CH626

“FAIL! FUCKING DAMN IT!”

Another disastrous test since his conversation with the galwaxian only the day before and Ben couldn’t help but feel it weighing on him as he mentally went over each one, hoping that his memories would reveal to him something that he hadn’t seen before, only to continue coming up blank. There was nothing, no sign he missed or hint waiting for him to be found, all there was was more testing.

“But who cares, here we are at test number two thousand, at least it’s going to be a big one. Got a hell of an idea, right here and waiting to go so this is it!”

He materialized as he spoke, pretending it wasn’t a pep talk to help with how constantly wrong all of his other attempts had gone as he put far more faith in his next idea, not just making any old thing but something far more unique, a substance he was willing to bet that not even the demon god had come across before, no matter how powerful he was and how many worlds he’d helped conquer. Spending his mana, Ben created a thin knife of faithstone.

A substance that ripped faith from the gods themselves through the people they had a connection to, he had high hopes for what it would do against a barrier containing divinity and stabbed into it the second he could, wanting it to cut or tear but instead feeling the blade itself break, leaving him to fall to his knees.

That had been his best shot yet but he’d still failed to get anything. It wasn’t like there weren’t ways he could try to improve from there, at least half of the other enchantments he’d tested could be applied again on the knife after he repaired it to see if they’d show any effect when joined with the faithstone, but from all he’d done he was growing more and more certain it wouldn’t be enough. He may not have known for sure how many gods the demons had but stretched across untold thousands of worlds, the one he’d already seen was more powerful than anything he could imagine. How was Ben supposed to put his own minor strength up against it in comparison and come out on top?

The thought left him to sigh as he let himself fall back, staring up at the ceiling above him and looking at the nearly comatose prisoner the upper cell contained, in that state after being held for an unimaginable length of time. A fate Ben would share eventually if he didn’t come up with something.

I need more power so what do I do from here? He sighed, feeling the few options skate across his head, with the main one that held any chance being completely impractical. I could slowly materialize as much rainbow mana crystal as possible, creating bags to hold it all and applying spatial enchantments on each one so they could each hold even more and try and direct the enchantments I’d place on the crystal itself to release as much power all into one point to break through, but how long would that take?

He materialized a piece as he thought of it, using nearly his whole mana pool to create what was at best a small bead of the stuff. Better than he had been when he’d first started materializing, creating less than a grain at the time, but it was still far from a generous amount.

It used nearly his entire mana pool to get even that much and took roughly thirteen minutes to regenerate it all to do again. Even considering the mana regeneration potions he still had in his ring or the food he had from the divine chef, if he did nothing but materialize and let his pool regenerate for a week he wouldn’t even have a handful.

No, it wouldn’t work. Or maybe it would, but it would take too long. He had enough potions to last him a month to help speed things up but after that, his progress would slow to a crawl and even if he didn’t slow down after losing his regen buffs, what he was looking at was going to be a matter of years to get to the point where he might have access to enough raw mana to do anything with it. By then his world would have already been long conquered.

It will be conquered whether I’m there or not. His pessimism whispered in his ear. Why not give up already when it’s not going to work? Stay here, trapped but alive. Maybe if I’m really lucky then in another hundred years I’ll be able to escape or maybe the demons will encounter a threat they can’t beat and I’ll be freed. My mind hasn’t driven me insane yet, I’m sure I can put up with the tedium of being here for a while.

It was a thought that left Ben hitting himself again. Maybe he didn’t believe in the world’s odds of overcoming that threat. Every piece of news and information he heard about it only ever made their chances seem worse, but so what? He would struggle, he would live, and if things had to come to it, he would die among the people he loved, not off on some alien world where everyone around was either insane or inclined to see him as a snack.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

So then what was the answer, what could he do?

I need more mana, plain and simple.

It still came down to that in the end but there were only two ways to solve that problem. Either he could go with his first thought, use what he had to materialize as much rainbow mana crystal and moribusial as he could to make a tool powerful enough to escape, or he could put in the work to grow his pool as much as possible, spending who could guess how many years to grow it to the volume he’d need.

It left him wishing that he could pull mana into himself from materials the same way he could people, but those were the only realistic options. What should have been his only options, and yet, from the depths of his subconscious where his deeper mind had been turning over the problem ever since he’d first been trapped, another path emerged. A mad, impossible chance that seemed sure to fail but picked at him like a siren’s song as he first questioned if he was even going to bother wasting his time on such a ridiculous attempt, but then, what did he have to lose?

It was only going to take his mana and a bit of prep, none of which would be hard as he grabbed what had previously been a job crystal from around his neck and placed an enchantment on it, holding it tight in preparation for his act of materialization.