CH798

“Ben, as your primary healer, tell me how you're hurt already unless you want to become even more so.”

“Is it appropriate for healers to threaten their patients?”

“I have terrible bedside manners. Now out with it already unless you’re going to make me prove I mean it.”

“Okay, fine, fine, just… Nobody panic.”

Two words that were certain to cause their fair share of stress as the other four watched Ben carefully slip off his jacket, with Thera getting a slight sense of the extent of his injuries first from the metal plate that was under his shirt.

What the others took for armour, what she herself took to be something he materialized for some extra safety when she’d first noticed it with her earth sense, clearly went deeper than that and instead of letting Ben take off his shirt himself she used her magic to reduce it to dust, the bloodstains on it speaking of a real injury and his bare chest telling enough of the rest of the story from there as one in the group gasped, with Thera in particular pulling off a face that screamed her mixture of shock, horror, and just a hint of annoyance as that last aspect poked out.

“You have a hole in your chest the size of my fist and your first instinct when explaining it was to make a bad joke?”

“I was trying to lighten the mood a bit, given I kind of figured reactions would be intense.”

“...Okay, whatever, forget about it. How bad is it?”

“When I said I was closer to being a heartless monster I meant it, the attack straight up destroyed my heart.”

“...”

“Dude, how the fuck are you even still alive?” Jake asked, his eyes practically popping out of his skull as he looked while Amy seemed like she wanted to be sick.

“Ben, you could have mentioned that before I was treated, you absolute psycho!”

“Okay, so first off, there’s no need for name-calling, despite how it looks I’ve got myself sorted pretty well. I’ll live. Second, I built myself an artificial heart with some of the materials I have on hand. It’s pumping itself but I can personally increase the speed if need be so it was able to keep myself alive during that floor.”

“How did that even happen?”

“Well, you see, the world is currently ruled by these stupid fucking no good awful bastard… Ahem, the gods of the world apparently didn’t think it was necessary to fire a warning shot first when designing this thing. As soon as I stepped through the door it was already in my blind spot, I didn’t notice the attack until it was tearing its way through me. Considering how easy it was for me to deal with the trial otherwise, needless to say, I’m a little peeved.”

A little was putting it mildly, he was reaching a point where he could no longer allow more minds to indulge themselves in their anger without actually limiting his mental prowess, giving him no choice but to begin trying to calm a few down while Thera’s thoughts were instead focused on how to begin fixing that.

“Okay, how it happened doesn’t matter. For now, lie down. Jake, you’re in charge of casting a time spell, when I tell you to, slow reality down for Ben as much as you’re able to and pull from the bracelet you were given if you have to, take everyone else’s too. Ben, I know you’ll be able to think faster than whatever effect Jake can pull off so connect with my mind to speed my thoughts up… No, just give me a circlet, I don’t care how much it splits my mind, just make sure it at least increases the speed I perceive the world by a factor of ten and while we’re doing this focus on materializing a constant stream of biomass directly into your stomach, I’ll be enhancing your digestion as well to start healing you. And on top of that actually, I do want you in my head after all because you’re also going to be in charge of trying to regulate my emotions a bit so I can stay calm because this is going to be my first time trying to regrow anything like a heart and needless to say, I’m kind of stressed out right now just thinking about trying it!”

…Yeah, she’s really not going to like what I’m about to tell her.

“Okay, so here’s the thing, and I want you to know I have a very good reason for saying this and I definitely won’t die but please just heal the muscle damage and ribs, leave the heart as is.”

She was grabbing his face as soon as he said that, taking a few deep breaths before looking in his eyes. “And why exactly do you want to do something as insane as that?”

“Well, you see, there’s something I want to test when it comes to replacing my heart when we get out of here…”

More stares until she closed her eyes and took another deep breath, trapped in the midst of a growing migraine as she thought she knew where he was going with that.

“You’re going to shove something in there to try and get a new fucking partial body skill, aren’t you? You’re going to try and become a chimera.”

He had the very good sense to not mention that he was already technically a chimera,  instead focusing on the meat of the question.

“Not exactly, it’s a little complicated but I’m going to be trying something similar to see if it lands me a bit more power.”

More stares as the grip on his face began to get painful, not that she seemed to notice how hard she was squeezing until she ultimately sighed. “You are so, so very stressful to love, you know that? Genuinely, whenever I die isn’t going to be a good benchmark for how long half spirits can live because each time you do something like this I lose decades.”

“Ahem, yeah, sorry about that. If what I’m thinking works though it will probably be pretty cool.”

“Shockingly, cool doesn’t really matter to me right now but whatever. Take whatever bits of metal you don’t want out of you then and I’ll heal what’s left.”

“Yeah, you got it.”

He had the sense not to say more when he fully understood just why she was mad as part of him questioned if his quest for power was really worth going so far, with a larger part acknowledging that even if it was insane, it was all for the goal of not only his but the world’s long term survival. If what he was thinking would work then there’d potentially be more than one benefit beyond himself as well, he’d just need to survive to test it.

“These cuts are a lot cleaner than Amy’s,” Thera muttered once there was nothing left in him but his metallic heart, instantly spotting the difference as she began rebuilding his bone and muscle.

“Ah, it was pretty easy to tell I was going to need to clean the rest up if I wanted that to work so I cut everything else away.”

“...Yeah, you’re no longer allowed to disagree when people tell you you’re insane.”

“Hey, there’s nothing insane about performing life-saving surgery on yourself, no matter how impromptu.”

“The insane part is not getting it fixed after to, by the sounds of it, experiment on yourself!”

“...”

Yeah, no good argument for that. I wonder if Myriad is screaming about it up there while he watches? If you are buddy, I want to make it clear that I never would have considered such a thing if you guys hadn’t punched a hole in my chest.

He was ready for some sort of comeback for that but with the voice of his god blocked off like it was any time he took on a trial, what he got instead was silence, at least from his cube. Instead, the voices in his head came from a different source once Thera finished rebuilding his chest, telling him that if nothing else, he’d gotten just a bit of progress for his suffering.

<BLOOD REGENERATION LEVEL INCREASED>

<ACQUIRED SKILL VITALITY ENHANCEMENT LEVEL 0>

<ACQUIRED SKILL VITALITY REGENERATION ENHANCEMENT LEVEL 0>