Chapter 163

After a long night of making use of Myriad in his realm to work on his mind skills, he woke up and prepared breakfast for everyone. Over the last few weeks he’d picked up a few recipes from Fontesh, and so he was putting his efforts into making the frattles Delair enjoyed that he’d grown quite a taste for himself.

With food served and everyone satisfied, he was going to go off to work on the statue again to try and get most, if not all, of it finished that day when Sachel stopped him, pulling him to the side to make a request.

“Let me hire you,” She asked, much to Ben’s surprise.

“Maybe. Why, what do you need?”

“We’re still stuck on how to deal with the frost bats. Thera suggested that you might be able to make something to help us find them.”

“I’m touched that she has so much faith in me, but I’ve never made anything for tracking before, I wouldn’t know where to start,” Actually, how would I go about something like that? Do any affinitied magics have spells that might work? Wait, maybe I could do something with bind? No, either way I’m getting ahead of myself, there’s a bigger issue here. “Besides, I can’t help you, this is your quest. If I do too much you might not pass it.”

“That’s why I said I want to hire you. I spoke it over with Myriad, I would just be paying you for your work. It’s no different than hiring someone to make a weapon for me, so long as I’m the one to use it.”

“Hmm, well in that case I guess there’s no issue with it so I’ll at least try to see what I can come up with, but I’m not making any promises. We’ll discuss price if I manage anything, alright?”

“Sounds good, thanks.”

He waved her off and went back to work on the statue, his thoughts filled with how he would manage to make an enchantment that could help with tracking.

Let’s see, I feel like I’m onto something with bind. Since me and Thera can always know where the other is it’s obviously a tracking skill, just highly specialized to a specific person. Maybe there’s a way I could alter it to track a specific item? One tracker and one receiver, and just put the receiver on one of the bats?

He felt like the idea had potential and stopped his work after a few hours to test it out. The simplest thing he could think of was to make a simple compass of sorts, but instead of using magnetism, he’d be letting bind point the way.

To test it he got a bucket of water and a leftover piece of wood, carving it into a shallow semi-sphere to float on the water with an arrow carved into the flat side showing the direction of the enchantment before he applied it, trying to work out the structure he thought would work best.

Since it came from his copy of bind he believed it should point towards Thera, showing him whether or not the idea was viable, and he placed it in the water, hoping it would slowly drift to match the direction he felt her in, only for nothing to happen.

A failure, huh?

He’d patiently waited a few minutes, but had no success. It wasn’t too surprising. Some skills took a lot of time and effort to learn how to properly enchant with, not being anywhere as easy to draw out the effects like using magic or enchanting the effects of the sword wielder skill on a sword. If he was ever back in Anailia he would have to see if any research had been done there since it was a skill that came from their god, but for the time being he could just experiment.

And experiment he did, spending a few hours alternating between working on the statue and trying to make something with bind work, getting Thera near the end to try enchanting with her copy of the skill as well to see if using both made a difference before he had to admit he couldn’t do it, he’d have to explore a different option.

That put him back to magic. He had his rings, and while the physical magics were likely to be useless to the task, he thought there might be potential in the more spiritually oriented ones, specifically dark magic.

Hey Myriad, you around? He asked, waiting a few minutes to get a reply.

No, nothing crazy don’t worry. I was just hoping you might have an idea on how to make an enchantment I could use for mind control.

Hey, I’m a sweetheart. Not an evil bone in my body.

Everything sounds bad when taken out of context, Mr. God that blew up his planet. I know using mind effects is forbidden on people, what I want to do is create something I could tie a mind effect to that could be placed on a frost bat to motivate them to return to their group.

Hmm, Light magic deals in illusions and dark in hallucinations, but I’d need a better understanding of either to put them to use in an enchantment like that. Maybe I could do something with the first option then. Do you think I might be able to link world speak+ to a frost bat so that it could have enough knowledge of the language that it might obey orders when charmed?

Connect, got it. Considering you seemed so against me learning to do this should you really be so proud of making a skill that makes it easier?

Okay, I see what you’re saying, it might do well in the shop if I learn how so I might as well. I guess I should be testing it with a different mind skill first anyway to know if I succeed, rather than start from trying to get world speak on a bat. Thanks Myriad.

With that done he went to find himself a test subject and found Skoe working on the same task he’d left him with when he stopped needing oil and tar, preparing firewood for the village. While everyone had a magic stove, that didn’t mean they could heat their entire homes with it when the temperature dropped, the mana cost would be far too high for something like that, meaning it came down to good old-fashioned fireplaces.

“Hey, you look like you may need a break from that!” He called out cheerfully as he approached the man, he looked at him with something almost akin to fear.

“Oh infinite hells, what do you need me to do now?”

What’s with that? I’m not treating him too badly.

Yeah, and he’s getting to sleep before me and waking up after me, he’s fine.

“Don’t be like that, I need to make an enchantment Sachel requested, I just need you to use it when I do to see if it works.”

He still seemed suspicious, but gave in since it was for his teammate. “Alright, do you have it on you?”

“Nope, I need to make a helmet first to apply it to so I want to fit it to your head properly. Take a seat and I’ll get started.”

As with the rest of his time in the village, the materials he could use were limited to basic wood or stone, and with plenty of logs around the choice of which to use was obvious.

He took a thinner log and got to work cutting it to the size he wanted, taking careful work to match it to the dimensions of Skoe’s head in a way that would be reasonably comfortable as well as secure.

Once that was done he started building an enchantment, not aimed at mind control since he wasn’t looking to break any laws, but instead to allow him to use the full effects of complex mind that Ben had access to.

By the time he had something he felt happy with, Skoe seemed antsy despite getting his desired rest. “Alright, all that’s left is for you to run some of your mana through it to see if it works.”

“And it will do what?”

“Make you think better, don’t worry.”

Completely unassured, the four-armed man did as he was asked, channeling a bit of his mana through the enchantment, only to double over and barf immediately.

“What the hell was that!” He demanded as soon as he could talk, a question Ben ignored in favour of examining what went wrong.

“Hmm, I don’t think I did anything that would cause vomiting. Maybe growing two new minds all at once was a bit too disorienting? Let’s take it from the top but this time I’ll connect to you as you activate the enchantment to see what’s going on.”

“Wait, hold on, give me a minute!” The man pleaded, but there were still plenty of things to do over the day and he couldn’t just wait around, so he placed a hand on the helmet to power it himself while connecting with the man. He wanted to have the tool ready by the night, no matter how much thorough testing that meant.

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