Thera sat to the side and watched Ben work. For a day and a half, only stopping to eat and forgoing sleep he had been fiddling with the arm of the statue, driving himself to the brink of mana exhaustion and only stopping long enough to recover it before going back to work.

He had explained his idea to her when he had it, if he could remove the enchantments on the statue’s arm he could apply his own, and Thera could attempt to use it as a makeshift staff. The issue was that the enchantments in no way wanted to come off the statue. He would deplete his mana reserves in the span of a minute or two, then have to wait for around ten for it to come back.

She had offered to try doing it herself, well aware that one of the only things her magic was good for was stripping enchantments from magic tools despite how much she may not want the particular talent. It probably wouldn’t even be that hard for her, but with her vast and uncontrolled power there was a concern that doing so might accidentally remove the enchants from the entire statue, which happened to be the only thing keeping them both alive at the moment. If that happened there would be no fixing it, the statues were right outside, waiting for them to get out and be destroyed.

That meant they needed to use Ben's more delicate touch, she just wished he would rest properly at least.

“I’ll take a nap when all of the enchantments are off. I wonder if all divine enchantments are this stubborn or if your god’s just a perfectionist?” Even after leveling up his enchantment he still struggled to remove them, the progress was painfully slow.

“Wouldn’t you do the same?”

“God yes, in a heartbeat.” He could only imagine some of the things he would be able to do if he could bind his enchantments to a material that powerfully. He could only sigh as he took in what knowledge he could. Unravelling the ones Anailia made had at least given him a chance to examine them in a way that merely looking couldn’t match. That combined with the various improvements to his status during the trial would make doing the entire thing worth it in the end.

Well mostly. He thought to himself, a bit of anger over seeing his brother like that slipping back into him. Not to mention that all of it would be meaningless if the growth and knowledge he gained was lost if he died there.

He shook the thought from his head and put his focus on the task at hand. He would be completing this as efficiently as possible, and then getting out of there. Falk’s forge was calling to him and he wouldn’t let a few dumb statues get in the way.

“Damn it, this is a bit inconvenient.” He muttered as he worked, but in the close confines they were currently in Thera couldn't help but hear him.

“What’s the matter?”

“A minor problem it looks like we’ll have to work around. I can’t break off the arm.” After far too many hours of work, he’d managed to strip the enchantments from the statue's arm and taken a well-deserved nap, but when he woke up another problem appeared. One he couldn’t think of a solution for.

His goal had been to turn the arm into a reasonable makeshift staff the best he could, which meant breaking it off from the rest of it for Thera to wield. Lacking any tools to make that happen he used a technique he was quite well-practiced at by this point, using the destructive properties of enchantment to weaken the material at the shoulder and break it off.

The problem was that whatever sort of stone it was, it was capable of holding the magic of a god. Even if he considered the fact that there were some truly masterful techniques used to make it possible, almost all of which he could barely comprehend, that didn’t change the fact that the material seemed purposely chosen to stand up to it. No matter how many enchantments he added to it the enchantments themselves would collapse under their own magical weight before the stone would experience any harm. Even trying to use his crafting to weaken the material or find any microfractures that could exist within it didn’t yield any results. That left only one option.

“You’re going to have to use it while it’s still attached to the statue.”

“What? That’s ridiculous, will that even work?”

“There isn’t any inherent reason it couldn’t, it’s not like a staff actually has to be swung around when using magic, it’s just a channel to direct mana. The bigger issue is that if we leave it attached with all of your mana, some of it might flow backwards into the statue itself. I’m not sure if it would be enough to break the enchantments your god has on it, but it will definitely be able to destroy the barrier magic I attached to it.”

“So if I start a spell the barrier comes down?” Her voice was filled with worry. “Ben if I try to do the same thing I did to the first three I need at least a minute and they’re right out there, we won’t have enough time.”

“I’ll do my best to deal with it, I’m just going to have to do something we’re absolutely never telling Falk about.”

“What?” She couldn’t imagine Ben keeping something from her uncle for any reason, he was way too open about pretty much everything.

“I’m going to have to enchant it in a way that will take some of the burden off you.” Falk had always been clear with him that he shouldn't make items in a way that could affect the development of a person's skills, but that was the only thing he could currently think of to bring down the time for a spell's activation.

She let out a breath, having expected much worse. “I’m pretty sure in this case he’ll understand you know.”

“It eats at my pride! By doing this I’m pretty much admitting that I can’t make you something proper to use, it’s so embarrassing.”

“You’re my uncle's student. When we get out of here, explain to him properly so he can guide you for next time.” She told him sternly, not able to believe they had to have this talk while her goddess’s murder statues were standing outside. She doubted her uncle's resistance to letting her use tools that would delay her ability to level up her skill would apply in a situation where she was about to die.

“Ah, I know you’re right. I just wish I could think of a better way, I don’t want to get used to doing this in emergencies.” He moped. “Okay, come and give me a hand.”

“Hmm? What can I do?”

“I’m going to use your earth magic to essentially carve channels for your spell to run through on top of my usual layering of resistances.” Doing so would act as a guide for her mana, but even though the earth magic enchantment would come from Thera herself and would be low level, it would still ease the burden of her properly using her magic herself. Falk was incredibly against making tools that would do that, even for regular clients, and would reject any special orders that requested it. He would do his best to make tools that matched people's needs without doing it in a way that would reduce their chance of leveling up themselves, and Ben was inclined to agree with the mentality. The fact that he needed to do it now made him feel like he wasn’t just failing his teacher, but himself.

Still, it would be better to do it and live than not and die. Given the fact that he wouldn’t be forging the staff itself while adding enchantments to it, but instead taking a solid piece of stone and adding them on, he would need to take every advantage he could get.

He used his usual technique of layering his resistances, now able to create a gradient of them with a maximum of 60. As he put them together he created a delicate weave of earth magic, creating channels to run along and through the resistance, guiding it so the mana would want to flow out of the end of the statue's fingertips. At the base of the shoulder, the area he wanted to separate it from to keep the gods magic and his own hastily made barrier intact, he got to work trying to separate it magically since he couldn’t do it physically. He loaded the shoulder with earth magic channels, but directed them each outward, hopefully causing any excess mana to escape out the sides of the arm without gaining any form. Finally, to every enchantment he could manage he attached as many sacrificial enchantments as would fit.

If he had been able to make the staff himself, creating a tool specifically designed to hold the enchantments he was placing it might have been his greatest work, at least next to Myriad's jacket. Unfortunately however all of his enchantments were not placed on a proper staff, and no matter how good the statue’s material was it wouldn’t make up for that fact. All he could do was hope it would hold together as Thera used her spell.

“I’m worried.” She told him as he finished.

“Don’t be, you’ve got this.”

“Or I’ll tear down the barrier before my spell’s done and get us both killed.”

“Have some faith.”

“Don’t you sound like a proper priest.”

“I have faith in you.” He said, brushing off her joke. “You’ve got this.”

She looked into his eyes and didn’t doubt he meant it, but she didn’t have that much confidence in herself. Unfortunately, the alternative seemed to be spending a couple of days waiting for their food to run out, so she stopped complaining and gathered her resolve. She picked up the statue's arm while Ben helped carry it so he could continue to rebuild the enchantments as she prepared her spell, focused, and let the magic flow out of her.

When she had been a child, trying desperately to get just a trickle of mana out of her to make her earth magic work, she never would have guessed that her next challenge would be holding it back. Once it started it wanted to come out in a torrent, a powerful, unending blast that she had to fight against with the entire strength of her will, and it was a battle she always lost.

No matter how much her control had improved with each level up, she still couldn’t hold herself back, not to a truly meaningful extent at least, and every time she was disappointed. It felt like she wasn’t really growing and improving, even if she could see she was able to fire off more spells and construct them to be more complex, it was meaningless compared to what she wanted to achieve one day when she grew to a point where her power would truly be under her control.

Through the connection he had made to her, she could feel Ben pushing every bit of himself to keep the statue's arm together, and preserve the enchantments that were keeping the barrier up. She couldn’t make him keep up that amount of strain for long and she tried to speed up shaping the spell in her mind. Collapsing and condensing the earth and dirt, creating three thin yet super dense discs. She cut teeth into the edges of each one with her mana, and finally put as much of her power as she could into giving them spin.

She felt Ben’s work begin to break faster than he could repair it and knew he made the choice to sacrifice the barrier by letting her mana flow back into it rather than risk disrupting her spell. There wasn’t much risk for them though and he knew it, her spell was complete.

The barrier separating them from the statues fell, and all three took a single step forward before the earth tore beneath them as blades of destruction flew up, cleanly slicing each of them in half, and they watched as the threat that had been looming over them crashed to the ground.

As Thera watched them fall to the ground, their victory secured, she heard a notification go off in her head, and it set her heart aflutter.

<MAX LEVEL OF THE APPRENTICE MAGE JOB ACHIEVED>

All of the work, all of the effort, it had just paid off for her in a big way. She excitedly turned to tell Ben, but by this point he was spent and was in the middle of collapsing to the ground, doing his best to make sure he broke his fall with his uninjured arm as he sighed in relief.

“I knew you could do it.” He told her with a smile.

“It was closer than I would have liked and you’re almost mana exhausted.” Still, she couldn’t hide the happiness in her voice.

“Doesn’t matter, a wins a win.” He reached his hand out to her. “Help me up, will you? I just needed to catch my breath, I’m fine now so let's get that flower.”

She took his hand and pulled him to his feet, and together they walked up to Anailias statue. Thera bent her head and clasped her hands, giving a quick prayer, before bending down and grabbing the flower's stem, plucking it from the earth. She took a moment to admire it.

It was bigger than she thought it would be, its stem almost as long as her forearm and five large silver and black petals covered its head. Their sheen was beautiful, but not worth nearly dying over. She assumed the main reward of the trial would come once they exited, and she wasn’t keen on the prospect of walking back. It was unpleasant enough getting there, and even if they wouldn’t have to deal with the trials again, a prospect she wasn’t willing to bet her life on, it would still be multiple days to get out.

As she worried about that and turned to leave Ben grabbed her and started to pull with all of the force he could muster. She didn’t know what he was doing until she looked up, and saw the statue of Anailia start to stir.