CH550

In an instant, Abrus and Thera were beside him and the armour he’d been wearing was stripped away to let her begin healing his shattered bones, all while Myriad screamed in his head.

<Ben, are you okay? What the hell just happened?>

I’m pretty sure I’ll live and it looks like this universe rejects my old one on a pretty significant level. Wow, everything hurts right now.

<It would be more shocking if it didn’t after that!> Myriad yelled before understanding what Ben had said. <Wait, did you actually manage to create foreign matter?>

Briefly, until it exploded a lot more violently than me or the grey predicted. Sure hope they were at least watching that for any useful data. Now if you wouldn’t mind quieting down a little, I’m going to take just a second to be in pain.

He felt his broken bones popping and sliding back into place as Thera healed him, her own worry evident as she tried to understand just what happened, with Ben answering what he could.

The conversation he’d had with Quilth the last night couldn’t help but pop into his head. The models the grey had made about the universe were clearly wrong in some ways already given the existence of magic materials and it looked like Ben had just been unfortunate enough to find another in a way he couldn’t help but beat himself up over it.

He should have guessed that it would at least be possible that they’d made some sort of mistake given what he knew, he just hadn’t been thinking deeply enough, and given how bad it could have potentially been, he was going to count his injuries as lucky. If he hadn’t gotten some bizarre reaction from the universe and instead created something that would act akin to strange matter then he wouldn’t have had time to regret it, he could have destroyed the world. The fact that the products of his old reality didn’t act that way was a positive at least, but that things had gone so wrong at all made him horrifyingly aware of the fact that it could have been much, much worse.

Still, he’d gotten the outcome he’d hoped for at least, a job beyond the master path finished in a single day so he grabbed his necklace with his less injured arm to see all of the options he now had and decided he could worry about the rest once that was done.

AVAILABLE JOBS

Trap user
Craftsman- alchemy path
Craftsman- artistic path
Craftsman- blacksmith path
Craftsman- cooking path
Craftsman- stonecrafts path
Craftsman- sewing path
Holy craftsman
Mathematician
Cursed item maker
High tank
Destructive craftsman
Soul defiling gardener
Summoned enchanter
Ritual enchanter
Divine enchanter
High marksman
High destruction mage
World killer
Beginner puppeteer
Freak mind user
Unholy thinker
Connect master
Polymath
Holy adversary
Title master
Master of all
Alien mind
Multiversal material mage
Outsider

Well, some of those are a little unusual to say the least.

Thera was clearly under a similar impression just from seeing the look on his face.

“What did you end up with this time?”

“At least one I need some proper divine guidance on. Myriad, you still around?”

<I’m not running off right after you almost blew yourself up.>

“Okay, cool. So two new jobs this time. Multiversal material mage which I guess I understand. An advanced material mage job popped up after I made something from another universe, it’s weird but I get it. What I less get is the second one, outsider.”

Ben had only heard of outsiders a couple times, both from the gods and the grey, but to have it applied to him felt unreasonable, even if Myriad seemed to feel it less so.

“I’m not some sort of eldritch monster.”

<No, what you are is a soul from a foreign universe, as in, something from outside of this one. Technically, every one of the summoned fits that description though so it does leave me to wonder what fulfilled the conditions for it. Would anyone who creates matter from another reality get access to it or is it locked to summoned individuals who pull it off? I’d personally bet on the second, but it’s entirely possible that there’s additional conditions that aren’t immediately apparent either.>

“Okay, and that’s cool and all but can you even begin to guess anything about it? What bonuses it would give to what and how powerful they’d be?”

<Ben, there’s literally no way to know without taking it. It could be anything, it could be everything, or it could be something so dreadfully specific that you’d have no choice but to take the loss and switch to a different job.>

“Okay, so not grabbing it when I have plenty of decent options, gotcha, which just leaves what to pick.”

“Weren’t you going for master of all?” Thera chimed in as she neared the end of his healing.

“Ugh, I was going to but with multiversal material mage as an option, I might be able to cheat it the way I just did. Even if using the full Earth periodic table doesn’t get me to the end, the grey could teach me about the matter structure of a hundred different universes, if I materialize it all then I might be able to finish that in a day too.”

It was an option he didn’t actually want to take, only feeling like he might have to. Time was ticking down till the next invasion, didn’t he need to do whatever he could to get as powerful as he could in that time? Doing easy jobs that were sure to give high returns made the most sense.

While he found himself struggling with that choice though, Thera made it for him, grabbing his face and forcing him to look her in the eyes.

“Ben, if your big plan to get through a job involves blowing yourself up a hundred times then you are not doing it. End of story, no discussion, ask your god if you really want to fight me on it.”

<I really am just so constantly grateful you have her around.> Myriad sighed. <She’s right. What you’re talking about goes well beyond your normal extremes Ben, it’s too much. Take literally any other job.>

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Okay, okay, you guys are right. I’ll go for master of all.”

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