After getting the wishes out of the way (Callie paid four Vitality for four Might putting her literally one point short of a hundred) we all took a break in that huge room to once again search for any loot that might be around. As everyone looked around for possible gear or materials the zombies may have dropped, I was taking a short break and checking my stats for the first time in a while.

Wishmaster candidate status. G-rank. Ability: Beginner Wish- Five times a day grant a Beginner wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics. Might 58 Impact 12 Fantasy 21 Vitality 29 Focus 38 Perception

40

Creation 32 Skills: Beginner Doom Sovereign Mastery,Lesser Enchanting Mastery, Lesser Cooking Mastery,Lesser Inventing Mastery, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Gymnastics Mastery, Minor Swimming Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Minor Singing Mastery,Minor Poker Mastery, Minor Archery Mastery, Minor Boxing Mastery, Minor Balam Mastery

I'd made some serious progress since we'd arrived out here, but it drove home more than anything how much longer I'd be spending at each successive rank. The trek to F rank was a slow grind, and I wasn't even halfway there. Of course, I expected a nice bump when this hunt ended and all the footage got uploaded, but it would still be a while until I got there. It made it even more imperative that I spend as much time as possible on combat training, because those skills would be what kept me safe against other opponents at my own rank.

Callie was having a field day sorting through the revenant corpses looking for possibly valuable stuff. Looting was one of her favor parts of fighting monsters, morbid as it sometimes was, and I had to admit it was cute how excited she got when she picked up some cursed dagger or something. We didn't find many pieces of gear either here or in the skeleton chamber, but we had found a few.

A knife, a cup, a ring, two rubies the size of golf balls that may or may not have been Ascendant materials and weirdly, a top hat. We had zero idea what any of the stuff did, but we'd packed it all up to be identified later. I was kind of hopeful that Zeke had an identification skill we could pay him to use to help us figure out what everything was. At the moment my girlfriend had dig up an extremely creepy looking doll she seemed ecstatic to have found, and I couldn't help but wonder how the hell something like that ended up down here.

Unfortunately along with her glee came a lack of caution, and I had to walk over and physically take the doll away from her because I was worried she might activate some kind of awful curse. "We talked about this. You need to let Sarah use her holy hand skill to move any treasure we find down here. She said there's a good chance that some of the stuff might be infused with dark energy." I dropped the doll on the ground. Neither of us touched it with bare hands, but even with gloves it wasn't a smart risk.

Callie just huffed. "Fine. I still say it's ok, but since I was outvoted Sarah can stow it in the pack with the other stuff. Still, the thing is obviously only H rank. No way some stupid curse on it will be able to do anything to me." Knowing what my poison could theoretically do if stacked enough I wasn't willing to risk it. The whole curse thing could get nasty, and everyone else had agreed with me about it. "Anyway, this chamber was a pretty good haul. We found a few objects, and even a box of gold coins. Not that the coins are really useful to us since they're just moral money, but the box is bigger on the inside which is amazing!"

I blinked at that. "Holy shit really? They had a legit spatial artifact down here and they were using it to hold gold of all things? Seems like kind of a waste, but hey, big win for us. How big is it?" Spatial gear was rare and tough to come by at our level. Mostly it ended up being buildings or vehicles. A box like that could be carried in a backpack and would be crazy valuable to us for storage.

She just shrugged. "I don't know, probably about a hundred square feet. Hard to tell without someone to appraise it. We dumped the coins out to get an estimate and then put them back in. Celine says you can sell gold coins for chits to certain types of fae, though the exchange rate sucks apparently." I imagined it was probably like I rank chits too, but still better than nothing. I'd been convinced we'd have to leave the gold strewn across the floor of our rooms or something as a decoration. Mortal stuff just wasn't really a viable trade good.

That was a really decent sized spatial container though, and it was a worth a bunch of cash even if we hadn't had a use for it, which we did. Callie sighed happily and slumped against me, surprising a laugh from me as I caught her. She nuzzled against my chest. "I LOVE finding treasure. This is so much more fun than shady back alley crime fighting. We should totally do more stuff like this." Given the pressure she'd been under it was really nice to see her so happy, and I gave her a squeeze before stepping back to help everyone continue looking.

There wasn't anything else around that we could find, I tried Seek Hidden, and despite not being able to scan for 'treasure' I did use the ability on revenant corpses and then sift through everything for anything NOT glowing red. Still, there wasn't anything else useful for us to find, and we finally packed up, ready to move on. When we got to the exit we verified that this cavern was the last of the tunnels before we reached the main cave area we'd been looking down on when we arrived, and everyone retreated to talk over out next move before we committed to the next leg of the journey.

It wasn't a long talk, we already had a plan, we mostly just wanted a second to take a breath and get on the same page. After that we headed out into the main cavern to see what was going on. Once again, the second I stepped inside I noticed the thick black grass carpeting the stone, interspersed with glowing blue flowers. In the distance I could see small banks of fog drifting around in strange patterns, with dark shapes moving among them. Callie lowered her voice to talk to us all. "Ok, we need to be careful about noise down here. This is all one big chamber, so if we're too loud taking out the next group we might pull way too many of them."

We all nodded solemnly at that. I did have a suggestion to help though. I lowered my own voice to an identical murmur. "What if we don't fight them in groups. If we pull one or two at a time it would be way slower, but ultimately safer for all of us. Sucking Mud would be perfect for this actually, given how slow they move for the most part. I could snag one of them, and since they're all mindless killing machines and there wouldn't be a target for them to focus on they wouldn't group up and attack."

There was no way to tell if that would actually work, but it seemed reasonable, and Callie thought so to, so we decided to give it a shot. We all headed into the fog, moving incredibly slowly to try and avoid any attention. We'd considered letting just Callie and I go ahead since we had stealth, but decided there was a better shot at a quick noiseless kill if everyone was there, so we moved as a group and just tried our best to be careful not to make any sound. The black grass was suprisingly good at muffling noise, and we did a decent job of moving unnoticed until we finally closed in on one of the shapes.

A small pack of wights was stalking their way through the fog ahead of us when we finally got within range. We stopped behind a small hill that I was pretty sure was just a big rock covered with black grass. I had no clue what the stuff was or how it was growing but it seemed to be everywhere. Regardless once we got close enough I focused on a ten foot radius around the edge of the pack and triggered Sucking Mud.

The ground started to give way, dragging at the wight that was closest before it could get free. It started to struggle a bit, but the others didn't pay any attention to it and by the time they were out of range the skill wore off and the ground solidified, trapping the wight temporarily underground. I knew it would tear free pretty easily if given a second, but Benny zipped forward and grabbed it with his tranq hand. He held on as the thing slowly stopped struggling and fell still. Cark stepped up and grabbed it around the head, tearing it off easily without making a sound.

The wight obviously had no treasure on it or something, but it was good proof of concept. Making sure the others were out of range we all circled up. "Ok, that worked, but it seems a little greedy to expect it to keep happening that smoothly." Callie was pleased with the results, but obviously saw the flaw in that plan. I had to admit it had an element of luck to it that repetition could really screw with. "Sarah, what's the range on that holy hand skill? Like if we wanted you to grab a straggler and drag it back here could you do it?"

The blonde cleric nodded thoughtfully. "Probably yeah, if I had to. It might alert the others though. The holy energy would start eroding the undead flesh and it would definitely scream. I'm not sure I could pull the thing back in time." Despite the frown on her face she held up a hand, and with some concentration a second hand made of glowing white-gold light manifested above it as she flexed her main skill. I had to admit the thing was pretty cool looking. I wondered what it would look like when it burned an undead.

Callie was the one frowning at that, but her face lit up as she got an idea. "Well what if you grabbed it by the throat. It wouldn't be able to scream and you could just haul it off into the fog. Assuming you have that kind of range or mobility? I don't know how the hand works?" I was curious to see the thing in action too, but I figured if it was strong enough to use directly in melee she would have mentioned it. An ambush might be possible, but I was betting that depended heavily on what her Might stat was at. Admittedly the wights were H rank themselves, so it was a possibility.

They got down to talking specifics, whispering furtively as they planned out our next attack, and I gave them space, wandering to the edge of a small radius to look out into the fog and keep watch. I wanted to make sure we didn't get ambushed just in case another patrol came through. Staring out into the fog I could just barely make out the shape of the dark fortress out in the distance, and I was more than ready for our big infiltration mission. I wondered what we would be doing while Callie broke in to raid the place? All I could do was hope it took more than a day to get there, a few wishes would make sure my girlfriend was as safe as possible.