The effects of altering the enchantment were minor, but that was to be expected. As a fifth-level enchanter, he’d been able to get the effect of Thera’s charm at a distance down to only needing a resistance of 19, while her effect on contact needed a resistance of 29. Both values were far too high for an average person to deal with, though it was still a significant improvement overall.

After tying in the effects of the other skills, he’d only managed to bring both down to 18 and 28 respectively, meaning that what would act as an increase of four for others, she could only get one, if that. It was entirely possible it was acting as a fraction of a percent that just happened to be enough to tip things over the edge, and he wouldn’t know for sure until he got access to higher leveled versions of the skills to attempt with.

Worse, when he did the math it didn’t work out. Assuming that for every level those skills had they could compensate for an extra point of resistance and Thera would need at best four levels to get a point off, that meant that even if he became a ninth level enchanter with access to ninth level skills, he would only be able to bring Thera’s charm down to 6 for distance and 16 on contact. A remarkable improvement to be sure, but still far from safe considering how low people’s magic resistances could be, not to mention the fact that if her charm magic ever leveled up again it would only get worse.

Aside from that, everything he’d just considered was built upon more assumptions than he cared to think about. There was no guarantee that each level of the enhancement skills would translate to an increase in resistance, and he needed to do more testing to be sure about how the skills affected the overall power of the brace.

God, why can’t things just be easy? Who knows if I’ll find any other skills with properties that can help. The ideal would be able to make it so it could cover up to what she would hypothetically need at charm level five so that she could train it up to level six without worries and be able to suppress it herself, but I can’t even cover it at level one.

Still, he’d suffered on it long enough. Falk knew he was planning on working on the braces through the night and wasn’t expecting him until later, so with all of his testing done he slunk to bed for a few hours of sleep.

“Hey Myriad, perfect timing, I don’t suppose you know any other skills that might help, would you? Something that has some sort of magic resistance or mental effect suppression tied to it?”

“Hmm? Um, not off-hand, sorry. There’s so many skills in the world, it can be hard to keep track. I think your current plan of getting some books on the topic is a good bet for the time being.”

His god seemed distracted, a fact he was quick to pick up on. “Something on your mind?”

Myriad was silent for just a moment, seemingly thinking before giving an answer. “It looks like I’ll need you to act as an apostle in an official capacity. Sachel’s in prison.”

“Wait, what?” It had been a few months since his fellow believer went off with her party to try and complete the quest Myriad gave her. He hadn’t heard anything from his god until then but had been under the assumption that she’d had something in mind when she left and was just trying to find a solution for it, not that she’d been jailed for some mysterious acts. “What did she do?”

“Ahem, well it seems she’d spent the first few weeks trying to find a different option for fulfilling her quest at the pleas of her teammates, but failing that she went to her home village to try and solve an issue they’d been having involving their sacred forest.”

“I’m still not hearing why they’re in prison.”

“It seems that entry into the forest is restricted to the believers of the dryad goddess Jagal, and since she converted to me…”

“She broke the law, got it. Still doesn’t tell me what it has to do with me.”

“I’d like to ask you to go to the village to try and resolve this in an official capacity as my apostle. You don’t need to get her in the forest or anything, just convince them to let her go so she can find something else.”

Ben was hesitant. Ignoring her party, he liked Sachel well enough, he just genuinely didn’t think he could do anything. “I don’t know Myriad, this seems a bit above my paygrade. Isn’t something like negotiating a prisoner release the sort of thing you want a professional to handle?”

“You think I wouldn’t get someone a bit better for it if I could? None of my believers are equipped for this sort of thing, I’m banking on the idea that they’ll give you some leeway as an apostle.”

He let out a long, pained sigh. “Can you at least make this a quest? Give a little payoff for what sounds like it might be a lot of work.”

“I can’t,” His god told him regretfully. “You have the quest options you have, I can’t create them as willy-nilly as other more powerful gods.”

“Alright, just figured I’d check. Anyway I’ll do it, just remember to cut me some slack in the future, okay?”

“Of course,” Myriad told him, relief leaking from him. Despite Ben being his apostle, he couldn’t compel him to act. Most gods wouldn’t need to worry about something like that, their believer’s faith would be all it would take to get them to move, but considering the fact that Ben’s opinion of the gods was so indifferent, he’d been lucky to have a strong enough relationship that he was considered a friend, there was always the chance he’d be turned down.

“So how long of a trip am I looking at? Don’t suppose it’s just a town over and I can get away with getting it done overnight?”

“You’re looking at about eight days of travel both ways, but if you can solve it all on day one it will be fine.”

“What are the chances of that?” Sixteen days of travel, not including however long he’d spend trying to sort it all out. Was there a way he could build something that would act as a car in the future? He didn’t care how hard it would be to construct if he could figure out some way to cut down on travel times.

It was times like this he missed Earth a bit more than usual. Gate travel was only handy if you lived in a gate city, being a five days carriage ride from the nearest one was a pain in the butt and he’d give anything for a car or plane.

“Anyway, tell me how to get there and I’ll go as soon as I can.”