When Ben finally left for the day, the three were left to themselves in Myriad’s realm where they were free to talk without prying ears, each of them having things to say and feeling about what just happened, with Myriad making his own clear by finally letting himself crash down before he started to complain.
“You know, obviously I was worried when he got that stupid thing, but when days and weeks passed without anything happening I thought we were in the clear… No, that’s not right, I just stopped thinking about it and hoped for the best which I’m now very much regretting. I feel like months of worry have finally caught up with me all at once.”
“Have we seen any other effects?” Helori asked. “It didn’t give him any skills when he got it, right? What about his attributes? If it’s really a blessing then you’d expect it to help them grow.”
“Impossible to say,” Myriad complained. “Look at everything within my apostle’s status Helori, it would be easy to not even notice a standard blessing’s effects amongst all of the jobs, titles, and even other blessings. Maybe it’s giving them some sort of small boost, but it could just as easily only be targeting his subconscious mind.”
“And has there been any change in his personality since he’s gained it?” Nare asked. “Acting out of sorts, doing different things, responding in strange ways?”
Myriad’s mind immediately flashed to the very thing his apostle had built in his church’s sub-basement before dismissing the idea out of hand. As unfortunate as it was, making a potential portal to hell felt all too in character for the boy, not leaving anything else to come to mind.
“...Is it too much to ask that this stupid thing make him a little more reasonable?” He wondered aloud, feeling Helori placing a comforting hand on his side. She may not have been aware of what Ben had secretly done, but she certainly understood the sentiment behind it.
“The real issue is what this has come to,” The goddess sighed. “As unfortunate as it is, Ben seeing Verbum was probably the correct call, but that does open up the potential for another god to see this new blessing bound to him.”
Seeing the record holder was an obvious option right when Ben had gained the blessing but they’d chosen to wait and see to avoid just such a thing. While there was no guarantee anyone would be watching either Ben or Verbum to see the skills bound to his soul through that summoned’s eyes, it was a possibility they’d hoped to avoid.
So what if Ben completed jobs quickly and was prone to titles in a way none before him had been? Those were known facts by that point, same with his skill in raising his levels. But now, on top of everything else, he somehow also had something worrying in his blessings to go along with the rest, something that was sure to draw eyes and questions.
And if they could convince the rest that it had somehow just formed from the chaos then maybe things wouldn’t be so bad, but there was another option, incorrect though it may be, that some might turn to. There were going to be those who’d believe he was given it by the outsider.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
There was no hiding the fact that Ben had its imprisoned soul, with only a few having bothered to ask if they should take it from him. They all knew at that point he’d fight the attempt and after what he’d done for the world it would be hard for any to justify, no matter how much some might dislike him, but there were always those who’d look for whatever excuse when dealing with a perceived slight, this was just going to create an avenue for problems to be born in the future.
“I’ll do my best to arrange an emergency meeting tomorrow around when things are going on with him,” Nare reassured. “We actually have a decent amount of the summoning spell figured out for the first time ever, so long as we fudge how it was determined a bit then that’s a reasonable enough justification for such a thing, even if there’s going to be a few who won’t like it. That should hopefully keep prying eyes away for the time being. Of course, it will get out eventually since he spends time with the soul mages on occasion, but it’s better than nothing.”
“That would be helpful, thank you,” Myriad said in appreciation before going back to the main matter. “I just wish I understood how this happened to begin with.”
It felt like the sort of thing they’d never get an answer to, but Helori at least seemed to have a theory.
“We know from the grey that it’s possible for things to adapt to the chaos after being born to a universe, it’s not just things spontaneously generated out there,” She reasoned. “Maybe Ben’s just gone through an early stage of that? You have to admit, if it would keep him from at best dying or at worst mutating into an untold monstrosity if he ended up between realities, it would certainly qualify to be called a blessing.”
“But he didn’t even have a finger cross over,” Myriad argued. “By all reasonable standards, he’s barely been exposed to the chaos.”
“But he saw it. No, let’s be accurate here, he witnessed it, just like his blessing says. Plus, just because he didn’t cross over, who’s to say nothing got in? Some tiny waves of pure uncertainty that could have latched onto his soul, which isn’t even considering the benefit he has that could have made it easier. Not just a healthy number of other blessings to improve his odds, he has the system as a whole, a tool designed to help people grow and eases certain burdens on souls in the process. A tool itself designed to grow and help others grow. Who’s to say it didn’t play a part in ensuring that he got the best possible outcome?”
“Nare?” Myriad asked, turning to the primary architect of the system itself. “What do you think?”
“Hmm, it’s possible I suppose,” he eventually gave in. “Like she said, it was made to grow, though that would be a bit more significant than I’d expect. Still, if we consider the fact that it was likely bound to the outsider then it might have learned from its experiences if we assume that thing was born to a different universe first and had to adapt to the chaos as well. In the end, it's impossible to say for certain though.”
“I suppose we could get Ben to try and get that bit of information from the system itself through Verbum,” Helori mused. “Though I can’t imagine how long and hard that would be to successfully pull out. Things are bad enough when the record holder has something right before his eyes, imagine how much information the system would spit out for an open-ended question like that?”
They didn’t need to. At the speed Ben could already read at, certain enquiries could still take him days to get through. Something that broad though? They’d be talking in terms of straight months, if not years.
In the end, all they were doing was musing and theorizing though, so from there they moved on to the far more productive discussion of just how they wanted to call their meeting to ensure as few eyes would be on Ben as possible in the day to come.