We spent the rest of the day at the Rowdy Badger, but after Jessie had spent enough time with Randall (which was to say he went to sleep because he was a bear and didn't have the energy to humor her anymore) we headed back home. We'd been doing research all day on the various forces, and while I'd looked into the Sanctuary Hall and the Beast Lord Garden, Callie spent almost the entire day looking up every single fact she could find on Silent Dagger, especially the relationship between Midknight and The Nothing.

I expected her to be all upset reading about her dad, but in an odd twist she was unusually excited as she filled me in on what she found during the ride back. "So I looked into The Nothing, and it turned out that most people don't think they're from here. The Nothing appeared several years before my father showed up, but there was no sign of them before that point. It took me ages of trawling the forums but I managed to pick up a few accounts of people who were around when The Nothing first rose to power. As far as I can tell, they probably came from somewhere weaker than Rajak, in fact, there's a decent chance they came from Velan itself originally."

That got a blink of surprise from me. "Wait, what? Another Velan native? How come we never heard about this person. If they were around when Midknight was coming up you would figure you at least would have heard of them. I know that older Ascendants could have gathered renown long enough ago to fade from public memory, but they only came to Rajak a few years before your old man right?"

Callie shook her head. "Well, a few years for us. More like ten or twenty chronologically. As for why we haven't heard of them? I suspect they left Velan young. It isn't impossible to get to the capital if you're willing to pull strings. Jessie had been here before if you remember, and so had I. If we have channels I'm sure the WCP does too, and I'd imagine those channels are much more easily purchased. Most people wait until at least high H rank to come to a place like this because any weaker makes you one hundreds of millions trying to carve out a piece of the pie."

I nodded in understanding. "Most as in not all. Some people don't join a force, and some people don't wait until they're at the top to jump to a higher ranking area. You think The Nothing was someone who knew your dad growing up and came here ahead of him to take advantage of the abundant resources? That kind of risk would take some serious willpower if nothing else."

Callie seemed genuinely impressed by this person. "Oh that it is. I imagine the improvement in resources and channels is cancelled out by the absurd amount of diffusion on the renown in this place. Think about how we've been doing here, do you have any confidence you could have accomplished even this much without the resources we've been using?" Her voice was excited as she described someone who seemed to be on a similar path to the one she was on, at least in terms of interacting with her dad. Knowing there was some E ranked badass who had walked the road she was traveling had energized her in a whole new way I hadn't seen from her before.

I knew we would be meeting The Nothing sometime soon. If nothing else Callie would want to talk to them about what exactly they had against her dad. I imagined there would be some asking about secret weaknesses and that kind of thing too, but mostly I think she was just happy to hear about someone who may have effectively stepped out of her fathers shadow like she had planned on doing. Her fervor died down a little as she shook her head to clear it. "Enough about that, what did you find out about the other two factions?"

There was no hiding the fact that she was forcing herself to change the topic, but I appreciated her at least pretending to be interested. "They're pretty well documented honestly. They both do huge amounts of business with other factions and are pretty up front about how they get things done. The Beast Lord Garden has two main industries, selling powerful tamed pets to high rankers and selling cubs to younger Ascendants to grow alongside them. That said they do follow up interviews to check how the tamed beasts are integrating with their new masters, which I think is pretty nice of them."

It made me think highly of Jessie's chances of getting along with them. I was prettysure her Lifeweaving was pretty unique, and I didn't doubt they would lose it if they knew even a fraction of what it could do. Even just the taming portion of things was probably going to grab attention. I hadn't done enough research on taming to know the specifics of why it was good but I had a hard time believing any power that versatile and unique wasn't something impressive to someone in that particular industry. Callie didn't interrupt, waiting for me to continue and offering me an encouraging smile.

So I moved on. "The last group is the Sanctuary Hall. The Peace Lord is considered a pretty decent guy, especially for an E ranker. His power is some kind of pacifying energy. It cancels out violence on a conceptual level, eroding the violent actions that originally caused a wound to help it recover like making it so they never happened. It can be used defensively too to cancel out attacks, and it makes him pretty damn scary, even to other E rankers. The busted ability is the second reason no one messes with him, aside from the whole healer thing which is the main reason."

Callie whistled. "That's...weird. Not sure how the hell you get a power like that but it sounds crazy useful. Not the weirdest ability I've heard of grant you. There are some really weird Skill and ability combinations that result in some strange powers. Unique Skills alone can cause strange changes, but even more than that certain stat totals and conception in Skills can change the outcome of synergy. One guy back in Velan had the power to summon rolls of cheese of varying sizes and compositions. As long as it was a type of cheese that existed he could conjure at least a small piece, even if it was higher rank."

I blinked at that. "There are higher ranked cheeses? I mean, I guess given other higher ranked foods existing that makes sense. Do the cheeses become higher rank through gaining stats? Or are they made with high ranked milk from a high ranked cow?" It was a ridiculous question, but it illuminated a secondary path for materials that I hadn't really considered. The initial formation through legend didn't have to be the only way. Hell, I bet high ranked cheese makers could get a solid chunk of change selling to restaurants.

Callie leaned in and kissed me for a minute or two, and when she finally pulled back she was smiling up at me impishly. "Callus to Shane, we lost you there for a second. As much as every girl loves to be ignored for hypothetical cheese, I'd prefer I keep my boyfriend's attention for the moment thanks. So, we need to take the time to go talk to some of these groups, but which one do you want to hit first? We shouldn't drag our feet since we still need to make ourselves seen at the Pavilion."

She was right, we should take the chance to check in with these factions, since things might start moving fast once we discovered who was behind Melissa's uprising. Hell, if we did want to shift the Pavilion to our side having our own faction backer could only help. That said, we couldn't afford to rush it too much, and we couldn't afford to half ass it, so I had to disappoint Callie. "I think we need to visit Silent Dagger last. I know you're excited to hear from The Nothing, but we need to cover all our bases. Even if we think Silent Dagger is the best fit we need to check the other two."

The conflicted look on her face broke my heart, but eventually she nodded. "You're right. I want to push you to skip them, but I know it's the wrong choice. Silent Dagger has been around for decades, they aren't going anywhere." She took my hand, squeezing it. " I have to do what's best for the group. But even if we end up deciding on Beast Lord Garden or Sanctuary Hall, we can still at least take the meeting right? I have so many things I need to know that I think The Nothing can tell me."

I leaned down to give her a soft kiss. "Of course. I'd have insisted on it even if we ended up sticking with the first faction we ran into. I know what this means to you. It's not just about finding someone to help you surpass him is it? The Nothing might have other answers you're looking for." I kept my tone gentle, but I didn't want her to get into the habit of bottling things up. I knew what I'd have been thinking of in her place, and I knew her well enough to be pretty sure her head had gone to the same spot.

She sighed, slumping against me. "I know it's stupid. I hate him, I'm not going to stop hating him even if I find out about his past. Having reasons doesn't undo the terrible things he's done to me or mom, but...I just want to know WHY. I want to know what made him this way. It can't just be recursion, because this part of himself was never something he showed other people. He's always been careful to be Midknight, the stalwart defender. He manages his image so carefully, and ruthless sociopathic bastard isn't any part of it. So what the hell happened to him? What made him like this?"

Part of me wanted to just shrug it off. Recursion didn't make a person. He might have just been a psycho from a young age. My money was on that option. But Callie wanted to know for sure, and I think deep down part of her was hoping she would find something that would excuse it. Some magical event or transformation she could undo that would make him a good dad who was in a bad situation. It was possible, anything was in this universe, but I doubted it.

Even so, I wasn't going to shatter that hope before I had to, especially since it was so fragile she wouldn't even let herself actually contemplate it. Besides, I didn't know what had happened. All I could do was be there for her, was walk by her side to the end of the road and then have her back as she dealt with the fallout. If she got a few days of hope or peace before she had to finally set fire to the last remnants of the part of herself that wished her dad could redeem himself, I wanted her to have that, she'd have thousands of years to live her life without those positive feelings.

So I held her, and said nothing, even as I watched what was probably going to be a train wreck in the making. We sat like that for while before I exhaled. "Well, I think tonight is as good a time as any to make our next trip to E district. I don't think we can hit all three places in a row, but we can at least knock out the Beast Lord Garden and Sanctuary Hall. We can meet with Silent Dagger tomorrow so we aren't away from the pavilion too long. What do you think?" Callie gave me an uncertain smile and I just pulled her close. Yeah, I didn't know what to think about all this either.