The instant the connection formed, Myriad felt it and shot away with all of the power he held, throwing himself from his apostle as the boy hung there in the air before he righted himself, giving an awkward smile as he did.
“Well,” He said lightly. “That didn’t go quite as expected.”
“Ben?” Myriad asked, caution thick in his voice. “Are you okay?”
“Do I not seem okay?” He asked, perking an eyebrow to match his slanted grin, with the answer Myriad could see from the part of the boy that was in his realm being a hesitant no.
By all accounts, Ben was normal despite the notifications they’d both heard going off in his head, with no immediate change to be noticed for them but that was exactly what was wrong. Ben’s mind skills had just reached the third tier but his inner thoughts felt almost the same to the god. Almost.
Even if it still seemed to be the apostle he knew, what he was experiencing felt more akin to what one might expect from a deep-sea fish, the mind he was being allowed to witness more akin to a bead of bioluminescence to trick anything foolish enough in, unaware of the horrors behind it.
Because horrors there surely were. His mind couldn’t have not been changed by the experience, everything he was dictated so. Not only had his unnatural mind grown to impossible new heights but his reconstructed alien thought structure had merged into it, a skill that took the aspects of each alien mind it touched and it had just been imprinted by the structure of a god.
And worst of all was how Ben was handling it, like nothing had happened at all despite that change by its very nature having to have been so much bigger than what happened when he’d brought his mind skills to the second tier. He’d been practically broken by then, needing Myriad’s help and constant hours of work to get him in a state where he’d be able to once more manage his own existence and the fact that the same hadn’t happened for whatever change he was hiding seemed outrageous, with the answer falling to one of the different skills that had merged into it.
“How long did it take you to manage however you just changed?” The god asked, watching his apostle’s grin deepen.
“Less than a second.”
“You know what I mean Ben, how long did you perceive it to be?”
With unnatural thought speed merging into the skill as well and while at the ninth level at that, there was no doubt that its own growth had been equally as outrageous. When Ben looked at the world, just how long could that fraction of a second have been? How many weeks or months or years of time had he spent getting his mind in order, with his apostle giving an exaggerated sigh before shrugging.
“Okay, you got me but I really don’t know. Doing that drove me insane for a bit, it was pretty hard to get my mind back in order. At least a couple months of perceived time though.”
“A couple months…” The god trailed off. “Stop hiding it already and show me.”
“You sure? I don’t think it’s going to be good for you.”
“Because weaker minds can be strained when confronted with stronger ones.”
He was about to retort but stopped mid-word. He could see Ben was being serious, the lessons of that fact engraved in the boy’s psyche. One of the first things he’d ever tried to do with connect was link with Myriad, being stopped and warned of the devastating consequences of such a thing and one of the first applications of the skill he’d found for himself was to use his mind to kill any bugs that were bothering him, with experiences only growing as he did.
Since then, he’d used nothing but the power of his thoughts to kill any demons he encountered and he had been on the receiving end of the minds of the great spirits before he’d adapted to them and now he’d finally felt the mind of a god and had it to compare against his own. If Ben was saying that his mind had grown to the point that it might harm Myriad’s, he had the experience to back that up.
But the god wouldn’t be dissuaded. Harm didn’t mean death and his apostle had just taken two very big steps into godhood, he needed to understand what had happened and seeing his god wasn’t backing down, Ben obliged, revealing everything he was to the cube and watching that higher being flinch back for it.
Ben had always been talented with his mind and he’d had a good idea of its workings from the start. Each thought in his head were threads that twisted together to form powerful minds, the number of each growing with his skills to create mighty ropes of consciousness, things that might occasionally fray but not break under the forces they were exposed to but that explanation for his mental structure ended there. Given what he’d chosen to present after his new awakening, it was clear enough he still had the power to recreate such a mental structure if need be but Myriad was no longer feeling threads or strings or ropes, dividing the boy’s conscious into separate minds was no longer an apt description with all of it instead being replaced by a black hole. Pure thought condensed to a singular point that wanted to suck in everything around it.
“...What even happened here?” The god asked, more to himself than anything else but Ben gave an answer, seeming as unbothered as he had been from the start.
“A bit hard to fully explain, obviously my thinking power’s exploded and your mental structure’s been incorporated into my own but the biggest change is probably that there’s no longer any distinction between my conscious and subconscious minds.”
“That feels far from the biggest change here.”
“You’d be surprised.”
How cryptic that was wasn’t lost on the god but it wasn’t the point then when there was still such an important question he needed to ask.
“And you’re still you?”
“I’m being serious Ben, I don’t think I’m even capable of understanding some of the changes you’ve just gone through. Are you genuinely still you or is the mind you’re displaying being used as some sort of model to act like the person you were because with the scope of change I’m seeing, that feels far too possible.”
“...Both,” He admitted after a second. “I am me, I will always be me but I’m now thinking in ways I don’t think anyone without this skill is capable of,” He said, raising a hand to his side and bringing up the mystery spell he’d found in the archive that bore the touches of the same one that had brought him to that world. “Mana modifiers? I’d need to do some testing to see if I’m right but I can immediately understand this. It’s a terraforming spell by the way, with some inputs needed based on what form of life you want to evolve on what exactly you're terraforming but otherwise it’s basic. The summoning spell was still a lot harder but I understand it now too. I’m confident I can cut parts out to reduce the cost which only leaves trying to improve it.”
“You just know this now? After all of the days and weeks and months you’ve spent studying it?”
“Because of the days and weeks and months I’ve spent studying it,” He clarified. “All of that effort made this possible, the increase to my mind just wrapped it all up in a nice little bow. That doesn’t matter right now though. What does is this. I’ve changed but I am still Ben, I’m still your apostle with the same goals and desires and ambitions. Well, mostly the same ambitions considering that what I had been trying to awaken doing that was my connect and I hadn’t had the slightest idea that my sacrilege would grow too.”
“Pfff, well it was a dumb idea, all the more so for doing it to me of all gods.”
“Yeah, I see that now. Connecting to you seemed like the best at the time but as a being born from multiple gods and the totality of a species, I can only assume your mind is more alien than most which probably caused me a lot more harm than if I’d chosen someone else. Still, considering that you specifically are my god, defying your will and transgressing into your mind is likely the final push that got me to awaken my sacrilege. Honestly though, after how much effort I’d put into raising it the result feels almost anticlimactic.”
Myriad had stopped listening, his focus driven elsewhere with a single word his apostle had just said.
“Oh, empty skies, harm! Your body must be dying down there!” Myriad screamed as he went to look, with Ben waving his concerns off.
“You don’t need to worry about that. I’d asked Helori to distract you so you wouldn’t be suspicious but right now I’m attending a small party with Thera, Steph, Lux, and Yuzu. Hell, Jake’s there too so maybe he’s helping as well, hopefully all of the healing spells I’d shoved into his head aren’t going to waste. Either way, another change that seems to have come with this is that despite being up here it looks like I’m still somewhat aware of my body now. I’m in rough shape but I’m being healed.”
“Rough shape is putting it mildly! I can see you're absolutely coated in blood!”
“Hmm, I guess just placing a blanket on Thera’s lap wasn’t enough, they’re all going to be real mad when I go back down there. Either way, it doesn’t matter right now, we actually have a far bigger problem.”
“Oh, falling stars, what?”
“I wasn’t expecting to awaken my sacrilege doing that and the name is more than a little suspect. Combined with the fact that my awakening was going to be obvious to everyone in the room given how my body had to have taken in the mana around me and given the way Yuzu likes to be nosy about what’s going on in my soul-”
He was cut off in an instant as Myriad's realm was filled, gods on all sides of him screaming at each other and holding one another back as he finished his thought.
“-Any god watching her was going to find out what just happened.”