Flying through the air under his own power, Ben rushed himself down dirt roads and past the eyes of curious succubi along the way, micromanaging his journey as he went.
Even though he could, he’d only used his magic to let himself fly a few times and the experience of it still felt strange, less like something he was doing than it felt like something being done to him, even if it still managed to be exhilarating in its own way, with the only drawback being just how many looks it would get him as he went.
Attention he didn’t usually want, it was enough to keep him from doing anything like that at home or any other town he’d pass through but compared to the speeds his legs could take him at, when it came to longer journeys, it was clear that that was the way to go and with the strength of his total mana pool and power of his magic, he didn’t need to stop until he reached his destination, returning to the fields where the souls of the forbidden gods were being put to use, in need of a replacement.
It wasn’t like there wasn’t more he could have gotten out of Haro, so long as he kept building the god’s mind back up again after he’d gotten all he could, he’d be able to keep extracting more experience to be used but that didn’t change the fact that it was clearly of a worse quality after enough time passed. No matter how Ben would reset them, the psychic wounds he would leave on their souls seemed to leave traces he couldn’t remove, eventual resets no longer allowing those imprisoned gods to maintain their haughty attitudes when seeing him for what they would believe was the first time since he’d slain them, leaving an instinctual terror that he currently couldn’t undo and worsened the experience gain he could get from breaking them.
Which means if I use them for too too long, there’s a chance that eventually I’ll no longer be able to reset them to a productive state. As it is, from what I’ve seen, I think that any god I use would still be able to give me experience even if I just used one until the next wave but it’s better not to risk it and that could easily change if I level my mind again. Create a few more mind gods to imprint on my thoughts and I might get close.
… God, if I level eldritch mind before awakening connect I’m going to cry.
With that cheery thought in his head though he arrived, wondering briefly if he was going to get a repeat of the last time he’d gone but finding it wasn’t to be. No dryad working those fields would accidentally mistake him for Bloom when Bloom was already there, having three different women than the ones Ben had met the last time at the great spirit’s side, with their attention entirely focused on each other.
None of them noticing him, Ben briefly considered getting close enough to get into the spirit’s head to see if anyone had actually bothered having that conversation about mortal affection with him or not but ultimately decided that as things stood, he didn’t want to know. He could see clear interest in the dryads’ eyes and actions, and with the way they were touching the spirit, it at the very least seemed that they hadn’t been given any sign to stop.
And if I find out something’s going on then I’m going to have to tell Thera, and she sure doesn’t want to know. Hmm, interesting thought though. I know the dryad’s talked Bloom into making a body from one of their trees for, well, let’s not call them nefarious reasons but considering that based on Abrus, they should be able to produce offspring no matter what sort of plant he chooses to inhabit, it does make me wonder if that might result in a line of dryads that could reproduce with plants that didn’t originate from their homeworld and… Yeah, Thera’s right, I need to stop being a researcher about this.
With all of the dryad’s busy and Ben already having the location he needed from the last time he visited, he instead just walked into the rows of trees where groups of succubi and incubi were at work harvesting the fruits they produced to make the world’s strengthening potions, selecting his next victim.
A god of passion and ice, Nance stood there, filling the role forced upon him ever since his betrayal of the world had been discovered, not knowing just how better off he was for it than he was about to be soon as Ben took out the divine crystal at the tree’s base and replaced it with Haro’s, taking the new one in his hand to connect to the god it held.
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Unlike the other two he’d seen, when Ben pulled Nance into his mindspace, the god’s first reaction was to prostrate, at least to the extent its form allowed. While the shape any deity took could be strange, the one before him had a form of dense snowflakes blowing in a wind, a few loose leaves mixed in no doubt from how being trapped in a plant was reshaping him, with the movement of them arranging themselves to somewhat match Ben’s shape in an attempt to make the display look more convincing.
“I’m sorry,” Nance told him before Ben could so much as utter a word. “I was wrong, everything I’ve done… I deserve this.”
A statement Ben watched the other give with interest. Not because he believed it, he was already within the other god’s mind and could tell he didn’t mean a word of it, hoping to instead get the jump on Ben, either to attack him or to trick him into giving the god back his freedom. No, what caught his interest so thoroughly was that, while looking over that deity's memories for anything worthwhile, even as he only just began it became clear that the one he was standing before was an evil god.
A designation that would fit any of the forbidden gods really for what they’d done, abandoning their old worlds to save themselves before arriving there to create and mistreat the demidemons in an attempt to strengthen themselves, ultimately bringing that and every other world closer to its doom for what that had lead to, yet those were all events from after their worlds had been invaded. Of the two Ben had already looked at, he would call neither of them good gods, in fact, he found the memories of both to be rather terrible, yet by the standards of the collective gods of that world they wouldn’t have been viewed as outright evil. Nance, though, was different.
From hatching plots to divide the other four gods his homeworld had been born with, forcing them to war and kill one another while their mortals did the same before ultimately striking the final blow on the survivor of that fight, to freezing his planet to match his ideals with little care for how that affected the things and people living there, that deity was nothing if not selfish and conniving. Even then, Nance thought that he could try to repent, act like he deserved his punishment until an opportunity came or else until Ben himself showed a moment of compassion, not knowing that he’d get neither.
Which just leaves the question of how to deal with him, he thought to himself. Obviously, eventually I’m going to have to start breaking him down, but what I’m seeing… yeah, he makes me sick. Let’s have some fun with him first.
“Maybe you do,” Ben told him, trying to sound earnest and regretful. “But that doesn’t matter anymore; none of it does.”
“What do you mean?” the god asked, unprepared for a reaction like that and still trying to keep up his appearance of shame.
“You’ll know soon enough. What matters is that I’m here now to offer you your freedom, Nance, if you can answer a question that is.”
“What? Um, what question?”
The offer was already far outside of what the god had been prepared for, having never expected that an opportunity would come so early and felt like he was seeing a way out he never could have hoped for, with the chance to escape that damned world once he got it. All he needed to do was answer whatever question the stupid mortal had, unprepared for the power Ben held.
Ben let the construct of himself he’d created melt away into nothing, replacing it with four new ones that looked nothing like him yet were intimately familiar to the watching god, the evil deity flinching back in genuine horror that had nothing to do with any attempted deception as before him stood impossible ghosts from his past. His four fellow gods he’d driven to kill each other.
“No,” he whispered, the shape he’d contorted himself into to try and appease Ben slipping away to a chaotic storm instead. “No, you can’t be here.”
“Why did you trick us!” Ben screeched in one’s voice, speaking for the others too.
“Why did you betray us!”
“You took our world for yourself and this is what you let happen to it!”
“You thought you would get away with all of this!”
“No, no, you’re wrong!” Nance yelled. “I don’t know what you think happened, but-”
He didn’t get to say more. Still disguised as the four gods Nance had killed before the founding of that world, each Ben descended on him, delivering the torment he needed to for the experience he desired.
Out in the real world, still surrounded by trees, Ben’s true body gave a satisfied nod. A fresh god meant fresh experience, and with each one he used, he grew better at obtaining it. He was sure that he’d be able to make his current one last for a while before he’d need to change it out for the next model.
