Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

“Alright, who’s talking shit?” Ben asked, stopping at the shop door as the new notification rang out in his head. “Seriously, what did I do to deserve that?”

“... Genuinely, if I ever find out who’s given me my last few titles, I’m going to get my revenge.”

It was a promise to himself, given the nature of his last five now. Even if titles were only capable of having beneficial effects on him, he wasn’t going to stand for the slander of it all.

But that can wait, he silently grumbled. I’ve got Myriad’s blueprint for connect in my head now; I just need to see if I can actually use it.

With the issues he was going to face trying already feeling numerous. Ben remembered when he first got the skill, his god had outlined what he’d put into making it. Mana, faith, and soul fragments, with himself only having access to two. At the very least, he had what was undeniably the most important component, but the rest he’d need to work to modify.

At least there’s one soul mage who’s walked a similar path before, he consoled himself. Even if the process she used was different as well, having a different way to look at things will only help in the long run.

That previous soul mage in turn had done basically everything she needed to with mana, albeit of the affinitied variety and once more different than himself. He couldn’t say for sure if he’d be able to directly materialize a skill through mana alone, but with what he did already know about soulcraft and the way it had let him construct blessings, he knew that his first attempts could only be done by using his soul as a medium.

But, with a smaller requirement than a blessing, Ben was able to make more attempts, even if he felt himself fail each one. While less essence was needed, to create a skill from nothing, what he used needed to be handled with more care, with each attempt only mangling the fragments he’d take from himself, leaving them useless by the end until already, he needed to finish.

At least getting something out of it in the form of his levels, any growth to eternal soul protection meant that he’d be able to practice more as his soul healed faster, and any growth to soul enhancement meant the same, with that skill boosting anything related to the nature of his soul. It might not have assisted him in his soul production at all, but it was providing some boost to the speed it would heal and his proficiency at manipulating it himself, even if that felt like a minor consolation in comparison to how his practice had turned out.

Mixed results, he sighed to himself. I failed every time, but at the very least, I figured out enough to be sure that it’s possible. I’ll be able to create and gift skills to people with a bit more practice. The issue is that currently, I can’t get that practice.

He’d let himself use enough of his soul that could have gone towards a single blessing, but given he’d just reached an agreement with the divine of the world to bless its more promising contenders, he needed to save up all that he could to keep that particular job from being a task of days. He wanted it done, the sooner the better, and then once he was, he could really devote himself to skill production.

Until then, though, I should be able to do one or two attempts each night and have my soul healed by morning, he compromised with himself, still wanting the practice he could get for his new power. And with those levels, at least I’ve got a bit more wiggle room too.

Sure, but let me bounce a question off you first. Do you think I’d have better odds of awakening my crafting if I properly shape and build everything, rather than just materializing?

Mmh, then we’ll aim for crafting and see how that goes. Either way, it’ll be nice to work with my hands.

The author’s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

With the scale of the task demanding he take his gate to his warehouse, bringing Delair to keep up her training through a clone while he himself began rearranging the space and created everything he needed, with new materials and materializers both set up, along with multiple forges for multiple homunculi to work through, and finally the tools to shape it all as he began, heating metal and cutting stone, bringing shape to the vision he had in his head.

Even if he was creating through flesh and strength rather than mana, he still needed to bring every available clone on deck if he wanted to get the work done that day as all of them moved, each one with a role to fill. Metals were alloyed then shaped; power sources were created as crystals were cut and set, and with it, enchantments were slowly placed where they needed to go, all under the watchful gaze of his god.

The deity grumbled, catching on to just what god his apostle was trying to make, only to be promptly ignored as Ben went on with his work, spending hours getting the pieces made to their proper specifications before it was time to move on to assembly, with that adding a new arrangement of enchantments that needed to be applied in the process as it slowly all came together. A construct that he could have only built inside of his warehouse, given the scale of it was larger than Sonya’s home as, by the end, all of the clones moved back for the real body to add the finishing plate, a gigantic cube now sitting before him.

“... Well, that’s underwhelming.”

“Simple, I had your blueprints. It looks like building this wasn’t significant enough to get me an awakening either-”

“But, to be honest, this was a little expected,” Ben went on. “Currently, it’s only high legendary, and when the gods you originally were merged into it, it was enough to push the design past what could exist in my layer of reality, which means I’ll have to hope it was getting so many mortal souls in it that pushed it to mythical first. I fill it up and if they start merging, then from there, I’ll have fulfilled the crafting gods’ goal and earned myself an upgraded blessing. All that’s left to do is to start.”

Myriad kept whining in the background, but Ben ignored him. Wearing the church of Myriad, Ben let himself overfill his soul for the first time since his newest awakening and began soul production, his hand placed firmly on the constructs cool metal form as he directed them all within it and didn’t stop, his new task of the day only waiting for the notification that would finish it.

“This isn’t working,” Ben muttered by the time Delair was beginning to clean up in the background. “Why isn’t this working? I’ve done everything right. There’s already almost a billion souls in this thing now, but there’s no sign to even hint that they might start merging.”

Myriad grumbled, still sore about having been recreated without a thought.

“Myriad, the only person I might lose to when it comes to making things is my teacher. I didn’t make this wrong, which means there’s only three options here. Either one, it requires a stretch of time that I can’t replicate as easily, two, the way your race could link their sub-brains to communicate was more necessary to the merging process than I wanted to hope, or three, you made it wrong.”

“No, but before you were you, you were a billion other people and thousands of them worked together to create the thing that became your body on a pre-system world. I don’t care how talented your people might have been, there’s no conceivable way they were better than me, which means you were having what would have almost certainly been tier one craftsmen, enchanters, and other mages working together to build this, letting little defects slip in. Follow the designs perfectly and you get the intended soul receptacle, but add in a hundred unknowable and unguessable micro-changes and we get you.”

“I sure hope it was just the time thing,” Ben sighed as he pulled out some of his voidstone before creating a new bracelet from it, with storage space in it not only big enough to hold the new construct, but with a time effect on it that would increase the passage significantly, all so he could keep hoping it might work if he just gave it a few weeks. “Low hopes though.”

“Actually going to get a bit worse for that second part before I finish,” Ben told him. “There’s one more thing I want to do.”

His god wasn’t given the chance to respond. This time, he wasn’t going to make anything from scratch, he wasn’t expecting what he was about to do to lead to any awakenings, but with everything Ben had learned since coming to the world, he took the designs Myriad had given him so long ago and refined them, redesigning the enchantments through the lens of how he himself would enchant which necessitated a change in every individual piece they’d be placed on, with the final design being materialized in his hands.

“Because I made it so much smaller?” Ben asked, lightly tossing his new creation up and down, having an item roughly the size of a head. “Come on, no offense was meant, man. I just wanted to see how much I could refine it. I know principles and have a level of skill that your people never could have dreamed of. It’s good to see the sort of things that are possible with progress.”

“There’s nothing wrong with dodecahedrons. Don’t be shapist.”

“Changing my previous statement to don’t be weird. The things I’ve made today are tools to house souls; you’re my buddy. Big difference.”

“First one was an educated guess, and the second was a fact, but if I’m proven wrong about errors in your design leading to your current existence, then I promise I’ll give you my most heartfelt apology.”