CH420

In the guild, Thera alone was looking good as the only person who hadn’t taken Ben’s offer. Everyone else couldn’t hide their mildly nauseous looks as he built up their minds with his own, while he had sweat dripping down his brow from trying to maintain it.

Taking apart a single one of his minds was one thing, with all of the ones in his head it was barely even noticeable, but doing one for each person was something different, and then moving on to two, and then three after where he reached his limits. As everyone else was experiencing a boost to their thinking power incomparable to anything they’d had in the past, while he was doing it he was losing a not insignificant amount of what he had.

‘Course, not insignificant for me and not insignificant for anyone else are two very different things. One of the many hundreds of spare minds he still had couldn’t help but think. Even if it still does feel a little weird.

Still, he pushed himself, wanting every level he could get in the short amount of time he had as he pushed himself to break down another mind, weaving it into the growing thoughts of others until a notification went off in his head.

And I’m all the way up to level two already. Life is good.

Expecting that that would be as high as he’d be able to get without far too many more hours of practice, he slowly removed the strands of his mind from the people standing around him, each one putting on a look of relief despite the loss in thinking power. The average person just didn’t seem to enjoy changes to the fundamental ways they would experience the world.

But that’s their loss.

<I’m actually inclined to think that might be a shared evolutionary trait meant to try and suppress the chances of falling into insanity.>

Something about that feels like an insult, but I’m not quite sure what.

With his levels gained and attempt done though, he spent the next few minutes going around and tapping cards, transferring the funds he promised to all of those who helped him practice as everyone looked just a little relieved it was done, even if the money made it plenty worth it.

Ending with transferring funds to Skoe, Sachel, and Ralia, the last two giving in to help after seeing that their teammate was basically fine, Ben then focused on Thera, holding out his hand.

“Well, ready to give it a try?”

“Mmh, just not in here, I don’t want to draw any attention to this.”

She seemed like she still needed to psych herself up for letting Ben use his new skill on her too, so he gave her a moment as he felt curious eyes on him from the other party.

“So just what was the point of all of this?” Ralia asked him, wanting to know where such a strange skill could possibly be leading.

“Just a little experiment to see if I can help Thera with a spell by doing this, getting a skill out of it was just a bonus for me.”

Sachel’s eyes lit up hearing that. “Can we watch to see if it works?”

He personally didn’t care, but it was Thera’s choice as all eyes fell on her while she sighed. “If it works just don’t go talking about it, okay?”

They got a round of nods before they all eventually went out, finding themselves in far darker streets than when they’d gone in as Ben took her hand, not needing to but still being used to the feeling of it as he connected to her and put his new skill to use.

He tried to force three of his minds to contain the harder things to understand about iron as he took them apart, wrapping each bit through Thera’s to increase the power of her thoughts as she dealt with it better than most, having had the benefit of all of her practice with the circlets Ben had made in the past few weeks while her mind was being filled with knowledge on the metal, both what she personally had, along with what she was getting from Ben.

It wasn’t exactly a good feeling, but it was a useful one as information clicked in a way it never had before, everything falling into place as she let her mana flow through her, letting it take shape as in a snap it changed from raw power to solid matter, a boulder of it appearing on the ground before them.

Without her having to say it, Ben could hear the notification going off in Thera’s mind, a new level of her spiritual earth magic to her name as the three with him watched in shock.

“So that’s the power of an awakened skill holder, huh?” Ralia muttered while Sachel had her own thoughts.

“I’m so jealous.”

It was an understandable feeling, that was a level of power normal people just couldn’t achieve. It needed the ultimate combination of strength, power, and knowledge, all put together to force mana to match one’s will.

It’s hard enough that even with me giving a bit of brain power it got Thera a level too. Sorry Sachel, but… Wait.

With the way ideas were exploding across his mind, trying to connect with each other and expand based on information he had, it wasn’t surprising he just got a level to his new skill, but he didn’t care. He needed to get home and talk to his god.

“Well, it’s late so we need to head out. Hope the show was interesting, thanks for your help, I’ll see you all tomorrow,” He told them, taking Thera’s hand in a rush to get home and in bed as the three of them were left standing at the guild with the hunk of metal, still stunned by what they’d seen, even if they slowly managed to free their minds from that enough to wonder why they’d be seeing him again so soon.

“Myriad, whatever you’re doing, stop, and- oh, hey Helori. Glad you’re here too actually. I have an idea. A crazy idea. One I need you both to tell me if it would even be possible.”

Neither god could figure out what it was from his thoughts, every mind in his head seeming to want to move in a million different directions at once with the feeling that they might even tear themselves apart if he didn’t get them under control, but Ben didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, this wasn’t an idea that deserved only a single level of lesser inspiration, this was something that should have catapulted him to the far end of awakening it.

If I can make this work then I can solve a bunch of problems at once. I can help with Sonya’s insecurities, I can get Sachel so thoroughly in my debt I could probably talk her into killing for me if I wanted to, and I could improve the chances of keeping the world I’m on from ending in a big way. And all it will take is the medium-ish risk of me dying.

“I feel like I just heard something about getting Sachel to kill for you somewhere in there,” Myriad muttered, doing his best to parse out his apostle’s thoughts.

“You were probably just hearing things. Anyway guys, I have a few questions for you. First and most importantly, what’s the lowest level a person can materialize at?”

“Usually you’d need to be well into the middle region of your awakened skill Ben, you’re just an outlier,” His god told him.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“Okay, and that’s nice and all but that wasn’t what I was asking. What is the lowest anyone has ever gone with it?”

“To my knowledge, there’s been one case of an eighth-level earth mage managing to do it,” Helori spoke, curious about where this was going. “He chose iron like you did for Thera but he had to spend years of his life studying it to make sure he knew enough, along with practicing constantly to raise his mana before he could succeed. It really was an impressive level of single-minded dedication to a goal.”

It was a higher level than Ben had hoped to hear, but he was still willing to take it.

“And how did that pay off for him?” He asked, even if he was sure he could guess from all he knew about magic and skills.

“He awakened it. Of course he did,” She told him. “Materializing isn’t something so easy you know, there’s a reason that most people can’t and that the majority who can are midway through an awakened skill. Honestly, it’s impressive enough that you were able to do it to awaken your own magic at the ninth level. That isn’t some simple task.”

“Yeah, that’s about what I expected.”

It was a goal hard enough that it even let the person who did it bypass the ninth level, a truly shocking achievement that was worth all of the effort that must have gone into it. It was the sort of thing that deserved to force a skill to awaken, and he was already thinking of how to exploit that.

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