Once all of those notifications finished, Ben sat in silence for a moment, taking them all in and muttering the first thought that passed through his head once it was all done.

“Isn’t lesser inspiration supposed to just awaken to inspiration?”

Compared to everything else it was completely inconsequential, even if it felt like a taunt at that point as his mind skills kept up their naming scheme with each awakening but he pushed that to the side. It was nothing compared to everything else he’d just gone through and he took a moment to think it over while waiting for his mana to return.

The levels to his crafting and material manipulation were both excellent and made enough sense to him. What he’d just done was an act of creation like no other, he absolutely deserved the levels for them. What had been less expected had been the acquisition of a whole new skill, one he’d never dreamed could have existed but had felt well deserved after getting it. In a way, what he’d done had used his material manipulation but at the same time, it had gone far beyond it. Despite having his small hopes during the attempt, even he had to admit that he’d stretched the definition of a material by a fair bit when trying to make it work, to have birthed a new ability within himself was more than he could have dreamed of.

With one hell of an added benefit.

Ben already knew that some skills would change how a person saw and experienced the world, with Thera’s earth sense being an example that let her understand the earth around her in a way that would be unusual to anyone else and his own king of sacrilege let him see and feel the faith or divinity in others, but soul production had come with a comparable change. Looking at the crystal in his hand, Ben could faintly see the soul it held.

And it will only get better as it levels.

It was something he was going to look forward to and could already picture the uses he’d get out of it but he moved on from there to look at the rest. In a similar vein to those surprises, completing his job was also a bigger benefit than he’d expected. At the time he’d taken it, he’d really focused on how the destructive aspect named in the title could be a good way to gain experience in the war, but it was still a crafting job. It gained experience for the things he made, what could give more experience than making a soul? Ben could only imagine how much he’d gained and he once more wished that he could store overflowing experience for future jobs, or at the very least he wished he could do something with it instead of letting it fade into the void.

That left the last notification, the one that was somehow managing to leave him on the verge of a headache in his far too powerful minds as he thought about it.

Transgressor. If it was a system-generated title then that was fine, he’d be happy to take whatever effect it would give, especially since if the system gave it that meant it would likely give him benefits to his newest skill, but there was another option as well.

Ben may not have been able to grasp the full extent of the demon god’s power but he knew it was overwhelming. He didn’t doubt that Oaun could have been watching him if he’d wanted to either and combined with what he knew of the gods and their races it made sense that he’d call him that.

While not a certainty, he was fairly sure that most races with an innate magic all had a god that was related to it. Nature gods like Jagal were more likely to have races with plant magic and Anailia, a goddess of love and seduction, had a people that possessed a specialized form of dark magic, a natural charm. That pointed to one inevitable conclusion about the god of the demons given what they each possessed. He was a natural soul god.Stolen story; please report.

Ben wasn’t particularly sure about what implications such a god carried but he did know one thing. If he was right, it would be completely within the realm of possibility that a being like that would view what Ben had done as transgressing in his domain.

Not that it matters at this point.

If the god was watching him then there was literally nothing he could do about it. This was the only avenue of power that felt like it might go somewhere so if Oaun already knew then all he could do was keep going and see if he’d step in to put a stop to him.

Well, I also need to see if the next step of this will work first.

He had the soul bound in a rainbow mana crystal, what mattered was if it was still able to absorb mana and from there, if he could access it that way.

Ben knew that holding a soul ruined the crystal's ability to absorb mana, but was the reverse also going to be true? Was a soul just as blocked from taking in that power? There was only one way to be sure and he reached out with connect to see, feeling it touch the thing bound in his grasp as the link was made and pulling out a trickle of mana with it.

…That wasn’t much. But at the same time, that was from a soul I’d made before officially gaining the skill and was my first success. Now that I have it in place I should be able to do better and if the past is any indication, I should be able to gain a few levels to it in the first week. It should definitely fall under the umbrella of a crafting skill since it's something I’m making so I’ll get those bonuses, plus a magic skill since it’s an act of materialization, through and through. Aside from that, I’ve got master of all done which is more job bonuses, not to mention all of my blessings, plus that new one. Thank you Oaun, even if it was just to try and get a look at what’s going on in my head I’ll use it well. Right until I escape and every other god is jumping down my throat wondering what I did to get that blessing… Hmm, yep, I’m one hundred percent going to look like I turned traitor. Oh well, I’ll deal with that when I get to it. For the time being, I need to take a new job.

…Except I’m already worried I’m being watched and if I am and I recreate the enchantment on my crystal then I’d basically be giving the production method to them. Shit.

That wasn’t some minor problem. No matter how much weaker it was going to be as a first or second-tier skill, soul magic was used to help one improve and the demons were no doubt using it on themselves at nearly all times. If they combined that and the benefits they were already getting from the base system with access to the job system too and then things were going to get apocalyptically bad.

Not that it isn’t already. Let’s be real here. Really, depressingly real. Even if they don’t gain access to the job system, is there any chance of anyone ever beating them? Doesn’t sound like there’s anyone in this galaxy with a shot unless the void, jovian, and solar races stop ignoring what all of the terrestrial planets are going through to work together against them and let’s be real, if they haven’t by this point then they’re not going to. Which is admittedly fair, it might take some modification from their god but I’d be willing to bet the demons could be modified into a void or jovian race at least, even if a star race might be impossible with whatever sort of biology they operate on. Still, I can see why they wouldn’t want to draw their attention, even if it’s a bad idea in the long run.

Okay, so things are officially bad enough that even if I accidentally get them access to the job system then that’s going to basically make no difference but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to keep it from them, even if I might fail. That’s fine, I can spare a few minutes on it.

What he planned was to release the soul from his crystal and from there make and break enchantments across it in one constant, smooth motion, in the hope that he’d be able to sneak on the one that would turn it into a job crystal in the middle and select a job without it being obvious through the sheer speed of his thoughts but a surprise stopped that at step one. When he broke down the enchantment he’d placed on the crystal to seal the soul he’d created within, the soul didn’t disappear.

He’d fully thought that once free of its bindings, the soul would vanish to wherever such things ended up, but to be wrong was a welcome surprise, speaking of things he’d need to test and experiment to carry out, at least later in the future. For the time being he broke the crystal with his power, finding that managed to do the job of freeing what it held before he remade it and began his enchanting, all to see what options awaited him.