“Wait, what?”

“From what I understand, you’re able to enchant unlike any other in the world. I know this is a lot to ask, but if you would at least try to make me one, I’d be forever grateful.”

“...Alright, ignoring the fact that I wouldn’t even know where to begin with something like that, I’m going to ask the obvious question of why you can’t get an awakened healer to help you. If your god was willing to spend the item I owe them for this, you must be worth getting some proper treatment as well.”

It wasn’t like there weren't options after all. Even ignoring how powerful the great light and life spirits were, someone who had been an awakened life magic user for long enough should have had what it took to help restore a lost limb with enough time. Considering the fact that Ben was getting to the point that many of his items were making it to ultra rare, if this man was worth it then he should have been worth whatever expenses would come from hiring a powerful healer.

Hearing that though, Kelf only shook his head. “Unfortunately, my race keeps that from being an option.”

“Mind if I ask why?”

“I’m a ghoul. My kind are thoroughly in the death affinity with an unnaturally strong resistance to life so there’s no mage who can heal me with their magics. I understand I’m asking a lot, but before I lost my arm I was a swordmaster. With only months to go, I’ll do whatever I can to fight again.”

Swordmaster. So an awakened swordsman huh?

He could see why Kelf’s god would be spending an item on that. Awakened skill holders were considered valuable enough that the gods even reached across realities to get more. If Ben could make him something that would let him use half of his original power then of course it would be worth the effort, but that still didn’t mean there weren't better options.

“Okay, so if life magic’s a no go then what about light? I get that its healing aspects aren't as good but I’m acquainted with a powerful one and I personally wouldn’t mind trying to get them to help you instead of making an item.”

Of course, if I ask Lux for help I’m sure I’ll need to do something for her or end up owing Pelenia even more, but it seems like a worthwhile trade.

Despite his willingness to put up with owing a different person a favour though, Kelf again denied him. “Even worse. Life magic may not work on me, but light actively causes me harm. I’m pretty certain light mage who has the strength to heal a person with an injury like mine would leave me a pile of ash instead.”

“Seriously?”

“The evolutionary history of my race has left us ill-suited for traditional forms of healing,” He sighed. “So seeing as that’s the case, will you help me?”

“Well, it’s the deal I made so I’ll at least do my best.”

“Myriad, why the hell can’t ghouls be healed normally? I can’t believe there’s an entire species less suited for living in this world than me.”

The fact he had to figure out how to make an arm wasn’t an issue, in fact he viewed it mostly as an interesting project that had the potential to help him with some other goals as he went, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to complain at all.

“The life of their homeworld evolved around an anomaly, it’s unfortunate but it’s affected their kind’s path as a whole. Good luck though, I believe in you.”

“No, not ‘good luck though’. What does any of that even mean?”

“For some reason, the star their world orbited would spew out death mana. Given that life was able to grow and develop despite that I’d say a few quirks are forgivable.”

“...Okay, whatever, this is just the reality I live in I guess. So how am I going to deal with this?”

He was being asked to do more than just make a simple prosthetic, he needed to make something at least mostly functional. Something that would be able to deal with whatever level of strength was put into it for combat while ideally being able to manage the smaller, more minute tasks one would expect of them in day-to-day life.

“I don’t think you need to go that far,” His god pointed out. “The man asked for help to use a weapon, how well he can use cutlery seems irrelevant.”

“If I’m making the guy an arm then I’m making him a good arm, even if it might take a while. But how am I even going about it? Dang it, do I need to start learning about biology now? Like, I can probably just imitate some of the structure, but I still want to make it as good as I can so I really might need to learn it on a deeper level, and that still isn’t considering the structure of the enchantments I’ll need to make which really is a whole other issue. I mean, I’m sure I’ll be able to do something, but the question is how complicated is it going to have to be and how will it be powered? Since I can already make some that can interact with a person's mind, that's not an issue, but this really is going to take a while,” He took a break from his rambling to look at his god. “Myriad, wanna do me a favour and make me an arm up here I can dissect? I want to freshen up on the structural bits.”

He had plenty of experience dismantling creatures for parts, but most of them weren’t very close to the standard hominid body plan like he’d need to make the arm, and any time he’d taken a corpse apart he hadn’t been concerned about how the various pieces worked together. Something Myriad couldn’t help him with either.

“If you’ll remember, my kind are radically different from yours and I don’t just know the deeper body structure of different races for no reason.”

“Ugh, damn it. Would Helori be able to help? I get her people are starfish, but with the whole knowledge god thing you’d think she might have picked up a bit here or there.”

“What? Her people aren’t starfish-like at all. They’re definitely hominid types.”

“What? But I’ve met Xizle.”

“Gods can have other species representing them. Case in point, me and you.”

“Fair. In that case bring her on over, gotta use my teacher for all she’s worth.”

Halfheartedly stirring a pan full of breakfast, Ben was in a daze trying to go through everything he and Helori had gone over the night before, trying to think about how he would possibly apply it to an item, especially something like a prosthetic. It was simply too outside of what he was used to and he felt like he was frying his minds trying to make the idea work out.

It was as these thoughts filled his head that arms wrapped around his chest from behind him as he failed to notice anyone approach, every bit of him too occupied to notice his surroundings as Thera spoke up.

“Nice to finally have you back home sleepy, we were getting worried.”

“Ah, sorry about that Thera, work was a little too busy and now on top of all of the other orders, I was given a bit of a crazy project to work on too. It might take a while to finish and I definitely should have declined more of the other ones that were coming in.”

Hearing his voice, she turned him around to look him in the eyes. “Wow, you look worse than I thought you would.”

“Ouch.”

“You know what I mean. As your primary healer, I recommend taking the day off and going back to bed. You look like you need it.”

She held his face as she looked at him while Ben took her hands. “I think I will once I finish this new project. I need to meet up with the client today but I’m not sure if it’s going to go farther than just a meeting to discuss it more while I figure out how to build an arm.”

“I’m sorry, build a what?”

“A prosthetic arm. I spent most of the night studying the structural aspects with Helori but applying it to my crafting is a whole other matter so it might take a while, but it could potentially be useful for what I’m trying to do for Inux so I really should put my all into it. Actually, as my primary healer do you have any suggestions?”

“Yeah, just let me handle it obviously,” She told him. “I may not have done it before, but I’m almost certain I can make someone regrow a severed limb. Worst to worst it will be good practice.”

“Doesn’t sound like it’s in the cards sadly, I guess his species isn’t super susceptible to healing magics.”

Although not many healers can claim to have her raw power so maybe it would be worth a try?

As he was thinking about it, she spoke back up. “I could still give it a go but if that fails, my next instinct would probably be to graft one on from something else, though I guess if life magic is an issue then that wouldn’t work great either, would it?”

“Probably not,” He said sadly, before feeling an idea come into place. But maybe I could do something close?