Chapter 240: Thera's Perpective

Chapter 240: Thera's Perpective

As she woke up the next day, Thera couldn’t help but be excited for whatever it had in store. The city was filled with all sorts of sights after all, and since Ben had decided to keep a limit on how much time he put towards examining the trial, that meant they’d have plenty of time to explore the city together, seeing shows and historic sites, trying food and learning about the various cultures with a strong presence in the city, it would be like a real vacation, at least until his competition started.

They were usually both pretty busy throughout most of the week. With him constantly at the shop training under her uncle and herself, no longer just practicing her earth magic but devoting plenty of days to work at the clinic, they typically just had evenings and their two hunting days together each week, the fact that they’d be able to just relax and have fun together left her smiling from ear to ear as she got up and dressed before heading over to his room and seeing a note stuck to the door addressed to both her and her uncle.

“How is he always getting drawn into all of this?” she asked herself with a shake of her head as she read it over. They’d only been in town for two days and he already had trouble with another god.

Well, I guess I should have expected as much. He is an apostle and this is allfaith after all, he was bound to be roped into something.

She felt a little disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to monopolize his time the way she’d hoped, but if it was for his god then she understood well enough, and at the very least he was thoughtful about it. She went into his room and ate the breakfast he’d prepared earlier for her before leaving through the gate, once again ending up at her homeland far sooner than she’d expected.

As she made it to her family home she found the same work area that Ben had been using the last time. It seemed that her family hadn’t bothered taking it apart, instead leaving it in case he returned any time soon, a judgment that had paid off quickly enough as she heard both Ben and her father chatting away within, with her dad breaking out into a powerful laugh before she revealed herself.

“Haha, wonderful, you really are more than Pelenia or I could have ever hoped for,” Abrus said with cheer. “When we’d heard just what happened to Thera during your quest together my wife applied a lot of pressure to them as a consequence, but if we’d know you’d gone so far as to almost kill their demigod and left a weapon prepared to go off at the doorstep of their church then maybe she wouldn’t have felt the need to put them so thoroughly in their place. No wonder you needed to buy some more magic materials from us.”

It wasn’t hard to work out what her father was talking about, it just left her to wonder what sort of pressure her mother saw fit to apply as their conversation went on.

“Well, I was going to need to buy some from you eventually anyway Abrus, I can’t stretch my mythril and mana crystals forever.”

“Of course, we don’t mind selling them to you at a good price since you don’t need too much so stop by whenever you’re out. Honestly, with the way we keep making braces it might just be easier to pay you in materials,” Her dad mused before switching back to the previous topic. “But really Ben, my wife and I couldn’t be happier to know Thera has someone by her side who’d go so far to look out for her. You sure you don’t want to marry her? We could hold a ceremony immediately, make things good and official.”

Oh my god dad do you bring this up whenever I’m not around?

She couldn’t help but cringe hearing the question and almost walked in then and there, only to stop herself before she touched the door handle. Her mind flashed to the same things she’d heard Ben say during the guild quest and she found herself overwhelmingly curious about what he would say to it when he didn’t think she was around to hear it.

“Look Abrus, your daughter is one of the most important people to me in this world,” Ben said with a sigh. “And she’s been extra clear she doesn’t want anything like that out of life.”

She felt a smile break out on her face hearing that again. I’m important to him. It just felt good to hear any time he said it.

“Well, maybe Thera will change her mind on that, isn’t that right honey?” Her father called out, making it clear he knew she was there as she tried to push away her cheerful expression as she walked in.

“Dad, don’t you have anything better to do than bother Ben about this?” She asked in the face of his smug grin. “Why do you and mom have to bring this up each time we’re here?”

“Oh, I’m just trying to get a feel for things is all,” He told her with a laugh. “Don’t blame me too much for wanting to see my daughter happy, and your mom still wants to see the faces of her grandchildren one day.”

“Not happening.”

She did as she was asked, using her earth magic to carefully help them travel through the sky under the strength of her raw mana, but giving a voice to a question the further out they got.

“So how exactly is running off to the middle of the woods going to keep you from completely screwing over your god? Kind of seems like we should be back in allfaith and you should be preaching on the streets. Or maybe run over to craftsman’s tower and try to spread just how handy it is for enchanters to have your connect skill.”

“Both excellent options, but they’d take too long for too low of a reward. Don’t worry, Helori is going to regret getting my hopes up.”

He seemed confident as Thera brought them down through the tree branches, staff at the ready in case anything attacked since they were miles from the gate and likely few adventurers nearby to help in an emergency, but as she worried about that, he placed a hand against a tree briefly before pulling out a nail and hammering it in before moving to the next one, explaining what he was doing as he went.

“So the competition between Myriad and Helori is to see who can gather the most faith, specifically without relying on getting any from current believers. It’s as obvious she wanted this to be a contest to see who could gain the most new believers over the course of a week as it is that she must already have a few people on the edge of joining her, but I don’t plan on playing that game. I learned a while ago that gods can get faith from non-sapient sources when Fredrick started giving some off, I’m just trying to take advantage of that. Each nail is made with mythril so each enchantment should be able to sustain itself and it’s built to be a mental compulsion to pray to Myriad. I’m basically turning trees into faith generators.”

“You’re using mind control to get your god believers,” She said in exasperation as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “You get how that sounds, right?”

“I’m just doing it on trees!” he yelled in his defense, before muttering in a quieter voice. “For today at least. Anyway, it lets me test out a theory about the tree tamer job. Like other tamer jobs, it gains experience through both how well something is tamed, and how many of something is tamed. Given the strength of the compulsion and the fact that I have a few thousand nails made up to hammer away, I might be able to fly through this faster than the time I took the mind user job.”

She shook her head, understanding what he was saying but still questioning the ethics of it, not to mention the practicality. “But will that even be enough for you to win? If something like this was so efficient then other gods would already be doing it.”

“Well, I’m told plants give less faith and of a lower quality, but that shouldn’t matter too much for a few reasons. First, the challenge said nothing of the quality of faith, meaning it doesn’t matter how low it is so long as we get enough, and second and most importantly is how Helori will be getting faith. I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t be able to get more than a handful of believers, and she’d be gathering the most faith as they prayed to her, which a typical person isn’t going to do for hours on end. A hypnotized tree on the other hand has no reason to stop. These things are just going to be pumping out prayer.”

“And that’s how you’re going to complete your quest too?”

“Partially,” He admitted with a shrug. “But the rest is tomorrow's thing.”

Thera couldn’t help but sigh. It seemed like he was going to be busy for all of his free time now, meaning all of her hopes of exploring the city together were going out the window.

Well, it’s not like I don’t get it, he has his responsibilities and they keep him pretty busy. I can deal with it.

Even if she thought that though, it had her feeling glum, a fact Ben easily picked up on as he made his way from one tree to the next.

“Sorry, I know you have a lot you want to do here so I’ll make it up to you the best I can. I know it sucks that I’m going to have to waste an hour or two on this a day, but I’ll do my best to put all of my effort into making sure the rest of our time in the city is fun.”

“It’s okay, I know you have... wait only an hour or two a day?”

“Yeah, I was hoping I could wake up early, make some nails, meet you to hammer them into a bunch of trees and then move on with the day. It will probably kill the morning a bit, but then we can still enjoy exploring in the afternoon. I know you were looking forward to it.”

A cheerful laugh burst from her as Ben spoke. Even when he was busy with his god he was still going out of his way for her. “Sure, that sounds great to me.”