CH442

“Um, so aunt Lux, aunt Funa, what was all of that about back at the beginning?” Thera asked, bringing up the question that Ben found himself deeply curious about as well, only to get shakes of their heads as Lux ran her fingers through Thera’s hair.

“Don’t worry about it sweetheart, it will only stress you out. God’s above, it’s already stressing me out.”

“We’ll have to talk to Abrus,” Funa agreed. “And when she said four, it must be-”

“It has to be him,” Lux muttered. “Just what is that idiot up to now? Was that why he’s been missing this whole time? Why, when I find him I’m going to…”

She trailed off, focusing back on Thera and Ben, as well as how they were only being made more and more curious with each word, before dropping the topic entirely for a different one.

“But let’s not worry about that right now. Ben, how are the homunculi working out for you?”

“So far, so good. I can’t do everything I was hoping with them, but they’re more than good enough for my purposes.”

He could feel the world through their senses, see through their eyes, hear with their ears and touch with their hands, same as if they were his own body, though moving them still took a bit more mental work. Normally, nothing really required much in the way of conscious thought, but for them, he needed to be aware of how he was directing each movement. It felt smoother and more natural than it had any time he connected to something with a shape completely foreign to him, but as things stood, he’d still need to practice for them to truly become extensions of himself.

Which isn’t bad, I’ve got my puppetry skill that I’m sure to level up a bit from this so it will only get easier and I already have ideas for raising it. The bigger disappointment is that I can’t cast magic through them. I mean, it’s not the biggest deal in the world since they have to be within a couple of feet of me, but that means anything I make with them will need to be enchanted by my real body. Oh well, that just leaves the physical me focusing on my magics while I can use these to practice my other skills.

And he already had a few ideas on how to do just that. After all, when he was going to be busy helping others awaken he now had four other bodies to put to use and all ten of his fists clenched in anticipation. Things were about to get exciting, he could feel it.

“Hey Thera,” He sang out, harmonizing with his four clones as she immediately took a turn to the suspicious.

“I would like to point out before you say anything that I just dealt with my least favourite relative for you.”

“I’m not asking anything bad, I swear. I was just hoping you’d make me some iron.”

She didn’t immediately trust him, the feeling that he was up to something too great when there were five of him trying to suck up, but she did as he asked, forcing mana to bend to her will and watching as it changed to metal, a small boulder of it appearing on the ground before her that Ben was quick to get his hands on.

Running his own personal power through it he broke it up into five equal parts before shaping each into a chest, reaching into his bag at the end to get some of his rainbow mana batteries to set into them before he began enchanting.

“Okay, I’ll bite, what are you doing?” Thera asked as she watched, not immediately understanding what the point of any of that was as he began his work.

“I need a place to store my clones when I’m not using them.”

“Wait, so you’re going to toss them into some metal crates? Ben, even if they’re not ensouled, they are alive. They need at least a little bit of care unless you’re going to make me heal them all of the time.”

“I won’t and they’ll get it, don’t worry. This is just a cost-saving measure.”

He connected to his rings as he built up the enchantment on each, not needing anything overly complicated, just wanting it to fulfill a relatively simple thing, even if the degree he’d be doing it at was rarely seen. He was manipulating the flow of time when it was sealed, making it come to as close to a standstill as could be done.

Time was an interesting magic to work with, if partly due to the limits of it. Despite its name, the magic could only really work in one direction, with backwards time travel being impossible. Despite that though, it was possible to drop the speed to nearly nothing if an enchanter had the skill and power for it, which was exactly what he wanted.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“If they’re in a slower time when they aren’t being used then they won’t need to be fed as often to keep them alive and they should stay in good condition longer since they basically won’t be aging while in there. It’s the most efficient way of taking care of them.”

It was a purely rational way of treating them, an idea that suited his practicality, though to Thera it still sat funny in her thoughts. Even if it was true, she couldn’t help but feel weird seeing anything that looked just like him being shoved into a hard metal box until they were needed, but she knew that wasn’t a real argument against it when they wouldn’t even feel anything unless he was using them.

“Just put a pillow under them or something at least, will you? My neck hurts just looking at this.”