CH697

“Oh my freaking god, why!”

<What? What has you in such a bad mood this time?>

“I still can’t figure out how to materialize with an enchantment.”

After his talk with Quilith the day before, Ben had wanted to complete that one small goal before moving his focus back to the summoning spell for a while but he still couldn’t get it to work. Not only that, it didn’t feel like he was even on the right track for success. By all accounts, making a tool that could materialize was impossible.

“Except it’s not impossible because I’ve seen it done before so I know it can be, I’m just missing some big valuable piece of information that I’m by all accounts never going to get and it’s killing me. Ugh, Myriad, are you sure you don’t have any idea how to do this?”

<I don’t, nor do Nare and Helori which means nobody up here is going to have a good idea. It’s possible you misinterpreted what you were seeing back then. Maybe it wasn’t materializing but simply rearranging matter.>

“Mmh, no, I’m pretty certain I’m right which makes this worse. Are there really no clues up there?”

<I can’t give you what I don’t have Ben, if it’s bothering you so much then take a break and focus on something else.>

“Mmh, you’re right, but…”

But he didn’t know what else to work on. His minds were still going over designs for Inux and the summoning spell and neither were at a place that could keep his hands busy which mainly just left trying to figure out ways of awakening his two skills but given he still needed to level connect more before he’d have a chance he was basically doing all he could and when it came to sacrilege, he was doing his best by constantly thinking sacrilegious thoughts about the gods of the world in the minor hope it was slowly shaving away at his massive hurtle while he prayed for a chance to put it to use in a big enough way again.

“What are the odds one of the gods of this world is secretly evil? I could use the easy bit of experience.”

<Slim, no trying to murder anyone up here for your own benefit.>

“If I don’t get this in the next six or seven months I’m going to have to. Don’t worry, nobody is going to miss Eneth and Olensia.”

<That is patently not true and if you succeed after one then you don’t need to try and kill both.>

“But then how will I be able to test the effects of it as a third-tier skill?” He asked innocently while Myriad sighed.

<Ben, no unjustified murders. Please, it would make my life so incredibly hard.>

“Got it. Reading you loud and clear buddy, if it comes to that I’ll make sure I think up some proper justification first.”

<So very much not what I was going for. What happened to the boy who at least felt some concern about how little he cared about taking lives?>

“I guess he accepted it,” Ben shrugged. “Whatever it says about me, it’s just not something I feel like’s a big deal. Relax, it’s not like I’m going to go out and murder someone for my own benefit.”

<What you’re describing is literally going out to murder someone for your own benefit. That is exactly what killing a god for an awakening counts as.>

“Ah ah ah, not so fast. Doing that is for everyone's benefit. Could you imagine a greater joy for a warrior god or whatever Olensia is? To sacrifice themselves for the sake of the planet? It would be beautiful, the sort of thing that everyone would remember them forever for. Honestly, I’d be doing them a favour.”

<Okay, new rule, no trying to psychopathically justify your quest for power, it would literally be better to me if you just admitted you were doing it for yourself.>

“Excuse you, I’m literally expecting to die if I succeed, it would actually be in my best interest to fail.”

<Fine fine, now figure out something to do instead of carrying on with that line of thought.>

“God, do you have any ideas? I can just keep making things to try and raise my crafting and enchanting but those aren’t exactly priorities right now. In fact, they’re kind of the opposite of priorities. When I’m trying to awaken connect with the entire hope it will pull in my enchanting, if I awaken my crafting and it pulls it in instead I’ll actually cry and that’s not considering the fact that if enchanting is what awakens I have no clue which skill it would be more inclined to pull in. Optimistically it would be both but that feels like a bit too much to hope for.”

<The idea that you might accidentally awaken your crafting is already too much to hope for, you really don’t need to worry about that. Still, if you’re looking for things to do, why not some reading? It might give you some ideas for all of your projects.>

“Reading huh?”

That meant going to the magic towers’ library, an idea he wasn’t entirely against. He may have completed the main building but they were sure to get new books in semi-regularly and there were still all of the surrounding buildings to read through too. Just because the information in those ones was looked at as being less valuable didn’t mean he had no chance of striking a nugget of gold. Hell, the book on sacrificial enchantments he’d found so long ago hadn’t been viewed as exceptionally important either and he’d been able to use it to drastically improve the way Thera could cast her magic at the time.

With the only drawback being his little promise to himself. He was still trying to avoid being too reliant on his coat, a goal that he hated to his core but was exceptionally important when one considered that it was for the express purpose of keeping his soul from being destroyed in the future but any time away from it was time he wouldn’t be making souls to the positively insane level he currently was, meaning his progress on that front would slow too.

But then, maybe a break there would be good too.

He couldn’t deny that the fact he’d seen that his strategy had worked was motivating him to push all the harder. Pulling mana into himself was never pleasant but since he’d gotten back he was doing it at a volume that was downright painful. Even if not to the extent he’d done it when escaping the demon world, it still wasn’t necessarily safe either.

It does help raise my soul expansion but I’d rather not be the first person to discover that this sort of thing can destroy a soul either. Okay, Myriad is right. A break from this is in order and I might as well fill it with some reading. Looks like I’m off to the library.