CH547

After finishing his regular work for the day, Ben was once again left wondering what he should do.

If he was being true to himself, the answer was sleep. Staying up all night to renovate the church after a full day of making weapons, only to move into an entire new day at the forge was taking its toll. He was tired, and just as importantly, still feeling in a weird mood. He wanted to rest.

The issue with that though was entirely himself. He still wanted to train his skills to keep growing, and just as importantly, he knew his work had value. Any bit of practice that could improve himself would immediately be worthwhile if he got another level in any of his core skills, letting him make better items even quicker. Taking a break then would be a waste of time, even if a not-insignificant part of him wanted it.

It was as he was struggling between those two sides that Myriad came into his thoughts and made the decision simple with only a few small words.

<The statue came down.>

Ben didn’t need to ask for more context, there was only one statue that his god would describe like that and he’d been waiting for months for it to happen. The statue in front of the church of Eneth, placed there as punishment for the attempted murder that had taken place in the past.

Letting himself catch up on sleep immediately stopped being an option. Ben had plenty of ideas for how he wanted to make the new statue to replace it, ideas that were sure to make Felth’s face crumple in despair, meaning Ben couldn’t resist the call of his work to get it out there just a little sooner and immediately began.

Like the past options, Ben was going to be making it ridiculously expensive, even more so than the ones he’d already made, but he couldn’t resist the fun that would come from adding a false sense of security to it that the others hadn’t held, and to make that happen he created the first part of the structure, a mini-gate.

The idea was simple. While the outer shell would of course be made of the most expensive parts money could buy, the inner part would be mostly hollow and the mana cost to keep it in the air would be low, or at least they would think. By having a gate within the statue, Ben would be able to add some moribusial to suck away the mana being put into it if he ever wanted the statue to come down, either if Eneth specifically did something to annoy him or else if Ben just needed the pick-me-up.

It was devious, all the more so since the presence of a gate within it would make the statue a legendary item, thereby boosting the price an astronomical amount, but Ben didn’t care. All of his interactions with that god and church had been firmly in the negatives, he fully planned on getting all of the revenge he could for as long as he was alive.

And if I have the gate at the top of the statue, I could technically just keep dropping stuff through on my end if I really want to. Could definitely cause some chaos if I plan this right.

<You don’t need to cause any more chaos, a large portion of the the church collapsed when the last one came down.>

Wait, really? But that one wasn’t even made to be as destructive as the first? This is basically not my fault.

<No, even if this came about due to some issue during the reconstruction, this is entirely your fault. Even with the chaos, there’s already priests standing outside to watch for you so you can’t just slip in and place the statue anywhere again.>

Hmm, thanks for the heads up, that sounds like it has a dangerous risk of killing some of my fun. I’ll have to plan around it.

It wasn’t like it would be hard to think of ways to slip past everyone either, all it came down to was the route he wanted to take and he had plenty of time to figure out how he wanted it to happen.

After getting home late that night and asking Thera if she’d mind helping him with transport plus making sure nobody would try to murder him the next day, Ben got his usual sleep, letting his body rest but not his mind before going back to work the next day until he and Thera were both done to fly off the newest statue, getting to the church of Eneth after a few far-too-short hours.

“Just try not to let anyone kill you,” Thera sighed, remembering how the last time had ended and fully expecting a repeat.

“Not to worry, it will be fine. Just give me a minute.”

They were both parked only a little bit away and got out to approach the church, Ben going on ahead with the statue in his arms as he surveyed the damage.

Myriad had been right about the level of destruction, half the church had collapsed with the impact, leaving the space essentially unusable, with the area being swarmed by priests, each of them ready to talk to Ben in the politest tones they had to while directing him to a place the statue could go instead of letting him put it wherever he wanted.

Many of them were even eyeing Thera, trying to tell if they were properly recognising her as his companion or if she was just another onlooker who’d come to gawk at the destruction, not one of them noticing as Ben casually walked by with statue in hand.

He wished he could have attributed it to some sudden growth to his stealth proficiency, but it was completely uninvolved. Instead, all credit went entirely to what he’d made, a mythril fabric enchanting with a combination of invisibility, light, and dark magics, all working in tandem to ensure he went unnoticed as he slipped by, searching for the perfect place to put it.

Dropping it in the same location as the last two times was no longer an option, simply because there really would have been no way for anyone to power it. The window they’d had to lean through in the past was simply gone, as was the front wall of the building as a whole.

That managed to create a far more unique of an opportunity though as Ben instead went inside the church itself and placed the statue down before taking off its covering and activating the enchantments on it, letting it rise up to a new ledge for someone to stand on, the partially collapsed second floor of the church itself.

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None there immediately noticed and Ben used the time to slip past them all again, trying to keep from whistling a cheery tune before deactivating the enchantments on his clothing to make it look like he’d just come from around the corner, with the eyes of the priests lighting up with fear as they locked on to him, a few instantly running off to go find Felth.

“Well, isn’t this a royal reception?” He laughed as he stood beside Thera, giving them all a wave. “I see some familiar faces here too. Did you miss me? Oh, who am I kidding, of course you did! There really is no bond stronger than that between the churches of Eneth and Myriad.”

“You are one hundred percent asking for one of them to try and murder you again,” Thera muttered as Ben worked the crowd, seeing both rage and defeat in equal measure amongst them all.

“I mean, that would get me a little more money when they fail.”