Invent (The Completionist Chronicles Book 7), page 12
“I don’t care about that so much,” Joe muttered as he tried to mentally rearrange his plans for the next few days. “Now what?”
“Now we hunker down and get this place ready for a siege,” Ciril replied, eyeing him sternly. “The destruction of a Tier-two town is worth thousands of resources. Even split by a raiding party, it’ll be a juicy target.”
“We don’t even have a wall,” Stan’s monotone rang out. “Next week, make a wall. Then make a town hall or something. Anytime you rank up a town after Tier one, the town hall is automatically upgraded. Don’t waste that; it’s free. Free is great.”
“I have plans for a Guildhall. Would that work?” Joe looked to the other two for confirmation, but both of their faces were as neutral as possible, with just a hint of disgust.
“You can have a Guildhall as your town hall… if you want to make this a guild town. Somewhere that even people aligned with Elves can just walk into, if they’re part of your guild.” Ciril spat the explanation with a sneer. “You have any guild members aligned with Elves?”
“I… I don’t know?” Joe pulled up his status, noting that he had a few quest notifications to look over. “I am the ‘First Elder’, or will be when my guild gets strong enough to upgrade to a Sect. Does that change things?”
Stan and Ciril looked at each other, and Stan sighed heavily. “I suppose all things come around again, given enough time. Sects are coming back into style? Ugh. That was a nightmare last time.”
“If you have the power to refuse entry to people in your guild, then yes… a Guildhall can work.” The admission was clearly difficult for Ciril to spit out. “You’re going to have some pushback from the Oligarchy.”
“I understand that.” Joe smiled brightly, then decided that he should hurry along. He paid each of the Dwarves that had helped with the rituals, then rushed back to his workshop. “No defenses, possibility of a lot of people attacking. No real militia. My weapon usage at the… Beginner rank. Whoo, boy. Now what?”
He tapped on the golden eye tattooed on his forehead as he contemplated his options. “I can set up defensive rituals. I can’t get good enough with my weapons in a week with no trainer, but what I could do is make them stronger. Maybe I could get out word that I have Uncommon housing for anyone that wants to be here? I never saw more than Common ranked for anyone in the Legion, so that should be a big draw?”
Joe examined his Ritual Orbs, feeling minorly frustrated with them. The only way to empower them in short order was to bind them to a characteristic, and that made him… nervous. “I could start with one that I don’t really need to worry about so much? Like Charisma?”
There was nothing to do but get to work, even if it was reluctantly. Since he was attempting to increase his skills and spells at the same time, Joe worked to create the ritual diagram entirely free-floating. The first two circles went without issue, and he switched over to only using a single Aspect Inscriber for the third circle. When he reached the Student-ranked ritual circle, he spent long seconds agonizing over each mark that he made with his dwindling Rare aspects.
He was in an enclosed building at the moment, and even a single mistake would turn his workshop into an oven. “I really should have done this in the reinforced lab area…”
“Or opened the door so I could leave if I needed to do so,” Cleave interjected dryly. To Joe’s credit, her words didn’t cause him to flinch and burn down his workshop, which had remained at the Common rank, as it was not constructed during his questline.
“Almost done… then I’ll have a Student-ranked ritual diagram and be ready to use the Rare ranking to help keep the subsequent enchanting work stable,” Joe whispered to himself as he completed the final line. It held in the air as he backed off, then a light blue energy drained from the outermost ring and connected to the remainder of the ritual, lightly dyeing the entire thing. “Success!”
“You can use the ritual to help with enchanting?” Cleave wondered aloud as she stared at the inert floating diagram.
“Not this one, but it was a good way to psych myself up,” Joe informed her with a goofy grin. “No, I need to enchant my Orb directly, and this won’t help in the slightest.”
Cleave shook her head, moving to the other side of the room and slumping to the ground. “You should get some chairs in here.”
“Magic is done on your feet! It’s a real stand-up profession,” Joe quipped as he pulled out a few chunks of scrap metal. “I need to practice this enchantment before I actually attempt it. You wanna go to sleep for a while? I’m going to be at this for hours.”
“Just do your magic.” She waved at him while cradling her head in her hands. “I’m getting paid even if you aren’t doing anything interesting.”
With a shrug, Joe turned to his wildly exciting work. “I’ll speak out loud so you can get an idea of what I’m doing.”
“No~o.” Cleave moaned into her palms.
“As I was saying!” Joe loudly spoke over the complaints. “This enchantment is… an interesting thing. I need to create a sympathetic link between myself as well as my understanding of the characteristic that I’m attempting to bind. Now, some of this is formulaic and can be widely applied. For instance, I’m human, so that means the enchantment uses a shape like… this…”
He spent the next twenty minutes creating an enchantment diagram for ‘basic human’. “There we go; not entirely terrible! Now I need to add in things that hold meaning regarding the characteristic I’m trying to bind from myself and onto the Orb. Let’s see, how about… Charisma?”
That was when Joe ran into the hurdle that would be impeding his work every step of the way from that moment on.
“Feces, how do I create an enchantment that means Strength, much less ‘Charisma’?” Joe gently slammed his head on the table as he tried to think of anything that could possibly work. “I suppose I can think of something for Strength… that’s just moving stuff with physical might. Even intelligence has something to do with the mind, and I can kludge something together.”
After testing a few more diagrams, he found that he could even generate a form for Constitution, by making the sketched body ‘resist outside influences’. When he tried to do the same by showing two people interacting, there was a magical backlash because the image was no longer drawing from him.
“I can do basic Strength, Constitution, Intelligence… everything else is not gonna work for me.” Joe thought about trying to assign Karmic Luck to something and just ended up shaking his aching head. His knowledge would need to advance far beyond its current level in order to make those characteristics viable for ritualistic assignment to an Orb. “On that note… Knowledge, Architectural Lore!”
He had chosen to increase this particular section of his lore skills because it was the only one he could increase at the moment. That changed in the next instant, as two thousand mana drained into his skull and opened his mind to new information.
Architectural Lore has reached Beginner IX.
Knowledge has reached Apprentice 0! Cooldown decreased to 18 hours. This skill is not impacted by cooldown reduction from spells, skills, or items under Artifact rank!
Congratulations on reaching a new rank with a Legendary skill! Reward: Compendium of Skill and Spell Rankings up to Rare rarity.
For a long moment, Joe stared at the five different lore skills that he would be able to start increasing again, starting only three quarters of a day away. Then he looked at the book that had appeared in his hand. Barely able to hold back from opening it and investigating his skills, he placed it in his ring for some light reading at another time.
“Too much to do right now; I can’t just start perusing random articles.” Joe turned his attention back to his Orbs and decided that it was time to make his choice. “I’m going to assign…”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Major Cleave, I’ve decided to assign my Intelligence to this Orb and hope for the best!” Joe declared as he began lightly coating the entire exterior of the Orb with the purest of white aspects. “Don’t try to stop me; this is something I need to do!”
“No, no…” Cleave called out as Joe *scritched* away at his Ritual Orb, drawing out a fair likeness of himself and highlighting the interior of his head. “I think likening your Intelligence to a chunk of dead metal is fairly accurate.”
“Thank you. See, in the past people have—hey!” Joe chuckled at what he hoped was a joke coming from the Dwarf. “That’s a good one, but you aren’t gonna make me mess this up that easily. Here’s the interesting part: did you know that the thickness of the lines on the X, Y, and Z axis are important? Enchantments are three dimensional at all times, even when they’re ‘flat’. You see, the sympathetic…”
Joe waxed eloquent as he worked, doing everything he could to tamp down his own nerves over the process. He remembered all the warnings that were assigned to the Ritual Orbs, and how dangerous it was to do what he was attempting. If something happened to this orb, he would need to repeat the process on another orb, with his intelligence effectively halved. “Gotta find a way to automate this… just in case.”
“Can you stop?” came an unexpected cry from Major Cleave. “I just gained Enchanting Lore at the Novice rank, and I have no interest in this subject!”
“You did?” Joe blinked at her owlishly, and then a wide smile shot across his face. “That means you were really listening… you do care!”
“I’m requesting reassignment right now,” she grumped at him half-heartedly.
“You’d lose your promotion! I’m guessing you would, at least,” The Ritualist called back as he finished his final few markings. “This was a Beginner enchantment… I’m kinda surprised by that. Perhaps it was because this is such an easily understandable concept? Or is it because there’s such a clear downside to using this enchantment?”
“Perhaps each one you make will require higher tier aspects.” Major Cleave finally gave up and decided to just get invested in the conversation. “You know, I will always cherish the initial misconception I had about you. You seemed so professional, intelligent, and ready to do anything necessary to stop the Elves.”
“Glad you got that out of your system, then.” Joe tossed back his head and laughed over-exaggeratedly. “Magic time! We see if my brain gonna do work hard.”
“Fill out form PH ten thirty-one EZ for transfer to a frontline combat unit,” Major Cleave muttered as she wrote on a notebook she had pulled from a storage space. “That’ll let me stay a Major.”
“Don’t be like that!” Joe walked over to his hanging ritual and willed his Ritual Orb into the center. Using his sole Rare-rank core, he powered up the ritual and began pouring mana into it. Eschewing his previous antics, he watched each and every reaction with hawkish attention.
As the ritual came fully online, for lack of a better term, the enchantment on the Orb lifted away. The mathematical equations, sympathetic lines, and various formulae were drawn off of the Orb and into the ritual, which slightly shifted its configuration to hold all of the new information it was being fed. After a few long, question-filled seconds, the ritual shifted its focus and roughly grabbed Joe.
He was held as still as if he were in a Ritual of Stasis as his mind was scanned, poked, prodded, and tested by the ritual. Thanks to the Ritual Orbs coming with the first diagrams that he had needed for this particular experiment, Joe knew that he hadn’t created them incorrectly. Yet, it was a terrifying feeling to have something of his own design hold him in a way where there was no possibility of stopping; even though that was supposed to happen.
Mana flickered from the ritual and sunk into his head. A moment later, a ghostly image of a brain was etched on the side of his Orb. Power streamed out of his head bit by bit, increasing until a flood of blue lights was connecting him and his Orb together. As the ritual finished, both Joe and the Ritual Orb dropped to the ground with a *thump*. With a final spark of power, the ritual ignited itself and burned away in an instant: a not-so-subtle reminder that this process had completed… and it was permanent.
Skill increase: Enchanted Ritual Circles has reached Beginner 0! Congratulations!
Words of Power (Written) has reached Apprentice II.
Somatic Ritual Casting increased significantly to Beginner V as you have proved your personal ability!
Magical Synesthesia has reached Beginner 0! You are now able to better understand how magic is noticed by your senses!
Essence Cycle has reached Beginner IV due to being forcibly cycled through your brain without causing permanent damage!
Quest updated: Student Ritualist. 1/20 rituals activated.
Joe blanched as he looked at all the skill gains that seemed… slightly ominous. Something told him that an error in his work would have resulted in even worse consequences than he had been expecting. As he glanced at his orb, he had the strangest feeling that it, too, was contemplating him in return. He touched it gingerly and read the description that appeared.
Ritual Orb of Intelligence (Masterwork). This Ritual Orb has gone through an Alchemic treatment as well as an extra round of enchanting via rituals.
Base Damage: 100 blunt -> shifting in progress.
Characteristic assigned: Intelligence. Any spell assigned to this Orb will have the primary damage effect increased by 10% on spell cast. Base damage will shift over time to be the damage type provided by the spell.
Automatically grants Orb the ‘recall’ ability; it will return to you after five minutes if left behind, forgotten, or stolen.
Core assigned: 375/1,545
Spell assigned: Cone of Cold (Beginner V, awaiting unbinding for skill upgrade).
Ritual Diagram captured: None.
“That’s a lot more information than you used to give me,” Joe breathed in wonder as he induced the Orb to fly over and hop into its holster on his bandolier. “If I’m reading that correctly, this is working on changing the damage type for hitting someone with this from blunt, to cold damage?”
The etched brain on the side of the Orb caught his eye as it gleamed, and he wondered if that meant that it would eventually have thoughts of its own. Joe didn’t know how he felt about that, but… too late now. His next thought was to upgrade another Orb, but the invasiveness of the process made him shudder. He wanted to see how effective this first one was in combat before he put himself further at risk.
Name: Joe ‘Tatum’s Chosen Legend’ Class: Reductionist
Profession I: Arcanologist (Max)
Profession II: Ritualistic Alchemist (1/20)
Profession III: None
Character Level: 21 Exp: 236,309 Exp to next level: 16,691
Rituarchitect Level: 10 Exp: 50,500 Exp debt: 2,300
Reductionist Level: 2 Exp: 5,186 Exp to next level: 814
Hit Points: 1,864/1,864
Mana: 4,955/6,788. (1,832 reserved)
Mana regen: 52.7/sec
Stamina: 1,524/1,524
Stamina regen: 6.46/sec
Characteristic: Raw score
Strength: 146
Dexterity: 146
Constitution: 142
Intelligence (bound): 152
Wisdom: 133
Dark Charisma: 100
Perception: 137
Luck: 79
Karmic Luck: 15
“You know, maybe one of the reasons I was having so much trouble with Charisma is that I have Dark Charisma.” Joe pondered that for a moment, reflecting on the change and what the resulting notification had told him. “I’m more easily able to influence people toward actions that cause fighting… I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe I should go and incite a riot? No, that’s a bad idea. Might be good training, though…? No! Must keep attention on making traps, alarms, and… oh, shiny notification! I got a new quest?”
Beginner Rituarchitect. Gather enough materials to create 10 Uncommon buildings. Damaged aspects: 0/20,000. Common aspects: 0/10,000. Uncommon aspects: 0/1,000. Reward: +3 to your choice of relevant Lore skill. Current options: Architectural Lore.
“I can use that to save a ton of time.” Joe stared at the reward, telling himself that he could hold off on completing the new quest until the town upgrade quest was completed. If he did so, and used Knowledge as much as possible, he could jump the Lore skill to the Student rank. With his plan set in stone, he turned to his currently empty workshop table.
“I’m almost out of Rare aspects, so I need to focus my rituals on three circles or below.” Pulling out a notebook, he wrote out the things that he thought would be the most beneficial, cost-effective defenses. “Major, would you mind taking a look at this?”
She took the paper, reading it with increasing concern for each list item. “What is this, Joe? Alarms, barriers, healing rituals, holding rituals, attack rituals, explosion… collapse? Are you planning to kill us all?”
“No, I was just writing down what I could start working on for defenses. I put it in order from least to most dangerous.” Joe tapped the paper and showed his teeth as he smiled at Major Cleave. “We’re going to be attacked, which means I’m gonna fall back on what some people might see as bad habits. Where do you think I should start?”
“Alarms, if you’d be so kind,” Cleave answered in an instant. “Least number of chances to accidentally murder us in broad daylight.”
“Ooh, so close.” Joe tapped the bottom of the page. “I’m gonna rig every tunnel to collapse based on the proximity alarms going off, so that actually has the most chances to take all of us down. Great advice, Major Cleave!”
“What if there are others? Noncombatants? Hostages?” Cleave didn’t bother to hide her displeasure. “You aren’t a Candidate anymore. War crimes against your own people will not be so easily forgiven going forward. Don't you think this is too… ruthless?”
“Yeah.” Joe’s sclera flashed black for an instant as he gazed out at the myriad tunnels that had been dug through the volcano by the Elves. “Being ruthless is what The Wanderers are good at. We even get a bonus for it. That’s why I said I’m falling back on old habits.”
