Chapter 1126

Walking to Fontesh’s home for the day, Thera and Mora at his side and Dewdrop in his arms, Ben reflected on what he’d done the last couple of days.

He still hadn’t put his earlier tests with Thera and the demidemons to use, his plans for the charm and the tracking spell both put off in the name of other priorities as he continued to fly around, giving people more blessed skills and building a few more churches for his god, each to great effect. He still needed to go out once the gods arranged a more proper gathering for him to let people travel to central meeting points, and he still needed Myriad’s believers to buy more plots of land for him to build on in the future, but those weren’t immediate problems.

His training with Thera had progressed well too, letting her finish her corrupt non-affinitied mage job to move on to sinful dark mage, earning her levels to her dark sight and intelligence enhancement, with far more beyond just that as well.

She’d wanted his help training specific skills, and she’d gotten it. Knowledge had been the easiest to raise by far, given that Ben could directly insert information into anyone’s mind, bringing her to the ninth level of the skill already, but the rest had progressed well too. She was a soul mage, after all, and the holder of a powerful variant of that magic. While it hadn’t exactly been easy or pleasant, in that time, she managed to raise her sacrilege and connect to their fifth levels and her mental expansion to its ninth, leaving her to use the healing aspects of her magic even then to try and deal with the headache that had left her.

Still, it’s all good progress, he thought to himself. There might even be an avenue I can use to help her get a bit more power, too. When we’re done with this meeting, I’ll have to talk with her about it.

His own growth hadn’t been minor either, with those couple of days allowing him to not only add four more points to his death resistance, but also verified through some of his test demons that there didn’t seem to be an issue with repeating the process. Once his soul had healed, he could do it again, constantly growing his ability to resist any death spells that would come his way, which, when combined with his resistance enhancement, meant he could hope to be substantially safer from that power.

Wonder if anyone’s going to notice that little change compared to everything else going on in my soul? Ben thought. Yuzu, Elvat, Falk, Verbum; I’m going to be around a bunch of people who can see my soul, but it’s pretty clear what most of them are going to be caught on. Who’s paying enough attention to ol’ Ben that they’ll see my resistances improving too?

He mused a bit more as they went before they reached Fontesh’s home, letting him knock once before the door was ripped open as Delair stood there, looking excited.

“Hey kiddo,” Ben smiled, handing the sleeping scrungle off to her. “Is your mom around?”

“Coming!” they heard yelled from deeper in the house before Fontesh appeared. “Sorry, just finishing up in the kitchen. You’re both still expecting to be gone for a couple of days?”

“We are, yeah, but if there’s any issues while we’re away, you can get Sachel to get Myriad to contact me and we’ll run back. You both be good for Fontesh, okay?”

“We will,” Mora agreed while Dewdrop purred, the outsider choosing not to wake up and instead just enjoy the comfort that came with being pet.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Great. We’ll try not to be too long, but-”

“But,” Delair cut in, eyes full of excitement. “Can I ask for just one teeny-tiny favour before you go? It’ll be quick, no time at all, really.”

… Well, we aren’t exactly in a rush.

“Alright, what’s up?”

“I was just thinking, you helped my mom and grandma and a bunch of other people awake their plant magic in town when they got to the eighth level, and I have my plant magic and material user at the eighth level, so before you go-”

“Hold on, I wasn’t expecting to have this conversation yet,” Ben stopped her, shaking his head. Since it hadn’t come up in the couple of days since she’d gotten her levels, he’d thought she hadn’t been thinking about it and that he could take his time deciding how he wanted to go over the matter when he got back, not put on the spot then and there. Now, though, since something had managed to put the idea in her head, it seemed that he couldn’t get out of it, leaving him to sigh. “Okay, this is going to be a matter of trust then. Delair, you’re my student. You trust my judgement, right?”

“Normally, yeah, but I feel like agreeing is going to mean you’ll tell me no.”

“Ha, either agreeing or not is going to lead me to telling you no. At least for now,” he told her. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I was hoping to have this talk when we got back, but here’s the deal. I have absolute faith that you can awaken a skill by yourself if you try, and as such, I want your first awakening to come from your own efforts. I’ll help you with any more after that, but the first one needs to come from you.”

“Or instead, my super-great teacher could save me the effort?”

“I’m not going to be around forever, kiddo,” Ben grinned. “Helping you grow is important to me, but I need you to be completely aware that you can keep growing, even without me there to help you. You’re talented, you can handle this, and then after you do, we can work on getting you all of the awakenings we can manage, okay?”

“Mmh, okay,” Delair gave in, not looking like she was buying it, while Ben reached out to ruffle her hair.

“Trust me, as an expert on awakening, I know what I’m talking about. You’ve got more than a few different options to work on right now, too, so if this is something you want to do, spend some time thinking on what skill you want to focus on and how you might go about awakening it. Even if I’m not going to do the work for you, I can give you advice when I’m back.”

Still disappointed, she had no choice but to accept it as Ben and Thera left, driving Ben to agonize over the choice the entire way to the shop. Even if he believed he was correct in it, it still felt like he was letting her down.

If she can’t do it herself by the third wave, then I’ll give in and do it for her, he told himself, already giving himself an out. It’s not like I can do it if I’m dead, and awakening connect especially might be impossible without me around. Even if she can definitely awaken others without me, I don’t want to leave her with less than I can.

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Thera teased beside him. “Disappointing your daughter did that much of a number on you, huh?”

“First of all, not my daughter. Second of all, yes.”

Thera laughed. “I’m sure she’ll understand. You’re raising a little monster; she’ll be fine.”

“Ugh, I know. I’m not going to dwell on it, and I can distract myself in other ways. Namely, work. I can give people more skills and blessed skills on the way there, and before we really leave, I have one more thing to set up.”

With that bit of set up leaving them to take the gate through to his warehouse in Anailia before both activating the materializers he already had, as well as quickly creating a few more. When the task he was leaving for was done, he’d have enough work that would have a heavy material cost and it would be good to prepare, rather than depending on his materialization the entire time, given just how many magic materials it would involve, but once those were ready, he had nothing else to hold him back. As ready as they could be, the two of them went to gather the others they needed to head off to their second meeting with the third tiers, this time joining them as equals.