Unlike his last time awakening people, that time only took him a day as he breezed through the crowd, helping Delair as he did.

Thanks to having two soul mages around to help lower her leveling difficulty, he was able to get her higher in both her enchanting and her plant magic as the hours wore on, aiding the process himself by merging just a single strand of his thoughts into her head to boost her thought speed by a bit while at the same time helping to replenish her mana as gently as he could, not overfilling her soul for any great purpose but instead just topping her up to let her work a bit longer without having to worry about her regeneration rates holding her back.

The fact that it had all paid off was what he felt best about by the end, with the girl positively glowing about her success, right until that meant it was time to go.

“Come on, Delair,” Her mother said, trying to pull her away and not having much luck as she hung onto Ben. “We really can’t keep bothering him.”

“We can bother him a little bit longer.”

That got a sigh from Fontesh while Ben laughed, instead putting out a different offer.

“Unless you guys have anything to do, how would you feel about staying with Sachel for a few days in Stonewall? I could train Delair for a bit and we have a space mage coming for me in about a week, we could get you home then?”

Given how far the dryad village was from their nearest gate, it wouldn’t actually be that much difference in time if they went with them first and would be a lot more entertaining overall compared to traveling by cart for days, but Fontesh still seemed unsure.

“Are you sure that would be okay? I’m sure you have things to be doing and we really shouldn’t be distracting you.”

“Mom, he wouldn’t offer if he wasn’t sure.”

“She’s right. My workload has actually decreased recently too so I have plenty of time to teach her a bit if you wouldn’t mind and I’m sure Sachel would love to see you.”

“Well… alright then, if you’re willing then I won’t turn you down.”

Delair cheered at that as Ben continued to reassure Fontesh it would be fine, all while getting Myriad’s attention in his head.

Myriad Myriad Myriad, tell your oracle that she and Ralia are going to be having guests for a few days.

<You really shouldn’t volunteer others to help you like that, you know that, right?>

They’re family and it’s the end of the world, they should absolutely use this last bit of time to see each other. If she’s unhappy about it then I’ll make it up to her later.

<Fine, but I’m making it abundantly clear that I’m just passing on a message about what you arranged.>

Yeah, that’s fair.

If Sachel was unhappy about it then he’d just deal with it later, but for the time being that was a future problem. With the time they had left, Ben dragged the two along for a dinner with his friends before making them each an amulet to take them both through the gate network and then mini-gate, arriving back in Stonewall.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

While letting the two enjoy the sights of a town very different from their own, they slowly made their way to drop them off with Sachel for the night, with the oracle seeming happy enough to get the chance to see some of her family again in the time they had left before the next wave until everyone turned in, letting Ben think about exactly how he wanted to do things as he laid down for the night.

Since the gods had reduced his workload by such a fair amount, combined with the increase in clones he had to take advantage of, Ben had plenty of time to focus on other things and he’d been using that time to indulge his skills in a number of ways while also trying to create as many legendary items as he could, but putting two of his bodies on the task of training Delair wasn’t going to be the biggest loss for his productivity. At worst it might slightly cut into his enchanting as he guided her more on that, but he was making good enough progress on his current job that it wasn’t going to be much of a hit. He was simply too good of an enchanter at that point for whatever small distraction helping her would be to cause him to lose out that much, especially since he’d still be able to enchant on his various bracelets without distracting her from her practice.

Which means I just need to think of a couple good exercises for smithing and alchemy for her, just to get her a taste of both. Let’s see, Falk had me making J-hooks when I first started so I’ll get her to do a couple at first but honestly that isn’t the most exciting, is it? Let’s see, why not have her make some woodworking tools that she’ll be able to keep practicing with when she’s back home along with some basic healing potions? Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

With that strategy fully in place, Ben went up to Myriad’s realm for the night, ready to spend the time he had bothering some gods.

“Hello everyone!” He greeted cheerfully. “Another job well done, aren’t I just the best?”

“Yes yes, good work as always,” Myriad told him. “Not exactly unexpected though. You did fine last time, why wouldn’t you do just as well after your skills had improved?”

“Maybe so, but I still deserve all of the appreciation in the world for my excellent work.”

“You have done well,” Helori said to keep him motivated. “We’ve never had this many awakened mages before, let alone with each of them having so much mana thanks to being able to plan their awakenings. With things going like this, we might be able to save more of our power for the third wave.”

“What? Boo, suffer with the rest of us.”

“We will be putting in plenty of work, don’t doubt that,” Nare sighed. “But planning out the portion spent is going to be important. Trust us, no matter what we do in this one, demons will slip past us so it’s far better to accept that some will get by to let us focus on containing the absolute monsters of the third wave.”

“Okay, how bad are we talking?”

“By our estimates, demons likely reach their sapient stage around the seventh or eighth level of their minor soul magic,” The god explained. “You won’t expect to see any with awakened skills in the mix-”

“Not trusting that since we definitely got a few in the first wave.”

“Alright, true enough I suppose but the point is that it would be an insignificant amount. For the third wave though, we’re expecting roughly one percent to be awakened with many many more being on the edge of it, though it’s a bit hard to be sure given that by that point, they’ll have had a couple years to enjoy the benefits of the system.”

“...Oh, so we’re like, screwed screwed. Okay, I had been considering making a will ever since the outsider incident but I guess I don’t really need to at this point, do I? I wonder if I could hypothetically get Vividus to remodel my body to function as a void species? I’m a bit more attached to being alive than being human, as long as the changes aren’t too massive then I can probably deal with them.”

“Can you please not be so defeatist about this?” Myriad sighed. “We’ll be doing our best. Everyone across the planet will be. Just have some faith.”

“Not going to lie, I’m feeling a little lacking buddy but I’ll at least hold off on trying to beg the great life spirit for that sort of help until it looks like they’re going to start fleeing the planet too. Unless we look particularly doomed after this coming one, then all bets are off.”

Ben had a good idea of how strong awakened skill holders were going to be and had no difficulty imagining how bad things would be against the tens or hundreds of thousands that would be flooding through the gate in the third wave to come. Against the paltry few thousand that he knew the world had, any optimism felt like insanity.

Oh well. He told himself, trying to force his fears for the future into the recesses of his thoughts. Just gotta focus on what I have going on now instead.