The next day I took off. I was exhausted and our only real lead needed a decryption expert anyway, which Callie was looking for. She reported our findings to the guild, getting a light slap on the wrist for moving without backup, mostly because with Attic Bat's death I think they didn't want to pile on her too hard. Still, I decided that for my day off I was going to have Benny over to hang out and finally do some exploring with my wish power.

I admitted I'd been neglecting it a bit. Sure, I'd tried to start filling my quota, but I couldn't really experiment with strangers. I needed someone in the know, and I'd been too busy to do it. In my defense, my life had gotten nuts. Pretty girls, new powers, evil serial killers, the whole shebang. But still, this was my power and the better I could use it the more advantage I would have going forward. So I called Benny to come over, told him to get anything he could use as compensation and then sat down to wait. Wait and think.

To begin with, I went over what I knew about my abilities. Firstly, my power had a harder time affecting those of higher impact, and having lower impact seemed to make things cheaper. This lined up pretty well with how Impact worked for everyone. Mortals were easy to mess with and higher ranks were a bitch to affect unless you had a ton of power. Secondly was the mechanics of my power. As far as I could tell, the Wish ability was some kind of meta power that made powers, at least temporary ones.

When someone made a wish, my power seemed to create a sort of one time use template for that wish, treating it like a consumable ability. The stats needed for the wish were channeled through the ability to make it function, the base amount amplified the structure of the wish...somehow. But the wish was destroyed in that process. The ability seemed to use the connection of the wish to draw the compensation into the ability itself like a second type of fuel, and when it was destroyed that compensation flooded back into me along with the stats that were used.

For things like bank transfers, it seemed it was the concept of the compensation that was used, which worked the same. That made sense given the nature of abilities as a conceptual force. That same conceptual nature also helped explain why trying to wish for secrets was apparently incredibly cost inefficient. Whereas normal cultivation empowered things through renown, based on the feeling I got when trying to feel out that encryption wish, the opposite was also true. Ignorance was its own sort of power, and a secret kept had conceptual weight that I needed Perception to get past.

I also knew my power was unique in some way, or at least special. The existence of that three times modifier for wish granting and the fact that altering my power destroyed it meant that somehow my ability had been optimized. Given the process for synergizing I could only assume someone had built the damn thing, probably the original Wishmaster, and I couldn't imagine the amount of skills he'd needed to include to get it to where it was. I also had no clue how the hell he'd managed to create some sort of bloodline for it.

From what I can tell most abilities were semi random, and someone could get anything. The existence of an entire line of people with the Wish ability, or even a fraction of that line, meant the Wishmaster had done at least two things with powers that made no gods damned sense to me. I shook that train of thought off though. It was interesting but didn't help with my actual experiments. As if summoned by the thought I heard the doorbell ring and let Benny inside.

He gave me a grin and carried a backpack in, tossing it on my couch. "Hey man, brought the stuff. You ready to get this show on the road? Because I have so many things I want to wish for. I know we can only do four today but still, I'm pumped for this." He gestured over to the bag. "Not to mention I called in some favors with dads old friends and got some pretty valuable stuff to offer as payment. I know you said the payments have to be legit, no back end deals or your power won't accept."

I nodded, curious what was in the bag, but not wanting to take it in case my power decided I was taking possession of them and counted them as mine. I didn't know the limits here and I wanted to be careful. "Ok. So before you make your wishes a few things. Like we said you only get four. Try to aim for stuff that doesn't involve high ranking Ascendant things. Skills are fine, can't do an ability until I hit G rank and get more impact. Other than that, go nuts." I nodded, thinking I got everything. I didn't want to limit him too much in case he found some loophole I hadn't considered.

He grinned. "Well hell man, I'm just spoiled for choice." He hopped up to sit on the back of the couch, something Zeke HATED for some reason and that he never did when my Uncle was home. "So I've been thinking this over, and I want to make my first wish something that'll help you. I know if you convince me to do that it doesn't work because the compensation will be unfair, but since it's my idea it should be fine. So with that said, I'm going to try the obvious. I wish we knew who this serial killer was."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I winced because I was pretty sure it wouldn't work, but I confirmed anyway, no harm in trying.

Insufficient stat points to grant wish. Requirements: 90 Fantasy, 250 Perception, 150 Focus, 3 Impact. I blinked at that last bit. I could only assume I needed more Impact than the killer, but more importantly countering the ignorance of all those people cost a quarter of a thousand points. Between all the stats the requirements were halfway to the F rank cutoff.

I shook my head at him sadly. "Sorry man. Nice try, but secrets seem to be a bit of a blind spot for me unless I decide to stack Perception and Focus hard." He looked downcast, but I reached out to slap him on the shoulder. "It's cool. It means a lot that you tried, and honestly it might have worked. Better safe than sorry there, so no harm trying. I'm honestly feeling like an idiot for not considering it before." I chuckled wryly at my own slip up but decided to change the subject. "Anyway, you still have your four wishes. What do you want to wish for?"

I figured getting his hearts desire would be the best way to take his mind off of the failure, and lo and behold I was right. He grinned broadly, rubbing his hands together. "You're right, no more moping, time for the good stuff. The first thing I wish for is...cooking skills! I want genius chef skills so I can cook my own meals and enjoy them again." He glared at me. "You completely ruined normal food for me with that steak you bastard. I wish for the best cooking skill you can give me with your current stats!"

I blinked. That...holy shit that was a great workaround. It optimized the skill he got without the danger of outright rejection. Shit why hadn't I thought of that. I mean, I'd have to tweak the wording for people who didn't know about my stats, but a vague disclaimer about possible failure would really maximize my output and cut down on rejected wishes.

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I confirmed.

Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 6 Vitality, 15 Focus, 6 Fantasy. Compensation required.

I grinned. A quick check of my stats confirmed that those were the max possible values I could put to use. This wish was as strong as I could make it. "Alright. Seems like that worked. Now you just need to pay me for it. Keep in mind this skill will most likely be the peak of Minor. Which will make you one of the best mortal chefs on the planet, and put you right on the edge of Lesser once you get some Impact. Whatever you pay with has to be pretty valuable." I'd love to just give it to him, but sadly that wasn't in the cards.

He almost cackled with glee as he leapt off the back of the couch, circling around it to grab the bag and dig through it before pulling out...a fucking emerald the size of my fist. I blinked. He seemed pretty pleased with himself. "I can't get more of those magic gems or whatever, but I figured maybe you could use this for enchanting. If they naturally can gain stats maybe they're better at holding them or something." I blinked again because holy shit he was right, I'd already discovered that materials affected enchantments. I was betting that Emerald would hold work great for a Vitality enchantment.

I took the stone and confirmed the wish again, and I was happy to see that the thing was enough to cover his costs. Honestly this was a win for me too, even if it was still fair compensation, because I could definitely bum meals off him in the future. Fortunately seeing an upside was apparently fine as long as I wasn't actively planning to invalidate the exchange later somehow.

Like I could feel without even trying that giving him skills and then trading those skills to me wouldn't work. My power wouldn't accept any payment offered for that wish because it would be something for nothing in a sense. I felt the static charge build in my skin as usual, this one seemed pretty heavy, I imagined it being so close to my limit was making it feel more dramatic. When the feeling finally discharged I saw that telltale purple flash in my friend's eyes as the skill was formed.

He hissed in pain, grabbing his head. This was much more dramatic than last time presumably because this skill was pressing up against the limits of the Minor tier. I was pretty sure mortals couldn't have Lesser skills. I was assuming all the extra Focus was for downloading the information into his head...or creating it? I was still fuzzy on the mechanics of wishes even having done more than a few of them. Still, as before the feeling passed and he blinked away the wince. "Holy shit man, that was...really, really painful. Way more than last time. But I got more out of it too."

Grinning, he hopped up, his pain forgotten as he bolted to my kitchen. We DID have a few things in the fridge, even if we mostly used the materializer because neither my Uncle nor I could cook. Materializer food was usually decent, but it was on the more expensive side, and they used standardized meals for the templates on the machines so they could keep the quality standard consistent. Properly cooked food made by an actual chef was obviously better.

Which was why I was shocked when I saw what Benny was able to do with the random assortment of shitty ingredients we had on hand. His fingers flew, knife flashing as he took apart the veggies and cracked the eggs and grabbed flour from...somewhere. Within about fifteen minutes he'd put together a solid tempura out of just random stuff and was carefully putting the stuff on a plate for us. His satisfaction as I took a bite and my eyes widened in delight was obvious. This was amazing. Peak Minor skill was absolutely fantastic even if it wasn't reality warping power. I couldn't help but get excited for what was to come. After all, my best friend had three wishes left.