Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Spending a few hours more talking, Anailia seeming to simply relish the opportunity to spend the night with one she viewed as a daughter, eventually the goddess could put off her duties no longer and Thera was allowed to get a few hours of true sleep before waking up, rubbing her eyes as she did.

She knew she had things to do still, after all. One thing she hadn’t made the time for yesterday among everything else. Ben had basically died, and a village of people she’d cared about needed help, and more than that, both Mora and Delair had needed constant distraction after all they’d seen and been through. In all of that, thinking about taking a new job hadn’t been a glimmer in her mind but now, alone as she was with the smell of breakfast being cooked in the kitchen, she let herself touch her job crystal, seeing what new options were waiting for her.

AVAILABLE JOBS

MusicianBardDarkness mage: charm specializedStaff userHereticMathematicianApprentice chefMind userQueen of intelligenceKinSoul mageMana goddessGreat spirit

A list that left her mouth hanging open when she saw it. Despite the fact that in the last few times she’d taken a new job, her options had only ever been shrinking, she had been prepared for three of those new ones. Having her soul modified had granted her enough intelligence to gain her new queen option, having her body modified had granted her kin, with the knowledge that divine kin would be unlocked if she ever took it, and her current awakening had left her with soul mage, but that wasn’t all that was there.

Seeing mind user was a surprise, she hadn’t realized she’d acquired enough mind skills and levels to gain it, and seeing mana goddess was almost certainly a result of surpassing one million total mana, but what really caught her attention sat at the bottom of everything else, locking her eyes to it.

Great spirit. Something that wasn’t a job, but instead her paternal species.

But that’s not completely true either, is it? She wondered, seeing the option forcing her to think about what that role in her father’s race really meant. There’s only one great spirit for every affinity, and they lose the ability to reproduce with normal spirits when they become one, the fact that the system seems to let them get around that with mortals was a surprise to everyone. Being a great spirit is… What is it compared to a regular spirit? An elevation? A role? Metamorphosis or symbiosis or something else entirely?

She had wondered on the fact occasionally that the system had her listed as a succubus-spirit hybrid rather than a succubus-great spirit hybrid, as well as the fact that it didn’t mention that her line was from the earth spirits at all, but the fact that the system was willing to list it in such a way for her left only more questions she was sure she wouldn’t be getting any answers to, at least until she got to take it.

With the desire to do that feeling strong, even if it was almost certainly the wrong choice. She knew nothing about it as a job, what it would give her and what it would mean, and while she did have a few guesses, which one she had to go with was obvious, the words on her thoughts that same moment.

Soul mage.

Name: Thera Oress

Race: Succubus/Spirit Hybrid

Titles: Spirit Child, Madman’s lover, Spirit princess, Saintess, Destined holder of Spirit Empowering, Outsider slayer, Friend of Elementals, City Builder, First Spirit Goddess, First of the Faith

Jobs: Soul mage (lv0)

Previous Jobs: Beginner Dancer, Dancer, Apprentice mage, Earth mage, True mage, High earth mage, Spirit mage, Life mage, High life mage, Telekinetic mage, Adventurer, High telekinetic mage, High spirit mage, Master earth mage, Earth princess, Master life mage, Life princess, Saintess, Crystallization mage, Master adventurer, Queen of mana, Mana embodiment, Dark mage, High dark mage, Master dark mage, Dark princess, War mage, Annihilation mage, Homunculus creator, Chimera maker, Non-affinity mage, Construct mage, Professional dancer, Healer, Master spirit mage, Spirit embodiment, Empathy mage, High empathy mage, Barrier mage, High barrier mage, High crystallization mage, Master of all

Attribute:

Vitality: 8764Vitality recovery rate: 224/hrMana: 1,960,930Mana recovery rate: 1754/minStrength: 3158Agility: 3748Stamina: 5824Intelligence: 32848

Affinities:

Light: 4Life: 22Fire: 11Water: 14Air: 12Earth: 103Death: 3Dark: 43Space: 2Time: 1

Resistances:

Light: 5Life: 9Fire: 11Water: 16Air: 12Earth: 35Death: 13Dark: 42Space: 7Time: 8

Blessed skills:

Spiritual earth magic lv9*Spiritual dark magic lv8*

Passive skills:

World speak+Coordination lv8BindSpiritual mana enhancement lv4*Earth sense lv9Dark sight lv4Magic affinity lv7*Sacrilege lv1Sleep resistance lv4Dark sense lv6Earth inclination lv3Stress resistance lv2Intelligence enhancement lv3Great spirit thought structureIntegrated divine body lv3Vision enhancement lv0Soul goddess magic lv0**Spiritual healing enhancement lv0*Soul knowledge lv6Active skills:

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Calculate lv7Dance lv7String instrument lv6Woodwind instrument lv5Cleaning lv4Staff wielder lv3Meditation lv5Speed reading lv8Overwhelming non-affinity magic lv6*Mana empowering lv7*Cooking lv3Spirit comprehension lv9Blessings:

Anailia’s BlessingElvat’s life magic BlessingQuox’s BlessingEneth’s BlessingEarth Pantheon’s BlessingLife Pantheon’s BlessingDark Pantheon’s BlessingYuzu’s mana regeneration BlessingNon-Affinitied Pantheon’s BlessingCrafting Pantheon’s BlessingVelmet’s BlessingTrials:

Trial of Anailia and TolonaEarth TowerLife TowerDark TowerNon-Affinitied TowerCraftsmans’ Tower

The long list of notifications going off, Thera rummaged around to pull out her card once it was done, taking in all of the changes it held.

The new knowledge skill isn’t shocking considering the way Ben likes to teach, but getting levels to awakened skills I raised only yesterday feels unreal. I guess that’s what it means to take a third-tier job. Besides that, I’d been approaching a million mana for a while now, but after this, I’m almost at two million, she noticed, the number feeling unreal to her. Maybe that has to do with the great spirit job? Great spirits have one million mana and a skill level roughly equivalent to a contender, even if the broadness of their skill might make it more correct to say that they’re somewhere between being a contender and a third tier when compared to a mortal, so now that I’ve surpassed both, maybe the system is viewing me in a similar way? It’s the closest I can think, and it is interesting, but… wait.

As her eyes continued to drift down her card, Thera noticed the other changes in her, new levels and the growth in her other attributes, but there was one thing she hadn’t expected at all. While she’d heard the notification in her head declaring that she’d awakened her spiritual life magic to soul goddess magic, a name that felt like it had its own fair share of complications, the system had been silent about something else that had happened to the skill; it had become passive.

Considering that she’d struggled with a passive magic for so much of her life, she wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about such a development, but it did bring up a memory of something Vividus had once told her in the past. Any spirit’s magic would be listed as passive; that was how innate to them such a thing was. Maybe it was her heritage that had caused it to change at the third tier, or maybe it was a result of equipping different spells to her soul to release specific passive effects, but whatever the reason in the end, that was the result.

Not that this seems too bad, she told herself, trying to be conscious of her magic and feeling as it moved around to match her will. This seems controllably passive, unlike my charm. It’s something I’ll have to look at a bit more later. For now, there’s something else I should test.

Something that would undoubtedly leave Ben bemoaning the unfairness of the world, even if he would be happy for her, Thera’s luck when it came to what she’d get with her awakenings continued as the bonus skill she acquired for awakening her magic was itself gained at the second tier, something that should have been a roughly ten percent chance that she continued to beat the odds one, with spiritual healing enhancement being her reward.

An enhancement that would heal herself rather than boost any healing magic, the only way to know how well it would work was to test it, and with that, she materialized a small knife. That act making her pause once again as she did.

Despite how her control had grown, materializing still remained as a bit of a weakness of hers, the act always producing far more than she wanted unless she deeply concentrated, but despite the massive boost to her mana pool, what she’d just done was fine. Simple even, with the blade created perfectly matching her desires and brought another memory to mind.

Back when even her earth magic had been a struggle to control, after completing Anailia’s trial, her goddess had told her that growing more skilled in a wider range of magic beyond that narrow path would help her control as a whole and having done exactly that, it seemed she might have finally reached the ultimate endpoint of that. At the second tier, all of her magics had become essentially as usable as any normal mage could hope for and they’d continued to improve as she awakened more magics and raised her levels in them all, but now she’d taken a step past that. The benefits of reaching the third tier for her life magic were extending to her magics as a whole, leaving her control over all of them and the mana she held finally worthy of someone at that level.

An unexpected result of awakening that was perhaps one of the most satisfying of all to her, she couldn’t help but grin at it before going on with what she’d meant to test, using the small blade to leave a cut along her arm and watching as, without the intervention of any of her spells, the cut closed as it was being made, her limb completely uninjured when she took the knife away.

“With healing like that, I might be able to regrow one of my limbs even without magic if I need to,” she muttered in wonder. “All of this, I really have grown.”

There was surely more for her to discover too, but with that bit all done, it was time to get up. Breakfast had to be ready after all, and with everything she’d dealt with yesterday, a good meal was a necessity.

Stepping into the kitchen, the scene made her freeze.

There sat her family, Ben on a chair with Mora on his knee, her boyfriend clearly continuing to try to comfort the boy they were raising, and her aunt beside them both, but it was all almost hard to see compared to what was happening as she dealt with the new sense that came with her new skill, her soul sight showing a flood of souls coming in and out of existence around them as Ben quietly practiced, leaving her to mutter as she did.

“Amy was right, this is theologically horrifying.”

Having never been able to see it before, she’d never been able to grasp the scale of it, but thousands of souls were constantly blinking in and out of existence and she couldn’t imagine just how many more there’d be when he was working in the shop, taking in mana from his coat. With how much his soul could now be forced to store after all of the awakenings of his own, she wouldn’t have been surprised if millions or billions were being made each day, leaving her to shake her head.

“Out of curiosity, how many souls would you say you’ve made by this point?” She asked him, getting his attention away from Sonya and whatever she was doing as he looked her way and smiled.

“I passed soul one trillion a few days ago, and honestly, a little disappointed by it. I was really hoping hitting that mark would awaken my soul affinity, or at least get me a new title for it. Oh well, maybe I’ll get that awakening at ten trillion or hundred trillion.”

“If you don’t, are you going to keep doing it till you hit a quadrillion?” Mora wondered, long used to seeing it while Ben just laughed.

“Well, when I’m not using it for anything else, this is a pretty convenient way to passively train my mana. The bracelets I used to wear for that sort of thing keep needing to get bigger and bigger so they can’t really keep up, and hey, this is technically training for both my soul affinity and my soul source so I wouldn’t mind awakening either if I could. Since this is something I can do in the background, it’s not really a big deal.”

“Ignoring that,” Sonya cut in. “Thera, sweetheart, you mind coming over here and giving me a hand with this?”

“Hmm? Sure, with what?” She asked before walking over and seeing exactly what, trying not to scream at herself as she did.

HOW DID I FORGET TO REGROW HIS LEG?

Even with everything else that had been going on, that just felt more like negligence on her part more than anything else, but he’d just been taking it so well. After he’d made himself a prosthetic, he’d been walking around normally without an issue, and he hadn’t even bothered mentioning it.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt though, she was well aware that despite everything he went through, he somehow still had never acquired pain resistance and before even intending to she was helping him regrow the limb, the new passive nature of her magic made obvious there as it began to regrow, even as her eyes were drawn to his soul.

His magic resistance enhancement awakened.

It was no wonder her aunt had struggled to get more than a few inches of leg grown despite however long she’d worked on it, even with her own awakened life magic. Despite the fact that Ben’s demigod nature had significantly increased his natural healing rate and, as such, increased everyone else’s ability to heal him in return, if magic itself had just become drastically less effective on him than larger injuries like that would become a significantly greater worry.

Which means I might need to devote more practice to some non-affinitied healing spells.

As things were she could deal with it, especially since she was now a soul mage and had practically endless mana to throw at it, but now that he’d crossed that awakening barrier for that skill she didn’t doubt it would grow more in the future. It never hurt to prepare for such things before they could become a problem, with that new task on her mind leaving her to shake her head before focusing on the rest of them.

“Alright, so what’s up for the day then?”

“I’m thinking family time, with the only issue being that I’ll need to pop into the shop real quick, both to make something and to make sure that Delair isn’t going to show up for regular lessons. If she does, I’ll probably bring her back here if that sounds good?”

“It does. And you, Aunty?”

“I am supposed to be going back to the hospital today but I’m going to do a bit of work and then come back early,” she said, reaching out to rub Mora’s back and give the boy a gentle smile. “Things have been too eventful. I’d like to be here with you for at least a bit if I can.”

Thera gave her aunt a smile, appreciating the thought. It had only been a day; it was all still too fresh. They hadn’t even been able to properly explain what had happened yesterday to Sonya since the kids had been with them and they didn’t want to bring it up around them, but her aunt could tell it had taken its toll and her presence would be appreciated. Thera needed to be strong for Mora, but having her aunt with them would help them all.