It was after the first half hour that both Thera and Yuzu had to admit that whatever was wrong with him, they couldn’t solve it. Thera could find no issue in his body and while Yuzu claimed there seemed to be something going on in his soul, it wasn’t enough for a proper answer, nor for her to know how they could possibly fix it. All they knew was that whatever the matter was, Ben had chosen to pull out the archive to use, they could only trust that it would somehow help as time went on.

“So like, is there anything we can do instead of just waiting?” Jake finally asked an hour after the two women had given up. “Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, do anything?”

“It’s hard to get a solution when you don’t know the problem,” Elvat said from the side. “If it seems like he’s doing something about it then trust him, it hasn’t been that long.”

“No, it’s been impossibly long,” Thera muttered as she stared at him. “Using the archive speeds up how fast he thinks by a hundred times over and I don’t even know how fast he can usually do it with his thought speed skill. For us, it’s been over an hour, for him it has to have been weeks at least.”

“Okay, so again, that sounds bad so what do we do?”

“I don’t-”

<AMALGAMATED ALIEN THOUGHT STRUCTURE HAS TRANSITIONED TO RECONSTRUCTED ALIEN THOUGHT STRUCTURE>

<UNNATURAL THOUGHT SPEED LEVEL INCREASED>

<UNNATURAL INSPIRATION LEVEL INCREASED>

Her words were cut off as Ben dropped the book and opened his eyes, groaning as he did.

“Okay, that sucked. Every part of that sucked. And I now have even more complaints for Nare about the accuracy of the statement that the system can’t hurt you. If that’s the case then why do I keep stumbling into all of this crappy painful harm? I mean, it’s at least a little interesting that I forced a skill transition, but-”

This time it was Thera cutting him off as she reached out and squeezed him tight before pulling him away to look into his eyes as the rest watched on.

“Ben, what the hell just happened?”

“Long story short, the system just drove me insane. Not to worry though, I got better.”

“You are giving me the long version whether you like it or not.”

“Okay, the slightly longer version is that the last job awakened alien thought structure in a way that I think caused my minds to take on the traits of everything I ever connected to. This was, to put it mildly, not ideal and briefly left me struggling to figure out how to use my body when it felt like I should have had more legs or arms or flippers or tentacles or whatever. To try and fix it I went into the archive for way, way too long and very carefully broke my brain in a different way, driving me sane again. And now I’m probably fine.”

“Not one part of that sounds fine!”

“Wait,” Jake cut in, looking far too interested now that it seemed Ben was stable. “So what happened then? You said the skill transitioned so that can’t be the end of it.”

“Ah, I took all of the non-human aspects from the human parts of my thoughts and well, combined them I guess into separate threads so instead of contaminating the full structure of my thoughts they’re just sort of acting as a different way of thinking in each of my minds. Like I said, I’m probably fine.”

“That still doesn’t sound fine,” Amy muttered while Jake just looked more interested.

“Wait, you’ve connected to me before, does that mean there’s a copy of me living in your head? Can he hear me? Hello inner Jake!”

“There’s not, thank god. Whatever happened to me didn’t copy minds into me whole cloth, only replicated some of the structure from races and species that differed greatly enough from my own. It’s probably fine.”

“And you’re still you?” Thera asked him, looking into his eyes as he smiled back.

“Always am.”

“Alright then, if you say it’s fine then it is.”

It seemed the others were less sure of that fact but what mattered was that he was at least mostly confident in it. Already when he was looking at the world he felt those new aspects of himself viewing it in different ways than he normally would but those aspects were now just as much him as anything else, they didn’t change the core of who he was.

Although I think I’m going to avoid mind jobs in the future, why are they always the ones trying to break me? At least this wasn’t as bad as some in the past… No, if I didn’t have my unnatural thought speed and the archive I would have been spending weeks, maybe even months on this. That is factually not good. No more mind jobs from here on out.

…Unless one seems really really good.

Ignoring the small part of himself that was already trying to weasel out of the personal promise he’d just made, Ben instead focused back on the others with him, giving away none of his thoughts as he spoke up.

“Okay, well now that that bit of awkwardness is over with, who’s ready to move on to their next job?”

“You can’t be serious,” Steph sighed. “Really? After you were just convulsing on the ground like that?”

“I’m not taking another mind job for the next one, it will be fine.”

“I wonder if anyone here actually believes that,” Will muttered, again with far too many in the room looking like they agreed.

“Guys, listen, I’m taking these next jobs with or without you so you can either tag along and enjoy the easy experience or you can watch me enjoy it all by myself. Your call.”

The fact that he was still going to be doing it either way made things easier for them, even if they didn’t seem to like that fact as they organized who would be in the next party, switching out who had to miss that time as Ben decided which of the two he was looking at he wanted to take first before ultimately ending on his newest option.

“I’ll take soul user.”

<ACQUIRED JOB- SOUL USER LV0>

<BONUSES GRANTED TO IMPROVING VITALITY, VITALITY RECOVERY RATE, MANA, AND MANA RECOVERY RATE>

<ALL SOUL SKILLS WILL RECEIVE A GROWTH BONUS>

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

It wasn’t completed instantly, but then, Ben hadn’t been expecting it to. He’d be entering new territory with it, all he could do was hope that he was right in his reasoning.

If creating souls counted as using them then he’d be fine for experience, leaving only the question of how long it would take. After all, Elvat had been right about how hard it was to raise a third-tier job. Needing to create three million souls for every level was simply absurd and he had no clue how comparable it would be to do the same thing for three second-tier jobs, plus his own, Sachel’s adventurer, and whatever Ralia had taken. It could easily have been the sort of thing that would mean days of work as all of them fought and trained which was still objectively better than anyone had any right to hope but slower than he wanted when the goal was to rush through them.

Oh well, if I’m lucky it will only be a couple hours so for now, let’s start by seeing if I can actually awaken this skill like I’m hoping.

Different from anything else he’d made, Ralia’s soul stood alone as something unique which made it all of the harder to deal with right off the bat. He still needed to simplify it the best he could, same with any soul he ended up creating, but that meant unraveling the structure he was seeing for the first time and trying to understand which parts matched the aspects he’d expect in a more typical one, trying to adjust the end product he hoped to create into something both unique and challenging enough that it would be enough to push him over the edge while at the same time being on the edge of what was possible, ending with something he thought would work.

It felt like it would be a challenge even as he visualized it but he had more than enough working in his favour. All of the jobs and blessings he’d accumulated, a title that helped lower the difficulty of awakening, and on top of all of that, the spells of the two soul mages placed on him, designed specifically to make something like that easier. If there was ever going to be a time he’d get an awakening when he wanted it, it was going to be then and without any more stalling he poured out his mana to give shape to his intention, feeling it work as he’d hoped.

<SOUL PRODUCTION HAS AWAKENED TO SOUL SOURCE>

<ACQUIRED TITLE- DESTINED HOLDER OF SOUL PRODUCTION>

<MAX LEVEL OF THE SOUL USER JOB ACHIEVED>

By that point, there was no flash of mana to mark his awakening, his attributes had only grown by a point or two at the very most, but that didn’t matter. He’d done it. He’d gotten the exact outcome he’d been hoping for the first time, actually managing to plan his awakening, with the grin that stretched out across his face being enough for the others to know he’d pulled it off.

“Soul source, huh? A good name for the skill, I dig it. I am officially a source of souls within this universe. Now just gotta see how well I’ve improved.”

Before when he’d materialized them using his natural mana pool he’d been able to make a maximum of seventeen at once when accounting for having both that skill and soul inclination at their ninth levels which meant now all he needed to do was see what his new upper limit was going be as he started to spend his power, creating and counting till he felt nearly drained as the total fell just short of three hundred, leaving the soul mages who could see what he was doing to be just as shocked as he was elated.

With that being the case, he was going to be able to fly through any future soul job, even without his jacket to do it and as he turned to look to his friends to see if they’d all picked their next jobs already, he was rewarded with another change that had come with the awakening. On top of the more linear growth, it had added yet another new dimension to how he’d see the world. Looking at them all, he could clearly see their souls.

Its unawakened form had already let him see the disembodied ones he’d created along with those stored in crystals but the growth he now had went beyond it. It wasn’t to the same extent as the soul mages, he couldn’t read the system information off of them, even if he was able to make out the structures themselves, but it was an interesting bonus he hadn’t expected that would only aid the future growth of the skill, should he ever want to pursue it. Until that point, he’d been relying on the few times he’d been able to see out of Yuzu or Elvat’s eyes, along with the couple he’d viewed through Falk’s. Now though, he’d be able to see it all across the world, unimpeded which would only help swell his knowledge all of the more.

There was more he’d need to experiment with too, he’d need to test to see if he was now able to create structures within a soul he’d previously failed to along with seeing how the complexity he could manage overall had changed, but for the time being what he had was enough and after confirming with the rest that they’d taken their new jobs he touched his own crystal once more.

Fully intending to take soul defiling gardener on the assumption that the name implied it was going to potentially be some sort of soul and plant job, he was stopped as he looked at the bottom of his list of choices. Two new options after all of the ones he’d sped through, with the acquisition of that new destined holder title appearing to have unlocked an option called master of destiny while completing the last job granting him access to soul master.

As interesting as the first sounded, it was the second that really managed to catch his attention. Considering the number of awakened soul skills he now had it wasn’t the most surprising to get but still altered his choice. Master jobs yielded advanced options once they were complete, meaning he’d be able to go even farther in his goal of getting those last few levels of connect by using the same exploit that had let him finish being a soul mage in a month. It was too tempting to pass up when it was right there in front of him.

“I choose soul master.”

<ACQUIRED JOB- SOUL MASTER LV0>

<MAJOR BONUSES GRANTED TO IMPROVING VITALITY, VITALITY RECOVERY RATE, MANA, AND MANA RECOVERY RATE>

<ALL SOUL SKILLS WILL RECEIVE A MAJOR GROWTH BONUS>

<SOUL EXPANSION LEVEL INCREASED>

“Okay, this should be a good little test to see how much experience creating a normal soul will give me so I’m just going to take a couple minutes on this one, give me a sec and then we’ll use up the last job option and you can all go back to your days… Mostly. I’m going to need to borrow Yuzu and Elvat for one more thing when I’m done here but we’ll worry about that when we get to it. For now, let’s finish up.”

Making souls one by one, he was expecting the amount he’d need to make to cover all of that experience to be a number in the millions even despite the fact the last one ended at just one. He knew awakening a skill gave a ridiculous amount but without knowing how much for sure, it didn’t feel outside the realm of possibility that it could have been so great that it would cover multiple people, surely without that boost it would be more, and it seemed he was right, though not as much as he’d thought. By the time he’d created ten thousand, the job was done.

…This, more than anything else, has really painted a clear picture of just how outrageous third-tier jobs are to level. Holy crap, that difference is insane. If I wasn’t carrying the others, doesn’t this mean I would have finished in one or two thousand instead? I need to figure out how to take advantage of this some more.

A future thing to consider. For the time being, after Ralia had covered forming the party for the last one, that meant Sachel would be using up her master adventurer job to create the final party, bringing in those she could as they agreed who’d sit out the last round while Ben checked his jobs, finding advanced options like he’d expected.

But only one it looks like I can take. He sighed to himself, disappointed despite everything he’d already finished that day and how it was going to reflect on his future growth. Soul creator is definitely the sort of job that isn’t going to be as insanely generous with the experience, all things considered, which means I’m going to have to go with the sacrilege aligned one. Not that I’m complaining, love me some sacrilege bonuses so let this be the job that finally gets me to the third tier of that stupid skill so I can cross one thing off of my impossible to do list. I’m taking evil soul user.

<ACQUIRED JOB- EVIL SOUL USER LV0>

<MAJOR BONUSES GRANTED TO IMPROVING ALL ATTRIBUTES>

<ALL SOUL AND SACRILEGIOUS SKILLS WILL RECEIVE A MAJOR GROWTH BONUS>

Once more he could feel the eyes of the soul mages falling on him thanks to the name of his job of choice but he didn’t care, sacrilege bonuses were excellent and no matter how else he might have felt about the system at times, as far as he was concerned one of its greatest features was how generous it could be with ensuring that almost every master-type job gave him something that incorporated it. A small part of him couldn’t help but wonder if that was somehow the system getting its bit of revenge against the gods of the world for what they had done to make it but in the end it didn’t matter, he’d be happy to take it either way.

It only took a few thousand souls for him to hear the expected notification, telling him his mass awakening could come to an end, claiming more than he’d hoped for his friends to ensure they could each get significantly stronger so long as they put in the work in the coming months, a fact he knew they weren’t going have any real choice in with how much they’d all be fighting.

“Alright guys, that’s done so you’re free. Next time you look at your cards just make sure to remember what a sweet, wonderful, useful, fantastic guy I am and if everyone lives then you can make this up to me one day. Now, Yuzu and Elvat, give me one second, I should be able to breeze through one last job for myself but then-”

“Hey Ben,” Will cut in. “If there’s one more job you think you’ll be able to finish that easily, what are the odds you’d be willing to wait to let me and Steph sign up at the guild?”

“...Yeah, sure, why not? Just make it fast.”