CH345

Running down the mountain as it crumbled, faster than his body would ever want to move, he could see his freedom close by. An exit that helped each ache and pain vanish from his mind, the blood pouring from his gaping wounds not even a distraction as he lunged, only for the trial to have one last nightmare in store.

Beneath him the earth split, a chasm forming and pushing the exit back as a bottomless pit stretched on under his feet, his hands desperately grabbing at any edge he could reach, only for them to fall short, his fingertips brushing the sides before he plummeted down as he screamed, every mind in his head desperate to find a solution that just wasn’t there until it finally ended. He felt an impact as knife-like spikes plunged through his gut-

Ben shot upright in bed, doing his best not to scream. He was soaked in a cold sweat as his migraine came back in full force and he did his best to take stock of things as his heart rate and breathing slowly started to come down.

He wasn’t in the trial. He was at home, safe, and severely annoyed that he’d listened to his god and actually gone to sleep instead of to Myriad’s realm as he laid back and closed his eyes again, waiting for the worst of his headache to subside before he did anything else.

Of course a stupid freaking nightmare managed to level up mental expansion.

He didn’t know if the sleep he had gotten had been enough to do anything for the lingering headache he’d been dealing with before since the level-up had brought it back in full force, but he resolved to work even harder on not raising any of his problematic mind skills until it went away completely. Even if he could live with it, he didn’t want it to get any worse when it would already be feeling almost debilitating for the next few days.

As all but one mind in his head focused on meditating, he eventually opened his eyes. It was still deep into the night, with him unsure how far off morning was, but since he was awake there was something he wanted to check.

Turning on a small light, doing his best not to look at it for the havoc it would play with his head, he pulled out his card, hoping to see if there were any noticeable changes from his experiment with the potions, and finding that while there had indeed been some growth, it had been nothing like what he would expect from a potion made from the body a god had died in.

It looked like with the exception of his recovery rates, all of his attributes had grown by three, which wasn’t the thrilling result he’d been hoping for when he’d tested it but was also far from nothing. There was no way to get a permanent growth through potions unless they were made from a god, so the fact that he was able to get three free points to everything was incredible, the issue was just that he was comparing it to the god bone potions he’d made earlier.

While Sonya hadn’t maintained her fifty percent growth rate with each one, she had managed to get her various stats above a thousand by drinking them, and even the ones Ben had made for himself from leftover condensed water had been better.

Despite that though, there was one area where the potions he’d just made were going to be superior in every way. Availability. Instead of something as rare and limited as the bodies of gods, he was able to keep making the potions so long as he had their souls, which meant that instead of a one-time growth, he could use it constantly, he just needed to determine how frequently they could be drunk without a decay to how much growth he would receive each time.

With that idea in mind, he took a breath, preparing for what he was sure to be an unpleasant experience as he forced his mind into his god’s realm.

“Fuck!” He yelled out as soon as he got there. The first thing he saw when he arrived was Helori sitting on Myriad, but that was becoming a common sight to him. What really made him swear out was the light in the area making his migraine flair up as the two gods there turned to look at him.

“Ben, you promised me you’d actually sleep tonight,” Myriad tisked in disappointment before he was able to pick up on the pain his apostle was under. “Wait, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that I actually did go to sleep and had a fun little nightmare that messed me up so bad that it leveled my mental expansion,” He said through gritted teeth. “Don’t suppose you have the ability to lower the light in this place, do you?”

At his request his god did exactly as he’d been asked, the entire area growing dark and dim and giving Ben just a bit of peace as the two gods came up to him, looking him over.

“You really are an interesting mortal,” Helori said with a level of purely academic curiosity. “If I wasn’t so worried about your ridiculous sacrilege skill I’d want to check your soul again.”

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“Hey now, don’t be afraid, feel free,” Ben told her, opening his arms wide. “I’d kind of like to know what’s going on in there too.”

She looked at him, filled with suspicion, but eventually her curiosity won over as she placed her hands on his chest, beginning to push in and feeling resistance as a notification rang out in his head.

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