Invent (The Completionist Chronicles Book 7), page 28
The area lit up to his senses, and sprinkles of mana that were already dissipating could be clearly seen. A light ringing also sounded in his ears, one that was different than anything his magical synesthesia highlighted. Joe spoke so quietly that even he couldn’t hear himself speak as he pushed a rock aside and settled into a combat stance. “It's my Hidden Sense… what is this? A used spell scroll?”
There was more to his Hidden Sense than just the remnants of a destroyed parchment. Now that he was focusing on things that were hidden, the area around him began to chime with the sound of magic. Muffled magic. “It's a spell… to hide spells?”
“Looks like the game is up, gentlemen! They found us, so let's go quietly.” Herr Trigger’s words were met with sardonic chuckling as people began materializing out of the darkness of the warehouse. A darkness that Joe should have been able to see through with his Darkvision, but the spell clearly had messed with his senses as well.
“Why are you people trying to ruin everything?” Daniella took the initiative to bellow at the group of mixed humans and Elves. “Our peoples have a chance at peace! A real chance! It might take a while, and both of them will have to concede small points for negotiation, but the end of this war is in sight!”
“You think your little boyfriend here can just invent a magical table that forces people to be ‘nice’ around it, and expect that social politeness is enough to get past millennia of war? This is not what is best for the Theocracy!” Herr Trigger’s hand blurred, and a revolver appeared in it. Without hesitation, he put three rounds in her chest in under a second. Not missing a beat, Joe caught her as she started to fall and sent a pulse of Lay on Hands into the wounds. “We are going to make sure this travesty of a negotiation dies as the horrible idea that it is… along with everyone else who was involved.”
Daniella gasped with pain, then relief almost in the same instant. “You’re a monster! Why are you just showing up and, and… not even condoning, but planning to continue perpetrating war crimes?”
“Woo, war cri~imes!” a Dwarf walking past the area called as he heard Daniella’s outburst. He waved at Joe and Daniella, then continued walking. “See ya later, teamkiller bro!”
Clearly, the Dwarf could only see the architect and Major General Pyrrhic through whatever spell was affecting the local area, and he didn’t want to interrupt whatever had allowed Joe to catch a swooning lady in his arms.
“I will even happily monologue to tell you what we are planning.” A wide grin on the assassin’s face informed Joe and Daniella that Trigger believed that they could do nothing to stop him. “You do not even have an inkling of why the Theocracy chose this place as their secret base, yet you moved right on in as soon as you found it and forced our people away. As if the Theocracy has ever not had a backup plan behind their contingency plan, or had to put in place a final option behind their plan B and C.”
Herr Trigger’s people had slowly started to fan out, prepared to attack as soon as they were given the signal. The bounty hunter simply raised his hands as though everything he was explaining was a foregone conclusion. “Right now, we are only waiting for the bait to take effect. Your pathetic little Guildhall has already been coated in the most delicious smell of meat… and it is coming for all of them.”
“You’re going to wipe out your own royal family?” Joe demanded with incredulity, “That will set both of our people back for months at the minimum!”
“Oh, it would…” Trigger started laughing as he raised his hand, “If a Royal family could truly ever be in charge of a Theocracy.”
“Abyss, the real ruler of the Elves is some kind of priest.” Joe had heard enough. One of his Ritual Orbs opened and unraveled with a metallic *twang*, instantly forming into the Ritual of Remote Activation. His mana touched it, and the wire-made ritual diagram activated. Moments later, klaxon calls began clattering all around the city. He stared hard into Trigger’s eyes. “Now the entire Oligarchy knows you’re here.”
“Excellent. Nothing draws out my pleasure like observing someone who knows death is coming… and making them wait for it!” Herr Trigger and his team opened up on Joe, who pulled Daniella close and used Omnivault to jump onto the wall of the building, then flipped and vaulted to the top of the next structure over.
“This… is pure…” Just before they were out of range, Joe heard Trigger’s voice and looked back, only to lock eyes with the gunslinger. The man had lifted both of his pistols to his nostrils and inhaled deeply, then shuddered with pleasure as he shouted, “… ecstasy!”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Stop!” Daniella shouted into Joe’s ear as he carried her along the rooftops. “We need to get back there and stop him from doing… whatever it is that he’s doing!”
“No, we need to get the delegations out of here, right now,” Joe told her firmly as he—very easily—continued to carry her. It appeared that having nearly a hundred and sixty points in strength wasn’t just for show. “I don’t think you have the same kind of ability to jump around as I do, so unless you want me to leave you here…?”
“Just… keep going,” Daniella told him after a long, uncomfortable pause. “This was all a trap? Gather the Oligarchs in one place, just to kill off them and the Royal family, which are actually only figureheads put in place by the real leader?”
“That’s what I was thinking. Even if Trigger fails with whatever is coming, they can use the attacks to justify never going to the table again.” Joe shook his head in disbelief. “It just floors me that they would go out of their way to invent a reason to continue this war. Why?”
“I’m guessing…” Daniella collected her thoughts and gasped as Joe vaulted from the roof, still managing to land gracefully on the ground. “Pressure from the humans? The humans don’t want to exterminate people, and I’d say that what you did back on Midgard took the people that did enjoy that sort of thing and put some fear into them. As to the Elves, I guess we just can’t assume that they’ll have the same desires we do. Open trade, advancement of magitech, all of that. They take their cues from the ‘gods’, so why do they need to want what we want?”
“I suppose you never really know what someone wants. What they’re actually after, even if they seem to be a good person in all other respects.” Joe had the Guildhall in view, so he didn’t notice that Daniella had sunk into stricken silence. “Since we were able to get them a warning, I hope everyone is in a standoff, rather than actively attacking each other. That’d play right into whatever twisted plan this is.”
As they came within ten feet of the doors, the klaxon calls were suddenly just gone. Joe jolted to a stop and turned around, stepping away from the building. The alarm was still going. A step toward the Guildhall? Silence. “There’s a noise nullification in play? They were never warned!”
Jaxon appeared a moment later, sprinting at Joe and the building behind him. There was a strange look on his face that Joe couldn’t interpret, but the larger concern was that his hands had transformed into T-rex heads and were furiously snapping at everything around them. “Joe! Help! My hands won’t listen to me anymore! They shifted on their own and won’t go away!”
“Delicious meat smell…?” Understanding dawned on Joe, and he shook his head to cut off anything more. “Jaxon! A group of people are trying to sabotage the negotiations, and I think they put down some kind of meat as bait, or something similar that is going to draw monsters to this spot. Let your hands be our guide to the meat!”
“But Joe, if my hands get to the meat, with the way I feel right now, they’re going to do terrible things in public. If I can’t control them now, what do you think is going to happen if I let them sink their teeth into juicy meat and go to town?” Jaxon cried out desperately. “Who knows if that will satisfy them? What if it just makes it worse because they got what they want? I’ll have to practically start retraining my hands on the spot to keep them from reaching for meat whenever they want it!”
“That’s a risk you’re just going to have to take, Jaxon!” Joe told his friend in as comforting a tone as he could manage. “The fate of thousands of lives is tied to your hands guiding you to the meat. We’ll be with you the whole time, so just let us know what we can do to help you keep your hands under control. But Jaxon, we need you to let your hands guide you to that meat. Please?”
“You’ll watch the whole time? You’ll be right beside me?” Jaxon pleaded as his hands started foaming at the mouth and nipping at his arms to make him move.
Joe healed the damage nearly unconsciously and bobbed his head. “I’ll be wherever you need me to be. Beside you, behind you, or in front of you. Anything to make you find relief with your hands and save these peace talks.”
“Then let’s go!” Lefty and Terror’s heads both whipped to stare in a singular direction, their strange eyes dilating as liquid dripped from their orifices. Foam, saliva, blood. The twin heads screamed from their pent-up frustration as Jaxon started running toward their fleshy desire. Joe had put Daniella down, and they were soon all running through the Guildhall, rushing madly through the back rooms.
“What’s going on? Why are you back here?” Major Cleave appeared and was forced to dodge a bite from Jaxon. “Did you just-”
“Either I bite you, or they do!” Jaxon called as his hands continued yanking him toward what appeared to be a small closet. “Or you get out of the way, I suppose. Joe! Help! A door knob! My greatest weakness when I’m like this!”
“Got it!” Joe grabbed the handle and flung the door open, revealing a pole coated in meat that had been jammed into the floor. “Jaxon! We need to get rid of the bait, so feel free to wrap your mouths around this meat pole!”
“Lefty, Terror, since you’ve been such good hands, Daddy’s gonna let you have a treat.” Jaxon nervously tried to justify this as his choice, and the attempt was so poor that the ravenous hands actually paused to look at him and roll their eyes before tearing into the bait.
An interesting trait of Jaxon’s skill was that any food that was eaten was converted to mana, which meant there was no upper limit to what the hands could ingest. In mere seconds, the meat pole had been stripped down to practically nothing. The dinosaurs panted hot, moist air as they snuffled for anything else they could go after. Moments later, they vanished as Jaxon’s hands reverted to just hands. The man clapped his newly-pink skin and looked at his group, “We did it! We saved the negotiations!”
A group of Legion Elites appeared in the hallway with them, took in their gore-spattered appearance and the bloody closet, then promptly started to hustle them out of the building. Joe could have made a fuss, but he was too relieved to have found the bait in time. Of course, thanks to his Neutrality Aura, he and his team were clean by the time they were tossed out, but the Elites had already decided they were troublemakers.
Joe took a deep, shuddering breath as he scanned the street for any other disturbances. The Elites hadn’t seemed perturbed about anything other than them, which meant everything else was going as well as possible in the meetings. “Now we need to go find Herr Trigger and his group, then get them tossed out of here. Oh… better yet, I can mess with him at a distance!”
Right then and there, he directed three of his Ritual Orbs to hover in front of him and mentally commanded them to spin open into the ritual circles that he had arranged within their internal wiring. When they were in place, connecting wires sprang up between each individual circle to form the physical component of their sympathetic connections. The circles began turning, and Joe pulled out his taglock. With a flick, the drop of blood flew up to hover in the center of the Novice circle. “I’m so glad I just tested to see if I could still use blood as a target… technically, it isn’t used to create the ritual, so no need to investigate the aspect version of his blood.”
“What is this?” Jaxon flicked the wires, making Joe flinch from a durability damage warning. “Never seen this ritual before, and whenever you use blood in something, well, it always seems to be particularly nasty.”
“First, please don’t touch the wires. These take double damage when they’re open like this.” Joe swallowed his concern and tried to hone in on the task at hand. “Second, this is the first time I’m using this, and it is nasty. This is called the Ritual of Insanity, and it was once considered a taboo ritual. Not anymore, though! I didn’t need to involve the things that the original ritual demanded in order to function. Like… you know, it required a finger-sized chunk of flesh from someone the target loves, but that requirement just converted into ten Common aspects when I did up the math. Nice and clean, and no one needed to suffer except the target.”
“Joe… what does a Ritual of Insanity do to someone?” Daniella questioned with a slight quaver in her voice. “Is this what your class is really for? Things like this? Not making or breaking buildings?”
“It does it all!” Joe cheerfully ignored her concerned tone and tossed two Mana Batteries into the diagram to power the ritual in its entirety. The circles began to glow, and soon, aspected mana was flowing through the ritual. As more energy was collected, it slowly gathered inside of the drop of blood. The sanguine droplet began to turn gold, and once it was full of energy, the Novice ritual diagram collapsed.
Joe pulled the restored Ritual Orb back to his bandolier, watching as a glowing energy version of the circle shrank down to a fraction of an inch and started swirling around the blood. The second circle did the same thing a moment later, followed by the third. Joe wiped at the non-existent sweat on his head and turned to smile at the others. “The ritual completed without issue!”
The blood dropped into his hand, transformed into a tiny, perfect sphere with three circles moving around it. An energy barrier kept everything together, allowing Joe to touch the object without interrupting the process within. Daniella stepped forward, her hands clenched into fists. “I asked you a question. What does that do to a person?”
“Hey now… all it does is make them see and hear things that aren’t there. It’s a constant distraction, which is especially useful against someone that attacks at a distance like Herr Trigger.” Joe stared into her hard eyes and narrowed his own. “Abyss, Daniella, take it easy. It’s easy to cancel. Either I just tell it to end, the medallion gets destroyed, or he casts a Student-ranked dispel on himself. Don’t forget that right now, he’s the enemy, Daniella. He tried to kill us all just a few minutes ago, and he’ll do it again.”
“It isn’t right to mess with people’s minds. Not even if they’re the enemy.” She crossed her arms resolutely. “If you aren’t going to act like you have a moral compass, I’m going to push mine on you.”
*Bang.*
Daniella dropped with a scream as a shotgun slug impacted her leg and shattered her femur. Herr Trigger and his cohorts stepped out of the shadows with cheerful smiles and waves. “Why, hello, Team Joe! Look at all these lovely bounties all in one place.”
“Thanks for coming to die and proving my point all in one.” Joe snarled as he healed the damage Daniella had just taken. “What is wrong with you?”
“Die? No, no, I’m here for the show.” Herr Trigger pointed at the Guildhall. “I felt the rumblings. My instruments are very sensitive to movement.”
“We got rid of your bait, Trigger!” Jaxon held his hands up in karate-chop positions. “There’s nothing coming!”
“You got rid of all thirteen bait packs since last we spoke, Joe? I’m impressed.” Trigger’s smirk coincided with Joe’s team’s faces falling. “No~o~o? You didn’t? How shocking.”
*Rumble.*
The ground under the Hamlet shook, and Joe’s mind immediately went to the thought that Herr Trigger had managed to set off a volcanic eruption.
“You want to know why I laughed at the fact that you built your little town here?” The falsely-accented man was forced to shout over the vibration.
A massive hand, with curved black talons made of pure obsidian at the tips of the fingers, burst through the ground around the Guildhall. Magma bubbled through the new fissures as the hand continued emerging. Soon, the entire hall was lifted into the air in the palm of a titanic creature’s hand. The fingers closed around the structure, and the entire thing was yanked under the magma in an explosion of molten rock.
Herr Trigger finished his thought with a satisfied sigh. “You built your little town right in the center of a World Boss’s domain. Trigger warning, my exquisite bounty.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Joe directed an Orb in front of himself and initiated the Ritual of Remote Activation as rapidly as possible. The time from start to activation was approximately one second. Novice rituals didn’t need much in order to get going. As the rain of liquid stone started to splatter down, a golden light shone up through the magma. “The building is intact enough that the stasis effect went through. That’ll give us ten minutes to figure out how to save them!”
“Yes! Good! I highly approve.” Herr Trigger clapped as his team leveled their weapons at Joe’s face. “Give them time to come to the realization that they are in the hands of a World Boss! An area where space is locked, so not even their last-resort teleportation artifacts can function. A creature so much more powerful than them that they cannot hope to win in a direct confrontation, even if the Royal family and the Oligarchy were to work together… but they won’t. The Royal family will do everything to ensure that the Oligarchy falls in this moment. The Ascetic has given them their mission, and they will fulfill it.”
