“Man, I might actually finish everything here at this rate.”

Being left alone in a library for so many hours, he’d spent the time plowing through books, enjoying the experience all the more for just how peaceful it was. He hadn’t been able to do anything like that in the trial and it felt like an excellent change of pace as he used the time to escape the world.

Vividus’s library wasn’t just full of books on life magic like he’d expected when he got there but a healthy range of topics that left him feeling happily stimulated as he got to work going through them all, reading dozens of thick texts in the span of the day thanks to all of his mind skills working together to make it easy.

And if this keeps up I might actually get to the point where I could just pick up a book and flip through the pages to read it all. Definitely need to get a few more levels to speed reading just for that.

All the while as he read away, he’d been kneading a piece of metal in his hand that he kept in his pocket, altering through training every magic he had with it to pass the time. Changing its shape with his material user skill, applying numerous complex enchantments with his divine enchanting, and destroying them in the end with his destruction, only to repeat the cycle in an attempt to grow.

As he finished his last book he put it to the side to give his magics more attention than what he could from a meager two minds, switching the order in his head to leave only a couple to digest everything he’d been reading while the rest focused on the lump in front of him. At the fourth level in material user, there were things he wanted to try, especially after how much his mana pool had grown.

Rolling the ball into a sphere, he attempted something he’d done when he first started using the skill, seeing how well he could manipulate it through mana alone.

He stared at its shiny surface as it sat comfortably in his palm as he directed his mana through it, bending the metal to his will as he went, working in the simpler features first, stretching it out into a more oval shape, pulling bits out and pushing others in to get the beginning of the standard facial features he wanted to work with, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth and clear, if a little rough, as he worked to refine them, giving more and more detail as he went before changing the scale he was working at, adding the pores as best as he could, subtle wrinkling around the eyes, slight dimples at the smile and attempting the hardest of all, hair.

That was the step where he failed. No matter how much he tried to pull out delicate strands from the head of the small bust he made, it was all too thick, giving a terrible look that Ben eventually gave up on, smoothing it all back out as he instead added more details and lines to give the look he wanted instead, reaching a point that he would consider it an excellent likeness of himself as he admired his handiwork.

“So my mana drains a lot faster doing it this way but as long as I regulate how much I output to match my regen rates it’s not so bad, and I’m pretty sure unending crafting is enhancing the quality of my work too cause otherwise I think this is better than really should be. It would make sense, right? I’m basically just using my magic as a tool for my crafting and I already know the skills are related, now it’s just to test it in ways that my crafting won’t help.”

He had two ideas that he wanted to try, one of which he’d tried before and basically failed at while another was new to him, which he started with.

Staring at his sculpture, there was one thing he was curious if he could manage, temperature control. How hot or cold something was depended on the energy in it, the atoms vibrating and giving off whatever levels of warmth they did, but then on a fundamental level, that meant it was just the material moving, at least as far as he saw it.

And if it’s just the material moving, then I should be able to speed it up or stop it.

Thinking about exactly what he’d need to do, he stopped and gave it a try, doing his best to still the atoms that made it up to bring down the temperature, feeling his mana leave him in a flood and sweat begin to form on him as he focused, putting everything he had to the task and still failing.

He wasn’t discouraged, he thought that if he was going to manage at all it would be difficult and failure was always the likely outcome, at least at his current level, but he didn’t let that stop him from trying it from the opposite end, doing his best to heat it after his mana regeneration.

On that end, he thought he might have had the smallest amount of success once he tried. He thought it felt warmer in his hand, at least slightly, but the longer he focused on it, trying to raise the temperature even more, the more he had to admit to himself it was probably just the metal absorbing his own body heat.

Alright, a failure on that end, not the most unexpected thing in the world. A shame, if I could get that down then I might have been able to cook food even without a fire or stove. Any change is just the result of the heat altering the food's properties, right? If my skill is ever great enough I might be able to, but even then it’s probably a while away.

Another thing to try in the future, but to end it he focused on his final attempt, the first way he ever used his magic and deemed it to be wrong, he raised up the small bust into the air through mana alone and had it fly in a tight circle before immediately stopping, feeling his mana plummet from the act and needing to wait as it all regenerated.

“Okay, even with all of my levels that’s still absolutely outside of what’s possible for me, good to know, now to just see if there’s a way around it.”

When he used his magic, his mana wanted to completely fill whatever he was using it on, but he’d already confirmed back in the trial that it didn’t have to and instead he tried to focus it into the smallest area he could before trying again, using a fraction of it in the process as he lifted the sculpture from a single point instead of every bit at once and making it do slow circles in the air around the room, with a mana cost that meant he could do it constantly.

He immediately wanted to cheer as the level went up. It still wasn’t at the point where he could use it for an attack, trying to move it fast enough for such a thing was all but begging to fall into mana exhaustion, but it did give him a new way to train the skill to practice, pushing it to grow to be stronger for the applications that had the most meaning to him, using it with his crafting.

And when I get home I can test a few more things too. So much to do, but it’s all worth it.

The only thing that stopped him from continuing to watch his sculpture flying through the air was Thera and Vividus walking in, both of them giving it a confused look before it landed back in his hand and he cleared his throat.

“Ahem, so how am I looking then doc?” He asked, knowing full well that as he’d been both practicing and playing around in the last few hours the room had been filled with life spirits examining him, even if he didn’t see them.

“We still need to look at you for longer and there’s something I personally want to check. Take your shirt off and use the tool you made that raised your level last time so I can examine you.”

“Wait, are you crazy!” Thera yelled. “He almost got himself killed using it last time and we don’t want to raise his level even more when we don’t know what effect it has!”

“If you want the best chance of understanding it then it’s important to see how it changes with a level up, and it would be even better for me to be watching as it happens rather than seeing it after. Given the nature of the skill I don’t believe it will harm him and considering the skills that merged with it, he’s likely to level it up in the event he gets enough injuries or needs to push beyond his limits, unless of course you don’t think either of those things will happen again.”

Thera looked at Ben silently for a second, needing barely any time to give in to the face of her aunt's argument. Given his track record with injuries as well as life-and-death situations, she didn’t want to bet on him finding himself to be safer overall any time soon.

“Fine, but don’t let him get past one level.”

With the both of them seeming to have come to an agreement about his body, Ben did as he was told, reaching into his bag to pull out the knife he’d used with the soul crystal still inside of it, and after Vividus stuck her hands into his chest and a second of hesitation on his part, activated the enchantment.

As soon as it activated and scales started to form along his arm, the great life spirit removed one of her hands from him, ripping out multiple of the red growths in quick succession.

“Ow! Man that really freaking hurts!”

“It will be good to see what sort of effect it leaves behind after you undo it. I suppose I should also deal with your arm as a whole so it doesn’t attempt anything,” She said as an afterthought, the immediate consequence being Ben losing most feeling in it. He still had the strength to hang onto the knife and could run his mana through it, though there was a chance he didn’t need to. He wasn’t sure if he’d lost control of it yet, and on a whim decided to test something just to see what would happen. Taking extra care not to have the effects extend to Vividus in any way for the sake of his own safety, he activated connect, trying to force the effects of the skill onto both his arm and the blade itself to see if either would work as his mind was filled with primal, raw screams.

It wasn’t his own, he hadn’t been affected by the act, what he was experiencing was the rage and madness of the demon's soul, the effect of caging a beast that wanted to be a force of violence and letting it see that its only way out was by going through him.

The notification rang out in his head, but before he could say anything about it, Vividus was already aware and ripped the knife from his grasp as the effects on him faded, the places where the scales were ripped out leaving thin cuts in his flesh in their place.

Just saying, it would be very cool if connect decided to awaken right now too. I just did something real neat with the skill, didn’t I? Using it on a soul that was trying to possess me, come on, I’ve earned it.

Despite his hopes though, no more system notifications followed. It was just Vividus standing there, arms still inside of him as she looked at him with what he thought was curiosity before changing her focus to the scales in her hand that hadn’t reverted to bits of flesh.

“Well, you’ve certainly given me plenty to go over so I’ll be talking with the lesser spirits, you both take a room. The building is set up the same as the other one so you should have no problem finding the equivalent of the last one. I’ll call for you in the morning.”

Clearly dismissed, the great life spirit continued to stare at the scales as they both left, the two of them eager to relax for the night.

As they got to their room and laid down, they briefly spoke about their days before Ben went to jot ideas down into a notebook for different enchantments to pass the time before going to sleep, only stopping as he felt Thera’s eyes on him.

“Something on your mind?”

“Mmh, you know, even my family tends to struggle to tell where I’m looking with eyes like this.”

“What can I say, I’m a fantastic boyfriend. Also, that wasn’t really an answer.”

She hesitated for a second, subtle looks of curiosity and concern playing across her face before she gave voice to what she wanted to know. “I’ve never really asked you about it before, I know it’s a sensitive subject for you Ben, but what do your people think of death?”

Ah.

He thought he understood where this was coming from. Even if he didn’t like it, he did end up in danger a lot and assumed this was another extension of her concern for him. With whatever was happening to his body, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to worry a bit, he probably should have been more concerned than he was and he put an arm around her as he spoke.

“I mean, even if Earth was smaller than this world, it had a lot of history to it and more cultures and beliefs than I could name, I can’t really say what my species believes as a whole, but I can say that I don’t plan on just rolling over and dying if I can help it.”

“So would you want to live as long as you can?” She pressed, staring into his eyes as if to see his soul.

“Yeah, of course Thera, do I give the impression that I want to get off this ride so soon?”

“I did watch you hang from the neck of a sea monster before.”

“Ignore that. I like living. If the world doesn’t end in the next few years then I’ll be happy to enjoy even more of it too. There’s an entire planet to see after all, and I want to see as much of it as I can with you.”

As he said that she leaned in and kissed him before going to rest her head on his chest, saying one final thing before she fell asleep.

“I want you to live a long life too.”