Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Ben took extra care getting up to make sure he didn’t disturb Thera. She’d had a long enough day and it had been at most a couple hours since she went to sleep, not the sort of time he should have been bothering her when the morning was sure to be just as full as he applied what levels of stealth he had to leaving the room, walking over to his old one before knocking on the door.

“Mora, it’s Ben, up as promised. Mind if I come in?”

“...If you want.”

Good enough I guess.

He opened the door to the room, finding the boy had at least appeared to have tried out some of the games and flipped through a few of the books, with a couple neatly stacked on the bed he was sitting on the edge of instead of the desk where they’d been left, which he took to be a good sign.

With another positive being that it seemed the boy hadn’t spent his sleepless night alone. While Ben couldn’t see them properly the way Thera could, all of the souls around them and the minds he felt while reaching out with connect revealed that the many spirits who would come to their home had found their new great one, approaching the boy in confusion and curiosity to talk a bit.

Although, based on what he was seeing in their minds, it seemed the talks hadn’t exactly gone smoothly either, difficulties brought forth from the fact that Mora didn’t represent a pure affinity but something new, making it harder for a species that was more typically wrapped up in the nature of their own individual powers to relate to without the eons of history living amongst each other to at least give the knowledge of what being any type of spirit meant.

He wasn’t going to try and look into Mora’s mind again, being caught once was bad enough when he wanted to get along with the boy and Ben would just be blocked off again anyway, but he could only imagine being separated in such a way from his own kind was a whole new issue on top of what his brief upbringing and far more recent abandonment had already left him.

It wasn’t a conversation he thought he’d be able to have until the boy opened up to them a bit though so he instead focused on trying to be positive and friendly, doing his best to create a comfortable atmosphere as he spoke up.

“Well, I see you tried some games and you read a bit, was there anything in particular that you enjoyed?”

“I don’t know, there’s some I might try again if I can.”

“Of course you can. Feel free to play with anything you want to, this is your home now too. And I’m sure this all must feel a bit new to you, is there anything you’d want to talk to me about? We’re going to be the only ones up for a few more hours so feel free to let me know anything you’re curious about.”

The offer got him silence, the great spirit looking at him for a minute without so much as a word before shaking his head and looking away.

“No, I’m fine.”

It was obviously a lie, the boy couldn’t have made it more clear he had something on his mind but if he didn’t want to say it then Ben couldn’t force the issue, instead spending his mana to materialize a stool to sit on to bring him closer to Mora’s level.

“Alright, if you don’t then that’s fine but if you’re just not comfortable talking to me about something you can also always talk to Thera when she’s up later. She’s your cousin and that fact means something to her, she’ll be willing to hear you out.”

Again he was met with silence, leaving him wondering if he was just doing something fundamentally wrong in how he was trying to talk to the child but after only a couple of seconds between them, Mora finally spoke up, curiosity winning over whatever reservations he had.

“How are you doing that so well?”

“Hmm? Doing what?”

“Materializing. Isn’t it supposed to be hard? You keep doing it like it’s nothing.”

“Ah, that. Honestly, I have a few handy advantages to it but it mostly comes down to the fact that I know a lot and I can think a lot at once, it makes it easy for me. Are you interested?”

“...A bit,” The boy eventually shrugged. “Are you making souls the same way?”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Ah, I guess it would make sense you can see me doing that. To answer your question though, kind of. It did level the magic I used to materialize when I first did it but it also granted me a new skill called soul production too and since then it seems like making them falls mainly in the domain of that skill instead, although I guess I wouldn’t be shocked if it was still influenced by and acting as a small bit of practice for my crafting and original magic too. I also don’t understand souls in the same way I understand matter so I’m technically not as good at it as I hypothetically could be but I practice and I get better.”

Everything was just practice in the end and he could do that endlessly, with bits of improvement coming in unexpected places. Even the few moments Ben had been able to connect to Mora the day before had imprinted the boy’s mental structure in Ben’s head which improved his soul creation a bit, even when he wasn’t damaging his soul pulling mana through it. What the line of question did give him was an area he could go down, asking one of his own after.

“Are you interested in making things?”

“It doesn’t matter,” The spirit shrugged. “I can’t use magic like that and I can’t materialize souls.”

“You already tried?”

“I just know. It’s not in my power.”

Hearing that was a surprise. While Ben was doing it with non-affinitied mana, he had felt confident that life or death mana should have been able to pull it off as well given their nature and it left him wondering if it came down to a difference in how they perceived the world from each other. That was why Ben had been able to create more magic materials when applying more mana to the materialization process, something Abrus had instinctively known he wouldn’t be able to do the same way as Mora, with the great earth spirit saying at the time that trying such a thing would have only given him more of the original material. It spoke of small limits to those overwhelmingly powerful beings that he normally wouldn’t see which they themselves might not have been aware of until presented with something they couldn’t do but he pushed the matter to the side for the time, focusing back on the boy with him.

“Alright, well even if you can’t materialize souls or use other magics, that doesn’t mean you can’t make anything,” Ben told him, materializing a wad of clay and handing it over. “How about a little art lesson? And then who knows, maybe you’ll…”

He was going to say that maybe the boy would gain a skill related to it but stopped in his tracks, a question he’d never deeply considered before jumping to the front of his thoughts. Could spirits gain and level skills like mortals could?

He knew from their first meeting that Abrus at least put some effort into trying to see if it would be possible for him to gain a non-affinitied magic since if he could then that would have the potential to be a drastic new path to power in his hands but from the sounds of it, there was no hint that he’d have any success even after years of attempts. But beyond just that, of the thousands of spirits he’d connected to when they came for Thera, he’d never once seen one with a skill other than their innate magic bound to their souls.

But just because he hadn’t seen it didn’t mean it was impossible. Because of their body structures and unique makeups, there was admittedly a host of skills they’d never be able to get. When all of their attributes were directly related to the mana in their bodies and that would never grow beyond its limits that meant they’d never access any skills directly related to attributes such as enhancements for them and when it came to skills of their own affinity, anything they could have gained should have already been present in their unique and powerful magics.

Their mental structures likely also meant knowledge skills were out, Ben didn’t think they needed something like that to help them remember anything, and that left whether they’d be able to get plenty of other mind skills as an uncertainty too, but what about beyond that?

With how powerful they were, he was sure they had no reason to try and get anything like swordsmanship or any other combat skill, but if they trained, could they? And then what about his own passion in the form of the different crafting disciplines? If a spirit really had the drive and passion for it, would they be able to gain a skill in it and level it from there?

And if they could, what would that mean for them? More importantly, what would it mean if they could awaken it? Spirits might not have been able to grow their attributes normally but awakening a skill was different from any normal bit of growth, if a spirit achieves such a thing, would they be able to get the same fifty percent improvement that any mortal gained, shooting them above even any of their other kin? And from there, what if they were able to reach the third tier of a skill like that, propelling a spirit into proper godhood?n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

He was immediately curious but he did his best to stop himself in his tracks. He wasn’t going to treat Mora like a test subject and with the third wave on the horizon, none of the other great spirits had the leeway to go through potentially months of training to try and see if such a thing was going to be possible and he didn’t have to ask to know that none of the regular spirits had the interest to do such a thing, meaning that there was no way he could test it.

Although Ogilt does seem to have some free time… No, with the state he’s in, he wouldn’t have any passion in trying to learn.

Which meant no matter how interesting it was as a thought, it was one he’d need to abandon. He had no way to see if it was possible and even if it was, there was still a chance it would take months or years to see any sort of success.

But if Mora is interested in making things then it’s not like I shouldn’t support it either…

With so many thoughts running through his head at once, Ben ultimately shook them away. If Mora wanted to learn then he’d teach, as simple as that, and he’d give no worries to whether the boy was capable of gaining the skill or not.

“Sorry, ignore me,” He finally said. “For now, let’s just try to have some fun exploring the joy of art, who knows, maybe you’ll like it.”