For the first eternity after hearing those notifications, it felt like his soul was being ripped apart as it changed, yet in a time so quick the Yuzu couldn’t process that anything was wrong, it disappeared all at once, his awakening complete, with the world frozen around him.

It had been a long shot, and yet, it had also been his best chance, the only thing he could think of that might have worked. Ben lacked affinitied magic, that was something he could never acquire, but his god and Helori had both seen fit to bring up that having such a thing might have been exactly what he needed to get that awakening, and with all else failing, all he could do was try to bring the possibility to his soul.

The circlet, forced on the demon’s head to drive it insane, made it believe its own soul magic was causing it immense pain and at the same time, gave it a desire to force that pain on him, with Yuzu brought in to help with her own strength. Even with that, Ben had made himself pray for a miracle. He knew that he held neither the life or death affinities necessary to make the low soul magic his own, but by grabbing the severed skill with connect and possessing soul affinity at its ninth level, he had theorized that it might be possible to cheat the weakness of his soul, at least, for long enough for it to merge into connect, if that last bit of power was the very thing Ben needed to awaken it, and found it to be so. Even if the demon’s soul magic had fragmented in the process, every part of it that required either the life or death affinity to function having fallen away, he’d gotten enough of it still to push connect forward, getting the awakening he’d been working so hard for that entire time.

And still failing. Connect had awakened, there was no denying that, but at the same time, it had failed in the main hope he’d had when awakening it, his new skill of soulcraft not taking in his divine enchanting like he’d so desired, leaving him with a pounding headache to go with a level of nausea that had reached its peak. He’d need to test it first, but as things were, odds seemed good that he still wouldn’t be able to enchant with the skills of the other third tiers, leaving him to despair.

Which means that if I can, I need to set my next goal as somehow awakening enchanting, he thought, the very notion making him want to scream. He had pulled off the impossible, again and again and again, yet it had still failed to live up to what he’d been aiming for, never managing to be enough no matter what expectations he shattered. Every time, something went just wrong enough that there was still more for him to do, never letting him rest.

For a brief, horrible moment, it was like he could feel the future looming over him in all of its terror, but he forced himself to shove the feeling back and breathe. As disappointing as it was, he could force himself to look at it as being halfway to his original goal, he now just needed the other half and with himself trying to hold on to that frame of mind, he began testing the limits of his new skill, needing to at least get a bit of an idea on how it had grown.

With a flick of his will, the moribusial wrapped around the demon once more, everything in his sped-up perception of time leaving the choice to do that made little difference when it wouldn’t have been able to cast before he could react anyway, but with that variable sealed away, Ben first reached out with his soul, feeling how far it would stretch, with it seemingly going without end, stopping at its new limit so much farther than its original fifteen meters, leaving him to gasp.

Two kilometers, he realized, feeling not only all of the former prisoners kept in stasis around him, but also everyone in Pelenia’s home beside it and even down distant streets too. Two kilometers in all directions, and so much more.

He was able to apply his authorities in that entire stretch but far bigger than that was how his soul now seemed to be applying his alien sense even beyond the limits of his body, able to perceive everything around him from the strange senses he’d accumulated from everyone he’d connected to in the world, making him feel both omniscient and omnipresent within that range in a way that left him breathless, temporarily too captivated to feel that previous sense of failure. That, more than anything else he’d experienced, matched his idea of godhood. He was everywhere and he was everything that sat within his range, experiencing it all, before he noticed something else. A different change that was grand enough that it distracted him from all further testing, raising the sick feeling in his gut even more as he pulled his soul back and his mind dropped back to baseline reality, letting him hear Yuzu react.

“That was a lot of notifications,” Yuzu said, looking at him with wide eyes as she took in all the changes he’d just gone through. Even with her spells to try and lower his leveling and awakening thresholds, she still hadn’t been prepared for so much, hadn’t been prepared for any of that. When Ben had explained what he wanted and asked for help, she couldn’t have imagined that anything would have come from cutting off an affinitied skill from one soul to try to attach to his, yet doing so had been enough to grant him his fifth awakening of that tier, the nature of such an act then raising his authorities and leading to even more awakening too.

And Ben noticed none of it. His eyes were focused on the demon, all of its mana ripped away and its soul exposed to him, with what depths that contained.

His previous restrictions were gone. Ben could now look at any of the life around him and see all of its details, even without needing to touch their souls with his own. Not just skills, but jobs and titles, affinities and resistances, anything that could be found and interpreted through system information, but more than what he saw was what he felt. Reaching out with soulcraft, he touched the essence of the monster before him, feeling it in a level of detail he’d never perceived before as he touched each of its individual skills before grabbing tight one of its own, the magic cancelling it had once used liberally when dragging him to its world for eternal imprisonment, and with his own soul, he sliced through its essence, having it in his grasp.

That was it. That was a skill worthy of godhood. A path to unlimited power, where one could take and take and take, getting infinite skill and growth in return. A path where every demon and enemy he had in the world became nothing but fuel for his own growth, where spending effort would be a thing of the past-

The severed skill begging to be joined to a greater whole, Ben slammed it onto Yuzu’s soul and ran before she could react, forcing the demon back into its pod with his magic while at the same time escaping from the building that housed it, out into Pelenia’s yard and then out further into the streets of Anailia, getting the eyes of the surrounding succubi on him but not noticing as he finally made his way into an alleyway, retching despite himself as he forced himself up to Myriad’s realm, his god’s eyes already on him.

“You look terrible,” the cube said as soon as he got there. “What happened?”

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“What, weren’t you watching?” Ben asked, trying to sound light and casual and failing in it entirely.

“I’ve been debating if I should all day. Suffering a side effect of whatever it was you were trying then?”

“You could say that.”

“And? Did you succeed?”

“Yes and no,” Ben shrugged, the taste of vomit still in his mouth and his stomach no better. “I awakened connect, whoopie and all that, but it didn’t take in my enchanting at all, and I was just a bit unprepared for how it grew.”

“Empty skies, so you really did manage to get a fifth,” Myriad said, shaking at the thought of what the reaction would be when word got out. “Start with how, then you can tell me how it grew.”

“It’s simple, you and Helori have brought it up yourself plenty of times,” he said as he started to pace, trying to calm his chaotic thoughts. “It’s a skill that seems like it would be more inclined to grow by combining with an affinitied magic, so I did the last thing I could think of: I got one.”

“How?” Myriad asked, seeing no point in bringing up the absurdity of such a claim when Ben was like that.

“Simple, drove a demon mad and got it to cut the soul magic off of its soul and try to force it on me. Got Yuzu’s help too, and you have to admit, the idea was sound enough. I might not have true affinities, but I do have my soul affinity, and I was hoping it would play the part, give the skill enough foundation in my soul to become a part of it and then merge into the rest. And that’s exactly what happened! Well, mostly. Got an interesting system notification. It said that what was incorporated when connect awakened were soul fragments. I think the part of the skill that required either a life or death affinity broke away. I guess even with my optimism about that little workaround, there were still parts I just couldn’t take.”

“Wait, to be clear, that’s what you considered to be a worse option than connecting to an outsider?”

“Yeah, and I finally understand why. When I awakened this skill, the trick I used to get it stuck, and it disgusts me to my core.”

“Wait, you don’t mean-”

“I do. I don’t know if I can cheat my lack of affinities with it or not, but I can officially cut skills off of the souls of others and make them my own. And I hate knowing I can do this. Myriad, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m an objectively worse person for coming to this world. I’ve lied, I’ve extorted, I’ve threatened, and I’ve killed, and the worst part of all is that none of that bothers me in the slightest. Every time I’ve felt justified for one reason or another, but out of all of that, this is a line I just don’t want to let myself cross. One way or another, either through hard work, rewards for my accomplishments, or just plain good planning, I’ve earned every bit of skill and power I’ve gained since coming here through my blood, sweat, and tears. I’ve pushed myself to grow beyond my limits through my own efforts, and no matter what it might do for the world, if I steal even a single skill for myself to get stronger, I’m instantly invalidating all of that.”

“Even now, I feel aspects of my mind making excuses and some uncomfortably good points,” Ben went on. “I could just give them back after, if I live. I could only take them from bad people. I could only take them from demons or enemies. Hell, I could only take them for a few seconds. I’ve already heard from Killi that the jobs from third-tier skills are different from others; you can unlock them without passing through any of the lower branches first. I could take the skill, get a third-tier job, return the skill and then cheat my way through for even more power. It would all be so easy but the second I do that, I’ll have crossed a line I can’t undo. Even doing it to awaken connect alone leaves me feeling sick and the only reason I’m putting up with that at all is that I can at least view it as mostly my accomplishment since I grew it so much myself and figuring out that was even possible came from my own willingness to experiment. I don’t like it, but I’m willing to justify it, but anything more? I can’t make myself stronger by taking the effort of others; I just can’t.”

The biggest conflict was that it felt like he’d just gotten his hands on the straightest path to potentially saving the world, only for it to be abhorrent to him. Maybe if he’d arrived on the world with such a power from the start, then he could have used it, but his time there had made him who he was. His titles said it outright, he was a monster, someone who couldn’t care less about the fates of those who opposed him, someone who could kill without blinking if he needed to, but it had also made him someone who knew better than anything else the value of the effort that he and anyone else in the world had put into growing. Even if it was a monster, a demon, or someone who’d set their eyes on killing him; he could take their lives without a second thought, but stealing the effort of those lives went far beyond the limits of his twisted ethics.

“And you want to know the biggest bit of wrongness to this?” Ben asked. “I can’t lie to myself about it, Myriad. Trying to would be denying the very power in my hands. Even just thinking about it, my evil authority is screaming at me that this falls within my definition, something I abhor so much that it’s basically among the greatest sins I can feel, which only means that if I were to put myself into it, breaking my own taboo, I’d be able to grow even more. Every skill I could steal would be stained by it, able to blossom under my authority, all I’d have to do was take whatever looked useful from even what stray demons I’d find on the world, and who else but me would complain about that? They’re demons, if anyone could get anything useful from them before they were exterminated, then that should only be a boon, but, but…”

“Then don’t,” Myriad said simply, the exact answer Ben had wanted in his disgust and conflict. “Ben, I don’t know if I agree with you. I don’t know if this bit of morality you have popping up is right to worry about so deeply, but I see how much it’s bothering you and I’m telling you as your god, don’t. You don’t need to pursue every path to infinite power, you don’t need to grow endlessly, and you don’t need to erode your pride for the greater good of the world. You’ve been doing more than enough, and if you don’t want to become the sort of person who could steal the effort from others without a thought, then, as your friend, I don’t want you growing into that sort of person either. Don’t worry about what other mortals would think; they never have to know, and don’t worry about the other gods because they’d all be relieved to know there’s a path to power you don’t want to pursue. If you need more power, then you can focus on growing through your own efforts, same as you have until now, and I’ll believe in you. With everything that’s happened, I don’t know if this world is still doomed, but I do know that if it is, you’re the one I believe will change that. Besides, this awakening, this new third-tier skill, it’s built on your efforts and everything that went into it. That’s just one aspect of it you’ve found in what? Not even an hour? There’s still going to be more about it for you to discover, and whatever you do, you can make that the real value of your skill.”

Myriad was right. The awakening wasn’t going to take away any of the skills that had gone into it; it would have only enhanced them. Calming, destructive and evil thought, mind break, hive mind, soul production, and deep connection, all of their aspects would have strengthened and merging wasn’t going to only allow him to steal skills; the name alone implied more than that. It wasn’t soul destruction or soul theft; it was soulcraft, with all of the creation such a name would imply.

His thoughts clearing a bit, Ben breathed just a little easier. One aspect of his new skill disgusted him, and the way he had helped get it to that point disgusted him as well, but neither was all there was to it. Sure, he’d mutilated a soul to help claim his awakening, but every level of every skill before that point hadn’t come from nothing, and the foundation it was built from wasn’t so pathetic either. No matter how it had come to be, it was now a part of him; he could reject what he loathed and embrace what he loved, and nobody would be able to make him do otherwise.

“Thanks, Myriad,” he eventually said. “I needed that.”

“Of course, guiding you in your times of need is exactly what I’m here for.”