It was early the next morning that they both headed out, the air thick with spirits around them as they went. Thera had taken the time to fill him in on just what had happened with her and the spirits in greater detail the night before as they made their way through the gate to meet someone for the first time in years. The apostle of Ooro, the skill master Zandale.

Ben had been looking forward to it from the moment that Thera told him. He’d liked his fellow apostle well enough when they’d first met so it would be nice to catch up, but just as important was the chance for him to make even more skill rings, with Ben materializing as many as he could through the night to make up for the fact that he didn’t have too many blank ones on him left after all of the enchanting he’d done at the tower.

That wasn’t enough for him either though. As they made their way through Allfaith he kept deep connection up all around him, leaving him at the center of a four-meter circle as his powerful new mental structure quickly examined everyone who went within his range, letting him see if there were any worthwhile skills to grab, or even better, any awakened skills.

It might be a bit much to hope for, but so long as I keep this up I’m sure I’ll find someone eventually. Plus I have that old deal with Quilith so I should be getting skills from every grey on the planet too. Just gotta arrange a time to meet.

He’d only gained two new first tier ones during their walk through the city but that was fine, he already knew this was going to be a habit for him and his library would slowly grow, getting a bit of immediate growth to go with it as the two of them reached their meeting point and went in, finding Zandale and four others, presumably his apprentices.

Ben let his minds scroll through the sheer volume of skills they all possessed, the four strangers having lower levels of the same teacher, borrower, learner, and lender skills that made Zandale so sought after, but many different ones from each other too. They clearly had different affinities and f he had to guess from the look of things, he would have assumed that they must have all gone off on their own ways to gather and learn skills, only occasionally meeting up to share the ones they could if they couldn’t find any strangers to practice with, but that was even better news for him as he discreetly began copying them onto skill rings, materializing even more into his pocket at the same time as the tentacled apostle greeted them.

“Thera, isn’t it lovely to see you again,” He began politely before turning to Ben. “And well well, if it isn’t the mad apostle himself.”

“Uh, how many people are calling me that?”

“Probably everyone who saw what you did,” He said with a laugh. “But don’t worry, Ooro explained the conflict between the two of you and I don’t intend to hold it against you, it truly is nice to see you both again.”

So every apostle, oracle, and head priest probably knows what happened huh? That does feel like it might get complicated in the future.

He ignored his god, letting Thera talk as she gave the other apostle a deep bow. “Zandale, I’m sorry I dragged you into this, it was the only thing I could think of to keep the spirits from abandoning the world.”

“Ah, there’s nothing to apologize for. My plans may have had to change because of this but I’d rather we not lose that sort of fighting force and it’s not like this is going to keep me from training my skills, so shall we begin?”

They only had one dark resistance amulet with them so they handed it to each of the five there before one by one they touched Thera’s hand, all of them copying her skill.

None of Zandale’s apprentices were of the same species, but each of them reacted the same way after getting the skill, looking into the air around them.

“So those are spirits,” One muttered, surprising Thera as they did.

“Wait, you can see them now?”

“Of course, should we not be able to?” Another asked.

“Um, I don’t actually know. I always could so I didn’t realize it was a part of the skill. I guess this works out easier for everyone though.”

Originally, she’d expected that each mage who ended up getting the skill was going to have to just sit down and use it for a set hour each day as the spirits assigned themselves to different ones, or else only the awakened magic holders who should have naturally been able to see them thanks to their mana sense would be taking the role. If that wasn’t the case then that meant there’d be no risk of anyone losing their time or mana if nobody showed up.

With that they all began their practice to gain the skill, Thera explaining everything she knew about it to give them the best odds of success as Ben stayed at the side. While he couldn’t see the spirits the way they all could, he could still see something thanks to king of sacrilege pointing out the faith within them, as well as picking up any that were in range of his connect as a question came to his mind.

Wait, but spirits don’t have gods so why would I be seeing them giving off faith? Maybe I’m wrong and that’s not what I’m seeing? Or maybe I’m seeing faith in general and it doesn’t need to be going to anything divine? They have faith in Thera, right? And presumably the great spirits, too.

Still, it made him curious and he wanted another look, so he tried something, letting himself experience the senses of all of the typical mortals in the room, as well as a spirit of each affinity as he felt his minds reel despite the power behind it.

When he’d looked through Thera’s eyes the night before, he’d learned she hadn’t experienced the world in the exact way he had, but the difference was subtle. That wasn’t true of everyone else, especially Zandale and the spirits.

His fellow apostle lacked eyes, but his tentacles seemed to have a level of photosensitivity, and combined with what seemed like echolocation, it let the man perceive the world around him in a way totally foreign to Ben’s brain. Beyond that though was how the spirits viewed the world, all of them lacking any normal sensory organ as they each instead perceived mana at a level of detail he didn’t think a mortal could replicate, as well as a natural perception of their particular affinity as he felt water vapour through the air from one, the ground beneath them from another, where light was striking and so much more.

It was as interesting as it was overwhelming, so for the time being he broke off the various connections and stuck to looking through Thera’s eyes, seeing the spirits around as she did as thousands of small points of mana.

Beautiful.

It gave the world a feeling of magic that he thought he’d long gotten used to, even if seeing them like that did leave him stabbed with guilt. They were alive, they were innocent people, and no matter if he didn’t know what he was doing, he’d killed so many of them. This wasn’t just an animal to be hunted or an asshole he didn’t like, despite wanting to he couldn’t just brush away his wrongdoing, no matter what anyone said.

Don’t think about it.

What was done was done, wracking himself with guilt wouldn’t help anyone, he just needed to distract himself from his thoughts. Lucky for him, there were five people there who could help with just that. After all, as nice as it was to get more skill rings, it would be a waste to not try and use those around him for all they were worth.

“So Zandale,” He began casually. “I can’t help but notice how you’re here and I’m here and you have a bunch of skills that can be taught and I have between three and five skills that none of you have depending on if you can learn the base skills that went into an awakened one.”

“You’ve awakened a skill?” He asked in surprise. “Then it seems congratulations are in order, but I wouldn’t be so sure that you have that many. While we can learn skills that have merged into others, I haven’t been sitting idly by these last couple years, and my students have largely different skill pools from myself.”

“Ah, yeah, I’m kind of aware. Hope you don’t mind but I already know what you all have. I awakened connect so I can use it from a bit of a distance now and with my enchanting it lets me see your skills.”

The impression Zandale and his apprentices gave was one of surprise, as well as deep thought before he spoke up.

“In principle, I don’t mind, however, we don’t have the time to be learning any skills from you. In whatever number of days it takes us to master Thera’s, we need to be off to start teaching the skill.”

“So how about a delay on payment then?” Ben asked. “You’ll be busy till the end of the war, why not bet on our survival? Let us learn the skills we can while you’re here and assuming we all live then we’ll meet you to pay after, and if we die it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

The apostle of Ooro thought about the prospect quietly. He actually had intended to offer Thera the chance to learn a skill since he was learning one from her, and the time would pass anyway. Why not get the extra practice and teach while he was at it?

“Very well, let’s hear the skills you have first and from there we’ll decide.”

Got him.

He could tell Zandale was convinced so he listed the five skills he had that the other apostle and his students lacked, namely material user, destruction, rapid thought speed, absorption resistance, and finally trap knowledge, explaining what he needed to for each in detail.

He technically had a couple more too, but like last time, he didn’t think any of them would want his sacrilege nor demon skill, and given the lack of guns in the world there wasn’t much point in teaching them marksmanship.

And then there’s all affinity resistance enhancement.

It was a strange feeling to have a skill others couldn’t learn because of the difference in their souls. I was always him on the receiving end of that in the past with everything affinitied blocked off from him. The fact that there was basically no chance any of them had the sort of resistances necessary to get that skill in particular left him feeling surprisingly smug, even if that meant he had one less to trade for.

“Ha, you really do keep busy, don’t you?” Zandale said, breaking him from his thoughts. “It had been a long time since I’d had anyone with so many different skills than me when we’d first met, but now? I think it’s been quite a few years. Alright, we have a deal. Should I take it you already have something in mind to learn? And Thera, would you like to give my book another look over? Since you’re giving us this skill then it’s only fair you get the chance to learn as well, though you’ll both have to work hard at it to make sure you get the skills you want before we need to leave. We can’t be waiting for either of you unfortunately.”

“I actually wanted to talk to you about that too,” Ben said, turning to her and trying to look serious. “Thera, I’m giving you a couple of mine so how do you want your magic to grow?”

“What?”

She had no clue what he meant so he tried to make things clear. “We both know you’re going to live for a very long time assuming we all don’t die, and with your mana pool I’d say your potential to make it to the third tier of any magic skill you get is pretty damn high, it’s just a matter of how long it takes. I suppose what I’m saying is do you want to try and learn each non-affinitied magic one by one, using the time you have to try and get them all to the third tier, or do you want to break through and get the non-affinity magic skill like Vasta?”

She felt her mind go blank at the question. She’d never even considered it, why would she? The path to getting the skill wasn’t just hard, it was outrageous, at least for a normal person. For a person to get the magic, all they had to do was have four different options with all of them at a minimum of the fifth level before awakening one for them to combine together into the new skill. Even in theory it sounded hard, but in practice it was outrageous. Getting that many non-affinity branches wasn’t some simple task, and they were difficult to level specifically because of what they were. Without an affinity to lower the mana costs, training those magics was a strain, at least for other people. For her, it wasn’t noticeably different from anything else she’d spend. Maybe her telekinesis was harder to level than her other magics, but at least the cost of the spells wasn’t a factor to make it worse.

With all of that, she understood where he was coming from. If she was going to live for so long, it could be nice to have so many branches of magic to work on, training them one by one to pass the time, slowly getting them each to the pinnacle of their potential if she could. If she actively tried to combine them into non-affinity magic at the second tier, then she wouldn’t be able to learn more after that. Admittedly, the skill would basically be just as good given the sheer flexibility of it, but it would be cutting her off from that potential bit of growth forever.

The longer she thought about it though, the more she was sure it didn’t matter.

“We hopefully just have two waves left, right? I’ll be a lot more useful for them if I have something like non-affinity magic when they start. I'm not going to worry about some hypothetical future when I need to be focusing on living here and now.”

She wasn’t even going to push back against the prospect of taking his chance to learn some of the skills he was being offered. They both knew that with the power at her fingertips, she’d be able to do a lot in the future battles, it made the most sense to worry about that first. So long as they survived, Ben could always use his fortune to book time with Zandale to learn anything else he wanted to after that.

“Cool, in that case, it looks like you have a lot of options to choose between.”

Zandale had the same ones he had in the past, namely enchanting, strengthening, empathy, and corpse song, but between his apprentices, there were four new ones.

Clairvoyance and mana crystallization, two magics that Ben had experienced firsthand in the dead god’s trial, with the first letting one cast their awareness into the surroundings while the latter would let the user temporarily solidify their mana to use for attacks. In addition to that, one also had the barrier magic Ben favoured so heavily in his enchanting, as well as scrying, a magic similar to clairvoyance that let the user lock on to a specific target to find it rather than just being able to look around.

“So you need three of them and that will leave me three skills to learn myself.”

“If I can,” She muttered. “I don’t know if you remember, but it took me a while to learn telekinesis. Even if I’ve gotten better, learning three might be a tough order.”

“Ah, well we’ll let me worry about that, you’ll only hate how we make it happen a little. And to do that, I’ll need to learn my first one.”

And hope the synergy I’m going to get from this doesn’t end up quite as unpleasant as what happened between my old mind skills.

He’d spotted the skill he wanted right away, it was one he was sure he’d be able to get in minutes, maybe even seconds, and it was certain to pair very well with a similar skill he found himself getting acquainted with as he walked up to one of the apprentices, a person who he might have mistaken for an emperor penguin if it wasn't for their vibrant green colouring as he reached out his hand.

“I’ll learn thought speed enhancement.”