Waking up the next morning, I was incredibly exhausted. Between helping Callie schmooze 'randoms' as Carl called them, and training (I absolutely wasn't going to waste a chance to train my soul strength nigh-limitlessly) my brain was fried, and I was still tired when I woke up. Not physically tired, since my Vitality was pretty high, but mentally tired. The process of constantly exhausting and refilling soul strength was a unique kind of exhausting I'd never experienced before.

Still, I'd made considerable progress last night. I was pretty sure I could handle using Magma Leg without instantly exhausting my soul strength now, which was a huge boost to my abilities. Of course, the biggest harvest from last night was something we hadn't even known had happened until this morning. Once we woke up we found an envelope pinned to the door of the house with our next opponents listed inside.

We would have been totally in the dark about who they were, except we'd been chatting up everyone last night and had managed to dig up quite a treasure trove of information on the other teams. The team from the Divine Stainless Temple had been precisely one of the teams we'd heard about.

It wasn't actually a shock that they'd come up, because the main combatant of the Divine Stainless Temple used an extremely weird primary weapon, and his first round opponent complained endlessly about how stupid and ridiculous it was that he lost to a guy using a mop.

"Ah shit." Benny said as he read it. "You guys are fighting mop guy? He's pretty strong right? Honestly, how does a person train mopping to a Beginner or even Intermediate Skill. And where the hell do you get a G-ranked mop from? I still say those Turtle Breath Monastery guys were just chumps."

Abel, who had crashed with us at the house rather than head back to G-district, shook his head. "Nope. Their team leader was actually decent. You get a feel for martial arts aura. I'd say...Intermediate rank, probably somewhere in the middle. Not a stand out favorite, but still, pretty decent. Plus I haven't seen him fight but 'Turtle Breath' makes me think defensive art. Those guys are always a bitch to deal with."

Jessie snickered from her spot at the counter. "So you're saying they got...cleaned up." We all groaned at the bad joke, though I secretly sidled over to give her a fist bump for the hilarious pun.

Abel rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying not to underestimate him because his weapon is weird. Don't we have a guy on our team who can beat people stronger than him with video game Skills? Stupid to assume other people can't do interesting things with underwhelming Skills. Mopping is a new one on me, but I could see how it could be pretty useful in a fight. I mean, it's basically a net on a stick."

"No." Said Callie. "That's a butterfly net, and it's already a thing, but I see your point. Also I really hope we don't ever have to fight someone who uses a butterfly net as a main weapon. I think mops are about the most ridiculous form of weaponry I can stomach."

That set Jessie off on another round of giggles. "You guys clearly didn't hear about the team with the guy who fights with a mug." We all just looked at her, and she put both hands up. "Hey, I swear that's not a joke. Mug guy crushed his first round opponent. They were whining about it all night."

Ignoring the ridiculousness of that, I turned to look at Callie. "I wasn't listening to any of the other stuff they said about the Stainless Temple." I grimaced. "Sorry, I was bored at that point, so I started training with Seek Hidden to pass the time. It doesn't have any outward signs so figured it would be ok." Naturally I needed to take best advantage of the music, and while dancing had helped using my other skills was useful too as long as I actively altered the skill during execution.

She just smirked at me and patted my arm. "I know sweetie. I could tell. But don't worry, no one else could. You did a good job of pretending to be interested. If it wasn't for the bond I might not have noticed. But it's fine. I noted everything down. I know you aren't a fan of those kind of events and that you put plenty of effort into meeting people for most of the night."

I just shrugged. I'd pick up people skills eventually. Unless...were there people Skills? Celine probably had some. It didn't matter. I had enough Skills to deal with trying to upgrade all the subskills for DS Mastery. "So." Callie continued. "The other members of the Divine Stainless Temple are decent, but nothing overwhelming. One of them can grow, which is interesting, and one of them can create swords. The last one just uses lightning blasts, but he teams up with sword guy mostly and they're pretty effective."

"Wait." I said in surprise. "He can GROW? Like...make himself bigger? How does that even work? Does he gain more Impact with size? Less? Is there a limit?" I'd heard of a few impressive powers, but that one was kind of over the top even by Ascendant standards.

She sighed. "Sadly, no one could say. I can pretty firmly say no to the first. That ability would be far beyond the scope of anything I've heard of. Even your ability isn't that broken. I don't know if he has relative Impact or if, like you said, it diminishes as he grows. There's obviously a limit, of course, since he has limited stats. I'm not sure if he has a stat multiplier when he gets bigger, but if not the power isn't that impressive. Just gives him better reach. Smart play would be to use it in small measures, making himself slightly larger. I'll look into it before we decide how to handle him."

"That's a good idea." I said. "We have a few days until the next round anyway." Speaking of which, I called Callie to the training room, waving off the others, though they didn't try too hard to follow. When she got down there I grinned at her. "Not sure if I mentioned, but yesterday I officially hit a thousand points. I'm capped for G-rank. Which means my wishes going forward are all yours. Since I was getting all my points from the Beast Lord Garden, I'm even prepaid on my contract with them for quite a while."

She squealed with joy. "Awesome! I was a little worried about that. Today and four more days, that'll put me at seventy-five points. What do you have left of the attacks I traded you before?"

I could see how excited she was, but I was pretty curious. "What are you going to focus on endgame? I know you wanted to try to qualify for a stronger ability when you synergize by making sure one stat was much higher than the others. Still going for Perception?" That was her highest and her original specialty, as well as extremely important for anyone who fought with Stealth. It would even have benefits for her constructs, allowing her top make them more detailed and make better use of her Shadow Manipulation.

She nodded. "I have a general idea what I'm doing, but yeah. As much as I love the extra Might, Perception is my bread and butter. I've been able to focus so hard on other stats because it was so high, but my fighting style is heavily influenced by my ability to move unseen and deceive the senses, not to mention find blind spots for my shadow attacks."

"Speaking of which." I said with a frown. "I'm low. I can channel your ability through the bond as far as I know though, so attacks don't seem as useful. Any ideas for what you can use to pay?"

She nodded. "I was thinking about that. The bond makes it tricky. My best idea was just to go out solo and make some money. I took a few missions while you were doing your thing with the Beast Lord Garden leading up to the first round. Nothing crazy, but enough to save up some chits." She passed me a small bag. Fifteen G-ranked chits. "I worked for them myself and not as part of the team, so they should still serve as payment, right?"

I wasn't positive, but I suspected they would. As long as they were specifically hers and something she owned herself it should be fine. Team goods and stuff from the Pavilion was partially mine so it wouldn't work as payment, but money she went out and made on her own should be fine. I nodded to her, and she grinned. "Awesome, I wish for fifteen points of Perception. Paid for with fifteen chits of our same rank."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I confirmed. The usual stat requirements rolled across my vision, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could actually queue up wishes like that. It made things much easier than listing them out one by one, especially if I got the payment all at the same time. Realistically though, it was just a minor timesaver. I still had to let the five wishes build and grant them individually.

The chits worked fine thankfully, each of them contained more than enough Creation to be a viable payment, and they also weren't so valuable as to tip the scales the other way. Callie got all fifteen points dropped right into Perception, bringing it to two hundred thirty five points and her full total to nine hundred of a thousand. Callie gave a happy sigh once all the wishes were finished. "Man, it feels nice for my Perception to spike like that. I'm pretty excited for my breakthrough when the tournament ends."

"You going to tell me about it?" I said with a laugh. "Or do I have to guess?" With Beginner rank Shadow Manipulation and a high concentration of Perception, I couldn't think of what she might unlock. Something related to infiltration probably, but she seemed to have a specific direction in mind. Given Jessie's Lifeweaver ability and how well if conformed to her future goals, I wasn't entirely certain that wouldn't affect things actually. We'd have to wait and see.

"Nope." She grinned at me mischievously. "Not that I know for sure how it'll turn out. I know what I'm aiming for at least. You'll just have to wait and be surprised like the rest of them." I rolled my eyes at that but didn't really mind. I was excited to see what she would end up with.

I kind of wished I could synergize my ability sometimes, but doing it at this point would be pure stupidity. The main benefit of the Wish power was fast growth, which in the end was the most impressive power you could have in a world like this. Stats decided everything, and getting more of them made all my other abilities much stronger. Once I reached a high enough level I could think about finally synergizing my ability to get something new.

I suspected that given the massive jump in needed stats, once you reach A or B-rank being able to get even ten or twenty from stats wouldn't be a huge advantage, otherwise my old man would have held off on his own change until he became a god. I wasn't anywhere near strong enough for that to be an issue for me though. So for now I was destined to keep my ability unaltered. With my stockpile of attacks and modifiers from DS Mastery though, I refused to believe I wasn't one of the best at up front combat among candidates my level. I guessed I'd be finding out if I fought Natalie in the tournament. I was honestly looking forward to that.