Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

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?”

“All of my attributes.”

“You won the lottery. Skills?”

“Ahem, my apocalyptic ones.”

While both Myriad and Nare looked justifiably horrified hearing that, Helori was still focused on the practical.

“Which exactly does that entail? A job that good, it had to have leveled every single one that applies.”

“Material manipulation, ill will, aim, hive mind, extraction enhancement, and bite enhancement. It also awakened my intelligence enhancement and gave me the skills destruction inclination and evil inclination.”

“Of fucking course it did,” Myriad muttered, with Helori not noticing the minor outburst while Nare gave the cube a comforting pat.

“And how easy have they been to level since?” She questioned. “I’d assume your awakening intelligence enhancement could have more to do with the attribute bonuses than the skill ones but at the same time, there’s no reason to think having a more powerful mind wouldn’t be viewed as something befitting the idea of causing an apocalypse. Personally, I find that more likely than biting things to be applicable.”

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“Same and easy would be putting it mildly. Both my new inclinations got up to level four today, I didn’t even have that easy of a time with soul inclination. I’m pretty sure I’ll have them at the ninth in a day or two if I make the effort. Hell, if I just spend the night here thinking about it then I’ll probably get another couple levels to my evil inclination so honestly I’m going to be doing that.”

“You know that’s not going to look good the next time someone gets a peek at your status,” Myriad sighed. “You do know that, right?”

“I mean, look, I’m not exactly thrilled to get a skill with that name either but there’s nothing I can do about it at this point and whether I like it or not, it’s basically going to be raising by itself with the bonuses I have on it. I might as well get it up as fast as possible to take advantage of it for all it’s worth. Besides, who’s to say what counts as an evil skill anyway? It feels pretty subjective to me.”

“You literally have one called ill will.”

“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.”