CH632

Day six of his imprisonment and Ben was once more looking for something different to do to pass the time. He’d been exercising consistently and seen that his attributes were in fact growing, even if a little slow, and he continued on with producing souls to get the last level of his skill but all of that still left him looking through his status, trying to see if there was anything on it that would be easy and worthwhile to train a bit.

In his time there he’d come up with an idea to try awakening actualization but with the way he was trapped it wasn’t something he’d be able to test anytime soon, but he had a couple other ideas too.

Taking the faithstone knife he’d made in his first attempt and dragging it across his arm, he watched the effects of the prison heal his wound, giving him an idea for raising a few skills.

If he was willing to put his body through hell there were a few things he could do to raise his blood regeneration, maybe even awaken his defense enhancement, even if the thought brought to mind both Thera and Myriad screaming at him to not blow himself up for a bit of growth.

Given that it was sure to make Tenth assume he’d snapped as well he decided to put that option on hold, even if he couldn’t help but wonder at the limits of it. If he made antimatter in a vast enough quantity to destroy his body, would the healing effects of his cell remake the matter he destroyed in the process? And what about foreign matter? Even if it killed him in the process, would the prison he found himself in be able to stand up against it despite the alien nature and reaction it would produce?

Both curiosities he could test if he found himself trapped there for a span of years, not days. He was determined to live no matter how the odds looked so he pulled his attention instead to a different section of his card, looking at his newer skills.

That made the choice easy as all at once, Ben materialized a bag of small marbles, no two made of the same thing with each one having a small label carved into it so he’d be able to tell what was what.

Pure elements and compounds, a couple of the easier magic materials to create and things that were more like wood or leather or bone, lacking any sort of DNA to make them truly so, it was the perfect thing for testing and training his new material sense as he pulled them out one by one, trying to get a feel for each one and mentally attaching the name to each feeling, leaving him semi-confident he’d be able to differentiate them by the time he was done.

<MATERIAL SENSE LEVEL INCREASED>

And now more than just semi-confident. Okay, let’s put this to the test.

Materializing a small tray to use, he poured a few of the beads on it behind his back, depending solely on his new sense to tell him what was what as he did his best to guess what was there from feeling alone before checking and finding he had been mostly right, only getting one in nine wrong before he poured them back into the bag and did it again, passing the time that way on top of his more important practice of soul production to get his ninth level of it, watching the world beyond his cell as he did.

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The ground was thick with demons moving about, with more than a few taking to the skies as well, all of them coming and going through the gates, though not peacefully. It wasn’t rare to see fights breaking out among them down below for reasons he couldn’t guess.

Perhaps it was as simple as stepping on each other’s feet or giving each other foul looks. Perhaps he was seeing members of rival sub-groups running into one another and competing for dominance or perhaps there was no reason at all, just a mad species with nothing better to do than kill and try to claw their way to the top of every food chain, even if they had nobody to do it against than their own kind. It didn’t really matter, it was just more of Ben seeing what they were and what that meant for every non-demon that occupied reality as a whole.

But through it all, another sight. Amongst the horde of monsters, as Ben stared out, one stared back, watching him with what looked like pride and glee, the demon that captured him having stopped to enjoy the sight of its imprisoned prey.