Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Hearing the shop door open and signaling that morning came, Ben and all of his homunculi put down their work to turn and smile at Thera, getting a far colder reaction in return.

“Ben, I’m pretty sure you agreed you wouldn’t be putting such an insane level of strain on your soul again until after it was healed.”

“Ah, right, this. You don’t need to worry, I got it all fixed up. Not only was Falk able to do it, he was even able to make me a thing to lower the odds of it happening again,” He explained, showing off the enchantment on one of his bracelets and letting her relax.

“Okay, I guess that’s good then as long as you haven’t been using it as an excuse to push your soul even harder.”

“...”

“Of course you are,” She sighed before holding up a hand. “Okay, I’m not going to say anything. It’s your body and your soul, if you’re going to destroy both then that’s up to you.”

“I really, really do promise that I intend to be done doing this soon. If I keep up this pace, I think it will only be a little over a week until I’m done with this job and then I’ll probably never need to do this again. At least not on anything close to this scale. Plus I’ll be able to swing things to clear out not only my job list but so many others too. Yours, Sonya’s, Sachel’s, Amy, Jake, Will, Steph; really most of the people I care about who don’t have third-tier options. And even if I can’t completely clear out your lists, I’ll at least be able to put some good dents in them.”

“Ha, and as much as I appreciate you wanting to help me too, focus on the others whenever you manage it. I literally just took my last second-tier one, it would be a huge waste to get you to help me finish my easy ones. Hell, even working through master spirit mage has been going quick enough that it would be a waste to get your help in finishing it. I should be done in a few weeks tops.”

“Sure, but then you’ll be getting a few more,” He pointed out. “It’s probably a normal master job so you should be guaranteed at least one advanced branch but if I’m right, and I always am, that’s your fifth master job. When you finish it, you’ll be getting access to master of all.”

“...That can’t be right,” She muttered, pulling out her card to give it a glance over while Ben chuckled. “Most of them are mage jobs, you can’t really say I’ve mastered everything when I’ve mostly just been handling a few magic branches. And not even that many magic branches if we’re really looking at it.”

“Hey, I don’t completely disagree but that’s just how it looks based on the few records of it I’ve read in the library. One of the people I know got it in the past was even more magic-specialized than you since you at least have master adventurer taking up one of your spots. It’s actually kind of interesting, no matter how much I’ve read I’m still trying to understand some of the details of how the system actually produces jobs. They’re all in essence basically just hyper-specific blessings but it basically creates them when it sees a place where one makes sense to exist and keeps records of them all to constantly compare and contrast against the events and accomplishments within a person's life but so much of it comes down to a kind of abstract idea of what potential exists within a person's soul and-”

He could have rambled longer, with his interest in the topic he was studying making it easy. Questions only piled up during all of his reading and while he was getting answers the more he went through, he also knew the system was a thing designed to grow itself and in the thousands of years since it had been made it had developed plenty of time to do exactly that, meaning not even Nare could give a complete breakdown of its current structure which only made it entirely more curious as a whole, but Thera was saved from all of that by a knock on the shop door.

Not expecting it since the place had been closed fairly regularly, acting more as a workshop than a proper store given all of the work Falk had away from town thanks to his high level of skill, Ben at least went to check. If someone needed something simple then he wouldn’t mind whipping up an item for them quickly but what he got was a familiar figure in the form of his favourite guild receptionist, Onk.

“Ah, so glad you’re in Ben,” They greeted cheerfully. “I don’t suppose you could find Thera sometime today before evening to make time at the guild? Ceselee is looking for you both.”

“Uh, yeah, I’ve got her in here right now if she doesn’t need to run off immediately for her work. Thera, you got some time or want to go by later?”

“I’ll go now, I’ll just stay a bit later today to help out. But anyway, what’s up Onk?”

“Ah, I believe it would be best to ask Ceselee when you talk to her,” They said, suddenly subtly trying to avoid Ben’s eyes in a way that spoke volumes, even without reading their mind as he made a prediction, feeling all too confident that something he’d been able to avoid until then was rearing its ugly head.

“Welcome, come in and take a seat,” Ceselee told them when they got to her office, looking tired. “Have you both been well? Ben, I don’t think I’ve seen you since before the wave.”

“You haven’t but all things considered I’ve been fine.”

“You’ve been surviving,” Thera told him. “That’s different from fine.”

“Hey, any day I can walk away from my problems is a largely decent day. Anyway, you doing okay Ceselee? You look tired.”

“Ha, things have been busy so do me a favour and don’t make this conversation any harder than I’m already expecting. You’ve both got a rank one quest you’ll need to participate in coming up in a few days.”

I knew it.

After all of the time he’d now been a rank one adventurer, no matter how little he actually used that qualification, neither he nor Thera had ever actually had a quest looking for them to take advantage of that rank. It was something he’d largely wanted to avoid in the past, even fighting against any time his rank had been raised previously, leading to Ceselee’s current expectations about how that piece of news was going to go and leaving plenty of room for him to surprise her.

“Okay then, what is it?” He asked, not trying to fight against it for once and getting to see some intense gratitude in her eyes for that fact.

If he was being honest with himself, no matter what it was he didn’t actually have interest but anything it might be would be a potential test for himself. If his end goal was to kill a god then a simple step along the way could easily be taking on a rank one quest.

“In essence, it’s a matter of guarding and evaluating a group’s combat potential as you all go around to clear out some of the larger known swarms of demons that don’t currently have any militaries working on eliminating them. Ideally, you’ll be leaving it all to the ones you’re watching and trying to look at how they manage as a fighting force.”

“...Okay, I’m actually less interested now.”

“Ben, please, you were making things so easy.”

“I’ll still do it,” He sighed. “It’s just not the sort of quest I was hoping for.”

He’d been expecting to be the one doing the fighting, not watching and judging others, but he knew he couldn’t easily get out of it when it was viewed as something important enough to drag two of the world’s rank one adventurers to, and most importantly, he could tell Thera was excited despite herself. It was the exact sort of quest she’d been waiting for ever since they’d reached that rank and even if he didn’t think it was worthwhile, it was something she could look forward to and enjoy getting to say she'd done in a time when genuine good news was going to become harder and harder to come by.

“So, how long until we need to go for it and where should we be going?” Thera asked, driven by her curiosity on the matter while Ceselee answered.

“You’ll be meeting at one of the untamed land gates, I’ll mark out which one, at which point you’ll be meeting with the other parties acting as supervisors along with the combatants you’re to be observing. All of this will be in a week's time and should only be a couple days of work.”

“And why exactly are we acting as observers?” Ben asked her. “Surely we aren’t necessary.”

“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you for sure but at least part of it is going to be so you can protect them if things go wrong. I trust you both will be able to take care of things no matter how they might turn out.”

“Alright, I guess we’ll prepare the best we can and try to get this over with.”