Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

“What are you staring at low-worlder?” Was the first thing to come out of the creature's mouth, making Ben realise he’d been a bit rude.

“Sorry about that, your appearance caught me a little off guard was all.”

“You ain’t too pretty yourself,” It said while looking Ben up and down.

“Globolgork, stop being a dick. You know exactly why he’s staring, maybe if your people didn’t suck so much he wouldn’t have reacted like that,” Karly told the grey, apparently Globolgork, off.

“Um, these are both of our nation’s summoned heroes, I assume mother?” Thera asked. “What exactly did his people do?”

“Wait, he was summoned as well? So does that mean…” Ben trailed off, but Karly knew exactly what he was asking.

“Well it’s a little more complicated, but basically yes. He’s actually one of the aliens people would see on Earth, instead of the language system making appropriate connections between a race and a preexisting concept like the succubi,” His former classmate explained to him.

Ben rested his arms on the table and placed his head in his hands. “I really, really hate this world sometimes,” He could only be grateful that he wouldn’t have to suffer through all the crazies who thought they’d been abducted feeling like they were right.

God, for all I know they really were right.

“Remember we once spoke about a race who discovered that one of the creatures from their legends actually existed? I’m currently going through that.”

She still seemed confused, so Karly took over the explanation. “You’re Thera right? I’m his old classmate. Anyway, He’s probably just a little uncomfortable about the fact that this assholes people occasionally stop by Earth to play pranks on rednecks and military pilots instead of actually making contact. At least that's what bothered me when I found out,” Karly explained, shooting the little alien beside her dirty looks.

As an answer it gave a very human-like shrug. “What’s the point in making contact with a bunch of low-worlders? Not like you lot have anything to offer but entertainment.”

Instead of giving a response, she kicked out his knee and walked over to the table as the small alien fell to the ground. “Pelenia, Abrus, thanks for having us for dinner.”

Thera’s parents didn’t seem to pay any attention to the little alien on the floor and immediately started to talk with Karly about how the day’s been while Thera and Ben could only watch the exchange.

“So his race exists in your world then?” Thera asked Ben.

“I guess? I mean, not my world, but looks like we share a universe.”

“Still wrong!” Globolgork yelled as he pulled himself up. “My people exist in a much higher plane of reality. We aren’t stuck in some pathetic lower level of existence.”

Thera turned to Ben. “I’m pretty sure he’s insulting you,” But Ben couldn’t give much of a response, this was a lot to process.

“Oh well, he’s stuck in this universe too… Wait,” He turned to the alien he decided should be referred to as Glob for the sake of convenience. “Does that mean your race can travel across universes? Could you bring us home?”

The room fell silent when he asked it but he had to know. Unfortunately he got the answer he was expecting.

“Every one of you asked the same thing. No, do you think I’d still be on this doomed garbage planet if that was an option? Our bodies were remade from the materials of this universe,” The small alien said dismissively. “Even if the language system makes connections to materials from your universe when naming it, the finer properties like boiling point, melting point, atomic mass, and a bunch of other things are going to be slightly different. Not to mention my people don’t travel across universes. We manipulate energies to create illusions to make people see us while peering into other realities ourselves.”

“I see,” Of course there was no going home. If there was, why would Glob still be here if he could get out? He felt a hand squeeze his under the table and looked to Thera and gave her a small smile, before turning back to Glob. “So why do your people do that anyway then? If not establish contact then what’s the point?”

Glob gave him a look as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s fun to fuck with low-worlders, obviously.”

Ben looked at him incredulously before turning to Karly, who could only give a shake of her head. “I wanted to be sure this prick wasn’t just messing with me so I asked for this to be confirmed with some of the others he was summoned with. Unfortunately it looks like the answer to why we haven’t heard from other intelligent life is because it sucks.”

“Cool cool cool. Don’t mind me, just going to use my favourite strategy to avoid an existential crisis,” Namely doing his best to not think too hard about it. “Karly, how have you been? How’s working with the succubus kingdom?”

“It’s not too bad. Being teamed up with this guy sucks but it’s pretty exciting in its own way and the money’s good. Training every day can be exhausting but it’s nice to keep busy. Other than that not much I can say. How about you? What have you been up to since… Well…”

“I’ve been working as an apprentice craftsman,” He said, trying to move past the awkward conversation of him being left behind as fast as possible. “I do a bit of adventuring on the side too with Thera, the last few months actually ended up being pretty fun minus a few hiccups.”

“I’ll bet. So you find yourself a job and end up friends with a princess, not too shabby,” She said with a grin that he returned.

“I’ll say, maybe the universe felt it owed me a little luck or something,” When he thought about it the few connections he had in the world were apparently a bit more powerful than he had initially thought. Thera and Sonya being related to royalty, even if they technically weren’t royal themselves, was pretty cool. It also meant his teacher probably had some interesting things going on in his past to be close enough to an earth spirit and queen that their daughter thinks of him as an uncle. He was definitely going to have to probe him for information at some point.

“So you’re one of the folks that decided not to take a kingdom's offer?” Glob asked curiously. “Thought you could make it on your own huh?”

“No, no nation made me any offers,” Ben awkwardly explained, causing Glob to immediately break into laughter.

“Wait, you're the forgotten one? Ha oh man, it sucks to be you!”

Karly went to punch him, but a small forcefield seemed to materialize in front of her fist before it could reach his face. Though the queen's death-glare couldn’t be stopped.

“Globolgork enough. Ben is currently a guest, and if what he’s created works he’ll have done a far greater service to the people of this world than you could have a chance to until the invasion starts. Mind your manners.”

“What did you make?” Karly asked out of curiosity. “Does the system let you cause psychic damage with your paintings now?”

“It’s private but no. Why is that the first thing your mind goes to?” Ben asked her.

“Because I’ve seen some of your art in school.”

A guy tries to properly convey the theme he’s given one time and nobody lets it go. He happened to like making regular paintings too, but heaven forbid anyone in his class ever brought those up.

“Actually, speaking of paintings,” Thera interjected and dug through her bag, pulling out the painting they brought as a gift and handing it over to her parents. “Sonya got Ben to paint this, she wanted us to bring it to you.”

The picture was of Thera and Sonya seated in their living room, looking like they were in the middle of a conversation, and Ben was pretty proud of how it turned out. He hadn’t had access to a large range of colours, but he’d made perfect use of what he did have available, and clearly Thera's mom thought so as well as small tears began forming in her eyes as soon as she saw the painting.

“Thera this is absolutely wonderful! And Ben, you’re the one who painted this? It's gorgeous. Oh I’m going to need you to do some paintings for me, I’ll make sure you're fairly compensated of course!”

“Yeah sure, that's no problem,” He told them, but a question arose in his mind. “But couldn’t you have gotten an artist to just wear a darkness resistance amulet? It seems like you have plenty around.”

“Perhaps now I could,” The queen said after giving it a moment's thought. “But as Thera grew up there simply wasn’t an enchanter we could find with the skill level or darkness resistance to make one. We’ve spent a considerable amount of our own funds raising up an enchanter who came close to the necessary resistance once Thera was born, but even now those amulets can only get to a resistance of 24 so we have to ensure anyone working around her will still have a particularly strong will. It’s good enough that any effects she has will be manageable for those around her at least, but still not perfect.”

This explanation only left Ben more confused though. “Wait, that doesn’t make sense. How could you only find an enchanter that could get up to 24 for its resistance? And what about Falk’s amulet? Hasn’t he used it to interact with Thera since she was a kid?”

“From what my sister has told me I’m aware your resistance levels make you quite the outlier, but the vast majority of people only have resistances up to 15, people like myself and Sonya who have even one resistance in the 40s are very unusual, and that’s in one our race as a whole is considered to have in higher than average levels. Having found an enchanter who has a darkness resistance of 30 was quite the blessing for us, and we still had to spend almost two decades to get him to level 7 in enchanting. As for Falk, the sorts of materials and technique he put into making his own amulet aren’t something we could hope to replicate on a large or even small scale unfortunately. It was something he spent over a year making once Thera was born and he learned about her situation.”

That was more than he was expecting to be sure. Getting Falk to explain how he had made his amulet was added to the ever-growing list of things he needed to bother his teacher about, but he also couldn’t help but be a little shocked to hear how hard it was to find an enchanter that could add high resistances. Falk did once tell him he could make a living by enchanting with his resistances, maybe he should make some simple amulets of every attribute in his spare time to make some money while he continued his training.

With his agreement to make a few paintings secured they continued to chat on for a while until food was served, meals similar to what Sonya had made a few times while he had stayed with her, but significantly fancier. He couldn’t help but wonder if they had a fully staffed kitchen in the back working throughout the day, but if the nation was as well off as he’d been led to believe it shouldn’t surprise him. Thinking about how wealthy the land was brought a question to his mind he had to ask.

“Hey Abrus, I’ve been wondering, how do you find so much mythril? Can you like, summon it from other places or what?”

“Well I probably could summon it if I needed to, but that would be theft from whoever owned it or from whatever nation I rip it from the grounds of. Since I’m not allowed to start wars willy nilly I just do this,” He held out his hand and Ben could see and feel the energies of the room changing and condensing around it, until suddenly it was gone, replaced with a small sphere of what Ben was sure was Mythril. The Earth spirit gently tossed it to him and Ben carefully examined it. “Here, keep it as payment for your future paintings.”

“Was that…” He began, and Thera answered his question.

“Materialization. Dad's way of making the nation prosper.”

Materialization, directly changing mana into something else. It was considered the highest form of earth and water magic, and the mana cost was astronomical. Even if a person had the necessary skill level to pull it off, they frequently wouldn’t have enough mana to truly make it worthwhile to use, perhaps managing to produce some pebbles, or a mouth full of water.

“Wait, you're just making it out of nothing? That’s insane. So you could make infinite magic materials with your level of power then?” Ben knew spirits had access to some ridiculous mana pools and mana regeneration, so he couldn’t help but view the person in front of him as an infinite material dispenser briefly before he was shot down.

“No, that would most certainly kill me,” Abrus casually said.

Thera went on to explain for her father. “When mana-based lifeforms like my father used magic they’re using their actual bodies to cast their spells. Use too much magic and they’ll cease to exist.”

Ben was interested for about a second until he found himself gripped with panic. “Wait does that mean when I got you to use an earthwave I almost killed you?” He felt his heart pounding and it must have shown on his face since she placed a calming hand on his arm before answering.

“No, you don’t have to worry. While I have a high mana level because of my heritage I’m carbon-based like you. Well presumably carbon-based, the point is I have a true physical body that isn’t made of mana, the form you see my dad with is just a construct he chooses to use. Ordinarily he would be nothing more than a mass of earth mana.”

He felt himself sigh in relief. He knew he had put them both in danger when they faced Roan's monster group, but he thought he had understood it. If she could have died from casting her spell he wasn’t sure what he would do.

“So does that mean you can’t shapeshift like your dad?”

“Of course not,” She said, sounding almost offended by the idea. “This is just me.”

After watching Ben panic for a bit and quietly laughing to herself the queen spoke up. “Alright, this is as good a time to end dinner as any. Thera take Ben to the spare room in your hallway, Abrus will pick him up in the morning to lead him to the volunteers. Karly and Glob, it’s almost time for your appointments, you don’t want to be late.”

“Off to do something fun?” Ben asked his old classmate. “I was hoping to chat a bit more, I haven’t seen another human in almost a year.”

“Yeah sorry, we’ll have to meet up while you’re here, I just have to go to, er, well…”

“Therapy,” Glob stated. “Being trapped in a world with a bunch of low-worlders would drive anyone insane.”

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the small alien. “Okay, yes therapy. But not for Globs stupid racists reasons. A lot of otherworlders need a bit of help adjusting, okay?” She looked at Ben, almost daring him to say something about it, but he had other thoughts on his mind, and a quick flickering of emotions across his face that only Thera noticed.

“No worries I get it, this is all still pretty crazy. Let's meet sometime later.”

Karly became a bit less defensive and gave him a parting smile. “Sounds good. Later then.”

With everything sorted for the day they all parted. Thera led Ben to his room as he was lost in his thoughts.

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