“Myriad?” Phixth asked, the god’s head resting in his clenched hands. “Just what exactly is your boy?”

“Largely, a pain in the ass,” the cube said, sharing the other god’s stress in the much smaller meeting they were having.

For the time, it was only four of them, with Myriad, Nare, and Helori going to Phixth first to discuss things before it could devolve into a larger event, with all of the chaos that would come from such a thing, but through it, it allowed both deities to commiserate, with Myriad and Phixth both getting their own shares of stress from that one particular mortal, even if their suffering came from different perspectives.

“To be able to directly share his experience right now though, instead of the way he’d already figured out how to manipulate things… you said he could give away up to ninety-nine percent of it? The way he already accumulates experience, that’s basically nothing, but when considering how that would divide among the world if he joins himself to everyone… if I understand this correctly, that means that if he merges his pool with a third tier, he’d need to get the experience equivalent of finishing the jobs of one hundred godlings.”

“Why should that be shocking?” Helori asked. “The boy’s clearly more than capable of that by this point.”

“It’s not a shock… alright, it is, it’s just not the main thing I’m considering here. That means the experience equivalent of what nearly a hundred third tiers would need is going to be split between the rest of the world, and I’m trying to figure out just how many jobs such a thing might actually finish.”

A part of him wanted to assume that such a thing would just mean that everyone would get a few levels by the time Ben finished a job, but he knew the math meant the real answer was sure to be far more significant. Even with a swath of people having decided to take king or queen of intelligence after gaining the option once their soul was modified, a choice that was terrible in practice considering how little it actually boosted compared to even most first tier jobs, the vast majority of people in the world held first tier options, with experience requirements that were practically nothing compared to what they’d need at the second tier, let alone the third. With the experience he’d be able to produce, odds were almost certain that the majority among the general population would be able to finish at least a job or three with his help, but as far as estimates went, Phixth was still sure that was on the conservative side. It was equally possible that Ben would finish the majority of first-tier jobs in the world, and a significant portion of the second-tier ones with them.

But even on the extremely low end, if the second tiers only managed to increase their job levels, a boost to those either wasn’t just some insignificant thing considering that plenty who reached that realm of power would be equally as stuck at it for years or decades at a time, and it wasn’t like Ben could do it just once. If Thera was currently on a third-tier job and, by the sounds of it, had one more third-tier option, then that was two that could be used.

“Who would have thought that getting him to finish the rest of the third tiers’ options would come back to bite us like this,” Phixth sighed, imaging how, if all of those had been able to be put to use, that would have almost guaranteed that Ben would have been able to finish every job on the planet. “We could have had so many more to work through.”

“It was impossible to know something like this would come up,” Nare tried to reassure, even if he couldn’t help but feel the same way. “Trying to grow the third tiers more was the most reasonable course of action at the time; nobody could have predicted this.”

“Is there really no luck in trying to raise up more?” Helori asked. “I know we’re running low on time, but surely one must be close.”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“There’s two I’m genuinely hopeful might have a shot still, but at this point I can’t deny that our odds of getting another are uncomfortably low,” Phixth sighed. “If we’d had ten, even just five more years, then… well, we don't, so we have to accept the reality of things. If we want, then we can let ourselves hope, but for the time, we’ll have to accept that we’ll only have two more job runs we can do to get the absolute most out of this strategy. Unless Ben is willing to use Rook-”

“If you think my apostle is going to do anything that might benefit someone who’s tried to murder him multiple times, you haven’t been paying enough attention to him,” Myriad cut in, leaving the other god to sigh.

“Just an idle thought, but considering what Rook is likely to do if the two are ever in the same room together again, I suppose it would just mean he’d be trapped once more at best or a victim of the power your apostle has claimed since he’d first locked Rook away at worst. So, as things are, using Thera’s experience pool as our main sink, Ben, who sadly seems to only have first tier jobs left, and whatever adventurer we find, that means there’ll still be three spots left in the party we have made that will have to be filled with the most experience-heavy second-tier jobs we can find to get as much as we can out of this. Considering that one will have to be a true mage, unless any of the non-affinitied mages have compatible options left, it's more like two spots. And you say that in exchange, he wants a skill?”

“That’s what he asked for,” Nare nodded. “And we should be giving it to him without any fight. In the grand scheme of things, gifting a single skill is nothing, and for what he’s giving in exchange, there’s no argument that such a thing is beyond reasonable. I’ve already spoken to the other crafting gods on the matter. While no one has designed a plan for crafting inclination before, not only have other inclinations been made, we built a superior version in the form of artisan’s touch. When you then account for the fact that there is a holder of crafting inclination currently on the planet we can look at, making it shouldn’t even take a week, so long as others contribute some faith and soul fragments so it doesn’t all fall to the crafting gods.”

“You don’t need to worry, I’m in agreement, and I’m beginning to think that even the most opposed have begun to admit to themselves that despite whatever faults they see in the boy, he’s too useful to not deal with.”

“Does that mean things have been going well for opinions on having him bless people?” Myriad asked, that particular discussion being one that had been going on largely in the background, with Phixth nodding in response.

“Some grumbling still, to be sure, but largely we find ourselves in agreement. We’ll be gathering thirty contenders to bless, and hopefully, that will improve our odds of one of them awakening. Even if I only have slim hopes for two, there’s always a chance that one other will surprise us.”

A surprising reaction, yet one that gave Myriad just a bit of peace as they moved on to discussing the logistics of it all and when a more formal meeting would be called to go over what Phixth had already been talking about in more private venues. For whatever faults he might have had, even the most antagonistic of the other gods were finally beginning to come around to the fact that they needed Ben more than they could hate him.

“... What do we even do about this?” Olensia asked the gathering, with all of the gods there looking defeated. “Not even just making blessings of all things, but now that freak has even found a way to bypass the job system more than he already has? Will this madness never end?”

It was a feeling that had swept through that gathering of gods and their more nefarious designs. Before, they’d decided to extract as much use from the boy as they possibly could before they’d act, just to give the others as little to complain about as possible, but now here he was, creating even more use for himself. How were they supposed to feel when it seemed their opportunity to get rid of him once and for all was going to need to keep getting pushed back, with only Eneth speaking up, looking as confident as when he’d first gathered them.

“This changes nothing,” he told his co-conspirators. “You’ve heard it all, same as I. He’ll be granting thirty people his blessings, and from there, he’ll be able to significantly help with the jobs of the world only twice. Once both of those are done, along with his awakenings and modifications amongst them, we’ll be able to act. Just have patience. We’ll finish this here and then we’ll be comfortably free of this blight.”