“So, things went smoothly then?” Myriad asked him, with Ben shrugging in return.
“Enough at least. We got both the terrestrial and aquatic groups done and despite contributing to Jake’s future suffering I’ve got no complaints. So when do I get to have my fun?”
“You’ll just have to wait a bit, this first month is still going to be a major clearing stage for anyone who uses a mythic item while we try to cull more of the numbers that got through. After that, the wielders will be getting some small breaks for you to bother them.”
“Lame but fine, so in that case, what should I do now?”
“Anything you can I suppose, why?”
“No matter how hard I work I only have so many hours in the day to work on raising my skills and I’m still stuck seeing if I’ll get anywhere trying to complete my job or if I’m really stuck in it forever but none of that is a real load on me. I need new things to fill my time.”
“What, are your current projects not impossible enough?”
“I’m making progress for both the summoning spell and Inux but I have months to fill, I need something more. Especially when considering the fact that finding new things to enchant will also push my connect a bit. I need those levels as soon as possible so I need to do my best here.”
“I don’t know what to tell you Ben, what you’ve made since getting back really is already more than enough. I’d say if you just keep trying to push out legendary items that will already help you plenty.”
“Sure, but I want to do more. Come on man, isn’t there something the world needs I can work on?”
“The only things the planet needs is to clear out the demons, prepare for the next group to come, and maybe get some more food along the way.”
“More food?”
“We’ve already got demons ravaging some of our larger farming areas. We’re keeping up a bit thanks to the dryads but it's a problem. If things keep up we can expect some shortages by the third wave and starving armies don’t make for a strong fighting force.”
“...Okay, I’ll think on it.”
He didn’t have any idea what he could do for any of that but it all gave him something he could work towards on the side with some of his minds immediately beginning to fiddle with those problems, trying to find a way to solve them and break through.
The first two were admittedly already things he’d consider but seeing as how his plan for the third wave until that point was to awaken his two skills and somehow kill Oaun, it didn’t hurt to start working on alternatives, even if he believed that anything else would ultimately be pointless.
But food, huh? I haven’t seen any issues yet but that’s going to be a problem. I’ve already awakened plenty of dryads and a few others on the world with plant magic but without something more that can only go so far. It wouldn’t be practical for me to set up the enchantments I have on my greenhouses at a scale to feed the world so what then? This might be a bit too far out of my specialty but oh well, it doesn’t hurt to consider.
While his wheels turned, Myriad went on, sounding tired the entire time.
“Really, just focus on your goals Ben, don’t stretch yourself out too far. This would be the worst time for you to burn out.”
“I’ll take a day off in a month or two to be on the safe side but for now I’ve gotta do everything I can. Speaking off, that should be enough for me tonight, gotta get back to work.”
“You literally just got here. Are you doing this to spite me for telling you not to burn out?”
“No, but time is limited and I’ve gotta make the most of it. You’re looking at someone with nearly five thousand points to their stamina, man, not sleeping much isn’t going to kill me.”
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“No, but it's going to worry both me and your lover. Thera has been noticing that you seem a bit more impatient in your desire to grow.”
“...Yeah, I know I need to talk to her about that, it’s on my to-do list.”
“I’m sure, maybe consider bumping it up a few spots then.”
“I know, I know, I’ll tell her my worries when there’s a good chance. For now though, off to make things.”
----------------------------------------
Would it be crazy of me to put a mini-gate between the shop and home for the few minutes of time it would save me? Minutes add up in the long run…
Okay, not today but putting that in my back pocket for future consideration. For now though, time to work.
He was already pulling mana into himself and creating new souls, feeling both the strain and the payoff at the same time with notifications filling his head after the first few hours of it.
“If only a few of my other levels would come this easily,” He muttered, putting down his hammer to take a look at his card. “I guess soul expansion is actually raising pretty slowly considering the speeds my other first-tier soul skills have grown at but it would be nice if all of the millions I’ve created would be enough to get me to awaken my stupid soul inclination already. I just want those bonuses on deep connection.”
He knew he shouldn’t be so impatient when it hadn’t been two weeks since his last level but he was feeling the weight of his own expectations.
Which isn’t helpful. I can only work as hard as I can, adding extra stress isn't going to make things better. Let’s see, after I clear out my job options I have a couple extra tricks I can pull too, but… No, this is still not helping, change of pace time. How would I feed the world if I needed to?
Facing the problem of food shortages his god had presented him with was preferable to whatever stress his rush was putting him under and he dedicated most of his spare thoughts there while he worked, seeing what he could think of.
The question of how he would feed the world was actually an easy one. If he was one of the gods of the world then he would have made sure the people had begun preserving as much food as they could the moment the prophet gods had made their prediction and tossed it all into time-enchanted chests to keep it fresh even longer, but seeing as how that didn’t happen and he couldn’t go back in time, that left the question of what could actually be done, with the problem constantly coming back to a matter of scale.
Feeding a village he could handle, maybe even a town or a city if push came to shove, but a world? An entire planet of people who’d need to be fed while monsters ravaged their lands for any bit of biomass they could sink their teeth into? That was a whole other problem with no easy answer.
He couldn’t just set up greenhouses enchanted to the gills; that would take up every bit of time he had until the third wave came down.
In the same way, he couldn’t do much else either. He couldn’t breed better crops or livestock, that was a task for Vividus if anyone, and he couldn’t awaken more plant mages unless they’d made it to the eighth level through their own efforts first, something that was going to be harder and harder to accomplish given that he’d already done it for so many of them. Even on the optimistic end, if ten or twenty more could be awakened in the next few months it still wouldn’t be enough to really make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
So where does that leave me? He sighed before materializing a handful of seeds. I can create the edible portion of that if I really need to and there’s no reason that demons can’t be eaten after they’re killed, but… Wait, there’s an idea worth pursuing.
Not the consumption of their foes but instead the first as Ben looked at the seeds he’d brought forth from pure mana, with every act of materialization ultimately being inspired by one singular event in his life.
The dead god’s trial, back where he’d learned it was even possible to materialize with unflavoured mana and the specific thing that had led to that discovery. Namely, the food it would provide him.
He would never forget that awful bread-like stuff he’d been forced to down for months but the flavour wasn’t the point, the result was. He’d already seen that it was possible for a structure, a tool, to materialize; who was to say that he couldn’t make something the same?
There were issues with that idea of course, a lot of them. Even if he remembered the portion of the tower’s enchantments that seemed to do it, he didn’t know how to apply it to his own work, along with the issue of power and quantity. He didn’t know how much mana the tower spent on feeding its occupants and he didn’t know the cost of it but that didn’t matter. What did matter was that he knew it was possible, meaning he knew it was something he could aim for.
“If I could make a tool that could pull this off in large enough quantities then I could make a lot without much trouble. Hell, I could outsource most of the work for the tool itself and focus on the enchantments alone, meaning I could probably make thousands without losing too much time. Okay, interesting thought but how would I do it? Obviously, I wouldn’t start off by trying to materialize food, that would be way too much work, so I’ll aim to create something simpler and make something that would materialize iron. Okay, that's a start so all that leaves is the design itself. How hard can it be?”