CH337

Standing in the middle of the training grounds, Thera wore an intense look of concentration on her face as she held the stump of Kelf’s arm, pouring untold thousands of mana out into the world to an extent that Ben could feel it standing off to the side as grass, weeds, and flowers in the area all took in what wasn’t being forced into the ghoul’s body, growing before his eyes before she eventually gave up.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting someone with a worse body for healing than Ben,” She muttered in defeat. “I probably could have treated a hundred lost limbs for what I just spent.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m more than satisfied with how this turned out,” Kelf told her happily as he stretched. When he’d been told there was an awakened healer in town who wanted to make an attempt he’d gone along with it, having no expectation that it would be any more than a waste of time, but to his surprise, there was a change. It wasn’t to the extent of growing a new arm, but many an old injury managed to heal from all of the life mana pouring into him, aches he’d dealt with for years gone in minutes. “I’ll have to stop by this town again if I’m ever hurt.”

While Thera looked annoyed that the life magic she’d worked so hard on was regulated to being nothing more than a means of healing minor wounds to the man, Ben spoke up. “Alright, I’m going to be honest Kelf, it’s probably going to take a while before I have anything I’m satisfied with giving you. How long can you be in town for?”

“I have nowhere else I need to be.”

“Cool, in that case, if you want to go relax or something, me and Thera are going to go for a hunt to see if that helps at all. I could meet up with you in a couple days at the shop to talk about my progress if that sounds good?”

He’d expected to part at that, but hearing the word ‘hunt’ Kelf perked up. “Could I perhaps join you?”

“Uh, sure I have no problem with it, but won’t you be bored?”

“Nonsense! No better way to feel alive and it’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed one. I’d love to see what the area has to offer.”

“Alright, in that case let’s head out.”

They moved through the woods without much concern, their goal being to find a specific species to examine, at least to begin with, one that was still reasonably new to the area but had already proven to be a problem for the town’s many adventurers, the stone ape. A creature that Thera was uniquely suited to finding as they went, pushing her earth sense to the trees above them, waiting to feel something move and capturing it in a net of stone as soon as she did, bringing it to the ground for Ben to get his hands on.

“Alright great, a little test for thee and a little test for me,” He muttered as he reached down to the restrained animal and connected to it. It felt similar to when he’d connected to an obble, lacking the defined skill structure that the system helped to provide, instead having a sense of vagueness to it. He couldn’t tell what anything on its soul was the way he could with a person, but that didn’t matter to him in the slightest. All that was important was that he could mentally reach out and touch it.

“Watch carefully world ‘cause I’m about to do something very cool that absolutely deserves to make my connect awaken.”

With that determination firmly in place, he grabbed tight onto the vague feeling he was picking up on with his connect and joined it with his divine enchanting, using the skills to etch whatever ability it was onto a ring.

It wasn’t easy, it felt akin to when he first discovered he could use the skill to enchant with the skills of others, but in the end it worked perfectly as Ben grinned down at the new ring, clearly labeled as ‘stone ape’s earth magic’ under his enchanting’s limited analysis, with his smile only slipping from his face as the moments passed.

…Why exactly am I not getting a system notification telling me what a good job I did for awakening my connect?

He had been so sure it would work, but with no system notification to show for it, he slipped the ring into his pocket as he stepped aside for Thera to finish the creature off now that he’d failed as she used her earth magic to kill it cleanly.

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“Impressive,” Kelf muttered. “Makes me wish I could learn more than death and dark magic. So what was the point of getting this?”

“Aside from my little failure; study,” Ben told him, pumping the creature’s chest to get more blood out. “If I’m making an arm I need some idea on how they’re supposed to work. I did get a bit of help on that last night, but I need more. Hence, this.”