CH947

“Finished!” Ben cheered as he let himself lay back on the ground once everyone who could be awakened was in Elvat’s residence, leaving the world with new awakened mages of all sorts, including giving the planet an aquatic archmage in the process. “Kind of, sort of, maybe finished!”

In a few days, he’d need to go back to a few places he’d only hit at the end to see if any awakenings would be possible for a few remaining individuals but otherwise he was done, freed from those endlessly boring days of work to get back to his life.

“Please be a bit more definitive about this, man,” Jake complained. “This was terrible and I never want to participate in anything like this again.”

“Well first of all, at least you guys got breaks because for me, it was ten straight days of the most mind-numbingly boring work I could have been doing, and second, I know I can safely modify a soul twice so, assuming nobody decides to kill me,” Ben pointedly yelled up at the heavens above. “I will be able to repeat the process.”

“Is that even a good idea?” Yuzu asked him. “The beastform holders are born with altered souls. Are these modifications going to be passed down?”

“Didn’t do any breeding tests, so I don’t know, and while that could potentially be-”

“Catastrophic,” Amy helpfully cut in, being ignored by Ben when she did.

“Bad, it couldn’t exactly be worse than everyone on the planet being murdered and eaten. Much like so many people being turned into demigods, we’re going to chalk it up as a future problem and worry about the rest later. For now, if you guys want it, then it’s your turn.”

While his physical attributes weren’t given a chance to grow in the past few days, his intelligence, mana, and vitality all had, meaning his friends there would be getting the best he had to offer, and none of them turned him down. Whatever reservations they might have held about potential long-term consequences, they couldn’t help but agree. Better to be alive to worry about them then, and with all of them ready, he reached out with his mana and materialized through their souls, getting the expected groans as he did.

“Oh my god, I don’t even know what words to use to describe this,” Jake complained as he tried to nurse his everything.

“Ha, yeah, that’s soul pain for you. You get used to it.”

“You really shouldn’t,” Yuzu commented, focusing on trying to treat Thera since herself and the other two would be able to enjoy the benefits of her magic when they were done. “How often would you say your soul hurts?”

“At this point? Basically every day. Considering you had mine healed up by day three of all of that, this last week is probably the longest I’ve gone without it being sore in ages.”

“... It’s no wonder your soul looks like that.”

“A little offensive. I’ll have you know a bunch of the changes to my soul have nothing to do with the way I have to constantly stretch it out.”

“I think the only word I can use to describe yours is calloused."

“Weird choice, not a fan. Anyway, ignoring the indescribable pain you’re all going through, how do you all feel?”

“I don’t think ignoring it is an option,” Amy chimed in, going through the same as the rest of them. “This takes how long to heal?”

“Without a soul mage by your side? Seems like up to a couple weeks. You, who conveniently have Yuzu and souls that don’t actively resist affinitied mana? I’d be shocked if it takes you more than a few hours. Now, actually answer the question.”

“Ugh, my head feels obnoxiously clear. It’s like it’s letting me experience everything else I’m going through in high definition.”

“That would be the extra thirteen thousand points to intelligence you just got. Anything else?”

“Everything feels different,” Thera answered. “If it weren’t for how much I want to curl up and wait for the feeling to pass, I’d say I feel good enough to do anything. Especially my mana, it feels like I can actively feel how much I’m absorbing.”

“Huh, you actually might be able to. Considering the size of your pool in particular, your recovery rate has always been surprisingly low, and with how much you’ve been using while carrying us around, it’s probably easier to tell how much it’s recovering.”

That particular change in Thera would have brought the amount of time she’d need to refill her pool from empty from thirty hours to just below nineteen, a substantial difference which would likely only show its true value when the next wave arrived. As slow as her regeneration might have been, that was only when compared against her total mana, something that was a distinct challenge to use up, only having happened once before.

“But for now, I’m happy to call this finally done! This may have been days of our lives that we’re never getting back, but it’s finished!”

“Until you have to do it again,” Amy pointed out.

“We’re ignoring that, so for now, it was great seeing you guys, but we officially have to go off to do literally anything else.”

---

On the way back home, ‘literally anything else’ included a pit-stop in Anailia to address the question Mora had raised in Ben’s head, needing a great spirit there to do it and finding one soon enough in the form of Abrus, the great earth spirit having gone unfound in their earlier visit to give their concerns about Bloom but made up for that by moving to scoop his daughter into a big hug the moment he saw her.

“Dad, come on.”

“I can’t help it. I feel like I only see you when there’s an emergency now, so let me enjoy finding you while you’re passing through. You are just passing through, right?” he asked, fully prepared for some new surprise after what they’d brought with both Mora and Bloom the last time they saw him, with Ben being the one to answer.

“Not a disaster but a small question. I’m sure you heard about the soul modifying going on, seeing as how it happened in Anailia, and I’m sure you know I’m the one doing it, but no spirits or other mana-based life attempted to get it done. Considering that you guys can’t grow your attributes by yourselves, I honestly would have expected more interest. Any interest really.”

“Ah, an understandable curiosity,” Abrus nodded as he set his daughter down. “One we were planning on discussing with you when we got the chance. To be honest, there’s three reasons we asked the regular spirits not to participate and why the fairies or elementals didn’t join in either.”

“Okay?”

“The first is that since we can’t grow ourselves, we have our worries that modifying our souls might leave some unexpected consequences. We may be made of mana, but considering the soul is where it’s housed, it would be just as accurate to say we are souls, and there’s no way to be sure how such a change could affect our overall nature. When we consider that, as slim as it is, there’s the fear that a shift of that manner might make us pass on as if we were simple ghosts.”

“In that case, we could run off to test on Vividus and Nox,” Thera added helpfully, ignoring the look the comment got from her father. “If one passes on then we could try the other, just to be sure, and if it does work then it's fine.”

“Okay, and ignoring your daughter’s more murdery impulses, it’s an interesting concern. While I think the odds on that front are slim, they aren’t zero, so they’re worth worrying about. What are the second two?”

“Number two is also a matter of our nature. Say it works and there’s no obvious downsides, so all of the spirits have it done. If, one day down the line, their great spirit dies, the change is of a nature that would keep the regular spirits from merging into a new great one, that would be a disaster for our race.”

“Okay, definitely a concern, but one I believe Mora should be able to let us know if it’s a justified worry or not after watching a single spirit have their soul modified. What’s the third then?”

“Less of a worry than a consideration. If you can modify our souls without causing any long-term harm to us, then this is still our one chance to grow beyond our natural limits. When viewed through that lens, we’d prefer that any spirit would wait until you became more powerful than you currently are.”

He’d only been able to test doing up to three modifications on a soul and while it seemed the manner in which he’d do it would allow for those three to be done and succeed, it appeared there was a longer and longer recovery time between each one with no way of knowing both how that would apply to any spirits or if there was an insurmountable upper limit to the modification that could be done. Even then, Ben wasn’t prepared to do more than two on the various people of the world for the amount of pain a third seemed like it would still inflict but while that would potentially add a decent amount of power to any regular spirit, in their eternal lives, if they’d only wait then it could get better too.

And there’s not many ways to verify any of this without trying it first to see what would come of it, but even if it’s slim, there might be one option to consider.

“Okay, in that case, you all don’t worship any gods, right?”

“That seems like a bit of a shift in topic, but no. Why?”

“Alright, not to be too blunt, but people from every race are going to die when the third wave comes. I’m willing to assume spirits will be no different?”

“We had losses during the second as well, more in the next is unavoidable.”

“Alright, I don’t know what your relationship with religion is like, but Myriad can absorb the souls of his believers when they die if they so choose to join him. If any spirits were curious, if they decided to worship him and happened to die in the next wave, then there’d at least be some sort of answer that might be gleaned about what would happen when a spirit soul is joined to another one. Of course, I get this is probably a bit of a morbid topic, and obviously that’s far from the ideal way of answering those questions, but unless your people are against giving faith and prayer, it’s an option.”

“Mmh, an interesting one but not one that’s going to see much success. Myself and the rest of the great spirits have a complicated relationship with the gods of this world, but as for the smaller ones, I’d say it’s impossible. Nothing can make them consider their great ones below another.”

“Hmm, fair, I guess I can’t imagine that either. Okay then, if you all ever want to test then just let me know, but otherwise I’ll drop it.”

Even if it was a curiosity he couldn’t explore, he understood the great spirit’s concerns and seeing as how he still wasn’t managing to do any soul modification in an optimal way, given the pain involved when compared against the two other examples he knew that could take in new souls, it could be something that could be pushed to a farther future, so long as he lived to see it.