CH81

He looked around him, trying to take stock of the situation the best he could with the seconds he had. Thera had managed to pull herself to her feet at least, but with the third statue up and joining up with the other two he didn’t know what he could do.

He did however have an idea. More of a desperate gamble really. When the statue had flung them away they ended up right by one half of one of the bisected statues, and Ben could still see the enchantments within it. There wasn’t much he could do with them, he didn’t even understand what they did, but he could try to remove some of the ones that were present. With so many of them so densely packed together he might be able to selectively erase some to create a new result.

He looked at Thera, hoping he would see something from her that would show she had a plan, any alternative to the ridiculous idea he had pulled together, but she seemed just as lost as he did.

Not knowing what else to do he threw seven of the charm bombs around them to try and discourage the statues from carelessly walking to them and rushed over to the one on the ground, bringing Thera with him.

It was going to be delicate work, and there wasn’t any point in trying to preserve the items he had, so he also ripped off his barrier gauntlet, ignoring all the pain it caused him, and put it on Thera.

“I’ll destroy the enchantment as soon as I use this.” She told him, but they didn’t have any other choice.

“Unless you have any ideas we’ll need to make it work. Okay I need one hand to work on the statue’s enchantments and another to try and work on sacrificial enchantments for the gauntlet, but how am I supposed to connect with you while my hands are full?” He muttered to himself before ripping down her hood and pressing his cheek against hers.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to connect to you to see how I’ll need to maintain the enchantment and gauntlet as a whole while also seeing if I can do anything with the broken statue. Not going to be surprised if my eyes start bleeding again so you’re in charge of watching our backs unless you have any other ideas?”

“In that case try and keep my staff together first, I’ll see about raising a wall around us.”

Any extra barrier was an idea he could get behind and a rough circle of stone rose around them just before the remaining statue got within reach. The earthen barrier would last for no more than a minute, but it was a minute he could spend entirely focused on trying to unravel the enchantments placed upon the statue. He tried to keep it out of his mind that the staff would be good for no more than a single earth bullet, and that was with him holding it together for her.

He did his best to ignore the sound of the statues slashing the walls with their swords as he devoted himself to looking at the enchantments, trying to use every bit of wisdom he’d gleaned from all the time he’d spent staring at the wall that divided the trial from the rest of the city.

His immediate concern was that when he destroyed a single weave of the enchantment the entire thing would unravel, falling apart and leaving him with nothing but stone, but the magic of a god was not so weak. Unfortunately, his problem was one on the opposite side of the spectrum. He could barely damage the enchantments. Since the act of removing it took mana he wasn’t exactly in top form for it, but he doubted that even if he was fully stocked would he be able to alter anything in a meaningful way with the time he had.

He could feel mana leaking from the sections where the enchantments had been successfully damaged when Thera ripped them in half, and desperately wished he could use it to refill his own reserve, but such a thing wasn’t possible, at least not for him. He swore to himself that if he lived he would try to raise that particular attribute’s levels, the fact that whether he lived or died was coming down to the fact that he’d pushed his non-magic skills so hard that he was almost out of mana for a second time since coming to this world was ridiculous.

As he tried to sort something, anything out he heard the wall of stone circling them come down with a crash. Reaching back with his non-broken arm, he grabbed onto the gauntlet while still seeing if there was anything he could do with the remains of the statue, and resuming his connection to Thera to see how to implement his crafting and enchanting to it.

<COMPLEX MIND LEVEL INCREASED>

With the abuse it felt like he was putting his brain through, it wasn’t surprising he got the level up, but it didn’t provide him with a new stream of consciousness. What it did was provide him with some mental wiggle room, just enough to notice a feeling he’d experienced earlier in the trial, one that had come to him again now, the feeling of just how tangible his enchantments felt.

It almost seemed like he could reach out and touch them, and on a whim he pushed his mind out to them, not just to guide them with his mana but with everything he had, including his connect.

In that instance everything clicked together. The feeling of tangibility was fulfilled as his mind seemed to link with the very enchantment itself and he’d found the potential that Myriad had been alluding to for his skills growth.

With no time to spare and no elegance in his work he tried to take the barrier magic applied to the gauntlet and attach it to the statue, to the loose strands of its own enchantment where mana was leaking out of it, available to power it, and shaped it as he could. Whether they lived or died came down to this, and as he bound his enchantments to those of a god he felt his mana finally tap out, and with it his consciousness as the spell came together.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

<ENCHANTING LEVEL INCREASED>

If it wasn’t for the fact that mana exhaustion had led him to sleeping on the cold hard ground and the broken arm he was nursing, Ben probably would have felt pretty well-rested. The fact that he woke up at all went to show that his desperate plan had worked, and as he cracked open his eyes he could see a barrier made of magic covering both him and Thera, as well as a small amount of the surrounding area, coming from the statues’ remains.

“I can’t believe that actually worked.”

Thera had been staring outside the barrier, presumably to keep an eye on the remaining three statues standing just beyond it, watching them, but she turned to Ben when she heard him speak.