Day six of his imprisonment and Ben was once more looking for something different to do to pass the time. He’d been exercising consistently and seen that his attributes were in fact growing, even if a little slow, and he continued on with producing souls to get the last level of his skill but all of that still left him looking through his status, trying to see if there was anything on it that would be easy and worthwhile to train a bit.

In his time there he’d come up with an idea to try awakening actualization but with the way he was trapped it wasn’t something he’d be able to test anytime soon, but he had a couple other ideas too.

Taking the faithstone knife he’d made in his first attempt and dragging it across his arm, he watched the effects of the prison heal his wound, giving him an idea for raising a few skills.

If he was willing to put his body through hell there were a few things he could do to raise his blood regeneration, maybe even awaken his defense enhancement, even if the thought brought to mind both Thera and Myriad screaming at him to not blow himself up for a bit of growth.

Given that it was sure to make Tenth assume he’d snapped as well he decided to put that option on hold, even if he couldn’t help but wonder at the limits of it. If he made antimatter in a vast enough quantity to destroy his body, would the healing effects of his cell remake the matter he destroyed in the process? And what about foreign matter? Even if it killed him in the process, would the prison he found himself in be able to stand up against it despite the alien nature and reaction it would produce?

Both curiosities he could test if he found himself trapped there for a span of years, not days. He was determined to live no matter how the odds looked so he pulled his attention instead to a different section of his card, looking at his newer skills.

That made the choice easy as all at once, Ben materialized a bag of small marbles, no two made of the same thing with each one having a small label carved into it so he’d be able to tell what was what.

Pure elements and compounds, a couple of the easier magic materials to create and things that were more like wood or leather or bone, lacking any sort of DNA to make them truly so, it was the perfect thing for testing and training his new material sense as he pulled them out one by one, trying to get a feel for each one and mentally attaching the name to each feeling, leaving him semi-confident he’d be able to differentiate them by the time he was done.

<MATERIAL SENSE LEVEL INCREASED>

And now more than just semi-confident. Okay, let’s put this to the test.

Materializing a small tray to use, he poured a few of the beads on it behind his back, depending solely on his new sense to tell him what was what as he did his best to guess what was there from feeling alone before checking and finding he had been mostly right, only getting one in nine wrong before he poured them back into the bag and did it again, passing the time that way on top of his more important practice of soul production to get his ninth level of it, watching the world beyond his cell as he did.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The ground was thick with demons moving about, with more than a few taking to the skies as well, all of them coming and going through the gates, though not peacefully. It wasn’t rare to see fights breaking out among them down below for reasons he couldn’t guess.

Perhaps it was as simple as stepping on each other's feet or giving each other foul looks. Perhaps he was seeing members of rival sub-groups running into one another and competing for dominance or perhaps there was no reason at all, just a mad species with nothing better to do than kill and try to claw their way to the top of every food chain, even if they had nobody to do it against than their own kind. It didn’t really matter, it was just more of Ben seeing what they were and what that meant for every non-demon that occupied reality as a whole.

But through it all, another sight. Amongst the horde of monsters, as Ben stared out, one stared back, watching him with what looked like pride and glee, the demon that captured him having stopped to enjoy the sight of its imprisoned prey.

He gave it the finger before he remembered how pointless that would be, with the monster not having the context for what that meant and left him wishing that the system was able to convey the meaning of any obscene gesture the same way it allowed for a universal language.

It left Ben in equal parts wanting to kill his captor when he got out while at the same time wanting to do his best to make sure he never ran into it again. That demon’s combination of skills being a tricky one to handle by virtue of its level of magic canceling alone. For anything to have an awakened magic nullification, let alone just short of the third tier, was going to be nothing but trouble for anyone unfortunate enough to encounter it.

Even ignoring that one, it’s not like I’m not going to have to think about how to kill my way past everything if I do manage to break the wall and I don’t know how many other awakened skill holders I might pass along the way. The fight to get out is going to be insane, but…

But that was an issue for later. It was going to take planning and even more materialization and with all of his mana going to creating souls to give him a chance to get to the ninth level of the skill, it was one that was going to have to wait just a little longer.

With a swarm of souls flashing in and out of existence as discreetly as he could around him, that was his priority, with everything else coming after.

And I have time. Nothing but time. I’ll get my level, create anything else I might need and then I’ll get out of there, easy as that…

Yeah, I wish.

Something was going to go wrong, something always went wrong. Even his best-laid plans with contingencies for anything he could think of across his thousands of minds often failed to really think of everything, he could only hope that whatever he ended up with would at least mostly be enough.

And it’s not like I’m lacking benefits. Who knows? He thought to himself as he pulled out his card. Maybe I’ll even be on a new job by then too.

Despite all of the levels and skills he’d gained after becoming a soul mage, it hadn’t been enough to get him a single level of the job, but what he’d been doing since then had already landed him multiple.

Helori had once told him, back when he’d first started materializing, that it was basically a cheat code for finishing related jobs quickly given the inherent difficulty of the act and he was sure that she’d agree that what he was currently making was going miles beyond that. Across everything he’d read in the magic towers, he’d never heard of anyone doing what he’d managed to and he was seeing the sort of experience that deserved it.

He’d achieved what many would view as impossible and all of that culminated into him walking an even greater path to power, all he had to do was survive long enough to enjoy it.

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