Chapter 280: Chapter Two Hundred Eighty One

The inside of the Chaotic Wombat was...weird. I'd seen a lot of  places, and even lived in a pretty unusual location myself. The orange  dyed house we had up in Rajak proper was strange to look at the first  time. Still, the Wombat took the cake, or rather...it was made of it.

Which  is to say, the whole place was covered in what looked like candy. The  chairs were made of peppermint sticks, the tables slabs of chocolate,  the chandeliers were rock candy, and the various doorknobs and other  things were all individual types of sweets. Despite her worry over an  attack, Callie went ramrod stiff when we walked inside, her wide eyes  raking over the bounty of delicious treats.

Abel, noticing  her expression, snickered slightly. "Yeah, I was wondering how you  would all react. The OWNER of the Wombat has Intermediate Candy Making  Skill. Most of this stuff is higher ranked food, like H-rank maybe. Even  two points of Impact can make a serious durability difference, and it  makes this kind of thing much more viable. Of course, any of us could  smash through this with zero difficulty, but then again, we'd be just as  able to smash through normal mortal wood or even some metals. Plus I'm  sure you can figure out the other benefit."

"Renown." I  said without blinking. "This would definitely generate plenty of buzz.  It's kind of weird, but in an interesting way..." I looked over at my  drooling girlfriend, with a worried frown. "If we eat some of this will  we get attacked or something?" This place was clearly crazy, the last  thing we needed was for Callie to break off a piece of rock candy from a  wall sconce and get us mobbed or something.

Hearing my  question, Callie snapped out of her stupor and looked at me sheepishly.  "What?" She said with an unconvincing laugh. "That's crazy. What kind of  moron would just randomly start taking bites out of furniture." Her  eyes  locked on a nearby chocolate fountain made of what looked like  waffle cone. "No matter how delicious it looks."

With an  amused snort Mel patted her on the shoulder. "Best to avoid that stuff.  This is the CHAOTIC Wombat, remember. They lace the candy with  psychadelics and other strange things. You never know what eating it  will do. The food you buy is fine, or else no one would buy it, but the  rest of this stuff is eater beware. It's not a bad gimmick all things  considered. But since we're here for a dinner, there's no need to invite  trouble."

Callie looked much less interested after  hearing that, shying away from one of the nearby pieces of furniture. As  we walked further in, Wren noticed something off in the corner of his  eye and turned to wave over at a table. "Oh, hey, Lestri! Vec, there  they are, come on." He hurried off in the direction he'd been staring,  leaving the rest of us to follow. Sloane, Beric, and Croll, were all  sticking close to Abel and Mel, which seemed wise, so I followed after.

We'd  decided not to bring the others, having them head back to the Robin,  because if things did get crazy, mediocre combatants would be most  likely to be picked off around the edges. Keeping our group to only real  elites would make it more likely for us all to remain safe.

As  we reached the table, Wren clasped hands with a short, red haired man  with sides of his head shaved. He waved us over. "Hey guys, come meet my  brother Lestri. He's on our team too." Looking closer, I could see that  the two of them had the same amber eyes.

It was easy to  see the similarities, from the olive skin tone to the red hair, but the  most shocking difference was their size. Wren was a massive towering  man, but Lestri looked like he was only a few inches taller than Callie.  Five foot four or five maybe? Still, he was corded with muscle in a  sinuous way that made me think of a coiled snake. I had a feeling he  would be pretty damn fast.

One thing I had picked up over  time was that being small wasn't necessarily a disadvantage for  Ascendants. One point of Might translated into a thousand pounds of  lifting force, but that was a static value. Someone with a hand the size  of a coaster would be able to concentrate that force more effectively  than someone with a hand the size of a dinner plate. With the same  physical parameters, smaller people tended to hit harder. Of course,  they had to sacrifice range to do it, so it wasn't like bigger  combatants didn't have their advantages, but it just went to show not to  underestimate anyone.

Lestri raised an eyebrow. "Oh,  these are the locals that kicked your ass earlier huh? Interesting to  see you met up with them again." He scrunched his nose. "Also why in the  gods names do you smell like fish? It's faint, but pretty unpleasant."  He sniffed a bit, realizing that Wren's hands were the culprit, then  pulled out some sort of sanitizing hand rub from the pouch at his waist  and handed it to his much larger brother.

Rolling his  eyes, Wren took the bottle and rubbed the contents on his hands, holding  them up so his brother could smell them before the smaller man nodded.  Lestri shot us a small grin. "Sorry, my brother can get a bit focused  and forget things so I tend to mother him a bit. Would you believe he's  the younger one?" He shot Wren an annoyed glare. "I have no clue what  our mother fed him to make him get so big, or why it didn't work on me.  Anyway, do all of you want any?" He held out the bottle.

Seeing  as his brother had just used it in front of us none of us were worried  about poison or anything, and our hands DID smell bad (the impact spots  on our armor had been washed clean by the water pressure, but our hands  were soaked in small amounts of fish blood and smashed into the things  for hours) so we decided to take him up on it. There was a pleasant  tingle from the liquid and it smelled sort of pine fresh. I liked it. It  also cleaned our hands INCREDIBLY quickly.

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Once that was  done we handed the mostly empty bottle back, and turned back to the  table. There were two more people there. A small, quiet looking girl  with platinum blonde hair, dark eyes, and pale skin, and a tall man with  bulging biceps wearing a carved wooden mask that looked like a grinning  skull. Wren gestured to them. "That's Lament, and that's our handler  Master Saiten. Lament is our top contender for the tournament."

The  E-ranked handler was as intimidating as I'd expected. He reminded me a  bit of Abel, but his aura of violence was much more condensed. Every  move he made was dangerous and it almost felt like he was constantly  resonating with his Spear Mastery Skill. I swallowed hard at the  realization the title Wren had just used might not be a formal political  title. It might be literal. Abel, of course, just outright asked.  "Wait, when you say Master..."

Saiten chuckled, a deep,  rumbling sound from behind his mask. "Indeed. I have achieved the Master  rank with my Spear Skill. Or course, the Skill is now simply, Master of  the Spear. Master Spear Mastery would be nonsense. Once you reach the  Master rank the naming conventions for Skills tend to change. Weapon  masteries tend to just be called 'Master of' whatever weapon you  specialize in. Though for more utility based Skills the names can  differ."

I swallowed hard. Master level. I had no clue  what that would require, but it was damn impressive. It also implied  that Saiten might be close to ranking up to D-rank if his Spear Skill  was the only one synergized with his ability. The sole requirement for  an ability to rank up, aside from stats, was for all component Skills to  reach that level first.

Of course, whether he was a peak  E-ranker or not was mostly irrelevant to us. Any level of E-ranker could  swat all of us like a fly. We all gave him our most formal greetings  and he nodded courteously before summarily ignoring us completely to  focus on eating. The wooden skull mask lacked a jaw so he wasn't impeded  by it as he dug into the food. Judging by the gusto he ate with it must  be good.

A waiter approached the table, wearing a crazy  candy hat and suit, and passed out menus. I winced a bit at the prices,  but Wren just told us to order whatever we wanted within reason. They  had a discretionary fund from the Legion for the tournament, and  anything they didn't spend would be confiscated on their return.

Since  Mel had mentioned that they held the purchased food to a standard  (probably how they justified the absurd prices on the menus) I wasn't  too worried about getting something poisoned or that kind of thing. I  scanned the menu before picking out a really delicious looking sausage  gumbo. Callie got a pot pie, Abel a steak, Mel lasagna, and Sloane and  her two friends all ordered clam chowder for some reason. I mean, I  liked clam chowder, but it seemed weird for them to get it as a group.  Maybe it was some kind of solidarity thing?

As  they left, Lament finally focused her gaze on one of us. Specifically,  Abel. She raised an eyebrow in challenge. "So, you're one of the local  elites. The rest of them don't give me much of a feeling of pressure,  but I can tell you and red mask there are different." She chucked her  chin at Mel, but never took her eyes off our mentor. "I take it I'll be  facing you int he big tournament?"

I  saw her hand clench around the edge of table reflexively, like she was  gripping a spear haft. Abel grinned back. "I'm happy to oblige you any  time. Tournament or not. Feel free to attack me right where we sit." His  tone was relaxed, almost bored as he spoke, but I could see a manic  glint in his eye that mirror that frenzy I'd seen from him when he  smashed the F-ranker from Sanctuary Hall.

Lament  started to stand in anticipation, but a crushing weight smashed down on  all of us, driving her back down into her seat and the rest of us  harder into ours. With a lackadaisical smile, Saiten clicked his tongue.  "Now children. No need to get so excited. We'll have plenty of time to  battle when the tournament begins. For the moment I think we should all  just relax and enjoy our dinners. Don't you?"

I'd  felt worse, of course. The metaphysical weight Zeke had dropped on us  the one time he decided to show off still made me shudder in remembered  helplessness. This weight, in contrast, was much more...condensed. It  wasn't nearly as strong, even in a much smaller area (the waiters and  nearby diners seemed unaffected) but there was intent here. Saiten was  TRYING to restrain us, while Zeke had just been...existing nearby. I was  pretty sure based on this Zeke hadn't even fully unleashed his Impact,  because a concentrated effort like this from him would probably have  killed us.

He  eased up and we all just sat there, panting slightly. We could have  moved but it would have been a massive effort. Callie smiled. "Th-thank  you, Master Saiten. No need for us to let things become unpleasant. This  is just a nice, relaxing dinner among friends." Which, of course, was  when all the lights went out at the same time. In the darkness, points  of green light flared up all around the room as stamps began to glow.  Well...almost all the stamps were green. I followed the red glow to the  illuminated and frightened face of a young looking girl wearing a pair  of rabbit ears at the next table. The sacrifice had begun, and it wasn't  one of us, but we would still need to help. Damn it. This was going to  suck.

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