Chapter 637

Chapter 637

What did Ben need to have on him in the event he succeeded in his prison break? Usually, any items he created were meant to help shore up his various weaknesses but as he looked at himself with a critical eye he couldn’t help but ask just how many of those he still had.

He’d just beaten his lack of mana in a huge way with the tens of millions stored in his coat; that meant he practically had no need to worry about how he’d attack. Even if breaking down the barrier was going to take every drop he was going to shove into his soul, he’d still have tens of millions more to grab from to do it all over again. It was something he was even doing as he sat there, overfilling his soul by hundreds of thousands of points at a time, dealing with the pain it caused to keep training his soul production for the massive experience it was giving his job.

No, with one exception, he didn’t need to worry about how he’d be fighting, leaving only two other things he cared about solving. His defense and his speed.

The first of which was partially solved too. For what little convenience he had in his cell, Ben hadn’t been stripped. His jacket was still on him, a high legendary item with all of the defenses he’d been able to cram on it when he’d had both a workshop and his full skill library to do it with.

The issue that left was for all of his other bits, or at least just his legs and head. As inconvenient as it would have been if he’d lost a hand while escaping, he’d manage and he didn’t want to lose what finger dexterity he had given some of what he might’ve had to do.

No, what mattered was ensuring that nothing shot a hole through his face or took him out at the legs, leaving him to focus in those directions as he began materializing and making all he could.

“Hmm? What is it now?” Tenth asked, seeing the work Ben was putting in but not knowing that droves of what was coming into existence were pure magic materials as Ben shaped them with his power.

“Preparing for my big prison break, I just need the right tools for the right job before I finally give it a try.”

“I see.”

The galwaxian asked no more, having given up on trying to talk Ben out of whatever hope he’d felt and instead let the man work with what he had.

With the first being a helmet, though an untraditional one given it looked more like a choker than anything else and fit snugly around his neck until he activated the enchantments on it, creating a layer of mana loosely around his head.

It was far from comfortable but that wasn’t the main complaint he had for it as he looked down at his hands and the sparse rings on his fingers. He had his magic ones, with the main being both high levels of archmagic and non-affinity magic, but that was it. None of the other skills he’d carefully collected to use aspects of and enhance his work were there to use and enjoy, making him swear to himself that should he escape he’d find a way to carry the rest with him at all times for cases just such as that.

But dear god, don’t let me have a lot more cases like this, pretty please. He silently begged while he continued his work, weaving an unusual thread through the pants he was wearing, one composed of both mythril and white mana crystal to power the enchantments he intended to place as he shaped his mana into something that would act as a flexible barrier, at least to an extent.

He had his speed, he had his defense, and he had his attack at least for the most part, with the one exception being a single vulnerability he wanted to fix.

He didn’t know how many demons would have magic nullification but the one he’d already run into had been bad enough and he’d seen it staring into his cell a couple more times during his observation. Not only would anything capable of that sort of magic be able to get past his defenses, he’d have trouble killing it, leaving the task feeling nearly impossible if not for the single cheat he had at his disposal.

An unknown material which he hypothesized acted as an opposite and counterpart to orichalcum, a material that seemed resistant to any magical effects which until that point had remained unnamed, with that changing then and there as he overfilled his soul with a million points of mana, bringing the shape he needed forth in the end.

A single bullet of stopstone.

Or at least the start of one. Even as he pushed his soul to its limits to materialize it he still barely got any, forcing him to repeat the process, materializing two more layers on top of what he’d first created until he had a usable size.

He looked it over while managing the pain creating it had put him through. It was something he needed to make sure he got right the first time for all of the ones he was going to produce, there’d be no redoing it. A magic material which by all accounts seemed immune to magic itself, Ben could only hope he wouldn’t be put in a position to discover that magic nullification was the exception as he took the time to make five more, having healthy breaks between each one to let his soul recover from the strain he kept putting on it and ending with six identical examples.

That left how to shoot them. Usually, he’d just build the enchantments on a gun to handle that sort of thing but the very property he wanted in the bullets was what was going to keep that from working. Luckily though, there was a simple workaround.

Spending his mana, he created a six-shooter revolver, adding all of the enchantments he typically would to such a thing, not to act on the bullets he’d just laboured to create, but instead what he was placing behind each one.

Thin pellets of steel, no bigger than the bullets they’d be resting against, would be acting as the target of the enchantments he’d created. Even if he couldn’t move the stopstone with magic, he could move something else and have that propel it out in the end. It wasn’t a perfect solution, especially since he couldn’t attach the pellets to each bullet without losing the very property he’d wanted to create, but it was good enough.

And that’s all I can ever strive for, right? Good enough is fine with the resources I have.

Maybe there was more he could do, maybe he could make plan after plan and tool after tool, but he was confident with what he had. Once he practiced and got used to his shoes he’d finally make his attempt after materializing everything he could and creating souls themselves. He’d see if he could escape.

And if this was worth all of the effort.