CH1019

Setting Mora down and ruffling the boy’s hair one more time, Ben stood up, showing off his new leg as he stretched it out.

“Yep, works like a charm. Thanks for patching me up, guys.”

“Just don’t let it happen again,” Thera told him, taking his arm to walk him closer to the door, whispering quietly enough to keep out of Mora’s earshot. “And you’re sure you’re okay?”

“Thanks to you,” he whispered back. “Mora’s still taking things rough though, and I couldn’t get him to open up while we were making breakfast together. Maybe you want to give it a try while I’m gone?”

“I will,” she nodded before leaning up to kiss him. “Just don’t be gone too long today, okay?”

“I’ll keep it to two hours, tops. It should be less though.”

Really, he planned on keeping it below an hour, but he left room for things to go wrong, even if his statement was still rewarded with a smile as he and Sonya left, the older succubus finally getting the chance to question him on just what had happened the day before beyond what she’d seen herself.

“I came the closest I’ve ever come to dying,” he admitted, trusting a healer like her to be able to react to that without too much horror.

“You’ve had your heart destroyed before, how much closer could you get?”

“My head. A demon basically severed space through it and left it a severed pile of mush. Thera arrived just in time to save me.”

Sonya blinked, struggling to find the appropriate reaction before settling on a sigh. “Well, I can see why she’d be bothered then. From how they’re acting, the kids saw it too, I take it?”

“Yeah, I’m hoping Thera will have better luck trying to talk with Mora than I did this morning, but as for Delair, well, seeing that happen to me probably wasn’t great but she also had her home destroyed and apparently a demon even pounced her. She’s been through too much for a kid her age.”

“You know, that goes for you too,” she told him, reaching up to rub his head like he would for the kids. “Losing a leg, losing a head, and still having to worry about the next day. Are you okay?”

“I’m always okay,” he grinned, wanting to reassure her. “If it’s something I can walk away from, then it’s not the end of the world.”

“Mmh,” she hummed, not believing him in the slightest but still let it go. “Well, I know you have Thera and your god and other friends too, but if you’re ever not okay, I’m someone you can talk to about it if you need to. You’re family, Ben, and I want to be here for you.”

Family.

“That means a lot, Sonya. If I need to talk, I’ll let you know.”

With the shop coming into view, they went inside, Sonya taking one of his gates to make it to her workplace for the day and deliver the bad news that she intended to leave early, leaving Ben to himself, sinking to the floor as he did.

His hand went to his neck, able to remember with perfect clarity the feeling of it being cut but he pushed it to the side to get his thoughts in order, something he’d dedicated large swaths of his mind to since the night before with little in the way of luck.

Despite all the power he’d accumulated, he’d still almost died, and to something that may have only been a contender too. His goal was to kill the strongest god in the universe, yet there he was, helpless before a bit of space magic of all things.

He needed more power; he still needed to awaken connect too, and with everything that had happened, he was giving in. There were a couple ideas he had that he just hadn’t tried, viewing them as either too dangerous or distasteful, but it was finally time to give in and do them to see if any option would finally click.

Or at least, it would be in a few days. There was no way he could immediately put himself back in harm’s way right after what happened, not when he knew the effect it would have on Thera, Mora, and Delair if anything went wrong. They needed to at least have a little time to process what had happened first, and it gave himself just a bit of time to mentally prepare too, with a different project able to take up the immediate future. After all, he’d just died to space magic; he had no intention of letting that happen again.

How nice it would be if my resistances would just protect me, he mused, knowing that, in the case of what had killed him at least, it wouldn’t be so.

When a magical effect acted on him, so long as it wasn’t on the level of a contender or higher, he had reached a point where he could probably walk away from it, but the spell that had killed him was different. While it had undeniably diced his head, it hadn’t actually been acting on his head; it had been acting on space itself. It was as if someone had thrown a rock at him with earth magic; all of the force was in the rock itself, the mana delivering that force wasn’t what was going to be acting on his body.

Which means that I just need to make something that can suppress the effects of space magic on the universe directly around me so that spells like that won’t activate in the first place. Simple.

With the need clear, the design instantly came to his head, leaving him to place an enchantment on a new pendant before examining the end product.

More and more, his enchantments looked like they could come from whatever mysterious group had left both the summoning and terraforming spells in the universe, with mana modifiers filling them to improve the designs of everything he made. There may have been no room for faith to add power to it like in those two great spells, but the result was perfect in what he needed.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Clipping it onto his failsafe, his necklace that both slowed down time on his body in the event he found himself gravely injured as well as would hopefully create a link to the church’s sub-basement if he ever found himself trapped in a lower realm, now it included a charm that would disrupt any space magic taking place around him, the pendant made to cause subtle ripples in the universe itself in a way that would be a challenge for any space mage to compensate for without first understanding just how it was being done.

It wasn’t perfect; a hole could be opened beneath his feet to drop him somewhere else if it came down to it, but it wouldn’t interfere with his ability to use any of his gates and, more importantly, it would keep anyone from tearing space apart through him again. That was enough.