CC 11: Thunderplump ~ Twenty-One!

Seventeen attempts. Seventeen failures. On the eighteenth, the failure that would have taken the last bit of his hope was mitigated by the special effect of his ingot hammer activating and forcing a success. As the energy crackled out of his tool and the anvil took form, Joe was forced to hold back tears of relief. He’d promised himself he wouldn't leave until he succeeded, but the fact that he had gotten within a single hammer’s blow of success at least a dozen times had well and truly thrashed his desire to continue.

Ritualistic Forging (Journeyman II → Journeyman III).

Feat of craftsmanship completed: Workhorse Montage I. You have gained skill levels in at least three different crafting-based disciplines while working for 72 hours straight. +1 to all stats!

“Yay, a whole skill level and a tiny Characteristic point bump,” Joe deadpanned as he let his hammer slip into his codpiece. Quickly checking over the anvil and finding that he couldn’t tell what type of metal he’d made it out of, the Ritualist stored the several-hundred-pound item into his codpiece and sent up a silent thanks that the legendary spatial storage device fully removed the weight of whatever was put inside. “That was surprisingly small for an anvil. What, two feet across? I wonder how dense that material really is, that it’s so heavy and so small.”

His body suddenly froze, as though he had been chomped by a full-grown hydra and pumped full of paralytic, caustic acid. Pain rippled through him, tingling his nerves and causing each part of him to shake to its own rhythm. The sound of a handful of notifications pinging in his head at the same time was a minor annoyance in comparison to the abrupt agony that was filling him. People were shouting, though they sounded as though he were underwater, but the words that he could make out comforted him greatly.

“Joe’s down! Get a healer!”

“He is the healer, find someone else! Maybe a cleric!”

“No, he is a cleric, find someone else! An Alchemist!”

“No, the Alchemist is too freaky, get the Council!”

“Interrupt the Council of Masters? You're out of your mind! Make him deal with it on his own!”

“Yeah, that's a good idea.”

“Oh. Didn't know that was an option. Great.”

The sound of hammers ringing on metal started up again, only to be interrupted by Growmore rushing over and gripping the sides of Joe's head. “Hey, lad! Going by the lack of foaming at the mouth, puncture marks, or bleeding, it looks like you’re going through a multi-threshold breakthrough. Hold tight to that thought, and just go ahead and let go of consciousness if it lets you.”

That option never came, and the entire time his body was going through the agony of sudden upgrades across the board, he tried to piece together where all of the increases had come from. His Characteristics had been jumping for days, but always in small spurts. He vaguely recalled gaining a boatload of Perception and Wisdom while detailing the constellations. There’d been a boost in his Charisma not even worth mentioning thanks to his handling of various crowds as well as his students.

Dexterity and Perception once more had been rapidly growing under the care of Jake the Alchemist, and it went without saying that such an intense round of smithing would show benefits for his Strength and Constitution. Then, of course, his mental attributes fed into his physical ones—thanks to the perk he’d chosen when he first got to Alfheim—giving them a boost.

He pulled up his character sheet, looking at the adjustments so he could feel he had at least some kind of control.

Name: Joe ‘Tatum’s Chosen Legend' Class: Reductionist

Profession I: Arcanologist (Max)

Profession II: Ritualistic Alchemist (7/20)

Profession III: Grandmaster’s Apprentice (15/25)

Profession IV: None

Character Level: 28 Exp: 423,159 Exp to next level: 11,841

Rituarchitect Level: 13 Exp: 87,450 Exp to next level: 3,550

Reductionist Level: 9 Exp: 53,000 Exp to next level: 2,000

Hit Points: 2,854/2,854

Mana: 6,561/8,988

Mana regen: 85.5/sec

Stamina: 1,350/2,140

Stamina regen: 6.8/sec

Characteristic: Raw score

Strength (bound): 188 → 200

Dexterity: 189 → 200

Constitution (bound): 188 → 200

Light Intelligence (Bound): 208

Wisdom: 185 → 200

Dark Charisma: 151 → 159

Perception: 189 → 200

Luck: 123 → 138

Karmic Luck: 25 → 26

“Karmic Luck even went up? Oh. That feat didn't say it excluded Karmic Luck. Interesting.” Joe looked at all of the numbers that stayed steady in his mind's eye, even as his head bounced off the floor, and his eyes rattled around in his skull. “Seriously? wait a second… did I get my old moderator back, or is the new one messing with me? One, two… five different Characteristics hit two hundred at the same time? There's no way that's an accident.”

The potent side effects of his sudden breakthrough started slowing, though the results remained. His nervous system became more effective and responsive, his bones and muscles shifted to being denser yet more supple, and every sense reached a point that was unrecognizable to basic humans. All of this combined meant that, even though he had been given back control of his body once more, his attempts at moving caused him to flail and damage himself and the floor he was laying on.

The difference from one hundred and ninety-nine points to two hundred was a qualitative shift. A single point shouldn't have been able to change everything about him so drastically, but… it did. Joe's mind had been at this threshold for a while already, so it was able to facilitate the shift well. His mind interfaced with his senses, coming into harmony at the fifth threshold. Once he had control of his senses, they interfaced with his Dexterity to give him balance, which let his muscles and bones align. Fractions of a second after he’d first started spasming around, Joe smoothly lifted to his feet and flexed his powerfully enhanced muscles.

“Whew. What a rush.”

“You think that's good, wait until your Charisma gets on parity.” Growmore chuckled as he gave Joe a hearty slap that didn’t cause the human to move even a fraction of an inch.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think that my Charisma isn't at the fifth threshold?”

“Just… you know… the whole…” Growmore waved a hand over the entirety of Joe's face, “…thing you've got going on here. Hey, changing the subject really fast, you should try picking up something you thought was heavy a moment ago.”

Only hesitating for a moment, Joe pulled out the anvil that he’d just created and lifted it into the air with only a very light grunt. “Huh. Yeah. I see what you mean. That’s… something new. I wonder how this’ll impact my ability to manipulate mana?”

“Depends. If you've got your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Perception in the same tier, you'll probably notice a marked difference.” Seeing the slight smile on Joe's face made the Dwarf scoff in amazement. “Don't tell me you got all of that at the same time.”

“Of course not!” Joe replied immediately, waiting until the Dwarf had settled down slightly to finish his thought. “I got Intelligence there weeks ago. It was only five Characteristics that pushed through the bottleneck. At the same time. Just now.”

“Get outta here before I chase you out with this new ice pick I just made.” Growmore hissed at Joe as he made a few threatening stabs in the Ritualist’s direction.

“I'm going, I'm going!” Joe laughed as he walked toward the door. Or, at least, he thought he walked there. To his own perception, he simply strolled across the room and put his hand on the door knob, but he was followed by a sound that was not quite a sonic boom, but still caused the water in the air to condense into a liquid form as he passed through.

“Blasted newbie mages!” Growmore snarled as he waved a hand and funneled the falling water out of the air and away from the forges.

“No, I’ve been a Mage for a while,” Joe informed him with great confusion. “But I didn't use a spell just now, that was just from moving!”

“Yeah, I know.” Growmore made a shooing motion at the Ritualist. “Don't worry about it; I’m using an old classification that doesn't matter anymore. Get!”

Stepping outside, the bald man flexed and stretched, feeling how his clothes strained against his body. “It's kind of nice to have tactile feedback that says that wasn't a nightmare, and this isn't a dream. Annoying that I'll probably have to go and buy new clothes, though.”

Congratulations! Beast Waves completed: 25/100.

All future Beast Waves during the rank up of your Town to a City will occur 6 hours apart; a 2 hour decrease in time between waves.

Bonus: as no monsters have managed to enter into the center of your protected zone during the first 25 waves, Novusheim has been granted a 25% total increase in morale!

You have proven your resilience! Beast Wave number 26 will start immediately, so you don't need to wait for more enemies to sharpen your blades against!

Horns began blowing, and at first Joe ignored them. It made sense that the people on the walls would call for reinforcements, as they hadn't had even a moment to switch out with fresh combatants. Only as the horns took on a more dire note, blowing a fourth time, did he hurry to see what was going on. “A single blast is beasts spotted in the distance, two are stealthy ones having entered the walls. What was three again? A Boss Monster? So… I don't even know what four toots of the horn is!”

There was only one way to find out, and Joe was perfectly happy to test out his upgraded physique on the way. Crouching down slightly, he burst forward with a push of his leather-clad foot, causing a geyser of snow to erupt into the air as he set off at a run. He could feel the strain of his movement, but it was no different than when he was running hard to beat his best time during his military days on earth. It certainly didn't feel like he was careening through the Town at over a hundred miles an hour.

But he was—and it was exactly as awesome as he’d always dreamed it would be.

The innermost wall of the Town was rapidly coming closer, and Joe was able to calculate at a glance the angle he needed to jump, exactly how much force he needed to put behind it, and how his Characteristics would mesh with his skills. “Omnivault!”

If before he had created a geyser of snow, now he was the start of an avalanche as he shot wildly into the air, crossing more than double his previous record for leaping a single time.

Skill updated: Omnivault. As you have broken through the 5th threshold of physical Characteristics, your skill sets will reflect the input of your Characteristics.

Omnivault: jump upward (Strength/10 → Strength/5) feet directly upward from a standstill, or leap forward (Strength/10 → Strength/5)*3 feet.

“I can jump forty feet straight up from a standstill? No wonder basketball doesn't exist in this world. That means I just leapt one hundred and twenty feet in less than a second… I should go pounce on a cheetah or something just to freak it out.” Still extremely exuberant about his massive increase in personal power, he hurried along until he arrived at the nearest sentry. “Hey! So sorry, I missed the meeting where they assigned what the horns meant. What does four toots mean? Heh. Toots. Fun word.”

“Uh. Yeah. Master Joe… we didn't have that signal until just now,” the Legionnaire informed him with a weak salute, his eyes trained on the horizon. “As to what it means, see for yourself.”

The Ritualist turned to look in the same direction, scanning the distant horizon and not understanding at first what he was supposed to be seeing. “Okay, pretty standard, monsters everywhere. Regular horizon, mountain in the distance, I don't see the issue?”

“Councilman Joe. Respectfully, Jotunheim doesn't have mountains.”

“Oh. Oh, no.”