Ben got home, exhausted after a long day and knowing there was still more to do. He hadn’t managed to gain the skill on the first day, and neither had Thera. Zandale at least had managed to get both connect and hidden mind, though they would still try to use their skills as a way to try and level up connect faster while still in town, and they had yet to acquire complex mind.

Of everyone, Sonya had been the luckiest, gaining mana examination after only her second time getting Zandale’s help. Ben couldn’t help but be a little jealous of her after a long day of getting beaten up, but it looked like she’d gone all out preparing dinner since she was home before them and the chance to dig in went a long way to ease his mood, especially knowing he was going to be up for a while.

“Hey Sonya, mind if I move everything out of the living room for the night? There's something I want to try,” He asked as the meal ended, confusing the other two at the table.

“...I guess it’s not an issue if you put everything back after, but what are you doing?” Hesitation and curiosity were plain in her voice, but he did have a good reason.

“I was hoping it would be cool if I put a large-scale enchantment on the room.”

“Wait, you want to enchant an entire room? Who does that?” Thera asked, surprised. Enchantments were something that were put on items, the idea of putting one on an entire room was ridiculous. Aside from the level of patience it would take to do, there was also the whole issue of powering it, it just wasn’t reasonable to supply mana to something that size.

Sonya seemed mildly worried but held enough trust in Ben that she accepted it. “I suppose that would be alright, but what were you hoping to accomplish doing something like that?”

“One part is to get a couple levels on my new job. As for the other, well It’s a bit of a surprise, but trust me, if it works then the payoff’s going to be great.”

The answer filled neither of the women with confidence but considering how much he’d done for them today they gave him their trust as he emptied the living room of all of its furniture and got to work.

The idea had come to him when he’d quickly thrown together a resistance amulet for Zandale so he could touch Thera to transfer the skill over. It started as a question really, what would happen if the enchantment for it was placed on an entire room.

The answer to which was nothing really. Anyone within would be safe from the passive effects from any charm leaking in from the outside, but sufficiently thick and sturdy walls were able to block it to an extent anyway. Thera’s was powerful enough to create issues despite that, but Falk had apparently reinforced the outer walls of the house when she’d moved in, just to be safe. 

Still, that meant an enchantment of that size wouldn’t actually help anyone in the room if the charm user was there as well, but what if it could? The enchantments on the amulets were set up in a way that they covered the user, but what if they were made to fill a given space instead? Would it have any effect? It was worth a try at least, and he wanted to see how far he could take the idea, so he got to work.

Having three minds at his disposal capable of enchanting in tandem had the potential to make the entire task significantly quicker than it otherwise would, but as per usual when he tried something big, he was limited by his low mana. At least he could finally train it a bit more efficiently thanks to having a job that gave it a bonus but it would still be a while before he made it into the lower end of what was considered average.

All he could do for now was construct the enchantment slowly and let the hours pass. He let himself get lost in the work, planning the most optimal locations to lay his enchantment and weaving them to reduce the overall mana cost as much as he could to ensure he could get the most out of how he intended to power it.

It was still more efficient than when he’d created the one for Theras arm brace at least. By having two minds dedicated to enchantment construction and one focused on regulating the mana cost he was able to increase the speed by quite a bit. That didn’t change that it was going to take all night to finish, but it did mean he wouldn’t be late to the shop at least.

He worked away patiently, in hindsight regretting that he started with the largest of rooms in the house, but eventually it was done.

<ENCHANTING LEVEL INCREASED>

<FOCUS LEVEL INCREASED>

He looked to his card and smiled. He’d thought he might get a level up to enchanting after all this, but getting focus was a nice bonus too, not to mention all of the job experience that went towards enchanting. Even better was the fact that this meant all of his blessed skills as well as connect had reached the level where most people stopped raising them up. It was hard to keep putting in unending effort after all, and each level required more than the last, but he had no intention to settle there.

Especially when considering how easy his next few jobs would be for him. He was far above the skill level one would typically take enchanter at so the job experience would come faster and easier, and the same was true of the two crafting path jobs he would need to take if he wanted to unlock high crafting. There were a few others out that were available to him now or would be in the near future that he was curious about too, but he was getting ahead of himself and got back to finishing up the final bits of the task at hand.

Grabbing his bag, he pulled out an item he’d made ahead of time at the shop. It was about the size of a pack of playing cards and he marveled at how little he needed to power an enchantment like this. It was such a simple thing, a small block of rainbow mana crystal that was set in some processed moribusial to extract the mana contained within, as well as a small plate of it across the front to do the opposite, pulling mana into the crystal at a quicker rate to ensure it didn’t run out. The entire setup may have been overkill, but he didn’t want to take his chances considering how bad it could be if they trusted the enchantment and failed, and he attached it to a section of the wall he was confident no one would accidentally touch, placing the power source at the start and end of the enchantment.

“All done?” Sonya asked as she walked into the room after waking up.

“Yep, I’d say it was quite productive.”

“So are you ready to say what you were trying to do?”

“Ah, sure I guess,” He said after a bit of thought. “I won’t be able to test it until later when Thera’s up, but I wanted to see if I could neutralize her charm in a given space by inverting the enchantment on a resistance amulet. Won’t know if it worked until she’s up though.”

Her eyes widened slightly upon hearing just what he’d been attempting and she let out a small chuckle. “This and helping her get a new magic skill, you’re really going all out for her first birthday as her fiancé, aren’t you?”

“Wait, her what?” He asked, thinking he misheard her.

“Hmm? Did she not tell you it was soon? For that matter do your people celebrate such things?”

“She didn’t and we do, how far off is hers?”

“It’s a week from today, but you don’t need to worry too much, you’ve done plenty.”

“Of course I need to worry, do you have anything planned for it?” He couldn’t believe he was just hearing about it now, and with such little time to prepare. He wasn’t sure how succubi celebrated such things, but he wanted to do something for her if that was the case.

“We don’t have too much planned. I’ve bought a few books to gift her and I believe Falk has something for her too, but you know how things are. This will be the first year she has a friend to spend it with too. I thought she might mention it herself, but it looks like that might have been too much to hope for,” Sonya said, regretting not bringing it up sooner.

“No, I was injured for a while so even if she wanted to she probably didn’t have the chance,” he bemoaned, cursing the timing of everything. “I’ll think of something to do for her and get your advice on it later.”

Another thing on his ever-growing list of stuff to do, but this just shot straight to the top.