Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

“Mmh,” Thera yawned as she made her way to the kitchen, finding breakfast ready with Mora and Sonya both already there, the soul spirit being obvious in the way he stared at the cook. “Morning.”

“Morning,” Ben called back, sliding her a plate before joining the rest of them at the table. “Sleep well?”

“No, can you guess why?”

“The stress of wondering how things are going to end up for Bloom?”

“Huh, what’s happening to Bloom?” Mora perked up, feeling concerned as his creator but relaxed as Thera rubbed his back.

“He’s fine, sweetheart. He just, well, a few people seem to have some crushes on him, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

“You seem worried.”

“More about him not understanding what he might be getting into than from any actual problem, it’s fine,” she told him. “My actual point of stress is Ben and whatever’s going on in his soul to have you stare at him like that, but don’t tell me, I’m waiting till he’s ready.”

“Actually, the gods should currently be having a meeting about me right now so I can let you guys know,” Ben spoke up, making Thera roll her eyes.

“Do you not feel at all concerned about the sheer number of meetings the gods have about you specifically?”

“Not really, that’s kind of just life.”

“It isn’t for literally anyone else but okay, hit me with it.”

“Okay, I’m just going to show you.”

He slid his card over, hiding nothing and letting both Thera and Sonya look at it, seeing the wall of text it had become to react to.

“I think it would actually be easier for you to just tell us rather than have us try and read through all of that,” Sonya muttered, leaving Thera with her own reaction.

“Psychopath?”

“I feel like that’s not the change you should be narrowing in on.”

“It’s the easiest one to find. How’d you earn this one?”

“Well, my very rude god decided to call me that and it stuck, but considering he called me that a couple days ago too and it didn’t then, I have to assume one of my new skills increased the probability of getting the title. But also fine, if it’s too much to read then give me a second.”

He took his card back and hid all but the relevant bits of information that he wanted to reveal, turning it back to them and getting the expected disbelief in return.

“How?” Sonya asked, the only thing she could in the face of the levels and skills he’d revealed.

“Well, I’ve been using a god soul to train my sacrilege, and long story short, I was able to do the same thing to awaken my affinities too.”

“And you just had to do it for your two worst ones,” Thera said, looking like she’d formed a headache in those past few seconds. “No wonder you wanted to keep this a secret because this looks so bad and… my stress resistance just leveled up.”

“Um, tee-hee?”

“Don’t act cute right now, Ben. Not when I’m going to be wondering for the next week if the gods are going to decide to kill or imprison you. Why did you awaken these?”

“Well, the good news is that thanks to my sacrilege they really probably can’t, so I should be fine and as for why, it was actually more of a side effect of training my sacrilege instead of intent.”

“Which would be true if I ignored the fact that you got Yuzu yesterday to cast those spells on you.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Well, yeah and I’ll admit, I did mean to do it but it was less for the sake of whatever power I’d gain by awakening those skills than it was to get the attribute bonuses for my soul modifying tomorrow, which is going to be insane I might add. Genuinely, I’m about to change the world in the craziest way possible.”

“Mmh, I suppose when I think about it that way it seems justifiable,” Thera agreed through narrowed eyes, not fully believing that there was no motivation to see what sort of power he’d get for it. “Is that going to be enough to keep any gods from wanting to smite you?”

“What all my years on this planet have taught me is that so long as the majority of gods on this world don’t want me dead, I’ll be fine.”

“Not as reassuring as you seem to think it is.”

“The other factor is that if they do decide to kill me, then they’ll just have to deal with a very unhappy god of evil, destruction, and sacrilege who’s going to have some strong opinions about having just been murdered.”

“... Why was that somewhat more reassuring?” Thera wondered to herself. “But okay, I’m going to believe in my heart that you’re useful enough that nobody is going to do anything too rash because of this, so in that case, what’s the plan for the day? Keeping your head down and not causing a fuss until you show how useful you are to the planet tomorrow?”

“I mean, I really am always useful to the planet, if my numerous inventions and discoveries somehow weren’t an indicator, so today’s going to be spending some time trying to determine any less apparent functions of my two authorities and then after that, stop in briefly to see a friend. During all of which I’ll be on my best behaviour, making sure I don’t awaken any other skills that the gods or the world at large might have a problem with.”

Well, that’s all pretty interesting.

He’d continued with his experiments on the way to the shop and throughout work that day, discovering more aspects of his authorities he hadn’t been able to find the night before, all with varying levels of benefits.

It seemed his own sense of evil and destruction affected how he perceived a skill as well, not just the skill holder or society at large, but it was a discovery he was only able to make thanks to seeing destruction in Delair, the only skill he truly viewed as destructive in nature. Everything else was simply too subjective, with his own sense of morality unwilling to apply those labels to any random ability, even if it seemed to hold some negative connotations.

More interesting was that, in the same way there were degrees to which he could detect what evil and destructive skills a person held in general, there were degrees he could determine how close or far a person was to leveling them, based entirely around how much the skill belonged to those domains either in general or at a given moment, which further allowed him to estimate the sort of leveling reduction his skills would give.

It was overall too complicated for him to estimate to the minute how far someone would be from leveling a given skill but it did allow him to see a certain range so long as someone followed a specific training plan which could have applications for how he’d train both Delair and himself. Both skills applied to him as well after all, and at the third tier their effects were going to be significant, leaving him to wonder just what he’d be able to grow.

I could potentially get more third tier awakenings out of this, especially if my authorities level any more too and there’s always the chance that my touch skills could change to soul skills like artisan’s touch did but beyond that, the way it looks like this is going to affect attributes is going to be pretty handy too.

No longer just skills, it appeared that, depending on if an attribute was used in an evil or destructive way, it would get a boost as well depending on if it was being used for such, with Delair’s use of destruction letting him help her raise her mana and mana recovery too while she was practicing and showed the versatility of getting an inclination to that tier.

Man, Nare was right. I really am going to be tempted to become a worse person because of this.

…

Really, no comment from up there? Guess they’re all still stuck in their meeting.

A meeting he admittedly wouldn’t want that passing thought to reach, even if what it implied for him was rather significant. He may not have had a way to use most of his attributes in an evil or destructive way, he’d be able to train his mana with it a fair bit if he really wanted, but the biggest winner would continue to be his intelligence for the things he was currently doing to Haro in his head.

But I’m now at over two hundred thousand points of the stuff. Sure, it’s handy for my actualization but there really are other attributes I’d rather get some bonuses to. I really should see if there’s a way for me to awaken any of my other attribute enhancements too.

A nice idea at least, but one to try and work on in the background. There was only one other effect of his authorities he’d discovered, but it was one of the most straightforward. The duration. When he applied the effects to a person, they could expect to continue to benefit from the effect without it weakening for roughly six hours after, cutting out completely when it was used up.

While that would mean little for himself as the permanent holder of the skill and therefore always under its effect, it did give him a handy timeframe to know what others would be operating on, especially if they were to train under it while he wasn’t around.

I’ll be able to keep track of how long anyone training under me can enjoy that benefit without needing to constantly apply it and focus on other things which could be handy but for now, it looks like that’s all I’m figuring out today which means it’s time to go see a friend and hope he doesn’t panic too badly.