Ben was practically skipping off to Anailia as the day started, his joy unable to be contained.
Seventy percent. His attributes had all grown by seventy percent by the time he’d woken up. It was a result far better than he’d been hoping for given all he’d already put his pieces of bone through to extract anything useful from them and it left the results twenty percent better than the ones he’d fed Sonya in the past. It was an increase in strength beyond even his first time awakening a skill and it felt like it. Of course, the potion had to technically be weaker than the one he’d given her all that time ago given he was also getting the benefits of his ambrosia skill but there was still a whole new level of power coursing through him that left him feeling on top of the world.
It was a fact further reflected just by trying to get to Anailia. Even without trying he was moving faster and if he wasn’t careful, his few times skipping would send him high up in the air far beyond the height an athlete from Earth would have been able to jump, not that any of that should have been unexpected.
He still knew that on average, a person's untrained attributes would typically hover between one hundred and one hundred and fifty depending on a few different factors, but using those numbers as a guide, he was obviously far beyond them for anything he had.
His strength was now over ten times greater than what any normal person could expect and his intelligence over a hundred. Even his agility was beyond what any average person could hope for unless they dedicated years of focus on training it. He felt power that reached beyond any normal limit.
Oh yeah, definitely letting this go to my head.
He carried on like that until he left Pelenia’s home and slipped through to the front gate, finding three people standing with the guards in wait.
“Hello there,” He greeted brightly. “I’m Ben, the one who put in the request. Can I assume you’re a party of three?”
“You can,” A succubus nodded. “We were told this was going to be a decent way to earn money but we weren’t given any more information than that so we were hoping to get more of an explanation before we agreed.”
“Yeah, fair, no worries. The long and short of it is that I currently have a job I’m not super compatible with that I want to get through so I was looking for adventurers who would be able to help merge my job pool with a few folks with jobs I actually am great at getting experience in. I don’t believe we’ll be slowing you down by doing this but it’s admittedly a possibility which is why I’m willing to pay well for the work. The key thing is that I only need five levels though so even if it’s not quick, I shouldn’t need to use you guys until the next wave.”
“I see, would you give us a minute to talk?”
“Of course, take your time.”
He moved off to the side while the three discussed it amongst themselves before ultimately agreeing, with the key motivator being money. Even if he did end up needing them for a while, he was offering enough that they wouldn’t have any concerns even if their work was impacted by him joining them, it made it worth the risk and it was soon after that he was brought into the party, officially sharing his burden with others.
“Fantastic, it’s wonderful to have you all. Now the only thing left is to go grab the other two, we’ll make this quick and then you can all go on with your day.”
----------------------------------------
Only taking the succubus who actually had the job with him, he led her through the gate to the other two waiting for him outside, one looking far more positive than the other.
“Verbum, Vasta, great to see you both!” He called out. “Ready for a couple weeks of helping me finish my job?”
“Looking forward to it,” Vasta nodded. “And this is our adventurer I take it?”
“That she is, now if you’d both just accept her invite and Verbum could stop staring at me like that we can all go on with our days.”
“How am I supposed to look at you when you’ve already changed so much?” He asked, seeing the awakened inclination on his soul, along with all of his attributes that had ballooned in the few days they’d last spoken. “Why are you like this?”
“Grit and determination I guess. Anyway though, just accept and I’ll get out of your hair.”
Ben could still feel the other’s eyes on him but ignored it until they accepted, finishing that task and hopefully letting him get everything he’d wanted to from the experience, with time being the only way to tell how well that would work out for him in the end.
With that done though he gave them all his thanks before running off, eager to make the most of his time.
He was already materializing souls the second Vasta had joined, an application of non-affinitied magic no matter how bizarre it may have looked, but he’d be able to speed it up all the more once he got to the shop, both for having his jacket to pull mana from along with all of the enchanting he’d be doing.
“Oh yeah, that’s the stuff,” He muttered as he put it on, dealing with the feeling of overfilling his soul in exchange for the power it granted him, with Myriad picking that point to make his presence known.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“I don’t think there’s any drug more potent than power and while I’m wearing this I have it in spades. This is objectively the greatest tool I’ve ever made.”
“It is not even remotely the air conditioners. At least say my resistance bands or divine potions.”
“Okay, whatever, they can like what they like. For now though, I’ve got lots of work to go.”
After boosting his mana with the potion he was creating over a thousand souls a second while he wore his jacket and creating enchantments over the various bands on his arms as fast as he could think. He was well on his way to getting his levels, meaning it was time to go back to looking at what he could do for the world instead of himself, with his focus going back to improving the overall quality of mages.
A part of him felt a bit bad that he couldn’t think of anything more general that could be used to help the warriors of the world too but once his homunculus circlets were distributed he didn’t know how he could help them grow beyond the potions and weapons he’d already made. Magic was different though. He understood it deeply and already had new ideas of how to help those who used it beyond just the mana bracelets he’d created, looking to his mythic artifact for inspiration.
As much as he didn’t want to admit it, the archive was a masterpiece, the sort of thing he couldn’t replicate no matter the skills and talent he possessed. From speeding up time to recording writings and entire stretches of memory, all while at the same time holding the representation of an ancient and powerful spell that was on par with the one that had brought him to that world, it fully deserved the ranking it had received.
As much as it annoyed him, he couldn’t replicate it for all it was worth but he could instead try to mimic a few of the features he desired and in one case even create something beyond it as he tried to get to work on figuring out how to store knowledge within a set of pages.
On the surface, the obvious answer was to write on them but his goal was something more. He wanted to create an item that would pull the user into a mind space and speed up the flow of time for them to read within, adding the effects of various mind skills to make it happen.
His unnatural thought speed to give any reader significantly more time, even beyond what the archive could manage, and his unnatural mind too to make up the space. Both of those would be the cores of it but with them, he planned on adding both his unnatural inspiration and knowledge skills to help the readers learn and retain the information faster.
It was basically his attempt to combine the books he’d already written with the circlets he’d already donated to create one greater whole and he materialized a book he aimed to enchant on, creating a structure filled with complex blends of magic materials of all sorts to try and give it the strength it needed to stand up to all he wanted to do before he began laying the enchantments he envisioned down, feeling them be placed each time but ending with a result that he couldn’t make work.
Hmm, that’s a little annoying. Okay, I get it, this is going to be a struggle. Why can’t I make this work?
As he looked at his design he couldn’t see anything fundamentally wrong with it. By all accounts, he believed it should have functioned perfectly but even as he modified and adjusted what he put down, he kept getting failure after failure, not one of them giving the desired result while he tested them no matter what he did.
He knew right from the beginning that making something like that was going to be challenging but he hadn't expected it to be to that extent. Even when he poured his mana into it to activate it he felt it taking his power, it just wasn’t invoking any effect.
It was an outcome he wasn’t prepared for and as hours passed while he struggled he had to admit the truth, he was well and truly stuck.
“Well, this sucks,” He muttered, thinking he was alone again until Myriad spoke up.
“Can’t get my enchantments to work. Also, are you just unusually free today? You seem pretty available.”
“Yeah, well don’t worry about it today, I’m reserving my next bit of nonsense for tomorrow.”
<...How?>
“Gonna try and awaken my sacrilege again.”
<...>
“Anyway,” Ben went on, breaking the silence his god had left hanging there. “What do you think? See anything obviously wrong with this?”
<...No, but I’m not the best to ask.> Myriad finally told him, resolving to ignore whatever plans his apostle had for the next day for the sake of his own mental health.
“You’re the best.”
With nothing else to do in his god’s absence, Ben put even more of his focus on creating souls, pushing his limits as far as he thought he could go without hurting himself to create more and more for whatever trickle of experience it would give him in the end, only stopping when his thoughts were filled with the sounds of a different tired god.
“I can’t make my enchantments work and I don’t know why. It’s bothering the hell out of me, as far as I can see there’s no reason for them not to function.”
“Ah? You see the issue?”
“I’m a big boy, just tell me already.”
The answer was met with a beat of silence while those thousands of minds that heard it took it in for all it was worth.
“...Yeah, you’re right, I didn’t like that. Thanks anyway Nare, I guess that means I can get back to work then.”
If it was going to work correctly for anyone else then how it did for him didn’t matter no matter how annoying it might have been so with that small mystery solved he began making more, planning to cover as many topics as he could before donating them to the library for whatever benefits they would give.