The next week passed in a blur. With my new ability to grant wishes for three stat points instead of two, the thirty five wishes accrued over those seven days came out to over a hundred total stats. Given the lacking foundations of one of our members, namely, Benny I made sure my friend got twenty four of those, which he paid off with four of those triple strength density shifted blows, and four of the triple strength tranq hits.
He chose to dump those twenty four into Might, given the physical nature of his recent attack style. Jessie had given me ten of those heals bursts for another thirty points of Vitality, choosing to lean into her advantages, and Callie had gotten the other fifty one points, specifically because she had enough accumulation to actually trade me some points for myself instead of just adding to my stockpile of attacks. She paid for eight of the wishes with shadow attacks and then the other nine with ten points of Focus, ten points of Perception, and seven points of Vitality.
With a fresh twenty seven points and a massive stockpile of attacks, I was ready for anything, even if I'd been forced to put Cark on the backburner for a bit to prioritize my team. I still had two fire attacks in any case so that wasn't urgent. Aside from the massive amount of wishes I'd spent the week granting, we also spent the entire time ass deep in combat training. Alden, true to his word, didn't rat us out, but he also kept his promise of watching us like a hawk, which to him apparently meant harsh and brutal training plans he custom tailored for us.
We could have turned him down, but it gave us a good excuse to interact with him, and a better excuse to continue our training and shore up our foundations a bit in combat. The week was a hellish exercise in persistence as we forced ourselves to follow various training regimens, some reasonable, like weight lifting and fighting constructs, and some insane, like being forced to run across precariously balanced sticks without stats or Skills.
He gave each of us separate tasks and we undertook them willingly, being forced to spar with new opponents daily to test what we learned, even when dog tired. With our Focus and dedication though, the last week had definitely shown results. We were all much stronger than we had been when it started, even if our Skills hadn't actually improved that much. Alden had helped us merge our Skillsets into our combat styles more holistically, developing trials that allowed us to use one skill at a time to accomplish a task outside the purview of that Skill until we learned to apply them in disadvantageous situations.
After enough of the sessions we were able to use our Skills much more naturally and fluidly in combat, and had learned a ton about when to use them too, rather than just how. We had learned more in the last week than we had since becoming Ascendants, and I could tell without even seeing it that if I fought the me from a week ago, I would have crushed myself within the span of a minute. Honestly at this point I was looking forward to upgrading my DS Mastery and enchanting, because twenty four charges daily just wasn't enough.
My stockpile of daily attacks had been plenty when I first made the jump up to G rank, but over the last week I'd seen how much smoother I could really be when using my Skills, that kind of fluidity required a sort of ingrained repetition that I couldn't afford at the moment, so I'd also added studying Enchantment to my daily regimen. I'd carved out some time to Enchant at the end of every night with whatever points I had left. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get the Skill moving again, which was all I needed.
Of course, this was what the three of us had been doing, but Jessie had been undergoing much less training. Or rather our blonde team member had been her own specialized training at the Beast Lord Garden, working her way up the ranks as demanded. She did a few team battles with us, but mostly spent her time in E district, learning more about beast taming and helping heal injured animals. She somehow managed to come home exhausted most night, even with her Vitality, but she was clearly thrilled, and had even picked up Minor Beast Taming Mastery Skill.
She wasn't going to merge that one, because her eventual goal of saving her brother required her to have the life force related ability, and it was already insanely useful and powerful, but still, having the Skill made her current abilities that much more effective, so no one was going to complain about it. She'd been doing so well that Melinda had even arranged a personal card for her to use the lifts down to E district, which was convenient because I didn't have time to escort her there every day.
Training aside though, this week had also brought as closer to Alden, who I believed was growing to trust us much more than he had before. Even as he trained us we talked to him, and while he wasn't revealing groundbreaking secrets about the lives of the founders of the circus, he happily shared anecdotes about when the cavalcade was just starting out and the antics all the original performers got up to. After the full week of getting to know each other though, he finally made enough progress to confirm some things, and asked us to meet him in the same spot.
When we got back there Callie set up the field again, resonating her Stealth Skill, and putting us back into that undetectable state. Despite all the interacting, this was the first time Alden had asked us to head back here, so it was a reasonable assumption that he wanted to talk to us about something sensitive, which really only left one option. Callie smiled at the bearded man. "So, I take it you found something and are deciding to trust us? Or are you planning to share the recipe for the moonshine mash you've been working on."
"First of all." Said Alden, in an amused tone. "I do trust you, and yes I have information. Second of all, that recipe will follow me to the grave, and you can try to pry it from my cold dead fingers after that. I've been poking around while I had you kids doing your training. I had to oversee most of it, but some of the exercises didn't actually serve a purpose other than forcing you to do embarrassing shit so you would be distracted." He grinned at us. "Don't worry, I made sure to have someone record those for me when I wasn't there."
I bristled at that. "You fucker! I knew that crab walking thing wasn't a real training method. Don't tell me any of the others, it'll just piss me off. I'm happier reading some nonexistent meaning into everything I did. I suspect I might have learned a few things you didn't even mean to teach me, and I don't want to ruin it. Plus if I don't have details I wont need to punch you in the throat for the humiliation." I made sure my tone was jovial enough that he didn't take it as an actual threat.
I needn't have bothered. "You're a hundred years too early for that lad. But as you wish." Alden choked in voice rife with barely controlled laughter. "Anyway, as I was saying before you mouthy brats interrupted me with your rabble rousing, I've been looking into what you told me, and I managed to confirm at least some of it. Mel is being too careful for me to manage to uncover what she's doing directly but I managed to put together a series of clues and figure out when she's meeting with her benefactors."
"I don't like it..." Alden said sadly. "But I'm willing to bring you along to scout the meeting. Something about this feels off, and worst case I can keep you three in line, but if I bring you I want your word that none of you will interfere actively without my say so. Aside from not knowing exactly what's going on, I also don't want you ruining things if the meeting isn't what we think it is. I will stop you if you try to get in the way of legitimate Pavilion business, is that understood?"
His voice was serious enough that we knew there was no room for argument, and we all nodded. Callie confirmed it aloud as soon as she saw we were on board. "Agreed. We'll give you priority on when to move. All we want is to see these people. We don't need to act directly." I had ways of identifying others, so it wasn't necessary for us to wade into a fight in an inopportune moment. Not that we were afraid to wade in if he decided to intervene, but promising to stay back so we could get the information we were here for was fine. We could always attack later if needed.
The bearded man sighed in relief. "Good. I won't lie to you, I'm a bit worried about all this. Mel might be in over her head. I don't doubt she received plenty of assurances we would all be alright, and was probably even promised she would retain control, but she's a bit straightforward at the best of times. When she's dealing with her feelings for Cicero she's practically a bull in mid charge, and it wouldn't be hard to slip some sneaky terms by her. I like you kids well enough, but I'm not in the business of trusting most newcomers. I doubt whoever Mel is working with has intentions as benevolent as she probably thinks they do."
I winced at the reminder of learning that exact lesson from Cicero not too long ago. Callie, ever the focused member of our little band, got to the heart of the matter. "So when is this meeting taking place? It would be nice to have some time to prepare. Not that we're going to need it for a simple recon mission, but its nice to make sure of things before you go charging off into danger. Double check our equipment and so on." It was a pretty flimsy excuse. He probably thought we wanted to stock up on bombs or something. In reality I knew Callie was thinking about using wishes to make sure things shook out in our favor.
Alden gave her a suspicious look, but finally nodded with another sigh. "It's tomorrow night. I only managed to find out about it by tracking the movements of some of Mel's more loyal lackeys. That girl has a knack for inspiring her people, but she isn't always too smart about deploying them. Battle maniacs don't make good spies. I don't know exactly who the meeting is with, like I said, but I was able to put together its existence at least. As for the exact time, I know one of the people who will be there. We'll tail him to the meet."
With that laid out, we arranged a time the next night to meet up, and then said our goodbyes. None of us were stupid enough to spend the day training and getting our asses kicked before a possible huge confrontation. We all headed back up, calling Jessie home from the Beast Lord Garden to fill her in. We would be bringing the wolves along for this obviously. They were very stealthy when needed and would be a huge force multiplier, even if they had to hang back at the start. Once that was done we started to plan as best we could. I had the sinking suspicion that this wasn't just going to be a simple recon mission, and if it went sideways, we needed to be ready.
