CH789

“Jake, I’m taking over part of your body for a bit, try not to panic.”

“Wait, what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means everything’s going to be fine, I just need to try something for a bit so keep practicing your enchanting until I’m done and try not to get distracted by this.”

He was already using his hive mind on the other, not taking him over entirely but instead conquering a single one of his split minds, making it his own while taking over his left arm as well to begin some tests as he used Jake’s soul to materialize a knife, taking control of the other’s magic just as he’d done when he’d been forced to improvise on his rank one quest.

He could feel a small part of Jake panic as he picked up on what was happening but did his best to forcefully soothe his friend’s minds with his own as he got to work, using all of what he knew about the magic he wanted to use and began trying to apply it, trying to bestow a spell to the thing he’d made.

Bestowal was rare, unreasonably so, and the worst part of it was that it didn’t seem to be a skill one could really train to gain. It would come as a bonus skill with an awakening or else something that might be acquired when one got lucky after taking a job but there was no evidence it was something a person could properly work towards, a fact that made it all the more valuable in his eyes, with that application of magic able to do things that something like enchanting couldn’t.

While less complex than enchanting, it was a power that saturated an item with a given spell or skill instead of placing it on it, meaning any item that was bestowed on could be enchanted on after without adding any additional magical weight, increasing the amount of power that could be placed into it without causing the base material to break, and in addition to that, didn’t suffer the sort of decay that normal enchantments might go through over the decades so long as a bit of mana was run through it from time to time to maintain it, making them essentially permanent if just a bit of mythril or white mana crystal was baked into any design that had been bestowed upon.

Of course, the second point was a bit less meaningful to Ben since he’d learned of the ring system and applied it to his work, with stability being one of the core features of that particular system and allowed items that were enchanted with it to hold their effects for upwards of thousands of years based on the few examples of it he’d seen, but that didn’t make the first point any less valuable. If he just practiced with Jake’s skill a bit until he got the hang of it himself, he’d then be able to teach them and even use them after they learned it to help with some of his work.

And maybe, if I’m really, really lucky, getting this bit of experience using the skill through Jake might help me get it for myself. That would both be very possible and very cool, right?

It was something he was willing to hope for at least, even if the odds seemed slim. Still, the fact it felt like a chance at all to one day gain that rare and elusive skill without needing to get Zandale’s help in the matter meant it was more than worth it and with that bit of greed in his heart he got to work, trying to bend Jake’s mana to his will until he got his first success with it.

He felt the knife he’d made begin to heat up as the blade got some of Jake’s fire magic bestowed on it and the success was enough to motivate him all of the more as he made new things to test on while the others practiced, seeing what of the endless options Jake held from all he could apply thanks to the man’s two skills would work and what wouldn’t, feeling different things stick or fail and from there, doing his best to figure out how to make the different failures work in a way he’d be satisfied with as the hours wore on and his comfort grew while his goal slowly changed from learning enough that he might help the other two figure out how to use and apply that magic to trying to figure out how he’d personally take advantage of that magic, finding an option he couldn’t resist as he did.

The twenty spatial rings on his fingers were all masterpieces given that they were items unlike anything else that had existed in the world before that point and at the stage he was at, the fact that each one held two cubic meters of space for items was already incredible but it was a volume that would only grow with that new power applied, so taking some of the pile he’d used Jake to materialize on that first day together and the day prior as well, he shaped them into new rings before getting him to bestow on them, finally taking them into his own hands to add what enchantments he could.

With the results being incredible. Each of them was ranked as high legendary items but that was practically irrelevant when compared against how they each turned out, with the volume the new rings could hold increasing by a factor of ten. As he transferred items from his old rings to his new he was left wondering just how he’d use all of that new space but that question was one he could take any amount of time to mule over. While he had Jake to do it, he upgraded all of his old rings from there and made new ones beyond it, needing some to give away to friends for the convenience they’d bring while others would be kept as backups to be used.

It was only as he was finishing up and he was left asking just what else he might be able to do with the skill that a solution appeared in his thoughts to a different problem he’d had, only needing the time to do it.

Time that would need to wait the following day. Training the two in their magics while interacting with the rest in the shop to whatever degree he’d needed to had taken up enough of their time that it was time to call that one to its end, with dreams of just what he’d be able to accomplish the following day dancing in his head the entire way home.