CH162

The hard part hadn’t been getting the crystal itself. He already knew where a decently sized quartz boulder was from making the resistance amulets out of it, and breaking off a chunk hadn’t been too terrible, even if it took a while.

No, the hard part was when he got back to Fontesh’s home, sitting outside by a fire, slowly chipping away at it as he tried to make a perfect sphere, using one of his minds to learn how to craft the enchantment while forcing the others to devote themselves to making sure the crystal was made correctly the first time. His entire body ached slightly, but he wouldn’t forgive himself if he put it off to rest and ended up missing out on some job experience.

Even though the quests rewarding him with it were far less exciting than getting a level to a skill, he didn’t want to undervalue the benefits permanent growth bonuses provided, and the more he could get, the faster he could potentially grow, which meant he wouldn’t be putting it off if he could help it.

He stared into the crystal, feeling it was as round as he’d be able to get it with the tools on hand and began polishing it to make it shine.

What do you think? Good enough?

<Should be perfect. I’m surprised you managed it in conditions like this.>

It’s not so bad, I just wish I had some sun. Anyway, let’s get this enchantment started.

<You sure you know what you’re doing? It’s not the easiest to make.>

Trust me Myriad, of everything I’ve done tonight, this will be the easy part.

He tuned the rest of the world out and focused on creating the enchantment. He had a perfect image of how it was supposed to look in his mind, and since it was made from pure mana he was on the same playing field as every other enchanter for once, his almost non-existent affinities doing nothing to hold him back.

It wasn’t set up like any other enchantment he’d made in the past, but that was part of what made it interesting, and left him wanting to dissect the entire thing to try and learn its secrets, but that could wait for another day. He created nodes of mana throughout the crystal, connecting them with the thinnest of threads as he went. He was sure he’d be able to make a much smaller version of the enchantment if he were to do it again, the only issue being it would need a better quality crystal than the common quartz to keep it from breaking, but that was another issue for another day. It was complete, yet felt strangely familiar.

Why do I recognise this?

<Probably from every time you’ve been to a job change room.>

I’ve never even noticed an enchantment in the crystal before, I never looked that hard and I usually had other things on my mind. I’m telling you, something about its structure feels familiar, like I’ve seen it before.

<Alright, well worry about it later. Break your connection with it so you can select a job already.>

He did as his god requested, feeling that if it was important it would come to him later and let all of his options fill his mind.

AVAILABLE JOBS

• Trap user
• Tree tamer
• Craftsman- alchemy path
• Craftsman- artistic path
• Craftsman- blacksmith path
• Craftsman- cooking path
• Craftsman- stonecrafts path
• Craftsman- sewing path
• Heretic
• Mind user
• Holy craftsman
• Kin
• Tank
• Magic item maker

I don’t suppose you ever learned what Kin is, did you?

<There’s no information on it, as far as I can tell it didn’t exist before you got it.>

He sighed, that’s what he’d been worried about. Neither he nor his god were exceptionally dumb, the job had appeared after his little organ transplant had resulted in a new passive skill, one that it was unlikely anyone else in the world possessed. Seeing how the brand new skill resulted in a brand new job, he couldn’t help but be a little curious as to how things would change if he took it. Jobs were meant to help a skill grow after all, but his was a skill without level, how exactly did that grow?

Even though Myriad knew Ben wouldn’t take it, he still warned him off. <Absolutely not. I don’t care how curious you are, the fact it’s somehow a demon-related job shouldn’t even be possible to begin with. I can only imagine the fact that you have sacrilege has played a bit of havoc with the job system, but that’s still improbable.>

Relax, I don’t plan on going for it for now.

<Don’t go for it ever!>

I’m just saying, I already have partial demonic body, that’s not going to change, and the job itself doesn’t sound nefarious or demon-related so long as no one knows what skill it connects to. When you think about everything my new organs do for me, don’t you want to see if the job can enhance them, at least a bit? Think about keeping your precious apostle alive a while longer.

<…>

His silence was deafening and Ben could tell his god wasn’t going for it as he put aside the issue for the time being. It wasn’t the one he wanted anyway, even if he would be willing to take it in the future to increase his overall survival.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

So in any case, I got two new options, tank and magic item maker. I understand tank at least, it probably comes from me having defense enhancement, but what about magic item maker?

It sounded like it would be linked to either crafting or enchantment, maybe both, but he’d looked into the jobs he could get along those two paths before and he’d never heard of it.

<You haven’t heard of it because you thought you couldn’t get it. For that matter, I did too. Usually, it’s a job that requires that you complete the craftsman and enchanter jobs, as well as have access to a magic to use. Looks like you were able to bypass that last requirement thanks to the way you use connect.>

That made sense. When he’d taken the time to read up on his potential jobs, he’d basically just skipped over anything with magic as a prerequisite, but that left him with a bit of a dilemma.

Ordinarily, enchanting would be considered pretty closely linked to magic jobs since that was the main way of using it. It was more or less expected that a person would go through the apprentice mage path, completing the job and improving both their magic and enchanting at the same time before gaining access to the enchanter job at the second level. Likewise, it was expected that an enchanter would move back to mage jobs and jobs that acted as hybrids of the two before they unlocked high enchanter at the seventh, if they ever made it that far.

While craftsman jobs gained experience through enchanting and presumably bonuses to the skill as well, his options there were incredibly limited. Crafting path jobs gained most of their experience from pursuing the path they were related to, meaning he couldn’t count on them for enchanting experience, while the other option of holy craftsman he couldn’t be sure about. There was a chance it would give bonuses to his enchanting, but it was possible it would only be in specific situations such as creating job crystals.

He’d promised to help Thera, but he could justify ignoring those to focus on something else for a little bit because he believed the attempt had potential and he wouldn’t be able to benefit his enchanting anyway, but now he had a proper enchanting option available to him. Should he really leave it for later, even if he was sure it wouldn’t be too long?

<Ben, I admire your dedication to helping your friend but you need to remember this is about your growth and your life. If you want another job, you should take it.>