His heart settled after his talk with his god, Ben rushed back to Pelenia’s home, getting there just in time to see Yuzu leave its gates with a stunned expression on her face, waving her down as he did.

“Hey, sorry about that. Not gonna lie, I kind of freaked out,” he told her, embarrassed to have behaved at all rudely to a friend he’d gone out of his way to ask a favour of, even if the way he’d run had been not a speck on her mind.

“That doesn’t matter; how did you do that?” she demanded. “How did you just give me that demon’s skill?”

“Okay, so, long story short, growing that collection of skills to the third tier seems to have let me replicate what I’d done to reach that level. I can cut skills off of a soul and move them to someone else. Bad news for the world though; I never, ever intend on doing that again. Messes too much with some of my core principles, so you’re officially the only person who’s going to benefit from that little aspect of my new power. Ah, since you’re a contender for magic cancelling now, I guess you should know how to use it too,” Ben said, slipping the information into her thoughts before she could say anything, briefly stunned by what she’d heard before her shoulders slumped.

“... This is too much to take in.” 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

“Ha, yeah, it is,” Ben agreed, knowing that she was talking about the scope of his new power and the implications within such an ability. “But that doesn’t matter. I’ve decided I don’t like it, so I’m not going to use it, as simple as that.”

“Except for the part where you just made me a contender for a magic I have no experience with.”

“I mean, you came to this world as a third-tier for a magic you have no experience with, but… I’m sorry. When it felt like I was able to while connected to its soul, I needed to see if I could, but then I did and it freaked me out and I didn’t want it so giving it to you seemed like a better option than returning it. If you don’t want it, I’ll cut it off your soul.”

“... No, leave it,” she told him, having her own conflicting feelings about benefiting from such a power yet not wanting to throw away an advantage that she could use to protect those she loved either. “It’s… well, it’s something I don’t know how to feel about, and I approve of the idea that you don’t do something like this again, but it’s already done and even if it isn’t really my power, it’s something I’ll be able to help and protect people with. Throwing it away would be a waste.”

“Alright, I’m sure you’ll use it well. And who knows, you’ve got some time, maybe you’ll reach the third tier for it before the next wave.”

“Pfff, I’ve got a few months, Ben.”

“And?” He grinned. “Are you really going to tell me that a few months isn’t enough to awaken a skill?”

She looked at him as he said it, seeing the unbelievable growth that he himself had gone through in a mere few months before shaking her head. “Okay, yes, I shouldn’t say it’s impossible. I guess I’ll… practice what you put in my head, maybe ask Vasta and Jake for advice too. Even if nothing comes of it, I can at least try.”

After walking Yuzu home, Ben began his own journey back as he did, exploring the changes in himself the entire way.

Soulcraft was stretching his soul out a far as it could go, letting him observe the world around him while also empowering the people he could with both his knowledge and authorities, the amount of people within his range now so great that the moment he’d started, he’d heard a flood of notifications from everyone and kept hearing more as he walked, bringing more people under the touch of his soul.

That alone made it clear the value of pairing soulcraft with an authority, with the only drawback being that he had essentially no chance of getting any more of that particular skill category to the third tier in the time he had left. Both his multiversal affinity and his defense inclination were growing too slowly, and he still hadn’t surpassed the limit needed to finally reach soul authority, even after having awakened so many of his soul skills to the third tier. It was a nice dream, but it wouldn’t come to him in reality.

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No, rather than wishing for more ways to help the world, more interesting was how aspects of other skills that had combined with connect had grown too. Testing on the god on his arm, the depths of each of his emotional skills had reached new heights, with evil and destructive thought both driving the one he practiced it on to madness while calming allowed it to reach a sort of zen-like peace that came close to ego-death.

While neither false Ben or empty soul seemed to have contributed to an obvious change, his attributes not growing more than expected despite the fact that both of those modifications had added on to the attributes he already possessed, bind felt like it might have had potential too, only being put off out of a healthy caution considering that it was a skill that linked souls. If he were going to test it at all, he needed to be prepared for the consequences.

Both mind break and hive mind felt significantly easier too, though when combined with the mind skills he already had, growing either in proficiency any more would already be noticeable to any outsider observer, with only two left.

To a soul mage, soul source was going to be the most obvious in its growth as the world around him was flooded with his creations on a level that went beyond what he’d previously been able to make even after overfilling his soul with mana, making the prospect of creating a quadrillion souls in the next few months feel far more realistic, as well brought to mind the somewhat lingering concern over whether there was something in the grander multiversal that both distributed them when a creature was born and took them back when they passed, a persisting curiosity of if he was transgressing into a domain far beyond what he could handle that he continued to ignore.

Until such a being made themself known, creating souls was an excellent way to train his mana, without filling the world with scraps and waste like materializing physical matter would. He couldn’t simply abandon a training method over a concern built on superstition when, for all he knew, souls were simply a natural byproduct of a reality that could only fully display themselves in any universe that managed to arrange matter in such a way that could be considered life, if not some far more outlandish, unpredictable explanation for their nature. Their existence transcended universes, after all, there was no reason to assume that their existence could be explained in any way that could be understood by a thinking brain. As long as they continued to be useful to him, he would continue to make them; it was as simple as that.

Leaving only the last skill that had gone into his awakening, his most controversial one by far. The fragments of low soul magic and whatever power they might have held.

Immediately, it was clear that the spells demons would use for their minor or low soul magics seemed lost to him. He wasn’t yet certain that he couldn’t exert any control over his own skills and attributes with it, but he knew immediately that he couldn’t do it for others, with the spells he attempted simply not casting. It was to a point that he would have assumed that the parts of the skill he’d lost were more vital than he’d initially assumed when taking it and that what he’d claimed had acted as nothing more than experience and glue to bind his other abilities together, if not for the very first example he’d found of cutting through a person’s soul.

He’d still needed to use his own soul of course, not accomplishing it through magic, but that was an ability unrelated to everything else that had gone into it and it made him wonder just how much else he could do in the same vein, leading him to disassemble a soul he materialized using only his own as a scalpel, taking it apart in its entirety and allowing for some interesting applications.

For example, this is now a soul attack, Ben noted, already seeing at least one practical application. If I can cut through souls then I can leave them injured, although, why I’d do that is another question. If I wanted to leave a body soulless for some reason, I already have my condemnation, and if I wanted to leave an opponent gravely injured, then I have physical attacks through my material manipulation. Hell, even if I want to just incapacitate someone, I could do it with the original aspects of connect and hive mind. But at the same time, it’s not just an ability to cut, but also an ability to put back together in different ways. The system wouldn’t call it soulcraft for no reason; there’s gotta be some interesting potential in how I use it that I’m just not seeing.

Whatever it was though, it was going to take more to find. As he got closer to home, he slowly retracted his soul, not wanting to give away the scope of how he’d changed to Thera and Mora until he could tell them himself, with both of them sitting outside when he arrived, enjoying the last bit of sun the day had.

Dewdrop was sitting comfortably on Thera’s lap, looking like she was making an attempt to get closer to it at least, but the scrungle was forgotten the moment she saw him, standing up and making the cat-like creature jump before curling up on the ground to go back to sleep, Ben raising his hands as he got there.

“I know, I know, you guys are seeing a lot of changes in me again, but don’t worry, I’ll go over them all and-”

“Ben,” Thera cut him off as she reached him, taking his face in her hands and staring deeply as she spoke. “Your eyes have changed again.”