Waking up in the morning, Ben was happy to prepare a quick breakfast for himself and Thera before he rushed off to work, already imagining what was going to lay ahead.
Sure, he was going to be spending weeks being worked to the bone, both making mini gates and weapons, but his teacher would be there to enjoy to his full potential, letting him see what a third-tier skill could do in full.
And maybe that means I’ll finally be able to get ahead on some other things too.
That was the dream at least, but he’d beaten Falk there by enough that it would need to wait for the yeti to arrive, meaning Ben wouldn’t waste time and got to work.
The first thing he did was pull in crates that had been left in front of the shop sometime while it was closed, all of them filled with metals and materials that were addressed for his use, making it clear that the gods had expected he’d accept their newest request early enough to send things over for his return and with everything already on hand he got to work, pulling out his homunculi as he began putting together the first gates of the day.
Now that he knew what he was doing, making it was almost mindless, in the sense it took up barely a fraction of Ben’s thoughts, and with that leeway he spent the time he had thinking, going over things he’d read and learned, trying to fit ideas together in interesting and novel ways and seeing what might connect to his other interest while also trying to push through problems.
When he’d last seen Killi, she’d given him the start of a formula to account for modifier effects up to ten deep against a given spell or affinity so he was mentally going through all of them, looking at every possible configuration to try and see if there was anything of note or any configuration that seemed like they would give the same result as something he was seeing in the spell while taking up less mana, even if he knew there were flaws in that. The design of the entire thing meant that later effects could loop back into an earlier one to change it and without being able to account for later effects in general yet beyond carefully testing everything, that meant that any early change could have disastrous consequences down the line, even if it initially seemed like it should have worked.
For the first time in ages, he felt the beginning of a headache form across his thousands of minds as he considered it all, along with how much work there still was to do, but tried to suppress it. It was just another thing that needed to get done and he’d dealt with worse back when he’d been suffering through months of migraines. He’d just push past it.
In that spirit he kept going, his work only taking a pause when his teacher finally pushed through the door, swearing as he did.
“Gods above, there’s five of you now? Am I in hell? Is that what's happening here?”
“Rude,” Each Ben said, speaking in one voice. “I've just learned a couple new tricks while you’ve been gone.”
“Well, they’re freaky as all hell. I don’t see anything in your status that makes me think you can suddenly grow new bodies so what’s going on?”
Right, he can see my status now, neat.
“They’re homunculi,” He explained, this time only speaking through his real body. “When connect grew it let me expand the range of my skill by making my soul expand outside of my body. It looks like as a side effect, when I try to connect to anything without one it becomes an empty vessel for me to fill. It’s super handy though, since I’m technically in them I can gain and train my skills through them the same way as if it was the real me doing everything. Well, mostly that is. I can’t use mana through them so that leaves yours truly to do any casting or enchanting while the rest are put to work.”
“I want to say that can’t be good for your sanity but since this is you we’re talking about I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? Looks like plenty of nonsense has happened in your status since I’ve seen you last.”
“Ha, maybe, but I think we can catch up on me later, mister soulsmith, because I want the details on that. Tell me literally everything.”
“Still figuring a lot of it out myself, boy. The way I experience the world’s changed a fair bit and I’m spendin’ most nights talkin’ with the world’s first soulsmith to try and learn the best I can.”
“Okay, very cool, you mind if I see for myself?”
“Alright, go for it.”
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With permission given, Ben connected to his teacher, experiencing the world as he did and feeling it all. Through more than any sense, Ben could feel the metal and stone around him, almost akin to Thera’s earth sense but on a far deeper level. If he’d been an earth mage he would have thought that moving any of it would be as simple as waving a hand, but as interesting as that was it didn’t compare to what else he was picking up. As Falk looked at him, Ben was able to see his own soul through his teacher’s eyes.
It was something he’d seen before, looking through the eyes of Yuzu and Elvat when they two had helped him awaken so many mages in the past, but since then it was apparent that things had changed. Besides the simple system information that was clear as day, the structure of it all was simply different in a way he couldn’t understand, not that that was unexpected.
Ben knew that souls were shifting, changing things with only a few bits of their unfathomable depths truly understood by the gods and the world. He was able to pick up on the parts that were known, his constants in the forms of unchanging and insignificant affinities and his ridiculous resistances, along with the skills he’d been growing and what had originally been foreign bits, his blessings, merging into him and strengthening him overall, but no matter how much he looked he couldn’t help but wonder if there was any way to really study them to their depths.
Nope, not thinking about that. It would just become another project and I have way too many at this point.
Instead, he decided to distract himself another way as he focused back on his teacher.
“Falk, I’ve gotta watch you make something through your eyes. Pretty pretty please?”
“Sure, if you want. I was gonna make something for you and Thera anyway, give me a bit of mythril and just a second.”
Ben did as he was asked, materializing a piece as big as his thumb that Falk took, and with his magic, blended with some simple steel before wrapping it around Ben’s wrist, creating another bracelet amongst all of the others he’d wear, its entire surface covered in a complex soul enchantment.
“You know, it kind of sucks that for the brief bit of time I was a better enchanter than you, you weren’t even around for me to be smug about it,” Ben sighed as he stared at the work through his own eyes. While not using his system or the enchanting modifier, it was undoubtedly a work of art, the delicate strands that made it up seeming impossibly fine and leaving the prospect of replicating them nothing more than a dream, even if Falk laughed about it.
“Boy, I should be the one annoyed here. I see how much your enchanting improves with each level and let me tell you, the system didn’t call it divine for nothing. You ever manage to grow it to the ninth level and you’ll be better at it than me again, no doubt about that.”
“You serious?”
“Wouldn’t lie, your level of skill is frankly disgusting so make sure you keep it up. I want you here before I know it.”
“Well, I guess I’ll keep on doing my best. So what does this enchantment do anyway?”
His limited analysis was telling him it was a soul enchantment but he could have guessed that, and the structure wasn’t giving him many clues either, but his teacher gave a toothy grin at the question, knowing Ben was going to love the answer.
“It improves the speed you’ll raise your attributes at. Not by a crazy amount, but it’s still significant. To compare after considerin’ the effect your death resistance is going to have on it, it will be a little less than what all of your attributes got when you took the craftsman job, only for everything instead of just the three you got then.”
Ben felt his eyes grow wide as he heard that. Even if he was taking jobs beyond the master branch now, getting that extra level of growth for nothing was huge. A level of growth Ben already knew could be improved with what he had to pass on to his teacher.
“Hate to break it to you, but it looks like you’re going to need to remake this for me in a minute ‘cause there’s something I need to show you too. Give it a look.”
He quickly enchanted one of the other bands on his arm to have the modifier on it, enjoying Falk’s shock before showing his teacher how it was done, connecting to the yeti to let him get a feel for it before he began his own attempts, stripping the enchantment he’d just made for Ben and practicing till he got it right.
“Boy, now I really want to know just what the heck you’ve gotten up to.”
“Ha, I’ll catch you up while we work. The gods have me on a big project and the pay is enough that I need to make sure I impress.”
“Ha, fine then, let’s get to it.”
As Ben tried to get back to what he was doing, he couldn’t help but be stopped in his tracks with what Falk brought out next. God bones, the few remaining ones they’d been sent, or what should have been a few, but Ben couldn’t help but notice the box had become unusually full.
“Ah man, don’t tell me they’re having you use the rest of those? I barely got to play with them myself!”
“Not the rest, but most. All of the remaining ones were sent here though so I guess they have some expectations.”
“Ugh, lame.”
It made sense. Right now, Falk was the person on the planet most equipped to really take advantage of them, but it still couldn’t keep Ben from filling with jealousy. He wanted to use them to see what he could do, something his teacher easily picked up on.
“Boy, I know you still haven’t used the piece you were given for anything, just do something with it.”
“It’s my only one, if I’m going to use it then it needs to be for something special.”
“Well, don’t just hold onto it forever. Anyway, like I said, I haven’t been told what to do with everything here. If I was a betting man, I’d say a couple gods are waiting to see how you manage a bit closer to the third wave so just do your best to squeeze out a couple more levels in everything then and you’ll probably be given something to play with a bit.”
“And I’m even more motivated. Which means I’m really going to need to get the rest of this work out of the way so I can experiment a bit.”
It’s going to be a busy few months.