“Um, so aunt Lux, aunt Funa, what was all of that about back at the beginning?” Thera asked, bringing up the question that Ben found himself deeply curious about as well, only to get shakes of their heads as Lux ran her fingers through Thera’s hair.

“Don’t worry about it sweetheart, it will only stress you out. God’s above, it’s already stressing me out.”

“We’ll have to talk to Abrus,” Funa agreed. “And when she said four, it must be-”

“It has to be him,” Lux muttered. “Just what is that idiot up to now? Was that why he’s been missing this whole time? Why, when I find him I’m going to…”

She trailed off, focusing back on Thera and Ben, as well as how they were only being made more and more curious with each word, before dropping the topic entirely for a different one.

“But let’s not worry about that right now. Ben, how are the homunculi working out for you?”

“So far, so good. I can’t do everything I was hoping with them, but they’re more than good enough for my purposes.”

He could feel the world through their senses, see through their eyes, hear with their ears and touch with their hands, same as if they were his own body, though moving them still took a bit more mental work. Normally, nothing really required much in the way of conscious thought, but for them, he needed to be aware of how he was directing each movement. It felt smoother and more natural than it had any time he connected to something with a shape completely foreign to him, but as things stood, he’d still need to practice for them to truly become extensions of himself.

Which isn’t bad, I've got my puppetry skill that I’m sure to level up a bit from this so it will only get easier and I already have ideas for raising it. The bigger disappointment is that I can’t cast magic through them. I mean, it’s not the biggest deal in the world since they have to be within a couple of feet of me, but that means anything I make with them will need to be enchanted by my real body. Oh well, that just leaves the physical me focusing on my magics while I can use these to practice my other skills.

And he already had a few ideas on how to do just that. After all, when he was going to be busy helping others awaken he now had four other bodies to put to use and all ten of his fists clenched in anticipation. Things were about to get exciting, he could feel it.

“Hey Thera,” He sang out, harmonizing with his four clones as she immediately took a turn to the suspicious.

“I would like to point out before you say anything that I just dealt with my least favourite relative for you.”

“I’m not asking anything bad, I swear. I was just hoping you’d make me some iron.”

She didn’t immediately trust him, the feeling that he was up to something too great when there were five of him trying to suck up, but she did as he asked, forcing mana to bend to her will and watching as it changed to metal, a small boulder of it appearing on the ground before her that Ben was quick to get his hands on.

Running his own personal power through it he broke it up into five equal parts before shaping each into a chest, reaching into his bag at the end to get some of his rainbow mana batteries to set into them before he began enchanting.

“Okay, I’ll bite, what are you doing?” Thera asked as she watched, not immediately understanding what the point of any of that was as he began his work.

“I need a place to store my clones when I’m not using them.”

“Wait, so you’re going to toss them into some metal crates? Ben, even if they’re not ensouled, they are alive. They need at least a little bit of care unless you’re going to make me heal them all of the time.”

“I won’t and they’ll get it, don’t worry. This is just a cost-saving measure.”

He connected to his rings as he built up the enchantment on each, not needing anything overly complicated, just wanting it to fulfill a relatively simple thing, even if the degree he’d be doing it at was rarely seen. He was manipulating the flow of time when it was sealed, making it come to as close to a standstill as could be done.

Time was an interesting magic to work with, if partly due to the limits of it. Despite its name, the magic could only really work in one direction, with backwards time travel being impossible. Despite that though, it was possible to drop the speed to nearly nothing if an enchanter had the skill and power for it, which was exactly what he wanted.

“If they’re in a slower time when they aren’t being used then they won’t need to be fed as often to keep them alive and they should stay in good condition longer since they basically won’t be aging while in there. It’s the most efficient way of taking care of them.”

It was a purely rational way of treating them, an idea that suited his practicality, though to Thera it still sat funny in her thoughts. Even if it was true, she couldn’t help but feel weird seeing anything that looked just like him being shoved into a hard metal box until they were needed, but she knew that wasn’t a real argument against it when they wouldn’t even feel anything unless he was using them.

“Just put a pillow under them or something at least, will you? My neck hurts just looking at this.”

“Alright, but later. After all, we’re burning daylight and we still have a big beautiful library left to explore. Gotta test these bad boys out to see what they can do.”

“But first you’re going to need to convince the librarians that they should be allowed to go up the higher floors with you despite not having any sort of identification.”

Hmm, did not consider that. Yeah, it might be a problem.

“...You think I could convince Uliel or Vasta to write me a note?”

Getting both the archmage and non-affinity mage’s agreement to help had ended up being the easy part after he explained just what he’d done. After fielding their questions and dealing with Jake poking or prodding, they had to manage the harder bit, convincing the librarians.

He would have never expected it to be a job that was taken as seriously as they made it out to be, but then, they belonged to one of the most prestigious magical libraries in the world so he cut them some slack as he moved to prove himself, given them orders without saying a word, proving he could see through the eyes of others and doing his best to convince them that they weren’t seeing members of his race trying to slip in, only living tools.

In the end, he still wasn’t sure if he really managed to make them believe it as much as the two mages present had. After all, they were the ones who got him access to the third floor to begin with. If the homunculi really were individual people who they would go so far as to lie for, it would have made far more sense to just get them to do the same thing again.

Oh well, it’s done and I’m here so who cares. It all worked out in the end. He told himself as he got to where he’d left off at the shelves the other day, pulling out a hundred books with his magic to float before all of their eyes with the sounds of paper becoming even more noticeable than it had been before, not that he cared. He was already lost in how well his idea was working out.

Before I was reading about four thousand books an hour, with this I should be able to do twenty.

Now the limit was his mana instead of his eyes, but he didn’t care. It would grow with time, but as he read thousands of pages through five pairs of eyes, he didn’t think there was any way he could look at what he was doing and say it still wasn’t enough, even if he couldn’t keep himself from imagining the possibilities for his crafting with just a couple more clones in his hands.

Well tell them not to watch then. Jeez, I’m not some sideshow.

Can you blame me? If I get some more bodies to use then I might be able to read everything here in my lifetime, along with everything else I’m hoping to do. Of course, I probably couldn’t manage more books than this with my magic. I’m already at a bit of a loss so I’ll need to either raise my regen or my level if I want to go beyond this.

Well, I have too much to do to waste a year reading it all. The couple of days before I’m awakening people and when I’m not doing any dates with Thera though? I’ll at least get most of the third floor done. Just you watch, I’m going to murder whatever this test is.

Hmm? Brought up what?

For a split second, imperceptible to anyone without a thought speed skill, the fluttering of pages stopped as Ben took in what his god said, only to go back with a renewed level of determination as a manic grin stretched across his face. The only two people at the third tier he’d personally met had both been soul mages and talking to the elder one had been a huge help in creating his soul crystals, he wasn’t going to miss out on whatever this new one had to offer if he could get it.