Chapter 388

Chapter 388

Opening his eyes after leaving the archive, Ben couldn’t help but let out a disappointed groan before letting his mind out of it.

“So it looks like that also failed.”

In the hours spent flying from the dryad’s village back to the gate, he’d been in there, experiencing almost ten days subjectively because of the time-dilation effect acting on his mind, only to fail in the goal he’d gone in with, awakening meditation.

When he’d asked himself how he’d ever conceivably do it, that had been the most obvious option. His entire time in there he’d been using the skill with all of his minds, hoping against hope that would be enough to push the skill past its limits, all to grab hold of the rewards for such an act.

While getting the skill to the second tier had no obvious value in and of itself, the purpose of that bit of work hadn’t been to let him meditate even better. No, what he had been after was the other benefit there was to be had, the bonuses to his attributes.

Even if it would have just been a six percent increase that still would have been really really nice to get. He thought with a sigh. Looks like my efforts just aren’t paying off.

Huh, that’s actually a pretty interesting point. Obviously, I can’t waste all of that time, but I’m sure I’ll be getting a few sleepless nights while I’m here. If I find myself exhausted enough I could enter the archive for an hour a day to squeeze out a day's worth of training and see if that gets me the results. It at least has to be getting me closer, right?

Just you wait, I’m on my way to zen mastery. After I awaken that skill then I’ll be reaching levels of reality you gods don’t even know exist.

“So no luck then?” Thera asked him, noticing his eyes open up as they rushed through the clouds.

“Not this time. Why does this sort of thing have to be so hard?”N0v3lRealm was the platform where this chapter was initially revealed on N0v3l.B1n.

“Of course it’s hard. The fact that you have three is abnormal enough, trying to get two more is insane.”

“So you don’t think I’ll manage?”

“I didn’t say that, it’s just that if you do and word gets out then you’ll have to deal with even more people trying to recruit you.”

“Okay, note to self, make sure if I awaken any more skills it’s done in private.”

He let a couple of his minds be consumed by the thought while the rest focused on other things as they finally made it to the gate, traveling through it and the space beyond to finally end up at their ultimate destination, craftsman’s tower.

Much like the magic towers, it was a city on a coast, being an important site for all races regardless of where they lived with each of them needing access to it for the chance to test themselves and grow further by taking advantage of the massive trial the gods had left them, along with the resources that had gathered in the land as a result of craftsmen coming from the world over to face it.

Despite that similarity though, the city itself was far more vast. They could see the tower that made the city what it was stretching into the sky, waiting to be challenged, but at the opposite end, off in the distance there was the beam of light jutting up, waiting for the thirty short days until the battle for the planet began.

If it was Earth, he would have expected the land to have already been evacuated, but the world he was on had the key difference of the gate network, ready to ease the evacuation as people moved to different cities without the threat so close by for the months that the demons poured out of them.

Ben knew the words were an understatement. He could see how tightly Quilith clenched his fists before him, the feelings of it all trapped and simmering beneath the surface in a way that would never really leave.

“And your people?”

“Oh, for the most part, it's what you’d expect. It’s not like we didn’t already have the infrastructure set up to deal with it when it came, but there were a few accidents as the light vanished and a few more who’d decided they didn’t want to live under an artificial sky. Ultimately it’s fine. My people will be able to go on for thousands of years given how far we’ve prepared for all of this.”

Thousands of years trapped on a dying planet. Another one as doomed as the one he was trapped on, each one ticking by with their own different countdowns as he sighed.

“Go home today Quilith. I’m sure there’s a lot you’d rather be doing right now than spending time with me.”

“I... Yes, actually, I think I will. Thank you for your understanding Ben, I will be back in a month when things aren’t quite so fresh. Try to keep safe.”

With that the alien vanished, letting Ben lay back and close his eyes, forcing his mind into his god’s realm.

“Ben, there’s nothing you can do, there’s no reason to let this bother you so much,” Myriad told him as soon as he arrived, all concern being waved off the second after.

“I’m not bothered and I know there’s nothing I can do. Since I have the time I just want to look at the summoning spell again is all, so if you would?”

Myriad just sighed as he brought up the spell in all of its majesty, Ben craning his neck as he tried to take it in with all of his minds despite the headache as Helori got off his god to stand beside him.

“I understand that what he said was upsetting, but you’ve already looked at this for months without any real progress,” She told him, looking at it as well. “A couple decent theories on how to lower the cost doesn’t mean much without the knowledge on how to put them into practice.”

“I’m just having a look,” He said again as he eyes focused on different parts, trying to make sense of how it would all work together as he once again faced the simple truth that no matter how powerful his thoughts were, they couldn’t handle all he was seeing.

There was simply too much going on, but if the problem was too big it just needed to be split into smaller, more manageable pieces.

“Myriad, do me a favour and slice off the top meter of this and bring it down for me to look at.”

He at least understood where magic was going in and out of it, as well as the direction where both mana and faith were moving for it, all he needed to do was find a place to start. If looking at the full picture hadn’t worked after months, then he just needed to cut it into smaller sections.

As his god did as he asked, cutting off the top layer of the spell and bringing it down for Ben to look at, it was still too much so he did it again and again, removing entire swaths of the spell and leaving him with a one by one meter cube of it, the frontmost right corner. As just a piece of a greater whole it was useless, like trying to infer the workings of a rocket from a single screw, but it was at a scale where he could finally have something to begin to examine as he put the full force of his thoughts to memorizing even the most minute detail, and feeling for the first time that he just might be on the right track.

“Okay, this could be the start of something,” He muttered. “Myriad, do me a favour and cut up the entire spell into sections like this. It might take some time, but I think this could be the beginning of me actually making some progress so long as I can keep going from here.”

Cutting it up had been such a small change, but one that instantly made his wheels turn as he thought of where he’d go next, trying to decipher the less obvious components of the spell, seeing how their structure worked together and how the mana moved as it traveled through each section and how that all built up into a final product. It was going to be long, tedious work, but that was exactly what he excelled at as the gods with him mentally prepared for a long night of theory-crafting and study.