CH402

When he felt himself coming to consciousness, Ben thought he was going insane. He couldn’t move, but that was a passing concern compared to the main problem. The noise. The constant, thundering noise that seemed designed to keep him from understanding anything as he was assaulted by the power of his own thoughts.

It’s so loud…

It hurts…

Is Thera okay?

Myriad?

Is everyone okay?

QUIET!

I was in a battle, then what…

What was all that screaming….

Sonya?

WHY IS IT SO FUCKING LOUD…

Myriad are you there…

Am I really dead this time…

I couldn’t do anything…

I couldn’t help…

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP…

AAUGH!

WHERE’S FALK WHERE’S THERA…

What’s happening to me…

“Ben, Ben if you can hear me try to relax,” A familiar voice said soothingly, setting off a brand new wave of noise.

Myriad?

MYRIAD!

Where are you?

What happened?

The battle…

My friends….

Myriad!

WHY’S IT SO LOUD?

WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH!

What’s going on?

“Ben I’m not positive if you can hear me but I need you to listen carefully if you can. You’re alive and everyone is fine. Thera, Sonya and Falk are safe, it’s you we need to worry about right now,” His god explained gently. “I don’t know if you’re even aware of this, but you managed to awaken your connect and some other mind skills into two new ones. I need to keep my distance because it looks like the way connect changed lets you do it from a distance now, if you’re not careful you’ll hurt yourself getting exposed to me. More important is the second one. I can’t say for sure which one awakened and what combined with it when it did, but all of it is what you’re currently experiencing. That noise is just your thoughts, Ben.”

I did what?

Cool!

Sweet!

How thought?

This sucks so much!

Augh!

Really not liking this…

Any chance you could cut the skill off my soul?

…could be useful…

Feels like I’m in hell…

How am I supposed to deal with this?

What about the battle?

How am I supposed to live with this?

How long has it been since I’ve eaten cause I’m starving?

Sure would like to be able to move.

How am I supposed to think like this?

“With everything going on in your head I simply can’t pull it all apart to figure out what you’re trying to get across, it’s like you’re trying to think with a thousand minds at once. For now, don’t try to move, just try to relax. They’re all your thoughts, you can control them, just give it time.”

He didn’t think he could, with a swarm of minds all saying as much. When he was at thirty-two it had felt like a lot, but what he was currently dealing with was outrageous. Like in the past, it wasn’t like he’d suddenly gained alternate personalities, every mind in his head was still him, connected at the root, but trying to manage them was the same as if he suddenly had hundreds of new limbs, each moving on their own at the slightest hint of stimulus and resulting in raw chaos.

“Alright then, instead try this,” Myriad suggested, able to pick up on the disbelief that he’d succeed in managing the change to him that filled Ben’s thoughts as the god made a suggestion. “Try your best to do as I say, alright? With every mind you have, pick a number between one and a hundred.”

He tried to do as suggested, wanting to trust the cube but not seeing the point, with that fact being clear as various whys echoed throughout his head as even more shouted numbers, with the answer becoming clear soon enough.

“If a mind did anything other than pick twenty-two, start meditating immediately.”

It was a simple order, but one many of his minds responded to, having months of practice doing just that as they essentially shut down while only a few resisted at first, before seeming to understand the point as things grew quieter as they followed that same order, leaving him with only seventeen active.

It was less than he’d had access to before the change, but each of them felt far different from a typical mind. They felt broader, in a way he didn’t know how to properly express. If a normal mind was composed of three or four individual strands of thought then what he currently had in each one felt like it was far surpassing that standard, being more like eight or ten but impossible to truly judge given that the nature of each strand seemed to have changed as well, almost as if they’d grown in length, with the end product being that was each mind was not a string, but a massive rope.

He could no longer claim to think in a way that was remotely human, but at that point, it was at least manageable as he was finally able to get up, the thing trapping him in place before being too many thoughts trying to act in too many different ways, with the hint of control he’d regained letting him speak with his own voice.

“What happened?”

It was a question with a lot of implications behind it. What happened to him as his skills awakened? What happened to cause it? What happened to those he loved and what happened to the battle as a whole, all of which Myriad swept away.

“Later. For now, we’re focusing on you getting used to your new minds. You just experienced how debilitating the change in you is Ben, if you want to be able to live then we’re focusing on this first.”

He wasn’t going to argue. He’d thought the change his mind had gone through at the eighth level of parallel thought had been huge when his thoughts had split, but that was nothing compared to what he was currently dealing with. The only thing he had to be grateful for was that despite all odds he didn’t have a headache from it all, with the last edge of one he’d carried from leveling mental expansion and parallel thought gone as well.

Which actually seems very very wrong considering the damage that only thirty minds were doing to my brain and soul, but I’m sure I’ll get an answer to that later.

“Alright, so what do I need to do?”

“What you have to do is bear with me because there isn’t even anyone I can ask for advice on this, no other mortal has dealt with this sort of change. Your only benefit is that since this is your skill and you have the system you should be able to manage it like any other skill with some practice. The best idea I have is that you should try to mentally assign the ones you’re currently using as your main minds for the time being so you can shut down any others if need be. Just take some time and focus on what you have active right now, okay?”

“Alright.”

He did as he was told, sitting down and focusing entirely on the ones he could feel active, trying to create a divide between them and the ones simmering in the back of his head until he was confident he had them.

“Alright, now this part is going to be harder for you but try and stop only a few from meditating. If you stop too many then slowly try to switch more back to meditating till you can handle what’s going on in your head, okay?”

“Okay.”

Once again he listened to his god, only to immediately want to wretch as a hundred voices filled his head, the thoughts he wasn’t controlling overtaking the ones he was as one by one they did what his god said, going back to meditate until he was left with fifty active and under his control.

“Jesus Christ Myriad, how many minds do I actually have now?” He asked as he rubbed his temples, trying to keep his control over the ones he was currently using. “I know there’s a lot more going on in there than the ones that just went active.”

“I honestly don’t know Ben. If you want to, I think your best bet is numbering them as you go but for now, just get used to what you’re using.”

“Alright, I guess I’ll give that a try.”

It can’t be too many, right?

“Fucking nine hundred and ninety-eight.”

He was pretty sure it had taken him almost twenty-four straight hours of practicing and adapting with his god, growing more and more accustomed to the new state of his mind in that time and counting as he went, but by the time he had a final number he had to go back and check again, just to be sure he hadn’t somehow added a few hundred by mistake.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“…It’s admittedly a lot.”

“Understatement. How am I even functioning? How am I alive? There’s no way my brain can handle all of this. Am I just some dead soul up here and you don’t have the heart to tell me?”

He still didn’t have perfect control of his thoughts and the sentiment was echoing around his head, but he could at least shut it down now as his god answered.

“You’re alive, don’t you worry about that. When I realized what was happening I discussed it with a few others and the best explanation we can come up with is that you’re thinking like a god.”

“Which means?”

“It means that you’re thinking with your soul.”

“…Which means?”

At that the cube sighed, coming forward now that the fear of Ben accidentally connecting with him was gone. “It means exactly what it sounds like. You’re aware that among other things, the soul is a record of the life you’ve lived. You’re simply now engaging with that record in a far more active way. It’s, well, it’s not exactly natural Ben, but it won’t harm you either. Hell, this was probably the only way it wouldn’t harm you. It’s genuinely impossible to properly express how shocking this change is. If I didn’t know all of the skills you had that went into it, I’d honestly think you were someone with a third-tier mind skill.”

“Has my mind really become that powerful?” He asked in shock as Myriad went to knock him down a peg.

“More like it’s become that freakish.”

Rude.