CH471

Days passed while Ben worked and planned, neither making any more legendary items after his first major success nor coming closer to thinking of how to help Thera with her charm. It wasn’t like he had zero ideas, it was just that they all felt terrible given what would have to go to making them happen.

Still, that one is really the best I’ve got. I’ll talk to Myriad about it tonight.

It was the sort of idea that demanded the help of his god if he wanted to make sure nothing would go cataclysmically wrong for him, but he wanted to be up there himself to discuss it face to face, not speaking into the heavens with who knew who else listening.

As things were though he couldn’t do anything in that moment so he focused on something else for the day. Testing skill synergies.

“I want you to know I hate this,” Thera told him, having been spending more time at the shop with him than out hunting or visiting various clinics. She seemed better emotionally than she had that first day but it still weighed on her, and combined with the fresh new level of awareness the town as a whole was paying to her, both for her title and connections, as well as the suspicion of more than a few that she’d charmed the man who’d come looking for her, having the privacy that came from just staying with Ben while he worked managed to make the days feel a little easier while she waited for things to calm down. At least it had been managing to until Ben decided he wanted to stab himself.

“It’ll be fine, I’m not even going to be hurt, it’s just going to be the homunculus.”

“I know you can feel its pain when you do this!”

“And I’ll take my soul out of it after the first little poke. Please, this is the best way for me to test my defensive skills without hurting my real body.”

No matter what he said, she wasn’t going to like it, but she still gave in in the end. “Fine, let’s just get this over with so you can move on to doing something less crazy after.”

“You got it.”

He turned to the homunculus he had sitting in a chair before slowly stabbing into its arm with the point of a knife, feeling almost no resistance from the flesh against the blade as it slid through before he pulled it out for Thera to heal.

“Okay, that was pretty much what I expected,” He muttered. “Now for the less fun bit.”

He reached out with his deep connection and found he was looking at himself through the clone’s eyes like he always would when using the skill before he went to repeat the test, trying to keep the pain from both faces as he did.

Getting stabbed always hurt, there was no denying that fact, even when he was the one holding the knife, but it did let him see what he considered a worthwhile change caused by the skills bound to his soul when he connected to an empty body. The knife he was stabbing with was upper rare in quality but had zero enchantments. It was about as good as a knife could get without any magical aspect to it but when it bit into his flesh he felt a level of resistance that hadn’t been there during his first test. Not enough to stop the blade, but enough to make it need significantly more pressure to go as deep.

As far as he was concerned, that was a win on the right track to leaving him less injured the next time he ran into something, or more accurately implied that his skills were doing what they were supposed to and had been making a meaningful difference in keeping him alive. On top of that, it also suggested a potential avenue to getting a few very desirable skills he still lacked despite all of the things his body would go through, both intentionally and otherwise.

“I wonder if I just keep beating these things while I’m using them if that would be a path to finally getting me pain resistance?” He mused, dreaming of a future where it didn’t matter how battered he’d end up so long as he was better in taking the hits that would come, only for Thera to try and dash that small hope.

“Ben, look at everything that’s happened to you. If you haven’t gotten pain resistance by now, it might just never happen.”

“That’s quitter talk! It’s way more likely that I might be super close to getting it given everything I’ve been through. Who knows? Maybe one more tiny poke is all I need to push me over the edge and finally get that skill.”

“Sure, until it doesn’t work and you decide that it’s just one more from there, and then another and so on and so forth until I’m left trying to put you back together again. This is definitely the sort of skill you shouldn’t be trying to force.”

“Mmh, fine.”

Admittedly, the prospect of stabbing himself repeatedly until he got the skill wasn’t exactly a desirable one so he didn’t argue more, not when he was already passively applying a fair bit of pain to himself anyway. The magic bands he had on his arm to try and raise his resistance enhancement were far from pleasant

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“So what’s next then?” Thera asked him, knowing he wanted to do more and was happy to show the deep distrust she was feeling after that last test.

“Okay, so there’s this teeny, tiny, little spell I was hoping you’d use on the homunculi for me, same way as last time, with one before I’m using it and one during…”

“Get to the point Ben.”

“Can you please please petrify it so I can see what the experience is like?”

“…Yeah, you know what? Fine, let’s do it.”

Something about the act just seemed so much more inherently harmless compared to stabbing that she didn’t care and went right away, pouring enough of her power into her spell that the clone instantly turned to stone before she concentrated on turning it back, needing a couple minutes to reverse the effects.

It was interesting enough to watch from the outside but even more interesting to experience firsthand as he connected to it, speeding up his thoughts to their maximum potential so he could feel every bit of the spell’s effects.

From the outside it seemed to happen just as instantaneously, the volume of Thera’s mana along with her levels meaning that the effect showed little difference to anyone but him, his sight sped up with his mind skills enough to know that there was a change of milliseconds, but that didn’t compare to the feeling of being petrified.