Ever since Roan's attack on Stonewall there were things he’d wanted to test, there just never seemed to be the time, but after connecting with Thera again as she used her magic he decided not to put it off any longer. No matter how low the chance of success he wouldn’t be satisfied unless he tried.
He grabbed her by the hand and started to connect with her, trying to feel more than just her mind or her mana, but something deeper. He wanted to connect to her skills.
When they were fighting Roan before and Glob just now he felt her power as she used it, and it let him know what to look for. His brow creased in concentration as he tried to force his mind to plunge even further, before he came across what he was looking for and latched onto it with all he had. There was no resistance and his confidence soared. This was it, this was what he’d been dreaming of since coming to the world. And if he could feel it he was sure he could use it.
He stretched his arm out in front of him, willing his mana to bend to his desire and form an earth bullet in front of him.
But nothing happened.
He let out a sigh and felt himself shrink. Of course it wouldn’t work. That would have been way too convenient if he could overcome his inability to use magic by connecting with someone.
Everyone else looked on, unsure of what should be happening. Only Thera understood what he had attempted by hearing his thoughts through the connection, and could feel the disappointment rolling off of him.
“Try not to let it get to you.” She told him. “You don’t need magic to be a fantastic craftsman.”
“I know, but it sure helps.” He wasn’t even sure if there was any point in testing his other two ideas, but for the sake of trying everything he carried on with lower spirits. “Hey Abrus, mind making me a copper armband? Something that could cover my forearm?”
“A simple enough request.” With a small wave of his hand the earth spirit materialized the copper around his arm. It wasn’t pretty, with no real thought being put into its look, but it would work well enough for his purposes.
He still had his hold on her earth magic, and with little hope tried to enchant with it. The very world felt like it changed when he felt it start to work.
He didn’t have much knowledge on how to enchant with spells, since he didn’t think it was something he would ever do, he had felt like there was no real point in taking the time to learn, and now that felt like an overwhelming mistake. Rather than try and shape the mana to produce a specific spell effect, he had no choice but to lay the entire skill onto the armband.
To everyone but him and Thera it looked like he’d worked up a sweat after staring intensely at the armband for around 15 minutes. But Thera, who could feel his concentration and excitement looked at him in astonishment.
He ignored his level up, it was only a distraction from seeing if he’d succeeded, and let go of her hand while raising his own. “Now to see if it actually works.”
He poured his mana through the tool, and small clumps of earth raised around him and began to take the shape of a ball when a wave of lightheadedness assaulted him and broke his concentration, causing it to all fall back to the ground.
Karly was the first one to react. “Wait what the hell was that? Didn’t you get stuck with the shit end of the stick because you couldn’t use magic?”
“I think it was mostly about my blessed skills but that sure didn’t help much.” He told her as he tried to work past a massive headache that had formed. “Either way I didn’t really do any magic myself, I made an enchantment with Thera’s magic and tried to activate the enchantment. Of course since I still have no compatibility with earth magic I think I used way too much mana. Fuck this hurts.”
His head was pounding and he pulled out his card to look at how much he had left. A measly four. With his mana recovery rate currently being 6 per minute he would be better soon enough, but if he just used almost all of it without being able to make a single earth bullet that wouldn’t be a great option for him in the future. Of course if his last test worked out then it wouldn’t be a problem.
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He connected with Thera again, this time not looking for a skill, but something he’d grown much more used to working with in the past few weeks. Mana. He knew he could feel it and work enchantments around it, but what he was attempting now was different. He wanted to take it for himself.
He reached for it mentally, but it was like water slipping through his fingers. As much as he wanted to use some to use for his spell or replenish his reserves, it just wasn’t in the cards for him.
“Shame.” He muttered under his breath. Still, the fact that even one of his ideas had worked for him opened up countless possibilities. Possibilities he intended to make full use of.
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Pelenia was waiting at the table as everyone streamed in, seemingly exhausted.
“Did you all train too hard today?” She asked. “I don’t know the last time I've seen you all so tired.” All except Ben that was. He seemed positively giddy.
“Ben ended up requesting their help to figure out the limits of his skill.” Abrus answered. “He was… rather thorough in his experimentation.”
They gave the queen a rundown of the day, explaining how training had gone and Ben's experiments with his skill. After figuring out he could enchant with other people's skills everyone was surprised and happy for him until they realised he intended to discover the skills limits there and then. He got everyone present to divulge whatever skills they were willing to and went to each of them, trying to apply different effects to the brace and worked to figure out what he could manage.
“... So it looks like I can use up to level 3 skills at the moment, which is a bit weird if you think about it because my enchanting should let me use up to level 5, but maybe it’s being limited by my connect level? Or maybe there's a more complex interaction going on than I can tell. On the plus side, it looks like I could still get the first three levels of the barrier magic skill from Globs teacher even though he’d awoken it to level 1 of advanced barrier mastery, but I couldn’t even touch any of Glob or Karly’s blessed skills. It’s like since they came to this world with evolved ones it didn’t have a base for me to grab onto, which is honestly a bit of a shame cause I would love to meet up with some old classmates and try and use their more powerful and rare skills, but then I just have to evolve my skills myself and I should be able to. I was able to use the skills they’d developed since coming to the world, so it feels like the blessed ones just don’t have a foundation I can take advantage of. After all, since I could enchant with Thera’s blessed earth magic I shouldn’t have that issue with anyone who’s built up their skills over time.”
Everyone seemed exhausted, having heard him ramble on as he pulled them all into his experimenting, but the queen's eyes were shining.
“Sounds like you’ve had the most productive day of all then, so what's next?”
“Think you could get me more people to make resistance braces for? The sooner I get either my enchanting or connect up, the sooner I can see how it will affect things.”
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After dinner and sleeping, Ben awoke in myriads divine realm with a smile still plastered on his face.
“Myriad, buddy! I didn’t hear from you today. Please tell me you caught sight of the news.”
“I did, things are looking good I think.” His god didn’t sound like he was giving Ben his full attention as he spoke, a fact Ben was quick to pick up on.
“What’s up? You seem distracted, I figured you’d be doing your glowing disco ball of excitement routine you do when something good happens.”
“This is excellent news, something about it just seems off is all, it’s eating at my mind a little.”
"What could be off? The amount I can enchant basically became unlimited! This is a huge selling point! I’m sure we’ll be able to snag some enchanters with this for sure!"
"It is, it's great. It’s just...."
"Just what?"
"There are already a group of skills very similar to it, lender, learner, teacher, and borrower. I won't bore you with the details but the short of it is that they all allow for sharing skills to an extent too, without the restriction of it only being able to be used for enchanting. While I can see how my own characteristics could lead to this, I just find it odd that it's growing with the restrictions it is. The influence of you and the world should be causing it to grow in more interesting ways."
“What do you mean restrictions? Sure not being able to use the skill when connected isn’t great, but it also has the whole mindreading aspect as a benefit.”
“True, but you had to work much longer to use it as well right? Your normal enchanting speed is significantly faster. Not to mention I don’t think there are many with blessed enchanting. I would bet that any enchanter without the blessed version of the skill would struggle much more. All of this makes it significantly weaker than the other skills I mentioned, which just seems unusual. As it stands it’s only grown into a weaker borrower and mindreading.”
"So what do you think is happening then?"
"I think you should try and get another level or two out of it and we'll see from there."