CH173

“So what favour did you ask for anyway?” Thera asked as they made their way to the woods.

“Huh?”

“The one that has you making your god a church? It sounds pretty expensive so I figured it must have been something big.”

“Oh, nothing crazy. I just wanted him to put a blessing on Fredrick to see what would happen.”

Thera stared at him through her hood before giving a long, drawn-out sigh. “You know what, I’m not even surprised. That’s exactly the sort of ridiculous thing you’d want to do.”

<Oh how I wish you were allowed to convert Thera to me. I feel like we could have an excellent time complaining about the sort of nonsense you do.>

Electing to ignore his god, he instead focused on Thera. “What can I say, it was just a bit of curiosity and I kind of owe Myriad one after making this anyway,” He told her as he gestured to his ever-present coat. Even if its defensive properties left something to be desired, the comfort did not. The perfect temperature control he’d built it to have was immensely satisfying on a warm sunny day.

“The fact you did that to begin with is one of the many reasons I’m not even surprised by what you do anymore.”

He gave her a cheeky smile as they entered the forest and got to work. The task was to gather as many colitox flowers as they could, an ingredient in some mana regenerations potions, with their reward increasing with the amount they brought back. It was late enough in their life cycle that they had dropped their seeds, meaning all that could be found could be comfortably gathered without affecting the next year’s population as they sprung up, and both the guild and Ben wanted to take advantage of that.

The flowers were small and green-brown in colour, making them hard to find along the forest floor, but the price for them was good and at this time of year it was a quest a good variety of adventurers would take, with Ben and Thera passing many that had party members on their hands and knees searching the ground as others kept watch, all the while the two of them went deeper into the woods, only stopping every now and then as Ben picked up some he noticed along the way.

It only took another fifteen minutes till they stopped seeing others for them to get to work in all seriousness, Thera acting to guard Ben as he searched, and Ben, simply taking a wide view of the area before he went to grab the flowers and any other plants he thought might be useful to him before they moved onto the next section.

As complex mind leveled up, this sort of gathering had ended up becoming a specialty of his, as not only did he have more minds to devote to the task, but the small change to how he processed the information he saw in the world grew each time, making it far easier for him to view an area as a whole and spot the many smaller details within, in this case, the flowers they needed.

They kept venturing in deeper, Thera eliminating any creature that drew too close with her earth magic, until they had the spacial bag filled after a little more than an hour had passed.

“Think this will be enough?” He asked as he closed it up.

“I think it would be shocking if anyone else brought back this much. Maybe I should try and get a few mind skills too.”

“Seeing how you managed with an item with complex mind on it, I doubt you’d enjoy it,” He told her with a laugh. He’d made a couple items with it attached for the shop, and the majority consensus from any customers that tried it on seemed to be that while it seemed handy, it wasn’t worth getting used to. Thera had managed only slightly better than when he’d forced it on Skoe.

“I more meant a normal mind skill. Or maybe something like tracking, not whatever weird thing you have permanently happening in your head. I don’t care if it’s handy, I don’t know how you’re sane.”

“And you only tried the one with complex mind on it, I wonder what would happen if you tried one with the effects of parallel thought too?”

“I’d be sick, that’s what would happen.”

They continued to chat and joke as they went on their way back to turn in their quest when they heard a noise behind them. Turning quickly and prepared to attack, they both managed to be too slow as Ben was brought to the ground, the weight of whatever it was crushing him.

With the air knocked from his lungs he couldn’t get a word out as he had a second to look up at the creature on top of him, seeing monkey-like features with a body covered in stone plates, before Thera reacted, firing an earthen spear she’d begun pulling together as soon as they heard a noise and ripping the creature from his body, killing it instantly.

“Are you okay? She asked as she ran over to him, worry filling her voice.

“Well no bites out of me this time, so that’s a plus, but that thing weighed a ton. Pretty sure I have a broken rib or two. God, I can’t wait until I get defense enhancement a bit higher,” He managed to get out between some painful coughs.

She cast a quick look around, wanting to be sure there weren’t any more of those things as she did before unzipping his coat and directing her life magic to him, trying to heal the unexpected damage from an otherwise safe trip in the woods. He watched her as he laid down, trying to be aware of anything in their surroundings as well when he felt her mood brighten momentarily from the worry she’d expressed for him before.

“Something good?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.

“How can you even tell these things? The benefit of this stupid cloak is that I should have some privacy,” She joked awkwardly, embarrassed to have been seen through as his injuries were being treated. “My life magic went up and it completed my job.”

The difference was apparent as her control improved, and eventually he felt good enough to get up, with her transitioning to healing him as they moved.

“Didn’t you just level up a few months ago? You can’t keep saying I’m fast at it if you keep up that pace.” He told her as he walked over to see just what had attacked him, at the same time happy for his friend’s growth.

“Pff, don’t compare me to you. I work like a normal person. It’s just that now that I’m getting better control over my magic I can practice more and take advantage of my incredible mana pool. It would be weirder if I didn’t start leveling up faster as I got better.”

“I’m a very normal person,” He said in his defense. “Arguably the most normal of any human on the planet considering how unreasonably powered-up every other one was when they got here. If I were to go back to earth, at this point I could probably manage to blend into society.”

“No, I met your friends, remember? It doesn’t matter how strong they were, they’re actually normal. Anyway, I think this thing is a stone ape,” She told him, directing the conversation back to just what had thrown itself at him. “They have some earth affinity magic they use to lower their weight so they can hide in trees and attack you like they just did, but they’re not normally in this region. We’ll have to give the guild a quick report, it could mean there’s going to be a change to the animal distribution to the forest.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Sounds bad.”

“We can only see how it turns out.” She told him with a shrug. “It might become a bit more dangerous, but there’s been times in the past that sort of thing has left an area safer too.”

He could only sigh as they got up to return to the guild, leaving its mangled body and warning any other adventurers they saw along the way.

God, this world is a mess.