“You know what? I’m just going to say it. I think the meeting earlier went really well.”
“You mean aside from the part where instead of just scaring the gods who tried to let the others get away with their attempted murder, you decided to scare everyone?” Myriad asked him, in good spirits despite everything he’d seen his apostle do before.
“Hey, I made it clear who’s in my good books and who’s not. Just because I am now undeniably more powerful than any of you lot up here doesn’t mean there’s anything for the rest of you to worry about. So long as nobody decides they want me dead again, but honestly, pointing knives at everyone who thought of trying anything seemed to have done a decent job of showing how outclassed they were. I should be fine for a while.”
“And it seems Myriad’s going to be fine forever,” Helori said, giving the cube a side glance and felt just how much more powerful he’d become, having claimed the total available faith of the twenty defeated gods, along with twenty percent of what the coward pantheon had held, with both instantly going towards boosting Myriad to the realm of one of the most powerful among the divine on the planet, losing to only a couple larger gods who’d been hoarding their faith for millennia as they waited for the invasion. “Couldn’t have gotten some of that for me and Nare too?”
“I’m Myriad’s apostle,” Ben shrugged. “And it’s not like Nare is doing badly enough for himself to need it. If you’re feeling tight, try asking Myriad nicely and I’m sure he’ll share.”
“And while that’s all well and good,” Nare spoke up, as happy as either of the other two had been to see Ben alive. “What now? You fairly clearly just asserted your authority. I assume you have some plans in mind?”
“I always have plans,” Ben grinned. “I basically got seven tower blessings out of that, so all things considered, I’m actually feeling great right now, but this was a decent wake-up call that I still need more power-”
“No, you don’t,” Myriad cut in, only to be ignored.
“And frankly, now I’m in a great position to make sure I can grow even more.”
“If you’re thinking I’m going to spend all the faith you just earned me on you, then you have to realize I really do need to invest most of it back into the war effort.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you do, but assuming we win and I live, then you’ll be earning faith from all of those gods forever. You could at least spend a little on me from time to time when I ask, right?”
“... You asked for all of the defeated gods' faith for the next ten thousand years and twenty percent from the coward gods for as long as you’re alive. What am I missing here that’s going to earn me faith forever?”
“Simple. If my soul isn’t destroyed fighting Oaun and I ascend one day to proper godhood, then as far as I’m concerned, I’m not dead, and I’ll be making those gods continue to pay you. At which point you should be giving approximately half to me, since I’m the one earning it for you.”
The three with him fell silent, realizing they should have expected Ben’s revenge to be of the eternal sort, given his nature, even if it left Helori with a question.
“Then why did you say ten thousand years for the defeated gods?”
“To give them false hope,” Ben shrugged. “If I don’t change my mind about killing them later, then for as long as they’re receiving faith, I don’t want them to enjoy a single drop of it. Attacking me is the sort of mistake I don’t want anyone being foolish enough to make a second time, and this is a decent enough deterrent. Eating them only earned me about a thousand points in any given attribute total, and while it was neat to see that it wasn’t just my mana growing like any time Jagal gave me one of her fruits, it’s not like that’s a big enough motivator to finish them off at this point, but you never know what the future holds.”
“Fine,” Myriad said, as indifferent to those gods' eternal punishments as Ben was, even without the benefits he was going to receive taken into account. “By this point, they should have expected as much from you. What else then?”
“Well, I need you to get in touch with Phixth. We need to arrange my next job, and I’ll need two open spots in the party.”
“Mmm, we’re out of third tiers but I do know you said you might have a way around it. Don’t tell me one of them is going to be Dewdrop?”
“Ding ding ding! Good guess, of course it is.”
Since his resident outsider had a third-tier skill, that meant it would have at least one third tier job option to exploit, so long as he could talk the lazy scrungle into helping, but he was confident enough he’d succeed at that, leaving his god to guess at the second.
“And Valaria, then? You’d said before you want to awaken her. Should I assume my poor priestess is going to be subjected to yet another bout of your ridiculous training?”
“Subjected is a strong word, but she’s not who I have in mind for this run, no. Maybe the next one after, though.”
“Then?”
“A surprise,” Ben grinned. “But trust me, if everything goes well, then you’re going to absolutely love it.”
“You only say I’m going to love things when it’s something that’s going to give me a panic attack.”
“Nah, not only is it going to be great for you, it’s actually going to be good for the world as a whole.”
“Then tell me who you’re going to use and what you’re going to do.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because then you might try to stop me.”
“Ugh, Ben,” Myriad groaned, already feeling stressed so soon after getting his apostle back. “Why do you have to be like this?”
“Because, unlike so many gods of this world who are happy to waste their faith or let their egos get in the way of using some handy resources, I’m actually pretty focused on the survival of the planet. With everything else going on, I actually made some crazy progress on that front too. That trip to hell was way more beneficial than I would have expected.”
With the way he now understood matter, having experienced it under the power of his combined alien sense, the cost of materializing had been more than cut in half, and when it came to making souls, it went even beyond that. His understanding in that regard was incomparable thanks to being able to observe them in a way he’d never been able to before, looking at the other damned, the ones he would make, and even his own, showing him that there was still more he’d need to test when experimenting with soulcraft, with that being a project for the day itself. As things were, while Thera slept beside him, his body below was continuing on smaller tasks, letting himself take it slightly easier than usual given the weight of the day prior.
“Well, fine,” Myriad told him. “Phixth wasn’t expecting you to be able to keep up with how you’d been helping with different jobs before with all of the known third tiers done, so this will be a welcomed surprise for him. How soon are you looking to start?”
“Ideally? Tomorrow evening. I could tell as I finished up the last one that there’s already a not-insignificant number of people I’m linked to who don’t have any more options left in general. A couple more job runs like the last one and I’ll have the majority of the planet done, with only a few people left who seem to have an unusual amount of options.”
“Like you?”
“I actually don’t have that many options left. If I was benefitting from someone else doing this, I’d probably be done all of mine by now.”
“I more meant the total number of jobs you’ve had.”
“Well, in that case, nobody has as many as me,” Ben grinned. “But a few come close. Depending on how things go, we might get a couple more unlocking the expert job by the time I really run out of options for speeding the world through what they have. Actually, Thera’s really close herself, so that’s something to look forward to as well.”
“Mmh, at this point, it’s just a shock you haven’t managed to unlock an advanced version of that job.”
“Ugh, I wish. With how many I’ve gone through by this point, I can’t imagine how many more I’ll need to do before the system decides I should get something like that again. If expert was unlocked with fifty and I’m currently sitting at more than a hundred, then I’m going to need what? Five hundred? If king and queen jobs are any indication, when the system is rewarding jobs based on quantities, it likes multiples of ten.”
“I don’t think I want to imagine what you’ll be like by the time you’ve unlocked five hundred jobs.”
“Well, as things are, that looks like a ways off yet. I’d need to start branching out into entirely different skill classes since it looks like I’m beginning to tap out of the ones I focus on.”
“You’ve told me before that if we win, you plan on learning everything, and given the way I’ve seen you teach, that looks frighteningly likely. If every non-affinitied magic and every combat skill you’ll learn is going to eventually yield you a job, followed by master branches and whatever those will unlock for you after, plus the fact that you still seem to be getting sacrilege aligned jobs, as well as whatever other stranger ones pop up due to combinations of the skills you have and what you’ve unlocked in the past, and I actually want to stop considering all of this because it’s making me sick.”
“Ha, okay, maybe I’m really not too far off. Still, since the requirement is avoiding my brutal and bloody murder, as well as the survival of the world, I’m nowhere near close enough to getting that for it to benefit me, or to see if I’m even right about getting an advanced version of the job by that point.”
“Please, you’re an absolute menace, and we’re close enough now that the only thing you have to worry about is the next wave. Even if it’s not unlocking an advanced expert job, I fully expect some other bit of nonsense from you in the next few weeks.”