“Ben, as your primary healer, tell me how you''re hurt already unless you want to become even more so.”

    “Is it appropriate for healers to threaten their patients?”

    “I have terrible bedside manners. Now out with it already unless you’re going to make me prove I mean it.”

    “Okay, fine, fine, just... Nobody panic.”

    Two words that were certain to cause their fair share of stress as the other four watched Ben carefully slip off his jacket, with Thera getting a slight sense of the extent of his injuries first from the metal plate that was under his shirt.

    What the others took for armour, what she herself took to be something he materialized for some extra safety when she’d first noticed it with her earth sense, clearly went deeper than that and instead of letting Ben take off his shirt himself she used her magic to reduce it to dust, the bloodstains on it speaking of a real injury and his bare chest telling enough of the rest of the story from there as one in the group gasped, with Thera in particular pulling off a face that screamed her mixture of shock, horror, and just a hint of annoyance as that last aspect poked out.

    “You have a hole in your chest the size of my fist and your first instinct when explaining it was to make a bad joke?”

    “I was trying to lighten the mood a bit, given I kind of figured reactions would be intense.”

    “...Okay, whatever, forget about it. How bad is it?”

    “When I said I was closer to being a heartless monster I meant it, the attack straight up destroyed my heart.”

    “...”

    “Dude, how the fuck are you even still alive?” Jake asked, his eyes practically popping out of his skull as he looked while Amy seemed like she wanted to be sick.

    “Ben, you could have mentioned that before I was treated, you absolute psycho!”

    “Okay, so first off, there’s no need for name-calling, despite how it looks I’ve got myself sorted pretty well. I’ll live. Second, I built myself an artificial heart with some of the materials I have on hand. It’s pumping itself but I can personally increase the speed if need be so it was able to keep myself alive during that floor.”@@@@

    “Shockingly, cool doesn’t really matter to me right now but whatever. Take whatever bits of metal you don’t want out of you then and I’ll heal what’s left.”

    “Yeah, you got it.”

    He had the sense not to say more when he fully understood just why she was mad as part of him questioned if his quest for power was really worth going so far, with a larger part acknowledging that even if it was insane, it was all for the goal of not only his but the world’s long term survival. If what he was thinking would work then there’d potentially be more than one benefit beyond himself as well, he’d just need to survive to test it.

    “These cuts are a lot cleaner than Amy’s,” Thera muttered once there was nothing left in him but his metallic heart, instantly spotting the difference as she began rebuilding his bone and muscle.

    “Ah, it was pretty easy to tell I was going to need to clean the rest up if I wanted that to work so I cut everything else away.”

    “...Yeah, you’re no longer allowed to disagree when people tell you you’re insane.”

    “Hey, there’s nothing insane about performing life-saving surgery on yourself, no matter how impromptu.”

    “The insane part is not getting it fixed after to, by the sounds of it, experiment on yourself!”

    “...”

    Yeah, no good argument for that. I wonder if Myriad is screaming about it up there while he watches? If you are buddy, I want to make it clear that I never would have considered such a thing if you guys hadn’t punched a hole in my chest.

    He was ready for some sort of comeback for that but with the voice of his god blocked off like it was any time he took on a trial, what he got instead was silence, at least from his cube. Instead, the voices in his head came from a different source once Thera finished rebuilding his chest, telling him that if nothing else, he’d gotten just a bit of progress for his suffering.

    BLOOD REGENERATION LEVEL INCREASED

    ACQUIRED SKILL VITALITY ENHANCEMENT LEVEL 0

    ACQUIRED SKILL VITALITY REGENERATION ENHANCEMENT LEVEL 0