CC 11: Thunderplump ~ Eighteen!

The knock on his door came even faster than he was expecting, but Joe was still ready. He threw open the entrance, a wide smile on his face as he took in the visage of his old party member, Major Cleave. He lifted his hand in greeting, opening his mouth to exchange pleasantries, but she cut him off with a brusque, “Really, Joe? A ring of fire around the entire Town? Is that meant as a Town defense, or are you trying to slow cook us all?”

“Are they calling for my head already?” Joe tutted and put his hands on his hips. “It's an effective method of damaging monsters ahead of time, and as it grows, it may even wipe out the entirety of the Penguin caste of monsters.”

By the way she glared at him, Joe knew he’d said something that the Dwarf in charge of the defense of the walls didn't like to hear. “As it grows? That fire out there is going to get worse?”

Joe pressed his lips together, refusing to speak until he was certain that the words he was going to say weren't going to open him up to further blame. “That's not really fire, per se. It’s magical plants that use extreme cold to grow and propagate rapidly. In fact, because we’re at the center of the ring, you should’ve felt the same warm breeze that I did.”

“Can it be called a warm wind if it’s fifty degrees below the freezing point?” Cleave snorted at him, though she did seem to be letting some of the tension in her arms and shoulders go.

The Ritualist crossed his arms, deciding against pretending to be polite about this issue any further. “Yes. It can. When the usual gusts hit negative seventy below freezing, that can at least be called ‘warmer’. If a ring of fire—which is entirely contained by its own nature—will help protect the Town, then that's what I'm going to make.”

“It's contained? How?”

Joe ignored the question for the moment, instead going deeper into his workshop and grabbing a few stacks of ritual tiles off the table before joining Major Cleave outside. The Ritualist went perfectly still. He hadn't been expecting such a large crowd of angry civilians to be surrounding his workshop, but…

“What? Are we doing this again?” He directly challenged the glaring civilians. “You have a problem with the things I'm doing to make sure that we win? Well, too bad! If you want protection to look a certain way, then you should be out there making it happen, not complaining that it is happening! Are you all so bored because you haven't had to deal with any monsters getting into your shops recently that you came out in force to parade around? Forget this. I'm putting a Ritual of Quarantine on my workshop. If anyone comes within a dozen feet of it, better be ready to projectile vomit out of your–”

Major Cleave stepped forward and lifted a device that was shining brightly, and as she spoke, her voice was magnified fifty fold. “The council, and therefore the Town, has already conferred about this new development and found councilman Joe to have done Novusheim a great service. As he’s already stated, we need defenses, and we need resources. There have been very few expeditions setting out since our arrival, and over eighty percent of them have been initiated by, funded by, or directly spearheaded by Master Joe.”

She went on to explain that the council would be taking the lead in sending people out in the near future, using the Fast Travel network that Joe had set up as a starting point. The Ritualist himself simply looked on incredulously, the mounting frustration he’d been feeling stripped away as he realized that she really had just been checking to make sure there was no other malicious intent behind his actions.

“Hmm. Major Cleave, I guess I can't fault you for doing your due diligence, even if it's annoying,” he muttered, loudly enough to get a sidelong glance from the Major. She continued speaking in hopes of collecting a large group of volunteers. When there was a lull in the conversation, Joe realized that he’d just been asked to lead a few more expeditions.

Shaking his head, he spoke louder so that the assembled people could hear him, the Ritualist offered an olive branch. “Nope! Currently I’m focused on Town defense and making sure that we survive to have an official City. After that, who knows? But, I’ll facilitate expeditions when possible. If anyone needs funding or specific help, either myself or one of my new students will help you out.”

Then, ignoring any further conversation—whether positive or negative—Joe Omnivaulted to the top of his workshop, kicking off the roof and arcing away in the direction of the celestial observatory. “See, this is why powerful Mages need to have enormous towers away from civilization. Everyone wants something, and half the people are angry when they get it. Then, even when everyone calms down and realizes it was for their own good, the meteor the mage called is already en route and can’t be stopped.”

As he landed near his destination, Joe walked a few more paces until he arrived at one of the messenger stands that had been set up. Pulling out a note, he wrote out a few questions and handed it to the messenger on duty, along with a small ingot of alloy. “Please deliver this to Grandmaster Havoc. I'll be waiting for a reply, but I need to know what his progress toward completing his project is.”

“Grandmaster H-Havoc? On it.” The messenger licked his lips and nodded, even if it was somewhat nervously. The ingot of alloy vanished into his pocket, and he turned and ran without another word.

Leaving the cold of the day behind him, Joe stepped into the observatory and firmly closed the door behind him. Then he walked straight to the center of the room, pulled out the bean bag chair that he’d been using while bubble-traveling around the world, and sank into it while watching the ceiling above him. Letting out a deep sigh, he pulled out a blank notebook and started detailing all of the constellation homework that his students had turned in. “If I use the first section of my notes for Novice stuff, then write out progressively harder combinations, I could turn this into a legitimate lore book.”

The sound of his quill scratching over parchment, combined with the low voices of people in the room, generated a soothing ambience that acted as a balm to his frayed nerves. When he had completed his writing, he closed the notebook and his eyes. “I really jumped down Major Cleave’s throat there, huh? It's not like I don't have plenty of precedent to point at. I do something, other people come after me for it, then we work to resolve it… but that wasn't her fault. It was never her fault.”

Feeling fairly guilty, he sent a Message spell to the Dwarf, who replied almost instantly with a stoic acceptance of his apology. The spell instantly leveled up to Beginner one, almost as if in acknowledgment of his attempts at being a better person. With that weight off of his mind, Joe was able to calm down and assess the situation in a different light. “It seems like the council is fully on my side, finally. I can't even count the number of sticks I've had to break on them, but maybe now we toss them a carrot. My plan is always to incentivize good behavior and make sure to immediately punish… Abyss, I am turning into an Oligarch.”

That thought drew a rueful chuckle out of him, and he bent his thoughts toward finding an effective reward that would be useful for everyone in the city. “Only thing I can think of is how massive this world is. I think… perhaps the best thing would be to expand the network of Fast Travel shrines. But how do I do that without having to go there myself?”

Perhaps it was the fact that the stars were twinkling above him, or that the environment was just right, but as Joe's eyes landed on Jotunheim’s version of the North star, something *clicked*. “I've been doing all of the work already, why don't I just combine it?”

Pulling out a large sheet of parchment, he hurriedly began sketching out his thoughts. “Endless monsters, which means I'll have as many aspects up to the Rare rank as I could ever desire. Even when the City is completed, we’ll have to deal with Beast Waves forever. I can use that to work in our favor; just like that we have our building supplies.”

The first building in what would become a production line was sketched on his parchment. “The A.S.P.E.C.T. tower will hold all of the aspects, and I’ll need to figure out how to hook the aspect jars up to the next piece. Hopefully, I can get Grandmaster Havoc excited about this project, and he’ll point out some areas to improve.”

Joe tapped on the open space then started sketching. “With the excess power generated by the Mana Battery recharge stations, we could have a fairly endless source of mana to fuel the rituals and construction. Good. We have a power source; we have materials. Next is a permanent ritual that creates the shrines, and finally someone on the end of the production line that uses the Ritual of the Traveling Civilization—already in place—to put the shrines out there in a grid pattern until we have access to the entirety of the planet.”

The Ritualist stared at the parchment in disbelief. Even though it was a rough plan and was missing a few key components, he was holding in his hands their best chance of gaining access to the entirety of Jotunheim. “I can even leave here, after my students are trained up to an acceptable level, and leave them in charge of running this and performing all necessary maintenance. It's… this is probably my best plan ever.”

Making a few additional changes, the Ritualist scanned the document one last time and stored it away. Right now, they had much more immediate problems. Still, he made sure that he wouldn’t forget this, because there was no one else who could possibly bring this to fruition. It was a heady feeling to realize that he was the only person who could accomplish something of this magnitude. “But before that, more work. Lots and lots of work. Let's see if I can figure out the star clusters that coincide with the Ritual of Slaughter. I'd love to revamp that to be even more powerful.”

Over the next few hours, he rapidly gained skill levels in his Celestial-Arcane Interaction Lore skill, breaking through into the Beginner ranks—then all the way up to Beginner six—before he was interrupted by a messenger with a return message from Grandmaster Havoc. As Joe packed up his documents, his bean bag chair, and prepared to go and meet his mentor, he couldn't take his eyes off the cluster of green and purple constellations—plural—that he thought might meet the minimum requirements for the Ritual of Slaughter.

“I'll be back to look at you more closely,” He promised the stars in the sky, which twinkled with a–perhaps imagined–subtle sanguine malevolence. Then the Ritualist hurried off, because Havoc’s message had only consisted of two words.

It’s ready.