Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Walking back over to his seat, Ben casually observed the reactions around the room, ranging from excitement to an intense level of discomfort over what they’d all watched. Rook was a bastard, not one of them there was unaware of that, but the fact that there was someone there who was not only willing, but even capable of inflicting such harm on someone who, until that point, had been impervious to anything of the sort was a rattling experience.

“Ben,” Killi spoke, taking a calm tone despite everything. “While we are all aware of your history with Rook, that was too much.”

“With all due respect, Killi, it wasn’t even a fraction of what he deserves. He’s been killing people since before anyone here was even born, and for the most meaningless reasons too. I saw in his head. He teleported someone underground to die after they bumped into him and knocked a drink out of his hand once. If you want to see where the body is, we can all take a little field trip and dig it up. I know exactly where he left them and more.”

Killi said nothing to that, leaving Elvat to take over. “What happened to him after, then? Is he dead?”

“No, put a way,” Ben said, lightly tossing the spatial prison that held the man. “As for whether I’ll kill him eventually… Well, I’d originally promised him that if he ever bothered me again, I’d get the great space spirit to drop him in the heart of some small star out there, so maybe that will still be an option, but for now, I have some ways to use him. With all of the trouble he’s caused over his long life, it would be good if he benefited the world at least a little bit, right?”

“Use how?”

“Lets see, plenty here are probably already aware of this, given that I helped you all get through your jobs, but I’m the one currently helping the world go through all of their collective jobs too, and having a third-tier one available makes things significantly easier. Rook has two options, even if he’s gotten a few levels done of the one he’s on, meaning I can use him twice while doing this for the good of the greater world. Really, considering how useless his skills would be in the next wave for anything other than keeping himself alive, this will probably be the most useful he’s been during the entire war. If you’re all really so against it though, I’m willing to discuss things. Do any of you here genuinely believe I should let him go, or even let him live?”

If any said yes, he was going to make them witness the same crimes Ben just had before asking them again, but, even if some weren’t happy with his display of brutality, none there would go that far either. Despite being the oldest of the third tiers, someone they’d all have met before rising to their own level of skill, none liked Rook enough to speak in his defense, and even those like Killi who weren’t pleased about what he’d just done still trusted Ben’s judgment enough to believe why he’d done it. It wasn’t news to anyone that Rook was a monster; at most, the only matter was finding out it was at a scale that might have deserved that level of reaction.

“No point it getting in such a twist about it,” Abel said, trying and failing to be subtle as she grew a new mouth at the back of her neck, which an unnaturally long tongue crawled out of to lick up the blood and flesh of the immortal still on the ground that she’d never gotten to try before then. “It’s not like most of us haven’t tried the same thing. Don’t be jealous just because Ben got to live our dreams.”

“How did he do it?” Sarodox asked, a third-tier on the aquatic side, holding king of growth as the skill that had earned them their seat at the table. “Absolute defense and immortality weren’t named that just for show. How did you beat them?”

It was a question that cut to the heart of a minor issue Ben had since he’d first agreed to go there. How much of his status to reveal. In principle, the meeting between the third tiers was meant to let them learn about each other’s skills, and to try to find a way they could be used together to help the world as a whole, but there was no denying that Ben’s abilities were far more problematic than most. Evil authority, destruction authority, and evil god of sacrilege were all powers that would warp anyone’s opinions of him, but at the same time, a significant number there were already well-aware of the abilities he possessed. There were too many there who could see his soul in one way or another. Even if he told the rest, he didn’t expect it to make too much of a difference, and when he really did want to hope that one of them might come up with an idea that would incorporate their skills with his own for the greater good of the planet, hiding any of his abilities would only lower that potential.

“To be clear, these meetings are kept somewhat private, right? No one’s going to go around telling the world about the skill-set of Myriad’s apostle? Because if anyone does, I will be able to find out.”

Of course, it’s not like plenty of people unrelated to me don’t already know, Ben sighed to himself, fully aware that a few of the gods hadn’t kept their complaints about him and his skills silent when it came to their core believers. I haven’t seen it reflect poorly on the church of Myriad yet, but if anyone does start actively spreading and making a big deal out of it, I’m going to be pretty unpleasant while sorting that out.

“We don’t reveal each other’s skills so carelessly,” Killi told him. “While some of us are public in our roles, others now and in the past have preferred to keep things private. The current state of things hasn’t changed that.”

“Okay then, in that case, I guess the question becomes should I just talk about my third tier skills, or do you want to know about anything else I’m a contender for too, since that’s all pretty powerful in its own right?”

No one there missed the fact that he said skills, plural, but when it came to the ones he had a chance of getting to that tier as well, Killi’s eyes scrunched. She had seen Ben’s status before, and she was well aware of how fast he must have been growing since coming to the world, given that he was now a third tier, but she didn’t know the specific scale of it. “How many skills are you currently a contender for?”

“Thirteen.”

A number that provoked a different sort of shock, Ben hadn’t included any of his second-tier, unleveled skills in that total, even if they could have technically been possible to awaken to the third tier as well. It didn’t matter. That many skills on the edge of the third tier painted enough of a picture of him for those without the eyes to see it themselves, bringing a curious smile to Killi’s lips in particular, the number leaving all thoughts of Rook forgotten.

“You’ve been busy.”

“The world hasn’t given me much time to relax.”

“Well, I suppose those would bear discussing as well, but since we’re just getting started and we have two others still to introduce, let’s hear it.”

“Sorry,” Thera cut in. “But I can already tell that if we let Ben speak first, it’s going to be ages until we get to me or Tress, so I think it would probably be for the best if we start.”

“Hmm? Well, I suppose I’ll take your word on it,” Killi said, seeing no objections from anyone else, and let Thera go on.

“Alright, I’m Thera, and I’ve awakened to soul magic.”

A brief introduction, but one that received a positive response. Soul mages were valued the world over and, even if late into the war, a third one was still sure to be beneficial to the planet as a whole, even if it was a well-trodden path by that point in time.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“She specifically has a unique variant of it,” Ben added when it seemed Thera didn’t view that as important enough to be worth mentioning. “She’s been getting good results so far, too.”

“Its name?” the divine chef asked, curious when only a few soul mages in the past had awakened to uncommon variants before, with the question leaving Thera to blush as she answered.

“Soul goddess magic.”

“To already be named as a god, impressive,” the chef said from the aquatic half of the room. “More powerful than the usual one, then?”

“I’m not sure if I’m equipped to judge that,” Thera told them, still embarrassed to admit to holding a skill with such a grand-sounding name in a room full of others who’d been at her tier for far longer. “But it’s a passive magic for me, so it is different than the usual.”

She went on to explain a bit of how she used it, seeing others there nodding along, impressed that such complicated spells could be so easily cast into a surrounding crowd before they moved on.

“And yourself?” Elvat asked. “Tress, was it? I must admit, I’m surprised to see someone here that I haven’t met before. Were you working with Yuzu after she took over handling the land?”

“They aren’t from me,” Yuzu denied. “I had thought they were one of Ben or Thera’s guests.”

“What? Yuzu, come on, you can see souls,” Ben told her. “How didn’t you catch that before we came in?”

“Don’t act like you don’t have the most attention-grabbing soul in the room by far,” Yuzu told him. “At this point, it’s just distracting.”

“Ha, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Thera then?” Elvat asked. “Did you have a hand in this, or did they really awaken without a soul mage’s aid at all?”

“Um, I sure didn’t help them, but as for how they awakened…”

She looked between Ben and Tress, having no clue what she was supposed to say or if they should reveal Tress’s origins in the first place, considering their past nature, leaving Tress themself to speak.

“It’s complicated, but you can consider me to be something Ben made.”

“Come again?” Elvat asked, furrowing his brow, while the rest of them looked just as confused as they turned Ben’s way. “I’m sorry, what do they mean, made? You created a third tier?”

“I started with some good foundational materials,” he shrugged. “But that’s their business, and it’s not something I’m likely to be able to repeat again. What matters is they’re here now, they exist, and they intend to be super helpful.”

As he was speaking, he caught a flash of Verbum’s eyes widening in horror before rolling back into his head, the other summoned having used his skill to get answers and passed out as a result, leaving Ben to roll his own eyes as he went on.

“And it looks like Verbum decided to figure things out for himself. Okay, whatever. Tress, do you actually care about keeping this a secret?”

“Not particularly. I just thought explaining things might slow the meeting down even more.”

“I’m under the impression that these are usually slow and, if anything, it should go faster than expected because I got rid of Rook. Up to you, though. I can make Verbum keep quiet when he wakes up.”

“Mmm, no. I suppose if they’ll keep quiet about you, they can handle this too,” they decided, willing to make things smoother. “I’m an artificial mind that’s been transplanted onto a demon’s soul that’s risen to the third tier. Temporal domination, you can consider my power to be one that makes me proficient in both souls and prophecy, being an ability that grew from the demon’s low soul magic, as well as time magic.”

The room fell silent, waiting to be told that was a joke as eyes slowly turned to Ben, seeing him shrug in response.

“You know what they say: waste not, want not. I had the demon’s soul; it made sense to put it to proper use.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m enjoying existence so far,” Tress added. “Even if it’s been short, overall, it’s been a fairly positive experience.”

“Oh, some drawbacks then?” Ben asked.

“If I use my magic too close to you to try to make a prophecy, I get a migraine.”

“Really? Weird. I built you what might very well be one of the best bodies in existence. I would have thought it would be able to handle that, even if you couldn’t process all of the information that comes with it.”

“It’s to the point that you probably shouldn’t get too close to any of the world’s other prophets. You’re only going to interfere with their work. From what little I’ve been able to look into, I’m already fairly confident your overall existence might be making prophecies across the entire planet just a little less reliable, even when you aren’t nearby.”

“Mmh, in my experience, prophecy hasn’t exactly been the most reliable from the start; it’s probably fine,” he shrugged before turning to the rest. “But anyway, yeah, that’s Tress. Despite where they came from, they’re lovely, so don’t discriminate and be nice.”

“... I believe we can all take some time to worry about the implications of everything we just heard later,” Killi went on, seeing that a change in topic would do the rest of them some good, even when left with a sudden worry over just what Tress’s apparent creator was about to reveal that had made Thera think that a person who had been created from the soul of a demon would demand less attention. “Ben?”

“Alright, so I have my skill eldritch mind which is basically a massive enhancement to my mental structure. It lets me think in ways that others simply can’t, and it has some synergies that go well with a few of my other skills. Then there’s soulcraft and… okay, so it has a lot of functions, but the core of it is that it lets me alter souls in a way that soul mages seem like they can’t, or at least struggle with. Make skills, give the same sorts of blessings gods do and, in the right circumstances, modify affinities and resistances in a way I can go over on a deeper level later.”

“Impressive,” Sarodox muttered upon hearing that Ben had two awakened skills. “And also potentially the most soul-based third tiers to ever exist at one time on the planet. Three soul mages, a soulsmith, Tress with their partially soul-based magic, Foast with his power dependent on his soul, and now you too.”

“Ah, yeah, funny way the dice fell here,” Ben agreed as he cleared his throat. “But I’m also not done. Along with that, I possess two skills, evil and destructive authority, both of which are third tier inclinations and both of which provide growth bonuses to the evil and destructive skills of the people around me, with my last skill being a third tier sacrilege, which I believe is the skill that let me comfortably handle Rook just now.”

The room fell silent; those without the eyes to see it turned to the previously mentioned soul mages for confirmation and saw them all nod. As outrageous as it was, Ben was telling the truth, and that was without even revealing the levels of some of his skills, a fact that none with the power to observe his soul were going to bring up.

“I see,” Killi said after a pause, collecting herself like the rest of them after the reveal of just how far Ben had reached. “Yes, I suppose I can see why this is going to take a while. Ben, if you would, could you go over all of your skills in a bit more detail? We can at least understand Thera’s, and we can go over Tress’s later, but it looks like we’ll have a lot to consider when it comes to the matter of how any of us might work with you.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he nodded, at least grateful that none of them showed an immediate violent reaction as he went on to explain the details of each power and answered questions as they came, that alone taking almost two hours of the day before they were done, leaving the rest there to process that, even if they were all ostensibly the most powerful individuals on the planet, there was now someone who stood far above the rest of them.

It was a complicated feeling that left a few among them curious how the gods were reacting to such things, given the number and types of divinities Ben would one day hold, while others who were aware of what one group of gods had done to Ben already had their answer. Killi herself knew that Ben had claimed the rights of both mortals and the divine for himself, and given the skills he held, it was easy enough to guess that such an agreement might not have come peacefully. For good or ill, it was easy to think that they were now all living in his world.

“Alright, perhaps a small recess would be best to properly digest what we’ve all heard,” Killi said, seeing the rest were quick to agree. They had gone there expecting to have to consider three new skills, but instead they’d learned the number was actually seven. Even if Thera had a soul magic, it was different enough that it warranted consideration, but Ben’s existence was a mess. A little break to put their thoughts in order would do them no harm, but before they could, it was Ben who stopped them.

“Hold on, one more thing we’re going to need to consider, even if there’s going to be a lot less information available.”

“Ben, in the name of all that’s good, don’t tell us you had a sixth one you haven’t mentioned yet.”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it. No, I’m talking about a different awakening,” Ben said a second before mana flashed and filled the room, Valaria standing at the epicenter of it, looking more shocked than anyone. “Specifically, her awakening.”