CH373

“Well, didn’t that go great?” He asked as he turned to his companions, with Thera seeming to mostly agree while the other three were left with complicated expressions painted across their faces. “What? Did that not go great?”

While he did have the minor bit of disappointment that despite all he'd done he hadn't completed his quest and he never actually got the broken bits of his used-up bombs back, as far as he could see the rest was a complete win, though it didn't appear that was the consensus.

“Er, it’s not that man, it’s just…”

Jake trailed off while Amy finished the thought on their minds for him, seeming more disappointed in herself than anything. “It felt like we were being carried for a lot of that, which isn’t great since this was at least partially meant to be training for us as well.”

They’d done bits at least, with Jake handling a lot of the first floor while Jake and Amy both had helped with the third, but the last two had been handled entirely by Thera and Ben, with that not even mentioning just how key they’d been in every other floor too. A situation like that couldn’t help but leave them with complicated feelings. Feelings Ben was happy to shrug away.

“Hey, take it from me, having an easier time is nothing to complain about,” He told them. “If you’re going to be doing twelve towers total then I’m pretty sure you’ll have plenty of moments when you look back on this and think about how much you wish the others could go this well. Besides, even if you didn’t get to train your skills as much as you wanted, you got both your levels and your blessings which was the main goal, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right, you’re right,” Jake sighed. “I can only imagine how much we’re going to be forced to train when we get back home though. I can already see Vasta working me to death since I didn’t get any levels to my non-affinity magic like we’d hoped.”

“I’ll remember you fondly,” Ben said solemnly before breaking back into a grin. “But anyway, since you guys will be hitting, what? Three or four more towers before things go down? You should put an order in with me before you do, just in case you’re all separated again and I’m not there to risk life and limb to save the day.”

He meant it in a light, positive way, what he’d gone through on the second floor weighing on his mind no more than any other violent event he’d needed to deal with on the world, but it had the opposite effect for the three of them as they remembered not only how little they’d been able to do, but that one of them would have died if he hadn’t been around.

“We’ll do that,” Amy told him, giving a small nod. “But for now we should probably find Uliel and Vasta, I can only imagine they’ve been pulling out their hair waiting for us to get out.”

It was with that they said their goodbyes, exchanging hugs and promises to keep in touch in the months to come as Ben and Thera watched the three of them walk off with more weight on their shoulders than they’d carried when they’d first met up to take on the tower, while Ben felt just a bit of his own disappear.

They’d done it. They’d made it through the tower in one piece, claimed the rewards that such a feat came with, and he’d only come close to death during it a couple times. As far as he was concerned, that was a win.

“So are you okay?” Thera asked as she took his hand.

“Better than okay. I’m a lean, mean, surviving machine,” He told her brightly. “No silly trial is going to take me out.”

“Oh?” She asked playfully. “Then does that mean you’ll do the life tower with me if I want to?”

“...Or we could go home instead?”

“Haha, don’t worry, I think at least for now, this was more than enough excitement for me. Of course, depending on the next few years I may change my mind.”

Thera for her part was entirely joking. As much as she was happy from all she’d just gotten to grow from what they’d gone through, some parts had been too much. Seeing what Ben still carried with him from the trial he’d been trapped in and watching as he nearly died, as far as she was concerned she would never do another trial since it would mean he’d be joining her, even if she wouldn’t go out and say it.

“Then I’ll do my best to emotionally prepare for the future,” He told her, doing his best to avoid imagining a time where he’d willingly walk into another death trap like that as a different topic surfaced in his mind as he leaned in close, looking into her eyes as they walked back to the cart. “But other than that, isn’t there something you want to tell me?”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” She told him, knowing full well where this was going and wanting to avoid it with all she had.

“You know, a certain change in your status you might want to mention?” He went on, continuing to probe.

“Of course I leveled my spiritual earth magic, it wasn’t like I’d waste that on my earth sense,” She told him, more trying to detract him with something else entirely than give in to what he really wanted to know. “And the blessing leveled that one up anyway, plus my coordination, mana recovery rate enhancement, calculation and cleaning.”

“Thera,” He began in a singsong voice. “You’re hiding a job from me.”

“Ugh, can I just not say?”

“You can, but my delicate feelings will shatter like glass.”

“Gods above, fine. It’s…”

She trailed off, muttering the words and leaving them all but indecipherable to his ears.

“I’m sorry, it’s what?”

“It was earth princess, okay?”

A small gasp of air escaped him before he could get himself under control, though it didn’t escape her notice. “So that was the only one you got after the earth master job huh? Wonder why it worked out like that?”

It was with that small question that she finally admitted everything, from the title she’d gained out of nowhere to every spirit on the world seemingly deciding together that she was their princess for reasons she could never get a clear answer on, and how both of those things seemed to have affected the job option she had as Ben listened as carefully as he could until he couldn’t take it anymore and burst into laughter, keeping it up all the way back to Stonewall.

Author's note

Man, it really shouldn't have but somehow this snuck up on me and here we are at the end of the eleventh story arc. Seriously, how did that happen?

Well, like always I'm here to try and reflect on it a bit so here I go. In this one we had  Ben continuing to suffer through and expand upon the effects of leveling his minds skills, an altercation with the gods, and finally taking on the tower trial itself to sum up the biggest bits in a sentence, but I think what I mainly have to talk about is that last section.

As a whole, writing things like fights and trials is something I think I probably struggle with most, yet also something I want to get a lot better at, hence including them for the bits of practice they give me. As I stated in a previous chapter, I do think that my fights feel a little too blow by blow a lot of the time and need to be less about saying exactly what happened and more about the emotions they contain, but considering the goal of completing the tower I can't help but feel like the weight itself was lower because of the goal. Sure, there's a desire for power from my characters that ties to the goals of wanting to live and wanting to not have their world conquered, but that's one of those goals that's so big and broad that somehow it becomes a bit less personal as a result, or at least I think so. 

And then there's the issue of the last two floors. Honestly, I don't dislike them, I actually rather enjoy them and think they were fun, but they were definitely a bit lower in stakes and that's partly because I had to completely change my original idea for them the moment I realized there was a major major flaw to what I'd originally planned. I'm not going to say what it is (mostly because if anyone were to suggest how I could have made it work I will cry) but that did leave me deleting 5000 words and wasting a couple days trying to think of an alternative that could be fun.

Of course, there's a lot I feel good about too. Ben working himself to death to try and save Yuzu was one of my personal favourite parts, and lines up to what I was saying about goals and stakes. Trying to save a friend who's going to die before your eyes is a lot more immediate and impactful than working for some future threat, and it had the bonus of everyone there having to properly confront what Ben must have gone through in the dead god's trial in a way they couldn't by just hearing about it and force them to reevaluate exactly what they were doing. Really despite the paragraphs above I really am happy with it overall, but there's always something to improve and work on and I don't want stop trying to find those areas in myself where I can grow.

Anyway, as with any time I do this it got a little rambly but hope you all enjoyed this arc. The next two chapters will be little side stories to split things up between this arc and the next so I hope you look forward to it and as always have a great one!