Holy shit, I’m a god.
He ignored Myriad, he was simply feeling too incredible to be brought down. No matter how disorienting the change to his mind had been, its effect on his ability to learn mind skills had been beyond massive.
It had been a week since he’d first gotten thought speed enhancement, only a little longer for rapid thought speed, and both of them had made it to the ninth level, bringing the speed he could make himself think at all the way up to one hundred and fifty percent faster. When he used it on all of his minds, the world around him felt like it slowed down, moving in slow motion.
It was an incredible feeling and one he was looking to push even farther as soon as he could.
So how do you think I’ll need to awaken the skill? If I put all of my mind into practicing with it at once then I should be able to get an insane amount of experience for it, it can’t be too hard, right?
What I’m hearing is that I’m absolutely taking mind master next. I may not know how long any advanced variants of it will take, but I’d be shocked if that one takes me more than a day or two to finish with my thoughts like this.
<...You know, I think I’m getting too used to watching you complete jobs. A master path is meant to take years.>
Well, sucks to be everyone who doesn’t have a thousand powerful minds in their head but I’m different. Who knows, maybe I’ll just take a month to do it and whatever advanced mind variants pop up after.
They continued to chat back and forth as Ben made his way through Allfaith. Thera still needed to stay as she finished up helping the last two of Zandale’s apprentices get her skill, but the others had finished and left just the day before, and he had his own things to do as he went off get more skills for himself in the one place in that city he knew would be agreeable. The home of Amy, Jake, and Yuzu.
By going there, Ben would be able to get both archmagic and non-affintied magic on rings, greatly reducing the amount he’d need to carry, at least until he got each individual one on a ring. There were always going to be slight differences in awakened skills, but in general, it was safe to assume that something specialized would be more powerful, even if it lacked the flexibility of a less specialized skill.
But that doesn’t matter in the slightest because I’m going to have every awakened magic to play with after this!
At least, that was what he’d thought. It was only as he arrived at the gate of the mansion the three of them lived in that his hopes were dashed.
“Sorry, none of them are here at the moment,” Guard told him when he tried to get in. “Won’t be back for a couple weeks either. I can take a message if you’d like?”
“Ah, no it’s fine, thanks.”
That just means I need an alternative.
He knew there were solutions available to him, plenty of them in fact. Quilith had visited him just a few days before to talk as they’d agreed, and he knew he’d be meeting up with the various grey in a month to copy their skills onto rings, but he didn’t want to have to wait that long.
He did have a different benefit though that could cut down on the time and get him a few different skills rings too if he played his cards right. He’d just need some help, so he found a place to sit in the time he had before speaking in his head, grabbing his god’s attention again.
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Okay, so that was a bust but I’ve got another option. I’m just going to need you to talk to some of the other gods about it to make it work.
It’s nothing bad. In fact, it’s the opposite of bad. I shouldn’t even be the one making this offer, you all should be begging me to do this for you.
I’ll finish making gate enchantments for the ones that are waiting for them. In exchange, I’ll need to meet people with at least the first level of each awakened magic, and what I want for my work is the standard pay for it, as well as to meet a different awakened skill holder at each location.
He already knew that there were many unfinished gates set up in the world, just waiting for the day that someone who could complete the enchantments on them would be born. The issue was how rare that was. A gate enchantment could only be made if the enchanter had an awakened enchanting, space magic, and time magic. Considering how uncommon it was for a person to have a single awakened skill, it was no surprise that centuries had passed since the last time, but now he was there to fill that niche.
Okay, well ignoring that last bit, I have a few things that can make everything I’m asking for more than worth it. I have a theory on how to lower the mana cost of the gates by a significant margin if I use every branch of magic in making the enchantment so if it works then you’ll all be able to have even more gates set up without needing to go quite so hard with all of the magic materials they take, but just as importantly, I’ll be able to do it faster than whatever enchanters made them in the past. It usually takes what? A week to complete one? If you give me an awakened space mage to get me around as well, I’ll be able to finish multiple a day.
He had three main benefits that would let him work through it all incredibly fast compared to others. He had his unnatural mind, which would let him work on multiple parts of the enchantment at once, he had Thera and his awakened connect, which together would let him access boundless mana so he wouldn’t need to worry about regenerating it as he went, and the final benefit in his arsenal was his thought speed skills. He could enchant as fast as he could think as long as he had the mana for it, meaning that the speed of his work had just gotten quicker by an outrageous margin.
Looking at all of that together, he thought the chances of being turned down were exceptionally slim. There were a few cities in the world that were close to invasion points yet didn’t have a functioning gate to make things easier on them, the fact that he was around to help could be considered a blessing, and the more gates he made the better off people as a whole would be. It was entirely possible that some of them might not want to go along with him because of personal reasons, but if the gods as a whole really did try to do what was best for their people then they wouldn’t refuse when the little extra he was asking for wouldn’t actually cost anything.
And if they do refuse I’ll just have to make it publicly known that they’ve put their personal feelings above helping the world as a whole.
Excellent, in that case just gotta make sure Thera is free for it.
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When he got back, he found Zandale’s two remaining apprentices still hard at work with their practice while Thera was laying on the ground, staff stretched into the air as a myriad of spells flew around her, aided by the circlet she was still wearing despite her intense desire to throw it away and never look back. She’d acquired the three magic she wanted, all that was left was training them to raise her levels enough that she could reach her goal and from there never look back.
“How’s it all going?” He asked as she saw him, putting her practice on pause as she got up.
“Mmh, it looks like I’m pretty compatible with empathy at least ‘cause I’ve already gotten a level to it. Also, I never want to experience a mind skill again.”
“Maybe they’re just easier to deal with when they’re actually yours instead of being forced on you?”
“I kind of doubt that. So how were they? Are we meeting for dinner later?”
“Ah, sadly no, they weren’t there and I guess they won’t be back for a while so I’m trying to swing an alternative. Don’t suppose you’re interested in helping with it ‘cause it will probably only be a week or two of work and we should be getting paid well on top of whatever skills I can grab.”
“As long as we aren’t doing it till these two are done then sure, what’s the plan?”
He ran her through the proposal he’d given his god and watched her eyes light up as he did.
“Sounds pretty fun, guess we probably won’t have time for any exploring doing that though, will we?”
“Er, probably not, sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, any city that joins the network will be easy to travel to later on so we’ll just need to see if anything catches our eyes for the future.”
The future, huh? That sounds nice.
He didn’t want to fall into defeatism so he took the statement for what it was and tried to keep himself from thinking too deeply on whatever the future was going to hold, even if he had to fight against the tide of his minds to keep them under control.