He tried to keep from looking injured as he rushed back, acting like he hadn’t just been briefly crushed by the time he reached the shop door, the new great spirit held in his arms making for a good distraction to keep Thera from seeing any bit of pain when he got in, her eyes locking onto it instead.

“Wait, is that-”

“A great plant spirit. Its name is Bloom.”

“Hello princess,” It greeted, catching her off guard as the first great spirit to refer to her as such and made her stumble.

“What? Um, hello. Please hold that thought for a minute. Ben, what- You’re hurt.”

“I’m just exhausted,” He lied. “I ran pretty hard and well, you know how I feel about that sort of thing.”

“You’re bleeding.”

Am I?

He rubbed at his face, feeling a gash along his forehead that must have come when he was knocked down that he did his best to dismiss.

“It must have happened while I was running, a few branches scratched me along the way, it’s nothing,” He told her, wanting to drop the matter given who else was in the room and how things looked for them.

Mora was curled up in a ball, looking like the only thing keeping him from bursting into tears was the structural impossibility of it while Delair sat by his side, doing her best to comfort him even without knowing what happened and not wanting to put more pressure on the child, he pulled Thera into his mind and increased her thinking speed to explain what happened.

“So Mora was able to turn a group of regular spirits into a plant spirit,” He told her, seeing the shock in her eyes from the very thought of such a thing as he went on. “I saw it in their memories. I don’t know why he did it, they don’t either but the change… Well, it was sudden and unexpected for them and as a result, its mana went wild and caused all of this.”

“And you were hurt.”

“It’s fine. I was knocked down; neither of them meant to cause all of this and I’ll live so it doesn’t matter. What matters is what we’re going to do now.”

“Oh, gods above, what even should we do?” Thera asked him. “Destroying a large part of town isn’t going to be the easiest thing to come back from. We’ll have to-”

“Thera,” He said, cutting her off when it looked like the thought of it all was going to make her panic. “I’ll handle the town, that’s less important right now. We now have not one, but two new types of great spirits that your paternal race never expected to exist. We’ve been doing our best with Mora and we’ll keep doing our best but we need to talk to someone about this too. Your relatives need to meet them, him and Bloom.”

She took a deep breath, trying to calm down before resting her head on his shoulder. “I really should have made the time to talk to them about Mora by now.”

“It’ll be fine. It’ll be… Maybe a bit uncomfortable and awkward depending on how things go, but it will be fine. I’ll do my best to sort things out in town and then we can-”

“I’ll go with them now. I shouldn’t have put this off as long as I have, I’m not going to put it off anymore. Do what you need to do and then come find me when you’re done.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, the sooner I get this over with, the better.”

He released her from his mind when she said it, leaving her to try and put on the most comforting face she could before turning to her ward, still sitting to the side, still completely withdrawn into himself while she crouched down and reached out a hand.

“Mora, it’s like Ben’s told you. Everything’s okay, we’re here for you but now we need to go talk about all of this, can you do that for me, sweetheart?”

“…Okay.”

“Alright, we’re going to meet a bit more of your extended family as well. It might be uncomfortable at first but they’ll all love you just like we do, don’t worry.”

He took her hand as she said it, a smile being his reward as she turned back to Ben.

“And are you going to manage Delair right now or want to make her an amulet so I can take her with me?”

“I’ll make sure she gets home, don’t worry.”

“Alright, in that case, Bloom, come with me too,” She told the new spirit, offering her other hand for it to fly over to, out of Ben’s grasp and with one final look at him she stepped through the gate to her family home, leaving Ben to get a handle on the aftermath.

“Myriad Myriad Myriad Myriad Myriad Myriad Myriad, it’s not exactly a code red anymore but I need your help for a bit to sort some things out.”

<Hmm, what is it… It’s barely been an hour since we’d last talked.> The god said, at a loss as it surveyed the surrounding town.

“Yeah, well it’s been a hectic hour. I’m going to deal with it and I’ll explain later but for now, call all of the demis both in and out of town that have any healing magic and get the ones out of town in particular to grab any spare hands they can to come back with them to help for any injured there might be around. Also, reach out to Anailia and get her to find wherever Sonya is working to send her back, an awakened life mage is only going to help right now.”

<Alright, I can and anything else?>

“Yeah, find me Sachel and send her my way as fast as possible. I want her to get Delair home while I deal with this.”

<She’s already nearby, she’ll be there in a minute or two.>

“Thanks. Okay, now I need to actually deal with this. Delair, kiddo? Will you be okay waiting for your cousin here for a minute or two?”

“Yeah, I will but is Mora going to be okay?” She asked in concern, bringing a small smile to his lips.

“He’s going to be fine, kiddo, don’t you worry. As an adult, it’s my job to clean up after him.”

Which means it looks like I’m going to be breaking one of my rules to do it.

Walking back, he pulled the church of Myriad from where it had been hung up before putting it on and filling up his soul to go out to face the world with it, feeling the millions of points of mana stretch him out and empower him as all of the minds in his head began casting with it in different ways, trimming the closest bits of growth around him while he walked the streets to the bigger areas of it while the people of the town slowly returned.

He ignored them though, anyone who had run away was safe. Instead, as he moved farther in his attention was focused on the tree tops, wanting to be sure there was nobody within them once he materialized saws to cut each one down, tearing away bigger and bigger plants but not letting them fall. The closer he got to the heart of it all the more disastrous it would be if they were left to collapse so instead he held them in the sky above with his power, looking like a god to any who saw.

Oof, oh yeah, definitely damaging my soul a bit with all of this. A part of him thought, ignorant of the impression he was giving to all who could see while his god commented.

<It seems like you’re finally trying to awaken your soul expansion, I suppose it will be interesting to see how it turns out in a sort of horrifying, academic way.>

This isn’t going to be enough to awaken it, no matter how much I want to. He thought back with a sigh, continuing to cut everything away as he moved through the streets until the sun above was blotted out by the sheer mass of it all. With how much my mana pool has grown, the total volume I can squeeze into me has as well. It’s just going to hurt the entire time.

<I don’t think anyone in reality has experienced as much soul pain as you.>

Which is why it’s such complete and total bullshit that I can’t get my freaking pain resistance!

<Womp womp, maybe one day.>

Ugh.

He kept walking till he reached the other end of town, having a field to safely drop it all in and was content to leave it up for grabs for whoever might want it. He didn’t have time to worry about anything else, his work wasn’t done.

Myriad, has anyone died?

It was a question he’d wanted to avoid, it was what he was most afraid of but in a small mercy, his god gave him the answer he’d wanted.

<No. Plenty of injuries but the demidemons and healers you sent for are covering them.>

Thank fucking god, that makes things easier for sure. In that case, I can focus on repairs.

Plenty of buildings had been damaged, if not outright collapsed from Bloom’s magic. A tree’s roots could split mountains and the town had felt the full weight of that, with the destruction being no simple thing to repair.

For anyone else that was, but as Ben pulled soul-breaking volumes of mana through himself to work, the lack of respect he had for the privacy of those around him showed its worth as well, as he looked at all of the memories of the townsfolk he’d ever seen, taking bits and pieces from everyone to create a mental model of the town itself inside of his head to let him repair what he could within the rubble and materialize what he couldn’t, building up the destroyed areas to be better than new with the millions of points of power flowing through him as structures were remade and reinforced while enchanted items got the full benefits of his skill instead of whatever paltry ability their original makers had.

The only thing that was irreplaceable for him was the food and any plant life he’d just had to destroy thanks to how it had been empowered but it didn’t feel long before everything he could do was done, leaving the town looking largely untouched and let his focus drop from what he needed to accomplish to the rest of the world around him, finding himself surrounded at a distance by a crowd of citizens in naked awe.

Without knowing how he’d done it, what he’d shown was a pure display of power in proportions none there had gotten to witness before with the world itself seeming to bend to Ben’s whims. It felt like looking at a god in the height of their power in action instead of their local blacksmith, instantly altering the opinions of those around him and warping them all the more so as he bowed down before them.

“I’m sorry!” He yelled out for all to hear, happy to take advantage of the crowd he’d gathered. “This was my fault! Something I was testing went drastically wrong and this is how it turned out! I’ve done my best to fix everything I’ve damaged but for all costs I haven’t been able to cover, please go to the adventurer’s guild and I’ll make sure you’re all compensated!”

Which meant he was going to have to go to the guild and leave a large sum of money with them on top of compensating them as well for what work that would bring but that was a minor problem in the face of everything else, with his god speaking up at his declaration.

<Are you sure about this, Ben?> His god asked. <Taking all of the blame on yourself->

I’m one of his guardians, Myriad. If this was a smaller thing then I’d go around and apologize with him to everyone but this wasn’t just a small thing. I can’t let the hatred and anger of an entire town be directed at a child and besides, this is at least partially my fault too. I’d been waiting for him to open up to us about why he doesn’t want to use his magic instead of trying to talk to him because I thought it would be fine but that’s my mistake. If there’s any anger about it, I can cover the cost.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep