Chapter 706

“Okay, so that wasn’t ideal,” Ben muttered, still nursing his very sore soul while Thera just shook her head.

“You know you can’t count on the two most important people on the planet being free at all times for your beck and call, right?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wish they were.”

He wasn’t able to get any of the strain he’d put himself through dealt with because no matter where they looked, neither Yuzu nor Elvat could be found. The most they’d gotten from the guards at both’s residences was that the two were each off to handle their own work with when they’d return left as a mystery, the soul mages having responsibilities that needed to be handed.

It was an inconvenience for sure, but not an insurmountable one as they stepped back through the mini-gate and into the shop, with Thera giving him a questioning glance.

“So, it’s pretty late, do you think you’ll be home tonight or staying to work?”

“Ah, tonight is for work, sorry. I had an idea after seeing some of those things that I want to test.”

“It’s fine, I just better not catch you wearing your jacket when I come by in the morning.”

“…Okay, but on the other hand, pretty pretty please?”

“No Ben, you are not allowed to try and figure out how much damage a soul can accumulate before you permanently break it. Take a break tonight and ask your god if he can help you find Yuzu in the morning, otherwise I’m just taking it with me.”

“Alright, you’re right, I won’t do it. All of my materializing will come from my very own, very humble mana pool.”

That got her to laugh just a bit. “It might be rich coming from me but I really don’t think you should be calling over five thousand points of mana humble.”

“It feels a little humble when I’ve been getting used to playing with millions. You’d be surprised at how godlike it’s possible to feel through intense levels of pain.”

“Thankfully none of my skills are so self-destructive. Do you ever feel any concern about the number you have that actually hurt you in one way or another?”

“I mean, it’s really only anything that qualifies as a mind skill, that’s probably fine.”

“Mmh,” She leaned in to kiss him before pulling away, looking tired after the long day. “Well, I’ll be by in the morning to make sure none of them have left you a bleeding mess on the ground. See you then, Ben.”

“Goodnight Thera.”

He watched her go, giving it just a moment before getting to work which started by materializing more souls for what trickle of experience that would give him. As much as he didn’t want to slow down for the night, she had been right, it wasn’t a good idea to push the limits of damage a soul could take no matter what growth he wanted to get.

Which means I need to figure out a way to heal it a bit more reliably for any time I can’t find a soul mage, but for now it’s time to see if any of my ideas are going to bear some fruit.

He went from the shop to his warehouse, pulling out his homunculi to do various bits of work while he got started with his main one to keep the night productive, at the same time making what souls he could while actualizing a small fly to buzz around him to practice that as well, even if it was all background noise in comparison to what pulled the majority of his thoughts.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He’d gotten to see a lot of interesting items that day, some he could replicate to significantly smaller extents and others he couldn’t at all, but there was one thing he’d witnessed that could have an immediate impact on the project that was giving him some struggles. The healing chamber that could reconstruct bodies using the information stored within its target’s soul.

Doing the same thing was probably out of his grasp, at least for the moment, but that mattered less than the realization it inspired in him. Souls could act as stores of knowledge and he could not only construct souls, but create blank ones that lacked any worldly experience to go with them. In theory, that meant he could bind them to an apparatus and use them as the source of information needed to make materializing through enchanting possible.

He’d been wanting to put the idea to the test the second he’d had it and now that he was back he’d wait no longer, with some bodies already building the item itself while his main one went looking for a piece of rainbow mana crystal, with the ability to make it himself currently locked away by his need to recuperate.

It was only when he found one that he materialized a soul within it, and putting his idea to the test, connected with it.

Normally when he did such a thing, all he cared about was taking the mana it held, but that wasn’t the purpose of the current act. Connect had always been a two-way skill and even if he typically blocked anything within his head from reaching another for the safety of anyone he linked with, that wasn’t a danger to a naked soul so he gave the thing an experience to be recorded within it, letting it deal with the link as every mind he possessed was thinking of nothing but the numerous properties of rainbow mana crystal in the hopes it would imprint in a way that a memory of sorts would form before eventually pulling away, leaving only to test if he was correct.

With the tool that would do the job largely looking like just a box, Ben inserted the crystal into the small divot left for it and began constructing his enchantments, building them up in a way that took as much inspiration from the only item he’d seen that would read a soul as he could while supplementing it with connect and anything else he thought might work, tying it all into pathways that would take advantage of material manipulation in the hopes that finally, after all of the failed attempts he’d left in the past, that he’d get the progress he so desperately wanted, pouring his mana into the tool to activate it and watching as it worked, a tiny grain of crystal coming into being.

“Success! Oh, I am so fucking good at what I do! And… I really want to complain about how the system ranks items at this point.”

He was seeing it listed as only middle legendary which couldn’t help but annoy him a bit, all things considered. He didn’t have the strictest idea of how it gave the rankings it did but he knew it took into account how skillfully the item was made, along with both the technique behind it and the actual materials used, but he felt it should have been higher.

His technique was unparalleled and he was using the rarest substance of all in the form of a soul to get a result that nobody else on the planet could manage, not calling it high felt outright picky at that point.

But that’s fine because this is just the start. He told himself. Let’s see, it really made barely anything at all for this but for a normal material, I’d be able to get a ton. Still, it’s good to have a way to produce more rainbow mana crystal on hand in the event I hurt my soul again in the future and I should be able to increase the output, either letting the item draw more power from more mana crystals or else by letting it pull directly from more sealed souls. Mmh, okay, I know what option I’m picking.

He could currently get a lot of power from a soul in exchange for a shockingly small volume of rainbow mana crystal and began filling more, modifying the device to make places for the new crystals he was adding with hundreds taking their place, leaving the tool looking bedazzled by the end but giving the result he wanted as he activated it again and it gave a fistful of the material instead, instantly replacing all he’d just used.

“Okay, this is good,” He muttered to himself as he looked it over. “If I was to make this again for any other material I’d need to set a limit for how much it could make any one time to avoid overfilling and potentially breaking it but for this one that’s not going to be an issue which means onto the next one and the next test to see if the idea that got this whole thing rolling is even possible.”

He’d shown he could make materials, now he just needed to see if he’d be able to use it for the goal it was leading to, creating an item that could materialize food to let him feed the world.

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