CH665

Walking into the hospital Thera had been slaving away at that evening, getting strange looks from the receptionist along with a few of the less critical patients waiting at the front from the large sack he was carrying over his shoulder, Ben went to the front with a smile, ignoring the rest around him as he did.

“Hello there, I’m looking for Thera as well as your director please.”

“We aren’t currently setting up appointments. As you can see, things are busy here so if it isn’t an emergency please head to one of the local clinics.”

“Okay, fair, I should have expected that response, just one second.”

He pulled out his card and hid nearly all of the information on it save his status as an apostle and slid it over to be looked at before he went on.

“It’s kind of important, Thera knows who I am so if you tell her Ben’s looking for her she’ll come out and I need the person in charge if I’m going to help this hospital at all so if you’d please?”

That got his desired outcome with the receptionist running off to grab them both, leaving Ben to wait for only a few minutes before everyone he was looking for came rushing out, the concerned look on Thera’s face dropping when she saw the positive one he was wearing.

“Not an emergency then?” She asked with a sigh as he shook his head.

“Nope, good news actually, along with the fact that you’re going to need a few days off.”

“Ben, you know I can’t do that right now.”

“We’d be drowning without her,” The director spoke up, not wanting to lose their best healer for any length of time for all of the extra work it would create as well as the lives that would be lost in the process.

“And I come with a solution to that. How many healers do you have working here?”

“Fifty-two currently, why?”

“Less than I’d thought. Okay, one second.”

From his ring he pulled fifty-two of his new bracelets before handing them over to the woman in charge who looked at them blankly, not understanding what they were supposed to solve for her until Ben explained.

“Put one on and activate an enchantment on one of the crystals and it will refill your mana,” He told her. “It won’t be the most comfortable and it will kill your growth rates for the attribute but it will let you use more powerful spells without taking breaks, brought to you by the church of Myriad itself. Give one to everyone you work with and just let them know that once one crystal empties it will take about ten minutes to refill, will that be good enough to make up for losing Thera?”

“...Honestly no,” The director told him after a second’s thought, even if she desperately wanted to have such a tool for everyone anyway. “A mage of her power, no matter how useful this will be, it won’t stack up to how much she can manage. The workload is still only going to go up.”

“In that case, what if we distributed more around then?”

“How many do you have?”

“About ten thousand.”

“...I can’t help but feel like something like this should have been distributed earlier.”

“There’s no helping it,” Ben shrugged. “I only invented them today.”

“What?”

“Moving on. You’ll all have to overwork yourselves a bit today but if I make sure these are distributed to every major hospital then that should immediately ease your burdens, right?”

“I suppose if you can manage that then yes, things will become considerably easier.”

“Sweet, then I’m going to take Thera and I’ll have her back to you in a couple days. We’ll make sure the rest of these are distributed by tonight so just do your best.”

He was already dragging Thera off as he said it, not sparing a glance back while she was left to process that back and forth before ultimately giving in to whatever he needed her for.

“So what’s the plan?”

“It looks like it starts with me dropping the rest of these off with Valaria in Anailia to let her handle distribution to keep me from being a liar and then from there we’re finding your dear uncle so I can experiment on him. It’s going to be great.”

“...Yeah, sure, that might as well happen.”

Too tired to argue, Thera ultimately accepted that she’d just have to wait and see wherever Ben’s mind was going as they ran around to get their first tasks done.

---

After dropping everything off with Myriad’s high priestess and explaining both what the bracelets did and how they needed to be distributed before suggesting she get help from both the local communal church along with Anailia’s church when it came to sending everything out, the two of them left to find Falk, trying the only place they could think before Ben resorted to divine intervention, going to his factory in the magic towers to search him out and getting immediate success for the attempt.

After a bit of work getting in which forced Ben to show guards stationed at the front both his status as an apostle as well his awakened crafting and enchanting they were able to make their way through and see the yeti working at the side, deep in his projects while the staff around him focused on both supplying his needs and getting weapons that had been sent in enchanted for future use, with the entire building a flurry of movement while people rushed around to get work done.

“Falk, take a break to enjoy our company after suffering so long without,” Ben called out, pulling the yeti’s eyes away from his work and bringing a tired smile to his face.

“Ah, you’re both safe, good,” He sighed before walking over and pulling the two into a hug. “I hear a few of the points had a fair bit of trouble, it didn’t affect either of you I hope?”

“That’s a long and complicated story I’ll fill you in on some other time. Instead, rejoice Falk! Your wonderful apprentice has come to make your day worse.”

“Gods above, what are you going to do now?”

“I need to test something and it just so happens that you’re my man for the job. It’s going to have the minor, minor problem of drastically increasing your workload but it will be worth it, I promise. Anyway, let's all just step outside for a minute.”

Not giving them room to argue, Ben was already dragging the two along, looking for a semi-private area with some loose dirt to take advantage of before giving up and pulling them to the gate network instead to go out into the untamed lands for all of the biomass that was available to be used.

It wasn’t exactly private, the other side of the gate was swarmed with adventurers there to protect it given that it was one of the few locations not within a city that demons could use to slip through but that didn’t matter. Walking a bit off to the side, Ben emptied the contents of both the mystery sack he’d been carrying as well as two of his rings, piling up meat on the ground, with Thera partially getting a picture of where things were going.

“Ben, just how many homunculi are you expecting me to make for you this time?”

“For me? Technically none. For Falk though? Around ten if you can ration the stuff I have here and make up for what's missing using the surrounding dirt and plants, though if you can’t manage that don’t worry, we can make the rest another day.”

“Where exactly is this going, boy?” His teacher questioned. “Don’t tell me you plan on having me work like you.”

“Right you are Falk! I’ve hopefully made something that will let you manage it but I just need to test it out, so without further ado…”

He materialized a knife and handed it off to Thera, with both her and her uncle looking between it and Ben’s hopeful eyes before giving in, drawing blood and altering it let it take in more from its environment, with both Thera’s new levels and the jobs she’d sped through improving her ability to do it, leaving one homunculi done in only a few minutes.

“You’ve gotten really good at this,” Ben told her happily as he rushed over, shoving one circlet on its head before handing the other to Falk. “Now all to see is if my design worked so if you would?”

Still hesitant, the yeti carefully took the item his student was handing him, looking it over for a second before slipping it on his head and immediately swearing.

“Damnable boy! What the hell is this thing doing to my head?”

“Splitting your mind in ten since you’d need at least that many, and the good news is that it looks like it worked! Man, I really am so good at everything I do.”

When his teacher had moved to grab his head in response to the change forced on him, the clone did the same, matching Falk’s actions in a way that told them they’d been properly linked, with Ben nodding in satisfaction.

“You’re going to have about eight meters of distance you can use that with in any direction so that’s plenty of room to take advantage of, even once we got the others made for you so for now just try and get used to the experience while you can.”

“And am I ever going to get a real reason why you’re doing this boy?”

“...If I’m being honest, there’s a lot I’m going to try to be doing before the next wave and it would be inconvenient if the gods came to me to handle too much work. I already know they’d rather approach you about anything if they can help it, so making it so you can make more at any given time will fulfill both of our goals. Sorry, I really am dumping this on you for my own convenience.”

“Hmm, well, it’s fine I suppose,” Falk said in the end. “I do intend to play my part as well so I’ll take it, though I’m not sure how much more time you’ll buy yourself after makin’ somethin’ like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“The ability to use somethin’ like this wouldn’t only be helpful to me or you,” His teacher pointed out. “You might not be able to use mana through these things so it’s not the most handy for mages, but I can imagine these being useful for any awakened fighters, both for slaying more demons and letting them grow their skills.”

“...Damn it, that’s a very good point. Okay, I’ll bring it up later and we can all see how much ends up getting dumped on us. For now though, let's finish you up and then I’m calling it a day. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy one and I don’t think Thera’s gotten to sleep properly in a month.”

“I’ll take whatever I can get,” She happily agreed. After all of the efforts she’d been putting in for weeks, any rest was practically a blessing, even if she wasn’t ready to let things end there. “But then what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?”

“If I succeed? Growing even more powerful. Honestly, I’m not super confident if what I’m thinking will work but there’s only one way of testing it out and if it works, well…”

Then it will give me a completely different path to power to pursue. Okay, I can’t deny it, I’m getting excited. Tomorrow can’t come fast enough.

<DESTRUCTION INCLINATION LEVEL INCREASED>