He wasn’t feeling a touch of exhaustion when morning came, his practice and study had captured his imagination enough that the night had basically passed in the blink of an eye, but with the rising sun came his regular tasks as he put his work down and moved on to preparing breakfast before heading out for the day, off to fill his quotas for the war effort.

He got to the shop as usual and freed the homunculi from their cases, reaching out with deep connection to fill them with his soul to use their hands and get to work as the last day’s shipment of metals were heated and hammered, four swords of varying sizes all being made at once until one by one they were handed off to his main body to enchant, letting him eagerly put what he’d learned to work.

Every item he’d been making and shipping off had been getting to high rare for the simple fact that that it would already be leagues above what any army had already supplied their soldiers with and it was something he could make in almost no time compared to the little extra it would take to get any rank of ultra-rare, but with that small change that came with the way he was enchanting, it had made a huge leap.

Lower ultra-rare, every single item he’d enchanted that day had reached that quality while being produced at a speed as fast as he’d been making rare items only the day before.

He understood why. The items he’d already made were plenty good and since he’d had the choice between making the enchantments simpler to save mana or increase their power, he’d chosen the latter. He was already making them in a way that should have been easy for any non-mage to handle and combined with the enhanced death effect on them, there was a good chance they’d be helping to save a lot more lives in the long run.

God, I am the best. Myriad, if you’re listening then I deserve a raise.

<You’re already being paid plenty.> His god chimed in, sounding absentminded before focusing on his apostle and seeing what he’d accomplished. <Why would you possibly- Wait, how the hell did you do that?>

Ha, you know how I was going to spend the night in the archive? It paid off and I learned a new little trick.

<That’s not some little trick! That’s… Hold on a minute, I need to get Nare.>

His god couldn’t deny his shock and needed a proper crafting god to confirm if what he was seeing was as big of a deal as he expected, with Nare making it obvious it was as soon as he arrived.

<How?> The other god practically demanded after seeing what Ben had pulled off, getting the same explanation Myriad had and still sounding surprised by the end. <Even without knowing how the ring system worked at the time, we were always a little surprised by the modification added to it since we weren’t sure how it was created, but to think it was the accidental discovery of a mortal…>

“Wait, what did you just call it?”

<What?>

“Never mind, shut up, I need to think here.”

Both gods wanted to comment on the rude attitude, only stopping when they saw how serious he was being about whatever was on his mind. It wasn’t just his real body, every single one of the homunculi had also frozen in their work with the whole of Ben’s thoughts on a single idea.

This is a modifier of sorts. One built entirely on empowering enchantments. One that doesn’t appear at all in the summoning spell. Holy shit.

“Guys, I need you to grab Helori too, I’m coming up to talk. Myriad, do me a favour and bring up the summoning spell.”

Three gods stood around him while he wandered through the illusion of the massive spell, talking the entire time as he was.

“This whole time I’d been working on figuring out how to use this thing, the goal had been to figure out what sections could be cut away if the grey could properly open a hole in their reality for us, along with any other parts we don’t actually need,” Ben said, eyeing the whole spell with a level of excitement he could barely contain. “And yeah, that’s a hard enough goal already but me and my team have been making progress. Enough progress that with this discovery it might be possible to dream a little bigger. What if we can improve this?”

“A bit too optimistic,” Helori pointed out. “You don’t even know how it works yet and you’re already dreaming of going past it when there’s already a big, obvious issue. As impressive as the enchanting modifier you found is, it doesn’t look like the sort of thing that will work on proper spells, only the bound ones you use.”

“Ah, come now Helori, your smart, wonderful, brilliant student can at least see that much, which leads into what I wanted to talk about. What do you all think the chances are that at least parts of this spell could be turned into an enchantment? Something we could place in physical space that could carry some of the burden of the spell while different sections would be carried out in a more normal way? If we can do that then we can shrink the mana cost even more, maybe even enough that a ton or two of rainbow mana crystal could provide some of the power we’d be needing!”

“It’s not… impossible,” Nare spoke cautiously. “The matter comes down to what areas could take on that modifier while still acting the same when in the form of an enchantment as it would for a spell. Presumably there are some, but there are other parts that surely have no choice but to be cast regularly and determining what’s what would be no easy task.”

“Not easy doesn’t mean impossible which means this has to be something to work towards. Even with the modifications already suggested, you guys don’t sound like you’d be able to bring everyone over here which means we needed to improve it somehow anyway. This just happens to be the first hint of hope.”

“It’s at least worth your time,” Helori admitted. “But you still need to test if it will work when you’re still in the middle of other research. How is your study on the modifiers going?”

“Faster than I’d hoped and slower than I’d like,” He admitted. “I think we’ve got every modifier within the summoning spell discovered and catalogued and we’re almost done comparing the effects when two or more modifiers are combined on different spells.”

“Which means you have years of testing left,” She shot back. “The modifiers were a good discovery, but how many of them build on top of one another in the full spell? You might end up having to test millions of variations.”

“Or I might be able to see the rules they work on when we start cataloguing effects after three or four modifiers deep. We don’t know. Still, it’s better to have some plans for the future and I kind of have to plan for the best, otherwise I’m going to give up on the idea of surviving at all and spend my next year or two of life indulging in a disgusting amount of gluttony while living off my savings.”

“Please, you’ll stop working when you’re dead,” Myriad said with a sigh, the prospect of letting his apostle enjoy what little life he might have left not exactly a bad one.

“Okay, well that’s neither here nor there so come on and do some planning with me. I’m open to ideas, theories, and suggestions of all kinds.”

Ending up just a bit swept away by his enthusiasm, the gods gave in, with Nare in particular sounding unusually motivated as the hours wore on.

“-So that’s where we’re at,” Ben told Quilith during their monthly meeting, taking place in his old room so as to not keep anyone up. “I personally think it has a good chance but the gods feel it’s less so. Still, that’s what we’re currently looking at. How are things at your end?”

“Preliminary experiments for tearing a hole in our universe have begun, though it’s being done with the utmost caution so don’t expect anything fast.”

“It’s fine, I get that’s the sort of thing you gotta be a little cautious about given what you’ve told me in the past. On that note, I’m assuming you guys have had at least a couple eyes on my work and what my employees have been doing, is there an easier way I can arrange it for however you’re recording it?”

“...Why?”

Ben shrugged. “One, because maybe you guys will be able to see something I’m missing since your world is presumably pretty invested in how this turns out, and a more likely two, I’m assuming if we lose and all die here you might go find an agreeable looking planet in some distant galaxy that isn’t in the middle of being conquered and see if anyone would be willing to help out.”

“...The way you’re currently doing things is enough, though if you could flip through the write-up of your most recent discovery after you make it, that would be appreciated since we still don’t have a way to watch or record mana.”

Quilith wasn’t going to deny what Ben was saying, especially when it seemed the other didn’t particularly care. While there were only a few on the task beyond some automated programs researching that universe, it was obvious enough that they might try such a thing if the current war was lost. The grey were at least a little invested in that world, both for the fact that members of their race were surviving on it and that after observing and talking with the people who lived there long enough a good impression had been made beyond any feelings of empathy, but they had to be practical. That was the only reality they knew of that could reach out to interact with others, should things fail then they had to keep going.

“Will do, since it’s a bit complicated I'll do my best for the explanation, but it’s still going to be challenging for anyone.”

“That's fine, we can’t exactly complain about the difficulty of showing examples across universes. But on that similar note, did you have any topic in mind for what you wanted to focus on today?”

“Any rules for robotics that you think might apply for this universe would be handy, but before that, I’ve got a question.”

“Yes?”

“You obviously don’t just know everything I could ever ask. Should I take it you’re reading off a monitor or something?”

“Nothing so primitive. My implant brings up the information I need and I convey it to you, that’s all.”

“Okay, very sci-fi of you. In that case, since you being here is all an illusion anyway, I was wondering if it would be possible to change things up a bit. Is there any way you could just create a wall of text for me and have it flash through everything you guys have gathered about the universe so far?”

“Sick of me teaching you already?” The alien asked, giving an amused impression. “It should be possible, give it a few minutes. Of course, if you’re asking for everything, it will be a while. That does cover what we’ve learned of those other worlds we’re watching along with a mountain of information with no immediately obvious value. Even with your current speed, it might take ten or so lessons to finish it all and we’re constantly learning more so expect that number to grow.”

“Hey, I plan on being alive in another ten-plus months so it’s no problem. Also, you’re not getting out of this. I need someone to ask questions for clarification and you’re good for bouncing ideas off of. I’m looking to keep this up till your butt is on world.”

“Ha, then I suppose we should get started.”

It was only a few seconds later that a rapidly flickering wall of text appeared to his side while he and Quilith spoke, and it was like that, another night passed.

<KNOWLEDGE LEVEL INCREASED>