CH878

He’d thought he’d gotten over the effects of staring into the chaos; it hadn’t stopped scratching at the walls of his mind since he’d first caught a glimpse but he’d been long past reacting to it, no bouts of sickness or headaches until then and while he hadn’t tested it, the new shape of his mind seemed like it should have eradicated the problem entirely. A mental structure that went beyond even that held by any god of the world should have been immune to anything no matter how strange but as he laid there, clutching at his chest as his heart pounded, everything he was went back to the chaos.

Not something a being born to a universe was meant to see, the space between realities felt unnatural, holding no true rules to give it stability yet was home to the unspeakable things that lived there but as something that wasn’t one himself it was more like he’d been contaminated by that brief exposure and with no part of him free of it, all he could do was wait for the feeling to pass.

Which started with his mind before his body. He didn’t know if his thought speed had changed at all during it but he did know that the totality of himself had dropped back to match real-time once the memory had begun to fade, letting him regain a broader awareness of how fast his heart was pumping in his chest along with the unnatural feeling throughout both his flesh and deeper still, prickling senses he didn’t think he held as something in him changed.

But through that, something else. Hands on his body and a feeling of magic as his eyes slowly came into focus, something pouring down his throat too as he finally took note of the crowd around him, the shifter touching his chest to provide what healing he could and Abel holding his head, a cut in her wrist that looked bit open pouring grey blood into his mouth as they spoke above him.

“Damn it, you little weirdo, don’t tell me you did something?” Foast asked as he focused on healing Ben, fighting through his resistances while trying to figure out just what was wrong while Abel tried to defend herself.

“Why would I have done anything? He’s a buddy!”

“Yeah, and I know you’re happy to take a bite out of anyone no matter if they’re your buddy or not!”

“And I’m telling you, you stupid old pervert, it looked like he was just taking a job and then did that!”

“Yeah, well taking jobs doesn’t hurt people so something must have happened!”

God, I fucking wish it was true that taking jobs didn’t hurt people. How am I both the first example of it happening and the one it keeps happening to? I’d like to lodge a complaint!

“I’m telling you, this wasn’t me!”

“Ugh, she’s right, it wasn’t,” Ben finally spoke as he forced himself to sit up. “And minor clarification, in rare cases, taking a job actually can hurt you and I just took one that nobody else has gotten before so I guess I got a bad pull.”

“Wait, are you being serious?” Foast asked, sounding in disbelief as Ben clarified.

“Extremely, extremely rare cases. Only a couple examples I’m aware of it happening,” And every one of them was in me. Fucking hell. “Ahem, thanks for the help though, I think I’m good now.”

As the feelings he was under faded and his pulse finally started to slow, he actually found himself feeling significantly more powerful, left wondering if whatever had happened to him had affected his attributes too as he went to rub his face and froze partway through.

Among other things, Ben could see souls and since part of their nature was that they filled whatever vessel they were in, he had some experience seeing his own when he’d look down at himself and the sight of his hands made him freeze for the change he saw in his. It looked deeper, thicker, like it was of more substance while minor structures it held had changed with it in a way he hadn’t seen in mortals or gods alike and left one inescapable question on his mind.

What did my witness blessing’s growth do to me?

It was a change he hadn’t expected, growing from witness of chaos to child of chaos but what that meant remained a mystery beyond the fact that the change ran deep and at the high speeds he could think, he ran a few quick tests to look for side effects.

He already knew that the blessing had been changing him before it had grown, slowly adapting him to the chaos in a way that mercifully hadn’t seemed to be warping him into some unholy monstrosity but with how it had changed it was impossible to say. He didn’t seem any different when it came to making souls nor condemning them and while he could feel the shift in how he perceived the world, he was willing to chalk that up to the new sense skill he’d gained that he’d look into deeper later. No, as he ran through the abilities he held, trying to see if they were at all affected, there was only one that he found altered for whatever had happened to him. One of the effects of deep connection had grown.

Before, every level of the skill had translated to roughly a meter’s distance when stretching out his soul, placing him at ten now that he was at his ninth level when he’d last done it but extending it beyond now with the change, his range feeling closer to fifteen. An undeniable boon to be sure but one with a cost he wasn’t sure he could handle.

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Child of chaos.

If he was the witness of it before then had he just become the child but if so, what did that mean? He needed to do at least a few more tests and with the world frozen around him, he didn’t hold back, forcing himself to dive into what he’d just been bound by, making his mind go back into his memories of the chaos to see what effect it would hold.

And finding nothing. No longer scratching at his mind, no longer nauseating him, and no longer seeming to be a problem in any way. He didn’t have any issues when it came to remembering the hole in reality he’d seen, nor the beast that had come from it. As far as he could tell, despite how violent it had felt getting there, he was fine.

So does that mean that maybe the effects of the chaos in general have weakened for me even more? He wondered, with no way to test. It wasn’t like he could go and open a hole in reality to check, nor would he want to. He hadn’t forgotten what Quilith had told him about some of the grey’s experiments and while it sounded like all of the worst effects came from anything that had actually been pushed through a reality, that was a level of risk simply not worth taking and he let a part of himself drop back down to base speeds to interact with the people frozen around him.

“Well, good because I had no clue what the hell was wrong with you,” Foast went on, blind to all of the tests and reflections Ben had gone through. “Your body seemed fine but… Well, even if it’s strong for being part of a third-tier skill, I haven’t really bothered training my life magic much since I was at the first. You should make some time to see a proper healer.”

“Ah, luckily I live with a few so I’ll get them to check me out later. For now though, thanks for the help.”

Seeing that he no longer looked in danger, the crowd slowly started to disperse, leaving him with the two third tiers by the end, with Abel offering her hand.