CH254

After a long conversation with the girls that basically amounted to confirming that whatever cultural issue that kept Yuzu from talking to him wouldn’t extend to him reading her mind, as well as spending an hour all but begging Uliel to allow the young soul mage to help him, they all parted ways for the night, Thera still expressing her disbelief by the time they got back to the embassy.

“Are you really telling me you were kidnapped after me and uncle left you alone for a single evening? Ben, you’re an apostle. Get your god to figure out whatever sort of curse you’re under that makes your life like this,” She told him, not able to work up any real strong emotion after processing everything.

“Hey, this is super not my fault,” He said. “It’s not like I expected to be kidnapped by the crab mafia, this is entirely on Greed.”

“Who you’re still helping,” She pointed out.

“I mean, even if this all stemmed from him not keeping it in his pants, I don’t want him to die over it.”

“Alright, well I’ll go talk to my dad for you in the morning. Sleep well Ben, try not to be assassinated in the night or whatever other nonsense might happen.”

With that, she went to her room and he went to his, letting him focus on what he needed to as one final thought flew through his head.

At least she’s looking me in the eyes again.

It seemed that current events managed to be just shocking enough to pull her from whatever was bothering her, giving him at least one positive to go off of. He still wanted to know what might have been said during their girl’s night, but he had much bigger problems as he called out to his god for what felt like the millionth time.

“Hey Myriad, even if I’m safe now, I’ve still got a bit of an emergency to deal with here! I could really use some conversation!”

In return he got silence, leaving him to curse. He desperately wanted to run what he was planning through with his favourite cube, but with no answer he didn’t want to just go to sleep. He couldn’t trust that he would actually arrive in his realm, and that would mean his entire night was wasted when he could have been planning instead.

How the hell am I supposed to get his attention? If screaming for help didn’t manage it he must have been pretty busy so short of anything drastic I don’t have any options and It’s not like I could go to him… can I?

He’d been to his god’s realm so often that he knew exactly what it felt like to arrive there, the experience of his mind ending up somewhere else entirely was subtle, but it was there. Whether he could treat it as a path to be followed was an entirely different question, but with nothing else to do he decided to give it a go.

It’s not like I have any better options to go off of.

Laying down, he started to meditate with all ten of his minds, putting his all into it in a way he never had before as his thoughts cleared and he let himself fall into the feeling of being taken somewhere else.

He didn’t know how long it had been, time lost all meaning to him as he simply followed the thread. He didn’t even hope for a payoff, that feeling would have been a distraction. With the exception of that one goal, his minds were completely clear.

<MEDITATION LEVEL INCREASED>

<TOLERANCE LEVEL INCREASED>

<SACRILEGE LEVEL INCREASED>

With the notifications exploding in his head his concentration broke and he opened his eyes, seeing the realm of his god before him and heard some chattering at his back.

Pretty quick to get another level of tolerance. Sure hope that’s a good thing. Oh, who am I kidding, with a level of sacrilege too it’s probably not. Oh well, it’s an emergency, Myriad can deal.

He turned around to the voices, finding their backs to him and in deep discussion. He wasn’t super clear on what they were saying though, he was too surprised by what he saw. Myriad floating as he always did, but with the addition of Helori on top of him, using his god as a chair.

“Ahem,” He said to alert them of his presence. “If this is some sort of sex thing I can come back in a bit, but I really need to talk to, well both of you actually.”

As he spoke they both whipped to face him. Well, Helori did, without a face, it was hard to tell with Myriad, but he at least rotated which seemed as good an indicator as any.

“Ben, what- how?” Myriad asked, too many questions forming in his head at once to express them all properly as Helori got up.

“It most certainly isn’t. Honestly Myriad, if you’re going to bring your apostle up here you should warn me first.”

“I didn’t. He made it here on his own.”

It was incredible that despite his apostle’s constant antics he was still capable of being surprised by just what the boy would do, but he couldn’t help but be shocked by this. While not impossible, it was rare to an extreme that wasn’t worth considering. Myriad was fairly sure that he’d heard of ten other gods that got to experience something like this, with most of them happening before the fall of their old worlds.

On the other side of things, Helori switched from annoyed to excited on a dime, rushing to Ben and immediately getting in his face with questions.

“How did you do it? Projecting your mind into a different level of reality isn’t some trivial thing.”

“Um, I just kind of followed the feeling I guess. Myriad hasn’t been answering my prayers so I was getting desperate.”

“Followed the feeling? Myriad, how often do you bring your apostle up here?” She demanded as curiosity filled her all the more.

“Most nights so long as there’s no issue. Why? Is that what let him do this?”

“Most nights? So he’s been brought here hundreds of times?” She asked in disbelief, getting a nod in return. “No wonder he was able to know the way here! Combine knowing the path with how tightly he’s bound to you thanks to having both your blessing and your apostle title, were you trying to strengthen the link as much as you could?”

“It just sort of happened. It’s not like I have many other believers. Might as well give them some of my time.”

“I’d say that’s a lot more than some. He’s probably met up with you in person more than almost any other god has with their believers. Really, to think that there could be this side effect…”

She trailed off, starting to mumble to herself as Myriad focused in on Ben. “So what was so important that you had to try coming here yourself?”

“Ah, well two things. The far more minor one was that apparently Yuzu said my soul looks funny because of how it’s interacting with parallel thought and complex mind. Since Helori looked at my soul not too long ago I was hoping that she could tell me if there’s anything I need to worry about.”

“What?” She asked, being pulled from her thoughts at hearing her name. “No, your soul’s fine. It’s a little rare, but if your skills are developing in a way that might hurt you the system will compensate to remove any strain, in the case of your mind skills, it’s keeping them from frying your brain by making them interact with your soul on a deeper level. It’s not common, but it happens from time to time.”

“Okay, cool.”

“And the other thing?” Myriad asked, trying to prepare for the worst. He doubted his apostle would try to go to his realm for a question about his soul, and unfortunately he was right.

“Okay, so while you were up here getting sat on and ignoring my many prayers for help I was kidnapped by a crab mafia. Long story short, I need help from both of you to put a spell together to get one of them a shell and keep Greed from being eaten.”

Helori’s eyes lit up as Myriad crashed to the ground, her excitement at the proposed task coming nowhere near his god’s despair at that brief description of the day’s events as Ben outlined exactly what he was thinking and they all got to work.

“Do you think you could make a laser gun?” Jake asked the next day as Ben was carefully carving some stone, trying to get it to perfectly match what he needed.

“Probably, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve managed to make a couple decent guns with my enchantments, but the mana cost sucks. Well, I guess since you have such a high amount you’d be fine, but it’s not practical for a typical person. Plus you have your spells.”

“Okay, okay. In that case, could you make me a lightsaber?”

“Again, just use your spells, you’d be so much better off. Do you even have the sword wielder skill?”

“I mean, no but I’d happily learn it. Come on man I’ll pay you well, it would be so cool to have!”

“Okay, fine fine I’ll try making you one when the contest is over. Anything else?”

Jake thought for a minute before his eyes lit up. “A hoverboard. Please tell me you can make a hoverboard!”

“Dude, how many times are you going to make me tell you to just use your spells? Just stand on a sheet of metal and lift it up while you’re standing on it. To make it I’d need to not only have to figure out the best method of having it hover a couple inches off the ground, either trying to force it to suspend itself with earth magic or using something like air or space magic to do the job, but then also making it adaptable enough that it wouldn’t immediately crash if it went over anything other than a perfectly flat surface. That’s not even considering how high the mana cost would be.”

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Even as he said it though he couldn’t help but start considering how he would solve the problems that came with trying to make everything Jake suggested. It was all an interesting mental experiment for him, and the other human kept giving ideas that he wouldn’t have considered himself so he didn’t mind too much.

Jake for his part was completely taken with the realization that he wouldn’t need a fancy tool to have a hoverboard when he had his magic and was thinking on what else he could ask about as he turned to look to the girls chatting to the side, half paying attention to all of the suggestions Jake was making but mostly leaving him to see which of his dreams could be made into reality.

“What about bikini armour?” He asked in all earnestness, leaving Will to look away in disgust as Ben turned to Amy and Yuzu, one of whom was holding their head in exasperation as the other smiled on, having no clue what her boyfriend was requesting.

“Just to be clear, you both love this man?”

“Unfortunately,” Amy sighed as Yuzu nodded happily.

Thera though looked mostly confused by the reactions around her and gave voice to the curiosity that was getting the better of her. “Alright, I’m just going to ask, what’s bikini armour?”

“Think underwear that can keep any part of you from being injured.”

“Is that bad?” She asked. “Honestly, it sounds pretty handy.”

“It would be if he had asked with any intention of seeing us with clothing on over it,” Amy told her, having a small internal debate about how hard she should try to convince his teachers to go on him for their next training session and leaving Thera thoroughly disgusted in the meantime.

Before anything could come of that though they were interrupted by the arrival of Greed’s son, along with two of his associates. Ben had told them all what he looked like so there was no confusion, though Uliel stood silently at the side with Falk, both prepared for anything to go wrong.

“Alright, are we ready to do this or what?” The fleshy crab asked, not bothering with pleasantries and all but ignoring those around Ben. “You better not have any funny business planned.”

“Hey, I said I’d help you so I’m going to help you. We’re waiting on one more person but I spent the whole night talking to two different gods to make sure my idea would work, so for now come on, let’s see if I need to make any adjustments to what I’ve got.”

He seemed hesitant but went over to where Ben led him, standing still as the different plates of stone Ben had been shaping were placed against his body and modifications made as need be.