Chapter 246: CH246

The two had been walking arm in arm, enjoying the festive feeling of the contest as they browsed what was available, but whipped around to his as they heard their names, seeing not only Ben, but Steph and Will cheerfully waving to them, happy to have run into members of their own species after so long and getting them to rush over in excitement as hugs were exchanged while Thera watched from the side.

“We thought we might see a couple classmates here, but we didn’t expect one to be participating,” Jake said with a laugh as he looked at what side of the table Ben was on.

“Especially for the invitee section,” Amy told them, looking surprised. “How did you manage that?”

“Ha, well my teacher was the one who was invited, he just really didn’t want to,” Ben explained. “But how are you guys? Living your best otherworldly life?”

“Ugh, well Jake is at least,” Amy told them as she shot her companion a look that carried none of the cheer they seemed to have while walking together. “Sounds like you are too though Ben. Rumour’s going around you’re married to a big shot.”

At that Ben put an arm around Thera’s shoulders, giving his widest smile and keeping her from slinking away. “Yet, this is my lovely bride-to-be, Thera.”

“Um, hello,” She awkwardly told them, wishing to leave. “Ignore him, that whole thing is a sham. Is every human we meet going to bring it up?”

“Ha, probably,” Jake told them as he extended a hand to her, a greeting she backed away from.

“Sorry, I can’t touch people.”

“Ah, no worries. We know someone who can’t talk to people because of their culture.”

“She can’t touch you because she’s a succubus you idiot,” Amy sighed. “Did you not pay attention at all when we got the news?”

“That was over a year ago, cut me some slack,” He told her, before switching back to Ben, his eyes almost glowing with excitement. “More importantly, you’re marrying a succubus! Dude, jealous!”

The comment got him a swift elbow to the ribs from Amy, making Will laugh as Steph shot her a sympathetic look.

“Well, like Thera said, it’s a bit of a sham,” Ben explained. “I was kind of tricked into proposing at a time she couldn’t decline. Worked out for me though, the inlaws are good to me,” He chuckled, getting a comparatively lighter elbow from Thera.

“If you keep getting their help eventually they’ll really force you to marry me,” She sighed.

“Hey, if it happens it happens, you’ll just have to put up with me for my short short human life.”

“Well, at least not that short, right?” Jake told him cheerfully, getting another sharp elbow from Amy as she hissed at him through gritted teeth.

“Are you seriously saying that to the only one of us without awakened skills you moron?”

His eyes opened wide in horror as both Steph and Wil looked to the side, feeling uncomfortable as Ben had no clue what anyone was talking about.

“Shit, sorry man, my bad.”

“Uh, no problem I guess,” He said before asking the obvious question. “But what does my lifespan have to do with not having an awakened skill?”

This time everyone looked uncomfortable, with even Thera seeming to tense beneath her hood. They all knew he didn’t have one, but what they had been unaware of was that he apparently didn’t understand all of the changes that awakening a skill did to a person.

It was Thera who spoke up as the others looked into one another's eyes, trying to see which among them would have the uncomfortable task of telling him what he was the sole person from their class to miss out on.

“Ben, awakening a skill doesn’t just make you better at the skill,” She explained, choosing her words carefully. “It can change you on a deeper, fundamental level. One of the effects being that it slows down your aging, with the first time awakening a skill increasing your base remaining lifespan by about fifty percent.”

He wasn’t even surprised to hear it, all he could do was sigh as she explained it to him. “Yeah, sure, I might as well also die faster than anyone else I came to this planet with, that seems to line up with my luck. So if a person was able to keep awakening their skills would they be immortal? I feel like I would have at least heard about that if it was the case.”

“No, the increase is halved each time, a person would never manage to last longer than double their remaining lifespan.”

“Er, sorry man,” Jake said again as Ben was pinching his brow.

“No, don’t worry about it,” Ben waved him off. “It’s my own fault I didn’t know this, I should have actually taken the time to learn about awakened skills while I was at the church.”

He’d read plenty of books on awakened magics at this point, but none of them had delved into the topic of what happens when the skill awakens, instead focusing on what can be done with it after based on a variety of factors and just what it awakens into. The fact that he didn’t know may have been because he hadn’t been in a good place to learn about it at the time, but it was a hole in his knowledge he was going to have to get Myriad to help fill later when it wouldn’t bring down the mood of everyone around him.

“Ahem, so what have you all been up to since our untimely deaths?” Will asked, unsubtly changing the topic to everyone's gratitude. “We’ve been busy with our training, and Ben’s been working on his skill the best he can when he isn’t trying to give Steph a panic attack with his letters-”

“Hey, what am I doing that’s so bad?” He yelled in his defense, getting a tired look from Steph.

“The stuff you feel comfortable telling me is horrifying enough that I’m not sure I want to know whatever you’re obviously hiding.”

“Come on, we’ve all been on this planet for a while guys, we’ve all seen our fair share of life and death situations.”

Jake and Amy shot Will a questioning look, to which he only gave an affirming nod before getting back on track.

“Anyway, we haven’t heard much about you guys. Come on, share some details.”

“Probably the same as the rest of you,” Amy began. “Just training. I have a bunch of combat teachers who help me while Jake works on his magic.”

“Oh, what magic skills do you have?” Thera asked, overcome with curiosity now that the topic was on one that held her interest and getting a wide smile for the question.

“All of them.”

Steph and Will seemed like they were already aware, but Ben and Thera were shocked as they both tried to put together just what he meant by that. There was a hard limit of five for the number of blessed skills a person could be born with and with ten affinities of magic that made it impossible, except for one skill that allowed an exception.

“Does that mean you have the archmagic skill?” Ben asked, curiosity stripping away his discomfort from the prior conversation as he got a nod of confirmation. The magic skill was one that a person could be born with if they happened to have a decent affinity with all types of magic, and since Jake had come to the world with awakened ones that meant he had to have the higher form of it. Not only would he be able to use the skill for any of the standard magics, he’d be able to easily use spells for any combined ones on top of that.

“Not only the archmagic skill, but the non-affinity magic skill as well.”

Ben could only let out a low, impressed whistle as Thera was stunned silent. Not only did his old classmate have an extremely rare skill that let him use all affinitied magics, he had an even rarer one that let him use all non-affinitied magics too.

“Damn man, sounds like you won the jackpot. Don’t tell me you're the most important summoned hero on the planet or something?”

“Er, more like the sixth,” He said bashfully as he scratched his head. “We actually know the most important one, but pretty much anyone who arrived with a skill at the third tier is considered more important than me.”

“He’s probably getting the most resources put into him though,” Amy told them. “Since nobody expects a third-tier skill holder to level up at all, he’s viewed as a priority to get as high as possible. If only he thought a bit more, maybe they’d see some proper payoff.”

“Wait, back up, some people arrived with skills at the third tier?” Ben asked in surprise. It was a lot to take in. He knew everyone that was summoned was powerful, at least more so than he was, but he at least understood how rare a third-tier skill user was. It was possible that the number of them on the planet doubled as a result of the hero summoning.

“Man, you didn’t learn too much about the rest of the groups, huh?” Jake asked before doubling over from the force of Amy’s elbow.

“And you don’t know how to think before you speak,” She told him as he used some healing magic on himself. “I swear, he obviously had some more important things going on at the time.”

“Ha, it’s no problem, really,” Ben said in the other man's defense, feeling a little bad to watch the display. “Admittedly I wasn’t in the best place at the time, but I really do need to learn some of this stuff.”

“No no, if Amy doesn’t do this then I might say something I really shouldn’t around someone I shouldn’t,” He said as he waved off Ben’s concern. “If it wasn’t her it would be my teachers, and they’re a lot less gentle.”

The talk of teachers managed to draw Thera’s attention all of the more. “When you say teachers, you wouldn’t happen to mean-”

“The archmage and the non-affinity mage, yeah. It’s not as great as it sounds. Also the occasional lesson from the soul mage, but that’s not as often.”

Except for the soul mage, the others were more people Ben knew nothing about, but at the very least he was able to pick up that they were bigshots from the context. If Jake really was having the most resources put into his training of any summoned, then they had to be impressive, all the more so if they each had one of the same awakened skills that he did.

The rest continued to pester him with questions for a while, curious about what sort of training Jake was going through as Steph pulled the conversation back to a more general topic.

“Anyway, what brings you guys here?” She asked, curious about how long they’d be able to see them. “We came because we thought we might be able to see Ben, but did you guys just come for some sightseeing?”

“We actually live in town,” Amy answered with a bit of defeat in her voice. “I’ve been trying to find a weapon that suits me for a while now, and since this contest is on we decided to do a walk around to see if anything manages to catch my eye.”

“What’s giving you trouble with finding a weapon?” Ben asked now that the conversation was focusing on his area of expertise. “I’d think that you’d be able to get a lot of countries to open their vaults to you, are you just not seeing anything cool enough?”

“Mmh, suffering from choice,” she admitted as Jake began fiddling with some of the weapons Ben had out to sell. “A few of the skills I came with were weapons mastery, high all-affinity augmentation, and high non-affinity augmentation. I don’t want to be in a place where I could use one weapon but need another, and then there’s finding something that could handle the full range of my augmentations as well.”

Interesting. He thought to himself as he felt his eyes light up. He hadn’t known how to spend an entire week on making something, but it felt like an interesting challenge had fallen directly into his lap as he probed further.

“I’m pretty well-read in skills, but I have to admit I’ve only heard of your weapons mastery. I didn't even know non-affinity magics could work as an augmentation, or that there was an archmagic version of the skill.”

“Apparently I’m the first to get them,” She admitted, not wanting to create any awkward situations like Jake had. “The issue is that since all of my skills are so broad, it can make deciding tough.”

I’ll say, what sort of weapon do you make someone that can do anything? You’d want to play to her strengths, but with so many there’s the chance of missing out on something. Maybe just fill a spatial bag with good quality weapons and let her go wild? I mean, if you got a good enough bag with enough space you could let her just keep pulling them again and again, but that would be pretty wasteful and you’d need to either collect any you dropped as you changed them or else keep buying new ones. Of course, that shouldn’t be a problem for her, but it still doesn’t feel convenient either.

As he let himself fall into the problem, thinking on just how he would go about trying to make her an item or items that would let her take advantage of the full range of her abilities, he couldn’t help but become more and more excited. This was a challenge, something he could sink days into trying to solve.

“Alright alright, tell you what,” He said confidently,” If you’d be willing to let me borrow all of Jake's teachers for a day I’ll make you something good, I promise it will be worth your while.”

She didn’t know what to say, with the main issue being that she didn’t know how to decline without being rude. She’d gotten to see a lot of weapons since coming to the world, with a lot of people making some for her specifically. Even coming to see the people participating in the contest was more of an unlikely hope. Even if she felt bad for him, she couldn’t depend on someone who only had a level one crafting skill when they arrived, they needed someone who had years of experience behind them. It was Jake who took the task of letting him down gently from her, though not in a way she expected.

“Deal,” He said, holding out a hand that Ben shook. “But only if she’s satisfied with the final product, if she’s not then I can’t help you. My teachers are busy people after all.”

“Fair enough, I’ll do my best to impress,” He said happily, already thinking on just what he would make and what he would ask if he managed to make something good enough.

Masters of affinitied magic, non-affinitied magic, and soul magic huh? Just you wait Inux, I’m on the right track to getting you a new body far ahead of schedule if they can help refine any of my plans and theories.

“How exactly are you going to explain this to them?” Amy muttered to him as Jake shrugged her off.

“I’m sure they’ll understand. Anyway, looks like they’re nearby. How would you guys like to meet my teachers, as well as the most important summoned hero on the planet?” He said happily, waving to a group of three in the distance, drawing everyone's eyes to them.

Each was a member of a different race, with Ben assuming the youngest one was the other summoned hero. Having a human shape, Ben didn’t have a point of reference to compare the girl against. Her sky-blue skin twinkled in the sunlight, seeming to imply it was covered in tiny, jewel-like scales, while both her eyes and hair were similar to Thera’s, being the same solid colour, only silver instead of gold.

The other two had to be some of Jake's teachers, not that Ben could tell who was who. Also hominid types, they both appeared to be in their thirties, despite how useless of a judgement that was for races that aged at different rates and might live for hundreds of years. The first of the two also had blue skin, but of a much darker shade, as well as a black mane of hair running down her back and feet that seemed to be backwards, at least from his perspective. The other one appeared to be a short human woman for all intents and purposes except for their ears which would put any elephant to shame, hanging to their side like a cloak and swaying as they walked.

Amy seemed annoyed by their appearance, but Ben paid his old classmate no mind, instead focusing on each of them, trying to decipher from any visual clues what they all might specialize in, only for the younger girl to stop as she looked them all over herself, seeming to focus on Ben in a panic before pulling the other blue woman’s ear to her mouth, a frown forming on her face with whatever was being said.

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Uh, Myriad? You around buddy? I’m getting a bit of a bad feeling and I sure would like someone with some mind-reading nearby to either warn me or put me at ease.

Unfortunately for him, his god was silent as the woman acted.

In a flash she appeared before him, throwing both Jake and Amy to the side as the earth sprung up around him, encasing his body in stone and trapping him, giving only just enough space to breathe.

The festive atmosphere around them fell silent as people who saw what happened ran in a panic, some away, but others forward as the other contestants he’d spent the first few hours chatting with grabbed their weapons from their tables, jumping forward as they saw him be attacked.

“What are you?” the woman hissed at him, earthen spikes emerging from the stone that trapped him and pressing into his neck before anyone that looked like they were coming to his aid could reach.

Anyone but Falk.

In a flash, far faster than Ben would ever expect the yeti could move, he’d grabbed one of the sword-sized knives from the table of the cyclops and had it pressed against the woman's throat as the words left her mouth, a mana so black wrapping the weapon as his teacher covered it with his magic that it didn’t matter that Ben’s mana sense wasn’t aligned with detecting death spells, he was sure anyone could see it.

She cast a quick glance to the side, seeing who had been able to go for an attack before she could react and her eyes briefly widened in shock.

”Aren’t you-”

“Aye,” Falk confirmed, not letting her get another word out. “And if you want to harm my apprentice archmage then first you’ll have to deal with me.”

“I was warned about some troubling details of his status. I have to ensure the security of the ones I look after.”

“As do I, and the details of the boy's status are his own business,” he growled before turning his attention to the girl who’d spoken in her ear that seemed to cause it all, prompting Jake to rush in front of her as she trembled in the giant man's angry gaze. “Just as mine are, so keep whatever those eyes see to yourself little soul mage and we won’t have any trouble.”

Soul mage. Even in the situation he found himself in, Ben couldn’t help but pick up on the word. Is she actually the soul mage and the one with the ears is the other worlder? I mean, it’s possible, but what if…

He hadn’t been told just what made the third-tier skill user they knew so important, but if she really was a soul mage then that would explain it. He’d already been told just how important they were, if the world suddenly had two then of course she was important. Even better, on top of that, she seemed to have an analysis skill.

Whatever she was, Jake and Amy backed away with the girl, unsure what was going on while neither his teacher nor the archmage backed down.

It was Thera who freed him in the end, doing something unexpected. She subtly touched the stone binding him and passed as much mana through it as she could, treating it as if it were a staff and making it crumble to dust in her touch.

The moment he was free, both people seemed to want to act as the other craftsmen held their weapons at the ready, not sure what was going on as Ben called out, trying to calm things down.

“Woah woah woah, let’s all be cool here, there’s no reason we can’t talk about what she saw that’s giving you issues,” He said, trying to show a level of cooperation to lower the tension. “If I had to guess, you’re worried about my little partial body skill, my ‘S’ skill, or my enemy title, right?” He asked as he tried to keep it vague. His god had warned him early on that such things could create a dangerously bad impression if people knew about them, and it looked like he was right.

The archmage looked to his teacher as he edged the knife away, revealing a long, dark cut on her neck that she began to heal as she spoke to him. “Very well, let’s hear the reason.”

He let out a sigh of relief as tensions lowered a little as he spoke. “My partial body skill is the result of an organ transplant to save my life in the middle of the woods, many people can verify this, including three with me. As for the other two, well that’s kind of a result of treating beings like my enemy as people.”

“How could treating them as people possibly get you a title or a skill like that?” She demanded, mercifully respecting his desire to keep them to himself and not saying what they are.

“Well, when a person important to my enemy tried to murder me in cold blood, I made sure he and nobody associated with him would be dumb enough to try that again. This is another thing that can be verified by both my lovely teacher, as well as the current queen of Anailia.”

This was technically a lie, the only ones that would truly be able to verify it was the gods and the church of Eneth, but he threw out names that he was sure would speak for him, with Falk verifying what was said immediately.

“Uliel, I’m not sure what Yuzu saw, but I swear he’s not a bad dude,” Jake said in his defense as Amy agreed with him, and she backed down just as templars began making their way to the scene, finally making the archmage lower her guard.

“Very well, It seems I’d acted rashly. I will explain the situation,” She said before walking off like nothing had happened, the long-eared woman following behind and complaining about her rash actions the entire time.

Ben let out a very stressed breath as she went away, giving a quick thanks to all of the craftsmen that had immediately rushed to his aid before turning to his teacher.

“Falk, I want you to know I love you; and Thera, thanks for the help there, I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I didn’t either, glad it worked out.”

“Boy, I swear I told you not to get into any trouble,” Falk told him as he shook his head. “I wasn’t even gone that long.”

“Hey this is basically not my fault,” He said in his defense. “I can’t help what skills I have. Mostly.”

The yeti didn’t look convinced as he looked to the templars not far off. “Alright, well I’m going to go make sure those two don’t try to embellish anything about what happened. Think you can keep anyone from wanting to kill you if I leave you alone for five minutes?”

“Um, soft maybe.”

As his teacher walked away, grumbling about having to deal with even more stress, Amy, Jake, and their friend turned to him, looking deeply uncomfortable about what just happened.

“Gotta say, you handle being attacked unusually calmly,” Amy said with an awkward laugh, wondering just what skills and title he had to get that sort of reaction.

“Ha, hey we’ve all been on this world for over two years now. If I’ve been attacked once or twice or thrice or ten times… well either way I’m pretty used to it, and since she didn’t immediately go for the kill it’s not so bad. I can only imagine what the rest of you are dealing with since you’re acting as your nation's heroes.”

The three of them all looked to Steph and Will before turning to Thera, trying to get some sort of confirmation that he was serious and getting exhausted nods all around.

“So uh, what skills do you have exactly that got that sort of reaction?” Jake asked, unable to hide his curiosity about what could be so bad for his teacher to almost murder a former classmate as the blue girl beside him leaned up and whispered in his ear. “Also, Yuzu says sorry.”

“No worries, and you know, this and that,” He said with no intention of answering in public given how things had just turned out and assumed they’d be told later anyway; before directing his attention to the soul mage before him. “More importantly, you have an awakened analysis skill! Oh man, I have so many questions for you!” He said, his eyes gleaming as he leaned towards her, making her pull back in fear and resulting in Amy standing in front of her.

“She doesn’t. Soul mages are able to see the information on the soul, including a person's status, but they can’t interact with the system itself.”

“Wait, so I can’t ask about any of my titles? Freaking lame.”

He’d thought he’d finally found a way to get a bit more information on the ones he had given that he had no clue what effects they had, but it looked like that would still be a distant dream.

“Hold it, titles plural?” Jake asked as he picked up on what he’d said. “How many of them do you have?”

“A couple; you know how it is,” He again told them vaguely. “In that case, you mind if I ask you some questions about soul magic then Yuzu, I’ve got a lot I want to know and there doesn’t seem to be many detailed books on the topic.”

She looked unsure, turning to both Jake and Amy for help, the latter of whom stepped forward to speak for her. “If you make her a list she can write out whatever answers she knows for you later, but for cultural reasons she can’t speak to men.”

“Uh, seems like she was talking to Jake just fine?”

“Until they’re officially married, she can only talk to Jake,” Amy explained as she pinched her brow in annoyance. “Don’t ask me why, the opposite is true of the men on her world as well. And yes, it’s as inconvenient as it sounds.”

Jake laughed uncomfortably at the reveal as the other three humans jaws dropped, with Thera unsure enough of human culture to understand the issue as they all looked to Amy, question clear in their eyes since they’d seen the two of them walking arm in arm earlier through the crowd.

“Yes, I’m seeing him too,” She said with a sigh. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet,” Will said, staring into Jake. “Okay, Ben when you’re done it looks like the three of us are having a guy’s night. We are definitely talking about this.”

“Oh, then the four of us can have a girl’s night!” Steph said excitedly, with two of the three other women seeming to want to escape immediately before she continued talking. “It really is so hard to make friends when everyone around knows that you came from another world and have an awakened skill. It would be so nice to be able to have the chance to hang out and talk and just feel normal for a while.”

Thera looked to Ben, all but crying for help under her hood as he shot her a grin. “Sounds like fun, I’ll make up some amulets for you guys so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“You’re the best Ben!” Steph beamed at him as he laughed. Even if Thera was feeling shy about it, he didn’t like hearing that Steph was feeling lonely. If the two could become closer that would be great, and since they already knew each other from their demon hunt he didn’t think it would be that bad.

As for Jake, Amy, and Yuzu, they could see that they weren’t getting out of it and agreed to meet up at the table as things closed for the day before walking off to meet Jake's teachers, leaving the rest of them alone for the time being.

“Well,” Ben began, seeing all of them dealing with very different emotions from all that just happened. “This was definitely one way to start things today.”

 

---

“Did you really need to attack him in the middle of a fucking crowd?” The non-affinitied mage Vasta complained to Uliel as they and the other three walked through the streets together after sorting things out with the templars. “Is it so hard to talk to someone before you go in for a fight? If you thought there was a risk of danger you could have gone ahead and pulled them away to ask first.”

“These three are in my care, it’s my job to ensure their safety for as long as that’s true,” She said, brushing off the complaint.

“As if you didn’t create more trouble for everyone over what turned out to be nothing. He’s not the first person in the world to get a questionable skill or title and he won’t be the last, you can’t just attack people for it.”

“So what did he have that was so bad anyway?” Amy asked the question she and Jake were dying to know. “It must have been pretty intense.”

Yuzu leaned in, opening her mouth to answer in a way that none in their surroundings would hear her voice as Vasta pulled her away.

“Don’t,” She said sternly. “I’ve warned you plenty that peeking into other people's statuses would get you in trouble eventually and now look what happened. Not to mention the boy's teacher. Was that who I think it is?”

“Seems so,” Uliel said, not meeting the other mage’s eyes as she let out a groan.

“Yuzu, if you saw his status as well you keep that to yourself to your dying day. He’s intensely private about it like a lot of people are, and getting on his bad side could cause all sorts of trouble for us. That goes the same for the boy, I don’t care how curious you all are, if I find out you’ve told them whatever you saw then none of you are getting off easy. If you’re his friends then get him to tell you himself.”

Having all been on her bad side before, none of them wanted to see just how poorly they’d get off and let the matter drop if it was as serious as she seemed to believe, though at the same time Jake spoke up.

“Sooo, by the way, he’s going to try to make a weapon for Amy, and if she likes it I told him that both of you and Elvat would spend a day answering some questions for him as payment.”

“... Why would you do that though?” Vasta asked as she held her face, with Uliel looking just as annoyed to learn she’d been volunteered for something.

“Don’t worry,” Amy told them, trying to keep them calm while cursing Jake for bringing that up while they were already in a bad mood. “He came to the world with skills at only level zero and one, there’s no way he’ll make something I’d be satisfied with.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jake said, his eyes shining.

“And what makes you so confident?” Amy asked.

“Cause unlike any of you, I actually looked at his items.”