He could feel Yuzu’s eyes boring into him but all he could do was give an awkward smile as he processed everything himself while she eventually just shook her head.
“I’m not going to comment.”
“Appreciate that.”
‘Cause all of that was… Damn. God damn.
Ignoring all of the levels he’d just gotten and what that implied for how easy those skills and more would be to raise in the future, ignoring the inclination skills he’d just gained and ignoring the names of them in particular, none of that mattered in comparison to something far more significant nestled in amongst those notifications, the bonuses he’d just received.
Jobs for tier three skills gave massive bonuses instead of the major ones a person would receive for stepping onto their master path and beyond but what he’d just gotten was past even that.
Divine bonuses. He’d at least heard of them after his reading on the top floor of the magic towers’ library. In fact, Killi was enjoying their benefits herself, though not in the same way Ben had been granted them. As the holder of a third-tier knowledge skill, she had access to the same line of jobs he’d gone through, with the attribute bonus being a rank higher than the skill bonus by virtue of the fact that it was all going entirely to intelligence and nothing else. If Ben ever got a third-tier mind job then he could expect the same, but what he’d just acquired was significantly different.
Not getting those unparalleled bonuses to one attribute alone, he was getting them to not only all of them, but to some of his skills too, something he’d never heard of before in any of his reading. Just thinking about it was making his heart pound as his thoughts ramped up to their maximum potential to let him process everything he’d just heard.
But where do I even start? Okay, apocalyptic skills, another category of skill I’d never heard of before and probably for a good reason, definitely not going to advertise that I get bonuses to those myself but I think the skills that grew from it make sense. I literally got the job from destroying entire planets using my material manipulation and one of the skills that grew from was destruction which also makes sense for my new inclination skill.
Even if I’m still not sure about its effect, ill will seems like it makes sense from the name too and I can buy into extraction enhancement, aim, and hive mind all being related. I admittedly wanna question bite enhancement leveling a bit; what does it want me to do, eat a world?
Hell, maybe it does. Doesn’t matter, I'll still take it. I wonder if there's any more it applies to too? With bonuses like that, it would be a little surprising if there is anything that just didn’t level immediately from it but at the same time after all of the levels I got from taking soul mage I might just not have enough practice in some of them since then for that to have pushed them over the edge, I’ll have to try and pay some extra attention to what goes up in the next couple weeks. Since aim went up I wouldn’t be surprised if it would be giving bonuses to marksmanship too and it's just a matter of doing something to awaken it, but I’ll figure that out later.
Actually, I need to see Verbum anyway, I’ll just add that to the list of things I need his help checking out so okay, what else? The fact that it awakened intelligence enhancement is fantastic too, awakening four skills in a day has to be some sort of record that I very much deserve some sort of cool title for but since I didn’t get one I can deal with it. A little annoying it followed the naming trend of my mind skills but hopefully that just means the growth bonuses to it are going to be all the more incredible.
And then there’s probably the only real issue with having taken this job. I’m never going to be able to get the experience to finish it.
Ignoring how fast he’d managed to finish soul mage, he had no choice but to imagine that it would be on another scale entirely when he’d already seen firsthand how much more experience it took to get compared to a second-tier one. Meanwhile, what he currently had was the sort of thing that could only be described as fourth-tier. As things stood, it would be practically impossible for him to finish, even as his various minds raced to try and come up with solutions to that particular problem.
Solutions he’d examine later. As much of a pain as it would be, he knew he couldn’t ditch it for something else when it was that good. No matter how impossible the task, he would find a way. First, he just needed to handle the rest of the day.
Slowing down a few of his minds to make it easier to interact with the world around him, Ben focused back on his friends, feeling their eyes on him as he tried to act normal.
“Sooo,” Jake began. “Don’t leave us waiting, what did you take?”
“Sorry, this one is going to be a secret until it’s done. Yuzu, you mind keeping it to yourself for now?”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Mmh, I’ll respect your privacy but the fact that you had that as an option makes me so incredibly worried about whatever else is sitting on your job list.”
“Trust me, this one is the worst sounding but what matters is it paid off big time. By the next wave, I’m going to be the most horrific monster anyone on this planet has ever seen.”
“You already are,” Will chimed in.
“Quiet you. Anyway, that’s it from me, show’s over, go home and don’t die somewhere off in the world while I’m not watching.”
He still had things to do and test but said goodbye to his various friends as they parted, all of them going off to do their particular parts in the war effort as he alone got to enjoy the perks of being largely free. It wasn’t like he couldn’t have gone to fight then and there like so many others but at the same time he didn’t have the obligations of any of the other summoned who’d traded their strength for wealth, instead only having the moral one to bother him which left him looking far further in the future as the present was left to focus on getting the most out of his skills.
And seeing as how I’m still in the gate network, let’s start by experimenting with esoteric actualization a bit.
Immediately he made himself an apple and bit into it, feeling it crunch under his teeth in a way he’d expect of the fruit and made more to consume until he was full before stepping through a gate to make it all disappear.
Yep, that was weird.
Having the contents of his stomach vanish with a few steps left a gross feeling in him but he wanted to explore the limits of the skill, with plenty of more important ideas to test next.
With that done, he materialized next instead of actualizing, creating a marble of white mana crystal in his hands and rolling it around his fingers as he processed the change in that too.
The cost has dropped more than I’d expect from just getting a new level to my material manipulation. Destruction inclination is going to be playing into that a bit too but still, interesting. Looks like going insane has its benefits.
He fully attributed the unexpected drop in cost to the new change in his mind thanks to how alien thought structure had grown. Even then, small parts of him felt like they were missing as those alien aspects of himself questioned the lack of not only certain limbs, but senses as well.
Things like the echolocation or the strange sense of projected touch that Onk’s kind possessed, but more than that too. He’d been connected to the ghosts of void, jovian, and star races, all of which had their own way of interacting with the universe and on top of that he’d even connected to two energy beings at that point as well. Everything in his head had been forcefully combined to create that new, unusual experience for him, along with some benefits to complement the sense of loss.
Among everything else, Ben had connected to the various mana-based life in the world, with plenty of their way of perceiving nature having relevance to his own experience. The way earth spirits and elementals would view the ground around him having relevance to his materialization and the life fairies along with the life and death spirits having their own touches for how he used soul source, with the presence of the one wraith he’d freed helping to combine those disparate aspects into a means of using his own unflavoured magics.
The human in him may have been at the wheel, but all of the rest was now just as much him as anything else and he was going to use it for all it was worth now that he had it, already feeling those new ways of viewing the world impacting how he’d approach plenty of his future work.
All of which would be for future testing. There were still some aspects of actualization he’d only be able to really put to practice once he got to his god’s realm later but the materialization he’d just done hadn’t been for nothing. It gave him a baseline of how much mana he would spend making something like that as he moved on to trying something new. Materializing and actualizing at the same time.
He couldn’t do the first in his god’s realm and until he’d awakened the skill, he’d never been able to do the latter somewhere his physical body actually existed, but now there he was in a place he’d be able to try both at once as he used the same mental process for both skills but different powers, straining his mind while he spent his mana and ending with an identical marble to the first, only at a slightly lower cost.
About five percent less? Interesting and that means it would probably only grow if I grow the skill more, but for now, let’s see if I actually succeeded.
After all, it wasn’t going to matter if the mana cost dropped if it turned out that some of it couldn’t exist in his base layer of reality so he once more walked out of the network, prepared for disappointment but not getting it.
The marble was unchanged. Not a speck of it disappeared, telling him just how useful his new awakened skill could be beyond a mere curiosity. Sure, it was limited in ways but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to enjoy it for all it was worth when he was in Myriad’s company.
And I probably should test to see if it really is that limited, just for completeness’s sake.
With that idea in his head, he stepped through the Anailia gate before finding an out of the way place to sit on the street before holding out his hand and focusing.
He’d decided to try and awaken his skill in the gate network because that seemed like what would have the most chance for success but who was he to decide it couldn’t be used in his regular plane without first testing?
At the very least, he had no intention of ignoring that bit of potential and he put his focus into it once more, this time imagining the finer details of what made a strawberry before straining his mind to try and force it into reality, once more feeling a pain in his soul as he overused that vehicle for his thoughts until he was left with nothing but a strange, sourceless migraine and empty hands.
He didn’t even know if trying to actualize in the normal world was possible but the bit of failure left him largely unsatisfied, even if he’d been expecting it beforehand, and as he went back to Pelenia’s home to try and use the last bits of the day to work on helping the various prisoners the best he could, a part of him couldn’t help but dwell on just where he’d failed and how he might make it work.