CH809

The other four didn’t understand what was going on throughout Ben’s battle. The real one had been on the defensive the entire time while the fake was repeatedly asking him to just kill it already but with Ben’s proposal, everything changed. Both attacks and defenses stopped, all acts of magic did as they looked to each other in silence, all communication by that point happening in their heads in order to properly transmit the flood of ideas needed to make the original’s goal possible but ending after a handful of minutes of real-time when compared against the speeds both of them would perceive the world.

“Gotta say, this is kind of exciting,” The real Ben said. “Not often I get to do something like this, I really feel like the Apostle of Myriad right now.”

“You sure though? Even if it works, which we both know is unlikely, this is going to limit one of two shots you have that would be better spent after getting to the third tier.”

“I’m hopeful the benefits of doing something like this are going to outweigh the drawbacks, and besides, I still have months to go. If the payoff isn’t worth the effort then I’ll figure out a way of safely getting a third time, it might even be as easy as getting Yuzu and Elvat’s help.”

“True.In that case, I’m still right in what I said before though. Let’s get started and if it fails, well, just give in and kill me.”

“Yeah, won’t really have any other choice by then, will I? Still, I’m confident.”

His copy laughed. “You know what? Same. Now let’s do this already.”

Both reaching out, real and fake alike, the two took each other’s hands while Ben stretched out with connect as far as he could go, feeling both the mind his replica held and the mana that made up its body, same as he’d feel any time he created a resistance brace and acting as one, the two began their unnatural act of ritual magic, melding the powers one had and the power the other couldn’t quite grasp as material manipulation was used to make up for any shortcomings of the fake while mana was expertly controlled and moved.

One Ben could already change the world but two of them? Anything was possible in that moment as all of the knowledge he’d worked towards in his time on the world was used, mana turning to essence and capturing the form of the replica in its entirety, the replica participating in the ritual to convert its own body into the ethereal substance as well, binding it to the true Ben in a way that combined the two as the fake was giving a soul and directly incorporated into the original, going beyond his experimentation with the demons and leaving him alone on the stage with its success to take in all of the changes that had come with what they’d accomplished.

Levels raised, more than he’d honestly expected but that had been what he’d been looking for from the start. He’d gotten a few the last time he’d been merged with a copy of himself as well but everything he’d just claimed had been on a different scale, although more interesting was the change that had come without its equivalent notification to back it up.

His maximum thought speed had just increased and there were hundreds of new minds in his head, both changes that felt like the equivalent of any time he’d leveled his unnatural mind and thought speed in the past but at the current maximum, the only way that they should have been growing more was if they were awakening, something that had clearly not happened no matter how much he would have welcomed it.

But I guess I can chalk that up to being part of the effects of false Ben then.

The skill the modification he’d made to his soul had been listed as, there was less pain to it than he’d been expecting after what he’d inflicted on the demons but it still hurt, likely would for a few more days but that wasn’t a concern. What mattered was his success and all that had come from it.

His minds were strengthened but more than that, he’d acquired the memories of what his copy and all the others before it had been through as they were forced to improve to create a challenge for him, the experience it had gained in the process becoming his own as well in a way he’d need to look at more closely later, leaving the last change that needed to be examined hidden in his card as he pulled it out to take a look at what had happened to his attributes.

With results being positive, arguably better than he’d expected going into it. They’d all grown by just shy of ten percent, telling him that soul modifications he made on himself would be equivalent to what he’d get from the buff bracelets he’d made instead of only the five percent he would see in both cases when used on others, with the benefit that three were above what he’d originally expected to be their upper limits.

Both his mana and its recovery rate were closer to a fifteen percent growth, likely due to the unusual process managing to catch some of the power the tower had been providing his duplicate, at least that was what he was telling himself, while his intelligence was closer to twenty with all of the new minds added to his head. A fantastic haul if not for the trade-off that had come with it.

Ben knew he could safely modify his own soul two times based on the experiments he’d run on the demons and he’d just used one up. The levels he’d just claimed for it had been nice, but would they be worth the potential he’d just lost? If he’d waited until after he’d awakened the skills he’d wanted to the third tier then the attributes he would have claimed for himself through that would have been incomparable to what he’d just gotten, now he only had the one shot to do it.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

…Yeah, I’m okay with this.

Perhaps it was a worse choice in the long run, he couldn’t know for sure but he didn’t regret his decision. He’d been in the mind of his copy and seen himself. He couldn’t imagine condemning his other to oblivion without even trying and no matter what might come of it in the long run, he would make it work and with the tower finally over, it was time to get their rewards.

The rest of his group walked over, all but Thera still looking sore despite what bit of healing she and Vasta had been able to manage with their non-affinitied magic and all of them looked confused on top of that. From their perspective, he’d somehow made peace with his replica and after holding hands for a bit it had vanished, ending that final section.

“Ben, my guy, don’t tell me we were actually supposed to find a peaceful solution,” Jake asked him, still sounding worn out as he nursed his ribs. “Cause that really would have been just so, so much nicer.”

“Ah, no, that wasn’t really an option for you guys, don’t worry.”

“How is it that you always manage to get along with every version of yourself you meet?” Thera wanted to know, shaking her head. “You’re way too good at it by this point.”

“Eh, what can I say, I’m full of self-love.”

“Well-” Vasta started, about to ask what exactly had happened but losing her chance. With the trial over it was time to get their rewards and that meant one thing in particular. A god was coming to greet them.

But not one Ben recognized. The one who would appear was meant to be a god that represented their particular tower and none of the ones he knew fit the bill, leaving them with an unfamiliar deity he could only describe as cute.

Taking a smaller appearance than any of them, its form resembled what he would compare to a winged hedgehog. An extra set of eyes on it, sure, but it would have fit in with any of the wildlife on the planet as the rest felt its divinity and prostrated immediately, leaving him alone to stand.

“Excellent work, all of you. You’ve taken on the trial and you’ve come out on top no matter the hiccups along the way-”

“Does my heart count as a hiccup?” Ben asked, the god making the choice to not look at him as it answered.

“I’ll politely ask you to take that up with Nare when you see him next, I played no part in helping design that particular floor. And of course, we’ll heal all of your wounds before you get out but based on what we’d heard, can I assume you’d like to leave that one?”

“…Yeah, I still wanna try something.”

“I look forward to seeing just what,” It laughed before the mana around them grew dense and the others’ injuries were treated, with some of the aches Ben had accumulated through all of that leaving him as well.

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