“It’s done! Plus no explosions and impending death this time! God, I really am so good at what I do.”
What Ben was holding in his hand was the newest legendary item he’d made, being the sword that had turned out so poorly only the day before. A masterpiece that would put any other application of ice or temperature-manipulating spells to shame as he held it forth, watching what anyone would think looked like snow fall from its blade, even if it was something far scarier. Frozen air, turning back to a gas when it got a couple inches away but still something nobody should risk coming in contact with.
The enchantments on the blade had to be specially made with a level of care that would be hard to replicate, with every bit of energy the chilled sword tried to absorb being directed to the handle, creating something that would at least be warm enough for a normal person to hold to keep the weapon from being some useless curiosity.
There were in fact numerous enchantments that had gone down to make something like that even possible, from all of the strengthening and stabilizing ones to a few specifically designed to keep anything from sticking to the blade, both to ensure it wouldn’t freeze to the first thing it cut into as well as prevent all of the air it froze from sticking to it to make sure it wouldn’t look like an ice club after a few minutes.
Just having it in the room was slowly lowering the surrounding temperature, even with the massive hole in the side of the building that had only been covered up with some tarps allowing for plenty of airflow and by all means he thought he’d created a masterpiece.
Which just leaves testing it.
He briefly eyed the three he was teaching and practicing with, all of them trapped within his mind and essentially defenseless, before shaking away the thought that would have had his god calling him out for his evil inclination and turning instead to a table just a little to the side, swinging the blade and watching it rip all of the heat it contained the second it sliced through, leaving the two halves to shatter when they hit the ground.
Oh yeah, this will do.
“I’ll make a sheath that can contain the cold without freezing later and from there this bad boy is being mailed out to John. He should be able to safely handle it with the skills he has.”
After the reunion he’d had with the other humans on the planet, Ben had promised himself he’d be sending the man a fortune in equipment and technically he already had, and not just him, but all of them. Since he’d seen them all at the meetup he’d been able to eyeball their sizes and despite some of the impressions they’d given him, he really did want every one of them to survive as long as they could, but that still left the issue of making a proper present for the only human he wasn’t already friends with that had searched him out without any agenda.
“No need for that, I’m sure my footstool can double as a mailman.”
<...I feel the need to point out that you’re talking about one of the highest members of Nare’s faith.>
“And Nare was also mad at him. This is fine.”
<...Just try not to mistreat him in public at least.>
“Fine.”
He would have been happy to keep up the back and forth between apostle and god but found himself having to stop for the progress that had been made by his students, with the notifications going off in one of their heads. Xilly had finally managed to get to the third level of connect, putting her in the same place as Nati who had achieved the same only a little bit earlier and he released the three from his mind.
“Alright guys, good work and take ten. Also, I-”
“I can’t take this anymore! You really are insane!” Xilly yelled at him, with both her and Nati looking beaten down by how long they’d spent in his head. “I don’t care if you were never really trying to seduce us, I was still right! Humans are the worst!”
“...I see.”
Without giving them a chance to say more he brought all three of them back into his mind to practice more as he used those spare minutes to both steal their mana to refill his own, letting him materialize and enchant the sheath for his sword while at the same time think on how he wanted to approach Xilly. He didn’t know why she had such a disdain for his kind, and while he could have spent some time going through her memories till he found the truth, finding whatever event had caused it, that sounded like a pain. He didn’t want to search through literally years of history at this point, leaving him little choice but to actually talk about it.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
In one smooth motion, he put the sword safely away before once again releasing them from his thoughts, with two looking disoriented from the experience while the third looked mad.
“You bastard,” Xilly spat at him, looking like she wanted to say more but was stopped by Ben’s own cold attitude.
“Enough. Let’s get this over with already. What the hell do you have against my kind and why have you been taking it out on me?”
“Why do I need a reason? Humans are gross and you in particular are an absolute slavedriver! What other reason do I need?”
“Sure, but you’ve been taking this out on me since day one when I was much, much nicer. It can’t just be because you thought my entire species was polyamorous so what the hell is your damage?”
“...”
“Oh no, no fucking way! This is not about that! I already told you you were wrong! It’s just Jake and maybe a couple others so why are you still being so shit about this!”
“Fine, Jake’s the problem, alright!” She yelled back at him. “How could he take advantage of Yuzu to get her when she was vulnerable and he already had a partner? He was just some manipulative jerk! On my world, she was loved by the land itself, you can’t even begin to imagine how important she was!”
“Then enlighten me. How big was she that you hate my entire race just because one of them is with her?”
“Fine, it’s not like it even matters. This world may be different but she was basically destined to be the wife of a god, not some lowly nobody!”
“...What?”
“You heard me, the fact that she’s been reduced to the tagalong in a relationship is ridiculous, both for what she was in our old world and what she is on this one!”
While both Nati and Zallith were shocked to hear that, Ben was mostly confused as he processed what she’d said.
“I thought all summoned worlds didn’t have mana?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m saying you didn’t have magic in your old world, right?”
“Obviously.”
“But you’re saying you had a god?”
“Many of them.”
“So when you’re saying Yuzu was supposed to marry one, you mean she was going to be sacrificed or something, right?”
“Disgusting. Is that what your people would do?”
“...Okay, we’re getting nowhere here. One second.”
His curiosity had been raised in a way that removed his earlier hesitation to read Xilly’s memories and he went through as much as he could to the best of his abilities, all while she squirmed, feeling the weight of his gaze as a minute passed by.
“What? If you have something to say then just say it!”
“Just that I’m never going to get over the differences throughout the multiverse,” He muttered, reflecting on what he’d just seen.
While Ben knew for sure that the grey had no gods and he was fairly confident in both his old world's lack of them as well as the fact that the pleiadens didn’t even have them as a concept, let alone in the flesh, it seemed that Xilly’s kind was different.
Without meaning to, Ben had let himself fall under the assumption that the existence of gods was at least partially dependent on the presence of magic. There was no real reason he had that misconception other than the correlation he’d seen till that point. All worlds without mana seemed to lack gods. The only world he’d known of that possessed the stuff had them, it was as simple as that, but it was proven wrong in a spectacular fashion.
Looking in her memories, Ben had seen a world different from the two he’d now lived on, with a far more complex culture and a level of technology he’d have placed at roughly eighteenth century if he was going to make an equivalent for Earth, even if that wasn’t a perfect comparison since whatever differences in physics had let air travel proliferate, but the biggest shock was seeing that there were in fact gods walking among them.
Unlike in his current world, they didn’t exist in some higher realm, but it didn't look like they were some separate ruling race like the pleiadens had been secretly dealing with either. Instead, the gods of Xilly’s world were born from the existence of community, with the bigger the community, the more powerful a god would result, springing forth from the world itself.
It was a blatantly different system from how the gods he was used to came about, but that was nothing next to the shock of just what Xillly had told him.
When she’d said that Yuzu was loved by the land, she hadn’t been exaggerating. She wasn’t to be wed to the god of some town or city or even a kingdom. Before her untimely death, she’d been the bride of a continent.
Okay, that’s a bit of a shocking reveal I hadn’t expected, I wonder if that had any influence on the level of power she got when she arrived here? No wonder Xilly has at least a few opinions on her current marriage, but… Didn’t she say something kind of blatantly wrong about how it happened now that I think about it? Like, very very wrong? Hmm, I could try to clear that up myself, but whatever the reason, she’d been taking out her feelings on me so I’ve got a better idea.
“Alright,” Ben began, looking uncomfortably happy all of a sudden in a way that put the three on edge, forcing them to remember just how thrilled he’d looked when he found out he could teach them without restrictions. “Good news for you all! I need to step out for about an hour so I want you guys practicing everything I’ve taught you in that time till I get back. Make sure you behave yourselves!”
He ran off at that, giving the three what should have felt like a bit of peace but ultimately trapped them in their worry as they tried to use their bit of time appropriately.