Untapped ~ Chapter Fifteen!

“Let's get going. If you hop on my back I can get us there in… let's say an hour and a half?” Joe gestured for Boris to hop on, only for the Scholar to scoff disdainfully and slowly shake his head. “No? I suppose we could use the fast travel option at Tatum’s shrine.”

“You are joking, yes?” Boris crossed his arms and stayed put. “I am neither a parcel to be delivered, nor a backpack to be worn. To be perfectly forthright, I’m also not comfortable using the power of your… deity. There's a reason I lived in the alleys between buildings for the last several months. I still have some pride, Joe. I certainly am not about to hop on your back and be carried along like a child. No, if you want this partnership to succeed, you will help me maintain whatever scraps of dignity I have left. We will walk. Perhaps the slower pace will help you put your thoughts in order? In fact, answer this, if you can. When's the last time you took it slow?”

“That’s…” The Ritualist clenched his jaw and rolled his shoulders to try and bleed off his frustration. “Okay, well, in that case I'll need to stop for some supplies. Probably for the best. I shouldn't just vanish without letting my mother know I'm leaving.”

“See?” Boris spread his arms wide, as though he had solved one of his friend’s many problems. “Look at that, taking your time is already paying dividends.”

A short while later, they arrived at the Odds and Ends shop, and Joe found himself on the verge of seeking out some of Havok’s ‘compliance powder’ and knocking Boris out so he could haul him to the guild’s town at speed. Whether it was from long months of malnutrition, a lifetime of not building up his Endurance or Strength characteristics, or if he were just plain trying to irk the Ritualist, Boris trudged along at a snail's pace. Seeing a chance to move quickly, Joe requested his companion wait outside as he purchased supplies, then rushed in to begin gearing up.

Grabbing a small crate of dried rations, two bed rolls, and a lucky find of a Common-rank alchemy cauldron and dozens of empty glass vials, Joe hurried to the counter and set it all out, smiling at his mother—who had been staring at him with one eyebrow raised the entire time he was shopping. “Leaving already? I certainly hope this trip will be shorter than the last one?”

“It has to be,” Joe shot her a knowing grin. “After all, there's a wedding to prepare for. I have a deadline now, and I’ve never missed one before.”

“I'm going to see you before the few weeks we have remaining have passed though, yes? Maybe in just one month?” Brenda dryly questioned while ringing up the goods. “I suppose that might be too much to ask. I know how you are. Haa… all together, twelve silver and eight copper.”

“Silver… right.” Joe patted at his pockets, knowing they were empty since he had scraped the final copper coins from his storage. With a sinking feeling, he realized he hadn't bothered to hold on to any of the currency from Midgard—he had filled his codpiece with far more interesting junk since leaving this world. “I don't suppose-”

“We don't sell on credit,” Brenda firmly informed him, shaking her head at her son's sheepish expression. “I'll cover you this time, as a welcome home present, but you need to find a way to earn a living like the rest of us do. Now, since I figured this would happen, I had a friend pick up some listings. There's a bonus for bear pelts right now, what with winter coming on. Also, if you remember correctly, you can sometimes earn coin from hunting monsters directly. I think you'd be perfectly suited for that task, especially if you’re planning on going out in the wilds anytime soon.”

“I appreciate it.” Joe accepted the papers, which immediately turned into quest notifications. He didn't bother looking at the official system messages, simply noting how hunting down any monster above level fifteen would pay a silver a head. Though Joe obviously kept his mouth shut, the fact was that he only took the bear fur quest out of respect for Brenda, knowing he didn't have a good way to bring in high-quality, undamaged pelts. 

Alternatively, if they were accepting singed, heavily damaged ones; that he could do. Pausing for a long moment, he slowly sidled over to several stacks of stone tile set in the corner of the shop, where a handmade sign reading ‘flooring’ was hanging. Emptying it out directly into his spatial codpiece, he sent a winning smile at his mother. “Since you're covering this one, I hope you don't mind if I-”

“The store doesn't sell on credit, but I will give you some from me personally.” Brenda grimaced at him, shaking her head at his antics. “That's nearly eight gold of cut stone, Joe. Not going to just casually hand that over.”

“I'll pay you back in no time flat,” he promised, giving her a quick hug and running to the exit of the shop as she grumbled in acquiescence. “I'll bring you back a souvenir!”

“I think you’ll regret that choice of words once you get to your guild.” She ominously called after her son as he pulled the door open.

As he came out of the shop, Joe realized Boris was giving him a bemused stare, and realized it appeared as though he had come out empty-handed. He slapped his pelvis, murmuring ‘storage item’ when the Scholar appeared shocked at the nearly-obscene gesture. “Hey Boris, I'm going to run over to the gate and start putting together a small arsenal. Meet me there?”

“I suppose I can manage to get there on my own, but I won't go any further outside of the safety of the city without you being present.” Boris replied after a moment's hesitation. That was all the confirmation Joe needed before turning on his heel and dashing away, determined to make as many rituals as possible before setting out.

Only minutes later, he was outside of the city and collecting dry wood to build a small fire. Under the concerned glances of the guards at the gate, Joe lit a fire by spinning a stick with his hands so quickly that the flames almost immediately flared up. As soon as he had a fire roaring, he pulled out his new, Common-rank cauldron and put it directly on top. Flexing his power, he shaped his mana and flooded the outline of an implement with white aspects to create a simple stirring stick.

Sitting down cross-legged in front of his rudimentary setup, Joe began directing Damaged aspects into the cauldron, using his stir stick to evenly coat the inside of the cauldron as he read the recipe out of the Ritual Combat Manual with his other hand. The entire time he was working, he was mentally translating the simple component cost into its equivalent aspect version, placing droplets of glowing energy alongside the interior of the cauldron as he did so. Between his Alchemical Lore being at Journeyman five, and his Ritualistic Alchemy being at Journeyman three, he was able to brute force the Novice-rank elixir with little issue.

Unfortunately, ‘little’ issue didn’t mean ‘no’ issue.

As he scooped the resulting clear, bubbling mixture out of the depths of the glorified saucepan, Joe looked on in dismay at the interior—which was now coated in a foul, brackish tar clinging to the surface. “How is there even that much in there? I barely used any ingredients, but it looks like I was just melting licorice and boiling it in bacon grease!”

After carefully pouring the single dose of elixir he had managed to make into a glass vial and replacing its stopper, Joe glanced at the oversized pot once more, hoping his Neutrality Aura had swooped in to save the day. Clicking his tongue at how only the edges had lost their burned-on substance, he reached in and began scooping out the foul mixture with his hands, trusting his Exquisite Shell to protect him both from the heat as well as any toxins caught up in the sludge.

Using his other hand to scrape away some dirt, Joe began to tilt his hand, freezing in place as a guard shouted over. “Hey! You’d better not be planning on fouling the ground. There are ways to safely get rid of alchemical residue, but dumping them in a hole is not one of them.”

“Nope, I've got a plan for it!” Joe blustered with a bright, fake smile. Looking back at the hole, he frowned and reached out with his mana, forming an Ascendant Matrix as he poured the ooze into the hole. The guard let out a strangled yell and rushed to stop him. Yet by the time he arrived, Joe had reduced the gunk into Trash aspects. “See? Nothing to worry about!”

After repeating the process dozens of times, Joe had come to a simple conclusion: he was terribly spoiled by the Artifact-quality Morovian cauldron, especially its self-cleaning function. “I can't tell if it's my form, or if this cauldron really is just that bad. Then again, it could be that I'm using a campfire with no heat regulation whatsoever. Hmm.”

An hour later, and dozens of elixirs stowed away in his spatial ring for easy access, there was still no sign of Boris. Joe started to get worried, but instead of thinking about it too much, he pulled out a stack of stone tiles and switched out his stirring stick for a similarly-ranked inscription tool. “Okay, I'm probably going to need a ton of these, ‘cause they don't do much damage. Maybe I'll just pick a few to focus on, especially since Grandmaster Pete told me to figure out how to push the bounds on what's possible with just one? How about…”

Joe chose three variant rituals, which were actually a single ritual, technically considered a second when enhanced by a secondary discipline, then again when a third was used in conjunction with the others. “Ritual of Elemental Burst. This is how you know I’m thinking of you, Sage Mir. Now, if I use it as a simple circle, it sends out a burst of power in a cone centered on the ritual. Kinda like a flamethrower, but it gets its elemental type based on what is most prevalent in the area. Hmm. If I want actual fire, maybe I should carry a torch with me?”

“Or maybe you don't use flames near the forest?” the gate guard called out from his position not terribly far away, where he had been taking an unhealthy interest in what Joe was up to.

Cutting off his desire to make a snarky comeback, Joe reluctantly acknowledged the man in thanks for his advice. “Fair enough. Of course, now I'm going to speak quieter so I have a little privacy over here. Where was I? Right, the basic version is good enough but if I enhance the basic ritual diagram with the elixir substrate and use it as an ink substitute, it’ll cause an Elemental Burst based on… oh, I can set it for either ‘on contact’ or ‘body heat’? Is this the same principle my previous proximity rituals used?”

Happily, he was able to quickly find an answer for how it worked, as the dense notes in the margin of this book explained the theory behind it; as per the standard in the book, being highly detailed for anything using alchemy. This made perfect sense, as the previous owner of the book was attempting to become the Sage of Alchemical Rituals.

Flipping pages, he eventually came to a section on theory. “Yeah… let's see, compounds, make ink, or substrates, yep, here it is. Alchemy creates specialized compounds similar to alloys which can change states or properties when exposed to specific triggers. If I’m reading this right, instead of remaining as static diagrams with a singular purpose, alchemy can be combined into the rituals to create potent versions which respond to ambient mana, fluctuations, or even… emotional states? How would that work?”

Joe looked up from his book, thinking about the new-to-him concept and reluctantly agreeing with the premise. “If enchanted items eventually can be considered ‘living’, I suppose this makes at least as much sense. Emotions, though? How does someone bottle a response to an emotion? That’d be like figuring out how to make the opposite of a love potion.”

Flipping back to his planned diagrams, Joe looked at the third version of the ritual. It was still labeled as ‘Elemental Burst’, but this time with the addition of an enchantment in the circle. When he had first read through it, the Ritualist had been greatly surprised to learn that the most basic version of the skill was incredibly simple: just add blood as a targeting material. According to Grandmaster Pete's annotations, the reason for it was simple.

-Blood carries a distinct magical signature which ties the ritual to the target, essentially functioning as a living, or perhaps a better term would be ‘parasitic’ enchantment. This is called biological anchoring, an ages-old substitute for creating an enchantment token for binding magic onto a target. 

“Abyss, if I had still been using blood regularly in my rituals, I bet I’d be out of the Student ranks in that skill by now.” Even as his inscription tool flew over tile after tile, barely needing a few seconds to design the basic Elemental Burst ritual, he compared the results of the three-skill-using ritual circle to the proximity type which would be the result of using only the circle, and alchemy. “Adding in a drop of blood, or a splash if I'm moving fast, will cause the Elemental Burst to form on the surface of the target. If I were using fire, not that I would—just in case a nearby guard has an Expert-ranked snooping skill—that would look like… what? Instant immolation? Light the target on fire all over their body? Yeah, I can see how that would be a lot more effective.”

“Ready to go, Joe?” Boris called from where he had parked himself just inside the city's gates. The Ritualist looked over, trying not to show exactly how relieved he was to see that the elderly Scholar had safely arrived. “Burning daylight right now, and I’d rather not get caught out in the dark without a plan.”

“Absolutely! Let's get going, Boris.” Joe quickly stored away all of his completed rituals, and was about to stand up and get moving when he saw how slowly his traveling companion was walking toward him, leaning heavily on a long walking stick he had likely been gifted from Joe's mother. 

Staring at the old man with a nonplussed expression, the Ritualist slowly settled back down into a seated position, and continued drawing the simple Novice rituals; a single circle overlaid with triple triangles poking out of one side of the diagram, all facing the same direction. Just under the triangles were symbols denoting simple concepts of the elements: a square with a circle in the center for stone, which tended to stay the same, but could be weathered down over time. A swirly figure-eight for wind, showing air in perpetual motion. A coiling flame which could have been found on the notebooks of eighth graders the world over, and finally a trio of raindrops next to each other to denote water. 

Between his Master rank in ritual circles, and current hundred and fifty points in Dexterity, such simplistic formulation required almost no thought or effort. By the time Boris had joined him next to the campfire, Joe had finished another thirty-six of the diagrams on the stone tiles.

“Well? Are you just going to sit there all day?” 

“I’m asa ready as I can be.” Joe looked up at the irritated Scholar, then his eyes flicked over to the horizon, where the sun had shifted upward a fraction of a degree since he had walked out of the gate. “If it's not too rude of me to ask, what’s your Constitution characteristic sitting at right now? Dexterity? Strength?”

“It is rude, but I suppose it’s pertinent to what we’re doing.” Boris stiffly replied, tapping his walking stick on the ground twice. “I'm not going to give you exact numbers, but anywhere between thirty to fifty for each of those. Don’t wince at me like that, young man! Not all of us are sitting at the mortal limit for characteristics and therefore more than fifteen times the Earth-human limit. It's clear what you’re getting at, and the fact is that I move at a perfectly reasonable pace.”

Joe silently agreed to disagree. Even so, he got to his feet and began strolling alongside Boris as the man moved at what seemed like nothing more than a sedate, serene pace to the Ritualist. For the first ten minutes, the walk was very peaceful, if rather boring. 

Hoppily, Joe soon saw fluffy creatures bounding along in the underbrush next to the road—a perfect test target for his new combat rituals if they decided to make a nuisance of themselves. With his Midgard-peak Perception, he was easily able to distinguish the twitching noses, wide eyes, and long ears from the bushes and grasses the rabbits were trying to use to hide themselves. It was fun to just watch nature, yet Joe eventually grew tired of the creatures and stopped paying much attention to them.

An understandable, if unfortunate mistake.

Completely by reflex, Joe plucked a leaping rabbit out of the air as it launched itself at Boris with a feral squeak, blinking at it in surprise as it struggled in his grip. “Celestial feces, did you see that catch? I wasn't even looking!”

“Joe…” Boris's eyes were wide, trembling as he stared at the rabbit frantically snarling and snapping at him as though it were a rabid dog. “You’ve been to multiple worlds, completed dozens of quests, and slain thousands of monsters… right? Please tell me that you've completed an escort quest somewhere in all of that?”

“Err…” Joe glanced around, the rustling in the underbrush reaching a fever pitch. “Not so much, no. Is that a problem?”

“So long as you can keep me safe, not a problem at all.” Boris stated with a quiver in his voice. “It's just, you see, the first time someone does an escort quest, the difficulty of it scales to make it a challenge. At least, it tries to, I don't know what happens if you’re at the maximum possible strength for the world.”

Joe shook his head disbelievingly, “This isn't a quest, so that doesn’t matter, right?  I'm just bringing you over to my guild area to give you a job. If anything, you're completing a quest for me.”

“I have reason to believe the system doesn’t see it that way.” Boris whispered as dozens of rabbits broke cover, bounding across the road toward them. Just then, a notification popped up, and the Ritualist was forced to agree with the Scholar’s assessment.

Ding! Ding! 

Mandatory Quest gained: Ringing the Dinner Bell. You have gained a dynamic difficulty quest, one which has been tagged as an audience favorite. As this is the first time you are escorting a singular, local entity to a new location in order to house them in a new area under your direct supervision—also known as an escort quest—you’ll need to fight! Future escort quest modifiers may be impacted by the manner of success or failure of this quest. Main objective: Ensure Boris survives the journey. Do not carry, launch, teleport, or otherwise induce Boris to move in a way not under his own power. He must remain above 50% health. Remain within 100 feet of Boris for the entire journey. Reward: Boris arrives in Towny McTownface.

Optional objective: Do not allow Boris to take any damage. Reward: Potion of tripled walking speed. (Boris only.)

Optional objective: Defeat 100 hostile creatures during your journey. Reward: Amulet of Damage Immunity (Boris only, 10 minute effect), for each 100 additional hostile creatures defeated, increase the effect by an additional 10 minutes. 

Failure: Boris dies or flees, never to attempt this quest again.

Activating three of his new rituals, Joe watched as a trio of cones of sharpened rock manifested and launched into the ranks of rushing rabbits. Each of the rituals generated a burst of shards every second for ten seconds, dealing a paltry eleven and a quarter damage each. Not enough to scratch Joe's health regeneration, but more than enough to obliterate every last one of the fluffy creatures. The Ritualist glanced over at Boris, who had gasped at the wave of crimson mist spraying into the air.

Squeezing down on the skull of the final rabbit, still squirming while clutched in his hand, Joe officially ended the first wave of attacks with a light *crunch*. 

“Don't worry. I've got this.”