<KNOWLEDGE LEVEL INCREASED>

“You are officially looking at a triple contender baby!” Ben cheered as he finished the book he’d been reading on the system’s design and function. “God, this is kind of bittersweet, isn’t it? Let’s be real, If I had gotten that level before the wave then making a soul is the exact sort of application of knowledge that would have gotten me to my third tier of the skill, right?”

“Possibly, but there’s nothing you can do about that now.”

“Ugh, I know, it just kind of hurts. Myriad, why can’t things ever just work out in whatever way would be most beneficial to me?”

“Reality doesn’t function like that and any pain you’re feeling is your overburdened soul. Are you going to see the soul mages soon?”

“Tomorrow if I can, do you know if they’ll be free?”

“Lucky for you, your friends are taking three days to regroup so you have the perfect chance to see them. There, sometimes things work out for you, right?”

“Mmh, I guess. Actually, maybe this works out pretty dang well. I should be finishing my current job tomorrow too and if things go well I can pick Yuzu and Elvat’s brains on how to awaken my soul production. From there, I can use my skill in it to rush through soul defiling gardener and hopefully any sort of advanced soul mage job I might get if I’m really lucky. All of that should give me some good bonuses for connect on top of the ones I’m already getting and then from there…”

“Just how many jobs are you planning on completing tomorrow?”

“As many as I can. As much as it annoys me I doubt I’ll be able to complete master connecter in one day but anything else that might help I’m going for. Oh, and I feel like I have a pretty decent idea for trying to awaken actualization and considering proper soul mages are supposedly able to lower the awakening threshold I’m going to borrow Yuzu to see if I can make that happen, that should let me finish high actualizer too for a few more vitality bonuses.”

“Seeing how you interact with the job system is actually horrific.”

“Excuse you, you mean efficient. Not my fault if other people don’t have skills that yield high experience.”

It seemed that Myriad had a comment to that but never got to say it, before he could both Nare and Helori appeared in the realm, each looking tired from whatever discussions had occupied them.

“Oh good, the gang’s all here, perfect timing ‘cause we were just about to get started.”

“On what?” Helori asked, looking like she wanted nothing more than to just ignore him and lie down.

“Figuring out how to get my connect and sacrilege to the third tier. Now come on, it’s theorizing time!”

“May I ask why?” Nare questioned, seeming just as tired as the goddess he’d arrived with. “If you want to awaken any skills so badly, I’d personally suggest you aim for your mind ones. Your compatibility with them is high enough that the prospect of you managing such a thing before the third wave is somehow not entirely impossible. All things considered, I’d say it’s actually horrifically good.”

“Ah, well, long story short since this world is completely and irrevocably doomed no matter what all of you insane optimists think, I’m going to unfortunately try and change that. Probably going to die in the process, really don’t want to, really not happy about it either but unfortunately that makes more sense than letting every other asshole on the planet die.”

“...Would you care to explain how you came to that conclusion Ben?”

“Sure, I guess we have time.”

He told the two what he hadn’t brought up the day prior, how hopeless any chance of victory felt, how impossible he viewed the idea that the demon god would simply allow them to continue to exist even if they did win in the end and how by virtue of his sacrilege, he was probably going to be the only person who could deal with the weight of the divinity it gave off, all leading to that ultimate conclusion.

“Someone has to kill Oaun if this place is ever going to be safe and nobody else has the one key skill needed to get the job done. I’m very obviously not ideal for the role either but that’s why I want to raise up connect to the third tier as well. Assuming things go right for once in my life and it properly merges with enchanting at the third tier then I should be able to enchant with any third-tier skill including my sacrilege, that would let me make… Well, a lot but the specifics still need to be worked out. I’ll devote a couple minds to it while I focus on getting the third tier of those two skills in the next year so for now, focus folks.”

“Or,” Myriad began. “You could try and think of a solution that isn’t suicidal.”

For just a split second, Ben looked at his god like he was an idiot but hid it away as fast as he could before speaking up. “Fine then, in that case, let's start the meeting formally known as ‘how to get off this doomed garbage world’. I’ll just shoot out a couple ideas here. Since it would be pointless unless around ninety percent of the people on this planet survive, If I get all of the space spirits to work together, spending days and weeks overfilling their souls with mana to whatever their maximum capacity would be, is there any chance they could safely teleport this planet to some distant galaxy that isn’t a complete hellhole?”

“I think you already know the answer to that.”

“I do. With how much mana it took to transfer thousands of people within the same galaxy, a planet’s worth would be impossible, even with the gods’ helping, at least as they are. That brings me to a far more possible idea. Enchant a giant container, probably something in the scale of a kilometer or two in size and have it so both the interior is expanded along with the best time enchantments I could manage to freeze the time within and shove everyone on the planet inside. From there we get the earth spirits, fairies, and elementals to lift it into space and help push it as far away from this world as possible and get the space spirits to warp space around it, again with the goal of getting us to another galaxy.”This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“The construction time and necessary materials for something like that would be completely infeasible,” Nare told him. “Not just the mountain of magic materials you’d need, even basics like copper or iron would be hard, even with you, your lover, and her father all constantly materializing.”

“I’d be able to speed it up a hell of a lot by just shoving more and more mana into their souls. Not to brag but if I ignore the pain and don’t worry about growing my natural supply, I basically have an infinite amount now.”

“Then the other issue would be gathering every person on the planet,” Helori chimed in. “Even if you could build such a thing within the year, moving that many people would never be quick, it would be a logistical nightmare without even mentioning that even if we could, escaping the galaxy is still entirely infeasible.”

“Yep, that’s completely right,” Ben agreed. “So that’s off the table too. Third option, we get Vividus to start modifying everyone on this planet into a void species and live among the stars, happily ever after. Or at least until the demons conquer every terrestrial world and decide to start going for the void too, although I personally think they’ll try to make the jump to the jovian first so that would probably give us a bit more time. It would be nice to kick this problem a couple millennia down the road.”

“Even more impossible than the last option,” The goddess pointed out. “For all of the benefits the system gives, it has made the biology on this planet exceptionally messy. Of course, that was part of the point of it, facilitating breeding between radically different races to help improve relations between them and create a universal race as an endpoint was always part of its design, but what you’re suggesting wouldn’t just be getting the life spirit to modify the biology of hundreds of species, it would also mean working out how to do the same thing for hundreds of mixed breed groups. Civilization here is old, Ben. There are people on this world whose bloodlines are filled with races and biologies that have mixed so much they wouldn’t be recognizable as any of their ancestral races. It would basically mean figuring out how to modify all of the species that have managed to remain somewhat close to their ancestors and then going through the other half of the planet one by one.”

“So that doesn’t work either then, not shocking and I’m now out of suggestions. Can any of you offer me something better than gumption and elbow grease?”

None of them responded. They all knew they had devoted themselves to a simple idea. Keep fighting, keep killing, and if things worked out in the end then they’d prove they were enough of a threat to be left alone. It wasn’t like they couldn’t understand that they were clinging onto something that might have been a false hope but they’d come there after losing everything, it was all they had in the end.

Their silence left Ben to sigh. “Exactly. I get it, you all came here wanting revenge, even if that seems like a mistake in hindsight I’m not going to hold it against you. So what if how easily your worlds were conquered should have been a sign to start running and never stop? Here we are so I’m going to try and create a solution that isn’t just trying my best and letting things fall how they will. If our plan for victory is hoping the enemy gives up then we don’t have a plan, plain and simple. And maybe if I’m really, really lucky, I’ll be able to think of a way to make this someone else’s problem. So as of now, I’m officially taking suggestions.”

They were all quiet for a moment, trying to figure out how to respond. At the scale he was talking, they couldn’t really believe that would be something he’d manage, especially after making it clear how powerful the demon god was, but trying to help him figure out how to approach the problem and get stronger wouldn’t do any harm either. They all believed in his ability to grow and the more power he had, the better the contributions he’d be able to make for what they still wanted to hope would be the last wave.

“Alright,” Nare gave in. “Ignoring if things will really come to that, there’s plenty you could be doing that you already do. Finishing up as many high-ranking jobs as you can as soon as you can would mean you’d have months to take advantage of the bonuses from them, I can’t stress enough that your attributes will always be too low if you really want to test yourself against a god that exists beyond the height of any of our powers but the more you raise them the better, along with whatever bonuses that would come to your skills with them.”

“Got it. I’m already planning on finishing a bunch tomorrow and then from there the aim is going to be to finish at least one a month. More if I can manage.”

The statement got him some funny looks but Helori went on from there. “As for awakening your skills, well, that’s going to be harder. I’m frankly giving you no advice on how to raise your sacrilege to the third tier, you’re creative, figure that out yourself. As for connect though, no matter what you do, it’s going to be difficult. You remember how much trouble you had getting it to the second tier since you can’t get any of the affinitied skills that might help? The challenge for the third tier is going to be incomparable, especially when you’re not even at the ninth level yet. Having soul mage is going to help a lot but I honestly couldn’t guess at what might be enough to push you over the edge.”

“Okay, that’s fine, I’ll work on that too. I’ve at least got a couple ideas to improve my experience gain and when it comes time to get to the third tier, well… I’ll worry about that then.”

With how much his mind had grown since he’d last been on world, none of them could tell from his thoughts that he had a bit of an idea on how he might approach it but something about his attitude left a hint of worry they did their best to ignore, instead focusing on the other practical issues.

“As for anything else…” Myriad started before trailing off. “Honestly Ben, you’d need to find out for sure what sort of god this Oaun is. The forbidden gods were basically powerless when you executed them, this one is going to be the opposite. Technically, I’d expect one that strong to be capable of anything but if they really are a natural soul god then that’s a whole other issue.”

“Why? The world has a bunch with all of the soul mages you guys keep creating.”

“No, technically when they ascend they’re gods of soul magic if we’re being specific. It's going to be close but different, the way there’d be differences between a god of fire and fire magic. Honestly, the fact that your sacrilege was able to hold them off from your mind at all was a miracle but part of your soul comes out of your body when you use deep connection. Even if you do get to the third tier of both skills you want, unless you have literally no other options, you simply shouldn’t even consider trying to steal mana from your coat to fight.”

That got a grimace from him. “I was trying to be cautious of that before but do you really think it would still be that much of an issue if I awaken my skills?”

“Impossible to say but it’s not worth the risk. You know your soul is likely somewhat safe within your vessel, remove it and all bets are off. If things do come to it and you end up in a position where you have to fight this god, your best hope would be to fill yourself up as much as you can before then and hope that will be enough.”

“Ugh, okay, that makes sense. In that case, I need to raise my mana pool even more, which I can start working on, but…”

But that means I probably shouldn’t keep my jacket with me.

Having it with him meant he had an unlimited supply of mana to his name, exactly the sort of thing he’d want to use as a crutch in an emergency, but here he was, talking about fighting what was likely the strongest god in the universe. If he couldn’t solve whatever problems came up for him before the next wave, he was never going to be able to face a god without it.

Last resort for my inevitably suicidal demise, not a resort at all until then. Fuck.

He grabbed at his face in the agony the entire situation was causing him but held back from anything else, instead going on like nothing happened.

“Okay, this is good, let’s keep it going. We have a long night guys, I’m not letting up until I squeeze every single idea I can out of you.”