CH525

“It’s done! Plus no explosions and impending death this time! God, I really am so good at what I do.”

What Ben was holding in his hand was the newest legendary item he’d made, being the sword that had turned out so poorly only the day before. A masterpiece that would put any other application of ice or temperature-manipulating spells to shame as he held it forth, watching what anyone would think looked like snow fall from its blade, even if it was something far scarier. Frozen air, turning back to a gas when it got a couple inches away but still something nobody should risk coming in contact with.

The enchantments on the blade had to be specially made with a level of care that would be hard to replicate, with every bit of energy the chilled sword tried to absorb being directed to the handle, creating something that would at least be warm enough for a normal person to hold to keep the weapon from being some useless curiosity.

There were in fact numerous enchantments that had gone down to make something like that even possible, from all of the strengthening and stabilizing ones to a few specifically designed to keep anything from sticking to the blade, both to ensure it wouldn’t freeze to the first thing it cut into as well as prevent all of the air it froze from sticking to it to make sure it wouldn’t look like an ice club after a few minutes.

Just having it in the room was slowly lowering the surrounding temperature, even with the massive hole in the side of the building that had only been covered up with some tarps allowing for plenty of airflow and by all means he thought he’d created a masterpiece.

Which just leaves testing it.

He briefly eyed the three he was teaching and practicing with, all of them trapped within his mind and essentially defenseless, before shaking away the thought that would have had his god calling him out for his evil inclination and turning instead to a table just a little to the side, swinging the blade and watching it rip all of the heat it contained the second it sliced through, leaving the two halves to shatter when they hit the ground.

Oh yeah, this will do.

<What do you even intend to do with something like this?> Myriad asked, making his presence known but thankfully seeming to have missed any of the thoughts he’d had about his students.

“I’ll make a sheath that can contain the cold without freezing later and from there this bad boy is being mailed out to John. He should be able to safely handle it with the skills he has.”

After the reunion he’d had with the other humans on the planet, Ben had promised himself he’d be sending the man a fortune in equipment and technically he already had, and not just him, but all of them. Since he’d seen them all at the meetup he’d been able to eyeball their sizes and despite some of the impressions they’d given him, he really did want every one of them to survive as long as they could, but that still left the issue of making a proper present for the only human he wasn’t already friends with that had searched him out without any agenda.

<Alright, given how dangerous this is I’ll ask someone from the communal church to come and deliver it.>

“No need for that, I’m sure my footstool can double as a mailman.”

<…I feel the need to point out that you’re talking about one of the highest members of Nare’s faith.>

“And Nare was also mad at him. This is fine.”

<…Just try not to mistreat him in public at least.>

“Fine.”

He would have been happy to keep up the back and forth between apostle and god but found himself having to stop for the progress that had been made by his students, with the notifications going off in one of their heads. Xilly had finally managed to get to the third level of connect, putting her in the same place as Nati who had achieved the same only a little bit earlier and he released the three from his mind.

“Alright guys, good work and take ten. Also, I-”

“I can’t take this anymore! You really are insane!” Xilly yelled at him, with both her and Nati looking beaten down by how long they’d spent in his head. “I don’t care if you were never really trying to seduce us, I was still right! Humans are the worst!”

“…I see.”

Without giving them a chance to say more he brought all three of them back into his mind to practice more as he used those spare minutes to both steal their mana to refill his own, letting him materialize and enchant the sheath for his sword while at the same time think on how he wanted to approach Xilly. He didn’t know why she had such a disdain for his kind, and while he could have spent some time going through her memories till he found the truth, finding whatever event had caused it, that sounded like a pain. He didn’t want to search through literally years of history at this point, leaving him little choice but to actually talk about it.

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In one smooth motion, he put the sword safely away before once again releasing them from his thoughts, with two looking disoriented from the experience while the third looked mad.

“You bastard,” Xilly spat at him, looking like she wanted to say more but was stopped by Ben’s own cold attitude.

“Enough. Let’s get this over with already. What the hell do you have against my kind and why have you been taking it out on me?”

“Why do I need a reason? Humans are gross and you in particular are an absolute slavedriver! What other reason do I need?”

“Sure, but you’ve been taking this out on me since day one when I was much, much nicer. It can’t just be because you thought my entire species was polyamorous so what the hell is your damage?”

“…”