CH787 The Gods and Mortal Potential

“Well, what was the real point of that then, Helori?” Nare asked her. “You’ve never felt the need for us to examine him as well.”

“I meant what I said, it’s good to get a different set of eyes and opinions, especially for what I’d like to present now that you’ve both gotten the chance.”

“Present?”

“A question and a hypothesis. Is Ben still mortal?”

“I’ll admit, with all my apostle can do that’s within our sphere it may not seem like it but he still hasn’t passed the third tier, no matter how much closer he seems to be drawing on multiple fronts,” Myriad said. “Unless that has to do with whatever hypothesis you’re about to tell us?”

She nodded. “As far as we know it, there’s a single path to godhood in this reality but just because only one is known is no reason to assume there aren’t any more and as it stands, I’d like to hypothesize that the boy may be walking down a new one. Of course, given how likely he already is to reach the third tier it may not matter but as things stand, if he were to die today, I personally wouldn’t be entirely shocked if he ascended as some higher being, not necessarily a true god, but some sort of lesser deity that hasn’t been seen in this reality before.”

“You wouldn’t be shocked by what would absolutely be the most shocking event in this universe’s history?” Nare chuckled. “But what do you have to back up that claim?”

“You both saw it as well, didn’t you? Look me in the eyes and tell me the boy still has a mortal soul,” Neither immediately responded, letting her go on. “Souls subtly grow and change all the time, it’s why the ones used made such a perfect medium for the system, but there are some changes greater than others as we all know. The change to the third tier is clearly the most obvious, granting a definitive path to godhood for all who walk it but the change to a second tier is plenty significant as well, with Ben having gone through it eighteen times now, with those changes growing and compounding with every new level he gets to them. Maybe he hasn’t reached it yet but when comparing his soul to any third-tier’s the differences I see leave me confident in saying there has to be a certain number of alterations that could lead a mortal with nothing but second tier-options to some sort of ascension.”

“…An interesting idea,” Myriad admitted. “And maybe not impossible but unless Ben dies there’s no real way to test it. I may not know what the previous record for mortals awakening skills was-”

“Fourteen.”

“…But either way, the only way to know for sure is if Ben dies before he manages to reach the third tier, something I believe more and more each day he’s going to succeed at. Potentially even awakening at least one skill like he hopes before the third wave. Of course, if he doesn’t and then all of our efforts aren’t enough on top of it, I suppose we’ll see one way or another as the world burns below, at least until we end up caught in that same fire.”

“Sure, but as he continues to grow and change, that does leave two more things worth considering and trying to prepare for, at least before it happens.”

“Which are?”

She held up a finger. “One, a fact that the gods who don’t know him and don’t know the exact number of awakened skills he holds can’t currently expect, if he does manage to awaken the two skills he wants, ignoring all of the complications that will come with the birth of a god of sacrilege, that still means he might have as many as sixteen other significant divinities.”

Technically, all of an ascended mortal’s skills would convert into realms of power for them but the majority who made it to that tier would only have one from a tier two skill, with that being far stronger than any that sprung from a tier one. Not near what was gained from a true, third-tier awakening but still something that would give them power enough that it let them play on the stage as equals to natural gods who held two or three divinities.

Ben though, holding sixteen along with all of the other skills he’d gained that he still hadn’t managed to awaken, would prove to be a significant figure by that point. If he did get a single skill to its third tier, all he had would comfortably leave him above any other ascended mortal and likely any god who held only two realms of power, but if he instead awakened two skills to the level of godhood…