Chapter 466

Chapter 466

He woke up early as per usual, ready to start the day, only to get the surprise of finding Thera up ahead of him.

“Mmh, hey,” She muttered, eyes still closed while she pressed up next to him.

“Hey, you’re up early.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Mind telling aunty I won’t be at the clinic today? I really want to try and get a bit more rest.”

“Sure, I’ll let her know and come right back.”

“Don’t be dumb, you don’t need to be stuck here doing nothing just because I’m in a funk. If I wake up before you’re home then I’ll stop by the shop, okay?”

“You sure? I really don’t mind sticking around.”

“I am, I think a little time to myself would be for the best right now.”

Leaning up to kiss him, trying to look a bit better than she felt, it wasn’t long before she fell back into an uneasy sleep, leaving Ben worried but off to prepare breakfast for himself and Sonya.

It wasn’t long until she was up as well, meeting him in the kitchen and looking worried as he laid out the meal.

“So how’s she doing?”

“Not great,” He admitted. “She says she won’t be at the clinic today, I don’t think she got much rest.”

“So can you tell me what’s going on?” She asked. “This doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with the issue in town, I’d expect her to be a lot more mad than anything.”

“Issue in town?”

He had no clue what Sonya could be talking about and the question left her dropping her head to the table, obviously not enjoying whatever the problem was herself.

“Well, it’s a little complicated and super annoying, but the long and short of it is word got out that she has the saintess title, along with just who she and I are related to. It’s been bothersome enough for me to deal with so I’d expect she might end up having it a bit worse.”

Wow, this is some horrifically bad timing. Thera is going to hate it when she finds out.

Ben knew she didn’t like the title because of the expectations behind it, and she hadn’t told anyone in town other than him about her relationship with her mother, the queen of Anailia. Even if he understood that it didn’t mean she held any power in her homeland, that didn’t change the fact that others might think otherwise, warping their perception of her all of the more.

The first thing he did was create a heavily modified version of a spell that Thera was well acquainted with at this point. Petrification. In any normal case, it would always be done using a combination of both earth and life mana, but he intended to substitute the other for light instead.

There was a good reason that affinity typically wasn’t used for the spell though. While light had its healing aspects, same as life magic, it also had a purifying aspect that could make using it for what was by all accounts a curse difficult. The two just didn’t want to combine in such a way, making the very first option an already challenging task as he was first forced to suppress any level of purification to the extreme, leaving only the aspects that related to the body.

Once he was sure he had it, all that was left was calculating the strength it would need to just fall short of beating his resistances once all of his skills that could affect it were taken into consideration before he was confident in saying he was done.

“Myriad, Myriad, Myriad,” He sang. “Pay attention to me so I don’t accidentally kill myself.”

“Petrification bracelet. It shouldn’t actually be able to petrify me but it's going to be super close. What do you think?”

“Hey, you know what they say, no pain, no gain. My other bracelets work great for letting me raise my stats, I’ve just gotta hope this will do its job and let me raise my resistance enhancement.”

“You don’t have to tell me, I’m well aware.”

It was one of his more problematic skills in that sense, making it an undesirable one to level, but he’d already considered that. The fact that it raised his resistances to other magics on top of it was a boon, and he now lived with two awakened life mages. He could take the risk that raising it would bring.

“I always do.”

With that he slid it on, bracing for the worst but not getting it. He was sure of the quality of his work, but with things like that there was always a little voice in his head whispering what if. Still, it had turned out fine, leaving him nothing but an unpleasant tingling feeling in his arm but nothing petrifying in the end.

“Okay, that worked fine so I just need a couple more.”

“...I’m not super thrilled about what just happened there.”

“Okay, fine whatever. On to the next one.”

He had two more bands to make and already plenty of ideas on how to do it so got to work dividing up the remaining affinities.

The first was a grouping of air, water, and fire, built in a way to subtly affect his body, thinning his blood when it flowed past the bracelet and warming his cells to as much as they could take before causing issues. It was even more uncomfortable than the first one, becoming the most unpleasant of anything he was wearing but was another not causing any immediate harm. His blood would return to a normal state as it flowed through his body and if it ever felt too warm he could just shift it higher or lower to give any one area a break.

It was the last one he knew he was going to hate but began working on anyway. The enchantment on it was simple, stretching and shrinking both space and time for anything that was going to be within the ring, namely his arm. He built it to be subtle enough that his body wasn’t going to be torn apart, but the moment he wore it he knew it was going to be the hardest to ignore. He could feel how it acted on his body and it took more conscious effort than anything else he would wear to ignore.

Finishing didn’t come with an immediate level but he believed that was only a matter of time.

And if it takes too long I’ll just make more with different effects. For now though, what should be next?

That hadn’t been a particularly long project, he hadn’t needed to make the bands since he was already wearing them and his enchanting was only ever growing quicker, meaning he’d only spent a couple minutes total. As he admired his work though he couldn’t help but feel a flash of genuine inspiration on how he should spend the rest of the day and wasted no time getting to work with his god still watching, feeling the sudden drive and excitement welling up in his apostle.