After getting our stories straight inside the temple where we couldn’t be observed (mostly just agreeing with Sable and Dom how they would tell everyone about what I’d done when they got back), and looting Echelon’s corpse, we headed out to do our exploring, trying to maximize the impact of our time in the Fields of Strakkenthar.

  Firstly, we scoured the marshes for Mournehollow Toads like the ones Bernadette had mentioned. I was shocked to see that Dom and Sable were both basically immune to the poison like I was, which was impressive considering the source. Since we were already out among the swamps we decided to scour the area for the toads to try to maximize our gains here, and we managed to find about thirty of them.

  One of the little beasts was even on the edge of C-rank. Not there, thankfully, but close, and Sable was particularly excited to potentially have a beast that could eat C-rank curses, apparently witches used them a lot, even on each other.

  Once we stopped finding any toads, even with Dantalion, we switched to hunting for Asphodel Flowers, the second major export of the Fields of Strakkenthar. This turned out to be a bit harder, and we only stumbled on the one meadow of the rare plants, stockpiling a decent, hundred and fifty of them.

  And of course, over the three weeks we’d been there, I’d been keeping up my wishes in scroll form, and the consistent income had been just over five thousand points (five thousand and forty, to be exact, at thirty points per wish where I seem to have stalled), but that was just the icing on the cake on our last day when I finally let all the points I’d held back hit me all at once, and I was staggered by the windfall.

  Aside from the five thousand from the scrolls, I’d gotten another thirty thousand from merging my forms into the Ten Demons Tome. I had no idea how, but apparently they were all kind of collecting individual renown (especially Mephistopheles) I’d have probably gotten on rank up, and the excess had sort of concentrated. On top of that Sable and Dom had spread word of what I’d done to Echelon, not to mention I’d had Callie have my grandma contact Bella (who I had no way to contact myself right now) and have her inform Ray so he knew his representative was dead and could ask for a new one.

  The end result was…a lot. My mask mostly kept gods from scouting me unless they tried hard, and the temple itself was a perfect insulator from divine sight, so they didn’t know about the special circumstances behind the kill (the sacrifice of my staff) and assumed that I’d just muscled someone a full rank above me from what they could literally detect was early D-rank.

  That story had spread, quickly, and to not just gods, but high rankers in their service, and to high level Ascendants on other planets, and waiting a few weeks gave it lots of time to accumulate.

  A grand total, all in all, of one hundred and sixty seven THOUSAND five hundred eighty six points across all my various stats. Needless to say, given it was more stats than I currently had, it knocked me on my ass. Like they’d been telling me, D-rank was a higher level, where people cared more what you did. I was pretty smug about the whole thing, until I found out that after I’d passed the inkstone and scythe to my grandmother through Callie (one to pass forward and one to keep to try to pass to my wife) that Black Sorrow had decided to fucking CLAIM me as her great grandson to get ahead of the narrative.

  I groaned at the changes, partially in pain and partially in outrage. It annoyed me to think about how much of that boost was from people learning I was related to Black Sorrow and retroactively attributing my success to being part of her bloodline. It helped that as soon as she’d claimed me, mom had done the same, though people still didn’t know who Celia’s dad was, so I only got the extra buzz off being related to one of the popes and not being triple godspawn, something I honestly didn’t mind.

  Chelsea, for her part, was ecstatic, because after the truth had come out she could actually show off her newly trained Enshrining Darkness, and learn to use it in combination with her purifying flame properly.

  As for me, I felt reborn. I’d been drip feeding all this renown to seemingly no effect over the last few months, but now I’d finally pushed myself up to nearly one third of D-rank. For the amount of time I’d been in this rank it was basically unprecedented, and regardless what people thought, I’d busted my ass making it happen. I felt powerful, deadly, and most of all, vindicated. My family could finally reunite, I could start preparing for the competition, and based on what I’d accomplished in this short time, there was a decent chance I might be able to hit C-rank before it started.

  Marmont came to get us on the last day, surprisingly returning us to our individual worlds of origin (origin in the test) without much comment on what had happened. I expected Felicity to contact me, or summon me, or something, but to my surprise, she said nothing.

  When I reached Rackham, I just called up to the Acheron, requesting they pick me up. They sent a shuttle into orbit to meet me and I flew up to get onboard, kind of wanting to show off. And when I made it onto the shuttle, I was pleased to find my apprentice waiting. “Master!” Squeaked Bella enthusiastically. “I had no idea you came from such a prestigious bloodline! I’m so lucky you decided to train me, I swear, I’m going to be the greatest staff fighter in the universe. I’ll play pool with the planets, smack stars out of orbit, do that trick where you knock a glass off a table and catch it before the water spills! I won’t disappoint you!”

  I laughed, ruffling her hair. “Someone’s been talking out of turn I see. It’s fine, I’m basically finished with this identity anyway. Time for Mephistopheles to disappear.” I was planning to go pick up Sable and Dom on our way out of the cluster, and possibly recruit their elders, so obviously I’d need to use my real name.

  A laugh sounded from behind me, and I spun reflexively, putting myself between my disciple and whoever had snuck up on us, but relaxed when I saw the familiar young looking blonde man lounging in the seat. Nicholas Anders, the Radiant Pope himself, one of the disciples of the Red Revenant and my maternal grandpa.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I said to my grandfather. “Mom send you?”

  “Of course,” he laughed. “She was worried about her baby boy, but an A-ranker wasn’t going to cut it. Besides, I pulled some strings and got you a few meetings. Of course, they’re just meetings, you’ll need to prove yourself. But from what I’m hearing, that shouldn’t be too hard. So how about it grandson mine? You ready for your recruitment tour?” Judging by his smile, I wasn’t so sure, but I didn’t let that show as I confirmed I was. Time to get down to business.