In Ben’s eyes, there was plenty of good about the world so long as one ignored the evercoming threat of impending doom. With so many different races coming together to build a planet and society, the richness of food and art was something to love, but what was always going to be most apparent when stepping through a new gate was going to be the architecture, with the one they’d chosen not disappointing. 

Unlike the more angular buildings he would see on Earth, the ones of the land he’d walked into were all semi-spheres, rounded buildings sticking out of the ground without worrying about efficiently using the city’s space and all of them painted in a rainbow of colours, making the place seem bright and fun.

Sure, it was a bit clashing to look at, he didn’t know if he could have lived there himself, but it was different and seemed like it would be exciting to visit, with the unique blue trees spotted around adding to that feeling.

Yep, this would definitely have made for a good first place.

“If not for the fact that the city was being attacked!”

It was only a minute after the two had walked through that a sound of screams had gone up as the residents made a mad dash towards them, trying to escape through the gate as a terror came from the skies. 

Twenty demons, all of them flying and looking ready to attack, with the first of them swooping down to dig teeth and claws into any terrified victim they could, only to be stopped in an instant by Thera’s power, her magic ripping a stone from the ground and propelling it fast enough to turn what had been its head into a fine mist.

“Thera, can you draw the rest in?” Ben asked her as he propelled smaller metal bullets with his own magic. “We don’t want them splitting and I want to try something.”

“Okay!”

With them all in her sight, she reached out with her dark magic to get their attention in the way that came most naturally, charming her mana and making all demonic eyes lock on her as their target was selected.

Under the effect of her power they moved as one, rushing toward them both as she prepared another spell while waiting for Ben to do whatever it was he intended, with his own goal already going against the point of their vacation. He wanted to test something.

The second that the closest was within five meters of him, he reached out with deep connection and exposed it to the full force of his mind.

It was something he’d been meaning to try but had never managed to get around to ever since he awakened the skill, but the moment he did there was an instantaneous effect. The second his mind touched that of the demon’s before him, it shattered, killing the beast and leaving it to crash to the ground as he kept it up for the next and the one after with the same result, only changing with the fifth that came close enough to feel his effects, that demon able to handle the weight of his thoughts.

So it’s not a certain thing I can kill stuff like this then I guess. Still, looks like it does pretty damn well. I’ll just have to- ack.

Pain assaulted him all at once as the demon thrashed around in his range, his body feeling on fire and the pain flaring all of the more as he shot out the stone around him to kill everything close enough.

“Thera, can you handle the rest?”

Something in his voice must have given away his state and that his desire to test anything was finished, in an instant the road exploded up, impaling the rest of the demons before they could make another move before her focus shifted entirely to him.

“What happened?”

“Not sure but everything hurts. Like, a lot.”

There wasn’t a single part of him that didn’t feel sore and he clutched at himself, trying to suppress the sudden and intense feeling of pain while Thera grabbed him to apply her spells, looking at him with her mana examination to try and spot whatever had caused it, only to come up blank.

“I’m not seeing any sort of injury and I’m not feeling any life or dark mana doing anything to you, maybe death then? Have you lost any vitality?”

“Just a sec,” He pulled out his card, aiming to check just that but received a far greater shock with what he saw. His vitality had gone down along with his mana, that was certain, but it wasn’t just marking that he’d lost some of his total volume. No, both attributes were showing he’d lost from the amount his body could hold at all, with both dropping by two percent of the totals he’d worked so hard to gain.

“Hey Myriad, I need some answers here!” Ben called out, both in mind and voice to get his god’s attention, with the cube speaking up only seconds later.

<Infinite hells. Ben, you just started your vacation, what could be- You ran into demons. On day one. You’re actually beginning to force me to have to re-evaluate if luck really does exist as a driving force in this reality.>

“Not the point here man, everything hurts and it looks like some of my attributes just dropped.”

<What? By how much?>

“Two percent for both vitality and mana.”

<Okay, that’s not good, but not cataclysmically bad. Tell me what happened.>

It only took a couple minutes for Ben to sum it up the best he could, explaining what they’d found when they’d entered the city and what he had been trying before being assaulted by that sudden pain, with his god having an answer to what just happened to him.

<Your soul’s been damaged.>

“Oh, well that sounds pretty fucking bad.”

<It’s not ideal but not the end of the world either. It will heal in a few days and you’ll return to your expected attributes, but it’s going to hurt until then. It’s actually shocking how much damage it was able to do to you, that has to only be possible since a part of your soul leaves your body when you use deep connection like that.>

“Okay, don’t expose my soul to natural soul magic users, when you put it like that it sounds pretty obvious. Is there anything I can do to speed up the healing process?”

<Go to the soul mages, they’ll be able to help.>

With the first stop of their vacation ruined before they could even enjoy it, neither Ben nor Thera could go to Allfaith immediately, no matter how much they might have wanted to. They first confirmed that there were no more demons in the immediate area before Thera began fulfilling her role as a healer, treating some of the injuries that had occurred in the initial panic. As unpleasant as it was for him, Ben would live so he could wait.

It was only once they were done that they waved away the thanks some officials from the city were trying to give them, instead jumping back through the gate to see their friends.

“You know, I don’t want to take this as a sign, but I’m instantly a lot more worried about this vacation as a whole,” Ben sighed, with his girlfriend trying to cheer him up.

“The rest will be better now that we got the bad out of the way,” She told him positively. “What are the chances of running into anything like this again?”

“Questions like that are tempting fate.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“You never know, my luck is apparently so horrendous it even has Myriad wondering if it’s a real force in the universe.”

They kept bantering back and forth, as much to help distract Ben from the pain as anything else, by the time they finally arrived at the soul mage Elvat’s residence and were allowed in shortly after, finding him and Yuzu in their training, at least until they noticed him.

With Elvat confined to the waters, it was only Yuzu who ran over, even if both were obviously concerned.

“Ben, what happened to you?” She asked him, not shaking him like she so often did but instead just leaning in closer to look, aware that whatever damage he was under had to be painful.

“Ah, you know, exposed my soul to a demon and got to find out firsthand what a bad idea that was. Like, an incredibly bad one. This hurts a lot and I was told you guys might be able to help instead of waiting for it to heal by itself.”

“Elvat, have you ever healed a soul before?” Yuzu asked with clear urgency, getting a firm negative.

“No, but this will be good practice for us both considering what’s sure to come so let’s do our best. Ben, come over here and lie down by the water’s edge.”

Feeling no intention of fighting the orders of those he’d come to for help, Ben did as he was told, getting close and letting both soul mages place their hands on him as they began using their spells, trying to stimulate whatever healing process his soul was going to go through, grumbling all the way as they did.

“How can any soul reject our magic so much?” Elvat muttered, feeling the full force of Ben’s resistances.

“The fact that most souls don’t have resistances this high might be an evolutionary trait,” Yuzu joined. “The way this reality relies on magic, you’d expect anything that couldn’t be healed by it to have a significantly worse survival chance. You’re very lucky to have Thera.”

“I am, but I’m also going to argue the evolution idea. If that was the case you’d expect to see low resistances to light and life but higher ones to every other attribute. From what I understand, most people can expect low values for every resistance across the board.”

Although it would be interesting to do a census on the world's affinity and resistance rates. I know you see trends across species as a whole but otherwise… No, I’m on vacation and even if I wasn’t I’m not making a project like that for myself. If the world doesn’t end I’ll float the idea with the gods since the results might be interesting at least.

For what it was worth, the conversation was at least managing to distract him as they worked on healing him and the time drifted by, bringing a low mark to the first day of his vacation.