Still staring at it, Ben used the connection to look at the skills it held, rubbing his head as he did.

Only one at the third tier, but the name of it was enough to draw any eyes. Reality destruction, an ability it had used to break out of its own universe and the same ability it had used to break into that new one, with Ben having witnessed it firsthand as it had flailed, creating cracks in the universe that had eventually led to him gaining the blessing, child of chaos. That wasn’t the only thing it held though, and he could only guess what some of those skills did, with nothing he’d seen in its history able to give him enough context to be sure.

Chaos refining, primordial reconstruction, dimensional fixation and more, he was seeing skills of something that had lived in the void between realities, and he couldn’t know how much would apply to the universe they were now in. Obviously, reality destruction was dangerous, but what about the rest? What chaos was waiting in a dozen first-tier skills developed outside of the bounds of a universe, unconstrained by whatever physics they would hold?

For that matter, how many of them would even be usable? At least from his perspective, the outsider had only used its reality destruction when he’d seen it, unless he was suffering from a major mistaken assumption about what that skill could do and he’d really been seeing it work in tandem with the rest it held.

But in the end, none of that really matters, he sighed. I already know it’s dangerous; what matters is what I’m going to do about it.

The simplest answer was to leave the crystal in storage and move on, but he knew he couldn’t. Ben may have killed people before by that point, he had the blood of Ather and the ones holding the gate to hell open on his hands without any of them bothering him, but the outsider did. It had been scared and it had been hurt and he’d still killed it without first trying to understand it, and maybe at the time, that was all he’d been able to do, knowing that if it was left in the world, it would only hurt everyone else around it, but he was no longer so weak, and he was no longer so ignorant. The creature only wanted the safety and security it had lost when it had left its home reality, leaving only the question of how to give it exactly that.

Leaving it alone was still an option. As a soul, it felt no harm, even if it still trembled in fear at the memories of what it had gone through, but that wouldn’t make things right. So what? Release it and let it rise to proper godhood? That was an answer the gods of the world would never accept, but when had he ever cared about what they wanted to accept? If it seemed like the outsider could handle it responsibly, then why should it be denied? Worst to worst, he could leave it with Myriad until the creature got the hang of things and Ben could have whatever arguments he needed to to force the rest of them up there to agree.

Of course, there was a darker option too, the one of trying to free the soul without letting it ascend if he could manage it, giving it true death and whatever might have been waiting beyond, but he hated that idea the most. He’d already killed it once; he didn’t want to finish the job, and while there was a fourth option he favoured more than all the rest in his head, at the end of the day, it couldn’t be his choice. Only the outsider had the right to decide what it wanted for itself; all Ben could do was give it the context it needed to make that decision.

“Hi there,” he said, trying to convey a certain gentleness in his words. Sounds the outsider wouldn’t have normally been able to hear, its form not something that could properly perceive noise to begin with, and while it might have been able to figure it out through understanding how sound waves interacted with reality itself, that was unnecessary. The whole of its mind currently existed within Ben’s own and, connected as they were, speaking to it was the same as thinking to it.

With the creature understanding despite itself, even if that understanding left it with a different sort of horror. By gaining access to the system, it had also acquired the world’s language, yet that was something it had never possessed before. All of its thoughts were abstract, and while Ben could decipher them, for it to hear a word and feel its meaning was nothing but a sign that something else was being done to it beyond its control.

“Woah there, shh shh shh, it’s okay,” Ben told it, threading in just enough of his calming to help it relax without outright controlling its emotions. “I know this is strange, I know this is scary, but nothing is going to hurt you anymore. I know it’s a lot to take in, but you are not alone.”

As he spoke to it, he used his mind skills to expand on the concepts attached to the words, giving it an understanding of the existence of other conscious beings, something it had been sorely lacking, and continued as he went on, filling the cavernous gaps in its knowledge in a way that wouldn’t be too shocking to it as he spoke.

“Let me say this first. I’m sorry. I hurt you before,” Ben told it, feeling it recoil, yet sensed the sadness Ben felt in knowing it. “Just like you didn’t know about the existence of other people, I didn’t know about you, and because of that, I hurt you and I trapped you to try and keep you from harming anyone else. Your own ignorance made you a danger to me and the people I care about, but I still didn’t try to understand you, and you suffered for that. And now I want to try and make things right.”

How? Ben felt it think, not using the worldspeak bound to it but instead in the more abstract way it was used to.

“By giving you options, but first, giving you the knowledge to properly choose among those options. About the world you walked into and what it might mean to be a part of it.”

From there, the gentle flow of information he’d been giving it swelled as the lessons began, having to teach it from the ground up ideas and concepts that most people would learn just by living their lives. What the world was, all that could be found in it, the nature of people and how they lived together, the joys that could be found in connections and knowing each other and the horrors they could contain as well, the war they all faced among them, and slowly, it began to understand. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“So with that, we get to your options,” Ben told it. “If you want, I can simply leave you here to enjoy the peace of it, not in pain, not needing to deal with others either. An existence most similar to the one you left from your old world. If this is all you desire, then so be it. I’ll make sure nothing disturbs you again.”

Ben felt it listen and wait, wanting to know the other options, prompting him to go on.

“The rest from here would need some time to arrange, but if they’re what you want, then I’ll see them done. The second would be that I release your soul and let you ascend to godhood. I’ll get some of the gods I know to teach you as much relevant information on what it means to be a god as they can while I work on creating enough souls to give you a foundation of faith you could use after escaping this world to begin building your own ecosystem in the void or on some dead star or planet. You’d be able to take your pick. Of course, you’d need to get life from somewhere to help evolve and take faith from, but that’s manageable, with the only issue being that I can make you no promises about what will happen after. If you’re looking to do that, I’d suggest becoming a void god and then leading your ecosystem out of the galaxy as a whole before the demons can take over every planet here and decide they want to move into space next, but if you do that, you should be fine for at least a while. Likely even longer so long as you’re careful and avoid what other gods might be out there.”

He could even make the trip to the galaxy’s edge quicker by pairing his jacket with a request to Ogilt to take them as far out as possible, but while he could feel the outsider consider it, it still wanted to hear more.

“The third option is one that I honestly hope you won’t take, but if it’s what you desire, then I’ll respect it. Instead of letting you rise to godhood, I’ll work to make sure your soul passes on properly, experiencing true death and hopefully, whatever peace can come from it-”

And immediate refusal in its thoughts, it was clear enough that that wasn’t an option to be considered that it couldn’t help but make Ben smile.

“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” he nodded. “In that case, there’s the final option. Not staying here and not rising to godhood, instead, I will get someone to make you a body, one that you’ll be able to live in among the mortals of the world, with that being my preferred recommendation. Your soul would technically still be in the crystal, so if you changed your mind and wanted one of the other options, we could either leave you alone or let you rise to godhood after. Of course, it has its issues too. You now know that the world is being attacked by creatures that aren’t hurting things out of ignorance like you or I, but malice, and by living there, you’d be at risk of encountering them, especially if we lose the third wave. It also means there’d be less time to build up your faith, so if you did decide you wanted godhood in the end, by the time you got it, you’d be far less powerful than you would be if you chose it immediately. Finally, I’m sorry to say it, but your original body would be impossible to recreate in our current reality. The physics of the world simply wouldn’t allow it, which means that we’d need to make you something completely new from scratch. Through my knowledge transmission, I’d be able to teach you how to use it easily enough, but it would still be alien to you.”

He wanted to be as honest about the drawbacks as possible, but even with them, Ben felt it choose that one, leaving him to nod.

“Understood. In that case, of everything I showed you, do you have any requests? I could get someone to make you a body of any race you desire or one that has whatever features you’d like, and I can still show you more. Just what do you want to be?”

Feeling its thoughts, Ben once more interpreted its mind, the outsider still not thinking in worldspeak despite the ability to do so, yet even still, it conveyed the desire with perfect clarity.

Small.

“You want to be small, huh? Okay then, in that case, why don’t we go over every potential option until we find one that sticks? After all, we have all the time in the world to find the right one.”

Opening his eyes, the destruction of his mind having removed his consciousness from the outside world, while probing the outsider’s billions of years of memories had required the totality of his thought structure to fully dissect if he’d wanted to do it in any reasonable span of time, after what had felt like ages, Ben got to see Thera before him once more, her face twisted in confusion as she looked at him.

“Different results than you were hoping for, I see?”

“You could say that, yeah,” he nodded before materializing a new armband and placing the soul crystal of the outsider within it while he continued his conversation with the creature. “Out of curiosity, how long was I unconscious for?”

“Hmm? As far as I can tell, you weren’t. You pulled out your crystal, got your levels, and then looked at me. Why? How long did that crazy brain make it seem for you?”

“Longer than you’d think,” he grinned. “But if it was so quick that you couldn’t notice then that’s fine, I’m calculating my new maximum thought speed as we speak.”

“And?”

“And, I’m completely fine and apparently still have an entire hour till we have to meet the kids, so I can figure out something romantic to do before then since I stressed you out about risking my health again so soon.”

“I like where your head’s at, but that wasn’t what I was implying. Two levels to eldritch mind, at this point, I’m not even sure there’s a point in commenting on that, but even if you got an awakening mixed in with it too, that wasn’t the one you wanted. What are you going to do now?”

“Ah, that.”

He had to keep his face from falling with just the thought. As things were, he had a single other idea of what he might be able to do, one that wouldn’t even have been as risky as the outsider, and yet, for reasons he couldn’t put his finger on, he felt himself resist it to the point that even putting his mind against a creature from beyond reality itself had been preferable, his heart screaming at him to find another option, even if in reality, all he did was lightly shake his head.

“There might be something, but… well, don’t worry about it. I have some other things to do first; I can take a bit of time to think on it.”

An answer that made her frown, wondering just what horrors could have been enough to be his second choice when he was worried about the one he’d just done killing him, but she said nothing to it. He was going to properly think about it, and despite the stress he was causing, she trusted him. He only needed to come to terms with whatever it was holding him back.