CH229

Oh thank god. I don’t care what mind job is available next, I’m never going to get a level to calculate again. He thought as they got back to Stonewall, feeling relieved as he did. In the four days of travel he decided to chip away at a few skills now that he had ten minds at his disposal, but even getting Myriad, Thera, and Falk to all ask him questions at the same time as he read through a few books, it simply hadn’t been worth the effort for that one in the end.

They parked behind the shop and Ben was ready to go right in and get to work. He wanted to put his ideas into practice and he’d had plenty of time to figure them out, but Falk could see the look in his eyes and stopped him.

“I know you’re itching to get your god’s business over with, but we all need to report to the guild now that we’re back if it can wait. Rewards to be collected and Ceselee probably wants to talk too.”

“Alright sure, I guess I can wait,” He hadn’t gone into much detail about exactly what happened before, when he came back he said that Myriad wanted him to talk with Eneth’s apostle and that they had behaved so inappropriately that they would be displaying a statue of Myriad to make up for it. He didn’t want to lie to them, but he also didn’t know how to explain that he’d challenged Ather to a duel and nearly killed the man.

Wait, just to be clear I didn’t kill him, did I? It’s not like I stuck around to find out if they were able to heal him after I left.

<He’ll live. He’s going to be under the care of a few healers for a while and Eneth’s church is going to have to spend a fair bit getting someone in with an awakened healing skill to fix some of the more devastating damage, but at the very least you didn’t just cost the world one of its stronger fighters. For the record though, the fact that you were able to inflict so much harm to a person and then not even question if he lived for days is all sorts of concerning.>

Hey man, do you think he was planning anything other than beating me into the dirt when he first challenged me? I’m not exactly going to feel too bad for the guy after what he did and what I saw of his personality.

<Mmh, well what’s done is done, just hurry up at the guild so you can finish your nightmare statue and we can end this particular bit of interfaith relations.>

As they got in they were ushered to Ceselee’s office, the last of the adventurers from Stonewall to get their quest reward.

“Well, aside from the unpleasantness at the end I just want to say you all did excellent work. Falk, thanks for helping keep the idiot alive. I want you all to know that I’ve sent out a report of exactly how they acted to the heads of the guild. We are going to be treating this as an attack on one of our adventurers and there will be consequences through a variety of forms so don’t worry about that. If you want the finer details we can go over them later, but for now I’ll take your cards.”

They handed them over, Falk receiving his funds and card back first while Ceselee stared harder at the other two, an amused smile forming on her face.

“Uh, is there an issue? Ben asked, breaking the silence and pulling her eyes to him.

“None, actually it’s quite the good news for the Stonewall branch I’d say. Based on what happened the system views both of you as having around forty percent of the total achievements each. I honestly assumed as much when I say what the rewards were for the others, independent of the base quest reward of course. Either way, congratulations are in order, you’re both promoted to rank three adventurers.”

As Thera cheered, her depression from the days prior all but forgotten with the good news, Ben couldn’t help but deflate. To him, that sounded like nothing but added responsibility.

“This has to be some sort of mistake.”

“No mistake,” The guild master said with a grin. “Your group told me what you did to make the one leviathan attack the rest, and after you were knocked out Thera played a vital role helping to weaken the remaining ones, not to mention what she did at the beginning before they emerged from the ocean. You’ve both proven you can handle the risks and challenges that come with being at that rank. Not that you need to worry too much about it, I don’t think there’s ever been a rank three quest in Stonewall and it’s not the sort of thing that would be anywhere close to going one on one with a leviathan, you’ll be fine. Let’s see, I don’t know what, if any of the perks of it would appeal to Thera, but why don’t you stop by when you’re free Ben and we can properly discuss what sort of information the guild can get you since you seem to like that sort of thing.”

“Ugh, fine, I guess I need to take everything I can get in that case,” So long as Thera wanted to keep up with it he wouldn’t quit, but he couldn’t help but feel he was suffering from success.

“So now that we’re alone, why don’t you tell me what really happened on your little outing boy,” Falk asked when they got to the shop. After the guild, they stopped by Sonya’s so Thera could rest before taking him back to deliver the statue, and Ben took that time to grab some of the supplies he needed. He’d thought he’d managed to get away without being questioned too hard, but from the look in his teacher’s eyes and the firm hand on his shoulder he knew he wasn’t getting out of it.

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

He gave his rundown of exactly what happened, explaining not only what he had done, but what he was still going to do, drawing a powerful laugh from Falk by the end.

“Boy, you absolute maniac. Between this, the guild penalties, and whatever Pelenia and Abrus end up doing when they find out, I think the church of Eneth is going to be having a bad time for a while to come. You’re really out here playing the angry husband well.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly plan for things to go quite so far. I just kind of over-prepared and then they threw this opportunity right in my lap. Anyway, since you know all the dirty details now could you do me a favour and run to the local jeweller while I get started? Just buy me however much of the most expensive metals you can with this,” He asked his teacher as he deposited three-quarters of his total funds over. He was already incredibly wealthy from his patent for the brace and the money continued to pour in, he wouldn’t be hurting for it any time soon.

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