Standing in the middle of the training grounds, Thera wore an intense look of concentration on her face as she held the stump of Kelf’s arm, pouring untold thousands of mana out into the world to an extent that Ben could feel it standing off to the side as grass, weeds, and flowers in the area all took in what wasn’t being forced into the ghoul’s body, growing before his eyes before she eventually gave up.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting someone with a worse body for healing than Ben,” She muttered in defeat. “I probably could have treated a hundred lost limbs for what I just spent.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m more than satisfied with how this turned out,” Kelf told her happily as he stretched. When he’d been told there was an awakened healer in town who wanted to make an attempt he’d gone along with it, having no expectation that it would be any more than a waste of time, but to his surprise, there was a change. It wasn’t to the extent of growing a new arm, but many an old injury managed to heal from all of the life mana pouring into him, aches he’d dealt with for years gone in minutes. “I’ll have to stop by this town again if I’m ever hurt.”

While Thera looked annoyed that the life magic she’d worked so hard on was regulated to being nothing more than a means of healing minor wounds to the man, Ben spoke up. “Alright, I’m going to be honest Kelf, it’s probably going to take a while before I have anything I’m satisfied with giving you. How long can you be in town for?”

“I have nowhere else I need to be.”

“Cool, in that case, if you want to go relax or something, me and Thera are going to go for a hunt to see if that helps at all. I could meet up with you in a couple days at the shop to talk about my progress if that sounds good?”

He’d expected to part at that, but hearing the word ‘hunt’ Kelf perked up. “Could I perhaps join you?”

“Uh, sure I have no problem with it, but won’t you be bored?”

“Nonsense! No better way to feel alive and it’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed one. I’d love to see what the area has to offer.”

“Alright, in that case let’s head out.”

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They moved through the woods without much concern, their goal being to find a specific species to examine, at least to begin with, one that was still reasonably new to the area but had already proven to be a problem for the town's many adventurers, the stone ape. A creature that Thera was uniquely suited to finding as they went, pushing her earth sense to the trees above them, waiting to feel something move and capturing it in a net of stone as soon as she did, bringing it to the ground for Ben to get his hands on.

“Alright great, a little test for thee and a little test for me,” He muttered as he reached down to the restrained animal and connected to it. It felt similar to when he’d connected to an obble, lacking the defined skill structure that the system helped to provide, instead having a sense of vagueness to it. He couldn’t tell what anything on its soul was the way he could with a person, but that didn’t matter to him in the slightest. All that was important was that he could mentally reach out and touch it.

“Watch carefully world ‘cause I’m about to do something very cool that absolutely deserves to make my connect awaken.”

With that determination firmly in place, he grabbed tight onto the vague feeling he was picking up on with his connect and joined it with his divine enchanting, using the skills to etch whatever ability it was onto a ring.

It wasn’t easy, it felt akin to when he first discovered he could use the skill to enchant with the skills of others, but in the end it worked perfectly as Ben grinned down at the new ring, clearly labeled as ‘stone ape’s earth magic’ under his enchanting’s limited analysis, with his smile only slipping from his face as the moments passed.

…Why exactly am I not getting a system notification telling me what a good job I did for awakening my connect?

He had been so sure it would work, but with no system notification to show for it, he slipped the ring into his pocket as he stepped aside for Thera to finish the creature off now that he’d failed as she used her earth magic to kill it cleanly.

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“Impressive,” Kelf muttered. “Makes me wish I could learn more than death and dark magic. So what was the point of getting this?”

“Aside from my little failure; study,” Ben told him, pumping the creature's chest to get more blood out. “If I’m making an arm I need some idea on how they’re supposed to work. I did get a bit of help on that last night, but I need more. Hence, this.”

Once he was sure he had the corpse as drained as he could get it he took out a sharp knife, taking the creature apart as he always would, but far slower than usual, trying to understand how it all worked together, what bits did what and how it would affect movement as a whole, while also questioning how it might be improved upon compared to what nature could come up with.

“Do you need to be looking at the entire beast then?” Kelf asked after a while, seeing Ben wasn’t just examining the arm, but every inch of the stone ape as he went.

“Honestly, probably not, at least for making you an arm. But it doesn’t hurt either and it’s something I’ll need to do eventually for a different project anyway. Might as well do it all at once.”

He devoted all of his minds to going over how all of the bones, muscles, and tendons worked together, building the creature into a comprehensive whole, but it didn't take long for him to finish, looking at the two with him as he did.

“Alright, that was probably the most useful one but let’s see what else we can find today too. Who knows, maybe some inspiration will strike depending on what I see.”

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After breaking down dozens of other creatures as the hours passed, Ben had to admit that he didn’t get too much more from it than he had with the first stone ape. That wasn’t to say it was pointless, just that it wouldn’t immediately help him with the current goal of making an artificial arm, so with that he went back to the shop, ready to do some testing.

The first of which had nothing to do with creating a functioning prosthetic. Ben wanted to see what could be done with a stone ape’s earth magic and knew he could grasp the basics with only a few minutes of work, so he did a few simple enchantments with it to compare against a standard earth magic enchantment, as well as trying to blend the two together, finding both options to be worse in every way than what could be achieved with just plain earth magic.

Not only was it disappointing, it also gave him no reason to ever pursue that line of enchanting again. In theory, it might be worthwhile if he ever got the chance to gain a skill from a creature that could use it more skillfully than any sapient mortal, but he doubted that would ever occur so he completely switched his mental gears to focus on just how he’d be making Kelf’s prosthetic.

Structurally, it wasn’t too hard, just a lot of moving parts to create. To mimic the way muscles would expand and contract he had to create metal levers that would interlock with one another, sliding into each other to replicate the action, while he had to create artificial tendons through his alchemy, modify the recipe he already used for his bike tires to create the properties he’d need, using both his material user and destruction skills to help with shaping before he moved on to the enchantments, letting it move by linking to the users mind.

It was only once all of that was done that he took it to Kelf, fitting it to the man's body as the ghoul looked on dubiously.

“Are you sure I’ll be able to fight with this?” He asked, not wanting to sound rude, but not feeling exceptionally impressed with what Ben had made.

“This? Absolutely not. I already said this is a prototype. I want to make sure I’m on the right track before I go all in on a design, so to do that I need you to work with me a bit to make you the best item I can. For now, just run some mana through it and try to make it work to your will. You’ll probably have to think about what you want it to do for now, but as you get used to it, it will hopefully become something you can handle without thought. Of course, if that never ends up happening then you can always aim to get the parallel thought skill to make things easier on yourself, but I wouldn’t worry about it for now. Instead, just give it a try.”

Kelf stared at his arm intensely as Ben did the same, and before both of their eyes it responded to the swordsman’s will, lifting up as the fingers on it curled and uncurled in response to what he wanted.

To Kelf, the experience was moving. It had been a long time since he’d lost his arm, and while he had thought he’d moved past it, just that extra bit of mobility and dexterity was enough to improve his quality of life greatly, even if it wasn’t enough to let him wield a sword to anything near his full potential.

To Ben though, it was a chance to see where he might improve. He hadn’t put any sort of covering over the pieces to protect them so that he could see how the item would move once it was being worn, and he could immediately see how it might be made to a better quality while he tried to line up those improvements to future ideas for his design, taking mental notes as he led Kelf through a series of movements to see how it would perform before sending him on his way with the prosthetic, letting him get used to the feel of moving it with his mana.

It wouldn’t be able to see constant use, at least in that model, but for the advanced one that would eventually contain a mana crystal to take off some of the user’s load, powering it wouldn’t be a problem.

And all that’s left is to figure out just how I’m going to improve the design. He thought to himself as he got to work on other orders. He couldn’t ignore what had already come in for him, but he wasn’t going to stop thinking on how to get the most out of such an interesting project as ideas and theories rushed through his head.