CH246

The two had been walking arm in arm, enjoying the festive feeling of the contest as they browsed what was available, but whipped around to his as they heard their names, seeing not only Ben, but Steph and Will cheerfully waving to them, happy to have run into members of their own species after so long and getting them to rush over in excitement as hugs were exchanged while Thera watched from the side.

“We thought we might see a couple classmates here, but we didn’t expect one to be participating,” Jake said with a laugh as he looked at what side of the table Ben was on.

“Especially for the invitee section,” Amy told them, looking surprised. “How did you manage that?”

“Ha, well my teacher was the one who was invited, he just really didn’t want to,” Ben explained. “But how are you guys? Living your best otherworldly life?”

“Ugh, well Jake is at least,” Amy told them as she shot her companion a look that carried none of the cheer they seemed to have while walking together. “Sounds like you are too though Ben. Rumour’s going around you’re married to a big shot.”

At that Ben put an arm around Thera’s shoulders, giving his widest smile and keeping her from slinking away. “Yet, this is my lovely bride-to-be, Thera.”

“Um, hello,” She awkwardly told them, wishing to leave. “Ignore him, that whole thing is a sham. Is every human we meet going to bring it up?”

“Ha, probably,” Jake told them as he extended a hand to her, a greeting she backed away from.

“Sorry, I can’t touch people.”

“Ah, no worries. We know someone who can’t talk to people because of their culture.”

“She can’t touch you because she’s a succubus you idiot,” Amy sighed. “Did you not pay attention at all when we got the news?”

“That was over a year ago, cut me some slack,” He told her, before switching back to Ben, his eyes almost glowing with excitement. “More importantly, you’re marrying a succubus! Dude, jealous!”

The comment got him a swift elbow to the ribs from Amy, making Will laugh as Steph shot her a sympathetic look.

“Well, like Thera said, it’s a bit of a sham,” Ben explained. “I was kind of tricked into proposing at a time she couldn’t decline. Worked out for me though, the inlaws are good to me,” He chuckled, getting a comparatively lighter elbow from Thera.

“If you keep getting their help eventually they’ll really force you to marry me,” She sighed.

“Hey, if it happens it happens, you’ll just have to put up with me for my short short human life.”

“Well, at least not that short, right?” Jake told him cheerfully, getting another sharp elbow from Amy as she hissed at him through gritted teeth.

“Are you seriously saying that to the only one of us without awakened skills you moron?”

His eyes opened wide in horror as both Steph and Wil looked to the side, feeling uncomfortable as Ben had no clue what anyone was talking about.

“Shit, sorry man, my bad.”

“Uh, no problem I guess,” He said before asking the obvious question. “But what does my lifespan have to do with not having an awakened skill?”

This time everyone looked uncomfortable, with even Thera seeming to tense beneath her hood. They all knew he didn’t have one, but what they had been unaware of was that he apparently didn’t understand all of the changes that awakening a skill did to a person.

It was Thera who spoke up as the others looked into one another’s eyes, trying to see which among them would have the uncomfortable task of telling him what he was the sole person from their class to miss out on.

“Ben, awakening a skill doesn’t just make you better at the skill,” She explained, choosing her words carefully. “It can change you on a deeper, fundamental level. One of the effects being that it slows down your aging, with the first time awakening a skill increasing your base remaining lifespan by about fifty percent.”

He wasn’t even surprised to hear it, all he could do was sigh as she explained it to him. “Yeah, sure, I might as well also die faster than anyone else I came to this planet with, that seems to line up with my luck. So if a person was able to keep awakening their skills would they be immortal? I feel like I would have at least heard about that if it was the case.”

“No, the increase is halved each time, a person would never manage to last longer than double their remaining lifespan.”

“Er, sorry man,” Jake said again as Ben was pinching his brow.

“No, don’t worry about it,” Ben waved him off. “It’s my own fault I didn’t know this, I should have actually taken the time to learn about awakened skills while I was at the church.”

He’d read plenty of books on awakened magics at this point, but none of them had delved into the topic of what happens when the skill awakens, instead focusing on what can be done with it after based on a variety of factors and just what it awakens into. The fact that he didn’t know may have been because he hadn’t been in a good place to learn about it at the time, but it was a hole in his knowledge he was going to have to get Myriad to help fill later when it wouldn’t bring down the mood of everyone around him.

“Ahem, so what have you all been up to since our untimely deaths?” Will asked, unsubtly changing the topic to everyone’s gratitude. “We’ve been busy with our training, and Ben’s been working on his skill the best he can when he isn’t trying to give Steph a panic attack with his letters-”

“Hey, what am I doing that’s so bad?” He yelled in his defense, getting a tired look from Steph.

“The stuff you feel comfortable telling me is horrifying enough that I’m not sure I want to know whatever you’re obviously hiding.”

“Come on, we’ve all been on this planet for a while guys, we’ve all seen our fair share of life and death situations.”

Jake and Amy shot Will a questioning look, to which he only gave an affirming nod before getting back on track.

“Anyway, we haven’t heard much about you guys. Come on, share some details.”

“Probably the same as the rest of you,” Amy began. “Just training. I have a bunch of combat teachers who help me while Jake works on his magic.”

“Oh, what magic skills do you have?” Thera asked, overcome with curiosity now that the topic was on one that held her interest and getting a wide smile for the question.

“All of them.”

Steph and Will seemed like they were already aware, but Ben and Thera were shocked as they both tried to put together just what he meant by that. There was a hard limit of five for the number of blessed skills a person could be born with and with ten affinities of magic that made it impossible, except for one skill that allowed an exception.

“Does that mean you have the archmagic skill?” Ben asked, curiosity stripping away his discomfort from the prior conversation as he got a nod of confirmation. The magic skill was one that a person could be born with if they happened to have a decent affinity with all types of magic, and since Jake had come to the world with awakened ones that meant he had to have the higher form of it. Not only would he be able to use the skill for any of the standard magics, he’d be able to easily use spells for any combined ones on top of that.

“Not only the archmagic skill, but the non-affinity magic skill as well.”

Ben could only let out a low, impressed whistle as Thera was stunned silent. Not only did his old classmate have an extremely rare skill that let him use all affinitied magics, he had an even rarer one that let him use all non-affinitied magics too.

“Damn man, sounds like you won the jackpot. Don’t tell me you’re the most important summoned hero on the planet or something?”

“Er, more like the sixth,” He said bashfully as he scratched his head. “We actually know the most important one, but pretty much anyone who arrived with a skill at the third tier is considered more important than me.”

“He’s probably getting the most resources put into him though,” Amy told them. “Since nobody expects a third-tier skill holder to level up at all, he’s viewed as a priority to get as high as possible. If only he thought a bit more, maybe they’d see some proper payoff.”

“Wait, back up, some people arrived with skills at the third tier?” Ben asked in surprise. It was a lot to take in. He knew everyone that was summoned was powerful, at least more so than he was, but he at least understood how rare a third-tier skill user was. It was possible that the number of them on the planet doubled as a result of the hero summoning.

“Man, you didn’t learn too much about the rest of the groups, huh?” Jake asked before doubling over from the force of Amy’s elbow.

“And you don’t know how to think before you speak,” She told him as he used some healing magic on himself. “I swear, he obviously had some more important things going on at the time.”

“Ha, it’s no problem, really,” Ben said in the other man’s defense, feeling a little bad to watch the display. “Admittedly I wasn’t in the best place at the time, but I really do need to learn some of this stuff.”

“No no, if Amy doesn’t do this then I might say something I really shouldn’t around someone I shouldn’t,” He said as he waved off Ben’s concern. “If it wasn’t her it would be my teachers, and they’re a lot less gentle.”

The talk of teachers managed to draw Thera’s attention all of the more. “When you say teachers, you wouldn’t happen to mean-”

“The archmage and the non-affinity mage, yeah. It’s not as great as it sounds. Also the occasional lesson from the soul mage, but that’s not as often.”

Except for the soul mage, the others were more people Ben knew nothing about, but at the very least he was able to pick up that they were bigshots from the context. If Jake really was having the most resources put into his training of any summoned, then they had to be impressive, all the more so if they each had one of the same awakened skills that he did.

The rest continued to pester him with questions for a while, curious about what sort of training Jake was going through as Steph pulled the conversation back to a more general topic.

“Anyway, what brings you guys here?” She asked, curious about how long they’d be able to see them. “We came because we thought we might be able to see Ben, but did you guys just come for some sightseeing?”

“We actually live in town,” Amy answered with a bit of defeat in her voice. “I’ve been trying to find a weapon that suits me for a while now, and since this contest is on we decided to do a walk around to see if anything manages to catch my eye.”

“What’s giving you trouble with finding a weapon?” Ben asked now that the conversation was focusing on his area of expertise. “I’d think that you’d be able to get a lot of countries to open their vaults to you, are you just not seeing anything cool enough?”

“Mmh, suffering from choice,” she admitted as Jake began fiddling with some of the weapons Ben had out to sell. “A few of the skills I came with were weapons mastery, high all-affinity augmentation, and high non-affinity augmentation. I don’t want to be in a place where I could use one weapon but need another, and then there’s finding something that could handle the full range of my augmentations as well.”

Interesting. He thought to himself as he felt his eyes light up. He hadn’t known how to spend an entire week on making something, but it felt like an interesting challenge had fallen directly into his lap as he probed further.

“I’m pretty well-read in skills, but I have to admit I’ve only heard of your weapons mastery. I didn’t even know non-affinity magics could work as an augmentation, or that there was an archmagic version of the skill.”

“Apparently I’m the first to get them,” She admitted, not wanting to create any awkward situations like Jake had. “The issue is that since all of my skills are so broad, it can make deciding tough.”

I’ll say, what sort of weapon do you make someone that can do anything? You’d want to play to her strengths, but with so many there’s the chance of missing out on something. Maybe just fill a spatial bag with good quality weapons and let her go wild? I mean, if you got a good enough bag with enough space you could let her just keep pulling them again and again, but that would be pretty wasteful and you’d need to either collect any you dropped as you changed them or else keep buying new ones. Of course, that shouldn’t be a problem for her, but it still doesn’t feel convenient either.

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As he let himself fall into the problem, thinking on just how he would go about trying to make her an item or items that would let her take advantage of the full range of her abilities, he couldn’t help but become more and more excited. This was a challenge, something he could sink days into trying to solve.

“Alright alright, tell you what,” He said confidently,” If you’d be willing to let me borrow all of Jake’s teachers for a day I’ll make you something good, I promise it will be worth your while.”

She didn’t know what to say, with the main issue being that she didn’t know how to decline without being rude. She’d gotten to see a lot of weapons since coming to the world, with a lot of people making some for her specifically. Even coming to see the people participating in the contest was more of an unlikely hope. Even if she felt bad for him, she couldn’t depend on someone who only had a level one crafting skill when they arrived, they needed someone who had years of experience behind them. It was Jake who took the task of letting him down gently from her, though not in a way she expected.

“Deal,” He said, holding out a hand that Ben shook. “But only if she’s satisfied with the final product, if she’s not then I can’t help you. My teachers are busy people after all.”

“Fair enough, I’ll do my best to impress,” He said happily, already thinking on just what he would make and what he would ask if he managed to make something good enough.

Masters of affinitied magic, non-affinitied magic, and soul magic huh? Just you wait Inux, I’m on the right track to getting you a new body far ahead of schedule if they can help refine any of my plans and theories.

“How exactly are you going to explain this to them?” Amy muttered to him as Jake shrugged her off.

“I’m sure they’ll understand. Anyway, looks like they’re nearby. How would you guys like to meet my teachers, as well as the most important summoned hero on the planet?” He said happily, waving to a group of three in the distance, drawing everyone’s eyes to them.

Each was a member of a different race, with Ben assuming the youngest one was the other summoned hero. Having a human shape, Ben didn’t have a point of reference to compare the girl against. Her sky-blue skin twinkled in the sunlight, seeming to imply it was covered in tiny, jewel-like scales, while both her eyes and hair were similar to Thera’s, being the same solid colour, only silver instead of gold.

The other two had to be some of Jake’s teachers, not that Ben could tell who was who. Also hominid types, they both appeared to be in their thirties, despite how useless of a judgement that was for races that aged at different rates and might live for hundreds of years. The first of the two also had blue skin, but of a much darker shade, as well as a black mane of hair running down her back and feet that seemed to be backwards, at least from his perspective. The other one appeared to be a short human woman for all intents and purposes except for their ears which would put any elephant to shame, hanging to their side like a cloak and swaying as they walked.