Chapter 1142

Knocking on the door to pick up Mora and Dewdrop, Ben and Thera could immediately hear the sound of running coming from behind it before it was thrown open and Delair jumped out, hugging him when she did.

“Ben, Thera, welcome back!”

“Good to be back, kiddo. You seem even more energetic than normal somehow.”

Energetic in a way that immediately made him suspicious, given their last conversation before he’d left, but he held back on the suspicion that she was buttering him up to try and get him to change his mind about awakening her, instead just smiling brightly and saw Mora follow behind in a much more subdued manner, carrying Dewdrop with him.

“Welcome back,” the boy yawned, the outsider with him seeming like it was just as tired for once instead of just being lazy. “Did you have a good trip?”

“A productive one,” Thera told him, giving the child a hug and taking the scrungle from him, rather than making him carry it. “Did you have trouble sleeping while we were away?”

“Delair had trouble sleeping, which meant we weren’t allowed to either.”

“Hey, we had fun, didn’t we?” Delair said in her defense. “And now that they’re back, there’s so much to talk about. Come on!”

She was already dragging them along, wanting to start the day with a level of energy that left Ben and Thera glancing at each other, wondering just where that was going.

If this is going to lead to me having to say I’m not going to awaken her again, then maybe this is something I should just rip the bandage off for now.

“Alright, kiddo, talk to me. What’s going on? Where’s all this enthusiasm coming from?”

“Hmm? I don’t know what you mean,” she evaded, trying to look innocent but completely failing.

“Nope, I can tell you want something, so out with it.”

“Mmh, you shouldn’t just read my mind all the time,” she grumbled.

“I didn’t and I didn’t have to. You’re making it obvious.”

“So you don’t know what I want?”

“No, but if it’s what we spoke about before we left, the answer is still no. I know you can awaken a skill by yourself, Delair. I want you to try your best at doing it, rather than relying on me.”

“Okay, that’s not it actually, so perfect!” she said, rebounding back to excitement and leaving Ben genuinely curious about what it could be if not that. “I’m going to do my absolute best to awaken something! I’ve been thinking long and hard about it since you’ve been gone too!”

“Alright, my bad for doubting you. That’s fantastic, and I have complete faith that you’ll manage to pull it off.”

“Of course I will,” she told him, puffing out her chest with pride. “And since I will, I need to get the most benefits I can out of it, right? You’re always saying I’m going to need to remember that when I’m making any sales or other deals in the future.”

“Correct,” Ben nodded, wondering where she was going with that. “And in that case, what benefits are you looking to get, buttering me up like this?”

“Well, since I’m absolutely going to get my awakening, that means I’m absolutely going to get my awakening bonuses. And since I’m going to get those bonuses, that means I should get the most from them I possibly can, which means…”

“You want me to modify your soul,” Ben finished, seeing her nod excitedly and left him to pinch the bridge of his nose as he thought about it.

“Is this really a no?” Delair asked, already disappointed until Ben answered.

“This isn’t a no. Actually, in your position, I’d want the same thing, and you are ultimately right. It would be a waste not to let you get even more from this and all of your future awakenings.”

“Then-”

“But,” Ben cut her off, hearing the raw excitement in her voice. “This also isn’t the sort of thing I can just casually agree to either. While I have complete faith in you, you’re still a child, and giving a child hundreds to thousands of points in all attributes is a big choice to make.”

“What’s that mean then? Are you going to do it or not?”

“It means we’re going to talk to your mom about it since she’s the one who’s going to have to deal with all the power you’re going to get,” he laughed. “But don’t worry, I am actually on your side about this, so I’ll try my best to convince her with you.”

“She wants to have her soul modified?” Fontesh asked, looking between Ben and her daughter after getting out of bed. “Is this why you’ve been so excited for them to come back?”

“I mean, I also just like my lessons,” Delair said innocently. “But please, Mom! Please please please! I promise I won’t let any power I get go to my head! I’ll be super responsible no matter how strong I get!”

“I don’t know if I actually believe that. Mora, if I agree to this, then when you’re with her, do you think you can keep her on her best behaviour?”

“You can count on me,” Mora nodded. “I’ll do my best to make sure she doesn’t break anything.”

Delair was left looking between her mother and her friend, contending with the sense of betrayal given it seemed her mom trusted Mora to be responsible more than her, against the fact that it seemed like her mother was going to give in, doing her best to keep that reaction to herself as Fontesh went on.

“This hurts for a while too, doesn’t it? Not that I and everyone else weren’t grateful for it, but Delair’s still a child…”

“Soul pain is definitely a concern,” Ben nodded. “And not one I can really do anything about. Having said that, Thera can definitely help with it, and we could get the worst of it over with by the end of the day. It’s obviously not ideal, and I don’t want to put her through that either, but Delair is right. You only get your first awakening bonuses once. The more she has to work with, the better the payoff, and the more she’ll be able to benefit from it years down the line into her adulthood. She wants to be a craftsman, and that’s great, but with the mana she’ll be getting from me alone, after her awakening, she’ll be an even more powerful plant mage too. We’re talking about a level of power that’ll make a significant difference with preserving your forests, even more so after her plant magic awakens in the future too.”

“And Ben was going to be modifying my soul today too,” Thera added. “I’ve got nothing to do today but make sure she and I will be as comfortable as possible. Even if it hurts for a bit, it shouldn’t be too bad, but if it is too much for her, I can just put her to sleep through the worst of it.”

“And if you’re concerned about her being almost as strong as you, I can modify your soul a second time too,” Ben went on. “While I can’t decrease the pain, there’s actually been a pretty significant development about how I do it as well, beyond just the fact that the attributes I can give you will have gone up by a bit. At the very least, it means you’ll have no issue handling her if she causes any trouble.”

“Why is everyone so sure I’m going to cause trouble if I get stronger?” she asked Mora, willing to hold back her offense, given that things seemed to be moving her way.

“You just give a sort of move first, think later feeling,” Mora shrugged. “Like you might make the biggest sword you can and then use your new strength to start swinging it around.”

She chose to look indignant at that assessment, rather than admit just how fun that sounded to her, while the adults around her went on, not concerning themselves about the talks of the children at their side.

“What other developments?” Fontesh asked, worried about just where such a thing might have gone when all he could already do felt so unbelievable.

“Affinities and resistances, I can now increase both by a significant amount as a onetime thing.”

A comment that immediately pulled both Fontesh’s and Delair’s eyes, Fontesh was more immediately aware of the significance of what that meant, while Delair simply found one more reason to be excited and to want to go through with it.

“No way, by how much?” His student asked, looking her mom’s way to make sure she was listening to a new, very good reason to let her go through with it.

“A thousand total points to split between your twenty options. I might be able to push it to a thousand and one if I really strain myself, but there’s two things to consider. First is that it replaces your current affinities or resistance, it doesn’t stack on top of them, and the second is that I’m not letting anyone raise their light or life resistance. Take it from me, being hard to heal sucks. In Thera’s and your mother’s case, I’ll go over things with them to decide what’s right for them, but in your case, I’d personally say that we should raise all of your affinities to ninety-nine, and then still have ten or eleven points left over that we could put towards your fire resistance for the time being.”

Since he’d never modified her soul before, giving her perfect affinities that time meant that if he ever got the chance to modify her soul a second time, he could give her perfect resistances then, while Thera and Fontesh both would need to consider things more carefully.

I really do need to continue my research on how long it takes to safely modify a soul a third time, he sighed to himself. It’s possible I’m currently there and just don’t know it. I’ll have to go gather a few hundred… maybe a thousand demons to store away and experiment with? That can be a tomorrow job, I guess.

“Alright, she can do it,” Fontesh gave in. “You’re right, I can’t let her miss an opportunity like that. And if you were being serious about it, then I’ll do it too.”

“Of course I’m serious, and great,” Ben smiled, while his student was busy swinging Mora and Dewdrop around in her own excitement. “Alright, in that case, let’s head out.”

“Hmm? Is it something we can’t just do here?”

“Technically, yes, but going somewhere else is going to be for Delair’s benefit. More than you or Thera, she’s going to need to get used to having higher attributes.”