Chapter 735
With the information he’d wanted acquired, Ben took the others and began to move. The fact the demon had killed itself before they’d arrived meant the jig was up, the one controlling it was aware of their presence and would likely be doing what it could to catch them, they just needed time to arrive and with an awakened space mage on their side, he didn’t want to wait around to see how long that would take as he began pulling things from his rings to make what he could.
The first of which ended up using ten of his new guns. Able to endlessly fire off ammo, he hadn’t even had the chance to properly use them yet and he was already breaking them apart to harvest the voidstone within, wanting that material’s properties for the first idea he’d had for handling the time limit of the demon’s prophecy, even if it was going to depend on how well he could time things as he began enchanting on it, managing to get the magic placed down successfully after dividing his total volume into three which left him needing to pull out three more of his guns than he'd hoped to get the fourth.
That meant he only had seven left, the recent redundancy of his creation showing its worth as he shoved the materializers that had been being held within the guns back into his rings, even as a question sprung into his mind.
Each of them had souls built in to power them, shouldn’t he take that power for himself to use in a situation like that? The lives and safety of himself and Thera were at stake along with the rest of their group, things had clearly progressed to the point of a full-blown emergency. Wasn’t that the time?
…No, I need to be able to overcome this.
The entire point of not bringing the church of Myriad with him was to ensure he wouldn’t have endless power available to him to face his problems given the coming future where doing such a thing was going to be a place of vulnerability. He couldn’t just steal power to face any challenges before that when he was supposed to be doing his best to make sure he could make the most of his own strength, even if that fact left his stomach in knots.
He was essentially putting people’s lives at risk in the name of practice, with one life in particular he cared deeply about, but he was still looking to a future beyond that instead of giving everything he could at that moment. The fact he was able to compartmentalize to such an extent made him question how much of what his mind had become could still be called human but he pushed the thought away.
It didn’t matter because at the very least, with the strength he had, he knew he’d be able to save Thera. Really, the main issue was the risk he’d be under for trying to do it, not her when all of the power she held would be pointed at him and as for the others…
Well, I’ll do my best. If I can’t beat one demon without relying on overfilling my soul then that just means I’ve never had a shot to begin with and need to start devoting myself to a different plan.