CH812

<Alright, you’re done, tell me exactly what happened. This got a lot of eyes and some strong reactions up here.>

Why did so many gods tune in to watch a bit of surgery?

<Because my insane apostle rejecting having his heart repaired in the middle of a tower to instead experiment on himself is the sort of thing a lot of gods were always going to hear about, with just as many wanting to know what the ultimate plan was. So?>

…Okay, I guess I was never going to be able to keep the results to myself since I’m going to try and see Verbum soon and I’ll probably see Yuzu again before long too but try to be cool about this.

<You’re priming me to panic.>

Mostly it’s probably going to just be some extra work for you from the regular suspects up there who seem to hate every little thing I do. I got levels to my vitality enhancement and my vitality regeneration enhancement-

<When did you get those in the first place?>

Shortly after my heart was destroyed but more importantly, two new skills. One called Mythril blood which you have to admit sounds cool as hell. No level to it but I’m going to go try to ask Verbum about it tomorrow to see the effects.

<And as interesting as you claiming yet another new skill for yourself is, it isn’t out of the ordinary by this point and there’s nothing inherently bad about the name which can only make me wonder what the other skill you got is.>

…Integrated divine body, which is along the lines of what I was hoping to get out of doing this, even if I didn’t know exactly how it would turn out. Actually, it went better than I really expected considering that with my first organ transplant, the change was originally listed as a partial body skill and had to transition to its current form. Looks like I got to skip that step.

<...>

Myriad?

<I cannot begin to guess how everyone up here is going to react to hearing that.> His god told him in what sounded like deep exasperation. <what does that even mean for you?>

Not sure, we can discuss it when I get up there later but for now I’ve gotta handle things down here so good luck.

Focusing back on the people around him and ignoring his god still grumbling in the back of his head, Ben got up and pulled the soul crystal from the dying homunculus while the rest stared at him as he gave them a big smile.

“Well, that worked out great! Thanks guys, I owe you all one.”

“Okay, but like, do we get an explanation about any of that now?” Amy asked him, with the rest making it clear they wanted one as well and leaving him to shrug. It sounded like the gods were already going to find out what happened from Myriad, no reason to leave his friends in the dark anymore just because some might still be listening.

“Alright, so this thing happens to be a soul crystal,” He explained as he showed it off, moving to put it back in his fruit tree. “Housing the soul of one of the forbidden gods specifically, it’s normally a key ingredient in my divine potions but there’s no reason I couldn’t force it to inhabit other things and given that a clone of me would be a perfect donor match for getting my heart replaced, I just wanted to see if there’d be any extra little bonuses from doing this sort of thing.”

“And were there?” Thera asked him, having guessed what he’d been going to do once they got to the greenhouse but had no way of knowing the outcome. There was no obvious change in Ben but his mood gave enough away. He’d gotten results.

“A couple levels and a couple new skills,” He told her happily. “You’re looking at someone with mythril blood and integrated divine body.”

“...What does that mean for you?” Vasta asked, breaking the silence as the rest there asked themselves that same question.

“Probably only good things, I’ll worry about figuring out the details of it later. For now though, I have a heart again and we’ve beaten one tower. Jake, Amy, seeing as how you’re both trying to awaken to the third tier and seeing as how I’m a great friend to have, come with me for the next one in a week so we can snag you guys some blessings and maybe even a level.”

“Two weeks,” Thera told them before turning to her boyfriend. “Ben, you just had heart surgery and you’ve modified your soul. You will be taking time to make sure you’re properly recovered from both.”

“...Yeah, okay.”

“You’re taking at least a couple days off of work too.”

“Mmh, fine,” He gave in. He knew she was right but the loss of time was going to hurt, even if properly recovering was important. He didn’t know how overfilling his soul might affect him when he’d just modified his own and even though he had nothing but faith in both Thera and Lux’s ability to heal him, there was no denying that he hadn’t made a normal choice when having his heart replaced. There could be waiting consequences he couldn’t yet see. “I was going to go bother Verbum tomorrow anyway to ask about a few of the changes in my status so I’ll take things a little easier. For now though, let’s get the rest of these guys home. Since we’re done with the tower, we need to grab our kid.”

---

It was still early enough in the day that even if some people in town were up and about, he’d needed to pound on Sachel’s door to get her to open, with the oracle along with a very tired-looking Ralia answering.

“Uh, Ben? Thera?” The half-dryad yawned out. “You guys are back already?”

“Benefits of having personal gates, we just need to use yours to grab Mora.”

“Okay, yeah come on in.”

It was even earlier in the dryad village but most of the residents there got up with the sun, the gate leading to Fontesh’s home letting them make way to the kitchen where the sounds of movement already abounded, the three of them already at the table while two of them ate.

“We survived again,” Ben called out, catching their attention and getting rewarded with the sight of Mora perking up, at least until the young soul spirit viewed him on a deeper level. The only thing that broke the child’s confused look was Thera making way to give him a tight hug, speaking as she did.

“We promised we’d be back for you after all, did you have a good time here?”

“Um, yeah, I did but what happened to Ben?”

“A lot of things,” He answered unhelpfully while leaving room for Delair to speak up.

“Does this mean we can get back to work today?”

“It doesn’t, sorry,” Thera answered for him, squashing the bit of hope Delair was feeling. “Not tomorrow either. Ben was a little hurt in a few different ways so he needs to take it easy first. After that, so long as we don’t see any side-effects he can get back to training you.”

“He has a different heart than he left with though?” Mora muttered, getting a laugh from Ben.

“Yeah, but these things happen.”

“And why’s your soul so different?”

“Something came up and I had to merge a new one into it.”

Mora stared at him for a moment before reacting. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Yeah but what can you do, right?”

The young spirit’s gaze turned instead to Thera who was left pinching her brow. “Mora, sweetheart? Do me a favour and try not to pay too much attention to things Ben puts himself through, it’ll be bad for your development. You too, Delair.”

While one seemed to take Thera’s warning to heart, the other didn’t seem to be listening at all, her eyes already gleaming at what she heard.

“Is your new heart better than your old one?” Delair asked in excitement, not bothering to think too deeply about the implications of such a thing and instead focusing on the results while Ben grinned in response.

“Got me new levels and skills so I’d say it was.”

“Cool!”

“Ahem, but since Ben needs to relax a bit today, we just came to get Mora,” Thera cut in. “We’ll get out of your guys’ hair for now. Thanks again for looking after him Fontesh, will you be fine to do it again in a couple weeks?”

“Of course, he was a pleasure.”

“Wait,” Delair stopped them before anyone could move. “I didn’t even get to show him the village yesterday, you guys came back so quick. If you’re relaxing then you should stay a while!”

Both Ben and Thera looked at each other before turning to their charge.

“Mora, would you like to stay a bit longer to see a bit more of the village?” Thera asked him.

“Will you both stay too?”

“We will.”

“...If you don’t mind.”

Before either of them could say anything, Delair already had the boy’s arm and was pulling him out the door. “Great! There’s so much I wanna show you still, come on!”

The three adults left alone in the room, Fontesh gave them a weary smile. “I hope my daughter isn’t being too much of a handful for you.”

“Oh no, she’s fine, don’t you worry about it. Making good progress too. She told you she got some levels the other day?”

“And a new one yesterday,” Fontesh laughed, instantly drawing both Ben and Thera’s attention with the offhand comment.

“Yesterday?”

“Her plant magic,” The girl’s mother smiled. “It seems the gods might have been smiling on us, it sounded like a lot of people got a few, myself included.”

A silent look passed between Ben and Thera as they said it. Not the work of a god but neither doubted that a small, godlike being might have played a part in making it happen with the question of why he was still keeping it a secret on both their minds.