Our meeting with Natalie was later that night, after their own match, so we said our goodbyes to Laura and her team. She seemed to be excited to find a powerful opponent or potential ally and insisted on getting Callie's scan ring number. Despite the rough first meeting, she was so enthusiastic about it that Callie couldn't bring herself to turn down the contact details. She also invited us to another party, but we took a pass on that one for tonight given the meeting and all the ones we'd been to lately.

After she got Callie's details, her smile slipped a bit though. "You should be careful. We aren't the only group hoping to guide how the tournament will progress. If you run into some of the others next round...well, let's just say they won't be as personable as us. You also need to be on alert. We got our fighting assignment early through back channels, and we aren't the only ones. There are people inside the Unity who are less concerned with victory than a payday."

That was unsettling, but not unexpected. We hadn't known for sure where they got their information, but a traitor had been one of the more likely options. Unfortunately our ability to address that was limited, given who was in charge over there. I doubted Midknight would listen to us even if he cared. Which was pretty up in the air.

We thanked the others and left, and after we did I triggered Stealth so I could ask Callie a question. "What are the chances you could get us a meeting with someone high up in the Unity who isn't friendly with your dad? You said he's always fighting with some of the other E-rankers to maintain control right? Could we get in touch with one of those?"

Midknight was a dick, and if he had it out for us there was no rule saying we couldn't back his enemies. I had a contract with Melinda and the Beast Lord Garden, but they didn't use all my wishes or anything. I'd have to recheck the terms but I was pretty sure the exclusivity clause in there was specific to the WCP.

Callie looked contemplative. "That...might work. It depends what we offer them and how much they dislike him. I never really checked into his enemies, that would have meant getting involved in all his political nonsense after he left and I was pretty outspoken about wanting no part of his life, but I bet Uncle Alex would know."

I nodded, at least we had a secondary plan at the moment. We headed home right away to get ready for our meeting with Natalie, with Callie planning to do some research before we left. She did get a chance to make her last day's wishes, finally bringing herself to the cap at three hundred thirty five perception and me to a hundred fifteen G-ranked chits. It also marked a breakthrough for my own Wish granting as I was finally able to give four points on her final wish. Which meant I probably could have done it earlier, but hey, live and learn.

With two three point wishes and one four point wish that left two more for the day, which I used on Benny, topping up two of my triple strength density shifted attacks. He put those eight points in Focus, which balanced it with Might. Benny had decided to do a combination of Focus for Inventing and Might for usage as his model for stat distribution. It might not be as over the top as Jessie's full Vitality allotment, but splitting most of his points between the two should still open up some interesting possibilities.

Callie, in the meantime, planned to start Skill training hard, making sure her Shadow Manipulation broke through to Intermediate before she ranked up and had to synergize it. She was at the upper edge of Beginner, but the jump to Intermediate wasn't so easy to manage, so she still had quite a bit of work to do. Though given our plans for the night she'd elected to wait until the next day to begin since we had a few days before our next match anyway.

After a few hours we finally headed out to the meeting, with Natalie insisting we meet in G-district at the pavilion. Our ability to move undetected was much greater in the WCP, especially in lower end districts where we were less likely to run into over the top abilities or people with absurd Perception. When we arrived, my cousin was sitting in Mel's office, feet up on the desk as her two henchpeople loomed on either side of the door. I'd never heard either of them speak, they just kind of...imposed. But they were pretty decent at being imposing.

Natalie was looking extra relaxed, sipping from a tall thin glass with a wild looking straw and an umbrella. We didn't have those here so I wasn't sure where she'd gotten it. Her eyes lit up when she saw me, and she took an extra large slurp before putting it down on the desk. "Baby cousin!" She said with a beaming grin. "Look at you. Fourth round already. I'm so proud. I knew teaming up with you was a good idea. Congrats on the victory against the Empire's B-team. Even that much is impressive."

My stomach sank as she said that. Solemn Vow had been strong, if they were the B-team...well it explained why the Empire hadn't tried to put the squeeze on us harder. Speaking of. "So you knew the Empire was involved? Because we didn't. That would have been good information to have."

She shrugged. "Not really our business. Faction bullshit is for the big dogs. They can't pressure us with anyone too strong so we might as well not worry about it. Besides, the Empire won't go overboard. You have more to worry about from the Cult. Heard you whacked one of their little dictators. Good on you by the way. No one really likes them. They aren't unique to the cult of course, but their structure makes useless arrogant fops more likely to spring up."

"Not the Empire?" I'd have figured nobility would be a sure way to make sure nepotism ran rampant. Granted, I wasn't in a position to throw stones, but still, it was a surprise.

She snorted out a laugh. "Gods no. Nobility is rank based. That's their whole cultivation system. Not that there aren't absolute bastards there, it comes with the territory, but useless up and coming nobles get killed off for resources long before they can become strong enough to be a problem. I won't go into details, it involves the way the Empire farms renown, but suffice to say people are very motivated over there."

"Fine." I said waving that off for another time. "But what about their F-rankers? They can send them after us and our guardians can't do anything about it. Isn't that a huge loophole?" I'd been wondering why they did the two rank buffer up to this point, but I couldn't exactly ask Zeke. Natalie might have some workaround though, and I could take care of some of my worries.

To my surprise she laughed again. "It isn't a loophole. They leave us vulnerable to people one rank higher because it tests our resourcefulness. Guardians are WCP resources to keep us from getting swatted like flies by high rankers, but they don't want us to get complacent. While WCP resources we don't pay for can't be used to protect us from F-rankers, our personal forces CAN. Allies too."

Callie made a sound of understanding. "That makes sense. It's all part of the test. With the wish ability, being able to recruit F-rankers and even E-rankers should be a snap. That's why the guardian's duties end at D-rank right? Because by that point they should be established enough to protect themselves."

"I like this one." Said Natalie approvingly. "She's much smarter than you, hold onto her." I flipped her off and she just cackled at me before responding to Callie. "Pretty much. It can be hard to build up momentum at the lower ranks since newbies have no rep. From what I could find, there was a big problem with candidates getting murdered early into the process to prevent more wishmasters from being added to the WCP. The guardian system was an answer to that."

"Where's yours by the way?" I'd never met Natalie's guardian and I was a bit curious.

She shrugged. "Who knows. She's a C-ranker so she has enough Perception to listen into anything that happens on this planet. Not like she needs to babysit me directly. I'm sure your own guardian is entertaining himself too. Probably has a few contingencies to keep you from getting randomly butchered though."

I shuddered at the thought of my mask eating that guy. She had no idea. "So we should be making contacts with some of the stronger locals in case we need them to deal with faction pressure?" That was pretty much what we'd been looking at doing anyway. We already had three E-rankers on our side who could step in if any F-rank pressure came our way. I hadn't really considered what a deterrent that was, but it would be hugely useful to us since Zeke could handle the E-ranked threats.

In my head I'd made the mistake of matching E-rankers against E-rankers, falling into the same trap most of the people on Callus did by noticing how much more powerful higher ranked and more centralized warriors would be. But even the faction geniuses who could fight up a rank would be mostly able to contend with very early E-rankers, and all of our allies were in the late E-rank coming up on D.

But the WCP wouldn't be enough. I looked at Callie, and found her looking back at me. She nodded, and I could feel through the bond that she agreed with me, we needed more than ever to make sure that we got one of the higher ranking Unity members on our side. With the WCP being an outside faction, involving them would give Midknight a chance to move against us, and while our E-rankers could handle themselves easily against our enemies, if the Unity E-rankers ganged up on our people Zeke wouldn't be free to intervene when we weren't in direct danger.

Natalie seemed to sense the tension, and gave me a reassuring smile. "Hey, chill. It's not a big deal yet. We're early enough out that no one is going to be exerting their full pressure. Just watch out for potential assassins and you should be good. The Cult are vindictive and not to be screwed with. Especially if you get matched with one of their teams. An Impact advantage is priceless at lower levels. It makes people your own rank substantially less dangerous to you, and that advantage sticks around for the rest of your life."

It would definitely do a lot to alleviate the danger of the early phases of a rank, where your stats couldn't keep up with all the more powerful Ascendants who had been there for a while.

This had been more reassuring than I'd expected, and I was able to put some longstanding fears to rest. My biggest need here was to do what I had been doing from the start. Making alliances and using my ability to gain favors. I was still pretty annoyed to be stuck at G-rank for the next few weeks, since I'd be losing lots of potential points, but I'd make do. It would be tight getting my friends to F-rank in time for the Moonsong Glade, though on the upside they would be able to rank up as soon as they hit the cap because they weren't in the tournament themselves.

We thanked Natalie and headed home, already making plans for where to go from here. I was worried about those assassins, and I wanted to make sure we were prepared. We decided to try to get a meeting with one of the Unity higher ups tomorrow. Now we just had to pick who we would approach.