CH537

Waking up in the morning, Ben was happy to prepare a quick breakfast for himself and Thera before he rushed off to work, already imagining what was going to lay ahead.

Sure, he was going to be spending weeks being worked to the bone, both making mini gates and weapons, but his teacher would be there to enjoy to his full potential, letting him see what a third-tier skill could do in full.

And maybe that means I’ll finally be able to get ahead on some other things too.

That was the dream at least, but he’d beaten Falk there by enough that it would need to wait for the yeti to arrive, meaning Ben wouldn’t waste time and got to work.

The first thing he did was pull in crates that had been left in front of the shop sometime while it was closed, all of them filled with metals and materials that were addressed for his use, making it clear that the gods had expected he’d accept their newest request early enough to send things over for his return and with everything already on hand he got to work, pulling out his homunculi as he began putting together the first gates of the day.

Now that he knew what he was doing, making it was almost mindless, in the sense it took up barely a fraction of Ben’s thoughts, and with that leeway he spent the time he had thinking, going over things he’d read and learned, trying to fit ideas together in interesting and novel ways and seeing what might connect to his other interest while also trying to push through problems.

When he’d last seen Killi, she’d given him the start of a formula to account for modifier effects up to ten deep against a given spell or affinity so he was mentally going through all of them, looking at every possible configuration to try and see if there was anything of note or any configuration that seemed like they would give the same result as something he was seeing in the spell while taking up less mana, even if he knew there were flaws in that. The design of the entire thing meant that later effects could loop back into an earlier one to change it and without being able to account for later effects in general yet beyond carefully testing everything, that meant that any early change could have disastrous consequences down the line, even if it initially seemed like it should have worked.

For the first time in ages, he felt the beginning of a headache form across his thousands of minds as he considered it all, along with how much work there still was to do, but tried to suppress it. It was just another thing that needed to get done and he’d dealt with worse back when he’d been suffering through months of migraines. He’d just push past it.

In that spirit he kept going, his work only taking a pause when his teacher finally pushed through the door, swearing as he did.

“Gods above, there’s five of you now? Am I in hell? Is that what’s happening here?”

“Rude,” Each Ben said, speaking in one voice. “I’ve just learned a couple new tricks while you’ve been gone.”

“Well, they’re freaky as all hell. I don’t see anything in your status that makes me think you can suddenly grow new bodies so what’s going on?”

Right, he can see my status now, neat.

“They’re homunculi,” He explained, this time only speaking through his real body. “When connect grew it let me expand the range of my skill by making my soul expand outside of my body. It looks like as a side effect, when I try to connect to anything without one it becomes an empty vessel for me to fill. It’s super handy though, since I’m technically in them I can gain and train my skills through them the same way as if it was the real me doing everything. Well, mostly that is. I can’t use mana through them so that leaves yours truly to do any casting or enchanting while the rest are put to work.”

“I want to say that can’t be good for your sanity but since this is you we’re talking about I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? Looks like plenty of nonsense has happened in your status since I’ve seen you last.”

“Ha, maybe, but I think we can catch up on me later, mister soulsmith, because I want the details on that. Tell me literally everything.”

“Still figuring a lot of it out myself, boy. The way I experience the world’s changed a fair bit and I’m spendin’ most nights talkin’ with the world’s first soulsmith to try and learn the best I can.”

“Okay, very cool, you mind if I see for myself?”

“Alright, go for it.”

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With permission given, Ben connected to his teacher, experiencing the world as he did and feeling it all. Through more than any sense, Ben could feel the metal and stone around him, almost akin to Thera’s earth sense but on a far deeper level. If he’d been an earth mage he would have thought that moving any of it would be as simple as waving a hand, but as interesting as that was it didn’t compare to what else he was picking up. As Falk looked at him, Ben was able to see his own soul through his teacher’s eyes.

It was something he’d seen before, looking through the eyes of Yuzu and Elvat when they two had helped him awaken so many mages in the past, but since then it was apparent that things had changed. Besides the simple system information that was clear as day, the structure of it all was simply different in a way he couldn’t understand, not that that was unexpected.

Ben knew that souls were shifting, changing things with only a few bits of their unfathomable depths truly understood by the gods and the world. He was able to pick up on the parts that were known, his constants in the forms of unchanging and insignificant affinities and his ridiculous resistances, along with the skills he’d been growing and what had originally been foreign bits, his blessings, merging into him and strengthening him overall, but no matter how much he looked he couldn’t help but wonder if there was any way to really study them to their depths.

Nope, not thinking about that. It would just become another project and I have way too many at this point.

Instead, he decided to distract himself another way as he focused back on his teacher.

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