CH972

For a fraction of a fraction of a second, Ben allowed himself to wallow in his shock and misery, specifically making sure not to scream despite how he was feeling on the inside.

He had already put a stop to over sixty assassination attempts, and he still had four more disasters to deal with. The bride and groom’s food being poisoned, everyone else’s food being poisoned a different way, a wholly different death trap added to the entire death trap that was the wedding’s challenge, and an assassin potentially out in the woods, presumably just waiting for a chance to strike and yet, despite having all of that already to deal with, now even the wedding itself was a threat.

A small, ignorable part of himself pointed out that he’d only been asked to keep Greed from being murdered by anyone who’d ruin the wedding. If it was the wedding itself that killed him, it wouldn’t actually be a murder, but that was just him trying to escape the reality of the situation. He couldn’t let Greed die because of some insane god’s tradition, but it was clear his friend wasn’t remotely prepared; he was going to need to step in during that too without giving away that he was doing so.

And then I’m going to spend the night swearing at Myriad over the other gods allowing a stupid ceremony like this to freaking exist because oh my god, I hate this stupid planet!

Okay, no, I can do this. One thing at a time.

While the master of ceremonies began giving a speech, he grabbed Thera’s arm and pulled her with him as he got closer, forcing himself into the minds and memories of all of the nearest dark elves once he joined the crowd to search for the answer that he needed, even if he hit another snag along the way.

At the very least, there was no cultural significance to the food for the rest of the guests, meaning he could entirely scrap those meals when it came to everything Cheele’s mother had poisoned and he was able to find a few people who’d gone through the ceremony themselves too, able to see in general what the couple’s wedding dish was meant to taste like, even if there was some variation in their memories of the flavour profile.

That was fine though, it was always going to vary based on the chef’s cooking skill and the freshness of ingredients, he could work with that. What was harder to work with was the rest of the wedding’s trial, finding that the exact nature of the challenge could change significantly based on whoever it was that arranged it. There was no template for him to go off of, and as things were, from where he and the target he’d need were standing, there was no way to get that information from the master of ceremonies mind.

But that was arguably manageable too. The man was standing farther back to address the crowd, but it seemed that he would move as the wedding progressed. Ben could improvise to help before then, with only one last issue getting in the way. Dark elves were mana sensitive.

Not to the point that their mana sense would be able to pick out specific affinities of the power without holding said affinity themselves, it was, however, to the point that anyone would be able to tell if he tried to interfere in what seemed like was intended to be a purely physical test, meaning that even Ben’s materializing was out. If there was anything he could do to help, it would have to be through actualizing.

A fact Greed didn’t know Ben would be able to help with at all. As soon as Ben had the crab at least within his range, he could feel the edge of panic in his mind, suppressed thanks only to the bit of Ben’s applied skill but still made the other jump when he thought into his head.

Here to save your life, as promised, Ben thought at the crab. And to swear at you for not looking into what a dark elf wedding involves.

Oh lord, Legs, I’ve never been so happy to have you in my head, Greed thought in relief. I’ll take anything, so what’s the plan? No magic for this thing so you think you could, I don’t know, invent me a way into surviving this real quick? I’ll pray to you and everything if that’s what I’ve gotta do.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

For now, just follow whatever the guy tells you, I’ll make sure you survive it, Ben told him. I’m not going to be able to be in your head like this the entire time, I have to go deal with a couple things to make sure that, well, everyone here doesn’t die when the wedding is over. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get back not too long after his speech ends and you have to throw yourself into this but even if I’m late, I’ll still be able to act from afar so just don’t panic, we’ll make this work.

I’m already failing on that whole ‘not panicking’ front. Any chance I could get another hit of whatever you did to help me relax before? I need it.