CH972

For a fraction of a fraction of a second, Ben allowed himself to wallow in his shock and misery, specifically making sure not to scream despite how he was feeling on the inside.

He had already put a stop to over sixty assassination attempts, and he still had four more disasters to deal with. The bride and groom's food being poisoned, everyone else's food being poisoned a different way, a wholly different death trap added to the entire death trap that was the wedding’s challenge, and an assassin potentially out in the woods, presumably just waiting for a chance to strike and yet, despite having all of that already to deal with, now even the wedding itself was a threat.

A small, ignorable part of himself pointed out that he’d only been asked to keep Greed from being murdered by anyone who’d ruin the wedding. If it was the wedding itself that killed him, it wouldn’t actually be a murder, but that was just him trying to escape the reality of the situation. He couldn’t let Greed die because of some insane god’s tradition, but it was clear his friend wasn’t remotely prepared; he was going to need to step in during that too without giving away that he was doing so.

And then I’m going to spend the night swearing at Myriad over the other gods allowing a stupid ceremony like this to freaking exist because oh my god, I hate this stupid planet!

Okay, no, I can do this. One thing at a time.

While the master of ceremonies began giving a speech, he grabbed Thera’s arm and pulled her with him as he got closer, forcing himself into the minds and memories of all of the nearest dark elves once he joined the crowd to search for the answer that he needed, even if he hit another snag along the way.

At the very least, there was no cultural significance to the food for the rest of the guests, meaning he could entirely scrap those meals when it came to everything Cheele’s mother had poisoned and he was able to find a few people who’d gone through the ceremony themselves too, able to see in general what the couple’s wedding dish was meant to taste like, even if there was some variation in their memories of the flavour profile.

That was fine though, it was always going to vary based on the chef’s cooking skill and the freshness of ingredients, he could work with that. What was harder to work with was the rest of the wedding’s trial, finding that the exact nature of the challenge could change significantly based on whoever it was that arranged it. There was no template for him to go off of, and as things were, from where he and the target he’d need were standing, there was no way to get that information from the master of ceremonies mind. 

But that was arguably manageable too. The man was standing farther back to address the crowd, but it seemed that he would move as the wedding progressed. Ben could improvise to help before then, with only one last issue getting in the way. Dark elves were mana sensitive.

Not to the point that their mana sense would be able to pick out specific affinities of the power without holding said affinity themselves, it was, however, to the point that anyone would be able to tell if he tried to interfere in what seemed like was intended to be a purely physical test, meaning that even Ben’s materializing was out. If there was anything he could do to help, it would have to be through actualizing.

A fact Greed didn’t know Ben would be able to help with at all. As soon as Ben had the crab at least within his range, he could feel the edge of panic in his mind, suppressed thanks only to the bit of Ben’s applied skill but still made the other jump when he thought into his head.

Here to save your life, as promised, Ben thought at the crab. And to swear at you for not looking into what a dark elf wedding involves.

Oh lord, Legs, I’ve never been so happy to have you in my head, Greed thought in relief. I’ll take anything, so what’s the plan? No magic for this thing so you think you could, I don’t know, invent me a way into surviving this real quick? I’ll pray to you and everything if that’s what I’ve gotta do.

For now, just follow whatever the guy tells you, I’ll make sure you survive it, Ben told him. I’m not going to be able to be in your head like this the entire time, I have to go deal with a couple things to make sure that, well, everyone here doesn’t die when the wedding is over. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get back not too long after his speech ends and you have to throw yourself into this but even if I’m late, I’ll still be able to act from afar so just don’t panic, we’ll make this work.

I’m already failing on that whole ‘not panicking’ front. Any chance I could get another hit of whatever you did to help me relax before? I need it.

Applying more deep calming, Ben pulled Thera to the back of the crowd with him when he finished, not having the time to dawdle and used connect to watch the ceremony itself through the eyes of others while she spoke up.

“So why exactly are you dragging me around like this?”

“Long story short, a good sixth of the people here came with the intent of murdering Greed, and I’ve been trying to make sure that didn’t happen since we arrived. I was able to put a stop to all but three plans which I was going to try and discreetly sort out before finding out I also need to worry about the wedding ceremony killing Greed and long story short, have you ever used an invisibility spell?”

“Once or twice while training under Vasta, why?”

“Because I’m going to need you to do it a lot on me for the next ten minutes or so.”

He heard the master of ceremonies continue on, the speech he was giving lining up with what he’d seen in enough other dark elf heads that he knew he had a bit of time to get things done and got Thera to spend her magic, a non-affinitied application of what was more typically a light spell that bent light around him to hide him from any watching eyes. Even if dark elves were sensitive to it, there was nothing to bother them when it was coming from their backs, allowing Ben to run back to where the meal was waiting and found a thick, ceremonial stew of sorts before pulling a spoon from one of his rings to have a taste and needing to keep from cursing then and there. 

While the favour was marginally different from anything he’d seen in any other attendant’s memories, it wasn’t to the point that anything stood out as potentially off, and it seemed like what bit of biological poison resistance he held was paying off. He couldn’t even get a symptom of it, meaning he wasn’t going to be able to use his extraction to remove the poison or materialize anything to neutralize it. That was a new dish he was going to need to replicate from scratch, forced to make something comparable with all of the wrong ingredients on hand.

Oh, fuck me, this is never going to end.

He had plenty of more swearing he wanted to do too, but he couldn’t let those feelings get in the way of his work and, while hidden away thanks to Thera’s power, began correcting it.

While a part of him considered letting the couple’s poisoned dish be and just forcing Greed to use his blessing magic to keep them alive, he knew he couldn’t do that. Instead, a lump of mythril was pulled from his ring, hastily shaped into a small pot with a fire enchantment on it while more and more ingredients were removed from his stores, vegetable and meats and spice that were all cut to size under his power while more flavour compounds were materialized before being topped with water and left to simmer, ideally creating something that would be close enough in look and flavour to let the change go unnoticed, all while he directed his mana through it to speed up the cooking process before focusing on how to replace every other dish.

He wasn’t even going to try tasting those ones, there had to be enough types of poison in each one to give him pause before testing it on himself but replacing them would at least be marginally easier as he dumped those hundreds of ruined dishes in his rings before pulling out plate after plate of his pre-made ones, dividing them up when he needed to and allowing him to line the table, needing to only create a few dozen more to fill out what was still missing, leading to the creation of more pots, pans, and ingredients to fill them.

He saw the occasional person turn around, sensing some bit of the magic taking place but thankfully not enough to tell where it was coming from, a curiosity more than a suspicion that led to nothing. Thera’s spell was holding, there was nothing for any of them to see as he waited for each meal to come together before plating, wanting every one of them to look fancy enough to be worthy of the occasion but unfortunately for him, taking too long, signified by the master of ceremonies calling out once his speech ended, a couple minutes earlier than Ben had hoped.

“And with that, it is time for Greed to prove himself. Before him, the challenge of Anqual, beyond it, his bride! Leaving only to see if he has the strength to make it!”

Ugh, goddamn it all, they just had to hire a fast talker.

With Greed having no choice but to begin, Ben was forced to see just how much he could manage to help from that distance.