Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Myriad and Helori were the only ones in the realm when he arrived, the goddess with her usual seat perched atop his god, being rotated as the cube turned to face him.

“Well Ben, anything happen today?”

“Thera adopted a child and I had another one sprung on me, screw you for that by the way, so it’s been pretty busy as a whole.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t try to deny it, Sachel already said you decided to not give me any heads up about Delair coming to train under me.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that. Why didn’t you tell me? What if said no?”

“That’s simple, you were never going to say no. No matter how much of a pain you may be Ben, I’ve known you for years now. No matter what other ways you might surprise me, I was never going to be wrong about this.”

“And that made it okay to not give me any warning?”

“Consider this my revenge for everything else you’ve ever put me through.”

“Hold on, but is that actually a good idea?” Helori cut in. “No matter what some of the dumber gods might think, you’re a genuinely important figure in the war, Ben, for more than a few reasons. Do you really have time to try and train an apprentice who, to be blunt, might not even live to see whatever waits beyond the third wave when you have so much else to be doing, even just among your own goals?”

It was a fair question but what it got her was a shrug. “Probably not if I want to be nothing but purely efficient in the months we’ve got left but that prospect went out the window the second the other gods of this world decided to get in my way. And none of that even matters because in the end, I still need to live in the time I’ve got left. Training up an apprentice might not be the best way to spend my time when I’m keeping the planet as my focus but I’m looking at myself and the people I care about right now instead.”

She looked at him for a moment in silence before shaking her head. “Well, it’s your life so do whatever you need to enjoy it I suppose. Now, what’s this about your lover adopting a child? Did she stumble upon a war orphan?”

“God, I wonder if that would have been less complicated. No, it’s family. The great life and death spirits have succeeded in having a child together.”

It was an answer that got the goddess to move. In a flash she’d left her place atop Myriad, practically flying right at him in her excitement.

“Tell me everything.”

“There’s not too much to tell. The kid was born as a great soul spirit just like they’d hoped but Vividus abandoned him. I guess it sounds like he refuses to use his magic so she decided to leave him with Thera to see if that would help. Oh, and as an extra fun result, however she and Nox had been raising him to that point has left him with depression.”

The answer left Helori crinkling her brow. “And while all of that is interesting, why would he need raising if he’s a spirit? They should be independent from birth.”

“Oh god, another complication but from what I can tell he’s roughly ten mentally, at least by human standards, and I’m almost one hundred percent sure that stems from a combination of just how unlikely his birth was, tied into the system doing it’s best to help mana-based life interbreed with the more physical life that makes up the rest of the world.”

He went on to explain his theory that the boy’s almost mortal mental structure was tied to the fact that Vividus had been arranging the mana in her body to a structural, if not cellular level, while Nox was continuing to act as the soul of a dead incubus, contributing his form as well that ended with Mora’s unique existence, with the goddess in front of him nodding the entire time.

“As far as ideas go, based on the limited information we have it’s not a bad one, but it would be hard to verify unless more are born, which does raise an interesting question. Do you think Vividus would be able to get a repeat if she tried again? There’s only ever been one of each affinities great spirit before but there’s never been a mixed spirit before either, at least not a mix between the affinities within its own kind. If it could be repeated though, bringing more great soul spirits into the universe, well, that could dramatically reshape the landscape of the entire planet, if not the universe as a whole. Which isn’t to mention the potential that further discoveries might be made if she were to succeed in giving birth to more.”

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“Discoveries like?”

“While it’s never happened in the history of this world, supposedly when a great spirit dies, a group of regular spirits of the same affinity will merge together into a new one. It’s a change that lifts the base spirits from what they were into incredible new heights, but who’s to say the potential for that sort of thing disappears when they become great spirits? There’s some sort of collective lock within their equivalent of biology that stops regular spirits from turning into great spirits on their own so long as the one for their affinity is still alive but if that can be bypassed thanks to them using the system and replicating mortal reproduction then it’s possible even more great soul spirits could be born, and then if they still have their own merging process and enough come into the world to reach a tipping point…”

She didn’t need to say more, Ben was already thinking about the implications. A regular spirit held a magic that was reasonably equivalent to a mortal's ninth-leveled magic of the same affinity, even if the spirit would have aspects to that magic which would make it far broader while also having an incredibly high affinity value as well, tied into a mana pool of around ten thousand.

A great spirit though held a magic that was equivalent to a second-tier ninth-leveled magic and a mana pool of a million. Extrapolating from that small bit of information, if Helori was right and the birth of more great soul spirits would cause them to merge into something new once enough were born then that meant whatever being would be born would have the magic equivalent of a ninth-leveled magic at its third tier and a positively insane level of mana.

A great spirit already had a hundred times more than any normal spirit, if that trend continued then that meant a being with a hundred million points of mana would be born, something with a level of skill and power that had never before existed. The word god felt too humble, at least when one went by the scale of what a god was in that universe.

If an earth spirit reached that level then Ben wouldn’t have been surprised if it could materialize a planet, or at least personally move one, but since being birthed was the only way the idea had any chances, that meant any pure affinitied spirit was out. So where would that leave a soul spirit? What could one do with that level of power?

The correct answer was there was no way to know for certain if Mora didn’t want to use what he had but comparing against what he knew of the soul mages, it wasn’t hard to imagine. With one hundred million mana tied in and a level of skill at the far end of the third tier, there was an almost certain chance that a spirit like that would be able to awaken anyone to the second tier of their skills like it was nothing and potentially be able to do the same for awakening third-tier skills just as easily.

Hell, why stop there? A being that powerful could probably put up a field of mana around it that would cover the continent and drop the leveling difficulty of everyone within it to nothing. That would basically turn this into a planet of gods.

And that was just one mixed affinity, there were certainly more in the world with each having the potential to show overwhelming power if mixed great spirits could be mass-produced and when he really thought about it, there was no reason to be sure that pure affinities couldn’t have more great spirits as well. It seemed like replicating a womb was fairly important to making it work but that was something any great spirit could potentially pull off, leaving the attempt from there being doing the deed with a regular spirit to see if that would result in a new great spirit being born instead of a normal one or some unexpected middle ground of the two.

Helori’s thought had left a flood of ideas running through his head that he did his best to shake away in the end. It was curious, yes, but not a path he’d ever want to explore, nor an idea he’d want to put in Vividus’s head. He wasn’t going to treat Mora like an experiment and he didn’t want to risk the great life spirit making the boy any siblings when she hadn’t been prepared to look after her first child. If there was no eventual merging process then that would mean potentially dozens of childlike great spirits running around the world with whatever disasters that would cause being the problems of whatever mortals ran into them.

“Yeah, we’re all going to keep this line of thought to ourselves, away from Vividus and any gods who might be dumb enough to want to test it out.”

“I suppose a safe choice in the end. Still, if nothing else, this does work out for you.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You’re going to be living with a great spirit that rules over souls. Once whatever issues he has with using his magic are sorted out, you can get him to lower your own awakening thresholds. That sort of thing could drastically help you achieve your goals in the time you have left.”

Ben looked at her in silence for only a few seconds before sighing and shaking his head. “Helori, you’re really showing you’ve never been a mother before here”

“Of course not. Only mild offense to Nare intended but breeding with one's mortals is perverse.”

“Okay, so I’m not asking this kid to do anything like that for me. If Thera’s taking on a parental role then so am I and I’m not making a child that’s already been abandoned once feel like I’m only going to be there for him if he does what I want. If he brings it up then I’d accept it but I’m going to do my best to try and never get anything out of him. It’s a kid’s job to be loved, no more than that. And speaking of, seeing as how this particular kid doesn’t actually need sleep, I’m going to have to wake up soon so just one more point. Can you guys help me get in touch with Jake, Amy, and Vasta?”

“Still hellbent on taking in the non-affinity tower even with two children in your charge?” Myriad sighed.

“I am and I don’t want to delay too much more than I have to. I’ll need at least a week before running off since I need to give Delair a few lessons before I run headfirst into danger and I need to get Mora used to me but I want to talk to them and put a team together as soon as possible.”

“Alright, I’ll see what I can do at least.”

“You’re the best.”

With that sorted he spoke to them both for only a bit longer before waking up even earlier than usual, off to see what the newest resident of their home was up to.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om