Wish upon the Stars : A Superhero Cultivation LitRPG

We didn't try to recruit the Magnificent Fable Forest, mostly because they were working for a faction that was currently actively pissed at us. While technically most teams could be part of the WCP or the Starchaser Palace and whatever faction they were in at the same time, Callie and I didn't see any upside to trying to recruit someone who had already admitted they had orders to teach us a lesson.

So once I finished fixing up Albai's spine, we just left, heading home to talk without any meetings or networking for a change. Which was a good thing, because as soon as I got there my first order of business was tracking down Zeke to find out what the fuck had just happened, and everyone else came with us.

Zeke, of course, had been there to watch the match, but had come home right after his own way, bypassing the hour of travel time with what I assumed was either an artifact or some stupid broken Skill. Well, or he just flew home. I knew that traditionally once your Impact passed one hundred (D-rank in other words) you could literally step on air and fly by manifesting the Impact onto the air under your feet. At Zeke's level he could probably fly insanely fast.

Either way, when I found him he was in the kitchen eating...enchiladas. I glanced down at the take out container on the counter and raised an eyebrow. "Did you somehow get down to Doomtown, order enchiladas from the Raving Baby, and then come back in the time it took us to get home?"

He stared at me for a second, taking a bite, and pushed the bag off the counter into the trash. "No." He said through mouthful of food.

Mel actually giggled at that, while Abel was glaring at my uncle with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns for picking up his favorite food and not bringing enough for him (not that I blamed Zeke, given the amount of those things my mentor could pack away).

Callie sighed loudly. "Right. Moving on. You saw that fight, so what exactly happened? We have a basic understanding since Abel knows that Domains can nullify abilities like his, but it isn't exactly something we've seen before. Are you allowed to tell us about them?"

He looked at her with narrowed eyes, chewing as he hummed speculatively, then swallowed loudly and burped, making all of us grimace. "Sure." He said casually. "This is considered common knowledge, since so many people have Domains in some parts of the universe. What do you want to know?"

I rolled my eyes. "Everything?" I had to hold back a sigh, because of COURSE he had to make things difficult.

"No." He said firmly. "THAT would be interference. I'll give you the crash course. Domains are a special type of Skill or Ability that allows a person to impose their power around themselves in a radius. They're kind of the opposite of a high level Intermediate combat skill, since you're offloading a large portion of the stress onto the space around you, so they don't require quite as much in the way of soul strength."

I blinked at that. "Wait...then why doesn't everyone use them? If they can counter a Master Candidate they must be really strong. Shouldn't they be way more common?"

Zeke shook his head, taking another bite and talking as he chewed. "Nope. There are downsides. Domains are kind of complicated, but the basics is that there are two kinds. Personal and Fable Domains. Fable Domains are based on stories like that Wonderland Domain. They're well explored, but that comes with its own issues."

"Oh." Said Callie in understanding. "Fable Domains aren't unique, so they would be pretty boring to anyone who knew how they worked. Especially if there's a lot of overlap, that means you would rank up really slow right?"

He pointed his fork at her. "Give the girl a cookie. You guessed it. Fable Domains are incredibly standardized, and unlike the nobility cultivation the Empire uses, there are enough variations that it dilutes the mass renown that they might have as a singular concept."

That made sense. I'd wondered why, say, a Count could funnel belief from the entire concept of that rank of nobility and it didn't work the same for Fable Domains. "Ok." I said curiously. "What about the other kind. Personal Domains? I'm assuming that's a less well known story suited to the user?"

"Yup." He said cheerfully. "But much like Unique Skills those are monstrously hard to rank up. They're still based on stories, but lesser known ones." He paused. "There's...other ways to apply the concept, but that's higher level stuff. Regardless. Domains are the nemesis of spatial Skills and abilities, and manifestations count. It isn't something you'll come across."

That was vague, but pretty much meant I wasn't getting any more. Luckily I had another question this whole thing had brought up that I hadn't had a chance to ask. "I'm curious though. Do you use heroic cultivation? I've never asked, but I know the Unity is the youngest god, and I don't know how old you are. Did you come from the Conglomerate?"

He actually stopped eating to look up at me cooly. "I was wondering when you would get around to asking that. No. I was born in the Empire, though I won't tell you how old I am. I use the job system. I'm currently a Legendary Voltomancer. That's Volto like the style of mask, not Volt as in electricity. Most people in the Empire use the job system. After all, if everyone was a noble it wouldn't exactly be efficient."

I nodded thoughtfully. "Like how some people in the Fairieland use the nobility system, but some people use Domains? I guess there's more variety in the other factions."

"Of course." He agreed. "Heroic cultivation is considered fairly new and untested. It has limitations and benefits like anything, but Ascendant culture is old, as are most Ascendants who are in charge of it. Most of them are taking a wait and see approach and consider the Unity's whole guild and this entire faction as an experiment."

"An...experiment?" I said blankly. "The Conglomerate as a whole and the Unity guild has to be centuries old at this point, how the hell does anyone consider that a passing trend?"

He just shrugged. "High end Ascendants have more than three or four hundred Impact, and you know that high Vitality keeps you in good health for long into the natural lifespan, while a person only ages a single biological year for the number of chronological years that equals their current Impact. Since people can live a hundred to a hundred and twenty or so natural years, multiplying that by Impact means high ranking Ascendants can live for tens of thousands of years. On that timescale, a few centuries isn't anything much."

When he put it like that I could see his point, but it was still a staggering thing to think about. It also kind of explained why he didn't want to talk about his own age. Who knew exactly how long he'd been around. I'd probably avoid thinking about it too. "Do...do you think we should switch to the job system? Would that cause me to lose my modifier for the Wish power?"

"Short answer is no. You CAN switch over if you want, your job would just need to use Wish as your Base Skill. It's not something I really want to get into unless you actually go through with it. But the Wishmaster position has existed since well before this particular cultivation system, and obviously the original Wishmaster didn't use it. He created the Wish Skill and then used it to create the Wishmaster job."

That said some interesting things about how the job system worked to me, not least of which that the Base Skill probably worked at least a bit like an inborn ability. I didn't know much about jobs, though from what I did know they insulated you somewhat from recursion at the expense of some of the speed you got from heroic cultivation.

I had no real desire to change my cultivation style though. It might be a bit safer, but it would also be slower, which would draw attention. Maybe I'd change my mind later, but at the moment I was fine with the way I was doing things. Plus I was pretty sure that making Wish my Base Skill would end up giving me the same limitations as I currently had, so there wasn't really a point, with the added problem of needing to somehow TRAIN my Wish Skill, and gods only knew how I'd do that.

This was the naturals vs. Martial Arts Skill user argument, and I had no desire to get rid of my free rank ups in Wish out of some misguided faith in my ability to understand the damn Skill well enough to grind it past where I currently was.

Zeke didn't seem interested in talking more though, since he put his head down and focused on his enchiladas. I knew him well enough not to expect any more from him. I could see a faint glow from his forehead under his hair, so I suspected SOMETHING he'd just told me or been about to tell me had been counter to the geas. Callie must have felt my guilt and also backed off, turning to Abel.

"So. Did you have fun during the match? I didn't get a chance to see what you did, but clearly that caterpillar thing wasn't able to take it."

The grin that split his face was one of the most ferocious I'd seen on anyone in my life. "Nope. They made the mistake of assuming hamstringing my reach made me useless. But Ragam is about pinpoint precision and focusing force into a small area. Bigger opponents aren't a weakness, they're a strength. Took me a few dozen blows on the same spot but I punched through the armor on that summon like an awl. When you dropped the Domain I was finishing up with the summoner and the metal girl."

Mel piped up. "The werewolf was surprisingly fun in a fight. Her regeneration was nuts, some kind of racial trait thing I think. Even cauterizing the wounds as I made them wasn't enough. Good thing I was strong enough to muscle her with all my Might. Though she was definitely a marathon runner and not a sprinter, so the help from Abel at the end there saved me some serious time."

"What do you think we'll have to deal with tomorrow?" I asked hesitantly. "Seems like they're getting tougher and tougher every round as people are eliminated. Only two more left, so our next opponent will probably be a monster."

Abel just shrugged. "Who cares. You got me don't you? You shouldn't worry about the next two rounds." His grin took on an edge. "You should worry about the five rounds after that." He paused. "At least unless you get one of the bye spots. But somehow I don't think you have the luck for that."

I just shook my head with a laugh. "Well, good to see you don't have confidence issues." I turned to walk past where Zeke was still eating quietly. "Now, why don't I make us all something for lunch, since SOMEONE didn't think to bring enough for everyone else."

Zeke just flipped me off without stopping his food rampage and I rolled my eyes as I started taking out a pan to start work. I would have asked what they wanted, but given Abel was here I didn't need to. He always picked the same thing if he had the option, and honestly the enchiladas smelled good anyway. Now, I just had to find out if I could make them as good as the ones at the Raving Baby. Probably not, but it never hurt to try.