Out of nowhere, Ben shivered as a chill ran down his spine as they relaxed in Jake's home, enjoying the food and drink his servants had brought to them. “Feels like someone just walked over my grave,” He muttered, doing his best to ignore the brief sense of dread that brushed through him.
“Given the circumstances that might have actually happened,” Will said with a shrug as the expression made a question pop into Jake's mind.
“Do you think they ever recovered our bodies? Dying in a cave-in, well it wouldn’t be shocking if they left us there, would it?”
“We aren’t talking about that,” Will told him with finality. “Instead we’re talking about the fact that you have two girlfriends. What the hell man?”
“Jealous?” He asked with a raise of his eyebrow, getting a swift response from them both.
“Nope, I’m happy with Steph.”
“No, that sounds like a nightmare. I’d heard some otherworlders were setting themselves up with harems, but I didn’t think it would be anyone I knew,” Ben said with a shake of his head.
“Hey guys, at least hear me out, it’s complicated,” Jake said in his defense as he shared the same story that Amy and Yuzu had told both Steph and Thera, getting more judgemental looks with each word.
“Why would you agree to marry some random girl as soon as you met her?” Will asked with his head in his hands. “Thank god Amy stuck around to take care of you, you’re absolutely the type to get scammed.”
“No wonder your teachers gave you hell after,” Ben said in complete agreement. “I can’t believe you agreed to marry her on your first meeting while standing beside a girl who’s been interested in you since before the beginning of high school.”“But I didn’t know that!”
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” Will told him bluntly.
“Hey, it’s not like you knew that Steph was interested in you!”
“Yeah, but I also wouldn’t have just agreed to marry some random girl. Heck, I probably would have spoken to Steph if any had shown any interest beforehand anyway because I’m not insane.”
Seeing he had nothing to go with against Will, Jake turned his attention to Ben. “Well what about you? You said your engagement is fake, but there’s no way things are that easy! How do you know Thera isn’t interested in you!”
“Oh, I’m almost certain Thera’s at least a little interested,” Ben said calmly and getting a shocked look in response. “I mean, I’m not dumb guys, I’m able to pick up on things, especially since I have a skill with some mindreading aspects. If I’m being honest I’m really interested in her too. Sucks nothing’s going to happen, really going to have to figure out what to do about it one of these days.”
Will seemed somewhere between amused and confused while Jake was picking his jaw up off the floor.
“Wait, you’re both interested in each other and nothing’s happening? Come on guys, you can’t act like I’m a bad guy here when you’re straight-up ignoring her feelings! At least I did it by accident!”
“I’d literally bet all of the money I have that Ben has a proper reason,” Will said in his defense as he looked at him.
“I mean, it’s nothing too crazy. Thera can expect a real long lifespan so she doesn’t want to get involved with anyone. She’s made that abundantly clear over and over. If she changes her mind then that’s great and all, but I’m also her best friend. I’m not going to put her in such an awkward place by telling her how I feel when I already know she doesn’t want to hear it.”
It wasn’t something he was thrilled about. He wanted to tell her, wanted to see where things would go if he did, but she was someone he cared for. Saying it would be for nothing but his own self-satisfaction and could ruin one of the most meaningful relationships he had on the planet, not to mention how she would feel about it. He knew she valued having him in her life, he couldn’t do something that could ruin that for her. Better to try to move on eventually, still staying close and leaving her with nothing but nice memories of their time together when he eventually passed.
Will pat him on the shoulder as Jake fell silent, finding the answer to be far heavier than the bravado or fear of rejection he’d been expecting.
“Anyway, enough with my non-existent romantic life,” Ben told them, trying to break the mood. “There’s gotta be something better to talk about.”
“Like whatever skills you have?” Jake asked again, feeling plenty curious as Ben looked surprised.
“What, Yuzu didn’t tell you?”
“Ha, we were told in no uncertain terms that if we wanted to know then we’d have to ask you. So come on, tell me already!”
“Fine, just don’t go trying to murder me for it. The skills were partial demonic body that I got from an organ transplant, sacrilege from… well a few things at this point, and the title enemy of Eneth.”
Both men with him were drawn to different things as he said it.
“Wait, you have some levels of sacrilege?” Jake asked as Will spoke at the same time.
“Wait, isn’t Eneth a god? What the hell did you do to piss one off?”
“Ha, well it’s a bit of a funny story really,” Ben said as he explained the details and getting their reactions before moving on to other topics and letting the night pass.
After getting back to his room in the embassy, Ben let himself collapse into bed and closed his eyes, opening them again in his god’s realm.
“Hey Myriad, didn’t hear much from you today,” He said cheerfully. Other than a few comments early on, his god had been strangely silent.
“Sorry about that, since I seem to have gained Helori’s interest she insisted on taking up a lot of my time. Honestly, it may be a while before I’m completely free again. Did I miss anything interesting?”
“Met the archmage, she immediately attacked me, you know, standard stuff.”
Despite Ben’s flippant attitude, his god could tell he was serious and crashed to the ground in despair.
“Half a day! I wasn’t watching you for half a day and you managed to somehow make an enemy of one of the most powerful mages on the planet! In all that’s good, what happened?”
“Relax, it sounds worse than it is,” He said to reassure the cube before explaining what happened, including the fact that it was resolved. “So really it’s not my fault at all.”
“No, with the exception of your demonic body skill, you’re completely responsible for everything on your status that could cause you issues,” Myriad said with a weary sigh. “Of course, I never expected you to run into someone that could actually see your status without going out of your way to find an awakened analysis holder, but I guess since you managed to clear things up it works out. If she causes any more issues, tell her to go to one of the communal churches and I’ll have a priest verify things for you.”
“That’s why you’re the best.”
“Yeah yeah, anything else I need to know about? Made an enemy of another god, maybe have a rogue invader trying to recruit you to their side?” He asked sarcastically, sick of all the stress this one mortal put him through.
“No, that’s probably the bigger bit, but there is something I was hoping you could teach me about,” He asked seriously. “I just had the super fun experience today of learning that since I don’t have any awakened skills I’m going to die sooner than everyone else I came to the world with. It’s probably time I actually patch that hole in my knowledge so what else should I know about them?”
“Hmm, I thought this question would be coming sooner or later,” Myriad said with a nod. “What do you already know?”
“Aside from the lifespan thing and the fact that the change during awakening is incomparable to just leveling up, not much,” He told him, stretching his memory back to when he first arrived on the world. “Let’s see, I think if I awaken my blessed skill I also get a second bonus skill, right?”
“That's right. Specifically, you’re guaranteed one if you awaken your blessed skill, if you awaken a regular skill you have about a ten percent chance to get one, though it seems to vary a bit person to person. It’s also not one fixed skill you could get, it seems to be one that’s related to the parent skill that will suit you. People almost always have a pretty easy time leveling their bonus skill, but that’s at least in part due to the fact that all of the job bonuses that would apply to the awakened skill would apply to it. Maybe more too, depending on the skill and what jobs you’ve had,” Myriad explained. “Besides that though, probably the greatest difference is what it does for your attributes. Similar to your age, it will give a boost by fifty percent, only instead of working off the base values it will work off the total. So if you manage to awaken another skill after, it will only be a twenty-five percent increase like for your lifespan, but that would be for your new values instead of adding what it would be before the increase.”
It sounded like it would be incredibly handy, at least for the first three awakened skills if someone was able to manage that, but would drop off with time after that. Not that he would turn his nose up at it, he doubted anyone would. He had worked and sweat for every point in his attributes he had. If awakening a skill could instantly raise his vitality or mana, not to mention his regen rates, then he desperately wanted to do it, and with a level nine skill he was well on his way.
“Not that I don’t like you being optimistic, but I would suggest keeping your expectations in moderation,” Myriad advised. “There’s a lot of level nine skill holders in the world who can’t make the leap to awaken it. If it’s not something you can do there’s nothing wrong with that. The overwhelming majority of people in the world can’t.”
“Maybe so, but if what I’m doing isn’t working then I just need to push harder,” Ben told him, not willing to give up. “I’m not going to be the only human without an awakened skill if I can help it, if that means taking my work to a whole new level then so be it. But let’s not stop there. Even if it’s out of the range I could hope for, tell me a little about what gaining a tier three skill can do.”
“Infinite hells, where do I even begin on that?” Myriad spoke as he tried to properly express just what gaining a skill at the third tier does to a person. “Well, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that tier three skill holders transcend the limits of what it means to be mortal in a very real way. Gaining one will immediately double your lifespan and attributes while giving you an unnatural level of power, to the point that any god that descended into a believer would need to fear you as things currently stand. Hell, even at the height of their power from before the loss of their world, a god would have to judge carefully before interacting with a mortal who’d managed that, although back then since it would have been before the system was in place a mortal managing to achieve that would be significantly rarer. Of all of the races that came to this world, maybe fifty percent of them have a person that powerful within their history.”
“Damn, and right now we've got around ten people like that on the planet?”
“The benefits of the system can’t be understated. There’s also the matter of a guaranteed tier two bonus skill if you awaken a blessed skill, or a guaranteed tier one skill with a roughly ten percent chance of getting a tier two one instead, but I haven’t even gotten to the biggest change that occurs for anyone who manages to get to that point.”
His god stopped for dramatic effect as Ben tapped his foot. “Well?”
“Godhood.”
The single word stripped away Ben’s impatience and dragged all of his minds to his god, giving the cube his full attention. “Are you serious?”
“I am. Getting a skill to that level makes you transcend the limits of your soul. A person with a skill like that will still technically be mortal upon their death when they’ll ascend. Because of both the system and the work of both the gods and the soul mages that have existed throughout history, over a hundred new gods had been born since, with only more to come as time goes on.”
He could only shake his head in surprise. Godhood, and five people just had that handed to them when they appeared in the world. Every now and then, Ben would have no choice but to confront facts like this that made it clear just how truly different the world he was in could be.
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