Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Of the ten books that were there, just begging to be studied, five of them were the notes of other people like himself who had gone through the first part of the archive to make it there, with the other five being the notes of Galwax and his theories on the spell's structure, being presented by the god himself as new recordings sprung up with the turning pages.

Ben didn’t hesitate to look at it all to get the opinions of both mortals and the divine, even temporarily forgetting his hatred of Galwax as he listened to the dead god’s ideas before finally leaving the archive, even if he knew he was going to be back.

With his mind as good as it was he didn’t really need to return to the book, everything was memorized already, but that was something he wanted to see again with his own eyes, meaning the mythic item was spared his wrath as he returned to the real world, seeing barely any time has passed with his students continuing their practice.

You know, after being in there for practically a month it’s not actually that bad to see them.

“Hey, can you not stare at us while we work,” Xilly said, barely giving him a glance. “It feels gross.”

…Maybe I could spend just one more month in there.

The temptation for the idea ran deep but he forced himself to suppress it. There was somewhere else he needed to go.

“Something came up so I need to talk to my god for a bit. It might be a while so if you need anything then just shake me or something.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, he was in too much of a rush when he closed his eyes, pushing his mind up to Myriad’s realm where two of the gods he wanted to see already were, both hard at work with whatever tasks would take up their time.

“Hey guys, emergency. Or the opposite of an emergency, whatever an urgent but good thing is. Either way, stop what you’re doing and give me your attention. Also, grab Nare, I don’t care what he’s doing, he’s going to want to be here for this.”

“Ben, I already told you, Nare’s… wait, what in all that’s good happened to your mind?”

“An evil god forcefully changed its structure a bit so now it’s like this. It’s probably fine.”

“What!” Both screamed in unison, going into a panic, each of them believing without a shadow of a doubt that Ben’s terrible luck could leave him running into an evil god.

“Of course someone my unlucky bastard of an apostle ran into an evil god, of course he did,” Myriad stressed, collapsing to the ground as Helori jumped off of him and rushed before Ben, shoving her arms into his chest as she did to look at his soul.

“You really do have the worst luck in all of reality. Did a stray void god end up on world? There’s been a few instances of invasions like that in the past, but-”

“Woah woah woah, guys don’t panic. That was a bit of an exaggeration, sorry, didn’t think you’d both take it that seriously. The god’s probably not evil, just a careless asshole, and more importantly, he’s already dead.”

He could practically see the stress melting off both of them as he said it, with his god sounding far calmer the next time he spoke while Helori kept examining his soul.

“Ben, take us through exactly whatever happened to cause the change I’m feeling in your mental structure.”

“To make the long story short, I finished the last book in the archive and met another recording of Galwax that tried to reward me by strengthening my mind. My working theory for the changes is that he specifically tried to change a galwaxian mind which I clearly don’t have and I got to suffer the consequences for it. Namely that it really hurt.”

“You’re lucky it only hurt,” Helori told him, staring into him with narrowed eyes. “From what I’m seeing I’d guess you’re right and we can only count ourselves lucky it happened to you of all people. These sort of modifications happening to a thinking soul is a lot better than it happening to a meaty brain. Not to say your brain didn’t receive any damage but it’s nothing that should kill you, just get your lover to give you a quick look over when you see her later to deal with the minor damage. Empty skies, the level of carelessness to leave something like that on world…”

“Certainly the sort of thing he should have properly altered before he went off to die,” Myriad agreed, sounding none too happy that his apostle had just been hurt from the carelessness of a dead god.

“So just to be clear though, I’m going to be fine? Not going to go insane or not currently insane and just don’t realize it?”

“You’ve been insane since I’ve known you,” Myriad scoffed. “I just couldn’t see it at first because you were too busy dealing with your trauma at the time to really show it.”

“I’m going to choose to take that as a ‘yeah, you’ll be fine Ben, and I love what a wonderful and caring apostle you are too despite the fact I tricked you into the role.’”

“You will be fine,” Helori clarified. “It doesn’t look like it’s changed the way you think, so much as maybe added a new dimension to it? I believe if you chose to, you might be able to approach problems the way a Galwaxian would, but that would always take a backseat to your normal- er, the way of thinking that’s normal for you.”

“I don’t feel like I needed that clarification at the end but okay. Anything else?”

“That depends, what was your intelligence value before this happened?”

“A bit over five-thousand one-hundred, why?”

“You just grew by over two thousand. The mental power at your disposal is frankly impressive for any mortal to hold,” Helori told him, her voice carrying approval as she looked at the difference in his mind.

“Yeah, that would track. Galwax specifically tried to grow my intelligence and given that in his tower he raised my mana and vitality by thirty percent it looks like he was able to keep up that level of growth, plus my unnatural mind leveled up too and I always get a few hundred more points when that happens.”

“Okay, so with that out of the way, just what is this good emergency?” Myriad asked, bringing them back to the matter that had Ben rushing up there.

“Read my thoughts and find out.”

He directed every mind in his head to perfectly recreate what he’d seen in the archive, every bit of the massive spell being ordered in the exact way he memorized, leaving the two gods breathless.

“Is that really-”

“There’s no denying it,” Helori muttered, exerting just a bit of her power to create a model of what they were seeing in Myriad’s realm instead of leaving Ben to keep it up. “Another example from the creators of the summoning spell, or potentially from another group who’d seen it and were able to learn from it to create this, but I doubt that. It’s beautiful, you found this in the archive?”

“Yep, it looks like the first part of it was kind of a test to see if the person holding it had the drive to learn everything they could and then they’d unlock a different section after containing the spell structure, along with Galwax’s thoughts on it and anyone else’s who made it that far, and as much as I hate the bastard, I think some of his theorizing may have just pushed my own research ahead by a few years. Maybe even more if I can find anything useful in this too. Look at it, it’s not many, but it has some mana modifiers in it that the summoning spell doesn’t.”

“If you're trying to modify the spell then having more tools will only help,” The goddess muttered, barely noticing him as she looked at it. “So what does this one do?”

“Don’t know, neither did Galwax. I guess he bought the info from a void god, same way others did for the summoning spell, but he never tested it. From what the recording said, it sounds like it was found in the ashes of a dead star and he didn’t want to try and power it, only to find out that the spell is what killed it in the first place.”

“Mmh, probably a good choice,” Helori agreed, even if she looked physically pained to not be able to grasp its purpose. “But if his race had already lost then he could have at least tried using this before getting himself killed while he still had the power for it.”

“Maybe he did,” Myriad sighed. “How would we know? He spent so little time here when he dropped off his tower, he should have at least told us about this spell as well.”

“Well, no point dwelling on that dead asshole,” Ben said cheerfully. “Instead, hurry up and grab Nare so he can see this. There’s no way whatever he’s doing is more important, right?”

“No, it is,” His god said in no uncertain terms. “You’ll hear about it soon but it will be keeping him fully occupied for the next couple days at least. He will be very disappointed to learn that he missed the reveal of this in person though.”

“Plenty will be,” Helori laughed. “I can only imagine every other knowledge and magic god grinding their teeth. The summoning spell was a masterpiece we always assumed was a one-off, we’d never heard of anything else like it from any other void god. The fact there’s been another example right under our noses this entire time is going to drive plenty insane.”

“Glad to see you’re excited because the rest of the day is going to examining and cataloging this,” Ben told them, his grin saying they wouldn’t be able to avoid it. “I’ll have to pop back down a couple times to see how the students are doing but other than that you can expect this to take up the rest of the night.”

“Ben, as exciting as this is, we do have other work to be doing you know.”

“Don’t be a killjoy Myriad, that can always wait another day or two,” Helori argued, her eyes still glued to the spell and showing the cube had no ally there when it came to staying on top of his real work. “The sooner we give this a look, the sooner we can go back to that, now come on already.”

Facing the enthusiasm of both his apostle and fellow god, Myriad was left no choice but to give in and examine Ben’s discovery, discussing and theory-crafting as they poured over all they were seeing as the hours went by.

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