The walk back felt long compared to his mad rush there, all the more so for the new wounds he carried with him as he forced his body on while he slowly made his way back to the group looking after Thera, finding them to be in the same place he left them.
“Is it done?” The leader of the lot asked Ben as he arrived. “Is it over?”
“As over as it’s going to be,” He shrugged, trying to ignore the pain the small act caused in him. “We’re going to be having a ghost problem for a while but not much we can do about that.”
And it will only get worse with time.
Even without anything controlling them, as hints of sanity and understanding came back to the disembodied souls they would once more gain control over some of the powers they held in life. Sure, there would be those who would simply pass on once free from the hells and there were going to be plenty who didn’t have a skill set that would translate well to their new astral forms, but there were sure to be great mages among them who would be able to cause unheard-of levels of devastation.
But that’s officially not my problem. The world is saved and the gods can ask the light and death spirits to help handle everything that escaped. For the time being, I have other things to worry about.
This entire day has been quite the adventure but hold that thought for one second.
Thera was still unconscious but he was going to try and speed up her recovery just a little if he could as he connected to both her and the group around them, transferring over the mana within his own soul as he stole it from the surrounding people and kept passing it over in the hopes of waking her up, keeping the process going as he did his best to estimate everyone’s regeneration rates to keep any of them from being knocked out by the process.
In the end, it had to be nothing but a drop in the bucket when compared to what her soul could hold and the speed it would regenerate by itself, with no more than ten thousand points of it being passed over to her, but after twenty minutes it seemed to have some effect as she began to stir and eventually opened her eyes.
“Everything hurts,” She was the first thing she groaned out, letting a small smile slip onto Ben’s face given how big of an understatement that felt like in the face of all they’d dealt with. They’d walked away with worse injuries from lesser threats in the past, as unpleasant as it was he’d happily take the current pain as he joked with her.
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“It looks like you really are capable of getting mana exhausted. How’s it feel to be as mortal as the rest of us?”
“Terrible, I hate this.”
“Ha, well you should be back to roughly around a hundred thousand by this point so focus on healing yourself up, and then maybe if you’re feeling up to it you could help your sweet little boyfriend pretty please?”
Saying that forced her to actually focus on him instead of just her own soreness and see the state he was in, her eyes going wide as she took in not only the range of cuts he’d closed himself, leaving ugly stitches across his flesh, but also seeing all of the deeper strain he’d put his body through thanks to her mana examination as she started to reach out to him, only stopping when he tapped her head.
“You. First,” He told her firmly. “I accidentally exposed way too much of my mind to you before, if I managed to accidentally damage your brain then it needs to be fixed. I will live until you’re done.”
“Fine, then catch me up on what happened while I was out. Did we do it?”
“The outsider’s dead and I closed the gate to hell,” He confirmed while avoiding giving any more detail when people he didn’t know surrounded them still. No matter how justified he was in killing one of the world's few demigods, that wasn’t exactly an accomplishment he wanted to spread and she seemed to pick up on that, not pressing for more at the time, even as she wondered where so many of his new wounds had come from.
You don’t even have a head, but fine, go on, I have stuff to do too anyway.
What he didn’t say was just what that stuff was as he laid back and closed his eyes, sending up a small prayer to Myriad as he didn’t try to go to his god’s realm, but instead followed the path it made as it went to the cube, finding himself standing among a meeting of the gods that none there would have wanted him in as the divine around him began to take notice as comments and cries went up among them.
He didn’t particularly care though. Seeing if he could pull off a move like that had been a test of the limits of his sacrilege but since he had succeeded, he had something to get off his chest as he yelled out at all of them.
“IF I EVER FIND OUT THAT MY WEAPONS ARE ENDING UP IN THE HANDS OF THE CHURCH OF ENETH, OLENSIA, OR ANYONE ELSE WHO HAS FUCKING TRIED TO KILL ME AGAIN, I AM DONE, DO YOU ALL FUCKING UNDERSTAND? BECAUSE OF THIS BULLSHIT, IF YOU WANT ME TO KEEP MAKING SHIT FOR THE WAR EFFORTS MY PRICES HAVE OFFICIALLY TRIPLED.”
He didn’t wait to see what any of them would say, he didn’t care. Having got that out of his system he went back down to fume and plan on how to survive in a world where so many seemed like they’d be more than happy to see him dead.