“Another job well done,” Ben sighed contently as he laid down in bed, everything he needed to do finished as Thera moved to lay beside him.

“I think you enjoyed that a little too much. What are you going to do if anyone from that church comes to try and assassinate you again? Because I’d be willing to bet money on that happening.”

“I’ll be fine, and even if I’m not, I’ll just beg my lovely girlfriend to protect me.”

“Mmh, this lovely girlfriend would much prefer it if people stopped wanting you dead instead.”

“Ah, but why wish for what will never happen? I don’t have it in me to try and make peace with Eneth and by this point I’m pretty sure it’s impossible anyway. Better to take all I can from them and come out on top.”

“And every other god that hates you?”

“Hey, they leave me alone and I’ll do the same for them. I’m a real peaceful guy like that.”

Well, except for maybe Olensia. He gave me an enemy title so he’s fair game.

Myriad sighed in his head, with Helori joining in.

Just to be clear Helori, what exactly do you think might be the most exciting thing I could get away with thanks to that?

Lame.

“Alright,” Thera said, ignorant of the gods speaking in his head. “Well, I don’t know about you but I need some sleep. Try to get some rest, Ben.”

“Will do, sleep well Thera.”

He closed his eyes, fully prepared to let himself drift off after everything he’d been doing, only for the sounds of a cough in the room to make them both jerk up to see their unexpected visitor, a grey casually standing by their bed.

“So should I take it you don’t want your lesson tonight?” Quilith asked, giving Ben more of an amused look than anything else.

…That’s tonight. Of course it’s tonight. How did I forget this?

“My bad, I’m up for the usual Quilith, give me a second to move to another room. Sorry about that, Thera.”

“It’s okay, I’ll just be here pretending there isn’t an entire planet watching us in bed.”

“There usually isn’t,” Quilith tried to reassure. “We extend enough courtesy to allow your lover at least a bit of private time from the prying eyes of my world.”

Ben wasn’t sure he actually believed that but Thera decided to accept the answer, if only for the benefits it gave her overall peace of mind, and wished them the best as the two moved to Ben’s old room where they began their study.

The way Ben learned had shifted from its original form to take advantage of his unique mental structure, with what were essentially slides containing all of the information the grey had managed to gather about the universe Ben now called home appearing beside Quilith and flashing past at dozens of times a second for Ben to take in, all while he spoke with the alien.

The beginning of the conversation was focused on what he’d seen the prior time they’d had their lessons. If Ben had any questions or comments about the slides he saw, they moved too fast to ask about immediately unless something really managed to catch his interest, so he’d instead speak them out as he worked the next day, whichever alien or program was in charge of watching him recording it all to give him answers during the next lesson.

After that was done, the two mostly chatted about whatever managed to catch Ben’s interest as they bounced ideas off one another, discussing different aspects of the universe that interested them.

“Genuine question, you guys are looking across the whole of reality, how have you not discovered who invented the summoning spell? I feel like that would make my work a lot easier, especially if they have more.”

“Well one, we haven’t studied the whole of this reality yet, it should go without saying that’s unreasonably big. Two, it seems whoever they were existed so long ago that basically no records of them exist since across a thousand some-odd planets, only two of their spells have been recovered. Three, in a galaxy in the middle of being conquered, it’s not exactly shocking that any more evidence that might exist would accidentally be lost or destroyed, and finally four, we still can’t detect mana or the different levels of this reality with the sort of proficiency we might need to find any artifacts of whoever created it. We’re working on it.”

“And that’s all very reasonable, but you’re investigating other galaxies too, right? Is there really no examples of unusual spells having been cast in any of the planets you guys have looked into?”

“Not that we’ve seen, but the other galaxies we’ve examined aren’t exactly close given that with the way things look like they’ll end up, it probably wouldn’t be too long before the nearby ones are invaded too. If you don’t come through for us then we want to get whatever space we can to either let your demon problem eradicate itself or for us to build up the sort of force that would be needed to deal with it, even if we are still having issues on all fronts.”

“Okay, fair I guess. Don’t suppose any of the other worlds you’re investigating have anything immediately useful then? Some sort of galactic superweapon that we can recreate and use here?”

“If there was then we’d have already told you all. It’s actually a rather interesting paradox. By all accounts, this reality seems relatively young and that fact is reflected in the advancements of the many examples of different intelligent species we see in it, but if that’s really the case, who was it that made these ancient spells? We have a few theories about life that may have been birthed either the moment the conditions for it allowed or else during the rapid growth period of this universe but to make that second option work we’d have to assume the flow of time was different then as well and without solid evidence of that we can’t be sure. Either way, a combination of young worlds and different doctrines from the gods that rule them has led to this being one of the more advanced worlds we’ve seen so far.”

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“Wait, really? That’s kind of depressing.”

“There’s admittedly plenty that are better off in a few different ways but it’s not applications you couldn’t immediately pull off here if not for just how savage this world seems compared to plenty of others. You can’t have rail systems here yet because the megafauna would be a constant danger and certain agricultural advancements would have similar issues to give just two examples. Still, despite the circumstances that caused it, the fact that this world has so many gods seems to work in its favour. By being forced to work together, they can’t one-sidedly impose their will on the people in ways that might slow or prevent their technological development.”

“Does that happen a lot out there?”

“You’d be shocked. That’s an entire other issue we’re facing when looking for potential alternative worlds to help us. Sure, we have candidates who we believe we could get to assist, but then we’d be trapped on their planet living under their rules. Not necessarily bad rules mind you, but limiting. And then there’s all the other issues with this universe. You may not have any examples here but you’ve been told about more than a few worlds that have suffered under evil gods, correct?”

“It’s come up once or twice, yeah. Seems like they play a pretty big part in shaping any planet they’re a part of.”

“Yes, but that’s only if they’re defeated. There’s plenty of worlds out there where it looks like they’ve won so we don’t want to be too close to any of them either in case they start trying to expand out, the same as you’re currently dealing with here. The search for the perfect world is a long one.”

“Well, you know what they say, sometimes it’s not about what’s perfect, it’s about what’s good enough.”

“Ha, and I feel that in whatever sort of soul I hold.”

“Well anyway, while on the topic- wait. Go back twelve slides.”

Ben was suddenly deeply focused on the pages that had been flashing before him, not because of anything interesting, but instead because of his own knowledge on a topic. From what he could see, the grey had a piece of obviously incorrect information down.

Since any other time Ben had asked him to go deeper on a topic rather than saving it as questions to list off after his lessons always tended to end with some sort of in-depth discussion, Quilith was prepared to spend another hour or so on diving into whatever caught Ben’s eye, with it seeming like an obvious attraction for any craftsman of that universe.

“Ah, the magic materials of your reality and the mysteries they contain, not an unreasonable place to focus on for the night.”

“Mysteries my ass. Quilith, it says here where they come from is still uncertain.”

“Yes? There’s no record of how they form but they don’t fit in with the normal periodic table we’ve managed to construct outlining this universe's elements.”

Helori chimed in as she listened.

Myriad asked, just as confused before he and his apostle spoke in one voice.

“Pure elements are altered if they’re exposed to mana for long enough.”

The grey was silent for a second, looking at Ben curiously while Helori was demanding in her desire.

“Ben,” Quilith began as an entirely separate conversation was taking place in his head. “How sure of you are this.”

“Pretty certain, I got the info from my god who watched it in action, at least for mythril. When iron’s exposed to pure mana for long enough it’s warped by it and changes to its new form.”

“Okay, but how certain are you that your god is actually correct,” Quilith demanded, seeming unusually impatient.

“Pretty certain given that Myriad’s people were partially made of the stuff. From how I understand it, he was from an unusually iron-rich world and after a bit of it changed, the properties of mythril would give off more mana from a concentrated region, making more mythril form around it and so on and so forth as it slowly spread in a way he was able to watch over the course of thousands of years. Plus the biology of his world looks like it could take iron into its cells and convert it to mythril too if there was none available for use.”

Helori yelled at Ben’s god, sounding betrayed with slaps coming between each word.

Quilith seemed to have his own reaction to the news, looking as though he was on the receiving end of a massive headache.

“You good buddy?”

“No,” He sighed. “Ben, do you remember what I told you once about how mana seems to act on both matter and antimatter in this universe?”

“Uh, I believe you said it doesn’t.”

“Yes, but if you’re right, that means our strongest models on the nature of your reality are fundamentally wrong! It’s not like we didn’t look into that possibility at all ourselves, you have nine elements that can exist in a pure, solid form in this universe, at least under the most common environments you’d find in life-bearing terrestrial worlds, the fact that there’s nine magic materials to match made it obvious to look into, but that would break some of our fundamental understanding of the nature of your current reality. This is a big deal!”

“Okay, but mana’s always had some interaction with the greater universe. Any time I cast a spell to move something, mana is doing it.”

“That’s you acting on mana, not mana acting by itself. This is almost like saying the universe can cast spells by itself without an ensouled wielder of it. If you can verify this is right then our physicists are going to have a breakdown.”

Verify it’s right huh? How would I even do that?

He was already using that knowledge to reduce the materialization cost of mythril but he wasn’t sure that acted as proof. It did put him on the right track though as he decided to test something out.

Holding out his hand, Ben attempted to create one of the elements he knew could be found in a pure form in the world, carbon, but he tried to add a new trick to it to see if he could change the end product.

While trying to create a small bead of the stuff, he poured in more mana than he needed to. Significantly more, nearly draining his entire pool of the stuff to try and alter the result, ending with a success after the first time as something very much not carbon was created instead for Quilith to see.

“I’m not sure what you materializing white mana crystal is supposed to prove,” The alien told him, wanting to know where this was going.

“Considering that I was trying to make carbon and just put in a thousand extra points of power, I’d say it proves everything it needs to. I didn’t know I’d be ending up with a mana crystal when I did this. God, the fact this worked at all is incredible actually. If I keep doing this then I can match what every base element matches each material to lower the mana cost of materializing them, and from there…”

He trailed off, freezing in place as a sudden implication struck him like a brick as a new, massive project fell into his lap.

“From there, isn’t there couldn’t I try it out with the entire periodic table?”