When morning came and Ben left, the three gods dropped their more casual atmosphere, all of them forced to reflect on what they’d just witnessed.
“This should go without saying, but if you would both do me a favour and not spread this around, I would appreciate it,” Myriad groaned. “I don’t want to imagine how anyone else would react.”
Nare gave his friend a light pat, trying his best to be reassuring. “Even if word does eventually get out, this isn’t as bad as some of the rest the boy can do, I wouldn’t be too worried.”
“I would,” Helori said, in no way helping Myriad but trying to be realistic. “Despite what we may have told him, we all know that’s not something a mortal should be capable of. In the few short years he’s been in this universe he’s already adapted to it in ways we never could have predicted. The fact that he now has outsider as a job option continues to make more and more sense.”
Myriad crashed to the ground with her words. “Don’t remind me. I don’t want to imagine what sorts of skills that might help him acquire.”
“He’d need the proper disposition for them first so it’s unlikely he’d gain any actual outsider abilities,” Nare told them, again trying to be positive, even in the face of the logic Helori kept trying to force on them.
“Not one of us would have guessed he’d ever gain actualization either. If it came down to a bet, I wouldn’t be willing to lose any faith that it wouldn’t give him another strange skill or make it easier for him to get some more bizarre ones in the future, especially when combined with his skill learner title.”
“That particular title does seem to be putting in a fair bit of work,” Nare muttered in thought. “With this new one added to the mix, Ben has quite the unusual status. He’s lucky more people can’t see everything he has.”
“If he was really lucky, he wouldn’t keep running into the few people on the planet who can see it for themselves,” Myriad sighed again, feeling that was going to be a common thing with the new stress his apostle had placed on him as Helori broached what for them was the obvious implication of his new skill.
“Let’s stop beating around the bush. He may have only created foods and utensils so far, but we all know there’s no reason Ben couldn’t make himself weapons if he wanted to. It’s more surprising he didn’t during any of his practice given his line of work. If the other gods were to hear about that, you know there would be a reaction. Maybe even a justifiable one.”
“Ben isn’t going to attack any of us just to try and raise his sacrilege,” Myriad said in his apostle’s defense.
“Us? No, of course not. For any judgment I may have about some of his actions, he treats those he considers his friends rather well. But the ones he dislikes? What about if he appears before Eneth or Olensia again? Or even just any of the gods who previously voted to steal from him or toss him into hell? Do you think he’d be willing to extend the same courtesy?”
“As long as nobody tries to kill him again, there’s no reason for him to cross paths with any of them. It will be fine.”
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“Ah, that’s not exactly true,” Nare said, his tone sounding guilty. “When he was training my granddaughter, he discovered something he’d asked me to keep in confidence. He can follow faith to learn the paths to different gods. He went to my realm after only visiting my church.”
The confession was met with the sounds of a slap, Helori hitting the other god once that reveal was out.
“You absolute bastard! You could have mentioned that before I got him to renovate my church! I like having at least a little privacy from time to time!”
“I don’t think you have to worry, he understands that and hasn’t come back since. I’m just saying it’s possible. Besides, even if he does go to their realm, he would at most be able to get one attack in with the element of surprise, I doubt the boy would do something that would be sure to have such little payoff.”
This time it was Myriad’s turn to sound worried. “Maybe for now. Neither of you have seen it, but Ben’s noticed that he can move as fast as he can think up here. As things stand, I can still keep up with him but it’s not easy. A few more levels and that will change. If he gets to the ninth level with his thought speed skill then I don’t know how hard he’d be to manage.”
“And that isn’t even considering how his sacrilege might interact with his actualization,” Helori pointed out. “If he creates a knife up here it just might cut.”
All of them felt a small shiver at the thought. There were few ways to kill a god and none of them particularly easy, but the main chance a mortal would ever have at it was when the divine would choose to descend into the body of a follower, something that was far less common on their shared world than in their pasts before the invasion.
Ben was different though. He was the king of sacrilege, and combined with abilities that let him travel freely to the realms he could find and those that let him make what he wanted, he was becoming a genuine and unexpected threat. No god would have guessed that the forgotten summoned would grow like that as time went on.
Looking at all he could do, Helori began to mutter. “He can freely send his mind to different realms, materialize like nobody else and now actualize on top of it, plus he can think with his soul. If he didn’t seem all but destined to rise to the third tier by this point, I’d almost think he was trying to figure out an alternative path to godhood.”
“He’s certainly interesting enough to pull it off,” Nare laughed. “And makes one wonder how he might grow next.”
“You feel free to wonder then, I’ll stick to worrying about however the skills he already has are going to grow,” Myriad grumbled. “He already got two levels to actualization so it seems pretty safe to say that it falls under the umbrella of a crafting-type skill to get those job bonuses, maybe even a mind skill too if it really is using his intelligence. Plus you all saw how much fun he was having with it, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one he’s going to try and awaken by doing something crazy. You all saw how much he made without any strain to his mind, if he really wanted to, he’ll be able to do something big up here.”
“If he accidentally destroys your realm, you can stay in mine for a while,” Helori said in sympathy, already imagining that Ben would somehow use his new skill to wreak havoc on the dimension his god called home.
“Nobody put that idea into his head either. I don’t think he’d intentionally do it to me, but I don’t want him being tempted by whatever sort of status change a mortal would get for managing something so insane.”
Myriad had faith in Ben’s basic decency and their friendship enough to believe his apostle wouldn’t actually do something to destroy his home, but that didn’t mean the boy wouldn’t be curious about what would happen if he somehow pulled it off, nor would he deny himself any benefits of such a thing if some accident where to happen.
With worries for the future abounding, both for how Ben would use his ever-growing pool of powers and how other gods would react to them, the three did their best to get back to their work, each left to wonder just how the boy was going to continue to develop in the future.