CH839

“You owe Sachel.”

The first words his god told him when he went up to the realm for the night, leaving Ben to give the cube a confused look.

“Why?”

“She helped make sure no angry mob would try to kick you out of town.”

“Wait, seriously? I mean, I know what happened and all but come on, I’m such a sweet little guy.”

“Eh, I'd say they had some valid points.”

“Apparently not valid enough.”

“Well, if we’re being serious it was just a few dissatisfied voices trying to raise trouble for you and Thera,” Myriad explained. “But lucky you, my oracle managed to quiet them down, with a bit of help from Ceselee and Aso too.”

“Okay, got it, I’ll make sure I make it up to them all when I get back. So everything’s good there now then?”

“I’d say as good as anyone could hope. You dealt with the majority of the issues yourself and any dissatisfaction has been squashed, all that leaves is whatever lingering trauma there might be but given how things are as a whole, that’s not exactly outside of the norm right now.”

“Alright, good enough I guess.”

He’d need to give some thought to if there was anything else in town he could do to smooth things over a bit more but that was a future problem, one he didn’t even care that much about at that. He’d done his best to handle the situation but by taking the blame on himself, things were guaranteed to be left a little awkward when he got back but there wasn’t much he could do to change that fact.

But it might be better to keep my distance for now to let things cool down anyway. The tower’s supposed to be a couple days away at this point, it wouldn’t hurt to stay here until then to let Mora get to know some of his extended family a bit more and then the tower will take me…

“Hey, how long does craftsmans’ tower take to finish up?”

“That was a bit of a non-sequitur.”

“It’s called curiosity, now come up.”

“Okay, fine. It’s a couple days of constant work although for a normal person, it would be grueling.”

“Not a fan of the implication behind that.”

“Please, I’d bet a lot of faith that you’re going to end up having fun with it, no matter the workload. Plus, given your talent at materialization, there’s plenty of potential floors that you’ll basically have the chance to bypass. If luck is on your side for what ones you end up with, this could be your fastest trial yet.”

“Alright, I love hearing that. Fast and easy are the name of the game.”

“So as per usual then,” His god commented. “And then once you’re done this tower and have your level, what’s then? A contender for how many skills-”

“Eight, once I get connect its level. I just leveled hive mind trying to make Bloom sane enough that he wouldn’t accidentally kill himself.”

“Empty skies, you’re a monster,” Myriad muttered. “I know you have your plans for trying to awaken them, what are they already?”

“Well, you know sacrilege has been so annoyingly difficult for me for all the years I’ve had it,” He shrugged. “Not to completely incriminate myself or anything but if it comes down to it, there's a couple ideas I still have to test out, all of which you’ll be happier not knowing about but don’t worry, I’ll make sure I look properly justified before I try any of them and I’ll only be resorting to that point if nothing else gets me there once we’re a fair bit closer to the last wave.”

“Wow, and as much as I hated hearing about that, I’m talking about connect. I know you have your plans but don’t think I haven’t noticed you constantly avoiding the topic every time it comes up.”

“They do say ignorance is bliss.”

“People who don’t know you said that,” The cube told him with a shake. “In your case, I’ve learned over the years that ignorance and knowledge are both equally as stressful so stop beating around the bush and tell me.”

“...Thera’s beloved by the spirits and I get on well with most of the great ones in the world,” He said. “It might take a week or two to set up but I don’t have a doubt that every one of them across the planet could be gathered for me and considering they don’t actually take up space…”

“You’re thinking of fitting the entire spirit population of the planet within your range and connecting to all of them at once,” Myriad finished. “Wow, I do hate that.”

“I know you do but it’s not like it’s going to destroy my brain.”

“Sure, maybe but that doesn’t mean you won’t be under a different level of strain. You’re thinking of connecting on a scale you never have before. That’s going to be… Well, hopefully it will just be intense.”

“But it’s a good idea, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s not a bad idea at the very least,” His god admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “If you’re trying to break through to the third tier without the years and decades of experience behind you to make it happen, you were always going to need to do something big. It… I can’t say if it will work or not but as far as attempts go, it won’t be a bad one.”

Yeah, a pretty good idea for something I came up with off the top of my head.

Now that he’d said it it was genuinely something worth considering if all else failed but it wasn’t what he really had planned for his real attempt. No, if Myriad knew what he was really thinking then his god would try to stop him at all costs, something he couldn’t allow to happen. He already had the issue with trying to balance all of the ways he might awaken his sacrilege without becoming the enemy of every god in the world, he didn’t need to be stopped from taking advantage of the one he actually thought he’d be able to pull off.

And as for the consequences of succeeding at that… Well, it will probably be fine. As long as I take the proper precautions, I don’t think I’ll die.

---

It wasn’t long after that he forced himself to get up, spending a couple hours with Mora before waking Thera as well, letting the three of them go off together to see her family and whatever had come from the talks that they’d had throughout the night.

Salinoth had appeared at some point, the great water spirit giving a friendly nod to them as they entered, not blinking at Mora’s existence but likely not needing to if he’d been properly filled in and Thera looked at them all.

“So? What did you all end up spending the night talking about then?”

“A request, and whether we should even make it in the first place,” Her father said, looking at the three but focusing on the young soul spirit holding their hands. “Mora, we’ve already said that we’ll accept you as our family and we’ll respect the choices you want to make about how you use the power you hold, at least so long as you don’t do anything outrageously unethical but both Ben and my daughter should be able to help guide you on that front so we’re not too worried about that, don’t worry-”

“Where is this going dad?”

“Great spirits. As the only one with the power to do such things, we’d like to ask you to create more.”