Chapter 96

Ben pulled open the door before Sachel even had a chance to knock.

“How did you know I was there?” She asked, more than a little surprised. She’d been excited for him to get back ever since she got the skill and had been told by Myriad that he would give her some pointers, but given her friendship with Skoe and his strained relationship with Thera she had been feeling hesitant to knock on her door.

“Myriad told me,” He said, having been woken by his god while he was in the middle of reading through the blueprints in Myriad’s divine realm. “Come on, let’s either go to your place or walk to the forest.”

“Not here?”

“Thera doesn’t like wearing her cloak at home and I’m not going to force her to for company.” Not to mention the fact that your party seems to have a history with her.

Ben wasn’t hiding the fact that Sachel was his god’s new believer from her, nor that he was going to help her a bit with the skill, but that didn’t mean he was going to force them into close quarters together. As far as he was concerned it was their party who needed to make a peace offering.

Having said that, Ben didn’t have any issue with Sachel outside of that. The few times she’d spoken to her about Myriad while she was considering converting she seemed pleasant enough, if not a little overeager at times.

“Okay then, let’s head to the woods, Ralia’s still sleeping and I’d rather not wake her.” It was still rather early in the morning. While Ben would usually be up soon anyway it was handy having his god there to help with that, and he knew Myriad wanted this to go well. If Sachel could use the skill to get the tree tamer job, and from there gain plant magic, she could be a valuable source of advertising, even if it looked like he would be able to appeal to a more crafting-focused crowd now that his skill had grown.

They walked to the edge of the woods, chatting along the way. Ben was interested in what had gone on in town for the last month and a half, to which the answer was a resounding ‘not much’, and Sachel was curious about what he’d been up to since he’d left, which Ben tried to keep vague. Between developing a valuable patent, taking Anailia’s trial, and kind of being engaged now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with the fallout of any of that being made public.

When they got to the woods though they began the lesson. “Alright Sachel, since you’re an adventurer I’m going to tell you here and now the most valuable use of the skill, one you’ll be using every time you walk into the forest.”

His sudden seriousness caught her and she looked at him with bated breath, excited to learn the applications to her new ability.

“If you keep the skill active, it will almost immediately kill any bugs that land on you to try and get a bite.”

“Seriously?” She asked, disappointed he already wasn’t taking it as seriously as she’d hoped.

“Hey don’t knock it, that was probably the first way I used the skill. Of course, I didn’t have anyone to practice with at the time but doing that is what led me to discovering it can link to plants. Have you given it a try yet?”

“I have.” She nodded. “I’ve tested it with Ralia a few times, though it tends to feel a little… off I guess? I’ve also tried on our house plants but I feel like I can’t pick up much from them.”

“Plants definitely take patience when you connect to them, the communication is slow and even when the skill levels up, you’ll never be able to detect anything like regular thoughts, it’s more you’ll be able to interpret their feelings better and be able to pick up on the subtleties of their emotions. At least that’s how it is for me. Since you’re still level zero, why not try to connect with me first?”

He held out his hand to her and she took it, activating her skill. Ben was reminded of what it was like when he’d first gained it, all he could feel from her at the moment was a mixture of nervousness and excitement, not a single thought broke through. He was keeping his mind pretty steady at the moment, there wasn’t much to provoke an emotional response from him after all, but after a couple minutes of feeling Sachel probe around his head he activated hidden mind, just to see what would happen.

“Wait, what did you just do? Was my skill canceled?”

“No, I just have a skill called hidden mind,” He said with a small chuckle. “I spent enough time with enough different people and races trying to keep my thoughts leaking out that it developed. Did it cut off everything entirely?”

“It was like I wasn’t even connected to you.”

Interesting. His hidden mind skill was currently at the same level as her connect. He hadn’t expected it would be able to cut off her skill entirely without it being a higher level. Perhaps it was a result of it interacting with one of his other skills that gave it a boost? None existed in a vacuum after all, just look at the interaction between connect and enchanting. If that was the case he’d put his bets on either focus or complex mind being the culprit, but he supposed there wasn’t really a way to know without doing some rigorous testing for something that was no more than an idle curiosity to him.

“Okay, well I have a good idea of what your skill is like at least. For reference, let me connect with you so you can see how it feels at higher levels.”

He connected to her himself now and heard the thoughts flowing through her head for a moment before she pulled away.

“Why is your mind like that?” She asked, clearly flustered.

“Rude.”

“That was worse than connecting with Ralia! At least her emotions only felt a little weird, but it felt like there were two people in your head!”

“Just a side effect of one of my other skills, I wouldn’t worry about it.” He told her.

“How many other weird skills do you have?”

“Still rude, but…” He thought about his current skills and three more came to mind before answering. “No others that should be noticeable while we’re practicing at least.”

I guess from what Myriad said both tolerance and sacrilege are a bit weird, probably bind too, but only complex mind seems likely to bother her. Still, I wonder what about her friend feels weird to her. I didn’t get that sort of reaction when she connected to me herself. He couldn’t help but feel a little curious and decided he wanted to check for himself if the option ever came up, but for now he still wanted her to get a feeling for what the skill was like at higher levels, so he attempted something a little different.

He took her hand, preparing to connect again, but first activated hidden mind, trying to use it on just one stream of thought as opposed to trying to cover up everything, and it seemed like that did the trick.

Better? He thought to her, and she gave an affirmative response. He spent a couple minutes trying to let her take in the sensation without looking too closely at her thoughts since she still didn’t have practice keeping her mind under control before leading in with another thing he’d wanted to test ever since he’d completed the trial.

If you’re comfortable with this, try connecting as well.

She did as she was asked and unfortunately they got the result Ben expected. The connection seemed to be strengthened a bit, but it was nowhere near the extent he had experienced during the trial. In no way was he experiencing the world through her senses, nor were they sharing their brainpower, and he couldn’t help to be a little disappointed. Even if he was still feeling a similar effect thanks to complex mind, if he had been able to stack a third mind on top he thought he might be able to do some interesting things with it.

Still, every result has value, and Ben didn’t slouch on trying to understand how much more he could get from her once their skills were active at the same time. The only noticeable change was that her thoughts seemed a bit more clear, but he would want to try again once she leveled up more. There was always a chance that the result he was looking for could be achieved once they were closer to each other in level after all.

He let it go on for a few more minutes but could tell Sachel was beginning to grow impatient, and he broke the connection.

“Okay, let’s start on what you’re really after then.” He told her, and her eyes lit up.

“Awesome, which one should we do it on?” She asked, looking around the forest and trying to decide what tree she wanted to get to know.

“Just pick one at random, it won’t make a difference. Now there’s no change from connecting to me. I’ll connect to it too and I’ll judge how well you’re interpreting its feelings if that sounds good? I’m not really sure what else I can do to help.”

“That would be perfect, thanks.” She walked up to the closest one and connected to it, Ben reaching his hand out to do the same.

Surprisingly, Ben could feel her mind through the connection with the tree and rapidly covered one of his own so as not to disrupt her. It made sense, he guessed. The two of them were connected to the same thing, and if it was a two-way connection then wasn’t this just a longer path being formed? At least that’s how he interpreted it.

Still, it was interesting and had the positive effect of strengthening Sachel’s skill as she tried to use it on the tree, making it easier for her to pick up on some of the subtleties she might have otherwise missed. Like that they let the hours pass as they trained.

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