CH695

He went home in the morning like he said he would, quietly cooking breakfast for everyone and letting the smell do its job of rousing the two women while he began plating up, watching as both came out and wiped the sleep from their eyes.

“Welcome home Sonya, did you just get back?”

“Mmh, yesterday. I only meant to have a seat but guess I was more worn out than I’d thought. Things were a lot worse than I was expecting. And you two? Both safe?”

“As you can see,” Ben shrugged, Getting a deeply exasperated look from Thera for it.

“I’ve been safe. Ben was kidnapped for a month and then after we went out with uncle someone kept trying to kill him.”

“And yet I’m still safe.”

“Um, maybe the two of you could catch me up.”

It was clear plenty had gone on so they filled Sonya in on all that had happened since the start of the second wave, hearing what she’d been up to in return. Even if not as extreme, she’d been dealing with nothing but constant work for over a month, dealing with the constant flow of people and bodies that were still arriving to that day as the world dealt with the horde that had made its way through.

“That may have been the first proper bit of sleep I’ve had that entire time,” She ended with a stretch. “Getting these bracelets dropped my workload enough that I was finally able to come home, the fact that you made them isn’t the most shocking, but I’m still going to have to be going back pretty constantly so I’ll be making good use of your mini-gates. As it stands I’ll probably be back home most nights, I just won’t be around for much of the day otherwise.”

“Aunty, you need rest too.”

“Who doesn’t, but I can’t just not work and it's not like the two of you aren’t busy too.”

Ben had his goals and Thera still traveled constantly to various hospitals and clinics to work, all of their time was constantly full, even if Ben’s mana bracelets had dropped the overall workload for healers across the planet.

Bracelets I need to keep making more of since there’s so many freaking mages on this planet. Okay, that’s work today sorted and my soul drastically overfilled again.

With the workload never-ending they parted after breakfast, Ben returning to the shop he’d just left to get back to it.

<Honestly, why go home at all at that point? You know the two can cook for themselves.>

Meals are my most important breaks. It doesn’t matter how much I have to do before the year is up, I’m not going to give up too much time for the people I love. If I fail and die at the end anyway I know I’ll regret it.

<A healthy enough attitude that I’m hesitant to bring up the obvious point but if you fail after giving them too much time, won’t you regret that too?>

Oh, absolutely, this is just the lesser evil for me. Anyway, do you need anything or is it back to work for me?

<You could say that. Remember your deal? In a week, you’ll be allowed to see the mythic items of the world, even if you’ll have a bit of a tight itinerary for it.>

Seriously? Score! Okay, these days are about to fly by!

It let him walk into work with a spring in his step, the knowledge that the reward for his work was so close couldn’t help but excite him as he imagined it.

Quilith had already told him about a few of the mythic items the world held in the past and Ben had directly seen two with his own eyes, being both the Talos and the archive, but he couldn’t help but want to see more of what was possible when one reached the higher levels of quality that existed within the universe. It immediately captured his imagination and took up a significant portion of his thoughts that weren’t devoted to any of his materialization as he worked, even if the thoughts brought another thing to the forefront of his consciousness as he began to speak aloud.

“Hey Quilith and any other watching grey, your favourite human is alive and well and waiting to hear why I haven’t gotten any more meetings if anyone wants to pop out to chat!”

The question was met with silence, nobody coming out to greet him or give him any sort of explanation that left him to shrug as he focused on his work, feeling his soul push to its limits as millions of points of mana passed through him until he decided to take a break for another piece of work.

Even if the souls he made couldn’t surpass his own limits, their total mana still grew with his own and with just how much growing he’d done in the past month he went back to his jacket and began replacing what each crystal within it held, putting in new souls and exploding up the mana volume of his most important outfit from sixty million to just over one-hundred and forty, leaving a grin stretched across his face and a notification ringing out in his head.

<SOUL SOURCE LEVEL INCREASED>

<SOUL EXPANSION LEVEL INCREASED>

“...Okay, as convenient as that was, I'm not redoing this.”

His total mana volume had just increased significantly but more importantly, he could now hold more within himself while creating more souls, meaning that he was going to be getting through his last few levels all the faster combined with his improved proficiency in making them, all of it tying into Ben fantasizing about the future.

Whenever he got to his final job level he’d give it a day or two before putting in a request for every person with the adventurer’s job he could get, along with both mages and mind users to succeed in his ultimate dream of all but obliterating the job system to claim every drop of power from it he could. He’d get skill and attribute bonuses out the wazoo along with levels in droves, probably a few completely new skills as well.

And hopefully good ones. I’ve been really lucky with pretty much all of the last few ones I’ve gotten from taking jobs. Even if I don’t care about my inclinations too much it’s better to have them and soul inclination has paid off at least by lowering my mana cost for making souls. Sure wish I could figure out how to awaken it to get it even lower but that will hopefully happen sooner than later.

No, the real stars of the show are defiler of ambrosia and especially modifier compatibility. If I could get a single new skill that existed at the same scale as either of them then it would make my entire life. With how many jobs I have, it’s not like it's unreasonable to hope that one of the stranger ones might help me get something good, right?

There were admittedly some concerns to worry about too, even if the good outweighed it by so much that it wasn’t going to hold him back.

Beyond just the basic fear of getting something comparable to flavour enhancement again, after how badly taking alien mind had gone for him he really did need to worry a bit about how they might make things grow and change too no matter how nonexistent the risk it supposedly was, with one sticking out as a greater concern.

Outsider. It was a job he had his hopes about, thinking it was the most likely of what he had left to give him third-tier bonuses but there were some pretty clear worries to be had about it too. He may have gotten the job as an option before he’d stared into the chaos but he could still feel it scratching at the walls of his mind, his consciousness affected by it in ways he still didn’t fully understand and still left him feeling ill if he focused too heavily on it, even if he was no longer at the point of vomiting any time it passed through his head. 

And tied into my witness blessing… Yeah, I still have a few weeks until this might become a problem but I’ll need to make sure I have both the archive and some good healers around me when I do, maybe even a soul mage to be on the safe side. Oh well, I’ll worry about that later. For now, it looks like I’ve got company.

His earlier call seemed to have been answered. No longer alone, Ben faced the grey who’d joined him.