CH388

Opening his eyes after leaving the archive, Ben couldn’t help but let out a disappointed groan before letting his mind out of it.

“So it looks like that also failed.”

In the hours spent flying from the dryad’s village back to the gate, he’d been in there, experiencing almost ten days subjectively because of the time-dilation effect acting on his mind, only to fail in the goal he’d gone in with, awakening meditation.

When he’d asked himself how he’d ever conceivably do it, that had been the most obvious option. His entire time in there he’d been using the skill with all of his minds, hoping against hope that would be enough to push the skill past its limits, all to grab hold of the rewards for such an act.

While getting the skill to the second tier had no obvious value in and of itself, the purpose of that bit of work hadn’t been to let him meditate even better. No, what he had been after was the other benefit there was to be had, the bonuses to his attributes.

Even if it would have just been a six percent increase that still would have been really really nice to get. He thought with a sigh. Looks like my efforts just aren’t paying off.

<It wasn’t a bad idea honestly. If I had to guess then you might have to actually do it while experiencing real-time though. The fact that the time-dilation effect means you aren’t suffering through what your actual body condition would be like from days of meditating means that you aren’t having to push through the effects of it.>

Huh, that’s actually a pretty interesting point. Obviously, I can’t waste all of that time, but I’m sure I’ll be getting a few sleepless nights while I’m here. If I find myself exhausted enough I could enter the archive for an hour a day to squeeze out a day’s worth of training and see if that gets me the results. It at least has to be getting me closer, right?

<I mean, it’s practice so I’d think so, but only time will tell if you actually do.>

Just you wait, I’m on my way to zen mastery. After I awaken that skill then I’ll be reaching levels of reality you gods don’t even know exist.

<Sure, sure, I’ll be looking forward to hearing all about it if you pull it off.>

“So no luck then?” Thera asked him, noticing his eyes open up as they rushed through the clouds.

“Not this time. Why does this sort of thing have to be so hard?”

“Of course it’s hard. The fact that you have three is abnormal enough, trying to get two more is insane.”

“So you don’t think I’ll manage?”

“I didn’t say that, it’s just that if you do and word gets out then you’ll have to deal with even more people trying to recruit you.”

“Okay, note to self, make sure if I awaken any more skills it’s done in private.”

He let a couple of his minds be consumed by the thought while the rest focused on other things as they finally made it to the gate, traveling through it and the space beyond to finally end up at their ultimate destination, craftsman’s tower.

Much like the magic towers, it was a city on a coast, being an important site for all races regardless of where they lived with each of them needing access to it for the chance to test themselves and grow further by taking advantage of the massive trial the gods had left them, along with the resources that had gathered in the land as a result of craftsmen coming from the world over to face it.

Despite that similarity though, the city itself was far more vast. They could see the tower that made the city what it was stretching into the sky, waiting to be challenged, but at the opposite end, off in the distance there was the beam of light jutting up, waiting for the thirty short days until the battle for the planet began.

If it was Earth, he would have expected the land to have already been evacuated, but the world he was on had the key difference of the gate network, ready to ease the evacuation as people moved to different cities without the threat so close by for the months that the demons poured out of them.

<Month actually, singular.>

And I still seriously don’t get the logistics behind how the demons invade.

With hundreds of worlds having been conquered, the way it occurred was well known. The invasion points would be marked and after a period of nearly a year, gates would open at their locations, only for them to close again after thirty days of a constant outpour from the demons, followed by them opening again almost a year from when they first did.

It seemed horribly inefficient from the perspective of a conquest, even if theories about why they did so abounded.

<If you look at both their breeding speed and the way they reach their sentient stage you could see it making a sick sort of sense. There are plenty of non-sapient species that don’t particularly care about the survival of their young, it stands to reason that there’d be at least one intelligent one that follows that same path, even if it says nothing good about the gods who uplifted them, and considering that they need to raise their soul magic proficiency to reach true sapience, a natural lust for blood and carnage is a way for them to get the experience they need. Besides, given the raw volume of them that will come out in that month, we’ll be stuck dealing with them for the entire time between waves too. Make no mistake Ben, millions will make it through.>

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

And I get that, but if that is the case, what are they going to do once they have every planet in the galaxy? If the point of this is really to help them reach the sapient stage of their development and let the intelligent invaders grow to greater heights then eventually they’ll run out of worlds to conquer.

<Either figure out how to move to another, adapt to start attacking Jovian or void races, or maybe fight amongst themselves. It wouldn’t be surprising if that last one was what they were doing before they had started reaching out to the stars.>

So we’re just the next stepping stone to all of reality falling to their might, huh?

<Don’t joke about that.>

It was hard not to, the situation they were in just felt too outrageous to take seriously. No matter how well off they may have been, they were the next in a long line of dominoes about to fall, and the more he learned about what was happening the more inevitable it felt.