It was late by the time Ben was finished being healed, with both soul mages having used him as a chance to experiment to determine the best ways of healing a damaged soul, but once they were both done, Ben and Thera’s vacation options were finished for that point.
Rather than go out through another random gate again to see what they could find, they opted to enjoy a meal with their friends, explaining that they were supposed to be taking some time to relax, even if the first day had gone poorly, before they all parted again, with Ben and Thera going to Anailia’s embassy within the city to grab a room and promptly fell asleep after dealing with that unexpectedly long day.
Or at least Ben tried to sleep. The gods had asked him to do as much, to let his mind experience real rest along with what he was supposed to be giving his body, but such a thing came with unexpected consequences.
Ben’s mind was no longer that of a human’s, no matter what he might say against that. When he closed his eyes and drifted off for the few time since awakening his mind skills he didn’t have one singular dream, but instead a thousand as his subconscious gave him hell, showing him his hopes, sorrows, memories, and tortures all at once, with his thought speed skill making each of those dreams feel like an eternity by the time he opened his eyes again.
The dark window told him it was still late and how tired he felt was enough to know that he could have only slept for at most an hour, but that wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat again so soon after the first one, so he did what had become far more normal for him at that point. He closed his eyes and forced his mind into his god’s realm, finding it already occupied.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” His god chided as he focused on his work with Helori and Nare, all of them too invested in what they were doing to turn their attention to Ben.
“Tried and failed. Shockingly, it looks like if you can think a few thousand things at once, that also means you can dream a few thousand things at once. It’s not fun.”
“Did you gain any levels again from it then?” Helori asked, casting an eye his way.
“Not this time, but I’m not really in the mood for a second attempt.”
“You really should try to learn to sleep normally if you can Ben,” Myriad sighed. “It might be easy enough for you to escape up here, but that doesn’t exactly make it a good choice.”
“I’ll try each night when I’m on vacation, but when I inevitably fail, let me come hang out up here. At least that way my body will get some proper rest instead of waking up every couple hours.”
“Fine, but no working while you’re up here. We aren’t going to make you anything to read.”
“Fine, I’ll deal so just keep me company.”
----------------------------------------
“You know what’s kind of bullshit?” Ben asked, laying on the floor and largely being a distraction to the other three as they tried to work as the hours wore on. “Convergent evolution. I’ve seen plenty of body shapes that match what you’d find on Earth, from humans to crabs to wolves and rodents and birds and so much more. Sure, I’m seeing some animals here that don’t have an equivalent back on my homeworld and Earth had options this one doesn’t seem to, but there’s a lot of similarities in animal life.”
Helori sighed, accepting that she’d be the one to humour him this time. “Where's this going Ben?”
“This is going to the fact that the same is barely true for plants! I mean, sure, we see trees and shrubs and grasses on both worlds, I won’t deny that, but those are all broad categories. When we look at fruits and vegetables though, there’s basically never a decent equivalent between the two worlds.”
“There’s going to be a lot of good reasons for that,” She told him. “Domestication being the biggest one. If you farm a crop and select for different traits, those are going to become more common and if you don’t start with the same crop and select for different things then you’re going to get different things, not to mention the presence of magic in this reality compared to your last. Plant mages can make some pretty big differences in things when it comes to farming. Honestly, even just life mages would lead to some radically different ways to how crops are grown compared to trying to do all of that without magic.”
“And I get all of that, there’s a bunch of great reasons why I can’t find any crops that really remind me of my old world, expecting that of this one obviously doesn’t make any sense.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is I really want a tomato.”
There were plenty of genuinely hard things he’d had to deal with when it came to adapting to the new world he found himself in but one that was more of a minor annoyance than anything else was satisfying his cravings. When it came to cooked meals, with his skills and a bit of cleverness he could replicate most things closely enough to be satisfied, but when it came to anything fresher he just had to deal with it.
Wanting to bite into a crisp apple or a juicy orange was nothing new, but in that moment he would have killed for a simple tomato. The sweet and sour acidic bite bursting through a soft red skin called to him. Even if he could remember in perfect clarity the taste of every one he’d ever eaten thanks to his mind skills, that wasn’t the same as eating one himself, leaving him to do nothing but imagine the thing he was missing, his mind trying to construct the platonic form of one to try and live through until he got the shock of one popping into the air above him, falling onto his face.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Oh, freaking sweet!” He cheered, not caring about the fact it had been dropped on his head like that as he looked it over. What he’d been given was a beautiful red-orange roma, exactly as he’d been envisioning and without a second thought took a bite, feeling the flavours explode across his mouth as he swallowed. “Man, if you guys could do that, you should have told me sooner and… what?”
When he’d finished the tomato and looked at the gods with him, he found them all looking back, staring in some mixture of shock and horror.
“Ben,” Myriad began, taking the lead on the conversation as the god stared into his apostle. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“That thing you just created up here and shoved into your mouth. How did you do that?”
“Wait, are you saying I’m the one that made that?” Ben asked, looking for confirmation as the three gods nodded, leaving him to try and repeat the process he’d just gone through of imagining a perfect tomato, getting the same result again as one appeared from nothing before his eyes. “Holy crap, I really did do that! Oh man, life just got a billion times better!”
He was instantly looking it over, seeing the thing he’d somehow created and finding it to be perfect, leaving him blind to the goddess who walked over and grabbed his arms, shaking him vigorously until his eyes were properly focused back on the others with him.
“Ben, let me see that,” Helori told him, taking it from his hand and ignoring as he immediately made another to snack on as she looked over the thing he’d made, bringing it over to the other two gods. “Nare, is this what I think it is?”
“It looks like it,” The god said, his focus switching between the newly created tomato and Ben who was already testing his newfound ability by creating more of the fruits and vegetables he’d missed from his homeworld to shove into his mouth. “The question is just how? If this was a side effect of his unnatural mind, you’d think that this would have happened by now already.”
“It has to be his new skill,” Myriad spoke up in realization. “Actualization. But for it to do this of all things, how could he possibly have the disposition for it?”
“Is it really that surprising if you think about it?” Helori asked. “Look at what he does. He’s technically doing it every single time he comes up here, isn’t he? And the way he was pulling Nati and Xilly into his mind and giving his thoughts structure to train them, you could think of that as being training wheels for the actual skill.”
“And I sure would like to know what you guys are talking about,” Ben finally asked, a table, cutlery, and full course steak meal that hadn’t been there before suddenly in front of him, with the gods left without the beginning of an idea for how to react to the display, all of them deciding to ignore it as Myriad took the lead.
“You’re manipulating this higher realm of reality,” His god explained. “I don’t know how to explain it more than that. It’s the same thing we do any time we’re making you books or chairs or places to sit. You’re taking the ideas of things and giving them form. It’s not something we’ve heard of mortals doing.”
“I suppose there’s no reason to assume other mortals can’t do this,” Nare mused. “Most just don’t spend enough time in a god’s realm to get the chance to.”
“I think we can pretty safely assume that even if other mortals did come up here as much as he does, they wouldn’t be able to pull this off,” Helori argued, taking back the tomato and having a bite. “Look at this, it’s not just some empty appearance, it has taste and texture. It has smell. This is detailed, it’s not inferior in any way to what a god might create.”
“And it’s very cool,” Ben grinned. “Is doing this costing me anything? I don’t think I feel myself burning mana.”
From experience, Ben didn’t think he could even use mana when visiting his god. He was forced to read books one at a time when he was up there since he couldn’t lift them or turn the pages with his material manipulation, nor could he enchant. The one time he had done so while he was up there, what had really been happening was he had been enchanting with his body in the normal world while his mind was above.
And I know that when I’m up here I’m using some sort of combination of my mind and soul since Myriad has worried about me accidentally connecting to him in the past but mana is stored in the soul. I wonder how that works out. Maybe it’s some feature of reality to keep mana from flowing from one layer to another? Adding this to the list of unimportant questions I can try and figure out in the distant future.
“There’s not going to be a mana cost,” Myriad explained. “If anything, you would likely feel a strain on your mind, but given how bizarre yours in particular is, not to mention the fact that you have an intelligence value of over seven thousand, I’m not sure just how much you’d need to push yourself to even feel it.”
“Okay, sweet, but back up to Helori a bit then. You said I’m doing this any time I come up here. Explain please?”
“It’s nothing to be surprised about. Look at you, you aren’t some disembodied mind any time you come up here, you have form and we aren't the ones giving it to you. That means you have been forcing your will on this realm for a while now, it looks like it’s just managed to grow into a proper skill thanks to your newest job adding some structure and mastery.”
“Even cooler, and it looks like I now have something I can do to pass the time that isn’t studying,” He said cheerfully, creating even more food as he spoke. “I won’t distract you for the rest of my vacation it looks like so don’t mind me as I play around with this.”
Myriad floated over to him as he said it, seeming even more worn out than usual. “Ben, it’s going to be even more impossible to focus with you doing this so if you’re going to insist on it then at least share.”
Giving a laugh, he tossed his god a pear, watching as it disappeared.
“Hmm, surprisingly good considering you only have one mouth to experience taste with.”
“Look at the planet Myriad, having a single mouth is the standard.”
“To the loss of every race on it, yes.”
Not having it in him to comment on the bizarre physiology of his god’s long-dead people, Ben was instead content to focus on the new skill he had to play with as the rest of the night passed by.