CH1132

A return from that small break led to a quick explanation about the nature of Valaria’s new skill, as far as they’d been able to investigate in that short time, while the other third tiers waited patiently, a mix of emotions on their minds.

He could see that many of them still looked worn out by everything that had happened in the period since their meeting had started, from Rook’s near murder to Valaria’s awakening, along with the reveal of not only how much power Ben held, but also the sources of it. While the broader world might not have known his name, by that point, everyone was aware of the church of Myriad, and those gathered with him were aware that he was responsible for the majority of what had earned his church its fame, yet now they were forced to match that reputation with powers that didn’t suit his station. The coming god of evil, destruction, and sacrilege. Even without revealing his levels in those skills to any there without the eyes to see it themselves, to the more pious among them, it was a troubling situation.

The ones who personally knew him judged him differently. His teacher, the soul mages, and Verbum were all used to seeing the skills he had, and Foast felt too in his debt to let such skills cloud his judgement. Even Killi, as uncomfortable as she’d been upon seeing what he’d done to Rook, hadn’t let the scene or the reveal of his skills shake her trust in him too much. After all, Rook had been a problem for the world for centuries by that point, even despite the little work he’d been able to do for it, and anyone who’d paid attention knew the conflicts he’d found himself in with the gods, even before some of them had decided to throw him into hell. Combined with his differing opinions as a mortal born to a godless universe, and the fact that he’d been willing to grow skills that might help protect him from the divine wasn’t exactly a shock.

That left Abel, the only one at their tier he knew who took the reveal with an intense level of excitement, seeing it as Ben turning himself into a worthy challenger to match her own growth and only wanted to fight him more for it, leaving him acutely aware that he was going to struggle to get out of a sparring match before he left, while it was those he didn’t know who held stronger reactions.

But that came down to those living on the aquatic half of the planet, and given that he had little interaction with them due to their difference in environment, that didn’t particularly matter. He knew Elvat, he’d gained his god believers among the depths, and plenty of his work, be it with souls or the things he’d make, would end up down there as well, but it wasn’t an area he could spend much time. To them, he was just as foreign, a mysterious force that acted on behalf of his church more than anything else, but at the very least it seemed while he’d been gone, those who’d known him had spoken positively enough that it had tempered some of their concerns, allowing things to proceed smoothly from there.

Letting the main discussion go on as they began, everyone voicing ideas about how they might be able to work with the new third tiers, even if it seemed they were focusing entirely on Thera, Valaria, and Tress, while he added his own opinions while he listened, all the while, working on what he actually cared about in the background.

Having placed all of their skills on his rings, their copied powers might have been inaccessible to him until he would awaken his enchanting, but that limit was only for the copies he’d made. All of them there in the same room as him, their souls exposed to his touch, meant that, then and there, he’d be able to enchant with what each of them held freely and, with that, meant he needed to use their time together for all he could, to continue his desperate hope of making a mythic item.

When including himself, the number of living third tiers in the world was up to sixteen, with all of them holding skills worth experimenting with, and him alone holding the power to do it. The three soul mages were straightforward enough; they had perhaps the most well-understood powers on the planet when it came to their tier, and Falk’s soulsmithing was a somewhat known variable, given he was the second holder of that skill too. Killi’s position as the embodiment of knowledge was clear, with her growth being a linear continuation of the second-tier knowledge skill which made her better at using the information she had, and Verbum’s skill was entirely based around interacting with the system itself. All of those powers he believed he understood about as deeply as he could, leaving him to turn his attention to the rest of them.

When it came to knowledge of their own skills, Tress and Valaria had been the weakest, both too new in their powers to have properly explored their depths, but Ben at least knew what they’d grown from, which gave him some room for interpretation. The fact that, other than the charm aspect of it, Valaria’s skill was akin to a weaker version of some of Ben’s own was a small disappointment, but it had also been expected when he’d awakened her, while Tress held not only powers over souls like so many others did, but also time. While the demon that had originally grown that skill used it with a focus on prophecy, there was no reason Tress couldn’t be used for other time spells as well, and with a previous third tier for time magic having once lived on the world, that was at least an explored area of its own.

And then I learned about Foast’s true shifting and Abel’s monster creation plenty while I was making them armour, which just leaves the last five.

With Rook stored away and both of his skills straightforward, it was more like four as Ben’s thoughts turned to the remaining third tiers, all on the aquatic side.

The divine chef, holding a third tier cooking skill, her recipes enhanced by the magic which had merged into it when she’d reached that tier, Ben held no qualms about plundering her mind for recipes as the meeting went on to use her knowledge on the subject for his own crafting. Regnal, one of the aquatic summoned, who had murdered ten he’d been brought to the world with, given they had been invaders to his own people, being the holder of the skill total collapse. Something akin to a space or gravity skill, it collapsed a region and everything within it down into a single point, destroying everything there in the process.

And definitely makes all of us sitting in a room together feel slightly scary, considering that in the last meeting, one of the discussions was about just what to do with him. Still, he seems mentally balanced as far as I can see, and from his memories of what he went through in his old reality, I don’t really think I have a place to fault him considering everything I’m doing in this one. I’ll just remember to give his mind a peek before any future meetings before I let myself get too close to be on the safe side.

Which left the final two. The summoned with the buffing skill ‘zone of empowering’ able to buff all attributes in those around them, and the native holder of king of growth, a total attribute enhancement which allowed all of their attributes to constantly grow in power at a rate worthy of the third tier. Those were the skills he had to play with, along with his own, and as he plundered their various minds to see how they were all used, he began figuring out ways he might apply them together as attempts were made and disposed of discreetly under the table.

Could soul magic be used with king of growth to create an item that would boost the holder's growth rates, and what about when Ben’s authorities were added to the mix? For that matter, could the buffing aspects of soul magic be used with zone of empowering to strengthen a person in a more immediate yet temporary way? Could a third-tier time spell be incorporated into the mix of anything else in order to speed up the results he desired, and could aspects of soulsmithing improve how well an enchantment took to whatever item it was placed on?

Each test gave way to further ideas and experiments, and each one left more work in its wake as he tried to figure out more complex ways of using more of those skills in a single enchantment. He only had that day and the next if that was going to be his path to making a mythic item, and while his hope felt slim, he still wanted to make the most of it.