Chapter 661

Chapter 661

The gods were making it obvious that they’d been waiting for him when he got there that night, the three of them practically staring him down by the time he’d arrived with the one he gave his faith being the first to speak.

“Ben, what job did you take.”

It wasn’t a question, they needed to know. The amount of experience it required was frankly unexplainable and word was sure to get out about it eventually when he saw Verbum or the soul mages again. It was better they knew sooner than later.

“Okay, but first I just want you to remember that I have a very good reason for why I picked it-”

“No stalling, what is it already?”

“World killer.”

“...Of course it is.”

Myriad sounded tired more than anything else when he gave the reveal, making Ben feel practically compelled to at least try to explain himself.

“When I looked at my options I wanted to pick a job that would give me the best bonuses across the board that I could get. After feeling how good those soul mage bonuses were, how could I not? From the name alone, it seemed like the most likely candidate to give me them.”

“Maybe so but the experience cost is frankly terrible,” Nare sighed. “No matter how right you were, the requirement is outrageous.”

“Yeah, so here's the thing. It wasn’t what I expected when I took it. I wouldn’t call this a third-tier job, I’d say it’s a fourth-tier one. Everything it gave me had divine bonuses.”

That changed the feeling of the realm immediately, with Helori rushing towards him, already ready to plunge her arms into his chest.

“There’s no record of any job that powerful ever existing before,” She said in her excitement while she touched his soul, Ben just letting it happen in exchange for the more positive energy she was bringing to the realm than had been there only moments before. “What exactly did you get your bonuses to?”

“We’re ignoring that. I don’t even know what the skill does yet. Which reminds me, I need to hunt down Verbum tomorrow.”

“...Okay, despite the timing of that I promise I’m not going to hunt the guy for sport.”

“So then what now?” Nare asked. “How many more levels do you need to finish the job and how do you possibly plan on getting them?”

“Well as for the first, I only need five levels which actually isn’t that bad, if you guys had all hung on for just a couple more minutes then I might have even been done. As for finishing it though... I don’t know. It’s a job I got for destroying planets, the way to acquire experience seems pretty cut and dry to me. Are there any others in this solar system?”

“None, that was part of why we all eventually settled on it. Didn’t need to worry about any potential neighbours.”

“In that case, there’s always the option of borrowing one of our world's newest residents to take me to some barren rock in space. If I do it in the void, materializing antimatter would actually be significantly safer so I could just fire it off from orbit and let Ogilt zap me away a safe distance before it hits. That would mean immediately violating my goal of avoiding overusing my jacket, but... no, that’s going to be a last resort so what else can I do? I doubt I’d get enough experience for any levels just by getting to the second tier of a skill but it’s possible I’d get a level or two by reaching the third and material manipulation is close, with the only problem being that when I already have a goal of awakening two completely different skills I don’t have time to be trying to think about that too, no matter how crazy the bonuses are for it. So I don’t know. I’ll give it a couple weeks and then if I don’t get any better ideas we’ll get a little apocalyptic out there.”

“I really, really don’t like that option,” Myriad told him. “Ignoring the risk to yourself because I don’t care how safe it might seem, that’s still going to carry a lot of risk, there’s other issues to consider too. One of which being that in an explosion like that, antimatter could easily be blown away afterwards back into space before it can annihilate itself with any standard matter. Even if it probably wouldn’t be much, it could still cause plenty of problems for others down the line, especially any void races that could potentially pass by.”

“...Okay, that’s worth considering. Admittedly, I don’t want to be responsible for anyone dying so I’ll keep working on other options until that’s the only one left. I’m a little clever sometimes, I’ll hopefully think of something.”

“There really is no reason to try and force a solution in the next couple weeks Ben, a job like that, if you’re ever able to finish it then you can call it a win and the bonuses you enjoying would make that fact worth it.”

“What can I tell you, I’m an impatient sort. Either way, this is just going to be something in the back of my mind while I focus on other things so it’s yet one more big, impossible goal to go along with the other two. On top of it, I need to get stronger in general and maybe I’ll try and force a few more awakenings now that I got this at least. I can imagine extraction enhancement might awaken into something interesting and with all of the bonuses on it that should be easy, plus I wouldn’t mind awakening any of my inclination skills either since at least two of them are going to be related to the skills I want getting to the third tier. There might be more to focus on too, but I’ll figure that out after bothering Verbum. Plus I have a buttload of things to figure out if I can make to make life easier and let me focus on my leveling without having to worry about getting work dropped on me. Okay, this is all fine.”

“Until you burn out.”

“If I’m afraid of that happening then I’ll give myself a single day off to enjoy. For now though, you guys do your thing. I’ve got a night of strategizing and evil thoughts ahead of me.”