Chapter 454

Chapter 454

You know, between skill learner letting me learn uncommon skills easier and awakener helping me get to the next tier, all I really need is a title that would help me level my skills easier. Know anything that would fit Myriad?

Mmh, I guess.

What?

His god didn’t answer, leaving him alone with those parting words as Thera began to bring them down to the ground below to begin their investigation with Verbum.

“Oh, sweet land!” The pleiaden yelled out as he jumped out of the cart, looking deeply relieved to be on the ground again, even if it meant needing to start his investigation as Thera spoke up.

“So we should be in the right area, I think we just need to go north a bit until we’re in the general vicinity we need to be.”

Those words were enough to pull the joy from Verbum in an instant, leaving him looking like he wanted to make a quick escape and only stopping thanks to how far from civilization they all were.

Ben for his part didn’t want to wait for him to get comfortable. His god’s lax attitude meant it couldn’t have been anything bad, but Myriad’s parting words did leave him wanting to see just what it could be about so he walked over to him in the middle of his indecision and threw him over his shoulder, leaving Thera to hold back her laughter.

“You know, I’m so used to seeing you as the one in that position. Decided to try dishing it out yourself for once?”

“Ah, just didn’t want to wait,” He said, ignoring the feeling of Verbum’s struggles against his grip. “Come on, let’s check this out. Verbum, what should we be looking for?”

“Killi didn’t tell you?”The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.

He was cut off as Ben took his hand, dragging him in further. Both he and Thera needed to see what it was like despite the protests of the one they were meant to be guarding.

“Ben...” Thera began, not having any clue what she was supposed to say about everything they were seeing but knowing she couldn’t leave it without comment.

“I literally could have never predicted this was going to happen,” He tried to argue in his defense while she just shook her head.

“I mean, I believe you, but maybe we should have come back for the nails before it got to this point?”

“It was free faith! How could I do that to Myriad when this was so harmless? Hell, I’m pretty sure despite how this looks it’s still harmless.”

Though I can’t deny it looks a little bad.

When they got closer it was clear it wasn’t one or two trees with the strangely cubed branches, but a forest of them, with even more effects to go with it. No matter the species of the plant, their leaves had developed into an irregular shape too, far more straight lines than many of them would normally allow as they took the shapes of squares, filling the branches above them and littering the ground below, but it got worse from there.

He was seeing square nests and hives in the areas of each plant that had caused the change and the bugs around were flying in geometric patterns, leaving him to see the long-term consequences of what he’d done to win a bet over a year in the past. He was seeing how the forest had changed from him turning each tree into faith generators, an enchantment nailed into them to gather it for his cubic god.

“What are you both talking about?” Verbum asked, looking at the two with even more suspicion but being ignored as Ben walked around.

He only found one tree nearby that didn’t have anything to block where he’d hammered in his enchanted nails but it revealed that even if he wanted to get rid of it, it was too late without tearing down the entire forest. A dense layer of bark had grown over it, burying it in the plant's depths to keep any chance of removing it as nothing but a dream.

He turned around, wondering just how he was supposed to explain this, only to find Verbum looking on the edge of a panic attack, knowing the two of them knew something about what they were seeing but with neither of them outright saying it. It was flaring his most paranoid of delusions, making Ben slowly raise his hands to try and calm him down.

“Verbum, Verbum I need you to chill, okay? So, this is kind of a funny story when you really stop to think about it, but I actually know why the forest looks like this so that actually makes things super easy for us!” He told him, trying to seem positive and failing to elicit the same response in the other. “Okay, so you’re definitely going to laugh, but this all started with a bet from a goddess...”