CH1016

“Thank you, Ben,” Fontesh told him quietly as the night came to an end, walking her to her new home while he carried Delair, his little student having fallen asleep with Mora as the evening wore on, both children needing their rest after everything that had happened. “For, well, everything today. I don’t think we could have handled any of that without you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Fontesh. I’ll always come help if you guys need it. If you find you’re having any problems settling in, then just let me know too.”

She couldn’t help but feel in his debt after everything they’d just gone through, but the day had left him with his own unresolved feelings as well. He shouldn’t have moved the sirens there, that much was obvious, but more than that, he knew he should have pushed for the village to move to Stonewall or anywhere else before it could have become such a problem. Without that disaster, he was sure they would have resisted, but if they did then that just meant he should have prepared to react to something like that happening instead.

If Delair hadn’t spotted them and sounded the alarm, that could have been so much worse, he sighed to himself as he dropped the two off, tucking Delair into bed before making his way home. All things considered, we got lucky.

He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Delair had just left without checking the little noise she’d heard or if she’d hadn’t gone back to sound the alarm, such a thing would have been a disaster and after the day he’d had, he needed a bit of a break too. His hand couldn’t help but gently touch his neck in that brief moment of privacy, still able to feel the cut when space itself had been separated but stopped the second he got home, not wanting to remind anyone else in there, even if it was quiet when he entered.

It seemed Sonya had gone to bed, left tired as well when she’d been expecting an easy day originally, and Mora had already been carried to bed before Ben had left, leaving him to do just a touch of light clean up before slipping off to his own room, Thera still barely awake and waiting, stretching out her arms for him when he got there.

“You could have gone to sleep,” he quietly chuckled as he changed and slipped under the covers. “You look like you need it.”

“If you think I’d be able to get any rest without having you here after the day we just had, you’re out of your mind,” she told him, holding him tight in her arms and wrapping her tail around his waist in case there was any doubt that he was going to be trapped there. “This was a bad day.”

“Everyone lived, that makes this an exceptionally good day in my books.”

“Mmh, I don’t want to hear that from someone who managed to get beheaded.”

“Yeah, admittedly that was pretty embarrassing,” he said, trying to play it off. “Imagine being a third tier and losing your head to a contender. Shameful, really.”

“Be serious,” she whispered in his ear. “I thought I’d lost you.”

He had nothing he could say to that. He’d seen her thoughts when she’d found him, seen the fear of losing him and the fact that the sort of immortality he’d obtained couldn’t compare to having him by her side and if he were truthful, he didn’t disagree. Godhood was good, but until he reached it, he didn’t know for sure if any of his little ideas to cheat it and still enjoy a life on the world would actually work. If they failed then he couldn’t deny what a loss moments like that between them would be.

“Well, I’ll just have to make sure I live a good, long time,” he eventually settled on, getting her hair in his face as she shook her head.

“Not good enough. I need you to live forever.”

“Ha, a pretty tall order you’ve got there.”

“You’re kind of smart; I’m sure you’ll make it work.”

Feeling herself start to drift off now that he was back, she leaned up to kiss him before he could say anything to the idea and nestled in closer as sleep took her, leaving him with his thoughts as he let himself enjoy the feeling for a while before giving in to what he’d been putting off, using his magic to pull his card from the side to properly look over before sighing and forcing his way into his god’s realm, his avatar there laying down, one arm covering his eyes while the other touched his neck.

“This has been an ungodly long day.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Wouldn’t know where to start. How much did you miss down there while you were gathering help?”

“From what I’ve heard, too much, but Anailia was watching and filled me in.”

“It got your partner her ‘first of the faith’ title quickly,” Helori added, Ben uncovering his eyes to see her and Nare both there too before he made himself sit up.

“Yeah, that’s great and all, but… okay, things you’ve seen and things you may not have seen. Dryads were attacked, odds seem pretty fucking guaranteed it was pulled off by that one space demon contender you guys told me about before-”

“And how sure are you that it was a contender?” Nare asked, a different implication in the question that made Ben hang his head back.

“If you’re asking if I think it’s awakened to the third tier, then my honest answer would be that I don’t have enough information to tell you. It seems like it was sending demons from a few different separate groups, so it’s definitely powerful in the magic it holds, but it could easily be a contender for a second skill too that managed to boost its power some way. For now, it doesn’t matter. It diced my head up, brought me real freaking close to joining you up here and also had the unfortunate side effect of giving me a few extra levels I wasn’t looking for.”

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“Not like you to turn down levels,” Myriad said, leaving Ben to groan.

“Really, it’s only one I want to turn down. Divine defense enhancement, defense inclination, flesh regeneration, fracture resistance, all of those are fine to get. Great even. Awakening my all affinity resistance enhancement to extreme affinitied resistance enhancement though? Left feeling a bit more conflicted about that.”

“Fascinating,” Helori murmured in naked interest. “With the skill effect applied to your already unnatural resistances, you must be basically immune to unawakened magics by this point.”

“Sure, probably, but it also means I’m going to be even harder to heal! Genuinely, aside from the whole ‘working on a time crunch to regrow my head before I fucking died’ thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if having to do that while at the same time dealing with just how magicproof I’m slowly becoming is part of why Thera managed to get her awakening, and don’t get me wrong, that’s great news and all, fantastic news even, but could I have not at least gotten just a normal high variant of the skill? Except for when I awakened knowledge, how is every one of my awakenings going to be a unique variant?”