Chapter 350

That night, Ben once again decided to give up on getting any proper sleep, instead spending all of his time in his god’s realm, thinking of how he wanted to approach the problem that was the coming trial and making plans with the little info he had on the topic, trying to figure out what he’d need to have the best chances of surviving with minimal injuries.

He’d need to pack plenty of food of course, and potions too to be on the safe side. Even with both Thera and Yuzu around, he didn’t want to risk needing them but not having them. He also needed to pack something to sleep in as well. He didn’t know how long to expect the trial to take, but he didn’t want to go into things and regret not having something as simple as a proper blanket to rest with if there was the chance that completing the trial would take days.

Then it came down to the tools he would need to make, tools that would need to be based entirely off of his own conjecture about what the trial would entail.Ñøv€l--ß1n hosted the premiere release of this chapter.

On that account, he at least had a bit of luck. Namely the knowledge of what the earth floor of the dead god’s trial contained, but he couldn’t trust that alone. There were going to be five floors of this for them to get through and he tried to envision how he could imagine earth magic being used, knowing full well that he would end up missing something. It mostly just came down to manipulating the earth itself to varying levels of complexity, the more intricate spells that could be done with it depending on how it was combined with other affinities, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t put his best in as he got up and jotted down some ideas before leaving a note for Thera and heading to the shop for the first time in far too many days.

It was still dark out when he left, meaning it was nice and peaceful as he made his way through the cool streets before finally arriving as he opened up and began heating his forge.

The first thing he did was going to be small but important to keep him working as he grabbed what bits of wax he could find and shoved it into his ears to help block out any noise from his work before he began.

In the past, during his very first time doing the trial of a god, he’d made his barrier bombs, items designed expand into anything that bit them, ideally killing them in the process. It hadn’t particularly worked out like he’d hoped, but now he was going to try and make what would essentially be the opposite.

Sticky pads, or at least that was what he’d decided to call them, items that were meant to look only a little bigger than a coaster, but once activated would cause a barrier to expand around it, only penetrable from the outside, meaning that it would not only attach itself comfortably to any ground or wall it was placed on, it would also be able to act as a catch for something that came in contact with it, trapping it to wherever it touched. He couldn’t be certain it would even see any use, but it was something he wanted to have just to be safe, with the idea having plenty of potential in his other work anyway.

That was the key to making it work, making enchantments on both feet, adding a small, simple spring to the soles of his shoes to let them feel if they were being compressed by him standing on the ground, and setting up the enchantment to work off the foot that was firmly planted, letting him move around with which shoe governed the final effect switching with every step.

The solution was complicated to build and needed multiple rounds of testing, but once done was well worth the effort. When measured against the enchantment that had been put in place before he’d even awakened his current skill, what he was making now would not only be more powerful, it would have a significantly lower mana cost to go along with it thanks to his divine enchanting.

He did need to clean it up a bit, designing it to react in the event both of his feet left the ground while he had them on, but that was a much smaller fix as he tested them out, putting them on to walk around the shop with the enchantment activated and seeing Falk had arrived as he was working, his teacher giving him a small wave as he pulled the wax from his ears and walked over.

“Wasn’t expecting you back for another week boy, you feeling better?”

“Er, not exactly,” He said truthfully. “Honestly, I could have used some more time to try and recover, but it looks like I’m going to be having some pretty crazy plans in a bit and I don’t want to waste a minute of the time I have trying to recuperate.”

“Coming from you in particular, I really don’t like hearing the words ‘crazy plans’.”

“Ha, yeah well, it’s actually your niece that’s agreed to do something crazy, there’s just no way I’m letting her do it without me.”

Ben gave his teacher a rundown of just what they’d both been invited to do and why they’d each agreed, as the yeti only looked more and more stressed to learn what two of the people he cared most for in town were going to do in what felt like such a short time.