Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

"Ben, are you sure this is a good idea," Thera whispered to him as they walked down the streets, heading to the gate. "It might be better if he stayed inside."

"He can't be there forever," Ben shrugged while Ogilt flinched away from any passing member of the public they walked by as they made their way through the city.

"I should be. I deserve worse," The spirit said, not bothering to pretend as though he couldn't hear them. "All of this, this entire planet is my fault, I can't just-"

"Rot away doing nothing, correct," Ben cut him off. "So what you'll do instead is help me work. I only need you to handle things for a week or so to let me get a feel for results and then if you want you can hide away again, but it really would be more useful for everyone if you came out to help."

"I'd only make things worse."

"You really won't but whatever, for now, come on and you can decide how you feel later."

Walking through to the network, Ben noticed the spirit perk up a bit, experiencing his first time in the strange space that linked gates as they went to one connected to a region of the untamed lands to finally get on to what he really wanted to do that day, speaking up as they got there.

"Alright, now to just find a sufficiently large group of demons to use."

The only ethical source of experimental materials he could access for the tests he wanted to run, the fact that they were incorporated fully into the system meant he'd be able to check their cards for any changes in their skills or attributes for what he was going to attempt by altering their souls.

He didn't expect the search to be quick but at the same time knew that the creatures had well and truly infested the planet after the last wave. So long as they spent the day on it and if Thera got the help of the spirits then they'd be sure to find plenty before it was too late, but before she could raise them in the air to begin their search, Oglit just nodded.

"Understood then. I will find you some."

Before either could say a word he vanished, his magic sending him off in his search and leaving the two alone, with Thera looking more than a bit relieved for it.

"Already don't like your new uncle?" He asked her. "Or is the issue you're not used to a family member being so incredibly handsome?"

The fact the spirit wore Ben's face made the joke easy, but Thera didn't bite.

"All I know about him is what my father mentioned growing up and now the fact that he caused all of this. I mean, I don't dislike him but Ben, everything that happened all stems back to the fact he wanted to explore. Are you really okay with him?"

He thought for a second at the question, really searched his soul over it. If the blame for everything that happened was laid at Ogilt's feet then he was responsible both for the end of countless worlds but also Ben's second chance at life. One didn't remotely excuse the other but when he thought about it like that, it made him realize that he couldn't feel justified connecting the spirit to either event or anything else that had sprung from it.

"I'm sorry, I understand why a lot of people and gods would feel like that but I just can't," He shrugged. "He didn't set out to do any harm, did he? He and the other space spirits are objectively the first victims of this all, just wanting to see the universe but having the crap luck of finding a powerful evil god along the way. And yeah, I get the fact that they were the reason things were able to get so bad when the base nature of demons really makes it seem like most of them wouldn't reach the levels of sapience needed to flood Oaun with faith to do something like this otherwise but I don't think I have it in me to hold anything against a guy who was a hostage for what? Thousands or tens of thousands of years at this point?"

"...Maybe, but locking himself inside since he's been freed doesn't exactly show an inclination to try and make up for it. I get what you're saying Ben but no matter how guiltless he might be, a lot of people would want to see him doing more if they knew he was here and that's only if they'd be willing to tolerate his existence on this planet at all."

"Maybe he's scared. He's still pretty pulled into himself and I mean, I'd get it. One bad choice had a hell of a domino effect, I wouldn't be so quick in wanting to make any more either. And like, if you don't want to be involved with him then I get it but as a person who saw a fraction of a fraction of what he must have, can you do me the favour of at least looking at him a bit more brightly than the great spirits you actively hate?"

"Mmh, well, that's not so hard," She admitted. "And I don't hate him, I just don't know him or have a reason to get close. No matter what he is to the rest of my family, he's a stranger to me. Still, I can at least be polite. Before I was stuck healing thousands of bodies a day I was even told my bedside manner was starting to improve."

"And now?"

"Now nobody gets manners when there's a hundred other people waiting," She said a bit more lightly. "Although the number's been going down each day. Enough that I've changed my mind, your mana bracelets are now the best thing you've ever made. Air conditioners are bumped to second."

"I feel compelled to point out I invented the braces that fundamentally changed how your race and many others get to interact with the world as a whole."

"Yeah, and that's nice and all, which is why it sits at a healthy third. Being cooled when there's a heatwave though? Just remembering it is making me already need to re-evaluate letting it sit down at second."

Her smile told him she was joking, a rarer sight with how much work they both had at all times now that he let himself enjoy before Ogilt returned, looking no different in his mood as he spoke.

"I found a group, I will lead you."

"Alright, what's the size?"

"One hundred and twenty-three."

"Okay, Thera, you ready?"

"I've got it."

"Great, in that case Ogilt, lead the way."

The spirit opened a hole in space, letting the two through to what waited beyond, with Thera casting as she walked, letting out her dark magic the instant she laid her eyes on them as they were busy fighting amongst themselves, freezing most of them in place on the spot with only a couple that seemed immune to her effect, with those ones instantly being impaled by spears of earth jutting up from the ground below.

"Awesome," Ben nodded as he looked around. "Then I guess it's my turn."

He walked through the crowd, having faith that Thera had them properly under her control as he reached out deep connection to read the skills of each one, materializing and firing off small bullets each time one had either earth or space magic and killing a few more if they had any skill that stood out as being a risk, ending with only one hundred and two left by the end.

<DESTRUCTION AFFINITY LEVEL INCREASED>

<AIM LEVEL INCREASED>

"Okay, a lot less than I was hoping for but even if we'd kept the whole group we would have needed over a thousand more to get most of my testing done so for now this works. Thera, I'm going to borrow your brain for just a bit, okay?"

"Let's just make this bit of your plan quick, okay?"

"It will be over in a jiffy."

Connecting to her and weaving his mind into hers, he in essence provided her a blueprint of what he needed her to make as dirt and stone were pulled out of the ground and minor acts of materialization took place while a building was constructed to act as a prison for those they'd caught.

<HIVE MIND LEVEL INCREASED>

Ignoring the new notification, Ben simply admired what they'd worked together to construct. It would in every way that mattered break essentially every ethical limit on how prisoners should be treated with its closet-like rooms that didn't even give the space to lay down but the second they'd had the misfortune to be caught by him they'd lost any chance to be anything other than test subjects. Scheduled for extermination the moment his experiments were done, he went over to the closest one and cut its flesh to smear some blood on one of the blank cards he'd received, letting him look at the various aspects of the creature beyond its skills he couldn't see.

Its attributes were all high but still below a thousand and while that one had decent affinities for life, death, and fire magic, its resistances were just as poor as anything he'd expect from an average citizen of the planet.

It was only once he'd looked it over and had it memorized that he did what he went out there for, looking at the beast's soul while trying to materialize on it and feeling himself fail in the end.

"Hmm, lame but not entirely unexpected," He muttered to himself. "Materializing one of my blank souls onto a living one instead of another blank soul was never guaranteed to work the same way. No experiment ever survives first contact with the real world I suppose but I figured out enough different configurations to have plenty to test until one properly clicks. Okay, let's give this a go."

He tried again and again, not getting one that worked until the sixth time but knowing he had a result as soon as he did for what he felt through the connection he was keeping up between them. A notification in their mind saying they'd acquired the levelless skill 'empty soul' and a sharp, non-physical pain that Ben knew all too well at that point that could only have been an unnatural strain on the demon's soul and he looked at the card to look for any additional changes.

"Hmm, no difference in skills but vitality and strength both rose by over a hundred? Interesting. Worse than I'd hoped but interesting."

Given that connecting a person to one of his blank souls through a beastform skill raised a person's attributes by five percent of his own, he'd been expecting he might get that much from any of them if he properly merged one of his souls into another and the two it got were at least close, even if those were the only ones. Still, it was a disappointing result, especially when one added in the fact that even getting ten percent to everything was still worse than what he'd really wanted to see.

The souls he made could hold fifty percent of his mana volume. Giving that to himself would be incredible alone, even if it meant risking damage to his soul in the process, but giving that to every mage on the planet would be world-shaking beyond anything else he'd done. If he could pull that off then it didn't matter how much the gods might want to resist, they'd have to come together to raise his mana as much as they could possibly do and give him whatever blessings he wanted on top of it. He'd literally be too valuable not to invest all they had in.

But without getting that in his first attempt, Ben had no choice but to carry out all of his testing as he turned to Ogilt, nodding at the one he'd just finished with.

"Move this guy to room one please and place his card on the front of his door. Now, on to the next."

With one done the first thing he did after giving it a card and checking its information was repeat all of his previous failed attempts. He knew they worked on his blank souls after all which implied it could work on normal ones if the conditions were right, but once those failed he repeated his last test to see if the results would be consistent, finding them to be largely the same with a variance of only one point in vitality he chalked up to the demon's original values being close enough to raising a point to make that difference.

From there his routine began, giving a card and checking information before repeating previously failed attempts and then moving on to new ones until he found one that worked, moving on once two demons had the same modification for him to record the effect of.

It was part way through that he sent Ogilt off to look for more groups and once found got Thera to deal with them, enslaving what she could and killing what she couldn't before they were brought over to be looked at for anything that might imply a risk of escape while the number of test subjects only grew.

By the end, of over a hundred potential modifications that he knew would work on his created souls, only sixteen worked on living ones, all gaining skills named things along the lines of empty, blank, modified, and altered soul, with some of the different modifications yielding the same name despite both differing configurations and final effects.

It was an interesting result and something to look further into in the future but the most important result was that three of the arrangements yielded the five percent increase to all attributes he'd hoped, even if they were all missing the incredible boost to mana he'd been wanting to see as the first stage of experimentation ended.

But he wasn't done from there. That was just the base modification after all, he needed to test to see the effect of stacking modifications on living beings to see whatever long-term effects it would hold, creating the need for so many demons to test on.

After all, he hadn't given up on a few of the failed configurations he'd come up with still and with so many more bodies to go there was no reason to stop until the last one, so failed tests went on again and again until it was time to try and stack different configurations of souls, feeling the reactions of each one.

There wasn't a single case where the level of pain they were under didn't explode, the creatures unable to voice it out of the command Thera had over them, but that yielded results of its own, with some getting better increases in attributes while some got worse and others were even able to stack previously failed soul configurations in a way that their base soul hadn't manage.

Still, he memorized the results each time, keeping track of what worked and what didn't as he finished up until all possible configurations of two added souls were done, letting him move on to testing arrangements of three and feeling an interesting result from the first that worked, with his test subject's mind collapsing in on itself out of the agony its soul was under.

Hmm, interesting. Ben thought analytically, feeling nothing about the result other than curiosity. Part of what I'm testing by holding them is going to be seeing how long any pain lasts too. I was planning on just disposing of them once results are in but since I'll have Ogilt watching them to make sure none escape, there's really no rush on enjoying my test subjects as long as possible. In that case, if and when the pain fades for the first ones I'll have to see if adding one more is going to be just as bad for them as it was by doing it on the same day. Okay, lots of things to look at here for a while to come.

<EVIL AFFINITY LEVEL INCREASED>

<ILL INTENT LEVEL INCREASED>

…Okay, I kind of take umbrage with that second one at least. There is literally no negative feeling behind this. I'm as unfeeling and analytical about my potential results and test subjects as can be. World killer's bonuses have just really shone through in full force today I guess.

Oh well, we've got two thousand rooms and plenty of hours left in the day. Whatever the system might want to say about it, let's fill them up.

Just because a few minds collapsed didn't mean he could stop working after all. He could still feel the pain they were under when he connected to them and he could still check results through their cards, meaning no matter what happened, he'd get data he could work off of.