CH389

“You look terrible.”

“Thanks for that.”

“I’m serious. Did you sleep even a little bit last night?” Thera asked, looking at Ben’s exhausted form with blatant worry.

“Technically.”

“So you were up all night talking with your god, of course you were. But you don’t usually look so bad after it.”

“Er, it was a slightly more involved conversation than usual, don’t pay it too much mind,” He explained, not wanting to go into too much detail. There was no need to make her think about what another world was going through with their own’s end so close at hand. “Anyway, should we head off? Don’t want to leave them waiting.”

She gave him a suspicious look, feeling like there was more being left unsaid but agreed nonetheless as they left the embassy and made their way through the streets, getting to the head of the craftsman’s guild.

The building itself was impressive, as were the ones around it. They all stood high, the walls being made of enchanted glass to keep a constant level of light coming through them for the people working within to enjoy and making the total of it an architectural marvel.

The ones surrounding it were much the same too, only serving a purpose beyond administrative work. In a similar vein to the magic towers, the land they found themselves in also had a place that hoarded the knowledge of its focus, with six large buildings each devoted to differing crafting-related topics and filled to the brim with books.

It was a place he fully intended to make use of while he was there amongst everything else he’d planned on doing, but it wasn’t the focus for the time being as they instead saw Falk waiting for them out front as they both rushed over.

“So how’d it go boy?” Was the first thing he wanted to know, with Ben’s defeated look being enough of an answer for anyone. “Ah well, don’t let it get you down, these things are far from easy.”

“I know, but they could stand to be a little easier,” He grumbled as Thera spoke up.

“And is aunty not with you?”

“She’s with your mother right now. I’m sure you can imagine but Pel is having a bit of a hectic time with everything going on so she’s there to be support before things get too bad.”

“Mmh, well I’ll go through to see them both in a day or two then. I need to talk to mom anyway.”

“In that case let me know when you want to head over,” Ben told her. “I need to order a bunch of diamond sheets from your dad. I promised Delair some games and I have something I need to test out too.”

“Ah, I’m going to be having a bit of a personal talk with her so if you just tell me what you need I’ll make sure to bring them back,” She said, not looking at him as she did.

Even turned away though, it didn’t keep either Ben nor Falk from noticing her face twinkle in the light as they each wondered just what sort of talk they were going to have, but ultimately left the matter alone as they focused on their own goal for the day.

“So are we heading out soon?”

“Just waiting on one more,” Falk told them. “When I told him you’d be joining us he wanted to meet up with you but since he’s busy and already late it might be a bit.”

Before either of them could ask just who it was he was talking about though, a voice called out to them as the door of the guild opened, with the head of it all, Iberu, walking out.

“Sorry, sorry for the holdup. It’s lovely to see you both again,” The troll hybrid told them, smiling at them all despite the atmosphere filling the city as Ben and Thera returned the greeting.

“It’s no worries, but don’t you have more important things to do than to go around with us?” Ben asked. He couldn’t imagine the head of the guild having the sort of free time that would allow such a break, especially not with an invasion point on his doorstep, but the man just waved away the question.

“You’re coming out to see my pet project and since you’ll be on the reserve team to help if anything goes wrong, how could I not? Besides, I could use a bit of a break from time to time so let’s head out.”

“Bah, you just want to leave things to your underlings,” Falk said, not believing him as he laughed.

“If I don’t give them any practice with my work then they’ll never be able to handle it when I’m gone. Besides, this is important. I’m leading around someone who’s both an awakened craftsman and enchanter if the rumours are to be believed. Speaking of, lovely to see you survived Ben, I was thrilled when I got the news.”

“And I was thrilled to live, it’s nice to see you again too Iberu.”

From there they walked through town, the topic sticking closely to their main focus and leaving Thera bored from the technical talk as they discussed the art of crafting as a whole, along with the finer points where their work was put into practice.

Ben was thrilled to learn that like himself, Iberu had the crafting skill, and at the ninth level on top of it. Even more interesting was what other skill he had with it. Magic smithing.

It seemed that the guild leader had taken advantage of the system in the early days of his training, and that fact let him reach his current heights. Crafting was essentially a combined skill, meaning that once a person had it, they couldn’t gain the individual skills that made it up. However, there was a workaround to that. If a person already had a crafting-type skill and then trained in multiple ones they didn’t, they could still get the crafting skill normally.

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By having both, it let his smithing reach beyond its expected limits, as well as gave a certain level of ease in raising crafting too, but it still wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Even though it could be done, already having smithing did increase the difficulty in getting the other. It spoke to the level of work Iberu put in to get where he was in life.

“But the skill synergy made it worth the effort,” Iberu told them with a smile. “And getting to the ninth level of crafting on top of it gave me that convenient bit of analysis to go with it. Plus it makes things easier for understanding the goings on in the rest of the guild.”