“I can’t thank you enough, Ben,” Valaria said once he freed her for the day, leaving her standing at her doorstep the second he released her from his mind, the chair and ropes that had been securing her nowhere in sight when she’d opened her eyes.

“Yeah, well, don’t worry about it,” he told her. “You did good work; we’ll have to meet up again soon to try and get you some more progress.”

With the progress he had in mind being an awakening, though a different one than he was sure Valaria expected. Over the course of that day, Ben had gotten her to the ninth level of connect inclination by making her train with more and more complex arrangements of his mind, but the real reason he’d been doing that was to finally get her to the ninth level of her unnatural mental expansion, with the hope that he’d be able to force a third-tier awakening in her for whatever benefits he himself would be able to gain from such a thing, be it a new title, or else just how the skill would imprint on his mental structure. She had potential that was worth growing after all, but as she looked at him, Valaria noticed something else.

“But are you okay?” she asked in concern. “You look…”

“I’m fine, thank you,” he told her before she could say more. “I just had a few different things come up while I was helping you train, but it’s nothing to be worried about.”

In his journey with Abrus around Anailia, like it or not, Ben had only gone on to find more crimes of a heinous enough nature that forced the two to stop and apprehend the ones who committed them, leaving him with a headache as stress clouded his thoughts.

When compared to the size of the city, only a few dozen undiscovered crimes of the sort of significance or cruelty that could get Ben to care was actually quite low, at least when he compared it to Earth, with the existence of gods in his current world likely having a positive effect as far as ensuring that the general populace would try to behave themselves, yet still he’d discovered so much and would still only find more. He was going to be going around the entire world again soon after all, connecting to all of the people who made their ways to a gate city, and among them would surely be those who’d done horrific things in the past without ever seeing any punishment for it.

Ugh, god, I don’t want to turn my soul modifying into a prison run, he groaned to himself. But I don’t really have a choice, do I?

It was an aspect of his newest awakening he’d been the least prepared for. Soulcraft had taken in the majority of his soul and mind skills, but he hadn’t thought it would force him to so deeply confront what evil existed in the world, leaving him to sigh.

Yeah, I have no choice, which means while I’m going around, I’ll also need to be gathering anyone who’s gotten away with all this shit in the past. Joy, won’t that be fun?

It was certainly one more worry on his thoughts, but with him keeping such things private, Valaria could only respond to what she saw.

“Well, if it’s anything I can help you with, please let me know. We’re coworkers, after all,” she told him with a smile, using the same way of describing their relationship under their god that he would, even if anyone else on the planet would have found such a descriptor for a deity's core believers to be insane. “And besides that, you’re always helping me. I’d like the chance to repay the favour.”

“Thanks, but really, don’t worry. You help me enough by fulfilling your role as Myriad’s high priestess, and you go above and beyond in it by working hard to get stronger. As long as you keep doing that, then you’re doing plenty for me.”

Looking like she wanted to say more, Valaria still accepted what he’d said and with it, bid him a good evening from there, leaving Ben by himself now that he had done what he’d set out to do as he walked through Anailia’s streets, left to reflect on the day.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Despite the fact that his new awakening seemed like it was going to force him to confront the evils of the world in a way he hadn’t needed to pay attention to until then, at the very least, he could say the day was productive. Both all of Stonewall and Anailia had been bound to him without showing any sign of a limit to just how many he could link to his soul and with the swath of new bodies, Ben was able to significantly boost how many souls he created at a time to compensate for how the experience he produced was now being further divided, allowing everyone to benefit as both lands got their jobs finished in droves while he estimated how that might change in the future as he connected to more.

The issue there was that it was still ninety-nine percent of the experience he created, divided up equally among everyone who would be able to take it. The benefits would work best so long as he had a third tier to party with to act as an experience sink, but Thera would only be able to do that twice for him before he’d have to have parties of second tiers built to try increase his overall experience requirement so he could provide more to others for longer.

There was the chance that awakening more third-tier mind users would help, even if not as much. His own mind was simply too powerful by that point, and he doubted that a third-tier mental expansion, complex mind, parallel thought, or anything else would actually last that long when his own mental structure would be passively creating droves of the experience such a job would require, even without any souls being made.

But at the same time, it might still be better than anyone else can get, and besides, if I do get a third tier in a party, ninety-nine percent of experience split between the rest of the world should be enough to finish at least the majority of first tier jobs for people, but… I should dedicate some mental power to considering how to raise others to the third tier as well. People with different skills that won’t match my own enough to finish too fast if they join me.

With that thought in his head, though, he was immediately considering the various contenders he’d seen and connected to, considering just what he might be able to put them through to drive them to godhood while he otherwise went on his way. After all, that was something for the background of his thoughts, and it had been a long day; he just wanted to finish the final task he had in Anailia and then go home.

Looking down within the mindscape he’d created, Ben was left with nothing but contempt for the last forbidden god he’d yet to use within the succubi’s fields.

Fednara, a god of bows, light, and life was the final one waiting for him, a deity who was so tied to what many considered the most inherently good magics for the healing properties they had, yet had still chosen to abandon his people the moment it had seen a chance to escape the devastation of its world and was still unrepentant when Ben had examined its thoughts, same as all of the others.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise though, it had been made more than clear that the entire group of them were irredeemable, the horrors they’d unleashed on both the world and the greater universe with their actions proving as much, and yet, Ben still couldn’t help but be disappointed.

Dewdrop, a being far more foreign and dangerous than any of them, had in a way been a pleasant surprise, with all of the destruction it had dealt coming from ignorance and misunderstanding instead of carelessness and malice, and that discovery had left Ben unable to deny the small flicker of desire in himself to see such a thing again. Perhaps to see a god who regretted the choices they’d made in the past, yet had found themselves unable to escape them on their new world. Something that could at least feel bad, to hold a desire to repent, and yet, Ben found nothing of the sort.

Attacked the moment he’d made himself known, there was nothing in that god’s thoughts that went beyond themself, Fednara caring for nothing but his own comfort and safety, with the difference between them made clear leaving the deity to beg at his feet, all while Ben knew that the god had never once granted the same mercy it had asked for.

And here I am, not going to give any either. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

The thought made his mind turn back to all of the people he and Abrus had captured that day, plenty of them feeling like they had their reasons at the time, just as Ben did now. The forbidden gods were remorseless in their actions, just as Ben was remorseless in using them to grow in power. No matter the wrongness of it, that wasn’t going to change.

Still, the thought did affect him as he bent down to look in the deity’s eyes, seeing the god flinch from the cold look in his own.

“Don’t worry,” Ben told him. “Or at least, try to take comfort. Just like I’m judging you, maybe one day, something will come along to judge me too.”

Fednara wasn’t given the chance to react; sharing even those few words was a waste of time that could have been better spent on trying to grow his skills, and with that, Ben moved on to what he would do every time. He made use of the chance to train before him.