“Oh, no freaking way,” Ben said as he ran over, examining the small shrub for all it was worth. “Since the seed was materialized as is this has to technically be a homunculus! Oh man, I didn’t even think of this! Fontesh, you are brilliant, you know that? This is going to work so well! It might even work exceptionally well! If there isn’t already a soul in it, I wonder how it's going to react with a god shoved into it? I mean, there’s technically also a demon’s soul in the crystal too but that’s still only two souls compared to the three there would have been if this was a normal plant. Man, I’m instantly wanting to see how this is going to turn out.”

The idea meant that traveling there at all had been pointless since he could have just materialized the seeds himself back home but he didn’t care. He hadn’t had the idea, getting it was a boon that showed the continued value of having others no matter how his mind would grow. No matter how much he could think, there would always be someone to point out something he missed or think something he didn’t.

He felt himself grinning as he imagined the potential, eager to see what would come from his experiments but held off on running away long enough to say his goodbyes, as well as ask a question he couldn’t leave without voicing.

“So, are you guys actually going to be okay out here? Things are getting dangerous. It’s none of my business but shouldn’t you guys move to a bigger town or city where you have strength in numbers?”

“Well, be fine,” Hentath told him. “We look after ourselves, and well, thanks to a certain someone a few of us have more than enough strength to look out for ourselves.”

“Okay, suit yourself. If you ever have an emergency you can't handle then I guess do your best to get Jagal’s attention and if she passes it on to me, well, I’ll do whatever I can. Oh, and I guess I should hand these off to you too, compliments of the church of Myriad.”

Pulling out enough of his mana bracelets for every dryad in the village and making a box to hold them, he handed them over to Hentath who looked at them curiously as Ben gave a brief explanation, telling her both their function along with the fact that they should only be used in emergencies if they could help it to keep the effects from hurting their growth rates.

By the end, the explanation left her too stunned to properly respond but the gift at least earned him a small smile from the older woman as she walked off, leaving them only with Delair and Fontesh, the first none too happy to see him leave so soon.

“But you just got here.”

“Sorry kiddo but things are crazy busy and only going to get worse. I’ll try to visit again when I can, so be safe until then and keep working hard, okay?”

“Alright.”

“Good.”

He ruffled her hair one last time before they left. With everything he had to do, it was sure to be a long night meaning they couldn’t spare too much more time as they traveled back to Stonewall to see if any of his ideas would bear fruit.

Getting back home, Ben didn’t let Sachel get any peace despite her return after being away for so long. After all, he had all of the seeds he’d need but that still left growing them.

The rest of her party went off after realizing how late Ben intended to keep her and Thera went home to sleep in her bed for the first time in weeks, leaving the two alone to work through the night as Ben dragged her to the town’s training grounds to grow all he needed to without destroying Sonya’s yard.

“So, how much of everything do you need me to help grow?”

“As much as possible for you. I need you to grow everything to a size that I’d be able to fit a ring around them snuggly.”

She pulled a face as he said that. “Some of these are grasses, Ben.”

“Then you’ve got your work cut out for you. Even if it’s just the roots it’s fine, I just need something and I know your magic can push plants beyond their normal limits, just think of it as practice.”

“Mmh, okay, I’ll go as quick as I can but this is still a lot, it’s going to take hours and I’m going to need breaks for my mana in between.”

“No, you won’t,” He told her, pushing a couple points into her soul to enforce the point.

“...Right, forgot about that. Okay, let’s get started then.”

She took his first seed and planted it in the ground, running her mana through it and making it sprout and grow, ending with its typical form of a yellow, lily-like flower in only a few seconds while looking at him expectantly.

“Looks good but I’m going to be honest, it’s not just the grasses I want you pushing yourself with.”

“Yeah, I was able to pick that up. Give me just a few more moments then.”If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Promoting its growth even more, what had been a single, solitary flower developed further into something more akin to a bush, exactly what Ben had been hoping for by the time she stopped as he took off one of his bracelets and reshaped it, both to fit around the thick stem as well as hold the crystal in his pocket, with the change he’d come to expect taking place.

It immediately had an effect, both adding a subtle, scaled look to it all while at the same time making the entire plant swell slightly more, an expected result given how he’d already seen it change from previous experience but still satisfying to see it work as he harvested it, pulling a knife to cut just above the ring before slipping out the crystal, with the changes the skill had forced on the plant holding true after being cut off, letting him slip it into one of his rings before nodding to Sachel, letting her move onto the next one from there to repeat the process again and again as the hours passed by, late into the night as they moved from one plant to the next.

It wasn’t until a few hours from sunrise that they were almost finished, leaving only one final one to do with Ben bringing the seed for it into being himself, spending his mana to get the chance to see how it would turn out.

He couldn’t deny his curiosity on the matter, seeing how shoving a soul into a thing without one would affect it couldn’t help but fill him with wonder and excitement but in the end, it was far less interesting than he’d hoped. The effect seemed more powerful than it otherwise would have been but there was no additional change, the deity having no extra control over it despite the lack of competition within, still confined by the limitations of the body that held it.

It did leave him to wonder what it was thinking trapped within the crystal after all of that. Ben wasn’t going to risk connecting to a god no matter what circumstances it found itself in but on that day it had gone from being forced to inhabit a fruit tree for nearly two years to going from plant to plant across only a few hours.

Was it able to understand what was going on? Was it disorienting? Could it feel each bite of the knife as Ben harvested its temporary flesh? The answer didn’t matter to him beyond mere curiosity, he hadn’t started to sympathize with the god after all it had done but the fact those were questions he wouldn’t be getting answers to couldn’t help but annoy him just a little. Questions he couldn’t answer were always going to do that to him.

Doesn’t matter. Myriad Myriad Myriad, pay attention to me.

<What is it?>

I need a favour.

<You always do.>

Yeah, I’m cute like that. Anyway, could you ask Anailia if she could get me a few hundred volunteers for this evening from the succubi? Or maybe a thousand? I want to test the effects of my various potion attempts.

<Well, I can ask at least but is there any reason it has to be her? Why not just go through town?>

I may not have worried about it last time but when I’m actively attempting to see any variance across my recipes I need consistency from the species too. The last thing I want to find out is that one of my options just happens to be slightly more or less powerful for some species than others and have my results screwed up. Honestly, it would be better if we could keep them all the same gender and roughly the same age, weight, and body type too but I’ll settle for what I can get since it absolutely needs to be people who’d be willing to share their attributes with me too so I can compare results. It will be good enough.

<Okay, I can do that so go work on your potions and release my poor oracle already, she’s exhausted.>

Oh, my bad.

“Thanks for your help Sachel, you’re good to go. Want me walking you back home?”

“Mmh, it’s fine, I can handle myself, just let me know how this turns out.”

“Don’t worry, if it all works out then you’re getting a supply too so wait and enjoy. Oh, and take this.”

He tossed her one of the bracelets he’d already given out to her village and walked off before she could say anything. She’d already heard what they did and she was a mage, getting it would only help her in an emergency.

So parting from there, Ben rushed to the shop without worrying about getting any rest first. He had energy for days and was going to put it to full use if he wanted to have his results the following morning and began by slipping on his jacket before going through to the further gate that held both his larger workshop and all of his clones in Anailia and materializing a range of containers for how to sort all of his new ingredients into.

There were a few different ways they’d need to be prepared. Some would be steeped in water until they released their compounds and others that would be boiled until the plant itself broke down into a fine paste, along with those he’d need to dry and grind into a powder and still others with even more complex preparations to get to the state he needed them in for his experiments, with the room turning into a flurry of movement and magic with his bodies rushing all over the place and his power being spent, extracting and breaking down what he could while at the same acting as extra arms by moving things around under his power and materializing even more on top of it, creating bottles to hold each of the concoctions by the time he finished each one with hundreds of different recipes to his name by the end, every one of them having potential to go beyond the previous limits in his quest for greater power.

<DESTRUCTION INCLINATION LEVEL INCREASED>

<DESTRUCTION INCLINATION LEVEL INCREASED>

<SOUL SOURCE LEVEL INCREASED>

“Yeah, I’ll take that. And Myriad, what’s the word?”

<Look outside for yourself.>

Peeking through one of the doors at the front of his warehouse, he could already see a crowd forming after that day of alchemy, all coming after their goddess had requested as much of them and giving Ben the exact sort of turnout he’d been hoping for.

“Tell Anailia I say thanks.”

<I will, and since you still have some time for others to come in I suggest you grab Thera as well. You’re working with a lot of people today and having them consume plenty they typically wouldn’t. I’m sure we’d all rather have a healer on hand to ensure there’s no unfortunate allergies discovered among them.>

“Good point, will do, but first…”

Materializing ten small books, with each section having a space for names, attributes, and the specific potion each one would drink, he was all prepared for the long day of testing to get started. Even if he could remember all of the results himself it was still good to have a record of it and things would speed up considerably by using a few of his homunculi to distribute them once he got started so all with that ready he went back to Stonewall to grab Thera as a safety measure, all to see if any of his efforts would pay off.