“Well, what was the real point of that then, Helori?” Nare asked her. “You’ve never felt the need for us to examine him as well.”

“I meant what I said, it’s good to get a different set of eyes and opinions, especially for what I’d like to present now that you’ve both gotten the chance.”

“Present?”

“A question and a hypothesis. Is Ben still mortal?”

“I’ll admit, with all my apostle can do that’s within our sphere it may not seem like it but he still hasn’t passed the third tier, no matter how much closer he seems to be drawing on multiple fronts,” Myriad said. “Unless that has to do with whatever hypothesis you’re about to tell us?”

She nodded. “As far as we know it, there’s a single path to godhood in this reality but just because only one is known is no reason to assume there aren’t any more and as it stands, I’d like to hypothesize that the boy may be walking down a new one. Of course, given how likely he already is to reach the third tier it may not matter but as things stand, if he were to die today, I personally wouldn’t be entirely shocked if he ascended as some higher being, not necessarily a true god, but some sort of lesser deity that hasn’t been seen in this reality before.”

“You wouldn’t be shocked by what would absolutely be the most shocking event in this universe’s history?” Nare chuckled. “But what do you have to back up that claim?”

“You both saw it as well, didn’t you? Look me in the eyes and tell me the boy still has a mortal soul,” Neither immediately responded, letting her go on. “Souls subtly grow and change all the time, it’s why the ones used made such a perfect medium for the system, but there are some changes greater than others as we all know. The change to the third tier is clearly the most obvious, granting a definitive path to godhood for all who walk it but the change to a second tier is plenty significant as well, with Ben having gone through it eighteen times now, with those changes growing and compounding with every new level he gets to them. Maybe he hasn’t reached it yet but when comparing his soul to any third-tier’s the differences I see leave me confident in saying there has to be a certain number of alterations that could lead a mortal with nothing but second tier-options to some sort of ascension.”

“…An interesting idea,” Myriad admitted. “And maybe not impossible but unless Ben dies there’s no real way to test it. I may not know what the previous record for mortals awakening skills was-”

“Fourteen.”

“…But either way, the only way to know for sure is if Ben dies before he manages to reach the third tier, something I believe more and more each day he’s going to succeed at. Potentially even awakening at least one skill like he hopes before the third wave. Of course, if he doesn’t and then all of our efforts aren’t enough on top of it, I suppose we’ll see one way or another as the world burns below, at least until we end up caught in that same fire.”

“Sure, but as he continues to grow and change, that does leave two more things worth considering and trying to prepare for, at least before it happens.”

“Which are?”

She held up a finger. “One, a fact that the gods who don’t know him and don’t know the exact number of awakened skills he holds can’t currently expect, if he does manage to awaken the two skills he wants, ignoring all of the complications that will come with the birth of a god of sacrilege, that still means he might have as many as sixteen other significant divinities.”

Technically, all of an ascended mortal’s skills would convert into realms of power for them but the majority who made it to that tier would only have one from a tier two skill, with that being far stronger than any that sprung from a tier one. Not near what was gained from a true, third-tier awakening but still something that would give them power enough that it let them play on the stage as equals to natural gods who held two or three divinities.

Ben though, holding sixteen along with all of the other skills he’d gained that he still hadn’t managed to awaken, would prove to be a significant figure by that point. If he did get a single skill to its third tier, all he had would comfortably leave him above any other ascended mortal and likely any god who held only two realms of power, but if he instead awakened two skills to the level of godhood…

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“Would that place him a bit above any of our kin with three then?” Nare muttered as he considered it, with Helori shaking her head.

“No, not just a bit. Consider what some of his lesser divinities would be, powers that come naturally to us that he’s growing and raising as a mortal. Any god, natural or ascended can actualize but no mortal one had the skill beforehand. All of the levels he’s gained to it in his time as a human are going to turn into a divinity, one that will place him above anything any other god can do with the same power. Same for his newest skill. Even if he doesn’t awaken it, he’ll still be inherently better than any of the rest of us at it by virtue of the fact that it will be within his domain. But let’s not stop there. What if we win in the end? The planet is safe, or at least safe enough that we have some wiggle room to figure out what to do next?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything the boy’s accomplished, he’s pulled off in a mere five years. An already outrageous achievement which is only made more so by the fact that I genuinely believe he has a chance of claiming the two awakenings he wants in the months we have left, no matter how tight it might be, but that’s operating on a scale of months. From what he’s said of his own lifespan, if he gets those two awakenings he’s looking for, the bonuses might be enough to let him live another what? Two or three centuries after accounting for how it should have already grown? Do either of you actually expect him to stop growing further in that time?”

Both were silent, thinking over the implications of just what that meant. That was all the growth Ben had managed with the bonuses through jobs and blessings and titles he currently had but he would only ever get more of them, compounding the already unbelievable speed he could grow at while Helori went on.

“With that much time available to him, I have no doubt he’ll awaken at least one mind skill and his material manipulation is practically a certainty given that it’s benefiting from the ridiculous bonuses from his world killer job, and Nare, I know you believe he has an excellent chance of getting there for his other crafting skills but with that much time, consider any other skill he might gain. In the short time he’s been on this world, he’s completed around sixty jobs now and even figured out a way to finish any new ones he gets even faster so long as he can keep acquiring options once he inevitably completes his list but if we just look at the pace he’s already gone at, if he keeps finishing sixty jobs every five years then in two hundred years from now he’d have over two thousand done, plenty of them being second and even third tier options. Hell, maybe even another fourth-tier one. With all of those bonuses bound to his soul, how much of a threshold would reaching the third tier even be by as little as a century from now?”

“…You’re saying you think that if we win, Ben might turn into a being with dozens of third-tier skills,” Myriad said, with Helori again shaking her head.

“In a roundabout way but it more circles back to my main point. After all of the times I’ve examined him, I believe enough second-tier skills might be able to compound to create a being that might still ascend, in essence being just short of what we consider godhood but still being a god, but what about a being beyond that? Someone whose soul isn’t being altered by the mass accumulation of second-tier skills, but instead third-tier ones? I’m asking, if we win and your apostle gets to live a full, long life, what will we have if he somehow steps beyond godhood?”

With the question the realm fell silent, all of them left to ponder the question. It was something that should have felt impossible, and yet somehow seemed all too likely. None of them doubted Ben would be able to make it to the third tier if he had the time but Helori was correct, getting to that tier would give him decades more to enjoy it and he wasn’t one to take it easy. Even if he somehow didn’t get the dozens or even hundreds of third-tier skills they thought might be possible if centuries waited for him, he’d undoubtedly get a number of new second-tier ones and for all intents and purposes, that would still put him above any god of that world or any other. ȒＡ₦Ꝋ𝐛Еš

It was Myriad who broke that contemplative silence, sounding more tired than anything else.

“Well, for now it’s only a theory, one I hope the two of you will do me the favour of not spreading around.”

“Pfff, you don’t need to worry about that,” The goddess reassured. “I like the boy enough that I wouldn’t want any of the misguided idiots up here thinking it would be a good idea to try and deal with him before he might truly become a problem.”

“He might welcome that,” Nare laughed. “Turn a situation like that around and he suddenly has yet another chance to try and awaken his sacrilege.”

“And no bringing that idea up with him either,” Myriad groaned. “He causes enough trouble, we don’t need to add entrapment to the list.”

Everything Helori had said was worth remembering but for the time it was only a theory. With months still left before the world might end, they all did their best to tell themselves that even if the future presented itself in such a way, that could only be a later problem.

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