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It took some time for them all to be healed, and while just how to handle them all once they woke up was one question, what would happen to their gods was another entirely that Anailia seemed to be ready to answer then and there.

“Helori, what’s the current status of the five of them?” She asked the sky as the answer came down for all to hear.

<Well, they’re alive for now at least. They put up a struggle at first and it seems they tried to escape when they realized that you’d found their people, but a couple hundred years of faith from such a small number still leaves them incredibly weak in the end. The bigger issue was keeping the other gods from killing them then and there.>

“It would be a waste to let that happen. Given what they did, they need to at least die in a way that will aid the world. Send them down.”

All at once the five unconscious demons seemed to change. It wasn’t in a physical way, but it was enough to make it clear to Ben and Thera what had happened. As with the three people before them, each of them were giving off divinity as they were being inhabited by gods.

Um, Myriad? Maybe some context please?

<They were just forced down to the world and are essentially being bound there, and since a body inhabited by a god can have numerous uses when it dies they’ll be killing them in there and then using them for potions and materials after.>

Wasn’t it hard for a god to be in a body of a race that hadn’t worshiped them for a while though? I doubt the actual demons were giving them any faith.

<No, but with how closely they’re related to their new species it’s fine, even if not the most comfortable overall. Of course, given how short their coming lifespan is comfort isn’t a priority.>

Interesting.

“A shame we can’t deal with them here and now,” The god Baphel spat at their unconscious forms. “But I like my priest too much to get him any sacrilege levels.”

“I suppose we’ll have to take them to one of the trials,” Anailia agreed. “If we go to mine I can deal with them using my avatar, they should be too weak to do much about it.”

Wait, I feel like I just heard something even more interesting. Ben thought as he perked up while Myriad grew worried in his mind.

<Now Ben, before you do anything rash->

“Hey all of you, if you’re willing to wait a bit I have a great idea to get them dealt with fast while also making things easier for Myriad to deal with their believers if you’re all good with it?”

The gods looked at him in confusion, the mess that was his mind making it a challenge to get a clear image from his thoughts while Thera found herself uncomfortably sure she had an idea of where this was going, as Myriad was cursing in the meantime. None of it mattered to Ben though. After what he’d just been through he wanted to not only be stronger, but to feel secure in his strength, and he was sure he’d found the perfect way to make it happen.

“Only you would be like this,” Myriad complained in his realm between meetings while Ben was there beside him. “The others only agreed because they don’t think you’ll actually be able to do it. They think they’ll have to fake it in the end to help deal with the more stubborn believers.”

“Hey, it’s a good idea so why waste the opportunity? If it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. Speaking of though, are you sure this is working?” He asked as he held a rainbow mana battery in his hand, enchanting it as he did to have the soul-sealing properties he’d worked so hard to create. At least it felt like he did, but normally nothing he did in his god’s realm had any effect on the real world, the fact it did this time was entirely due to the request to see if it was even possible.

“It’s working. I’m setting up replicas up here and your body is in a sleepwalking state so you can get to your stuff and interact with it properly, but we’re not doing this again.”

“What? Why not? It feels so handy and now I can practice my skills twice as much! Hell, I wish we’d been doing this since I met you.”

“Look, doing this once is fine and we could probably do this every year or so without worries, but you really really don’t want to get your body used to sleepwalking or sleep casting. Moving around while you’re asleep is dangerous enough, but using mana? You could end up keeping yourself in a perpetual state of mana exhaustion and just not wake up.”

“Alright, point taken, let’s never do this again if it’s not an emergency.”

He was sure Myriad would be able to wake him up if that did ever happen, but that was only if he noticed before it became a problem. His god was becoming busier and busier so there was always a chance a couple days could pass without being contacted. He didn’t want to spend that long unconscious.

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Their discussion ended as they brought the next group up though, a family unit of the sleeping believers the forbidden gods had created, who immediately felt blinded by Myriad’s radiance.

Ben’s bet had been right, the forbidden gods interacted with their believers as much as any average god did, meaning that despite how few of them there were they weren’t used to being in the presence of divinity, and even if Myriad would spend a lot of his faith, there was no denying that he’d clearly grown in power compared to when they’d first met, even if Ben barely picked up on it himself.

With the last family there, the two of them simply talked to them all kindly, explaining who they were, why they were there, the lies their gods had told them, or at least what they were able to pick up on based on what the prior groups had said, and most important of all, that they wouldn’t be harmed.