“Alright, testing’s done, everyone can go back down,” Ben told the gods, all of them who’d acted as additional senses for him during that having been invaluable. “Sachel, Valaria, Toltho, just focus on making sure you change your jobs when the option comes up for you now, the rest of us here need to talk.”

He’d still be down below to mingle with them for a bit, but he wanted some privacy, the gods waiting with expecting looks.

“Well?” Myriad asked him after a moment of silence stood between them, the three deities getting to see Ben’s face stretch out into a grin.

“Long story short, it looks like I can now share experience with anyone, regardless of if I form a party with them. Forming a party is still important to really get the experience production going, of course, but getting this skill linked me to all of my fellow believers through Myriad, and after my little examination, it seems like I can add more people into it too. Not sure if there’s an upper limit, I just added a few hundred more from the surroundings, no problem, but it’s something I’ll try to be aware of as I search things out. As it stands, though, I continue to hold my position as the most useful guy on this entire planet.”

“Unbelievable,” Helori muttered. “Is it connect-derived, and this is specifically related to the job you took, or is this just an extension of what you already do? The way you’ve been manipulating the system and your experience production grown into a proper skill beyond a mere exploit?”

“Who says it can’t be both?” Ben shrugged. “What matters is that I can use this and it can help way more people than just the ones the other gods saw fit to have me party with. As things are, a lot of people should already be changing their jobs, at least the ones with first-tier options. If I keep soul production down to just one a minute then that should be plenty of time for people to go through all of their options as the day passes by, and from there… okay, when I’m done here, I’ll go around… I should start with Stonewall, it’s home after all, but I could go to Anailia too, assuming there isn’t a limit to how many I can link to, and then maybe some more places besides that, and… Myriad, you spoke about getting me to do another round of soul modification, is that happening?”

“In a week, ideally. I was going to discuss it with you yesterday before this sprung up, and we’d like you to do another round of awakening after. Considering how fast you should now be able to act, rather than have you go to specific cities, we’ve been spreading word that anyone who wants it should go to any gate city in particular, with some space mages helping to move people if they’re too far away. It’ll make all of the cities a bit more crowded, but we don’t need people shoulder to shoulder for efficiency like we did the first time anymore.” 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

“Yeah, sure, that’s fine,” Ben nodded. “In that case, if I don’t have a limit, then I can connect to everyone there to share experience with across this whole world. That actually might be enough to slow me down significantly if I let myself start producing souls on a more normal scale.”

“There is no normal scale of creating souls,” Nare chimed in, with Ben waving him off.

“Normal for me, you know what I mean. Hell, even if it gets to the point that people aren’t finishing jobs multiple times a day, this could be a permanent boost to everyone’s experience… minus the part where I’m still getting one percent of everything, meaning that if it is still enough for everyone to finish a few jobs, then I’ll still need to significantly slow down on my soul production, and it really just works out to me needing to produce one hundred times the experience for whatever party I’m a part of. Mmh, whatever, it’s fine. There’ll be ways to arrange parties to get the most out of this, and so many people could benefit from this, leading to the obvious question here.”

“How you’re going to get paid,” Myriad sighed, knowing exactly where his apostle’s mind was at.

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“Bingo,” Ben grinned. “You know I produce unfathomable amounts of experience using my adventurer strat, so long as I have a big enough experience sink, I’ll be finishing people’s jobs the world over by doing this and I am frankly so worthy of being rewarded for it. Come on, what do you think I can reasonably ask for?”

“Assuming you don’t have an upper limit as far as people you can give experience to…” Helori started before trailing off. “Hmm, if we’re doing that, the most valuable thing we could probably convince everyone to reward you with would be a skill that would yield a job, but do we have any you’d particularly want?”

“Bestowal,” was instantly on Ben’s lips. “Holy crap, get me the bestowal skill and I’ll work myself like a dog for you guys.”

One of the few specifically crafting-type magics, a power similar to enchanting but had more to do with imbuing a material with a specific spell, Ben still remembered seeing it in action for the first time during his first visit to craftsmans’ tower and it had lingered on his mind ever since. A skill that people needed to either be lucky enough to get from taking a job or else as a bonus skill from awakening, the only way one seemed to be able to naturally learn that power was by becoming a proper non-affinitied mage, which was currently a few steps beyond what Ben was willing to work towards.

Unfortunately for him, though, those limits seemed to hold true as Nare shook his head. “We haven’t been able to design that skill, so there's nobody up here who can give it to you.”

“This world is hell.”

“As for what we might be able to give you instead…” Nare trailed off, ignoring Ben’s outburst. “That does become an issue. A non-affinitied skill that would lead to a job, that you wouldn’t be able to just get yourself, that you’d also want as a reward. With all of the bonuses on you, active skills are more or less out, though I suppose we could ask around to make sure that no god has anything interesting that they could make without an obvious pathway to learning, but passive skills aren’t as reliable to lead to a job after, if the goal is to have you gain more of them so you could keep feeding the world experience.”

“Or, we can just reward me for my work without worrying about whether a job will come from it, huh?” Ben told them. “If I need more jobs then I’ll get them, but that’s not exactly an immediate worry. Thera is currently on a third-tier job, and the experience I’m sharing seems to be pulling from whatever pool I’m a part of. Even if I’m still getting one percent, with this one and her having mana goddess is an option too, I should have a couple of fairly convenient experience sinks so that I won’t go through all of mine too fast. Come on, instead of trying to think about how you guys might get the most out of any reward to me, let’s just focus on what would actually be best for me here.”

“And in that case, you would want…?”

“Okay, so you guys can’t get me bestowal, very lame of you, but I’ll live. I’m currently trying to awaken enchanting though, so there’s three potential skills I’d be interested in to get there. Crafting inclination, enchanting inclination, or magic inclination. Surely you guys can get me at least one of those, right?”

“... It might take a bit, but if you can wait, then an inclination should be doable,” Nare nodded. “Of course, we’ll have to discuss things with the others and I don’t know if anyone up here has properly designed any one of those skills to gift their believers, but there’s surely a deity who’s designed and given an inclination before, it would be significantly easier than trying to figure out how to gift you one of the more esoteric magics in the world.”

“In that case, while we’re discussing it, do you have a preference?” Helori asked him, leaving him to rub his head while he thought.

“Crafting inclination would be my top choice since that one should cover my crafting, enchanting, and material magic, along with some other skills. Magic would be my second choice since it would cover enchanting and material magic, and enchanting inclination would be my last choice. If you’re going to push for something, push for crafting.”

“Alright,” Nare nodded. “I’ll start discussing things with the other crafting gods since creating that would be our domain.”

“And I suppose I’ll start talking to Phixth since we’re going to need to have a meeting about this if it really is possible,” Myriad sighed. “In which case, you go off to do as you’d said and see if you really can link all of Stonewall and Anailia to you as a test run. If you can do that without issues, the odds of you not having a limit seem guaranteed, and we’ll be able to more easily proceed with discussions.”

“Cool, in that case, I guess I’ll get to work.”