Opening his eyes after leaving the archive, Ben couldn’t help but let out a disappointed groan before letting his mind out of it.

“So it looks like that also failed.”

In the hours spent flying from the dryad’s village back to the gate, he’d been in there, experiencing almost ten days subjectively because of the time-dilation effect acting on his mind, only to fail in the goal he’d gone in with, awakening meditation.

When he’d asked himself how he’d ever conceivably do it, that had been the most obvious option. His entire time in there he’d been using the skill with all of his minds, hoping against hope that would be enough to push the skill past its limits, all to grab hold of the rewards for such an act.

While getting the skill to the second tier had no obvious value in and of itself, the purpose of that bit of work hadn’t been to let him meditate even better. No, what he had been after was the other benefit there was to be had, the bonuses to his attributes.

Even if it would have just been a six percent increase that still would have been really really nice to get. He thought with a sigh. Looks like my efforts just aren’t paying off.

Huh, that’s actually a pretty interesting point. Obviously, I can’t waste all of that time, but I’m sure I’ll be getting a few sleepless nights while I’m here. If I find myself exhausted enough I could enter the archive for an hour a day to squeeze out a day's worth of training and see if that gets me the results. It at least has to be getting me closer, right?

Just you wait, I’m on my way to zen mastery. After I awaken that skill then I’ll be reaching levels of reality you gods don’t even know exist.

“So no luck then?” Thera asked him, noticing his eyes open up as they rushed through the clouds.

“Not this time. Why does this sort of thing have to be so hard?”

“Of course it’s hard. The fact that you have three is abnormal enough, trying to get two more is insane.”

“So you don’t think I’ll manage?”

“I didn’t say that, it’s just that if you do and word gets out then you’ll have to deal with even more people trying to recruit you.”

“Okay, note to self, make sure if I awaken any more skills it’s done in private.”

He let a couple of his minds be consumed by the thought while the rest focused on other things as they finally made it to the gate, traveling through it and the space beyond to finally end up at their ultimate destination, craftsman’s tower.

Much like the magic towers, it was a city on a coast, being an important site for all races regardless of where they lived with each of them needing access to it for the chance to test themselves and grow further by taking advantage of the massive trial the gods had left them, along with the resources that had gathered in the land as a result of craftsmen coming from the world over to face it.

Despite that similarity though, the city itself was far more vast. They could see the tower that made the city what it was stretching into the sky, waiting to be challenged, but at the opposite end, off in the distance there was the beam of light jutting up, waiting for the thirty short days until the battle for the planet began.

If it was Earth, he would have expected the land to have already been evacuated, but the world he was on had the key difference of the gate network, ready to ease the evacuation as people moved to different cities without the threat so close by for the months that the demons poured out of them.

And I still seriously don’t get the logistics behind how the demons invade.

With hundreds of worlds having been conquered, the way it occurred was well known. The invasion points would be marked and after a period of nearly a year, gates would open at their locations, only for them to close again after thirty days of a constant outpour from the demons, followed by them opening again almost a year from when they first did.

It seemed horribly inefficient from the perspective of a conquest, even if theories about why they did so abounded.

And I get that, but if that is the case, what are they going to do once they have every planet in the galaxy? If the point of this is really to help them reach the sapient stage of their development and let the intelligent invaders grow to greater heights then eventually they’ll run out of worlds to conquer.

So we’re just the next stepping stone to all of reality falling to their might, huh?

It was hard not to, the situation they were in just felt too outrageous to take seriously. No matter how well off they may have been, they were the next in a long line of dominoes about to fall, and the more he learned about what was happening the more inevitable it felt.

It was late enough when they arrived that meeting up with Falk and Sonya, along with any exploring, was left for the next day as they instead found their way to Anailia’s embassy, getting the free rooms they were provided and preparing for the night.

Ben for his part flopped into bed, staying awake only because of the guest he was expecting as Quilith appeared before his eyes.

It was such a simple arrival. One moment there was nobody in the room with him, and the next second the alien appeared, no lights or fanfare that one might imagine for something that seemed as grand as projecting oneself across realities, leaving Ben to look at the man who he’d grown acquainted with in the last few years.

“What’s wrong?” Was the first thing he asked. Even without having a firm grasp on his body language, Quilith gave off a distinct impression of something being off that Ben wasn’t used to seeing.

“You know, you seem shockingly good at understanding moods at times. It’s honestly astounding when I’m forced to consider the fact that your system can’t be helping you at all with reading me. Is it just a talent or do you have a sixth sense for it?”

“I just look at the people I talk to, and that’s not an answer. Out with it ‘cause you look bad.”

For just a moment the grey stood in silence, looking like he might just disappear instead of giving any sort of proper answer. It was only after a deep breath and pulling his eyes from Ben that he gave voice to what weighed on his mind.

“Our star died.”

Three words that carried the weight of a world. The little alien said them so easily, but Ben couldn’t begin to imagine the feelings going on beneath the surface.

“...I thought you said you guys should have a decade.”

“Ha, you know, it’s funny, we actually would have if we hadn’t been so set on trying to change our fates,” His voice was filled with derision entirely directed at his kind. “But our desire to keep the light of our world just brought its end about all the faster.”

“Your experiment caused it?” He asked, remembering what Quilith had told him in their last meeting, only to get a shake of his head in return.

“No. Well, not entirely. For a few thousand years we’ve been trying everything we could. In that time, information was shuffled and misplaced, failed experiments lost to time. It seems an ancient one that we’d all but forgotten about interacted with our last and caused a runaway effect nobody expected. It is… disappointing.”

Ben knew the words were an understatement. He could see how tightly Quilith clenched his fists before him, the feelings of it all trapped and simmering beneath the surface in a way that would never really leave.

“And your people?”

“Oh, for the most part, it's what you’d expect. It’s not like we didn’t already have the infrastructure set up to deal with it when it came, but there were a few accidents as the light vanished and a few more who’d decided they didn’t want to live under an artificial sky. Ultimately it’s fine. My people will be able to go on for thousands of years given how far we’ve prepared for all of this.”

Thousands of years trapped on a dying planet. Another one as doomed as the one he was trapped on, each one ticking by with their own different countdowns as he sighed.

“Go home today Quilith. I’m sure there’s a lot you’d rather be doing right now than spending time with me.”

“I… Yes, actually, I think I will. Thank you for your understanding Ben, I will be back in a month when things aren’t quite so fresh. Try to keep safe.”

With that the alien vanished, letting Ben lay back and close his eyes, forcing his mind into his god’s realm.

“Ben, there’s nothing you can do, there’s no reason to let this bother you so much,” Myriad told him as soon as he arrived, all concern being waved off the second after.

“I’m not bothered and I know there’s nothing I can do. Since I have the time I just want to look at the summoning spell again is all, so if you would?”

Myriad just sighed as he brought up the spell in all of its majesty, Ben craning his neck as he tried to take it in with all of his minds despite the headache as Helori got off his god to stand beside him.

“I understand that what he said was upsetting, but you’ve already looked at this for months without any real progress,” She told him, looking at it as well. “A couple decent theories on how to lower the cost doesn’t mean much without the knowledge on how to put them into practice.”

“I’m just having a look,” He said again as he eyes focused on different parts, trying to make sense of how it would all work together as he once again faced the simple truth that no matter how powerful his thoughts were, they couldn’t handle all he was seeing.

There was simply too much going on, but if the problem was too big it just needed to be split into smaller, more manageable pieces.

“Myriad, do me a favour and slice off the top meter of this and bring it down for me to look at.”

He at least understood where magic was going in and out of it, as well as the direction where both mana and faith were moving for it, all he needed to do was find a place to start. If looking at the full picture hadn’t worked after months, then he just needed to cut it into smaller sections.

As his god did as he asked, cutting off the top layer of the spell and bringing it down for Ben to look at, it was still too much so he did it again and again, removing entire swaths of the spell and leaving him with a one by one meter cube of it, the frontmost right corner. As just a piece of a greater whole it was useless, like trying to infer the workings of a rocket from a single screw, but it was at a scale where he could finally have something to begin to examine as he put the full force of his thoughts to memorizing even the most minute detail, and feeling for the first time that he just might be on the right track.

“Okay, this could be the start of something,” He muttered. “Myriad, do me a favour and cut up the entire spell into sections like this. It might take some time, but I think this could be the beginning of me actually making some progress so long as I can keep going from here.”

Cutting it up had been such a small change, but one that instantly made his wheels turn as he thought of where he’d go next, trying to decipher the less obvious components of the spell, seeing how their structure worked together and how the mana moved as it traveled through each section and how that all built up into a final product. It was going to be long, tedious work, but that was exactly what he excelled at as the gods with him mentally prepared for a long night of theory-crafting and study.