Lament was not pleased at that big flashy death of the giant spider. "I HAD it." She groused. "I was having fun, and then you had to go be a big showoff." Which to be fair, might have been true, even if that wasn't really the point. While Lament COULD have probably killed the spider, it would have taken much longer and the rest of us would have been in way more danger.

Wren, who obviously understood that, cleared his throat. "Yeah...I'm with them. We were wearing it down, but that thing was dangerous. You can scratch your battle itch in the tournament." She glared at him, but he seemed unperturbed. While he might have been scared of her, she was also a teammate. He wasn't worried about her attacking him for no reason, and he was right about this.

To my surprise, Callie stepped up next to the spear wielder and patted her on the shoulder. "It's ok. We still have all the loot to gather. You can help me with that. Collecting treasure always makes me feel better." Her voice was cheerful and almost bouncy as she started forward to once again start gutting tiny spiders to check their stomachs for valuable materials. Lament, not having anything better to do, started helping, while I went to check on Abel.

My mentor was flexing his hand, grimacing at the motion. "You ok?" I asked as I approached. I'd never really used any abilities like that on another person. Maybe one of them or something, but not a massive stack of powerful attacks. My head was still pounding from the strain of manifesting all of them.

Abel looked almost grim. "I'm fine." He said tightly, still flexing his hand. "There are downsides to that kind of attack. It was exceptionally powerful, but using it the way I did increased the strain on my body. My hand is a little raw. It'll heal, it's just going to suck for a while." I wasn't sure what that meant, given his hand was in a glove, but to make Abel, one of the toughest people I had ever met, react like this, it must have been agony.

That was kind of a scary thought. It was easy to think of my teacher as some invincible badass, but knowing he was mortal under all that terrifying combat prowess wasn't comforting. If anything, not being able to take his invincibility for granted was going to make this tournament more of a worry, not less. I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, activating another scan heal/heal burst combo.

Scan heal on its own wasn't incredibly useful for someone our rank, but Jessie's heal bursts were incredibly effective, if unfocused. The combination let the powerful healing energy of the life force target injuries and mend them directly instead of wasting the extra power supercharging the body with extra energy. Abel blinked at me as the green life force swarmed is hand and began repairing it, though the damage hardly went away immediately.

My own injuries from earlier were still mending, though they'd mostly started to fade after a few minutes and another scan heal/ heal burst combo. The stored attacks were extremely useful, but at this rate wouldn't last long. To be fair we normally wouldn't be hunting down an F-ranked creature. Being able to finish it off was pretty impressive, even as a team. I glanced over at the cracked and damaged armored spider, which Wren and Lestri were trying to pry out of its protection.

"That was damn impressive though." I gestured to the spider. "Even with the augmentation from my skills. Being able to kill that thing so easily is no joke." We'd pretty much set the fight up perfectly, or else I wasn't sure we'd have won, but Abel's contribution was by far the highest. Granted, having so much hard stone to act as an anvil to that blow had certainly helped.

Abel didn't like happy though. He just shook his head. "Yes and no. We got really lucky. That thing wasn't made to fight on flat ground, and your skill restrained it. Even so, there were several times it could have killed us. I got overconfident. I've killed F-rank humans before who got in my way, and it made me confident in fighting up ranks. Seeing Lament fight though, it reminded me that I was fighting useless trash when I did that. There are other powerful people like me, and even at my own rank they might pose a challenge."

I glanced at the spear wielder where she was helping Callie. "Are you saying you don't think you can beat her?" Lament was scary, but Abel was Abel. I couldn't get my head around him being afraid of someone. Sure, I felt that kind of fear, but Abel seemed so unshakeable. He was a force of nature.

He shook his head. "No." Then he paused. "It's more that I don't KNOW if I can beat her. Which on one hand is exciting. I love a good challenge. On the other hand though, if she's here, someone else at the same level may be as well. The team match will be fine, but what if one of you or Mel run into someone like her. Not all of them will be as affable as she is. I'm starting to worry about how our team will do in this tournament."

I had my own ideas for dealing with that. "Don't worry too much about us. I have ways of keeping us safe." We'de already tested wishes for retreating and a tournament would make that kind of thing even easier to arrange. A single breach of the rules and we could be spirited off to the waiting room. I wanted to win this, but not at the cost of one of my friends. Worst case we would give up on the Moonsong Glade. It wasn't worth losing anyone I cared about in this competition.

Escape wishes were the best possible safety net, and with four of us it was entirely possible without compromising my contract with the Beast Lord Garden for even a day. I couldn't wish for a safety net myself, so that only left three, and Abel didn't seem to feel he needed one. I had two spare wishes a day, and that meant I could ensure the safety of our teammates without letting anyone know those two wishes had been used.

This was all a matter for later though. I clapped Abel on the shoulder, eliciting a small wince since it was his still healing arm. "Anyway. Don't sweat the small stuff. Just make sure you're at your best. In the meantime we should head over and move that spider. It's on top of a fortune in Ascendant materials." He grinned at me then, a quick flash of gratitude and amusement that settled into his usual mocking smirk and we headed over to where the shattered spider lay.

As we closed in, I couldn't help but whistle. The sheer size of the thing was awe inspiring up close. Seeing it on the web or from a distance hadn't done it justice. I felt a thrill of fear clench my stomach and weaken my knees as I imagine standing to face something this big and terrifying like lament had. No running or dodging, just me against the enemy head on.

At the very least, I knew that wouldn't be a problem here. This thing was dead as a door nail. Half submerged in stone, the top of the monster was cracked and broken, but more than that, the armor and meat below it were damaged and corroded. Touch of Tears, under the magnification of all my Skills and Abel's own tremendous power, had been carried along with the force and truly destroyed the spider. Even with that corrosive effect gone after I dispersed it, the remains had been seriously damaged.

Which we gave no fucks about. We weren't here for spider meat. We'd strip the armor for sale just in case, and probably the legs and mandibles in case they could be made into weapons, but at the moment it was what lie under the beast that we wanted. I activated Sucking Mud, wincing slightly but still able to do so since I wasn't altering it at all. My soul was extremely strained right now, to the point even normal Skills hurt, but they were still usable at least.

Luckily my body was fine, and the two of us had no trouble lifting the bulk of the spider and hurling it off to one side. A quick use of Seek Hidden left me able to see all of the materials, and Callie's timely arrival (she'd seen us move it and come running) to supply me with a shadow forged net, let me fish up all the gems and leave them in a substantial pile off to one side along with all the others.

Most of them were G-rank, since they needed to be digestable to the baby spiders. A few large pieces of stone were apparently F-rank materials the spider had been saving to consume itself, but they were few and far between. With the base currency in H-rank chits, it was estimated most of the smaller ones would got for a few dozen. Materials could only be worked by crafters, and unless we held onto them to sell piecemeal we were going to need to give a bulk price to unload them all.

The F-ranked stuff we were going to keep for the big auction. We were going anyway so we figured we might as well. We'd unload the spider armor and claws at the same time. Callie took great relish in totaling up the gains, figuring out exactly what we were going to get, and when she finally reported the total, even I was pretty gobsmacked by exactly how much money this trip had netted us.

Three E-ranked chits. Three thousand H-ranked coins which could be considered the base currency here. It was...a LOT of money. Even someone like me with almost no grasp on how the Ascendant economy worked was blown away. Abel looked like he might pass out. In the end, we decided on the obvious even split. Sydney and Megan got one, the Spear Legion got one, and we got one to keep for the Pavilion.

Sloane and the others felt like they hadn't done much, and I was a guest elder anyway, so my force growing was a net benefit to them. They abstained from taking a share. Which left us with a single E-ranked chit to invest in the Pavilion. Deciding that growing our new faction was the most important thing, we handed it over to Mel.

Resources were strength too, and there were so many ways spending money could help increase the power of our faction. Improved training equipment, alchemical pills and elixirs, even Skill Crystals. Those were extremely rare here on Callus. You could find useless ones around in some of the Unity branches, but nothing impressive or worth the price. The reason was that the production of the Skill Crystal itself was a closely guarded secret. The blanks had to be specially prepared to be imprinted with a Skill. Buying blanks was much pricier and much more useful to forces like ours.

I'd even considered having Callie imprint Balam on a blank for our people to learn. Not that it was a direct transfer. More like a way to watch memories and get a feel for the Skill. I figured I could try to learn enough to push my Balam Skill up to Beginner and end the geass at least. I was pretty sure paying for a wish with a Skill crystal of a Skill I made wouldn't work, but since we hadn't considered it beforehand it should be a solution at the moment. I dismissed the idea though for the moment. We'd need to see if we could even get any, it wasn't like blanks grew on trees. One more reason to look forward to the auction.