than I had already given how crazy the Ascension process had been, but tomorrow I would be able to get some points to him. Three days to H rank at most with four a day, and that was assuming he didn't get ANY from turning in this critter mission, which was unlikely.

We all climbed into the skyride and Callie turned on the nav system. It was way more necessary in a city the size of Rajak than it had been back home. She scrolled through the inboard map in the nav system until she matched it to the yellow area on the map and then we took off. Getting out of the building was a chore in itself, maneuvering around so many skyrides was a huge pain in the ass.

I was mostly clutching anything I could find for dear life. I knew how Callie's driving was, and adding a third dimension to her movement abilities wouldn't necessarily fix anything. Benny and Jessie didn't have any idea what they were in for, so the sounds they made when the skyride took a sharp drop would have been pretty amusing if I wasn't desperately praying not to die.

Benny and I had no clue how to drive one of those things, but Jessie did, so we forced Callie to land and let the blonde take over. Jessie's driving was much smoother and less terrifying, though Callie sulked the rest of the way to our destination, clearly upset at being considered too dangerous to be allowed behind the wheel. I was personally feeling vindicated after my experience on her bike. At least it wasn't just me.

Despite the stop we got to the district we were heading to in decent time. It only took about forty minutes to drive there. We'd picked a place within a short distance, relatively speaking. Rajak was so huge that driving to the other side of the city could take days even flying, but as a consequence there were general necessities localized in different regions. This part of the city had even more of that kind of thing because of the academy and the Unity headquarters being located here.

When we finally touched down we all climbed out of the car and did a bit of stretching to get ready. The megaplex housing units around us were massive, and I knew they were even bigger inside. It made me kind of curious to go in, but we had bigger things to worry about. Or rather, smaller things, because we were here to deal with the raccoons in the area. We headed around the nearest building and ended up in the alley between it and another megaplex, finding literal mountains of trash in the half mile gap, mostly kept out of sight by the massive buildings. This was going to be a long day.