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“Well, didn’t that go great?” He asked as he turned to his companions, with Thera seeming to mostly agree while the other three were left with complicated expressions painted across their faces. “What? Did that not go great?”

While he did have the minor bit of disappointment that despite all he’d done he hadn’t completed his quest and he never actually got the broken bits of his used-up bombs back, as far as he could see the rest was a complete win, though it didn’t appear that was the consensus.

“Er, it’s not that man, it’s just…”

Jake trailed off while Amy finished the thought on their minds for him, seeming more disappointed in herself than anything. “It felt like we were being carried for a lot of that, which isn’t great since this was at least partially meant to be training for us as well.”

They’d done bits at least, with Jake handling a lot of the first floor while Jake and Amy both had helped with the third, but the last two had been handled entirely by Thera and Ben, with that not even mentioning just how key they’d been in every other floor too. A situation like that couldn’t help but leave them with complicated feelings. Feelings Ben was happy to shrug away.

“Hey, take it from me, having an easier time is nothing to complain about,” He told them. “If you’re going to be doing twelve towers total then I’m pretty sure you’ll have plenty of moments when you look back on this and think about how much you wish the others could go this well. Besides, even if you didn’t get to train your skills as much as you wanted, you got both your levels and your blessings which was the main goal, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right, you’re right,” Jake sighed. “I can only imagine how much we’re going to be forced to train when we get back home though. I can already see Vasta working me to death since I didn’t get any levels to my non-affinity magic like we’d hoped.”

“I’ll remember you fondly,” Ben said solemnly before breaking back into a grin. “But anyway, since you guys will be hitting, what? Three or four more towers before things go down? You should put an order in with me before you do, just in case you’re all separated again and I’m not there to risk life and limb to save the day.”

He meant it in a light, positive way, what he’d gone through on the second floor weighing on his mind no more than any other violent event he’d needed to deal with on the world, but it had the opposite effect for the three of them as they remembered not only how little they’d been able to do, but that one of them would have died if he hadn’t been around.

“We’ll do that,” Amy told him, giving a small nod. “But for now we should probably find Uliel and Vasta, I can only imagine they’ve been pulling out their hair waiting for us to get out.”

It was with that they said their goodbyes, exchanging hugs and promises to keep in touch in the months to come as Ben and Thera watched the three of them walk off with more weight on their shoulders than they’d carried when they’d first met up to take on the tower, while Ben felt just a bit of his own disappear.

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They’d done it. They’d made it through the tower in one piece, claimed the rewards that such a feat came with, and he’d only come close to death during it a couple times. As far as he was concerned, that was a win.

“So are you okay?” Thera asked as she took his hand.

“Better than okay. I’m a lean, mean, surviving machine,” He told her brightly. “No silly trial is going to take me out.”

“Oh?” She asked playfully. “Then does that mean you’ll do the life tower with me if I want to?”