As she woke up the next day, Thera couldn’t help but be excited for whatever it had in store. The city was filled with all sorts of sights after all, and since Ben had decided to keep a limit on how much time he put towards examining the trial, that meant they’d have plenty of time to explore the city together, seeing shows and historic sites, trying food and learning about the various cultures with a strong presence in the city, it would be like a real vacation, at least until his competition started.
They were usually both pretty busy throughout most of the week. With him constantly at the shop training under her uncle and herself, no longer just practicing her earth magic but devoting plenty of days to work at the clinic, they typically just had evenings and their two hunting days together each week, the fact that they’d be able to just relax and have fun together left her smiling from ear to ear as she got up and dressed before heading over to his room and seeing a note stuck to the door addressed to both her and her uncle.
“How is he always getting drawn into all of this?” she asked herself with a shake of her head as she read it over. They’d only been in town for two days and he already had trouble with another god.
Well, I guess I should have expected as much. He is an apostle and this is allfaith after all, he was bound to be roped into something.
She felt a little disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to monopolize his time the way she’d hoped, but if it was for his god then she understood well enough, and at the very least he was thoughtful about it. She went into his room and ate the breakfast he’d prepared earlier for her before leaving through the gate, once again ending up at her homeland far sooner than she’d expected.
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As she made it to her family home she found the same work area that Ben had been using the last time. It seemed that her family hadn’t bothered taking it apart, instead leaving it in case he returned any time soon, a judgment that had paid off quickly enough as she heard both Ben and her father chatting away within, with her dad breaking out into a powerful laugh before she revealed herself.
“Haha, wonderful, you really are more than Pelenia or I could have ever hoped for,” Abrus said with cheer. “When we’d heard just what happened to Thera during your quest together my wife applied a lot of pressure to them as a consequence, but if we’d know you’d gone so far as to almost kill their demigod and left a weapon prepared to go off at the doorstep of their church then maybe she wouldn’t have felt the need to put them so thoroughly in their place. No wonder you needed to buy some more magic materials from us.”
It wasn’t hard to work out what her father was talking about, it just left her to wonder what sort of pressure her mother saw fit to apply as their conversation went on.
“Well, I was going to need to buy some from you eventually anyway Abrus, I can’t stretch my mythril and mana crystals forever.”
“Of course, we don’t mind selling them to you at a good price since you don’t need too much so stop by whenever you’re out. Honestly, with the way we keep making braces it might just be easier to pay you in materials,” Her dad mused before switching back to the previous topic. “But really Ben, my wife and I couldn’t be happier to know Thera has someone by her side who’d go so far to look out for her. You sure you don’t want to marry her? We could hold a ceremony immediately, make things good and official.”
Oh my god dad do you bring this up whenever I’m not around?
She couldn’t help but cringe hearing the question and almost walked in then and there, only to stop herself before she touched the door handle. Her mind flashed to the same things she’d heard Ben say during the guild quest and she found herself overwhelmingly curious about what he would say to it when he didn’t think she was around to hear it.
“Look Abrus, your daughter is one of the most important people to me in this world,” Ben said with a sigh. “And she’s been extra clear she doesn’t want anything like that out of life.”
She felt a smile break out on her face hearing that again. I’m important to him. It just felt good to hear any time he said it.
“Well, maybe Thera will change her mind on that, isn’t that right honey?” Her father called out, making it clear he knew she was there as she tried to push away her cheerful expression as she walked in.
“Dad, don’t you have anything better to do than bother Ben about this?” She asked in the face of his smug grin. “Why do you and mom have to bring this up each time we’re here?”
“Oh, I’m just trying to get a feel for things is all,” He told her with a laugh. “Don’t blame me too much for wanting to see my daughter happy, and your mom still wants to see the faces of her grandchildren one day.”
“Not happening.”
“Ha, we’ll see. Make sure to stop in before you both head out, your mom and aunt would both love to see you while you’re here.”
With that he stepped out, leaving the two of them alone.
“Sorry they’re always like this. Maybe one day they’ll actually mellow out a bit,” Though I doubt it.
“No problem, I like how lively it is with your family.”
“I’d say too lively. Anyway, what’s up? What did you end up getting involved in that was so urgent?”
As she looked around the room she could see boxes and boxes of three types of items. The first being a few small statues of Myriad, the second being necklaces with a cube dangling from them, and finally there were some filled with long nails, their purpose she couldn’t begin to imagine.
Ben could only give a small, awkward chuckle as he explained just what he’d gotten both him and his god into in greater detail than the note had, leaving Thera to put her head in her hands by the end of it.
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“You’re an idiot,” She told him bluntly, doing her best to keep from laughing at how ridiculous it was.
“Hey, it’s not my fault,” He said in his defense, only to immediately back down. “I mean, okay maybe it is my fault, but neither Myriad nor Helori knew I could accept without his consent, and on top of that I thought I’d finally be able to get a magic to use myself, how could I resist?”
“Why do you even want one?” She couldn’t help but ask. She knew it was something he desired at least a little that was out of his reach because of his low affinities and the difficulty of learning a non-affinity magic, but as much as she personally enjoyed it she didn’t see the appeal for him. “The things you can make are already incredible after all, seems like training up a magic would be a waste of time for you.”
“It absolutely would be, but it’s not like I want one specifically to be good at magic, I just want to be able to try firing off a spell with my own strength. If I’m going to be in a world where that sort of thing is possible then of course I’m going to want to do it at least once, though I guess that might be harder to understand when magic is such a fundamental part of this world.”
It wasn’t like she couldn’t understand at all. Growing up without being able to use her earth magic had been a massive point of stress through her youth, the fact that she could finally use it with any level of skill was a huge relief to her. She supposed it made more sense when she considered his position a bit more. Before him, she’d never met a single person that couldn’t have learned at least one magic skill if they wanted to. She was sure that if he had one it would fall behind his other more important skills, but the fact that he couldn’t get it at all must have felt tough at times.
“Anyway,” Ben went on. “There’s just one thing I need to do today and tomorrow but I’m done here for now, want to stop in to see the rest of your family and then we can head out?”
“Sure, sounds good to me.”
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After getting to see her aunt and her baby cousin for a bit, as well as putting up with her mom and dad, she and Ben went off through the gate, taking one they’d never gone through before.
Despite the number of them in the world, all set up to allow for faster travel across vast distances, there were never enough. A person managing to awaken both enchanting as well as space magic was simply too rare of an event, to the point that there were plenty of cities and nations who had built the structure for a gate but hadn’t been able to apply the magic needed to make it function.
Despite that, there were a handful of gates set up that many would view as a waste. Gates built in the middle of the untamed lands, put in place to reduce the travel time as best as they could in the event of an emergency, allow cities easy access for the training of their adventurers and armies, and to collect the sort of resources that couldn’t be acquired otherwise. No nation was allowed to lay claim over them, all had to share the lands equally, and for reasons she couldn’t understand, Ben had led her through one of them, bringing nothing but a large cases of nails and a hammer.
“So I know this isn’t the sort of place you could bring a cart through, but do you think you might be able to create a stone platform to carry us deeper into the woods? I want to avoid anyone finding what I’m doing the best we can.”
She did as she was asked, using her earth magic to carefully help them travel through the sky under the strength of her raw mana, but giving a voice to a question the further out they got.
“So how exactly is running off to the middle of the woods going to keep you from completely screwing over your god? Kind of seems like we should be back in allfaith and you should be preaching on the streets. Or maybe run over to craftsman’s tower and try to spread just how handy it is for enchanters to have your connect skill.”
“Both excellent options, but they’d take too long for too low of a reward. Don’t worry, Helori is going to regret getting my hopes up.”
He seemed confident as Thera brought them down through the tree branches, staff at the ready in case anything attacked since they were miles from the gate and likely few adventurers nearby to help in an emergency, but as she worried about that, he placed a hand against a tree briefly before pulling out a nail and hammering it in before moving to the next one, explaining what he was doing as he went.
“So the competition between Myriad and Helori is to see who can gather the most faith, specifically without relying on getting any from current believers. It’s as obvious she wanted this to be a contest to see who could gain the most new believers over the course of a week as it is that she must already have a few people on the edge of joining her, but I don’t plan on playing that game. I learned a while ago that gods can get faith from non-sapient sources when Fredrick started giving some off, I’m just trying to take advantage of that. Each nail is made with mythril so each enchantment should be able to sustain itself and it’s built to be a mental compulsion to pray to Myriad. I’m basically turning trees into faith generators.”
“You’re using mind control to get your god believers,” She said in exasperation as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “You get how that sounds, right?”
“I’m just doing it on trees!” he yelled in his defense, before muttering in a quieter voice. “For today at least. Anyway, it lets me test out a theory about the tree tamer job. Like other tamer jobs, it gains experience through both how well something is tamed, and how many of something is tamed. Given the strength of the compulsion and the fact that I have a few thousand nails made up to hammer away, I might be able to fly through this faster than the time I took the mind user job.”
She shook her head, understanding what he was saying but still questioning the ethics of it, not to mention the practicality. “But will that even be enough for you to win? If something like this was so efficient then other gods would already be doing it.”
“Well, I’m told plants give less faith and of a lower quality, but that shouldn’t matter too much for a few reasons. First, the challenge said nothing of the quality of faith, meaning it doesn’t matter how low it is so long as we get enough, and second and most importantly is how Helori will be getting faith. I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t be able to get more than a handful of believers, and she’d be gathering the most faith as they prayed to her, which a typical person isn’t going to do for hours on end. A hypnotized tree on the other hand has no reason to stop. These things are just going to be pumping out prayer.”
“And that’s how you’re going to complete your quest too?”
“Partially,” He admitted with a shrug. “But the rest is tomorrow's thing.”
Thera couldn’t help but sigh. It seemed like he was going to be busy for all of his free time now, meaning all of her hopes of exploring the city together were going out the window.
Well, it’s not like I don’t get it, he has his responsibilities and they keep him pretty busy. I can deal with it.
Even if she thought that though, it had her feeling glum, a fact Ben easily picked up on as he made his way from one tree to the next.
“Sorry, I know you have a lot you want to do here so I’ll make it up to you the best I can. I know it sucks that I’m going to have to waste an hour or two on this a day, but I’ll do my best to put all of my effort into making sure the rest of our time in the city is fun.”
“It’s okay, I know you have… wait only an hour or two a day?”
“Yeah, I was hoping I could wake up early, make some nails, meet you to hammer them into a bunch of trees and then move on with the day. It will probably kill the morning a bit, but then we can still enjoy exploring in the afternoon. I know you were looking forward to it.”
A cheerful laugh burst from her as Ben spoke. Even when he was busy with his god he was still going out of his way for her. “Sure, that sounds great to me.”