<ABOMINATION SOURCE LEVEL INCREASED>
<ABOMINATION SOURCE LEVEL INCREASED>
“You okay taking the kids home by yourself?” Ben asked once their journey to the nearest gate ended. “I should probably make sure Verbum gets back safely, and after that, Myriad set up a job for me. I probably won’t be home ‘till the morning.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Thera said, kissing his cheek and giving him a bright smile. “Will you be back in time for breakfast then?”
“Ha, yeah, I’ll make sure I’m around to feed you guys, don’t you worry. It’s just a reno; the real concern is not finishing it so fast that they think I didn’t bother trying.”
She laughed lightly before leaving through the gate to start making her way back to Stonewall with Mora and Delair, leaving him to walk with Verbum through the magic towers, taking him back to the library.
“You know, I can get back on my own,” Verbum told him.
“Nope, I took you so you’re my responsibility until you’re safely home. What the heck would I tell Killi if you disappeared on my watch, huh? Or if you passed out in the middle of the street because something spooked you.”
“That wouldn’t happen.”
“Verbum, half the times we’ve met up, you’ve passed out for one reason or another. I’m not taking any chances. Besides, you helped me out by coming along, I can at least make sure you get back safely.”
“I wasn’t given a choice!”
“But you still gave me a hand anyway. Besides, I know you had a bit of fun at the party last night. You can’t hide these things from a mind reader.”
“... Mmh, it was a change of pace at least,” he admitted. “But two days off means I’m going to be spending the next week trying to catch up on work. Breaks aren’t sustainable.”
“Ha, I get the feeling. Still, we win and the war ends, you can enjoy your riches in peace without doing anything ever again, or you can start charging outrageous prices for your help. Either option sounds like a win to me.”
“Ugh, the first, definitely. If I’m going to be stuck on this mad world forever, the least I can do is relax a bit before I have to worry about being a god. Doubt you can sympathize.”
“Hey, I like relaxing occasionally.”
“It doesn’t count as relaxing just because you have fun with your work,” Verbum told him, rolling his eyes. “When this is done, I’m hiding away at home, hiring someone to do all of my shopping, cooking, and cleaning for me, and just enjoying whatever books I can get till I’m dead. You’re just going to keep making things.”
“Ha, okay, you got me there. Perks of being completely unwanted when I got to this world, I guess. Since I was able to work at my own pace, nobody made doing this less fun for me.”
“I feel like nobody could overwork you if they tried.”
“There’s been a couple times it’s felt pretty close though,” Ben told him as they made it to the library’s entrance. “If I leave you here, you think you can make it inside without anything going wrong?”
“I seriously don’t like the way you’re acting as if I’m the accident-prone one between the two of us.”
“I’m one of the most skilled people in the world and it’s not even close. I’m pretty far past the point of accidents by now.”
“Fine, it’s your luck that’s another matter, and I’m nowhere close to how bad yours is.”
“You know, it’s kind of funny that across so many different realities where luck doesn’t exist, people keep coming up with the same idea of it,” Ben mused.
“Yeah, because some people are dealt better hands than others, and yours absolutely stinks. I don’t wanna stand for you acting like some sort of misfortune is going to immediately befall me when someone like you exists.”
“Hey, my luck really isn’t that bad either,” Ben laughed as he turned to leave, content dropping Verbum off there. “It landed me satisfying work, a loving girlfriend, plenty of friends, and enough power to take on the world. As things are, I’d say I'm doing pretty well for myself.”
<You’ll be on your best behaviour, right?>
Myriad, I’m always on my best behaviour. Always so rude to me, it hurts my delicate little feelings, you know that?
<No, I can already sense it. You’re plotting something evil.>
Well, yeah, but nothing to do with this guy’s church, I promise.
<... Then what?>
Hmm? Oh, earlier today I was just thinking that if I could create a sacrilege inclination that it should be pretty easy to speed level it to the third tier is all. Something to work on in the future, after I make a few other inclinations first.
<... Or you could not?>
Myriad, the sort of awakening bonuses I could snag are just too good to pass up. I’m sorry.
<You’re never sorry. Ugh, Ben, we talked about this. You’re starting to get on everyone’s good side… Okay, not their good side, their ‘willing to tolerate your existence’ side. Why do you have to try and mess that up?>
Because that’s not actually going to benefit my long-term survival compared to getting as much power as I possibly can?
<Infinite hells, I despise you.>
Very rude thing to say to one of your best friends, your most powerful believers, and someone who’s done the best job of getting you more believers and faith, but don’t worry, Myriad, I forgive you. I know you’re just acting out because of stress.
<YOU’RE MY POINT OF STRESS!>
Ha, don’t worry so much. I’m doing good things with my ability to make skills so far, the gods can let this one, teeny tiny way of abusing soulcraft slide, right?
After all, the entire way back from Inux, everywhere he’d gone, Ben had been giving everyone who’d ended up in his range access to crafting inclination, and as he gained the ability to make more skills, those gifts would only become more valuable. Passive skills were hard to train for compared to active skills after all, with some that really didn’t have any fixed way to train to acquire as well. Combined with that, he was going to be focused on making inclinations in particular for the first little while, after he would begin designing his own skills from scratch, and it meant he’d be able to share one of the rarest skill-types with the wider world around him.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Hell, with how many different types I plan on eventually making, here’s hoping I just get really, really good at designing that skill class to give all the gods of the world yet one more reason to appreciate me.
<I think I’m not going to hold my breath on the idea that whatever goodwill you’re gaining will last beyond the end of the war.>
You’re right, most of you up there are unappreciative jerks. Good news, though. If the tone starts to turn again when it comes to me, if the war’s over, then I can just stop doing anything for anyone. No need to help anyone who doesn’t appreciate it.
<Yeah? Well, just do your best on this job, and hopefully you’ll make a decent impression on Plyzar and anyone else who decides to check out your work here. All gods have churches, but not all gods have dedicated craftsmen. Maybe we really will get lucky and enough will decide they’d rather have a cooperative relationship with you than a negative one.>
Don’t worry, I’ll be giving this my best.
He landed as he thought it, having flown to his destination of a medium-sized town, holding what was a largely mixed population of different species, yet with belief focused heavily toward the god he’d come to help.
Around the town itself were ranches filled with different animals being raised for their products, and through it, he could see many with pets or different work animals as well, showing that Plyzar really was one that fit tamers as Ben made his way to the church he’d be renovating.
Not the god’s main branch, Ben could understand why hiring someone from outside of his faith for such a thing might have been a bad look, it seemed to instead be his third biggest one, along with being one that went untouched for a while. Far from being bad, a fresh coat of paint would have been more than enough, but that wasn’t what Ben was there for and with what he could see, he was already thinking about how he might change things, with one other aspect catching his eye.
Circling the church were ten people in prayer, all of different races, doing it outside instead of in, and a quick peek into their minds revealed the reason. Recently, in the name of gathering more faith, Plyzar’s church had been paying believers to spend a day devoted entirely to dedicated prayer to gather faith in preparation for the next wave, with the ones for that day sitting outside instead of in since he was going to be there, with the act catching his interest.
He’d never considered it himself, considering he could create souls specifically to give Myriad faith, he hadn’t needed to, but paying for constant devotion wasn’t a bad option, even if it was coming from only a few. Sincere belief from people filling a role in the hopes of keeping the world from ending would be a powerful thing, even if there was some profit for them behind it, and with the gods needing everything they could get, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea for a few more churches to start doing the same. What was the point of having full coffers yet nowhere to spend them? Better to use that money while they could for all the good it would do, but having taken that in, Ben stepped inside to get to work.
“Hello there,” he greeted as he entered, seeing a man already seated and waiting, sporting cheetah-like features if Ben were to make a comparison to his old world, though with an extra, smaller set of eyes just below his main ones, along with being bipedal like so many others on that planet were. “I believe you’re expecting me, but I’m Ben, the apostle of Myriad, here to renovate this church at your god’s request.”
“Ah, welcome, thank you for coming,” the other said, not introducing himself, but whose memories revealed him to be his god’s high priest. “I was asked to assist you with anything you need before I leave to do some other work, but I’ll be back in two hours to check on you.”
“All I’ll need is whatever holy text you have to look through,” Ben smiled, able to see that the man had a poor impression of him from the time he witnessed Ben spit on Eneth but was trying to move past that feeling, given Ben was a guest of his god. “And if your work is done early, well, not to sound conceited, but I am a master craftsman. I understand your god is willing to trust my designs, but I’ll likely be rather far along by that point, so if you come back early, it will be easier for me to make any revisions I need to.”
Really, if he wanted to, then Ben was sure that he could be long done by that point, but given he was going to be taking things slow so that nobody could act like he was rushing things, he’d just aim to be two-thirds of the way there and then, after getting the priest’s opinions and thoughts on the matter, spend another hour wrapping up.
Technically, doing things like that would be a huge waste of time, but Myriad wanted him to make a good impression and the god of that church was going to give him a blessing for his work, Ben could stand to make it seem like it was being done with his utmost care.
Hell, even if I went as fast as I could, it would still get done with my utmost care. Whatever, nobody else exists at the same speeds as me so this is fine.
“Very well,” the priest nodded. “You will find the book on the shelf to the left, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
With that, the priest left for his other chores, leaving Ben alone to casually walk over to the shelf, holding plenty of copies of the same text for whoever wanted to enjoy them, before he casually flipped through it, reading it all in the span of only a couple seconds to learn all of that god’s history; or at least the parts Plyzar felt were worthy enough of being recorded, letting Ben get to work.
The god of beasts and bloodlines had an unsurprising focus on animal husbandry back on his old world, domesticating and breeding creatures to fulfill many roles for the mortals who worshiped him, and taught his believers to do the same in a way that couldn’t help but raise Ben’s interest as well.
If I ever get the chance to meet the guy, I’m going to have to do a deep dive into his mind, Ben thought as he began his preliminary work, moving things out of the way and experiencing the structure with his material sense to start making mental models of how he might change it. There’s sure to be a decent depth on whatever biological system his planet originally developed. It would be handy for some of my own experiments, along with progressing the development of my terraforming trees.
<Do you seriously need to keep developing those horrifying things?>
I’ve got some future goals with them, so yes, Ben grinned, imagining some of what would be possible as his experiments progressed further. As it is, my progress on that front has been miles higher now that I have abomination source; you can expect some exciting future uses for them.
<Have I mentioned yet how much I hate that the system decided to name you as a source of abominations in this reality?>
Really? ‘Cause I love it. Not going to lie, the system deciding that I’m a source of something can’t help but make me feel a little special, don’t you think?
<Could you become a source for something normal then? Kindness? Compassion? Mercy?>
Considering the way I materialize, I’d happily take something like ‘matter source’, Ben told him while he worked, confirming the design he wanted to go with, even after doing his best to take his time and becoming increasingly aware of just how hard it would be to keep himself from finishing in the next couple of minutes, let alone the next couple of hours. Honestly, besides that, I’m not sure what else I could get a source skill for. I don’t see anything else I have awakening to one, and if source skills always grow from production skills, then I’m just out of luck.
<No, I’m not comfortable letting myself believe that. You’re going to get something along the lines of ‘outsider source’ or something equally horrific and unimaginable, I just know it.>
Listen, I genuinely love the vote of confidence you have in me, Myriad, but that’s a bit much. How would I even go about making outsiders? Open a hole in reality, materialize ensouled life out there, let the chaos mutate it so it can run off… yeah, actually, if I can figure out how to safely open holes in reality or get Dewdrop’s help, that actually wouldn’t be too hard now that I think about it, but would something like that get me the skill outsider production? It would be the chaos mutating them so it wouldn’t actually be my fault, so I wouldn’t get the skill. What I’d actually need to do if I wanted a skill like that would be to somehow replicate the chaos in this reality… or maybe just replicate a different set of physics? That would mean I could just start trying to force a different set of rules on the universe instead of the sheer randomness that exists between universes, and considering I already have rule bender, that actually might be somewhat possible. Oh, or, I could start running simulations for life using foreign matter and materialize it in this universe. I know foreign matter typically just explodes violently, but maybe if it’s ensouled-
<Stop. For the love of all that’s good, just stop.> Myriad told him. <I didn’t bring that up to make you start seriously trying to figure it out.>
I mean, with the way I think, that’s actually on you. You can’t put an idea in my head and expect me to not explore it a bit, Ben said in his defense, warping the church walls to show scenes of animals of all sorts, one end displaying ancient forms that shifted and changed subtly the further one went until at the other end it showed their modern, domesticated counterparts before taking a break, forcing himself to stop for a few minutes before he’d begin painting them. Besides, it was an interesting idea. Why wouldn’t I think about it a bit?
<Common decency?>
Excuse you, a member of my household and one of your more powerful believers happens to be an outsider, what’s so indecent about them?
<You’re impossible, you know that?> Myriad sighed in his head, making Ben laugh.
No, I’m-
His thoughts cut off at the feeling he picked up around him. A dozen divinities on all sides appeared as his mind moved at its highest frame of reference, trying to understand what was happening, but too late.
The same instant it appeared, without delay for even his own mental prowess to slip between, the divinity surrounding him was used, leaving reality itself to crumble beneath his feet, pulling him and the entire church he was in out of the realm he belonged and into one so much deeper down below, fracturing everything he was in the process.
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