Chapter 653

Steph and Will both arrived before Sachel’s party did but that didn’t matter to him at the end of it all, he only needed them for his attempt at awakening the one skill, there was no rush for that, so after sparing a few words for each other and explaining why he’d pulled them away from their fighting he had Jake bring them all into their party before turning to both Yuzu and Elvat.

“Man, I feel like I’ve been asking everyone a lot of favours today but seeing as how we’re hopefully about to go through a bunch of jobs and you guys are able to lower both leveling and awakening difficulties on top of increasing awakening bonuses and seeing as how some of us have more than a few ninth leveled skills, well, you see where I’m going with this.”

“Yes, we can cast on you,” Elvat nodded. “Although the effects are going to be a lot weaker on one than the rest.”

“Yeah yeah, me and my stupid soul,” Ben sighed. “Doesn’t matter. Every little bit helps, so without further ado…”

He touched the job crystal hanging around his neck, watching as all of the options filled his mind.

AVAILABLE JOBS

• Trap user
• Craftsman- alchemy path
• Craftsman- artistic path
• Craftsman- blacksmith path
• Craftsman- cooking path
• Craftsman- stonecrafts path
• Craftsman- sewing path
• Mathematician
• High tank
• Soul defiling gardener
• Divine enchanter
• High marksman
• High destruction mage
• World killer
• Beginner puppeteer
• Freak mind user
• Unholy thinker
• Connect master
• Polymath
• Holy adversary
• Title master
• Alien mind
• Multiversal material mage
• Outsider
• Body user
• Slayer
• Judge
• High actualizer
• Assassin
• Cycler
• Beginner dancer
• Entrée
• Hive brain
• King of intelligence
• Soul user

Seven new options but only one in particular left Ben pursing his lips before focusing up on the heavens above, speaking with both his voice and all of his thoughts to get the attention he wanted.

“Nare, answer me ‘cause I want to have words with you. Angry words. Namely ‘fuck’ and ‘you’.”

The god asked him, unaware of just what Ben was seeing.

“The stupid system you created is broken and terrible. I hate it.”

“Aside from the fact that it gave me a stupid skill called flavour enhancement which I’ve been doing my absolute best to be in denial of, it has now also given me a stupid job that I have no choice but to assume is related to it which has managed to thoroughly squash any plausible deniability it might have had. Why in god’s name do I have a job option called entrée? I have been told over and over again the system shouldn’t do anything to harm me, getting a skill that makes me tastier sounds pretty damn harmful!”

“Yes, because the other option in both of those cases was starvation for them!”

Sounding equal parts guilty and as if he were trying to run away, Nare left his thoughts, leaving Ben to grumble and ignore the looks of the rest in the room who’d gotten to hear that one half of the conversation as he instead quickly went over the rest of the new options he’d gained, trying his best to ignore that single one.

On the one hand, seven jobs was a lot to get at once, but on the other, all of the levels he’d gotten, both thanks to taking soul mage and getting modifier compatibility, meant there had been plenty of room for him to grow.

If he had to guess, assassin had come from finally leveling up stealth again after years, along with his broad knowledge of poisons thanks to his alchemy and his preference for ranged attacks but that wasn’t one he saw much value in so he ignored it, same with cycler and beginner dancer with the levels that had made both of those available to him feeling obvious, leaving only three more interesting ones.

Hive brain was obviously related to his newest awakened skill but since he was still working out the finer aspects of that one it wouldn’t be something he was going to consider for a while but as a job that technically required connect to function it had potential to be looked at further in the future considering his desire to raise that skill beyond its limits.

King of intelligence was good to get as well, though not one he intended to take any time soon either. In the same vein as Thera’s queen of mana job, all king and queen jobs required an attribute value above ten thousand and needed to grow by a few thousand points to finish. They had potential if one cared about growing it but with how quickly he already raised his given the rest of the bonuses he had to it along with the shape of his mind, it wasn’t a priority.

That left him looking at his last new job, one he’d never heard of before but could infer some information from based on other jobs of a similar name. Mind user came from getting enough mind skills, body user came from getting enough body skills, soul user almost certainly came from getting enough soul skills, with his newest, soul expansion, having to be the one that had pushed him over to getting it as an option.

Not only that, it was one that he couldn’t help viewing as something that had potential for him as he once more was forced to re-evaluate how he wanted to do things that day. After he finished helping the rest of them acquire all of the jobs they could in the shortest possible time frame, he was still going to try and rush through a few more himself so having a new option like that would be a boon for him.

Really, his only disappointment was that it appeared he hadn’t gotten any sort of advanced soul mage variant to enjoy after having finished it, even if it shouldn’t have been the most surprising thing in the world. From what he understood in his reading, the few times people had finished third-tier jobs had already shown that they weren’t guaranteed advanced variants for them the way one was for finishing a master job, even if it was still disappointing in the end.

But oh well, I’ve got a lot of other options, so without anything else to distract me, I’m taking freak mind user.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Okay, that finished just as quickly as I’d hoped which is nice. I guess the job system really wasn’t prepared for just how freaky my mind would grow to be. Still going to do my best to not be offended by the name but anyway, onto the next one.

He waited for the rest to take their new jobs before selecting his next one, expecting just as easy of a job and getting it as he spoke.

“Unholy thinker.”

“God, sacrilege bonuses always feel so good. And I guess that means ill will counts as a sacrilegious skill? Gonna have to look a bit deeper into that. And just as importantly…”

Ben trailed off as he pulled out his card, searching for where his new skill fell on it and found it to be an active skill like he’d hoped, meaning one very important thing.

Guess who never has to face any of their trauma again!

The fact that Myriad didn’t respond to that told him that the god was well and truly too deep in his work to pay attention but Ben didn’t care. Lucid dreaming was the act of controlling one’s dreams, if that was the case then that meant in the event he was ever blocked from Myriad’s realm again then he could simply retreat into his mind rather than face whatever his subconscious was going to throw at him.

An emotionally healthy solution to handling all of the things he’d been through since ending up on that world? Absolutely not, but it was a solution nonetheless that he’d be happy to use for all it was worth.

Sharing none of that though, he instead focused on the rest with him as they all processed their own notifications.

“Okay, Amy’s turn to take the adventurer job, I’ve got a couple more that I should be able to use too so let’s take advantage before I’m all out of mind options.”

Once more the rest of them made their choices and were invited into the new party, leaving Ben to make his next choice as another mind job was taken.

“Polymath.”

“Yeah, that tracks.”

Unlike the last two jobs, this one didn’t finish immediately and he wasn’t greatly surprised as to why. Unlike the last two, this one seemed like an advanced version of his past scholar job, meaning he’d need to actively learn to get the experience he needed for it.

“Okay guys, I’m just going to be maybe an hour or two so sit tight and mingle while I finish this one real quick.”

He sat down as he spoke, making himself comfortable before forcing his mind up to his god’s realm, with Myriad taking quick notice.

“Ben, I really can’t entertain you right now, I have things to do.”

“I’ll be quiet, I’m just going to do more reading up here to finish another job. It’s quicker than rushing off to another library.”

“Fine, just try not to be a distraction.”

With consent received, Ben used his actualization to raise up more of Nare’s books detailing the system’s design as he tore through pages, letting information fill his mind.

“Less than an hour, better than I could have hoped,” He said positively before coming back down, noticing the two new ones who’d joined the room while his mind had been elsewhere. “And Sachel and Ralia, big welcome, thanks for coming! Skoe didn’t feel like joining?”

“When he heard you only wanted me he elected to stay behind,” Ralia told him, betrayal clear in the snake-woman’s voice as she’d been forced to wonder the entire time over just what his intentions could possibly be, with Ben already fulfilling them as he reached out with connect to look through Elvat and Yuzu’s eyes, examining the details of her soul.

It really was different from any other he’d seen in a way that didn’t make it immediately obvious it was the outcome of two souls being merged together and it gave him an avenue for his later test to claim what growth he could enjoy, so since they were there he intended to reward them for helping.

“Hey, have either of you taken the adventurer job yet?”

It was Sachel who answered, shaking her head. “No, why?”

“Excellent, because I’m a guy who pays off his favours. Folks, we’re going to switch things around a bit for the last one because I have three more jobs I’m confident I can finish today and three more chances after so for now I just need one of you to switch out to let Sachel fill a space. Wait, no, first you guys are cool with that, right? We’d be attempting the same sort of job speedrun I did with you both in the past but I know you have Skoe in your party too so would it be bad to take up your adventurer jobs without him here?”

“We’d never planned on taking that one anyway and without him here it’s his own loss,” Ralia shrugged, suddenly far happier that she hadn’t tried to fight off being dragged along considering what was being offered. “We’ll take any growth we can get.”

“Awesome, in that case, let’s get started.”

It was Will who decided to change out that time as everyone who needed to take a new job did before the party was formed, leaving Ben to pick his among the various options as a single remaining mind job took its place as the one with the best potential. Alien mind.

It was a job he’d gained after acquiring alien thought structure due to the carelessness of Galwax and one he felt confident he’d finish just as quickly as any other given that it would be a job affected by the change that had taken place across his thousands of minds and without any hesitation selected it to be enjoyed for all it was worth as notifications filled his thoughts once more.

An awakening like he’d hoped but he could already tell it wasn’t a normal one. With the change his body collapsed to the ground, shuddering as it tried to make sense of how to move while he struggled to get it under control, his minds screaming out for senses he didn’t have and the ones he did felt like they were overloading from stimuli and information being processed in new, strange ways.

It took him far too long to realize that the speed of all of his thoughts had increased, reaching their maximum and making the world seem like it was frozen in comparison before he was able to bring them down to something more normal, letting him see the others rush to his side with Thera and Yuzu both trying to examine and heal him.

“Ben, what’s wrong, what’s happening?” Thera asked him in obvious worry, having only just gotten him back from what he’d just been through and not ready for him to already be in some new danger again, all while words escaped him.

“Prin- Ther- augh.”

It was like his very mind had been contaminated with something else as he looked at the people around him, his friends who he knew and cared about who were all clearly worried but seeing more than that too.

Looking at them he saw both predator and prey, weakness and the divine, a range of judgements and evaluations all at once that felt like it was tearing him apart as one truth became clear to him.

The system’s finally driven me insane.

It felt like he needed to run, kill, fight, play dead, worship and so much more all at once, just from looking at the people he knew; not remotely the response of a healthy mind that was made all the more clear as his thoughts continued to struggle against his own body, lacking any semblance of the control he normally wielded as the parts of him that were still him tried to understand what was happening, coming to something of an answer.

Originally, alien thought structure had imposed aspects of a galwaxian mind on his own and now that it had grown it had gone beyond that as he felt features from thousands of different minds trying to mesh into his thought structure from every experience he’d ever connected to.

From things as simple as plants and bugs of all sorts to the stronger animals he’d faced, up to not only the various people of the world he’d casually connect to in passing but even beyond that, with the thousands of minds he’d touched as he explored the thoughts of his fellow prisoners and even the ghosts who’d escaped the hells from there, all of it taking aspects of who they were and trying to fit it into him with disastrous results.

He didn’t even know if that was something that could be fixed or if in his quest for some quicker power he’d become irrevocably broken but he knew the only way to find out would be to spend time on it, something he could make in spades.

Without the processes to tell the others around him what he was doing, he used what bit of will and sanity he knew he still had to pull something from his ring, letting it fall into his hand as he activated the archive to force his damaged thoughts be pulled somewhere with a thought speed effect that would stack with his own, and ever so slowly, began disassembling his minds one by one into their base strands, feeling what each one had become and comparing it against the memory of what they were before as he cautiously and with great care tried to restructure each strand, removing the excess and returning it to what it was before.

With just short of five thousand minds in his head, each of them made of dozens of strands of thought by that point, it was neither going to be quick or easy work with no certainty of success but with no other obvious option able to pass through his mangled thoughts he did what he could, hoping that it would clear in the end.

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