The next day we had...nothing to do. Not absolutely nothing, granted, we had training pretty much daily, but there were no big important tasks other than getting ready for the following day's match. We slept in late, got up and had a big breakfast, and then had a big meeting with the others to catch them up on what they might have missed, as well as making sure they all knew Rime (Cark hadn't met her yet).

Once that was done I granted her all five of her wishes, confirming that while I could do four points of stats for a G-ranker, I could only do two for an F-ranker, and it would be impressive if I could manage even a single one for an E-ranker. Still, ten points of stats was nothing to sneeze at, especially daily with no big requirements.

In repayment for her wishes she put up elixirs as requested. Each wish of two points was paid off with a G-ranked elixir worth five, and she was easily able to supply the Focus elixirs Benny needed for the day, bringing his focus up from one hundred thirty three to one hundred fifty eight, his total coming up to four hundred and twenty eight points. At this rate it might be possible to finish getting him and Jessie up to F-rank before it was time to leave.

"I have to say." I told Callie as we sat on the couch with the others, strategizing for possible enemy fights based on the opponents we were sure had passed the third round already. "I kind of wish the elixir limit wasn't a thing. Like, I understand it, but this is WAY more convenient than bartering individual points. It would have made ranking up a snap." I looked at Zeke. "Any chance its possible to integrate elixir points perfectly with wishes?"

He sawed a hand back and forth. "Anything is possible, but it's not cost effective. It's an Impact thing, so it only really work on people lower ranked than you are, which kind of limits your options. That's a much bigger change than you might think, so even in those circumstances the cost is prohibitive. The only ones who really bother are incredibly rich cultivators who can pay MUCH stronger wish granters to get their kids back on track."

Rime nodded at that. "I could see how that would be a rare and valuable commodity. It can be pretty enticing to be able to constantly get stronger like that. There are plenty of people who don't believe they can ever rank up and just decide to ignore their elixir limit entirely and artificially pump themselves up to their next rank limit."

I froze. That...I went back over what I knew about elixirs in my head. That would actually work. The elixir limit wasn't an inherent thing, it was the formula for what part of your core self could be artificially inflated before your soul would be too weak for a rank up. Which meant it WOULD be possible for people to pump themselves up to the edge of a rank. "Ok, I hadn't realized you could do that but that makes sense. Why don't all the E-rankers do it then? Shouldn't they ALL be at the peak of E?"

Rime shook her head. "They can't. We don't have nearly enough E-ranked Alchemists or materials to supply all of them. Hell, we have almost none. Any time E-ranked elixirs show up they get snatched up almost immediately, and usually not by the same person."

"True, it's much more common elsewhere." Chimed in Zeke. "With D-rank being a watershed, E-rank is as high as a lot of people manage to get, so you see a lot of people who completely abandon the hope of advancement to artificially pump themselves up to the peak of E. Happens all the time on real D-rank planets where materials like that are much easier to get."

Rime sighed. "Even F-rank pills and elixirs can be hard to find here. I hit my cap, but I'm in the minority. Frostbite had to put in quite a bit of effort to boost me up so much. Luckily, G-rank is low enough that there are plenty to go around. We had a stockpile for some of our lower level members, and I didn't even clean the whole thing out."

Well that was good for us. Honestly even once the twenty five wishes were past I would probably work with her for a while if possible, since at that speed Jessie would still have seventy five points left on her cap. I also cursed myself for never trying to give more points when they were lower ranked, since I'd had no idea it worked like that. I probably could have gotten them to G-rank much faster. Assuming they could pay for it of course. I hoped that Callie had mentioned her whole part time job thing, since they would need cash to pay off the points blitz especially in the last month. At the very least once I broke through to F-rank getting Jessie ready in time would be much easier.

Focusing back on the matter at hand, I had to point out the obvious. "As nice as getting everyone to G-rank on time is, it's not exactly going to matter if we can't win this. We really need to know who we're fighting."

Benny snorted. "Anyone else amused at the irony of us doing our level best to get the leak busted when we could really use his services?" He looked at Rime. "Any chance he's still active and they're like...gathering evidence or something?" He said hopefully.

She just smirked. "We're the Unity. We don't need to do stings on flunkies." Her smirk dropped off into an annoyed scowl. "He was picked up right after I called in and is currently having...words, with some of our interrogation specialists. Probably won't lead anywhere sadly. Either he's a greedy opportunist or whoever was pulling his strings did it carefully, but either way he's apparently not going to give up anything of value. Not the best outcome I admit."

That was unfortunate, but it could have gone worse. Still. "Does that mean there's not a high chance of him going down for this?"

"Oh that's already happening." She said casually. "He's screwed, it's just that he's the ONLY one who's screwed. The threat is a lot weaker if she just wrecks the one guy. Since we couldn't get his bosses, anyone else who wants to leak info through a cats paw will be emboldened to try it for themselves. Though Frostbite is having people put in place to keep an eye on all the bigger names who have access to things like fight info, so at the very least they won't be quite so overt about it next time."

I slumped at that. "Does that benefit us at all though? Getting our hands on some random minion isn't likely to actually scare off the people behind him."

She shook her head. "Nope, but you're not thinking of this the right way. Whoever was backing him won't dare act a second time. While some of the middle management might risk it, whoever he got that information from has to be careful now that everyone is being watched. One data point means nothing, plenty of people could have given him that little tidbit, but the more times it happens the more vulnerable they are. They won't dare try it again while being watched. Which means whichever faction bought that information lost their main connection in management."

Callie cut in, bringing us back to the point. "Anyway, we need some kind of plan on what we'll do, and since we don't know what we're actually facing more than one plan would be best. Something general, maybe some formations we can use or something." She looked at Abel, who was leaning back on the couch nearby with his eyes closed, though the angle of his head and his breathing showed us he wasn't sleeping, just relaxing as we talked. "Any ideas there, Apollyon?"

His eyes opened, focusing on me. "Maybe." He said with deliberation. "I'm not sure exactly. Honestly I think we have enough figured out in terms of roles that we don't need too much more work there. Our best bet is to continue the training we were working on before, forcing you all to react to my attacks and try to survive them. That's training that will give you instincts you can't get from studying a teams win record."

I grimaced. I'd been afraid he'd say something like that. I'd hated that training. Callie didn't seem thrilled either, but she nodded. "That might be best. Realistically, not knowing the opponent isn't too much of an imposition as long as we're in top form, and your...special training is nothing if not effective." She shot Benny and Jessie a jealous look. I completely sympathized. Those lucky bastards.

Abel popped to his feet, moving almost too quickly to track. "Well then, guess we have a plan." He grinned at us wickedly. "You two might want to get warmed up. Wouldn't want you to move too slow and get hurt." I was pretty positive given the massive strength difference Abel wouldn't accidentally kill us, but he might PURPOSEFULLY maim us, given Jessie's presence here as insurance.

Speaking of which, I looked over at her. "Hey Agria, can you do me a favor and stick around for this? Even if he doesn't break our knees or something we don't want to fight exhausted tomorrow. If you patch us up we can train hard and still be in good condition."

She shrugged. "Sure. I was planning to go visit Randall and the wolves, but I can do it later." With Randall coming up here we realized the house wasn't going to cut it for keeping the animals, so we'd cleared out a shed behind the house that Zeke hadn't bothered telling us about. The wolves had claimed it as a den pretty much, and Randall mostly just slept in the back and let them do their thing unless they woke him up.

With a sigh, we headed for the training room to prepare for the fight. Realistically, I knew this was a smart move. Abel was a monster in battle, and learning to react to him even in training took our ability to avoid attacks to a whole new level, but I was getting cold shakes remembering the last time we did this. The feeling of his fist whistling by me so fast I could barely track it was something I would never get used to.

When we got down there, I saw that Rime had come along with us, deciding to sit off to one side and watch, and to my surprise Mel walked over to sit with her. The two of them had started chatting and apparently hit it off. I found the dichotomy amusing, since they literally couldn't be more different. The red haired fire user and the blue haired ice user were a study in contrasts, but it couldn't be a bad thing for Rime to get better acquainted with everyone.

As we took up position and started warming up, Abel strolled into the ring we were going to be using and stripped off his coat. He left the mask on, which we were thankful for, since Mel had told us that Abel was only ever REALLY serious in battle when he took off his mask. But still, knowing he was going harder this time was terrifying.

I triggered the overlay for both of us, making sure we'd have the best chance to avoid the attacks and to learn from this, and focused on the bond between Callie and I. Once he saw that we were ready, Abel gave us that same bloodthirsty smile that had been seared into my brain last time. "Fight." And then all I could see was fists. This was going to be a long day.