Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Despite what he may have had to say about it, Ben's mind was no longer human. Existing at a scope great enough to shock the gods who'd seen it and growing only more alien with every living being his soul touched, potential existed within it that rarely needed to be used unless he was trying to solve a particularly complex problem. Certainly not the sort of potential that would normally go towards running away but with the current issue at hand he stopped a few of the background tasks some were on to take half of his minds, forcing each one to think of how to escape.

With a total of four thousand nine hundred and ninety in his head, that didn't mean he was only coming up with half that many ideas though. Even a single mind he held had grown in strength beyond what a normal person could ever hope to expect, awakening the skill not only boosting his total number of minds but also the strands that made them up, bringing it from the normal three or four individual thoughts a person might be able to carry at a time to well over a hundred now that he'd reached the final wall of the skill and all of them were directed to looking at different ways he might escape the current situation, willing to accept any option no matter how ludicrous and that in itself helped create easier paths for him as every one of those ideas created a possible future he could go down, exploding the total number of options that whatever prophets the demons held would have to choose from.

<It's working.> his god said in his head. <They're stunned.>

Then all that's left is picking a future. Myriad, give me a number between one and two hundred and fifty thousand.

<Okay, one.>

One. I ask you for something in the range of hundreds of thousands of options and you pick the very first?

<It's as good a number as any.>

Fine, whatever. I just want you to know you're a terrible random number generator.

<Wrong. One is just as random as any other number I could have picked, it just doesn't feel like it because it was so low. With whatever remains of how your human mind is set up, anything too close to the minimum or maximum wouldn't have felt random either, same with anything that ends in a zero or five. Blame whatever bits of your natural psychology you have left.>

I know how probability works Myriad, I just also know that you didn't do a whole lot of soul-searching when you gave me that answer. Next time take it slightly more seriously since my… Huh, is my life on the line or are they just trying to capture me to make another attempt at taking me over? The attacks so far haven't been anywhere near as lethal as they could have been if the aim was to kill us.

<Figure that out later and focus.>

I already am.

Even during that back and forth he'd begun his first potential plan, one that was admittedly among the most straightforward with how low it was on the list as he actualized bullets and tried to fire them off in directions Myriad said there were demons in hiding, Feeling the strain as each hit something while he changed his directions by taking a sharp angle right.

<Four demons downed, you got them all.>

Cool, now give me another number.

<Two hundred and fifty thousand.>

You're a bastard!

<What? I'm trying to be as random as I can but that's just how the dice land sometimes. At least it's better than getting one again.>

Ugh, whatever. Any chance you could grab Helori? I feel like there's a chance she'll take number-picking slightly more seriously.

<Alright, I'll call for her. The more eyes up here to look at things for you the better your odds I suppose.>

Thanks.

As they spoke he began his next moves, activating the barriers within his shoes he'd placed to boost his speed during his escape from the demon world and putting them to use in a different way, using them to help increase the height of his jump instead of pushing him forward faster and bringing him to the tree branches while he propelled the chimeras with their natural strength, once more actualizing behind him but in a way that lacked any inherent meaning, trying to create things that might draw curiosity or wariness from whatever demons were gauging things as they came face to face with structures that held no mana while popping in and out of existence for seemingly no reason, with his hope being that the demons would assume they were being set up to act beyond whatever limits their prophecy held.

While running through the tree branches he continued to strain his mind, feeling and controlling the way every individual muscle in his body and the others he was controlling moved while pushing his balance enhancement to its limits to make sure he wouldn't fall, strengthening the branches with his magic as well at any place they seemed they might break until after a while he did the opposite, letting one snap to bring them back to the ground in a way that surely would have looked like an accident to any outside observer by the time Helori joined in his head.

<Myriad caught me up. Based on what I've heard, I'd guess at least one of them has awakened since coming to this world, this level of prophecy is too much otherwise.>

That's cool, we can worry about the implications of that in a bit but for now, give me a number between one and two hundred and fifty thousand!

<One.>

What the actual fuck guys!

<I don't know what to tell you Ben, I spun the wheel and that's what it landed on.>

You spun the- Did you seriously actualize a wheel to pick?

<Yes.>

Wait, then was Myriad being serious when he was talking about rolling dice? Was that not just a turn of phrase?

<Yes.>

HOW!

<That's just how probability turns out sometimes.> Helori told him in a way that left him hearing the shrug in her voice. <Although I admit it feels like you sometimes twist the odds. I wonder; since your little rule bender skill is for going against the standard rules of this reality if it's somehow let you create a genuine force of bad luck for yourself in some passive way.>

It's not a passive skill and if I find out that's true I'm just giving up and letting a demon eat me!

At least after the last two times he tried to do a better job of randomizing the difficulty of the order and he used his surrounding swarm of bugs to look behind him for what followers he still had, seeing that at some point it was still largely the people he'd come out there with, with whatever demon held them able to see through all of the possibility he'd created that no matter what, he wasn't going to hurt them if he could help it.

Worse though was that Thera was still on their heels, warping the earth around them while firing constructs of magic since the dark aspects of her power weren't going to work on the few that were left.

Seeing her there made him question if he really wanted to go with the option Helori picked for them but there was no other choice. The purpose of creating such random options was to create more futures than what the demons would be able to evaluate and carrying on with that he actualized a single bullet, not worrying about getting it correct to the molecular level since that had a greater risk of hurting him than anything else and instead left it hollowed out to act as both a container and barrier for what he really wanted delivered, shooting it at the ground behind them and letting the mental construct come down, exposing what he'd materialized to the world.

<BALANCE ENHANCEMENT LEVEL INCREASED>

<PIERCING RESISTANCE LEVEL INCREASED>

That same instant an explosion rang out, throwing them forward and their pursuers back while filling the air with dust and debris to block the view all around them as he landed on all of his feet and continued running despite his ringing ears and hot back, earning him the screams of the gods.

<Did you just make antimatter again!>

<Ben, you're on fire!>

A quick look through the eyes of his few surviving bugs told him the second comment was true, with the heat he was feeling being some of the dirt that hadn't quite been vaporized in the blow to sting the skin of his neck and burn the back of his head in a way his companions had largely escaped from and he quickly materialized some water to put it out before addressing the first shout.

Yeah, I needed to fill out my options which included making some risky ones. I wanna say though, when I put it at number one I wasn't expecting it to actually get picked!

<Don't make that an option at all!> Helori yelled back while he focused on materializing a variety of molecules in the air around them to try and mask their scent.

Relax, I did my best to calculate how that would turn out and it looks like I was mostly right. No planets destroyed and presumably nobody dead on either side?

<The others that the demons took are injured but will live.> Myriad sighed. <It looks like they weren't prepared for that future, as long as you keep running you should be in the clear so what now?>

Now? Now I figure out how many demons are responsible for taking them over and then work to kill them and free the rest so I'm going to need to get some help. Stick around, this is going to be a busy day for all of us.