CH757

Well, that was a freaking letdown.

While he still couldn’t say whether or not they’d done it, what he had found out was that none of them were home. Jake, Amy, and Yuzu had left the day before, sounding like they’d be gone for a few more, and by all accounts their teachers had left with them, meaning he couldn’t probe their minds for whatever he might find.

That left him making his way back to the shop, using the time he had left in the day to slip on his coat and begin the work that was materializing souls while at the same time making more of his mana bracelets and materializers as the time went on.

For the first, he was at least already seeing progress, with his growing job level showing him that all of the other ways he’d grown, with his levels of soul source, soul expansion, and soul affinity, were all more than enough to make up for the fact that he was taking things slightly easier to spare himself just a bit of pain and suffering. 

<SOUL RESILIENCE LEVEL INCREASED>

<SOUL EXPANSION LEVEL INCREASED>

<SOUL AFFINITY LEVEL INCREASED>

Man, no matter how much it hurts that feels so good.

He felt more mana flood him with the new level of soul expansion and tied with the growth of his soul affinity, he was immediately able to create more than he’d been making only seconds before, not changing the strain he was under but improving the output to an extent that he couldn’t help but feel a bit better about giving in to help the gods.

Each time he leveled his soul affinity, soul expansion, and soul source he would instantly be able to make more and raise the speed he acquired job experience, shrinking the time it would take to help all of the third tiers while his thoughts ran wild.

Obviously, soul source was proving its worth, not only with his experiments to modify people's souls but also through the bands he was making as well as the materializers, and soul affinity had the fantastic benefit of lowering the mana cost of soul skills while at the same time making it easier for him to level and gain more but as great as both of those were it was his soul expansion that captured his imagination while he worked.

Perhaps it was one of the more straightforward of any of his soul skills but its effect was huge, letting him get an instant and significant boost of growth to his mana each time he raised it with one more fact making it feel all the more valuable. It was still only at the first tier.

He’d done that math and he knew by that point that each level of the skill was raising both his total mana capacity along with his regeneration rate by about ten percent of the volume he held at each level which by itself was huge, but what if he could push it further? Just what might he manage if he could get it to the second tier like so many of his other skills?

Hell, even if it just keeps giving me that ten percent each time it would be great if I got it there but if it would give me even more? I can only imagine my pool growing by fifty percent each level and with how significant an awakening is, something like that doesn’t feel out of the question, leaving the only issue being how I’d ever awaken it? Kind of feel like even trying something like that might leave me accidentally destroying my soul with however much I’d need to overfill it.

…Yeah, okay, since I’m only at the sixth level of it that will be a little while off but I think before I even begin to consider trying it I’ll need to get my soul resilience to the ninth level too. Hell, maybe even awaken that one first if I can, this is definitely a better safe than sorry situation.

<Why do I feel like I arrived to you thinking something crazy?>

Because you’re overly judgemental of your wonderful apostle’s goals and aspirations. So what’s up?

<There’s something I wanted to check for a moment. Ben, do me a favour and take off my church.>

Hmm? Okay, can do.

He slipped off the jacket and put a pause to his work, waiting to hear from his god about whatever that was about as the moments passed before the cube spoke up, pure pleasure in his tone.

<It looks like I’m getting a bit of faith from the souls in it.>

“Wait, seriously?” He asked, not bothering to keep the conversation to the confines of his head since he was alone.

<Less than I get from any of the trees you made during our bet with Helori but not by as much as you might think. I hadn’t noticed before since I actually do have a reasonable number of believers now along with all of the random, one-off prayers I get from some others thanks to how well you’ve advertised me with your work and the things you’ve made but this actually isn’t an insignificant amount. I don’t suppose I could get you to make me a few more?>

“No longer worried about the ethical implications of getting your faith in ways like this?”

<What ethical implications? These are souls that never truly lived with no minds of their own, why should I be bothered by it?>

“Hey, if it works for you it works for me. In that case, this should be a decent way to mix up the day a bit, give me a second.”

He slipped the coat back on while figuring out the basic structure of what he wanted to materialize, bringing forth a thick square tile that was about the size of the palm of his hand, filled to the brim with souls.

Compared to his jacket, doing that was significantly easier too, not needing him to arrange the crystal in a way that would be comfortable and instead focusing on squeezing as many into the space as was possible, ending with ten thousand in that one spot after expending everything he’d pulled into himself.

“Okay, now I’ve just gotta make enough of these to tile all of your churches here, in Anailia, and in Allfaith, unless you’ve gotten more since this last came up?”

<Just those three but seeing how many you managed to squeeze into that little thing and the total area of each church and I suddenly get the feeling there may be some hidden ethical issues I’m just not seeing.>

“Too late, this has me interested. Let’s see, I could also replace some of the shelves and seats I have in the Stonewall branch at least to fit in even more without obstructing visitors. Since I have the sub-basement set up as my emergency get-out-of-hell-free card I won’t be doing that one but I’ll be able to work on the rest of the space, even if it will take me a fair bit of time to make all of these, but then… Huh, I’ll be squeezing a positively insane volume of mana into your church by doing this, won’t I?”

<Yes, and?>

“And, it would be an absolute shame not to use it.”