Chapter 65

Chapter 65

Myriad screamed in despair while Ben had his own concerns.

"I maxed out my job before getting the quest reward? So those levels are going to go to the easiest bit of experience for me to get on the next one? That's so lame."

"I mean it fit the qualifications you gave me, why wouldn't it have worked?"

Myriad tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing but kept falling short. The quest shouldn't have been completed, it wasn't possible, but he could feel energy flow from him to Ben to raise his level, and he could sense his divinity from the coat. He ordered his believer as calmly as he could manage given the circumstances.

Ben, from the perspective of his god at least, was annoyingly happy to discuss the finer details of his work. "Okay, so my thought process was like this. You want your church to be comfortable on top of safe, right?"

"Right! So I figured some temperature control would be the way to go, and if it was just a bit on the smaller side it would be less mana intense. But then I thought about how small I could make it, and at what point it would be conceivable to power it with the mythril I have on hand to keep the price down, and then it occurred to me. All it needed was to be something someone would enter with your figure on the outside, then couldn't I make it a jacket? Once I figured that out all I had to do was have some threads enchanted with fire and water spells to control the temp and blend them with a thin mythril wire to power them, then use that to make the jacket lining. I also made the zipper from mythril too, just to be sure the enchantment would get enough power, though honestly I'm pretty sure I overdid it a bit. After that, it just came down to getting a nice strong leather to go with it to complement any boost to defense it gets and put the entire thing together."

"No of course not, I couldn't just hide away your representation, and I also wasn’t just going to bedazzle you on. That would be rude and eat at my artistic pride. Well mostly it would make the coat look like crap, so I just went subtle with it. Look."

Ben threw on the jacket and zipped it up, revealing that the zipper itself was shaped like a cube.

"Yeah, looks good doesn't it, I figured it matched your sheen."

Myriad wanted to cry.

"What does using mythril have to do with anything?"

"Great, mystery solved. Now mind if I ask a question?"

After all of this he really wasn't in the mood, but he couldn't just brush off his apostle either.

"What does the sacrilege skill do?"

"Um, is it bad?"

"Oh damn." The infinite hells. During his time at the church the topic had come up despite his lack of interest and from what he could remember it was some sort of fractured plane of reality the gods would send the souls of the particularly wicked. It was a scary thought, being trapped there for all of eternity when he died. The only problem was that it was scary in a hypothetical sense, he couldn't actually work up any will to care.

"Well I mean before I got here I was somewhere between an agnostic and an atheist. Being told I'm going to hell just doesn't have a huge impact on me since I didn't even know it was real until I started living in this world."

He could actually hear his god deflate as he spoke.

"That doesn't seem super godly."

Touché. He wasn't going to try and argue that. Even if he really believed it qualified there was no denying that he knew it wasn't what Myriad had in mind. "So what does it do then?"

What Myriad tried to skirt around was the fact that it might make it easier for Ben to twist his quests in the future, even without having proper faith that he was in the right. He was sure that if he knew that Ben would immediately start trying to test the limits of his skill. Thankfully his apostle seemed to accept the answer he was given and moved on.

"Okay, so there's no real problem with having the skill either, right?"

Myriad was quiet for a moment, contemplating his answer.

"Two actually."

"Okay look I'm sorry, but can I just ask one more thing."

"Does the length they travel matter at all?"

EnchanterTrap user Tree tamerCraftsman- alchemy pathCraftsman- artistic pathCraftsman- blacksmith pathCraftsman- cooking pathCraftsman- stonecraft pathCraftsman- sewing pathPriestHeretic

"An excellent point. Myriad what do you have for me anyway?"

"And the bad news?"

Ben thought it over. As nice as 20 job levels could be, growing his faith again was out of the question. He wasn’t sure how many new believers Myriad would be acquiring, but he didn't want to be stuck after getting 40 or something and never being able to complete the quest. As for the first option, the reward didn't seem that bad at least. It was comparable enough to what he’d already gotten, plus the job levels would help him get out of the job a little faster if he took priest and it didn't suit him. There were some clear issues, but he did have a question about it.

"What counts as an achievement? Could I complete Anailias' trial in your name?"

"So if we successfully complete it I'll be able to get five levels of job experience. That doesn't sound so bad for something I need to do anyway. Plus if completing it gets me even more job experience then it will pay off. That sounds like a pretty good deal." At worst he would be stuck in it for a couple of years, but as long as he kept selecting quests he thought he had a chance of completing then he should be able to get through it, and his previous jobs had already increased his ability to improve his crafting and enchanting, having bonuses go towards his connect would be a lot of help.

"Alright, in that case I'll complete an achievement for you."

With his new quest selected he placed his hands back on the job crystal. It wasn't what he had been expecting when he came to the job room, but he'd made his choice.

Name: Ben Heph

Race: Human

Titles: Apostle of Myriad

Jobs: Priest (lv 8)

Previous Jobs: Apprentice craftsman, Craftsman

Attributes

Vitality: 162Vitality recovery rate: 1/hrMana: 86Mana recovery rate: 6/minStrength: 140Agility: 84Stamina: 603Intelligence: 211





Affinities:

Light: 3Life: 2Fire: 4Water: 3Air: 4Earth: 2Death: 3Dark: 1Space: 4Time: 5





Resistances:

Light: 68Life: 72Fire: 75Water: 69Air: 66Earth: 81Death: 78Dark: 85Space: 63Time: 61





Blessed skills:

Crafting lv5Enchanting lv3Focus lv3





Passive skills:

World speak+Tolerance lv0Sacrilege lv1

Active skills:

Dismantling lv1Stealth lv0Connect lv3Hidden mind lv0

Blessings

Myriads Blessing

Ben felt a slight grimace when he heard what attributes would be enhanced. Intelligence was at least good for his crafting as well, but mana recovery wasn't too useful for him since he wasn't a mage. There was a good chance he'd be using more enchanted tools now that he had a way to make them himself so a faster recovery could be helpful, but his mana pool itself was so dreadfully low he would have much preferred to get some bonuses to that instead. As for vitality recovery, well that was a whole other issue to him. When Ben first got to asking about it he had assumed that it had been as simple as it looked. He would lose a point of vitality and get it back in an hour. Unfortunately it seems significantly more complex than that and he wasn't entirely clear on the rules. It looked like that was his recovery rate if he was in basically perfect health, but the more severe an injury he had the more his recovery rate would be dampened. A bruise could heal in the span of an hour, but some of the more serious injuries he'd had, like anytime something tried to eat him, could be severe enough that it may as well be nonexistent. He knew it did something and it was better than nothing, but he'd also spent more than enough time being treated by Sonya to know not to depend on it.

Still he would just have to try and get through it the best he could. It wasn't like any of his job options would be immediately helpful with the trial anyway.

He zipped up his coat and offered a prayer to Myriad to thank him for his advice before heading back with Thera. They were entering the trail the next morning and with the amount he'd spent preparing in the last couple days he had just wanted to relax.