CH880

To some of his greatest surprise that day, Mora was asleep when he went to pick him up, the body the boy had made needing rest that had trap

To some of his greatest surprise that day, Mora was asleep when he went to pick him up, the body the boy had made needing rest that had trapped his true self in its thrall while Fontesh did her best to keep her daughter from poking and prodding at him as Ben scooped him up and carried him home, left to reflect on his thoughts as he went.

It had only taken ten minutes of soul production to get that job level but each one was harder than the last. He was going to need to keep at it constantly and really strain his soul if he wanted the maximum results for it, even as he wondered just whose job was acting as such a resource sink.

Was outsider really so extreme? He could certainly believe it would be difficult to raise and even with what he was seeing it didn’t seem like it would be remotely as hard as world killer had been but as things were it was still going to take him days to complete.

And if it’s Abel’s job then I need to be prepared for some other third tier’s job to slow me down in the future. Ugh, which means that I can’t even use this as a good way of judging how much experience my current mental structure gives me.

Actually, my mind should be generating third-tier levels of experience. Can I actually be certain that this isn’t taking the same amount as world killer right now? God, it better freaking not be when it’s not giving me the same scale of attributes.

Just the idea felt annoying but he tried to suppress it. He knew he could get through it, even if it would be longer than he’d like and more importantly, he had other things to think about.

Beyond the change to his blessing and by all accounts becoming the child of chaos, he’d gained two new skills for it and one new bonus as well. While he’d seen the multiversal bonuses that outsider had granted him before when he’d taken multiversal material mage, bonuses to outsider skills were completely new.

Especially because what’s the difference? I may still not be certain about what multiversal skills even are but aren’t outsiders a part of the multiverse or is the system counting the space between as something different? Or maybe this is an all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares type of thing? Multiversal skills cover everything and outsider skills cover the space between universes specifically? If that was the case then that would mean the one job is letting any outsider skills I have double dip which would be cool if I actually had any.

The only one that might have qualified was rule bender but considering there was only a single rule he really knew how to bend, he wasn’t holding his breath, though he did now have one more that might count for one of those bonuses purely on a technicality.

Multiversal inclination should be getting my multiversal bonuses but then we circle back to the issue that I have no clue what skills that inclination should help grow and ugh, I just want to consult Verbum but if any god up there notices that I’ve already raised evil god of sacrilege through him then it’s going to be a huge pain in the ass. If I can distract Mora after he sees it then there’s a good chance he won’t be thinking about it for weeks, Verbum I’d have no such luck. Which reminds me, I really should do some testing before Mora wakes up. Myriad Myriad Myriad?

<What what what?>

Need your attention briefly, gonna test if you can detect people around me I’m trying to block off so just let me know if it looks like anyone around me disappears.

Trying to not extend the effects to himself, Ben directed his sacrilege to Mora and also the few people walking in his direction, doing his best to cover five different ones at varying ranges and waiting only for an answer that his god was quick to give.

<Well, Mora just vanished from your arms it looked like, along with five people around you? And I need to say, I really don’t like this skill.>

Yeah? You’re gonna like it even less when we talk later then.

<Ugh.>

His god’s worries were of no matter, what did was his success. He could block the sight of the gods from not only himself but also the people he wanted, ensuring just a little privacy and with any luck, a delay in how long it would take them to notice the levels he’d gained and would continue to gain to some of his more problematic skills.

Which means I am going to have to keep this up basically any time I’m around Mora but that’s fine, it’s just extra practice.

---

“Alright, what happened today then?” Myriad asked him, sounding in despair. “I can tell there’s something so out with it already.”

“Before that, weren’t you guys going to try and get me some more gods I could connect to? What’s going on with that?”

“We’ll have a few coming through later and if any are late you can just pop up during the day. Now tell me already you little nightmare, what happened?”

“Did you just try to give me little nightmare as a title?”

“No, but if you’d gained it it would have been completely appropriate. Now stop avoiding the question.”

“Ugh, okay, fine. What do you guys want first? The news that’s going to make the other gods want to kill me or the news that’s gonna make them want to enslave me?”

“...I change my mind, I don’t want either.”

“Tell us the news that’s gonna bother the rest,” Helori sighed. “Considering how a few already feel about you, how bad could it be?”

“I leveled evil god of sacrilege.”

Helori froze at the statement, left blinking while Myriad let out a pained whine before the goddess went on.

“Oh, so you really did it… Alright, that’s going to be pretty bad.”

“Exceptionally bad,” Myriad groaned. “I knew you were trying to do it, you stupid, bastard of an apostle, and I even believed you would, but two days! Only two damnable days since you awakened that skill and caused such a fuss and you’ve already managed it!”

“I mean, it actually took longer than I was expecting and I’d needed my new sacrilege job to push it over the edge, but yeah. Even if it’s taking millennia in my head, it looks like I can manage this.”

“I hate you. You and all you stand for.”

“Mean thing to say to your strongest, most productive believer.”

“My most stressful, psychotic believer. Ugh, can you at least keep it hidden for a month? Just one month, that’s all I ask so that when word does get out it looks marginally less terrible than it really is?”

“Well, when Mora’s around me I’m going to be blocking him from any watching gods so as long as nobody peeks into his head when he happens to be thinking about it then we’ll be fine, but Myriad, delaying the reveal won’t make things better.”

“Of course it won’t, that’s still a level in a single fucking month but it’s better than a couple of days!”

“I more meant because within a month’s time I’ll have another level too, maybe even more if I can help it.”

“...Helori, I’m done,” Myriad said, sounding on the verge of tears. “I don’t have the energy to convince the rest of the gods to not throw him into hell when he so clearly wants every one of them to try.”

“Myriad, buddy, look at it this way. No mortal’s gotten past the first level of a third-tier skill before, right?”

“I’m not about to be swayed by how oh-so-impressive it would be for you to do it, Ben.”

“Not the point. If I get to, let’s say even the third level, what are they going to be able to do to me? Like, really, there was already a suspicion that even when it was only king of sacrilege, nobody would be able to rip out my soul and condemn me and now I’m comfortable saying that’s going to be absolutely impossible. Who’s to say that if I get to the third level that anyone’s going to be able to do anything to me at all? I might already be immune to the threats of the gods but if I’m not, so long as I keep getting stronger then I sure will be.”

“...Somehow, the idea of the rest of the gods not being able to stop you if they need to is also terrifying.”

“Well, as we always say in the church of Myriad, any unhappy gods can go fuck themselves.”

“We don’t say that! Stop trying to make that my church’s slogan!”

“You gotta admit, it’s a catchy slogan.”

“It’s not even remotely! It’s not even clever, you’re just full of spite!”

“I mean, yeah?”

“And the other thing, Ben?” Helori asked, breaking up the back and forth since it didn’t seem like it was going to end any time soon. “Perhaps we can balance out this current issue with what you’d already mentioned about your enslavement?”

“Ah, that. Well, it looks like thanks to how I use eldritch mind with deep connection, I can now level most tier one active skills, at least as far as the ones I was able to test on.”

“...Elaborate on that.”

“I’m just now able to transmit a deeper level of knowledge and understanding,” He explained. “I’ve connected to a huge number of people who hold high levels of both first-tier and awakened skills and I can now sort of adapt the feelings of using them to a target, along with the knowledge I was already sending over. I’ve only been able to run a couple experiments for it on both Thera and Delair but it works pretty darn well so long as the information I send is then practiced, though I know for sure I can’t help with skills I haven’t seen any examples of and it seems like I might not be able to awaken people that way either, though I was only able to make one attempt on that so it might just be lower odds without getting more people to test on. There’s probably some other limits too but for now, well, it’s looking pretty handy, even if I don’t want the gods trying to make me meet every person living on the planet and filling their heads.”

Again, Helori wasn’t quick to answer, just taking in what he’d said before shaking her head.

“Is it working on you too?”

“I leveled my dance while practicing with Thera and while I’m confident it will work on a few of my other more common options, I actually have very few active skills that are either first tier or that I’m not the first to get.”

“Bizzare to hear but true I suppose. Anything else we should know then before discussing what to do about it?”

“...It looks like I can help people learn active skills now too, it took Delair only about an hour each to learn destruction and material user from me.”

“That’s a faster teaching rate than Zandale.”

“Yeah, but it’s only for active skills and I couldn’t teach her connect either which means there’s going to be some exceptions to what I can do in that category too.”

“Do you genuinely believe that matters?”

“No, I just know that he’s being worked like a dog and I don’t want to go through that myself.”

“You already do that to yourself, it’s just on your own terms,” Helori told him, shaking her head before focusing more deeply on the mortal before her. “So then, have you used it to gain any new skills yourself?”

“Ugh, I want to so bad but I’m telling myself to not split my focus,” Ben sighed, already hating that choice. “I need to think about how to kill the most powerful god in the galaxy and maybe even in the universe as a whole, I need to keep working on my various projects like refining down the summoning spell to something significantly less mana and faith intense, and most important of all, I need to raise connect. Even with all of the bonuses on me, I can’t waste my time gaining skills that I probably won’t even get past the first tier before the third wave. If we win and I live then I’m going to go crazy with it and if I can awaken my connect in a soon enough time frame, well, maybe I’ll treat myself and learn a few new skills, just as a little reward to myself.”

“Okay, and I understand what you’re saying, that just feels like a surprising amount of restraint. There’s nothing you’re going to try and get for yourself?”

Since he’d discovered he could, he’d been doing his best to not so much as think about it for the temptation it would give him but the continued questioning broke his resolve, one active skill he’d wanted more than anything else making its way through as he discreetly woke his body up to start practicing in bed, even if he kept straight-faced in the realm above.

“Well, maybe there’s one I’ll try but let’s not worry too much about that and instead discuss how I’m going to be doing this once word gets out and the gods inevitably want to work me to death for it. I’m thinking this. In a few weeks, I’m going to be modifying souls the world over. Everyone who comes to get their souls modified can in turn benefit from the knowledge I can give and anyone who doesn’t is out of luck.”

“Seems reasonable,” Helori nodded. “I can see others thinking you should do more but making it one big event will help streamline things a bit and anyone already motivated enough to get some free power is going to be the sort who deserves the benefits while at the same time hopefully motivating others who might not have originally come to join, leaving only one question. How are you looking to get paid?”

“God, I fucking hate this. What I’m giving is worth so much but any fair payment is going to be a huge fucking fight. How possible does a second-tier awakening sound for my work? Upgrading my soul resilience to a new tier would leave me with a ton of new options.”

“I think we both know the answer to that, Ben.”

“Ugh, I hate every one of you cheap asses so freaking much. The help I’m going to give might mean thousands to hundreds of thousands of levels for people depending on how many come and I know you guys aren’t going to be shy about pushing your believers into going.”

“The world’s already been informed of the date for anyone who wants to get their attributes enhanced,” Myriad said from the side. “It gives people a chance to travel for it if they need to.”

“See? Jesus, the moment this planet is safe I’m not doing anything for anyone ever again! God, I don’t even know what I want because for all of the most worthwhile things I keep being told no! With my last few financial agreements, I’ve already gone from having generational wealth to eternal wealth unless you’re expecting anyone else to be able to make gate factories like me and as nice as new attributes always are, I’m already so fucking golden. God!”

“...So I can see you’re a touch unhappy,” Helori said as diplomatically as she could while she let Ben fume, waiting for him to collect himself before he put up a hand.

“I’m fine, it’s fine, it’s all whatever. Okay, if you guys are going to negotiate for me then I want my mana regeneration grown by at least four hundred points. Modifying souls already got me five hundred in general but then someone made the stupid fucking choice to put three hundred of those points in my agility so here I am, wanting complete say in where they’re going and I want payment as soon as possible.”

“Is that bit really necessary?” Helori asked him. “You’ve already been paid early for soul modifying and that still needs to be done.”

“It is necessary because here I am, trying to get to the third tier again and no matter how unlikely the rest of you view the idea of me pulling it off in a few weeks, I refuse to miss out on those benefits if I can in fact make it happen and then in turn having less to give every jerk on this planet who’s getting their soul modified then I would have been able to if everyone up here hadn’t wanted to wait! God, I don’t care about how much some of them up here hate me, more power for me means more power for everyone else!”

“...You seem stressed.”

“Yeah, I am,” Ben deflated before pinching his brow. “You think the stress is only going one way? Sure the gods are unhappy anytime a mortal dares to suggest they be paid for their work but I’m unhappy to work with a group that thinks they should be above payment. I meant what I said, when this war is done, however it turns out, I’m taking no requests from the divine ever again, baring you, Myriad, and Nare I suppose. And I guess Anailia too, maybe Jagal, and I’ll at least hear Phixth out. But that’s it!”

“That’s a pretty long list,” Myriad called from the side, getting a dirty look for it.

“Well, don’t make me trim it by one geometric shape! Ugh, yeah, I’ll consider helping anyone up here who’s seen fit to treat me fairly and will pay me a fairly negotiated wage for my work but I’m not doing anything for the collective gods of this world ever again. It’s a community filled with assholes and it’s way too much stress.”

“Well, some of that group should be arriving soon to let you practice connecting to them so maybe control a bit of that hate,” Myriad told him. “It’s not like there aren’t a few more gods on your side than the ones you spend time with.”

“Yeah, I know, I know, it’s just the ones who don’t like me souring the batch. I’ll deal.”

It was only a few more months of work dealing with the gods of the world and how they’d see fit to try and make him work while fighting tooth and nail to give him nothing in return. In the end, whether the world was saved or not or if he lived or died, he would be free of having to ever again entertain the sort of negotiating that felt like some of the most unpleasant parts of his last few years of life.