NOVEL NEXT Chapter Three Hundred Fifty Eight
The next two days passed without much incident barring a missing dessert I'd picked up for myself. I kept up training, but between my daily improvements I made a point to relax and spend some time with my friends. Jessie and Benny weren't in the tournament and had been left mainly to their own devices, but seeing how dangerous things were and how much work we were doing had them worried.
Benny I mostly tried to distract. Callie might have had a point about letting him stew. I'd wanted to leave him to think things through, based on personal experience, but the reason that usually wasn't necessary was that we were usually inseparable. I'd neglected to note that this time was different because I wasn't around, and our time hanging out had seemed to help a lot, so I decided to spend more of my time being around my friend, to give him a bit of relief from the constant soul searching.
In between that though, we did his wishes. Twenty Might, twenty Focus. He paid mainly in chits, bringing my personal stockpile to one hundred thirty six chits, as well as topping up my tranq blows to ten. I'd considered stockpiling some extra attacks, but honestly with the tournament ending soon I really needed to save for my weapon. Hell, even not being able to use it I would have still probably bought it if I hadn't been waiting for the new skills I was developing.
For now though, it was the last night before the second round, and I hadn't been able to come up with a proper Skill yesterday, being stuck on Earthseeking. I'd tossed it around for a while, trying to come up with a proper mix, but in the end had ended up wasting two days on it. Today, I had decided to try something else, and was planning to officially switch to a different skill. Specifically, today I was going to be trying to tweak Seek Hidden.
Seek Hidden occupied a strange place in my arsenal, being both extremely useful and extremely useless. When it made a difference it made a big one, but because of the nature of the skill I didn't find much use for it as it was meant to be wielded. Seek Hidden was meant to be used on large objects over great distances. It could be used on smaller ones closer up, but that wasn't its real purpose.
Not to mention it only picked up one thing at a time, which was a huge downside to a skill like that. What I needed was the ability to look at everything around me and see the hidden and concealed. I also used it for investigation, so I needed to be able to pick up small clues with this ability.
It took me quite a while to puzzle out exactly what Skill I needed to mix it with to get what I needed, but after spending some time on it, I made the connection that was obvious if you were paying attention. Poker.
So I went through the process of combining my Minor Poker Mastery with Seek Hidden, to create the skill that I needed. Unlike the last couple times, where I kind of guided them to the point they were close to what I wanted and then smashed them together and let them do as they would, this time I decided to try to guide the formation of the new skill more carefully.
In the spirit of that, I decided to define the skill as I wanted it to be. A new skill to let me see what was hidden, to find what was lost, to discover the traces of that which would conceal. I resonated the two skills, doing my best to use the aspects of both that I wanted to see.
Despite being prepared, I almost passed out. Micromanaging skill synergies was apparently EXTREMELY soul intensive. I felt like I was trying to lift an engine block with the power of my mind, focusing so hard I was worried I'd blow blood vessel or something. It hurt. A lot. More than any other skill merge, but I pushed on. This was exactly what I wanted, exactly what I was hoping for.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, I felt the click that I'd been waiting for and the burden vanished. I slumped over backwards, shaking and sweating, as I tried to get my heart to calm down. I breathed heavily for a few minutes until I finally had the strength to check my Skills.
Minor Poker Mastery was gone, as expected, and when I checked on my subskills I noticed the new one I wanted. Eye of Revelation.
Eye of revelation was perfect. It wasn't a passive, only lasting for five minutes, but while it was active it allowed me to find the hidden and disguised, as well as discover traces of things missing. The tradeoff was that Eye of Revelation had an extremely low radius of effect, only being able to see things within twenty feet or so. Still, what it lost in distance it made up for in versatility, and it would be ten times more useful as it was.
I grinned, forcing myself to my feet, and staggered over to the track where I'd been training. I prepared to start...and then realized that I had nothing to actually find. I considered what to do with this, and then decided that I might as well have some fun with it. I headed upstairs, opening the refrigerator and peered inside at an empty spot. I'd picked up a slice of cheesecake on the way back from junk island, and someone had eaten it. I didn't know who, but with my new skill I could find out.
Triggering Eye of Revelation, I watched as the world kind of...darkened. Everything got kind of dim, with the exception of a few brightly lit items that I was pretty sure were hidden or clues. I could see some candy hidden in the cabinet behind the fridge, a bag of cookies shoved into the back of a cutlery drawer, and what looked like a plastic monkey under the oven mitts, the last one presumably belonging to Cass.
Along with that, I could also see footprints, leading off into the distance. Well, twenty feet into the distance. I stepped forward and picked up the next set, following them down the hall, stopping, to my complete lack of surprise, outside my girlfriend's door.
Rolling my eyes, I rapped on the wood, and she opened it, looking out at me with a pleasant smile. I smiled back, then slipped around her into her room. She looked confused, until I followed the trail to the back of the room, dug around in a drawer, and pulled out a styrofoam container.
She giggled nervously. "That's...not mine?" I just looked at her for a minute, and then she pouted and looked away. "You didn't get me anything. That was rude. It looked really good so I ate it. Its not like you put your name on it or anything." I opened the container, showing her the inside, where my name was printed in black marker. She clicked her tongue. "Yeah, ok I don't know why I even tried that."
"No cooking." I said flatly."For a month." I didn't actually care that much, but I liked cheesecake, and I wanted to make an impression so she didn't do it again.
Her eyes widened in shock. "Wait. What?" She crossed the room in a blink, clinging to me. "That's not fair. Come on, I'll buy you another slice. I can't go back to eating materializer meals and I don't have the money to pay for takeout. I spent it all on wishes!"
"Want to make it two months?" She jerked back, sulking but unwilling to risk it. I actually felt a little bad but if I caved every time she gave me puppy dog eyes I'd never stick up for myself.
I flopped down on the bed. "So, you already had your second round right? What was it, yesterday?" It had been day three of the first round which would mean two days after my own match.
Snorting a laugh at the subject change she thumped down next to me. "Yup. Next match is tomorrow. I won, in case you were wondering."
"I wasn't." I said with a smile. "But I'm curious why you're up again so soon. Shouldn't you be in a later round?"
She shrugged. "Guess not. Since there are so few people left the rounds won't be as consistent. Not everyone will fight at the same point in the rotation. I don't know who I'm fighting this time, or even where yet. They're sending out locations the morning of."
"Makes sense." I admitted. "If they told us where we would be fighting it would be easy to figure out our opponents by process of elimination. This way the surprise is fresh." I was still worried as hell about who I'd be fighting, but I had to admit that the first round had been a blast.
She rolled over to cuddle up next to me. "I guess. I'm just worried one of us will run into someone really scary. I know there are safety measures, but this is still battle. If someone like Abel decided to kill you, do you really think you would survive? And now we have Celine's asshole sister putting bounties on us, which granted, she was nice enough to specify shouldn't cause our deaths, but..."
"But." I agreed. "But there's still the cult. But we have enemies here. But the tournament is the perfect opportunity to kill us without allowing for interference."
"Do you really think that would work though?" She asked cautiously. "Like...Zeke is bound not to interfere, but after you died..." She sounded uncomfortable bringing it up, but I got her point. Hell I couldn't argue it because I'd asked him the same thing once.
I mulled over my wording. "I think that the person who kills me is going to have a bad day. Or century. But I also think that won't mean much to me since I'll be dead. If it makes you feel better, I'm not planning on dying, and I've made some serious preparations for the next round."
She looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. "Oh really? And what would those be? Inquiring minds want to know." She fluttered her eyelashes at me so fast it looked like she was trying to blink morse code, and I cracked up at her, which earned me a poke in the ribs and another pout. She didn't push for my answer though, she knew I wouldn't give it. After all, we might be up against each other at some point.
We chattered for a bit about nothing, not wanting to give away anything about our preparations but still wanting to spend time together. She tried to convince me to cook for her early, and I resisted, leading to lots of bargaining for one or two weeks taken off despite my steadfast refusal.
Eventually, we drifted off to sleep, and I couldn't help but smile as I dozed off, loving that we were still able to relax together even though we might be enemies if things went a certain way.
I was woken the next morning by my scan ring, and Callie by hers, and I groaned and sat up, flicking open the screen. Callie was yawning and doing the same, and as the screens came up, we each noticed what the other person's said and we froze, staring at the information. Nothing too complicated, mind you. A simple address. Very simple, in fact, because it was the exact same address on both screens. I glanced up to find Callie looking at me in worry. We'd both gotten our assignments. Our tenth round fight would be against each other.