“So to make a long story short, after I proposed to him and we all talked, this is how it turned out!” Yuzu told her friend happily, the only one among them all to not see the mental damage she was doing with what she had said. “I can’t believe I never told you before! Of course, with everything moving so fast I guess it just kind of happened.”

“I can’t believe it either,” Xilly spoke, her blank face and empty voice conveying her broken spirit as she was forced to listen to Yuzu’s account of how she’d ended up in the relationship she had, that not only was she the instigator of the proposal, but that Jake had technically been single when it had happened, the man being too dumb to notice Amy’s feelings till everyone around him made that fact clear afterwards.

God, catharsis really is the greatest feeling in the world, isn’t it?

“And now you’re learning from Ben! The world really is small, isn’t it?” Yuzu laughed. “This is really a great opportunity for you, you’re so lucky.”

The comment was met with the shocked looks of the three victims of Ben’s teaching practice, with Amy at the side looking like she was inclined to agree with them.

“It’s kind of hard to think that when he’s using someone as a footstool, Yuzu,” She said, eyeing Zallith as the man was bent over on the ground to support Ben’s legs, even if Ben went to defend himself.

“That’s a misconception. This only looks like a person, it’s a footstool through a through.”

“...Really?”

It wasn’t hard to imagine that Ben might have the skill to make a piece of furniture that looked so deeply like a man, but that very footstool speaking to its defense killed that brief bit of belief.

“I’m not, I’m a person,” Zallith tried to say, only stopping as Ben delivered a swift kick to his ribs with the force of his high strength behind it.

“Footstools don’t talk back,” He ordered, the tone he’d used with his friend gone from his voice as everyone else watched the cold display.

“...Well, aside from whatever this is, I swear you’re really lucky to have him teaching you,” Yuzu went on in Ben’s defense. “Aside from his teacher, he has to be the best enchanter on the planet right now so make sure you learn a lot, okay?”

“You heard about that, did you?”

“Pff, it was hard not to and given my own skill of course I was informed. He’ll be stopping by to learn some soul spells with me to help him get used to applying them.”

“Wait,” Nati spoke hesitantly, not wanting to be right but unable to escape the implication of those couple sentences. “If you’re telling the truth about him being the second best right now, wouldn’t that make his teacher-”

“The world’s newest god,” Ben finished for her. “Yeah, don’t go spreading it around. He likes his privacy and if word gets out then there’s a non-zero chance he’ll kill you guys. Well, maybe not you Nati, given your family connections and all, but definitely the other two.”

That reveal seemed to deal a greater blow to the three than anything else, making Nati and Zallith in particular go pale. Neither had been shy about acting smug for their faith to have gained a third-tier skill holder and had been fine directing that smugness at the very man’s student. Beyond being emotionally horrifying, it was simply embarrassing.

“Hey, Ben, buddy?” Jake whispered in his ear as his students were left to deal with the reveal. “My guy, is everything okay? You seem kind of… not thrilled with any of them.”

“Oh, they’ve just been terrible students during my entire first week here,” Ben laughed. “Rude, confrontational, and just genuinely unwilling to actually work with me at all, plus a little too willing to let me die. Let’s just say they didn’t go out of their way to make a good impression and now that I have Nare’s permission I no longer need to try and be the bigger man. Let me tell you, being petty feels great.”

“Wait, what was that about letting you die?”

“Don’t worry about that, what matters is that now I get to train them to be the best versions of themselves and they can’t say no so anything I do is justified since it’s all to make the world a slightly safer place.”Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“And using someone as a footstool contributes to that?” Amy asked again, still having her misgivings about what she was seeing.

“No, that bit’s just for my satisfaction.”

“I think you broke one of my ribs with that kick,” Zallith whimpered and was completely ignored as a reward, same as how he’d seen fit to ignore Ben’s bleeding.

If Yuzu had been looking at him, she might have gone to at least give him some mercy healing, but her eyes were entirely on Xilly, grabbing and pinching her cheeks.

“Xilly, you have to be nice to Ben while he’s here teaching you. I’m sure it’s going to be hard but you’ll get a lot out of it.”

“You don’t understand though, Yuzu,” Xilly said, trying to keep the conversation private by switching to her native language, not realizing that Ben had dug through her memories and in the process learned her tongue. “He’s actually insane. He turns hours into weeks and has the mind of a monster. In the last two days it’s been more like he’s been teaching us for months. If I keep this up for another four like we’re supposed to then I’m going to have a breakdown.”

“Lessons always feel long, don’t they?” Yuzu laughed, replying in her old language as well. “They did back in Asoth and they still do here.”

“That’s not what I mean-”

“Still, you need to be nice to him,” She said seriously. “He literally died protecting me once, I owe him things I could never pay back.”

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration,” Ben chimed in, displaying his previously unknown mastery of their language and getting shocked looks from not just Yuzu and Xilly, but everyone in the room. “It was just cutting it close a little bit.”

The two girls were left looking at him in a stunned silence, one of them eventually managing to break it as she looked away.

“Ben, how did you do that?”

“I’ve been connecting to Xilly for the past couple days,” He said innocently. “All I had to do was figure out the context for some of the things I was hearing in her head and from there it was easy. I’ve recently had to decode about a dozen alien languages and I know a dozen more dead ones from this reality after talking to some gods about the subject so it wasn't hard. Hell, I’m pretty sure I’m technically the world's foremost expert on language in general at this point.”

He was leaving out the fact that he’d dug through Xillly’s memories, not really feeling the need to make that clear and reveal an aspect of his skill that many wouldn’t like knowing he could do, even if the fact he’d learned to speak an entirely different language from one of their thoughts over the course of what they thought was a few days was already horrifying enough.

“I assume your new weird skill is somehow involved,” Yuzu muttered, having seen alien thought structure bound to his soul with every other skill he possessed. “But that doesn’t matter. Ben, I literally had to restart your heart multiple times and keep your soul bound to your body! I watched you bleed out of your pores! I’ve never even heard of anyone else going through that before! Just because you’re currently alive, doesn’t mean you didn’t die a little bit!”

“There’s no such thing as dying a little bit so don’t worry so much. I got a bit hurt looking out for you, you healed me. You don’t need to make such a big deal out of it. We’re friends and I’m sure you do plenty of healing for Jake and Amy too.”

Jake and Amy both chose to stay silent at that, not having the heart to tell him that their wounds in their training consisted largely of cuts and bruises, with only a broken arm once on Jake’s part when he’d acted slightly too carelessly during his lessons and only a couple more in the trials they’d done.

“Well, either way, I feel like I owe you so that’s what matters, but we’re not talking about that. Xilly, you have to be nice to Ben, okay?”

“...Okay.”

From the memories he’d seen, Ben knew she wouldn’t be able to go against the words of the young soul mage. While both called each other friends in worldspeak, Ben could tell that the word they’d use in their native tongue possessed a level of subtlety that the other language didn’t, leaving out plenty of the detail it implied.

Confidante may have been closer, but it was still wrong. On Yuzu’s world, the fact that she was supposed to be married to one of the more powerful gods of her planet was supposed to be a secret from all until after her wedding passed, with only a close few being made aware beforehand and Xilly had made that shortlist.

It was a relationship of trust, but while he didn’t think Yuzu could see it, it also managed to be one where she was clearly placed ahead of the other. He hadn’t expected it when he’d called them there, but if she was going to tell Xilly to be on her best behaviour, it didn’t matter how the other girl felt, she wasn’t able to keep herself from doing as she was told.

Well, all’s well that ends well, right folks?

With that, Xilly was going to be less of a problem for him and he could now focus even more on training them all without any snide comments about his race as a whole, meaning he could just coast by and enjoy the rest of the night.

“So since we’re here, why don’t we all get dinner?” Yuzu asked, looking excited at the prospect. “If you guys are almost done for the day it would be a great chance to sit down and catch up!”

“...Yeah, okay,” Xilly told her, agreeing not only for herself, but on behalf of Nati and Zallith too, leaving Ben to be looked at with hopeful eyes by the young soul mage.

And it looks like Xilly isn’t the only one getting sucked in by feelings of obligation.

“Thera should be done with her friends in another hourish,” Ben sighed. “If it's good with you, I’ll head off and we can meet up in a bit?”