CH775

“You want to talk about it?”

“Ugh, I wish you weren’t so good at reading me.”

“What can I say, it’s my specialty.”

His first day teaching had gone well, both for Delair and for Sachel. The first had managed to have fun the entire time, he’d done his best to keep the lessons he was giving both in the shop and in his head varied and dynamic, and while Sachel’s hadn’t gotten quite the same level of enjoyment, at the very least she appreciated all of the information he’d been able to give, with the one day combined with all she already knew enough to turn her into one of the better experts on plant magic. It would only take a few more to make her one of the best, especially if he increased the speed for some of her minds even further.

It was only after getting home that he found something going on. Not exactly wrong but clearly on Thera’s mind, but with Mora with them and still getting used to the new environment, he waited to bring it up until they were in the privacy of their room for whatever little it would give.

There was a chance the young spirit would still hear them though, his senses should have been powerful, even if alien, so after a moment,  Thera pointed at his head, making what she wanted clear as her mind was pulled into his thoughts for the privacy it would give.

“So, what’s going on?”

“I think Mora was casting spells at the hospital today and I don’t know how to approach it,” She told him, pinching her brow. “Vividus got rid of him because he wouldn’t use his magic, how am I supposed to ask if he was doing it in secret? Especially since it would only be a secret from me, there’s no way his mother wouldn’t have known if he’d been doing the same thing with her around.”

“Okay, back up a second. What makes you so sure he was casting any spells?”

“Aside from nine of our healers leveling up their magics today while we just so happened to have a great soul spirit in the room? Healing in general was just easier. Not overwhelmingly, we all still had to work, but nobody who came in died today.”

“I was under the impression people don’t usually die when you’re working.”

“Okay, true but it does happen if their injuries are too bad sometimes and I guess I don’t know for sure if he was helping things but it really seemed like it had gone a lot better. I’m feeling pretty confident about this.”

“Alright, if you're sure then I believe you but then what do you want to do?”

“Ugh, I don’t know,” She moaned, resting her head on his shoulder. “If he’ll use his magic then what’s the problem that made Viv decide to abandon him? And if he wasn’t using it around Vividus and Nox only then why wasn’t he? And he hasn’t brought it up to me so it seems like he might be trying to hide it but if he is he’s honestly doing a bad job about it but it’s only the second day and if he has some reason for it then I don’t want to pry because I’m really trying to get him comfortable with me but I just feel so bad at it and… Ugh.”

“Okay, well do you want to hear my opinion on this?”

“Please.”

“Don’t mention it to him, give him a bit of time to get more comfortable with you first and then you can ask him. He’ll open up to you eventually. As for confirming if he’d done that, well, it won’t be so much confirming as it would be adding just a bit more evidence but I do have an idea on the topic.”

“Yeah?”

“You asked me to help awaken people before, right? I’m already rushing the gods to try and set it up but I’m joining you tomorrow and basically going to force the relevant spells into the heads of every light and life mage I can get my hands on. I was only expecting it to help lower the difficulty of people getting levels and awakening, maybe it would be enough to level up one or two if we’re lucky, but if we have him with us and he’s lowering their leveling thresholds…”

“Then not only levels, we might even see some awakenings too. Okay, that sounds good. Better than good even.”

Thera had been wanting more awakened healers on the planet in general, if Ben and Mora working together would get it then that was something to celebrate, even if it working would only add to the question of why Mora wasn’t openly using his power.

But that was something that didn’t need an immediate answer. The first goal was just making sure he was comfortable with them, they could learn the truth whenever he was ready to tell it and feeling just a little comforted from the talk, Ben released her from his mind, letting Thera kiss him before she fell to sleep and he made his regular move of joining his god, finding the cube waiting.

“I want you to know, the fact you insisted on doing this so soon was a complete pain to arrange.”

“Hey, the world needs good healers and here I am, in a position to help some improve. Any bit of dawdling could cost lives, right?”

“Sure, but that didn’t make this any less of a challenge to set up. Still, you’ll be getting a constant flow of them helping out at the hospital Thera typically works at so try not to traumatize them too deeply.”

“I feel the need to point out that you’re asking me not to traumatize people who’ve been watching others die constantly, each day, for weeks, maybe even months depending on how much carnage they saw from whatever demons made it through the first wave. How bad do you expect lessons from me to be?”

“Bad enough to tip any of them over the edge. How many minds are you planning on forcing on all of them?”

“Well, Delair’s my little student and I enjoy being in Sachel’s good books since she’s the only one in her party who isn’t afraid of me and they only got three…”

“So the healers tomorrow are only getting three?”

“...Okay, you got me, they’ll be getting five but that will probably be manageable.”

“I’m sure,” His god told him, voice filled with nothing but pure doubt. “And pray tell, at what sort of speed are you going to be forcing these poor healers' minds to move at?”

“Okay, so Delair I only doubled and Sachel I only quadrupled-”

“And we aren’t talking about them.”

“Fine, fine. Gosh, so picky about it. I’ll be going through their memories to see what each one already knows but in general, I’ve split the life and light spells I know into high, middle, and low priority, with people who only have low levels of their magic mostly learning high priority spells while people at the ninth level will be learning everything I can teach, with the potential to stop a bit early for any of them if they do gain their levels or awaken so I can move on to the next people and considering that I’ll maybe have an hour with any healer, tops before they’re changed out so I can help teach some more-”

“You’re stalling still.”

“Geez, okay. Considering I’ll be teaching four individual minds for each person while the last will be focused on hands-on healing whatever patients are brought in and that I want to make the most of whatever time they have, I’m thinking about a thousand times faster, maybe more if it seems like they need it.”

“...Ben, that’s called torture.”

“It is not.”

“A thousand times, four times over for an hour might as well be four thousand hours of studying Ben. That’s the better part of a year!”

“You know, back on earth some say you need ten thousand hours to become an expert on something.”

“And you’re planning on giving it to them all at once!”

“It’ll be efficient.”

“It’ll be madness-inducing! Besides, I’m sure your little saying about experts doesn’t take into account a knowledge skill or that you’re able to force your ninth-leveled one on others. How do you expect me to believe you’d even be able to fill all of that time?”

“I mean, if they have any other magics I’ll happily teach them all I know about them too…”

“Vetoed. If you have to be psychotic, bring it down so their total time learning from you doesn’t equal more than a thousand hours. There’s at least a chance they’ll be able to mentally recover from that.”

“Counter offer, I’ll add some dark enchantments to my circlets to improve their ability to make their users focus and resist mental strain.”

“Counter counter offer. Do that anyway and then still only give them a thousand hours of studying in your head.”

“Mmh, okay, I can see we’re at a bit of an impasse here so I’ll compromise. I’ll build the enchantments to strengthen their minds in every way I can to be sure they’ll be fine in the end and then we’ll only do two thousand hours. That sounds fair and reasonable, doesn’t it?”

“Not even remotely but I think I need to finally give up on getting you to understand the plight of mortal minds.”

“Excuse you, I’m still mortal, mine is by the very definition a mortal mind.”

“No, no you don’t get to say that. I’m pretty sure that if a random mind reader ever got close enough to poke around in your head they’d either die or go insane by this point.”

“Okay, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a mortal mind. Besides, the chances of any mind reader getting that close without me noticing their intentions are pretty slim.”

“Ugh, I don’t know why I’m trying to bother. Fine, do whatever you think is best but if anyone seems like they’re genuinely suffering let them go.”

“What? Obviously Myriad, I’m not a monster.”

“Your titles beg to differ.”

“Hey, when you’re killing a god they practically give those things away. Anyone could get one.”

“Not if the condition is killing a god!”

“Well, agree to disagree. And speaking of-”

“I already don’t like where this is going.”

“It’s basically unrelated, I just want to catch up on some practice tonight. Don’t worry, I’ll be quiet.”

Before his god could say another word, Ben was already actualizing in the distance, creating targets for himself before shooting off bullets at them, watching as his aim held true.

“...It’s going to be pretty hard to ignore the fact that you made your targets look like Eneth and Olensia.”

“It’s important to get some stress relief from time to time,” He said innocently, as if he hadn’t previously made clear just what he would try to do to the two gods if it would help him awaken his sacrilege while his own gave up, getting to his work and leaving Ben in peace to get a bit of training in the meantime as the bit of night he had to use went by.

<AIM LEVEL INCREASED>

<ILL INTENT LEVEL INCREASED>