Getting to the guild, Ben ignored the looks along the way he now realized were due to a combination of people learning that he wasn’t dead, as well as the secret that he was an apostle leaking to the town as they went inside. He needed some sort of distraction from the fact that Thera fully intended to fight in a war against a race that was all but certain to win, and dealing with Ceselee raising his rank seemed like the perfect way to keep his minds off things.

As they got in, Onk immediately noticed them, seeming to go through the same range of emotions that Ceselee did when they saw them, though it was harder to be certain due to a lack of any sort of facial features to help give it away.

“Ben, it’s so nice to see you alive!” She said enthusiastically despite that, though the direction of their head turned to point at where he and Thera were linking arms. “And you’ve brought a new friend.”

“No he hasn’t,” Thera said. “It’s me as usual. I, um, don’t need my cloak anymore. Hi Onk.”

“Thera! So that’s what you look like! Oh my aren’t you lovely, I completely couldn’t recognise you,” They said, any hesitation vanished, leaving them filled with nothing but the joy of the two of them returning. “It’s been so long! Ceselee mentioned that the two of you would be coming but when you walked in I… Well anyway, I was told I should check your cards.”

“Or you could not,” Ben suggested as Thera was already eagerly handing hers over.

“Come now, it’s fine, let’s see-”

Their words dropped off in an instant as they processed whatever information the guild was able to read from the cards without a person revealing it, seeming to struggle to mentally process what they were seeing before leaning forward in a hushed voice.

“You awakened two skills?”

“Mhm,” She said, trying to contain her smile.

“Not to mention all of these kills, how did you-”

“Uh, we don’t need to focus on that bit too much,” Thera told her, not wanting to think too hard on when she’d completely cut loose during her training alone in the woods. “If you just transfer over whatever I’ve earned for those kills it’s fine.”

“Of course, no wonder Ceselee wants to see you. Then how about you Ben- wait, three!”

“Ahem, anyway could we keep this private? Also, it doesn’t show which ones, does it?”

“No, our systems only pick up that you have them, none of the finer details.”

“Cool I guess.”

With the shock to their favourite guild employee out of the way, they were led to Ceselee’s office, where she sat at her desk waiting for them.

“Well Onk, how’s it look?” She asked cheerfully as she finished up the paperwork to send off to the head guild. While she had full authority to update Ben’s card then and there, it was still important to send such information out for record-keeping purposes. The issue was that everything she’d written was meaningless, and there was about to be a lot more.

“It looks like we have two rank one adventurers in town,” Onk told her happily as Ceselee took a moment to process it before sadly looking down at the papers she’d finished and tossing them into the trash.

“You could have mentioned this earlier.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Ben laughed, enjoying his bit of revenge before asking the most important question. “But more importantly, what are the actually responsibilities and benefits that will keep me from just quitting when I hear them?”

“I’m sure not as bad as you’d expect, most organizations tend to prefer to keep awakened skill holders happy, especially since it would be easy for you to find work elsewhere. Hell, at this stage we can’t even ask you to move for us, but if you take on the requests we give then there’s a lot to gain. The pay is on a different level for anything that would be a rank one quest, not to mention accommodations. If you ever take one, on the way there and the way back, whenever possible we’ll ensure you only stay in the best inns with meals covered for whatever you desire. Of course, we can’t promise that all quests would occur in areas where that would be possible, but it would happen enough.”

“Except I’m rich, and as the holder of an awakened crafting skill it would be hard to find any better cooks than me.”

“There’s more still, relax. By far the biggest benefit would be gaining access to the job ‘master adventurer’. It grants major bonuses to all skills and attributes so it’s something to be envied for anyone who unlocks it. More aligned with your interests though would be that the guild would now send you the books you’ve been ordering for free, and at a faster pace than you currently get them too.”

She saw Ben’s eyes light up at that and knew she had him. Even if he didn’t personally believe he could offer much as an adventurer to make staying worthwhile, from what she’d seen it was worth it for the guild to try and keep him.

No longer hesitating, Ben and Thera handed over their cards to be marked with their rank, and as Thera stared at hers, eyes glittering, Ben wasted no time in asking for exactly what he wanted.

“Alright, now that that’s done, send me everything.”

“Um, sorry?” Ceselee asked, thinking she’d misheard.

“You said by doing this the guild could get me any books and information it could so I want all it has to offer. Send me everything.”

“Ben, I know you’re eager but that’s thousands of books across dozens, maybe hundreds of topics, there’s no point,” The guild master argued as she tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t be dissuaded.

“If it’s only a few thousand then I’ll likely burn through them all in a year or two, tops. I’m very fast at it.”

She could tell from his eyes that she wouldn’t be changing his mind and gave in, accepting the fact that she would have to think hard on just how she was going to submit such a ridiculous request as she tried to finish up.

“Just don’t expect them to all come in at once, okay? Anyway, for the paperwork I am supposed to ask what skills you got to the second tier. You can decline, but we prefer to try and have an idea on where to send you that would be of the greatest assistance.”

“I awakened my earth and life magic,” Thera shared, having no issue with the guild knowing.

“Crafting and enchanting. If the guild has a quest that would need those I guess I’d be curious.”

“What about your third Ben?” Onk asked from the back, getting a blank look from the guild master.

“You left for a few months and came back with three awakened skills?”

At that Ben smiled, placing a single finger over his lips. “Secret. It’s not anything the guild could make use of so don’t worry about it. If that’s all then I’m sure I’ll be seeing you both soon enough, but life’s been exhausting and now that I’m home I just want to rest.”

“Did they seem odd to you?” Thera asked him as they walked, thinking back to how both Ceselee and Onk had both acted right when they’d first arrived, only to drop whatever weird feeling had been there a few moments later. A fact that Ben had noticed too and had at least some idea about.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they thought I was cheating on you or something,” He explained offhand, making Thera stop in her tracks as he said it.

“What?”

“They didn’t realize who you were at first, right? The moment they knew it was you they were a lot happier to see us.”

“...What?” She asked again, not knowing how she was supposed to react to that. “Ben, don’t be ridiculous, we weren’t even like that when we left, why would that matter?”

“Ha, all I’m saying is they saw me arrive back with some random beautiful girl, no cloaked figure in sight and made some sort of assumption before they knew it was you. Maybe I’m wrong though, you can always ask them.”

She thought about the prospect of doing exactly that but didn’t know how she would ever react if he was right, so instead decided to let the matter drop entirely. It felt like she would be happier if she just ignored it and let it drift from her mind instead of focusing on whatever ideas people had about them, however accurate they currently were.

Getting back home, they enjoyed all of the smaller things that came with their normal life that they’d missed after so long. Sonya prepared a feast for dinner to celebrate their return and after it continued on as things normally did. They caught up some more, played some games to pass the time, and eventually split up for the night, with Thera stopping Ben outside of his door just before he went in, pulling him into a kiss.

Her hands on his back, he didn’t notice the bit of mana she directed through him, too focused on his girlfriend in his arms.

“Ha, you sure you don’t want to move in already?” He teased as she pushed him away.

“Just enjoy what you get. Sleep well Ben.”

“You too Thera.”

With that they parted, Ben going to his room after so long away and smiled at his houseplant, lovingly cared for by Sonya while he was gone, though in need of pruning. It had grown significantly since he’d last seen it, becoming more like a small tree by that point, likely in large part thanks to the enchantment in its pot, and he’d need to make a new one soon.

Touching its branches, he connected to it briefly, sending it a greeting from his mind of warmth and love and feeling it respond in kind before he sat at his desk, the container that sealed the core of the talos Inux still waiting for the day it could be freed.

“Sorry it’s been so long Inux, had a busy few months and almost died a few times, you know, the usual. The good news is I’ve made a lot of progress towards what I need to for making you a new body. Maybe even an overwhelming amount of progress. I have to assume the enchantments that made you up were decaying because the god that made you put more into them than it could really manage with its skill, so you must have been less stable than other mythic items. At least that’s my working theory since I’ve never heard of a god needing to maintain a trial. Either way though, I’ve stumbled across a far more stable way of doing things that I’ve incorporated into my usual techniques, I might actually be able to get you sorted with a lower level than expected, though it will still be a while. Either way, just thought I’d let you know.”

His one-sided conversation done with a being that likely couldn’t even hear him to begin with, Ben laid in bed, feeling comfortable after such a long time as he brought himself to his god’s realm.

“So if you look at this area here, we believe that its purpose is to both slow the flow of mana from the previous section, while at the same time directing it to the next four at different rates with different interactions depending on the area,” Helori told him, pointing out different spots of the summoning spell one by one as she explained what few insights and theories the gods who had bothered to study its structure in detail were able to unravel. “Of course, this is all just conjecture. We feel fairly certain this is correct from what we’ve seen when the spell was actually activated, but the finer details escape us.”

“Still, if we can modify this I can already see a potential option to drastically reduce the cost,” Ben said, getting a curious look from the goddess. “Though it might not actually be any easier.”

“Alight, I’ll bite. What do you think could be done?” She asked, more to humour him than anything, not truly believing he could come up with a way to reduce the cost of a spell he didn’t understand.

“Well, we already know the grey can project themselves through realities, which means that they have a way of repeatedly finding this one again so any part of the spell devoted to pointing out the way there and the way back could potentially be stripped away, but what I think would save the most is if they could open a hole in their reality from their end. Think about it, the fact that they can interact with any universes to any extent shows they can likely weaken the boundary at least, if they can tear the hole themselves then that’s a bunch of mana and faith that doesn’t need to come from this one to do the job.”

While untested, the goddess couldn’t find any immediate flaw with the argument to correct him on like she’d expected to. Any known time a summoning had been carried out, there hadn’t been a chance to talk and plan with the different worlds that people would be taken from, but the power of the grey’s technology changed that completely.

“A genuinely decent idea,” She muttered as she tossed it over. “Depending on how well it works, that could change from bringing over a few thousand at the very best to bringing tens of thousands. There’s still obviously issues of course, so much of the power saved would be lost constructing them bodies, not to mention that the idea is built on the notion that the spell can be modified at all, that a single piece being pulled won’t make the whole thing tumble, but… I’ll bring it to the other magic and knowledge gods at least. As busy as we are, there are occasional bits of downtime, I’m sure at least a few would be interested in pursuing that line of reasoning.”

“All progress is progress,” He muttered to her, as he continued on with his language lessons from his god in a different mind in his head.

With so many of them now, it was easy to have a handful devoted to his lessons on spell structure with Helori as others were split between reviewing what he’d learned of one of her people’s dead languages, as the rest focused on the madness that was the one Myriad was teaching him.

He couldn’t deny that it was interesting, the issue was solely that it was insane. That wasn’t even mentioning the fact that he’d never be able to replicate it with his mouth. While it did have spoken components to it, many of them seemed to require facial structures that he was almost certain every race on the planet lacked, and that wasn’t even mentioning the unspoken parts of the language.

Myriad’s people could naturally link minds with one another. It was undeniably strange, but Ben had long grown used to doing it himself, considering the ability to be one of his main core skills. The issue revolved around how language would develop and evolve with that trait present, requiring sounds it was difficult enough to think accurately, let alone have any chance of ever speaking.

The challenge level compared to the ones Helori had been teaching him was astronomical, but he was making progress on that front, albeit slow.

If I can actually learn any of the ones Myriad wants to teach me then I’m golden. There’s no way I would fail to decode a language if I can learn this nonsense.

“I heard that Ben! This language isn’t nonsense, it has a rich history and culture that it was built up to fit the needs of that perfectly complements my people!”

“Sure, except every word lacks meaning on its own, meaning there’s no way to make a dictionary for it, and it doesn’t have verbs or adjectives, but some weird alternative I’m pretty sure doesn’t have a name in english or all speak.”

“That’s part of its charm!”

“That charm is going to make my eyes bleed.”