CC 11: Thunderplump ~ Twenty!

Walking away from the new addition to the ritual tower staging yard without looking back was a test of his willpower, but Joe tried to keep his body language calm and his breathing even. “If I don't make a big deal out of it, why would anyone else? There's only one of them right now anyway, not a sequence of Chernobyl events all lined up in serial waiting to melt down and take out the last vestiges of the Dwarven population.”

He tried to stop that line of thinking but couldn't stop himself from nervously giggling and adding one last thought. “No, we won't have the meltdown sequence all set up until at least next week.”

With that, he was finally able to break away from his doomsayer mindset and turned his attention to what should be happening in the near future. With the Dwarven engineers and craftsmen building ritual towers, training up a cadre of Ritualists to arm them, and now having a hopefully permanent energy source to provide the fuel, Joe's daily task list had dropped to ‘I get to do whatever I want to do’. As he realized this, the constipated grin plastered on his face settled into a much more natural expression, and his attention began roving the area within the walls of the city.

“Should I do enchanting first? No, that's a bad idea. That’d take away time from Havoc and the others, and we need them to finish the additional recharge stations.” Joe pondered his other crafts, feeling a little leery about losing days at a time going back and observing the stars. “I've been making a lot of metal recently, so maybe I should go and exercise my right to alchemical training while I still can.”

As he walked toward the Pyramid of Panacea, Joe activated his Knowledge skill, double selecting Alchemical Lore to bring its level up to Student eight. “Glad I remembered to do that before I was in eye or earshot of Jake. Don't want to get caught ‘skipping steps’ again.”

The door of the pyramid was one of the only ones in the entire city that he needed to knock on and still wait to enter. It irked him slightly, but standing in the cold gave him a few moments for self-reflection, and Joe chuckled at the realization that he was starting to feel entitled to his position in the current social hierarchy. “I guess that's just what happens when you have an entire city that has no houses or personal living spaces. Everything is a workshop or a public space. Kind of weird, when I actually think about it.”

The door opened, once more revealing Baumann instead of Jake the Alchemist. “Master Joe! You’re back! Excellent, I've got to tell you, Jake has really been awesome to work with. He's also…. very persuasive about my aptitude as an–”

“Jake, if you steal him from me, you lose the temporary bonus!” Joe called out succinctly. Then the air itself seemed to freeze in his lungs as an aura of bloodlust washed over him for a fraction of a moment. He looked to the side, meeting the eyes of the highly talented Neophyte, and nodded slightly. “You shouldn't have to worry about him trying to sway you over anymore.”

“Oh… yeah, that's… that's what I was going for. Yes.” The Dwarf's nose was once again bright red, showing that he was beginning to blush.

Wondering if he’d just made a terrible mistake, Joe surreptitiously checked his messages, but there was no notification of his Luck threshold impacting him. “Doesn't mean that it's not, just that it isn't telling me. Yet.”

“I see that you’ve returned and are ready to dive into the deep end of the alchemical pool,” Jake commented with his usual bland, stoic monotone. “Good. I feel that you have been wasting your precious time learning from me. Instead of specializing in excellent, useful areas, you’ve been tinkering with lesser crafts. Does that change today?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Joe returned with a sheepish grin. “I managed to offload all of my other responsibilities, besides teaching, and I'm going to take a few dozen Beast Waves’ worth of time to improve my overall crafting ability. But-!”

The Ritualist quickly made an addendum to his words as annoyance crossed Jake's face, and he started to turn away, “But I came here first! Because I know it’s the most useful.”

“Hmm.” Jake seemed to decide against pressing further and simply waved toward the cauldron in the exact center of the pyramid. “I suppose you are going to take the best spot once again and still not recognize its absolute intrinsic value. Might as well get on with it, then.”

“I recognize it. I built this place!” Joe defensively argued. Those were the last words he spoke for at least a dozen hours that did not have some significance to the task at hand. Jake had a masterful plan in mind and set Joe and Baumann against each other to see who could pick up a new potion, new trick, new style, faster and more efficiently than the other.

The Neophyte and the Ritualist went head to head, with the Dwarf gaining a skill level every single time he attempted a new recipe, whether he completed it or not. Joe, on the other hand, had no interest in losing to what was supposed to be his star disciple. His pride demanded that he put every effort he possibly could into succeeding, so as not to be shown up. Throughout the entire process, Jake's voice was constantly speaking directly into their ears, guiding them through difficult Draughts, complex Vials, and edging into low-ranked Philters as Joe's skill ranks shot up.

As the Ritualist scooped a multicolored liquid out of his cauldron, pouring it into his container with a swirl and flourish that would allow it to showcase its most potent effects, he finally pushed into the Student ranks of Ritualistic Alchemy.

Congratulations! Training under a… calculating… Master of Alchemy has done wonders for rapid skill growth!

Ritualistic Alchemy has reached Student III!

Ritualistic Alchemist Profession experience gained: 1,680.

Congratulations! You have reached Ritualistic Alchemist level 7. As a level 7 Ritualistic Alchemist, you gain a profession bonus. Randomizing…. bonus gained.

Elemental Equilibrium: This profession bonus allows you to add alchemical reagents to rituals to mimic the effects of adding additional elements into the ritual or balancing out conflicting elements. All ritual-specific reagents you create will now have their elemental affinity listed and can be sacrificed to a ritual to add or negate a specific elemental effect without the remaining effects of the reagent impacting the ritual.

Joe turned his eyes to the dozens of stoppered flasks he had filled with various-ranked alchemical liquids, reading over each of them and their effects. Focusing on his two favorites, he found that, just as promised, they now also showed their elemental affinities—some of which were… strange.

Item created: Philter of Ethersync. Effect(s): Reduces loss of mana due to channeling in rituals by 18.4% (Maximum: Student Ranked rituals). Enhances the emotional connection between the activating Ritualist and their ritual circles, allowing the ritual activator to understand problem areas and gain better control of the sympathetic flows of power.

Elemental affinity: Dreams, Exceptions, Water.

Item created: Draught of Clarity. Effect(s): Focuses the mind of the ritual activator, allowing them to hold a more complex mental image of a ritual pattern in their mind. (Maximum: Apprentice Ranked rituals).

Elemental affinity: Time, Health, Lightning.

“What the what? Elemental Affinity of Dreams? How is ‘Exceptions’ considered an elemental affinity?” Joe's mumbling didn’t go unnoticed, and a slight smile appeared on Jake's face.

“Sounds like somebody got a rank in their profession! Congratulations. You should really take some time to go and consolidate the foundation you have been building in this discipline.” Jake shook Joe's hand and pushed him toward the door. “By that, I mean take your potion-quality swill and get out of this building before it is impacted by your wastefulness. Frankly, I'm shocked that you could get anything less than a perfect twenty percent reduction in the loss of mana in a Philter of Ethersync. I'm literally shook by that knowledge, as I've never seen it happen before.”

Before the Ritualist had another moment to think, the door was already slamming behind him. A *tinkle* sound of glass shattering drew his attention to the fact that the sudden shift in temperature had caused one of the glass vials to shatter. With a muttered curse, he swept the remainder of them into his codpiece and started walking away.

“What was that… fourteen hours? Not bad.” Joe looked into the distance, where the ever-present sound of creatures roaring in fury and pain emanated. “Sounds like the walls are holding, and no alarms are going off. If that's the case… done with alchemy, onto smithing!”

Hustling over to the forge, Joe found that all of the workstations were occupied and patiently waited out one of the smiths who was pounding molten metal into shape. Joe filled his time with testing various ritual components, trying to decide if he should keep his new potions for himself or hand them off to the soon-to-be-Ritualists and deciding which of the forging projects he should work on next. He was only at the first rank of Journeyman, and although he had managed to make items above his rank before, he wanted something he could do consistently. His eyes fell on one document and lit up. “Or, I could create something that lets me skip coming here all the time.”

It was an ambitious project, but Joe tapped on the template for a ‘Ritual Anvil’ to show that he was going to be completing it today. “A small, portable anvil that’s great for on-the-go ritual component crafting. It can only facilitate the creation of ritual-based items, and even though it’s an Expert-ranked template, only Student-ranked items at best can be made upon it.”

He looked around the bustling workshop and gave a small shrug. “Not like it's going to matter to me all that much; I always have access to this place when I need it. But, when I get tired of using this thing—or lugging it around—I can just offload it on a member of the coven, and they’ll be eternally grateful. Good. I like this plan.”

He was a full rank below the minimum requirement of being able to easily, or at least consistently, complete the project. Still, Joe understood that greater difficulty came with greater rewards. Full of energy and ready to use his muscles after more than half a day of fiddling with minuscule alchemical components in the form of aspects, Joe swung his ingot hammer at the thick bar of aspects waiting for him. His first strike was practically a thing of beauty, the hammer singing in the air as it vibrated in resonance with his own emotions.

As he worked on the project, humming slightly just because he felt good, everything just seemed to flow. The aspects were shaping up well, the patterns and divots created by his hammer were well ordered, and just as it felt like everything was coming together, the center of the anvil sizzled, sparked, and a small crack appeared that shot from top to bottom. The still-forming metal disintegrated into a shower of sparks and aspects, burning holes through whatever they touched—rapidly reducing the durability of the building as a whole.

“Sorry, sorry!” Joe shouted as a wave of complaints broke out, especially from those who had been lit on fire by the failure. Still, it wasn't even the first time today that most of them had gone up in flames, so no one was too upset. The Ritualist turned back to his anvil and his anvil project, closing his eyes and envisioning what had gone wrong. “Okay… think. It looked like it started at the top, but it moved through the entirety of the item too fast. So it must’ve been a flaw in the internal structure. Where’d I go wrong?”

After visualizing his process several times, Joe noticed a tiny discrepancy between his memory and what the template showed. “Ah… there it is. I should be able to fix that this time around.”

His second attempt was even more promising. The anvil had fully formed, and he was using a chisel to tap symbols into its outer edges that would allow it to focus the energies of his class and profession into the items that would be created on it. Unfortunately, as he leaned over the still-glowing, almost completed object, a single drop of sweat formed on the tip of his nose, falling off and splashing onto the semi-solid energy of the anvil. It caused a chain reaction that made the metal collapse in on itself as if it had been surrounding a tiny black hole. Not even a single mote of light escaped before the anvil was gone.

“Here I was, thinking that putting my blood, sweat, and tears into a project was supposed to make it succeed.” Since he had to either decide to be furious or try to make light of the situation, Joe went with humor.

Continuing to power on, the Ritualist felt like the third attempt was the one that would absolutely succeed. The anvil took shape, the symbols were formed—he had double-checked his Neutrality Aura this time around to mop up any loose sweat—but as he completed his final swing, a glow from the building itself around him collected on the surface of his project and reduced it to slag.

Ritualistic Forging (Journeyman I → Journeyman II)

“Right, I'm going to count that as a win. It clearly succeeded then was derailed.” Feeling more than just a hint of despair, Joe stared at the pool of molten metal and let out a deep sigh before starting again. “Taken down by a malicious manifestation of Special aspects. I see how it is. Well, I’m not leaving until I succeed.”