Four months. We'd been in space on the road for four months. One hundred twenty days, seven hundred and twenty wishes. Of course, I hadn't focused all that on myself. While training was out as per my promise to myself (and my girlfriend), it was a big ship, and there were lots of people who WERE training. People who got injured doing said training, and I was more than happy to heal them with the charges I got from Jessie.

This enabled me to rack up a sizable nest egg by charging healing fees, as well as continue helping Jessie boost her Vitality, since she was the furthest behind out of all of us statwise.

Half of my wishes went to actually boosting my stats, of course which totalled out to twenty five hundred and twenty points each for us. I still had a bit of bleedover from the godslaying incident ( though not nearly as much as Callie ) which got me up to a solid three thousand points of added stats over the trip. I was officially over nine thousand total and closing in on E-rank which was pretty solid for not putting in any effort.

Aside from Jessie and I, Benny spent a not inconsiderable amount of time inventing, and sold most of it to Nat for wishes to keep up. While I was unwilling to train for the trip, my cousin was much less sanguine, and spent all her time either fighting or granting wishes, except on the rare occasions we were able to drag her away. Benny got a full two thousand points out of her ( Might and Focus, of course), and Callie had her godslayer renown still coming in, which netted her a thousand for doing nothing.

All in all, Jessie and Benny were both right on the edge of seventy five hundred points, with Callie and I both over nine thousand, and I had thirty six hundred F-rank chits (or thirty six E-rank) as a nest egg stashed away from healing fees.

More importantly, I got to spend time with my sister, my girlfriend, and my friends, just enjoying life and NOT worrying about being impaled alive on spider legs or eaten by wolfhornigators. Sadly, all good things must end, because according to Killian we were rapidly approaching Stratholme, an imperial C-ranked planet where would be joining up with a local force.

Vinnie had already left by the time we tried to get in touch, so hopefully we'd see him again at some point. This particular planet had been picked by Zeke after talking to some of his contacts (since this was about the war and not the candidate competition it didn't trip his geas) and would apparently be perfect as an entry point.

So we all gathered up at the house, where Callie and Chelsea had put together an information briefing on Stratholme based on research and preexisting knowledge.

"Welcome everybody." Callie said as we all sat down. "As you know, we've been heading for the Empire, planning to join a noble house for military training. Now, obviously we aren't signing up long term, this is more of a mercenary contract. It'll be for less than a year, but plenty of these places have high turnover, so it shouldn't be too tough to find someone to take us. Before that though, we thought we'd give everyone a breakdown on how the Empire works."

Chelsea nodded. "Most of you are from the Conglomerate. Which, while relatively established, is much more recent than the Empire. Because of that fact, and the structure of the Empire itself, it's a much more rigid and law abiding place. Individuality isn't quite as prized as in the conglomerate, even among Ascendants."

"How is that possible though?" I asked, a bit confused. "Renown is how Ascendants rank up. If nobody is doing anything interesting how does their legend spread?"

Callie chuckled at that. "First off, I think our standard for interesting is a bit skewed. But secondly, because they work on the job system. Much like the Church and the Cult, who you may have noticed tend to be mostly pretty uniform rank to rank. That's because the job system allows you to funnel large amounts of belief to specific roles, rather than the people filling them. In the Empire that's nobility. There are other jobs, and those are managed by the Empire's roles, where they keep records of who does what."

"Basically, the Empire is incredibly stratified because it lets the Emperor funnel renown to all the imperially accepted roles." Said Chelsea. "As a god whose domain is concerned with administration and the running of a nation, he has the power to do that kind of thing. It's why the Empire has MANY more possible jobs than the Church or Cult, which have less than twenty or so each."

Reaching out for a piece of paper, Callie sketched out a quick pyramid. "The Emperor, as a god, doesn't need renown anymore, but as the symbol of the empire it all feeds to him. He funnels it from there, first to the kings, then the dukes, and so on down the line. Each noble is responsible for funneling renown to those in their own territory, a duty heavily monitored and managed by the imperial court. Bakers, candlestick makers, even guards. Everyone gets some."

"That's...weird." I said after a minute. "But if it works for them whatever. How will this affect us? We don't have jobs, is it possible for us to get renown this way?"

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Callie shrugged. "Somewhat. There's always excess, and the Emperor can't access or distribute renown outside the imperial scope. It won't be much though. Just not how the Empire works. Not a huge problem for us, since that's not why we're here, and you can always get a job officially to gain renown that way. But we've gotten off track. I mention this particular fact because it means there's actually LAWS in the Empire. More than just the haphazard random 'hey probably don't do that' guidelines we had back home."

To my surprise, Celine cut in. "She's right. The Conglomerate, especially the edges where you were, is chaotic. The Empire is a more regimented and lawful place, so we'll need to confine any issues we have to specified combat areas. Costumes should be fine, they're not the norm but there are people from all over in the Empire so they're hardly going to shock anyone."

"Speaking of costumes." I grimaced, glancing down. "I need a new one. I tried patching that big ass hole where Travis shivved me and nothing will stick. I have zero Skills for tailoring, and honestly I'm almost outgrowing the things anyway. They were really nice when we got them from Cicero, but it's been months, and I really need to get something a bit more suitable before I hit E-rank."

Abel snickered at that. "If anyone back home heard you say that they'd probably stab you again. Your progression is absurd. I'm lagging way behind at this point. If it wasn't for Nat I wouldn't even be at the halfway mark. Hopefully I can get a temporary military role while I'm on Stratholme and pump my numbers."

I hadn't even considered that Abel and Mel might be lagging. They were the strongest of us, pretty much. It just made it even more obvious how terrifying my mentor was, though I suspected he was also heavily focused in one area like Jessie was, and that probably helped.

"ANYWAY." Said Callie loudly, bringing us back on topic. "Stratholme is our first C-ranked planet. It's going to be pretty rough. Our stats are going to be suppressed by the native Impact, though everyone else's will too. There are certain areas like cities and special residences that are exempt, places where children are raised and such, but they're under heavy guard and the actions you take inside are tightly restricted."

She pulled out a few more papers, covered in tightly packed scrawls. "We looked into the various factions on Stratholme, and as a C-ranked planet, it obviously has C-rankers. In the Empire that's an Earl. The Earl in charge of the planet is Earl Nevius. His family pretty much runs things, though there are Viscounts, or D-rankers, of various factions, and each of them is in charge of several Barons, or E-rankers. Those E-rankers mostly field armies of F-rankers, or Lords, which is what we are. Any lower and they pretty much can't function on a C-ranked planet."

Which meant we were probably going to be the next best thing to mortals on this planet. With the weight of the Impact we were going to be under serious strain, luckily, we were at least HIGH F-rank, we'd probably be stronger than most. Good for training, bad for everything else. Joy. "I'm guessing there's a lot of political bullshit going on behind the scenes?"

"Tons." Said Callie with a grimace. "But the basics are this. The Earl is peak C-rank. He did...something, and the Emperor censured him, which means he stopped his renown gain. He's stuck unable to enter B-rank, but still isn't someone anybody wants to mess with. Because of that, he doesn't micromanage much, just lets the Viscounts do whatever."

I sighed. "Which means their Barons are probably fighting like a hundred cats in a five foot bathtub. We're going to be avoiding working for any of the big power players right? Because I don't need to get mixed up in imperial bullshit. We're here for training and possible faction building, not to get sucked into regional nonsense."

She nodded, circling a few names. "There are a few Barons that are essentially free agents. They call them Robber Barons. They don't answer to the Viscounts for anything more than lip service and taxes, and fight amongst themselves. Territory there changes hands semi-often, they don't actually lose TOO many fighters, and there's a high turnover as people prove themselves and use the reputation to join a reputable faction. Low commitment, medium risk, high intensity."

"That's perfect." I said with delight. "Let me see that list?" She passed me a piece of paper with a series of names and descriptions, rank, approximate level with that rank, personnel reviews. She'd really dug into this. It was a good thing the Empire was on the scan ring network. "Tell me about this one." I pointed at a Baron three quarters down the list.

She found him quickly enough. "Camden Tolbert. Father is a Viscount from the Tolbert family, big money in the Empire. Camden hit Baron young, decided to go out on his own. Bit rough around the edges and a tad battle crazy, but supposedly an honorable guy who takes care of his own. He was on my shortlist too." She read over her notes before nodding again to herself in confirmation. Before we moved on though, she reached over and put a hand on mine. "Are you sure about this Shane? This is going to be rough."

"I know." I said grimly. "But you heard Nat before. This will help us run our own faction when we reach that point. And mercenaries like this will be perfect for recruiting. Is everyone else still good?" I asked my friends, looking around for confirmation.

They'd all been quiet, listening to us talking and memorizing the information. Benny spoke up. "Honestly, I'm kind of looking forward to it. Being just another face in the crowd sounds nice. Like I'm sure you and Nat will tell this Tolbert guy about your powers when you can trust him, but until then, we're going to be bottom level grunts. I'm even looking forward to being normal levels of strong again."

I laughed at that, but nodded in agreement. We'd been getting so powerful, getting involved in such crazy shit. Having to prove ourselves and fight our way up would be a nice change of pace from fighting gods and their crazy fanatic worshippers. Of course, I was just as sure that was going to change quickly when we got to Stratholme. For now though, I just settled in for the rest of the briefing. I wanted to learn as much as I could.