“Um, what?”

Ben didn’t know how to react to what he was seeing. The cold, distant goddess was now pleading with him desperately, tears in her eyes and destroying the dignified image she’d managed, placing herself more along the lines of how he thought of Myriad as his god seemed to sigh at his side, having a far better understanding about where she was coming from than he did.

“Everyone up here already knows what you’re like and I shouldn’t have made a move against your god like that, please don’t try to destroy the faith I built up,” She begged him, leaving him feeling like he was bullying a being so far above him in power as he cast an accusing eye at his god.

“Everyone up there knows what I’m like? What the heck are you saying about me that’s so bad it could make a god act like this man, there has to be a limit to the slander.”

“Hey, don’t blame me,” Myriad shot back. “Any rumours about you are your own fault.”

He didn’t believe him for a second but still tried to put the goddess at ease. If he was being honest he did have things planned with the request, but nothing so bad that it would destroy her faith.

“Alright, calm down, I’m not going to ruin your faith,” He said gently as she only looked less sure.

She couldn’t help it. His mind was a tangled web compared to other mortals, making all but any thoughts he wanted a god to read need a higher level of attention to parse out, made all the worse by how much was going on in the depths of his mind, less easy to see unless one did their best to plunge beneath the surface. All she had to go off of with any certainty was what she’d heard.

“But if you put those statues into every one of my churches I’ll be ruined! Do you know how much work the church of Eneth has to put into to keep it floating, not to mention how much it will cost if they fall? I have dozens of churches across the land and even if I’m a goddess of magic it still won’t be easy for my believers to supply them all with mana at all times. They’ll come crashing down constantly enough that I’ll be left destitute, having to sell off my churches just to avoid having to deal with the statues by the end of things!”

…Okay so maybe this actually is my fault.

“Alright, calm down, calm down,” He told her, suddenly feeling guilty. “What happened between me and Eneth was a result of his apostle trying to murder me and his son harassing my friend, all you did was pick a fight with my god, I can deal with that without making it a big deal. Admittedly, I’m disappointed you got my hopes up about giving me a magic skill, but not to the point that I want to crush you in revenge.”

She seemed to calm down, casting an unsure look at Myriad as his god agreed.

“It’s true, as annoying as it is, Ben would much rather get revenge for personal reasons than for anything that happens to my faith, he’s not giving this any mind.”

“Hey!”

“I’m just saying it would be nice if you directed some of that energy to getting me believers,” The cube tisked as Ben brought his focus back to the goddess before him.

“Let's make things clear so nobody's worried about anything. When I say statues in each of your churches, I’m not talking about what I made for Eneth’s. Let’s see, first off, you can be responsible for getting your own statues. They don’t have to be enchanted in any way and they can be made of whatever metal will look like him, it doesn’t need to be a magic material. The dimensions should be about a half meter by a half meter at least, but I don’t care if it’s hollow so the pricing shouldn’t be too bad. Your churches can’t hide them away, they need to be present in a way that people will know it’s a god and your priests should be prepared to answer questions about him in a positive light and take care of their upkeep, but that’s it. A lot easier than spending however much faith it would take to get me a skill, right?”

She chewed her lip, looking much younger as she thought, though now that she knew she wasn’t going to be ruined by the request she was much more relaxed, although still unhappy.

“Mmh, it’s not as bad as I thought, but the main issue is that… well it’s him,” She said, casting a look to his floating god and leaving Ben to sigh.

“Well for now, let’s start with some of the questions I want as well. What exactly do you have against Myriad? I heard you guys used to get along and it would be nice if he had a friend. Is it just because he destroyed his planet?”

Myriad didn’t quite know how to take his apostle wanting him to repair his relationship with her so he’d have a friend but was even more surprised to learn the reason she disliked him so much to begin with.

“It’s not just that he destroyed his planet, it’s that he destroyed all life on it too,” She said awkwardly, deciding to fulfill at least that part of her obligation.

“Ah, I can kind of see that I guess, even if all of Myriad’s believers became a part of him after, that doesn’t mean every living thing did. Killing all life rather than letting it fall into enemy hands is pretty brutal.”

“I’ve seen the way you hunt, you don’t have much of a place to judge from,” His god shot back.

“That’s not it,” Helori said, silencing them both as she drew a breath. “I don’t suppose you know much about how life in the universe is generally split, do you?”

“Uh, I know we do it a lot by body type here, I’m a hominid type which is one of the most common, but you also get plenty of crustacean types and bug types and probably a lot more I’m not aware of.”

“Wrong. That’s how mortals break things down, but it’s basically meaningless. Artifacts of convergent evolution and the modifications the gods make to their chosen races. I’m talking about on a deeper, biological level.”

He thought it looked like his god was beginning to understand where she was coming from, but Ben still wasn’t getting it. “My studies lean more towards material science and magic, help me out and give me the answer, would you?”

“Originally, the gods that first made their place on the world and built the system thought life could be split into two types. Beings based on carbon and those based on silicon, with a few races being the product of endosymbiosis between both sides,” She explained, showing off just what made her a goddess of knowledge. “It’s an aspect that was well understood and defined by them and it let the system be designed to facilitate breeding between radically different species, with the hope that such a thing would allow races to keep their personal differences to the side as they eventually intermingled enough to essentially become one singular race with enough diversity within it to survive anything, even without us at our old strength.”

He felt himself being pulled into the lesson, eager to learn something new and interesting.

“Then came the mana-based lifeforms,” She continued. “Creatures that didn’t have physical bodies in the normal sense, those we never would have dreamed to exist before coming to this world. The system became a part of them as soon as they joined these lands and it was originally not certain if they’d be able to be a part of that plan, but the system was built to be able to grow and adapt, and as you already know, we’ve just seem that it does in fact allow the mana-based to become a part of this new, global species. And then we get to just what your god's race was.”

“Were you something interesting?” Ben couldn’t help but ask.

“Of course I was! What sort of question is that?”

“His was the most interesting!” Helori yelled. “It was exciting enough to learn about the mana-based lifeforms for us, Myriad’s people were something completely different! The only examples of mythril-based lifeforms in the known galaxy, at least as far as all present gods are concerned, as well as the few void ones we’ve spoken to. Possibly in all of reality, his world was the only one to give rise to something that was not only new, but to come from something as rare as a magic material as well! If he’d saved at least a specimen or two it wouldn’t be so annoying, but he didn’t even have the forethought to do that!”

As her outburst ended Ben looked to his god, questions on his mind.

“She’s mostly right, though I was unaware at the time,” Myriad explained. “Usually only the void gods move through space freely, taking their races with them, so I simply didn’t know. Of course, there’s two thing’s she’s wrong about. While my race was mostly mythril, we did in fact have an endosymbiotic event of our own. To be specific, while our base cells were mythril, they contained organelles of both carbon and silicon that were instrumental in making such a difficult form of life exist. But second and more importantly, she’s wrong that I didn’t save any specimens.”

The way Helori moved to Myriad as soon as he said those words was all but instantaneous as her mood completely flipped. No longer was she showing anything of the cold, angry, scared, or outraged faces she was before. Now it was one of nothing but open curiosity and excitement.

“What, where, how?” She asked in a rapid-fire as he gently floated away from her ever closer face.

“Inside of me. I kept a few cells the only place I knew they’d be safe, pulling them to this realm so that nothing could harm them. It’s been a small dream of mine to take them to a new world in the event this one survives, as unlikely as that is to be, and to spare whatever faith I can to help them grow and proliferate until they reach the point that a diverse world of life exists, built on the remains of my old one.”

Ben never would have guessed his god had actual goals beyond simply getting more believers so he wouldn’t constantly feel so powerless and wasn’t sure what to say to that, but Helori couldn’t have been more excited by the prospect.

“I’ll accept the request of your apostle if you let me watch and help!” She all but yelled, getting confusion from Myriad in return.

“What? Why?”

“Because it’s interesting, obviously. No god has ever directed the course of life on a world from a single cell, it’s a project that could take millions of years, even if you pour all of your spare faith into it, how could I reject something so unique!”

“Um, alright, if you’re sure,” Myriad was looking to Ben, unsure of how to take this as his apostle laughed from the side. He couldn’t help it, the turn of events was too unexpected and entertaining.

“Alright, I’ve agreed so we’re all good,” Helori told him, eager to focus on the more interesting topic but switching back just long enough to focus on her obligations from agreeing. “So let me know what questions you have and we’ll get this over with.”

It was at that, that Ben felt his already wide smile grow all the more as she finally got to what he was really hoping to get out of this, with any extra faith for his god being a bonus.

“We really don’t have to do this today. In fact, it would be impossible to do all of this today,” He told her cheerfully, causing her some brief confusion.

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“You agreed to answer all of my questions. We didn’t put a cap or a time limit, and by god, do I end up with a lot of questions in life. I look forward to working with you teacher.”

There was only so much his own god knew after all. As nice as it was to have Falk and Quilith around to help teach him things, having a goddess of knowledge and magic at his disposal was perfect for finding out more on any topic he could want. He didn’t intend to destroy her, but he was going to get the most from her he could.