With the notification going off in Kalley’s head speaking of her success, Ben went around to some of the other children to give them what help with their spells he could, focusing mainly on helping them acquire their new affinities while the rest practiced what they learned of what they already had, with their growth coming easily.
Though to them it would have looked like he was going to them one at a time, he was watching them all through his soul, giving minor bits of advice and guidance from afar when it seemed they needed it and under the effects of his authorities, it was easy for their strengths to bloom. By that point, both were at the fifth level of the third tier, applying that level of growth potential to anything was going to start showing an effect, no matter how tangentially a given skill might have applied. Especially when it was going towards a first-tier skill.
It was only twenty minutes before everyone had acquired everything they could, another ten spent on making sure everyone could practice at least a couple of the spells they could pull off at the zeroth level under his guidance before he clapped, bringing their attention to himself.
“Alright, as promised, those of you who could learn any more affinities have got them, meaning we’re moving on to non-affinitied next. The branch you’ll be learning is called destruction, and to make things simple, it lets you do this,” he said, picking up a stone and turning it to dust before their eyes. “Now, what you won’t be doing when you get this is using it willy-nilly, understood? If I hear any parents complaining about items in their homes getting destroyed or find out any of you have been destroying anything in town, you’ll be working under me until you’re skilled enough to remake anything you fix, and I won’t be a nice teacher during that, you all understand?”
A round of agreement went up, and he checked his mind as he said it, with the kids at least intending to stick to that promise right then. But of course, they were children, someone was going to mess up eventually, so he could only try to make sure they were careful enough not to do anything too bad as he strengthened the memory of his words and their agreement in their minds as a small additional deterrent before going on.
“Good. When you want to practice this, go out and find sticks or stones, or if you want to try breaking something more interesting, you can ask Delair to get me to make you all things you can practice on. For now, though, you should all have everything you need to begin, and Delair, you’ll be helping anyone who’s struggling, understood?”
“Got it, Ben!”
“Good. In that case, everyone find a rock and get to it.”
He wasn’t expecting it to take that long either, Delair had only needed an hour to learn how to do it, but he was still surprised when he saw Kalley finish instantly, applying the lessons he’d slipped into her head to immediately get the skill.
Well, thanks to her awakened intelligence enhancement, she is going to be shockingly bright for someone so young. Still, even if it’s non-affinitied, it’s a basic magic; she might get bored waiting for everyone else to get it…
“Here,” he said, materializing and scrambling a rubik's cube before her eyes, seeing them flash with interest. “If you’ve already got the hang of destruction, try your hand at unscrambling this.”
He handed it over and got to see as she immediately began twisting and turning it, entirely enraptured by the toy as the other kids claimed the magic for themselves as well and got at least a bit of practice with it, with the slowest there needing half an hour to get a skill that most people hadn’t even heard of, and would normally take weeks or months of practice to get themselves.
And it took Delair an hour to get it when I first taught her. She’s definitely not worse than any of the other kids, which just goes to show how much of a difference my authorities are making with skill acquisition, especially with just how compatible this one is in particular. No denying that it matches my destruction authority to a T, and it’s going to be covered by evil plenty as well. The perfect skill to teach.
With the next one being just as simple. While Ben hadn’t bothered learning any unarmed combat techniques himself, first due to a lack of interest and talent and later because he had entirely different priorities, he’d been in the heads of the greatest warriors of the planet by that point and had extracted their knowledge like he had from so many other minds. Finding what would most suit the body plans of the dryads and demis wasn’t hard, as he put the knowledge in their heads before creating a new way for them to practice.
While magic could successfully be gained just by completing a spell, combat was something better accomplished through genuine practice and with that, for every child there, he quickly raised and shaped the earth near them into small mannequins for them to practice with, having multiple sparing partners that he could puppet as they started moving their bodies with the forms they now knew, Ben giving corrections when he saw areas that could be improved.
“Ben, do you ever think you might be a little too powerful?” Sachel asked, seeing how quickly the kids under his guidance were gaining skills that would typically take days to months to acquire normally.
“I’m actually beginning to think I’ll never be powerful enough. Why?”
“Just thinking about what the future holds,” she said, looking at the children and imagining that, if they survived, they were all going to suddenly have bright futures as powerful mages or warriors that would all root back to that initial lesson. “But… no, wait. I know you don’t have all of these magic and combat skills you were talking about teaching earlier. If you spent a week on it, couldn’t you get every magic and combat skill on the planet?”
“Only most of the non-affinitied options and more like two days tops, but yeah,” he shrugged. “And if I devoted myself to practicing all of them instead of any of my core skills, then by the time the next wave rolls around, I could even have most of them at the ninth level for sure, but what would be the point? Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to do that, for my own personal sense of satisfaction if nothing else. It would be cool and it would be fun, but we’re entering a stage of the war where first tier skills aren’t going to cut it, at least not in comparison to the sort of help I could give by raising my second tier ones or aiming for another third tier awakening. As annoying as it is, I need to be smart with how I spend my time and energy, wasting any of it on skills I wouldn’t bother using in the next wave would be so wasteful in comparison to focusing my efforts on my more immediately valuable powers.”
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“... How worried should I be if we win then?”
“If we win and aren’t all forced to spend the rest of our lives trying to kill whatever ridiculous swarm managed to make it onto the planet? If a time like that comes, I’m going to learn absolutely everything,” Ben laughed. “I said I could get all of those skills to the ninth level if I focused on them for a couple of months, give me a year of effort and I’ll have them all at the second tier, working my way up it too as I go. Seriously, not only am I going to be unstoppable, I’m going to become the most powerful and flexible god by a mile. There’s not going to be a single active skill I’m capable of learning that I won’t touch.”
“This is why people are afraid of you, you know.”
“‘Cause I’m ambitious?”
“No, because anyone that knows you knows that if you think you can do something, no matter how outlandish, it means you probably can,” she told him, with Toltho nodding in agreement.
“Sachel, I’m the most powerful guy you know by a mile, there’s no ‘probably’ about it,” he laughed. “But it’s not a big deal. I just like to keep busy.”
“So busy that you plan on becoming the most powerful god in the universe when you die?”
“Eh, everyone needs a hobby, right?” he asked, feeling no need to correct her. After all, barring Oaun, who already had that particular claim due to just how much faith he would be getting from the total galaxy, there was no denying that Ben could have died then and there and at least held the title as the universe's most skilled god. Most complete divinities and most strength within the divinities he would hold, it was enough to make him curious about how he would currently stack up against the gods of the world while still within his mortal coil, but that wasn’t something he could test so easily, no matter what misgivings with some of them he had. Still, letting himself imagine a future where they all won and he lived couldn’t help but be an exciting prospect for him. He wanted the leeway to be able to spend a few days focusing on things that sat outside of his interest, just for the sake of seeing how far he could get in that time, and it would be enjoyable to grow as much as he could in that time as well. At the very least, such efforts would grant him an endless stream of second tier jobs, even if he was admittedly less confident about how many he’d be able to push further into the third tier in all of the centuries of life he had ahead of him.
Although, that’s a good question in and of itself. How has my race changing affected my overall lifespan? There’s no way the system would have allowed becoming part demon to have made it shrink, so maybe I’ve got a good few extra years on top of all of my awakening bonuses too.
At the very least, while most demons seemed to die young under the threat of their more powerful kin, when it came to their contenders he’d been able to explore the minds of, he’d found lengths of time in their memories that implied that they could live significant spans, and add on the fact that theirs was a god of survival, the idea that they’d naturally have at least a couple centuries to them wasn’t outrageous. Perhaps, if he was lucky, Ben could even hope for up to another thousand years, once all of his awakening bonuses were taken into account, though the only way to know for sure was to live through it. Similar to Thera, he was now a thing that had never before existed, and with demon lifespans an unknown fact and the unnatural way he’d become a hybrid, the only way he could be sure how long he’d live for was to walk those years himself.
And who knows? I’m part god now too, even if that hasn’t changed my race name, that might be giving me an even bigger bonus to my lifespan. I guess I’ll just have to hope that I can live long enough to wait and see.
With those thoughts going through his head though and his chat with Sachel and Toltho continuing while it could, it was far quicker for the kids to get their unarmed combat skill than any magic, the only requirement there being the need for them to move their bodies in the correct way and let them move on to the final thing he promised to teach them as he called out to address them all.
“Okay, good work, everyone! That brings us to weapons now. Everyone, either think of what weapon you’d like to learn to use or else leave it for me to pick for you. Either way, we’re going to begin here!”
About a third of the kids had an idea in mind, less than he’d expected from them, with the various children’s upbringings not exactly lending themselves to a wide range of knowledge on the topic. The demis largely fought with magic or their bodies, their previous gods not wanting them to make too much that might be found by the other inhabitants of the world, and the dryads had been isolationists who focused on their magics instead of anything else. They just didn’t have enough information to make a choice.
With that lack of knowledge changing the aim to a quick lesson, Ben making more puppets holding a few dozen weapons to demonstrate them and creating scenes of memories of people fighting using them with his magic, creating a clearer picture for most and left some of the initially confident ones to change their choices, with only a few left unsure.
For them, though, he picked what he viewed as the best choice in their positions. In the event that things got so bad in the world that the town was being attacked, even with all of the powerful people and spirits living there, the best weapon would be the easiest thing for them to grab, something that basically every household would have. A knife, and with that choice simple, Ben began giving them each the particular bits of knowledge they requested and began materializing items for each of them.
He wasn’t careless, though. All of the things he made were for practicing; no sharp edges enough to leave anyone dead. While there was no changing the fact that they could still be used to hurt someone if they wanted too, the bludgeoning weapons especially, he just had to accept that such a thing was going to be a risk when any combat lesson began and with that, modified the previous puppets they’d been against so they’d be facing ones’ holding their own weapons of choice, with the rest of the training plan for the day made up there.
Obviously, when it came to weapon practice, after they all got the skills, they’d all need to practice against both other weapons and what beasts he could create too, but after that, it would be best to go back to unarmed combat and magic. After all, as comforting as the knowledge that they could use a weapon might be to them, the fact was that if it ever came up, it was far more likely that they’d be forced to use what they had at their disposal, their bodies and their mana, meaning everything after that would be focused on how to combine the two.
There was a reason he picked destruction as their non-affinitied option after all. Even if some of them didn’t have an affinitied magic that could be used in combat at lower levels, destruction could always have potential. Be it breaking weapons of their opponents or destroying tooth or claw that might have gotten too close, if they could reach with it, they could use it and from there the rest of his day began, letting him enjoy the thrill that each of them got with every bit of growth they claimed for themselves.
