Chapter 81

He looked around him, trying to take stock of the situation the best he could with the seconds he had. Thera had managed to pull herself to her feet at least, but with the third statue up and joining up with the other two he didn’t know what he could do.

He did however have an idea. More of a desperate gamble really. When the statue had flung them away they ended up right by one half of one of the bisected statues, and Ben could still see the enchantments within it. There wasn’t much he could do with them, he didn’t even understand what they did, but he could try to remove some of the ones that were present. With so many of them so densely packed together he might be able to selectively erase some to create a new result.

He looked at Thera, hoping he would see something from her that would show she had a plan, any alternative to the ridiculous idea he had pulled together, but she seemed just as lost as he did.

Not knowing what else to do he threw seven of the charm bombs around them to try and discourage the statues from carelessly walking to them and rushed over to the one on the ground, bringing Thera with him.

It was going to be delicate work, and there wasn’t any point in trying to preserve the items he had, so he also ripped off his barrier gauntlet, ignoring all the pain it caused him, and put it on Thera.

“I’ll destroy the enchantment as soon as I use this.” She told him, but they didn’t have any other choice.

“Unless you have any ideas we’ll need to make it work. Okay I need one hand to work on the statue’s enchantments and another to try and work on sacrificial enchantments for the gauntlet, but how am I supposed to connect with you while my hands are full?” He muttered to himself before ripping down her hood and pressing his cheek against hers.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to connect to you to see how I’ll need to maintain the enchantment and gauntlet as a whole while also seeing if I can do anything with the broken statue. Not going to be surprised if my eyes start bleeding again so you’re in charge of watching our backs unless you have any other ideas?”

“In that case try and keep my staff together first, I’ll see about raising a wall around us.”

Any extra barrier was an idea he could get behind and a rough circle of stone rose around them just before the remaining statue got within reach. The earthen barrier would last for no more than a minute, but it was a minute he could spend entirely focused on trying to unravel the enchantments placed upon the statue. He tried to keep it out of his mind that the staff would be good for no more than a single earth bullet, and that was with him holding it together for her.

He did his best to ignore the sound of the statues slashing the walls with their swords as he devoted himself to looking at the enchantments, trying to use every bit of wisdom he’d gleaned from all the time he’d spent staring at the wall that divided the trial from the rest of the city.

His immediate concern was that when he destroyed a single weave of the enchantment the entire thing would unravel, falling apart and leaving him with nothing but stone, but the magic of a god was not so weak. Unfortunately, his problem was one on the opposite side of the spectrum. He could barely damage the enchantments. Since the act of removing it took mana he wasn’t exactly in top form for it, but he doubted that even if he was fully stocked would he be able to alter anything in a meaningful way with the time he had.

He could feel mana leaking from the sections where the enchantments had been successfully damaged when Thera ripped them in half, and desperately wished he could use it to refill his own reserve, but such a thing wasn’t possible, at least not for him. He swore to himself that if he lived he would try to raise that particular attribute’s levels, the fact that whether he lived or died was coming down to the fact that he’d pushed his non-magic skills so hard that he was almost out of mana for a second time since coming to this world was ridiculous.

As he tried to sort something, anything out he heard the wall of stone circling them come down with a crash. Reaching back with his non-broken arm, he grabbed onto the gauntlet while still seeing if there was anything he could do with the remains of the statue, and resuming his connection to Thera to see how to implement his crafting and enchanting to it.

With the abuse it felt like he was putting his brain through, it wasn’t surprising he got the level up, but it didn’t provide him with a new stream of consciousness. What it did was provide him with some mental wiggle room, just enough to notice a feeling he’d experienced earlier in the trial, one that had come to him again now, the feeling of just how tangible his enchantments felt.

It almost seemed like he could reach out and touch them, and on a whim he pushed his mind out to them, not just to guide them with his mana but with everything he had, including his connect.

In that instance everything clicked together. The feeling of tangibility was fulfilled as his mind seemed to link with the very enchantment itself and he’d found the potential that Myriad had been alluding to for his skills growth.

With no time to spare and no elegance in his work he tried to take the barrier magic applied to the gauntlet and attach it to the statue, to the loose strands of its own enchantment where mana was leaking out of it, available to power it, and shaped it as he could. Whether they lived or died came down to this, and as he bound his enchantments to those of a god he felt his mana finally tap out, and with it his consciousness as the spell came together.

If it wasn’t for the fact that mana exhaustion had led him to sleeping on the cold hard ground and the broken arm he was nursing, Ben probably would have felt pretty well-rested. The fact that he woke up at all went to show that his desperate plan had worked, and as he cracked open his eyes he could see a barrier made of magic covering both him and Thera, as well as a small amount of the surrounding area, coming from the statues’ remains.

“I can’t believe that actually worked.”

Thera had been staring outside the barrier, presumably to keep an eye on the remaining three statues standing just beyond it, watching them, but she turned to Ben when she heard him speak.

“Thank the gods you’re awake, I was getting worried. Whatever you did kept us alive, they tried taking some swings at the barrier before but seem to have given up. Just wish they would leave.”

“Well the barrier will last till I take it down I think so we’re safe for a while. We just need to figure out what to do from here.”

“First maybe you could explain how you did this? It looks like we have the time and I’d personally like to know if you could do it again if need be.”

Despite it all a grin stretched across his face. “I finally figured out how my skill was growing. Myriad kept saying that how it developed would depend on both me and the world, and it looks like that caused it to grow in a way where I could connect to enchantments themselves.”

If it weren’t for the life and death situation he found himself in he’d be salivating. If he could copy enchantments themselves then he was in a similar boat to when he figured out he could do it from people, but the convenience of it had just skyrocketed. He wouldn’t need to do something as inconvenient as find people with the skills he would need each time he wanted to make something if he just commissioned enchanters to make him items that already had their skills on it. Sure he still couldn’t use magic himself and he wouldn’t be able to directly use the skills, instead having to make tools to use them through, but it felt like his greatest bottleneck had just been overcome.

As he was lost in his thoughts Thera snapped him out of it, encouraging him to continue his explanation.

“Sorry, anyway I took a gamble and attached a few barriers to the broken enchantments in the statue to power them, and shaped them into a dome. If we hadn’t had a power source we would have been screwed.” He told her with a laugh.

“I don’t really see the humour in the situations, but at least we’re safe for a while. What should we do now though?”

“We’ve got a fair bit of food still and as long as our canteen doesn’t break it will keep filling up so we could survive here for a while, though I want to get out of here sooner if possible. Not to be delicate about it but my arm really hurts.”

Thera could tell just by looking at it he wasn’t in great shape. At the very least she hadn’t seen his bones bend like that in the time she’d known him, she was fairly certain it wasn’t supposed to.

“Broken?”

“Definitely.”

She winced under her hood. She probably would be able to set it if they had some sticks and cloth available, but while she had the knowledge to deal with it, lacking supplies there wasn’t much she could do.

“I’ll manage,” He told her with all the confidence he could muster. “Our main concern is how to get out of here. I doubt they’re going to let us leave any time soon.”

“My staff has maybe a single earth bullet left in it even if you help with it, I don’t know how we’re supposed to fight them.”

Ben wasn’t too confident himself. When he took stock of the situation they currently had his damaged cloak that happened to have water and fire spells attached to it, his barrier gauntlet, seven remaining charm bombs, a canteen enchanted with some water magic, a spacial bag, a few days worth of food, sleeping bags, and a staff on the verge of breaking.

He thought there might be something he could manage if he could pull together an enchantment from the ones he had available to him, but he wasn’t sure what, and he still lacked experience enchanting with actual magic instead of just his skills and resistances. How much blind experimenting would it take to pull something useful together? He just had his miracle discovery, he doubted he’d get another one.

As he looked around, trying to think of something, anything he could do, another option appeared to him though. There was one more thing he had available, the left half of the statue that was currently keeping them alive.

He walked over to it, preparing to try and connect to the enchantments attached to it but hesitated. When he first got his skill Myriad had told him that trying to connect with a god would make his head explode. He wasn’t sure if his god was being literal at the time but didn’t doubt he would die. The question was, would the enchantments of a god do the same thing? There was no mind attached to it for him to feel, but then maybe the amount of mana and complexity within it would be enough to cause some serious side effects. The first time he’d connected to Thera as well he felt like he was going to be blown away by her raw mana. It had gotten easier to deal with as time went on but would the same hold true for something powered by a god’s magic?

In the end it didn’t matter, they were stuck there unless something changed and trying to access the enchantments placed on the statue might be a way out if he could figure any of them out. With a deep breath and a prayer to his god he reached out his good hand to the statue and tried to connect to it.

A second passed and not a single thing happened. Ben wasn’t dead, something he considered a pretty big plus, but he couldn’t connect with the statue’s enchantments at all.

He couldn’t understand it. He could feel the enchantments on it the same way he could feel the ones on his brace, but it was like there wasn’t anything to grab onto. Whatever made a god’s magic work, it was completely inaccessible to him.

“Well, there goes that idea.” He muttered to himself.

Then what could he do? Maybe he could link a fire or water spell up to it but he wasn’t sure how well that would work against the statues, and structuring the spell in a way that would be both viable and safe for them to be around would be a challenge of its own. At this distance he was pretty sure anything he did with fire magic would be more than enough to cook them to death if he made something that could destroy them.

That didn’t even touch on trying to do anything with the spacial magic enchantment on his bag, how did one even manipulate space? Did that affinity even have any spells that could act as physical attacks?

When he thought about it there really was only one option he could think of, the option that had the most success so far. Earth magic, and letting Thera decide and fire the spell. He had read up on magic when he came to this world, his curiosity wouldn’t let him ignore it, but he hadn’t dug deep enough to have the proper understanding he would need to do anything great with it.

Thera had been studying earth magic for years. Sure her control was lacking, but as long as he helped her with that it would be manageable, they just needed a staff for her to channel her mana through.

He looked back to the statue and felt an idea. He didn’t love it as an option, it was definitely going to mean at least a day or two of grueling work for him if it was even possible, but he would manage it.

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