Alright, think I’m ready to give this a try.
While Thera slept beside him and he conversed with the gods in the heavens above, down below, Ben worked in the background, confirming how his new understanding of matter and souls had reduced the cost of making either, as well as modelled a problem he’d been having in his head, finally feeling like he had a solution that led him to cut off a piece of his soul and give it shape, producing the enchanting skill with little effort.
Something he’d originally expected to take a few more days of effort and far more fragments of his essence, his brief stay in hell had left him an unexpected shortcut to not only that, but to many other skills too. He’d seen his own skills, present within his soul and with a level of detail incomparable to anything the gods could look at them with, and through that had refined his understanding of how to make them, cutting out potentially weeks of practice as he immediately materialized that skill on everyone within his range, and not ending there.
Seeing himself so completely had left him with a level of comprehension that paired well with anything he had a god’s skill blueprint for, so long as he held the skill as well, and immediately proved it by taking another piece of himself to make artisan’s touch and shared it just as freely, moving onto knowledge skills after, where he needed a few more attempts to become so flexible.
His original ones were plants, material, biology, traps, and physics after all, not skills that many would particularly care about, but they had grown into a general knowledge skill and, through that, could be used to build backwards into any knowledge skill he had a blueprint for, and after the last meeting, the number of those was many.
He hadn’t just been looking for which gods had supported him or not after all, he’d been looking for anything useful in their memories, constantly flashing out his soul to steal their knowledge without them knowing, and that had left him with all of the skills the world’s total pantheon held, even if some were more relevant to him than others.
But, when it came to knowledge skills, Ben was at least willing to spend a few bits of his soul learning to make them for each affinity, giving him the ability to materialize them onto the many mages of the world, with his girlfriend being the first. He’d already given her artisan’s touch, just as he’d given to anyone else within his reach, but as for the rest, he focused on what she’d be able to use, giving her the knowledge skills for earth, life, death, and dark, with all of them instantly reaching the ninth level the second they touched her soul.
A shame that no god’s made a non-affinitied knowledge. Seriously, the gods who rule over those magics have been slacking, but at the very least, this puts her in a good position to awaken a general knowledge skill which could come in handy in the future.
He examined the rest in his range as well, giving them all whatever the appropriate knowledge would be and, feeling the demis and dryads both in his range, couldn’t help but try to do more too. None of the divine had a plant knowledge in their heads, and none had bothered creating a soul knowledge either, but even without those blueprints, Ben felt he could do it himself. At least when it came to knowledge skills, Ben now felt like he had an incredibly solid foundation for designing his own and with that got to work, spending only another hour on the two ideas before he had them complete, leaving him feeling proud as he finished.
And now that’s two designs done without using a blueprint, he smiled to himself. Considering how much relevant knowledge I have on them, this isn’t exactly the most impressive accomplishment, but still, that was a big step out of the way. I think it’s time I start working on designs I didn’t get from the gods more seriously.
There were still plenty that the gods had made which he found interesting and would even want for himself one day, but they weren’t skills that would help him with his current goals, leaving Ben to focus on what to make next, with the roadmap for how to progress being simple.
What he wanted most for himself was inclinations, so he would start making inclinations focused on the areas he had already had proficiency in before he’d begin trying to create the ones he didn’t have to boost his own talents. He would pass on creating an evil inclination, even if he was personally fine with it, there were many who would object to having such a thing appear on their status, but destruction probably wouldn’t come off as inherently bad to most people, and making soul and defense inclinations would be entirely benign.
If anything, Ben just hoped that making and distributing such an uncommon skill class would lead to the discovery and creation of more unknown skills for him to get on his rings and perhaps even gain for himself one day but, once he succeeded in making those three, he could move on to the greater task of making the inclinations he wanted for himself.
Enchanting, magic, non-affinitied magic… could I just make a general, non-affinitied inclination instead of a non-affinitied magic inclination? Let it cover everything instead of just my magics? If I can, then I’ll do both. Why not get those bonuses too if it’s possible, but I’ll see how the odds look after the first two. With those done and every bonus towards my enchanting that I can realistically get, I’ll move on to making a sacrilege inclination next to push that up to the third tier… Ugh, or would it just be better to do it after I make an enchanting inclination to make sure I have the time I’d need to grow it? I don’t know how long any of these are going to take, and as much as I want to push my enchanting to the third tier, having a skill I feel guaranteed I’d get to that level might be a lot more handy to me for the growth bonuses alone. Plus, getting that to the third-tier would mean three different authorities that I could help grow the world around me with, and more importantly, getting those three bonuses on evil god of sacrilege. At that level, maybe getting it to the fourth tier wouldn’t have to be a dream.
… Okay, getting it to the fourth tier before the next wave is still going to be a dream when that's less than two months away, but it makes my odds of managing that farther into the future a lot more possible. God, if this was the sort of thing I could pull off before the next wave, then my odds of winning would stop feeling like five percent and change to a guaranteed victory.
The thought left him to sigh to himself by the end. Even if he wanted to, and even with the total weight of his mind briefly devoted to the problem, he still had to admit that something like that still wasn’t going to be possible. Crossing the third tier was a high enough hurdle; the amount he’d have to dedicate to something previously unconceived of was an entirely different matter.
I should be focusing on other things instead of dreaming about something that’s not going to happen. Like instead, after I make those four or five inclinations, I could make something purely for myself. I could finally get the inclination inclination that I’ve always dreamed of. Maybe apocalyptic inclination too.
The more of that skill class he created, presumably, the easier making new ones would get as he built up experience, and given it was a class that would make it easier for him to learn new skills that fell under a given category and could also lower his mana costs, they really were a priority, but once he made enough, it would potentially be nice to gain the ability to make other skills from scratch too. He could finally create his own pain resistance for one, if he was going to continue to fail at developing the skill for himself despite everything he went through, or he could spend months, even years studying and testing if that meant he’d be able to get the elusive bestowal.
Really, even if it would be easy for me to learn any non-affinitied magic or combat skill now because of how I think and learn, in the future, it might be better for me to try and make the skills themselves instead of training for them to give me a broader range of practice. It might slow me down a bit at first, but as I eventually perfect skill creation, it might help in the long run.
…Or I could just learn them the regular way, pop down into hell to glean as much info on the skill structures as possible, and then use that information from there to learn how to design them and give them out. It might not be the same level of practice as designing them without that additional info might give me, meaning it would be a slower learning curve for designing other skills completely from scratch, but that’s not exactly a big deal either. Whatever, I’ll decide if I ever get to that point, and then I’ll have all of the fun in the world figuring out all of the skills I can create.
Ultimately, with that power, there was an endless amount of things he wanted to make, and with a lifespan that would likely surpass three hundred years, so long as he was alive for it, he’d have the time to invent skills previously undreamt of by both the gods and the wider world. The only thing rushing him from what would have been nothing more than the fun of discovery and inventing was the feeling of the world’s timer slowly ticking down, that he did his best to ignore. Every project was a series of steps after all, and with Thera still asleep beside him and a while before he’d need to start preparing breakfast, he was happy to begin the first, using everything he’d seen in his soul and his growing experience to begin trying to create destruction inclination from scratch.