CH474

Alright, of it all, test twelve showed the best results, now to just redo it to its full potential to get the maximum effect.

“Mmh, Ben?” Thera asked as she woke up, still groggy and trying to rub the sleep from her eyes. “Is it morning already?”

“Ah, no. Well, I mean, yeah but you can sleep a bit longer, sorry if I woke you.”

“S’okay, I can get up. Want help with breakfast?”

“Sure, in a bit, I just need to finish up here.”

She was too tired to notice his hand on her brace so she didn’t pick up what he was doing, the same thing he’d been doing all night.

Combining the various awakened skills he’d gotten on rings with the library of knowledge in his head, he’d spent the night testing enchantment configurations, trying to find the optimal one for getting the best results he could as fast as he could by utilizing both his unique mental structure as well as resupplying himself with Thera’s mana so he wouldn’t need to slow down or stop for breaks, same as when he’d been constructing gates throughout the world.

After dozens of such tests, seeing some that worked better and some that were worse, he’d finally settled on the best configuration, one he was just about to tell her about until he noticed she’d already fallen back to sleep.

Ha, she really is too bad with mornings. I guess it’s just good she manages to wake up on time in general.

He let himself watch her sleep for just a little longer, enjoying the peace that came with the morning before it was time for him to start his regular routine as he got up to make breakfast.

He decided to aim for something simple yet filling, going for a variety of easier dishes to make instead of one big one to draw the two women from their slumber. It meant more dishes to do but that was nothing he couldn’t handle and it was a nice change of pace from time to time, with everything he had on the go acting as a siren’s song, luring the two in.

“Morning,” Sonya yawned out before taking her seat. “It smells great in here.”

“It does,” Thera murmured happily, just awake enough by the time he was handing out plates to look at him curiously. “Did I wake up a bit earlier? I feel like I remember you doing something.”

“You did and I was. Since I got another level to my enchanting a couple days ago I decided to modify your brace while you were asleep and test a couple things. The long and short of it is I can guarantee that even if you can’t control your charm when it’s at the ninth level, you are officially covered for both your effects at a distance and on contact.”

That woke them both up.

“Really?” Thera asked him, looking at her brace with naked surprise. Until that point, she’d had been lingering at only a point or two of effect on contact left. Not enough to be a real concern for the majority of people in the world but still enough of a threat that she wouldn’t risk touching anyone. For it to go from that to so fully suppressed couldn’t help but catch her off guard.

“Really really. I’ve gotten the practice I needed for learning the subtleties of my new various skill rings while I’ve been trying to make legendary items and combined that with all of the things I’d learned at the magic towers along with my knowledge and thought speed skills. Easy-peasy.”

He was downplaying it a lot. He’d worked himself to the bone with his various tests while she’d been asleep and even before he’d started his attempts, each mind in his head had been trying to model and estimate just what could work, no matter how outlandish, with the final enchantment that had gone down pushing a rare ranked armband into being the third lower-legendary item he’d made.

He skimmed past the usual bragging and explanations though because he could see that even if Thera was happy about it, it still left a complicated feeling. She was still dependent on a tool, unable to manage her power by herself.

Receiving it was undeniably great for her and she had no intention of being ungrateful, but still left the lingering feeling of what if? Ben had said she’d be fine up to the ninth level with it, what if she surpassed that? What if awakening would make her charm grow too strong and what if the brace wouldn’t be enough? It was worries she was trying to make herself learn to deal with while Ben took a different approach.

“If you still need it in the future then I’ll keep figuring out ways to make it better,” He told her in no uncertain terms. “This is the best I can do now, not the best I can do in a week or a month or a year. If you’re ever worried about it just remember that.”

“I will.”

She could see just how serious about it he was. He’d gotten to that point in his skills by consistently working hard and pushing farther and that mentality had given him the tools to keep doing so. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, his mind was basically alien compared to a standard human’s by that point, being powerful enough to shock gods. It wasn’t perfect, he couldn’t think of things he’d never consider, but it meant he could constantly work on and chip away at the problem, using everything he was learning to refine the brace enchantment to greater heights.

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And there’s even a decent avenue for learning in town I’ll need to check up on today as well. I’ll mark that down as a later thing.