CC 11: Thunderplump ~ Eleven!

After a half dozen hours, Joe had finally come up with his plan for completing the first Mana Battery Recharge Station. “This goes here, this here. Good. With the complexity, if I assume every portion is at this difficulty, and I put in my best effort… it’ll kill me ninety-nine times out of a hundred. This is ridiculous.”

Tossing the documents into storage, he groaned and remembered that he had as many resources as he needed to spend to make the project work correctly. “With an unlimited budget, I should be able to hire someone who can actually make it in the next few days. ”

Taking out a single page , he studied the Mana Collector, which was the easiest of the modular items to make. Thanks to the seemingly endless supply of ambient mana on this world, it would even be able to easily collect power constantly. On a lower strength world, like Midgard, it would struggle greatly to get even a single point of mana a minute. Unfortunately, that was where Joe had run into his first problem. He gently slapped the paper with the back of his hand in frustration. “It collects endlessly, and I can't see any way to turn it off, or measure how much it has inside at any given moment. This is practically begging to self-destruct spectacularly.”

The Mana Condenser was no better, essentially being a giant coil of high-end metals and gems that forced any mana input to take up less space, concentrating the power to a terrifying degree. Once again, there were no safety measures added. It would last longer than the collector, but that just meant that when it went critical, the explosion would be that much more powerful.

As for the Mana Transfer Output? It was so inefficient in its design that anything that was dumped into it would practically turn the air around it into energetic soup. Simply being near it would be a hazard to his health bar. “Why? Why would Havoc give this to me and say it’s ready to go? He has way too much pride in his craft to short sell me on this.”

There were only a few reasons that he could think of, and Joe sighed as he realized that most of them started and ended with, “That means for this rank of enchantment, this must be the best option. Perhaps it’s intentionally inefficient so that it helps to get rid of excess mana? Maybe making it more efficient would cause a bottleneck, and lead to the bad ends I was worried about?”

Grumbling about the situation, Joe Reluctantly pulled the documents out of storage and continued studying the diagrams that Havoc had handed over.

Half an hour later, he found himself trying to decide if it was worth attempting to build a Ritual of Enchanting around them, or if he actually should use the power of the purse that Grandmaster Snow had granted him to hire a half dozen-enchanters and put them to work. With one last attempt at understanding the documents, the Ritualist finally gave in.

Slapping a hand on the table, Joe pushed himself to his feet and nodded firmly. “Both. Step one is to get Havoc in here to at least supervise, if not put these together himself, then make him train me so I can build them. Bring in a few other enchanters because I need more than one of these. Yes. It’s decided.”

Throwing open the door to his workshop, Joe stepped outside, only to come face to face with a Dwarf holding three ritual tiles raising his fist to knock on the door. “Uh. Hi! I finished.”

Joe was nonplussed for a moment, then he realized what was going on. He looked at the Dwarf up and down, then reached his hand out. “You did all three of them? Where’s everyone else? Did they finish as well?”

“A few people did, but I stayed until I did all three.” The Dwarf had bags under his eyes, as though he’d been keeping his eyes wide open the entire time that he had been gone.

“Huh. Alright. What's your name?” As his new pupil opened his mouth to respond, Joe forestalled him with an up-raised hand, “Wait, no. Don't tell me. You can take up space in my head when you earn the class. What's your class currently?”

The rapid fire questions didn't phase the Dwarf, but Joe's final question caused the tip of his nose to turn bright red for some reason. “Ahem… currently I’m a Neophyte.”

“You're a vampire? Err… I mean, maybe not a vampire, is that a werewolf?”

“What? No. I've had a class of Neophyte my entire life, and I've been unable to change it.” The Dwarf grumbled at his own words, looking away in shame. “It gives what is essentially a free ride in skill levels up to the top of the Student ranks, but makes it impossible to push any of them up to Journeyman or beyond. It’s supposed to allow me to train under almost any class trainer. But… for some reason, whether I have a hidden curse or a broken title fragment stuck in my status, I've never been able to find a class that will allow me to take their class change quest.”

The Ritualist stared at the candidate, and tried to put into words what he was thinking at the moment. “Okay, yeah, tell me your name.”

“They call me… Baumann the Broken.” The Dwarf had completely flushed red while saying this, and looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and vanish for a while.

Clapping a hand on the Dwarf's shoulder, Joe pulled him into the workshop and sat him down. “Look here, Baumann. You don't have to worry about that nasty title for very much longer. But let me ask you something… when you change your class, do you lose your bonus to skill growth?”

“Technically yes, but I get to choose a single skill to have doubled growth for until the Master rank.” At this, the Dwarf puffed up his chest, only to remember his current situation and allow a wry smile to show. “Or at least, that's how it’s supposed to work, but I've been stuck without another class for about three hundred years. Hence the… Broken.”

“I don't want to scare you, but I want you to put your class change quest on hold for now.” As Baumann started to protest, Joe held up a hand and pulled out a piece of paper. He began frantically writing down every skill he could think of that would be useful for the Dwarf to attain before losing his incredible skill growth. “You’ve the potential to become the best Ritualist in all of the worlds in no time flat. Well, maybe not surpassing me, but that’s just because I’ll be the one you’re learning from. Anyway, here’s the skills that I have that I think you should pursue. You know what? Let's throw some gathering skills in there as well. Tailoring? How do you feel about art? Freestyle drawing and such? You’re going to have an incredible foundation for this magic.”

As the list rapidly grew, Baumann’s eyes went wide. “You want me to learn more skills that aren’t class related? That’s… wasteful!”

A cocky grin appeared on Joe's face, “I'm an omnicrafter. I can make anything, out of anything else. But I need the skills to do it. I'm a Master in Ritual Magic already, but I have nothing in tailoring, leatherworking, enchantment support… trust me on this one. You know what? Better than that, I'm going to give you a Guild invite and make you my direct… disciple. Huh. I wonder if that's what Havoc did with me? Anyway, show me what you can really do, and I’ll make sure you’re the most powerful Ritualist in the world, after me.”

By the time Joe had finished speaking, Baumann’s eyes were blazing with excitement. “It's a deal, Master Joe! Also, I have several of these skills on your list at the peak of Student rank, especially the ones that are aligned with the Oligarchies most valued members. Metalwork, smelting, mining, enchanting, sculpting, golem crafting, and the like.”

Joe gulped hard, trying to keep his drool from making a mess on the table. “Yeah, I think you’re going to like this class a whole bunch. First thing, I need you to go to the Pyramid of Panacea and start learning alchemy. Jake seems scary, but he's actually terrifying. He’ll like you a lot though, and if you can't change classes to what he does, he can't steal you away. It's perfect.”

“My class change quest just updated. It’s… you were serious? How can you have a disciple? You could have an apprentice, or something, but a disciple?” Baumann seemed almost listless, the intense emotional roller coaster he’d been going through seeming to burn him out for the moment.

The Ritualist nodded at him, understanding his confusion. “My guild is transforming into a sect, and I've been guaranteed the position of… well, don't worry about it. It's pretty high up there. I'm going to be turning one of the suburb areas into a guild town once we’re a full City. That should let us upgrade into a full sect and collect our people, especially if we have control of the bifrost here. Plenty of room for expansion.”

The Dwarf shook Joe's hand, eyes glazed as he stumbled toward the door and out into the cold. The Ritualist watched him with an extremely pleased smile on his face—bordering on smug—then startled and raced toward the door when he remembered that he was supposed to be doing things out there as well.

His search for enchanters was on, but they were doing a phenomenal job of hiding from him. Asking dozens of business owners, and even some council members, got him no closer to finding wherever the enchanters were staying currently. Eventually, Joe was starting to get so frustrated that he considered interrupting Grandmaster Snow. Happily, before he made a foolish decision—as his anemic Luck Characteristic was pressuring him to do—Joe remembered that she’d declared martial law and set all enchanters to start working on the walls.

Carefully considering whether his requests would be shot down, Joe still decided that he needed the help; and he had been ordered to requisition whatever he needed. Only an hour later, Joe had four Dwarves that were extremely pleased to have the chance to work indoors again.

Only when they started talking amongst themselves did Joe realize that he might’ve made a mistake.

“Will you look at that?” The Dwarf with the most elaborate beard braids chortled as he stared out of the small window of the workshop. “Snow's coming down thicker than the pile of Elf bodies made by my most recent superweapon.”

“Now this is the life. I can't believe our peers are still out there, fussing with that ridiculous bouncing enchantment the council is making us inscribe at cost! They had the chance to get out of work without breaking martial law, and instead chose to slowly freeze to death? Unbelievable.” The voice was slightly muffled, as the person speaking had their nose buried in a dusty tome of advanced enchantments.

A third, who was sipping the coffee Joe had provided, nearly spat the precious liquid out as he joined in their laughter. “All hail Master Joe, breaking us out of work detail. Smarter than he looks, that one. Nothing says planning for the future like getting a group of Expert Enchanters on his side early on, know what I’m saying?”

The last of them, who’d been silent until this point, watching the various expressions crossing Joe's face during the conversation, had a slightly different take on the situation. “I don't know… something about this doesn't sit right with me. There were near a hundred of us, and almost everyone outright refused without even considering it. Are we stuck with an ongoing, continuous contract? Are we going to be forced to do low-level ward maintenance or another menial task?”

“With our expertise? Peak Enchanting Experts?” The impressively bearded first Dwarf scoffed, beard jingling as he shook his head at the naivete of his fellow. “Master Joe Eunuch, what will we be doing? All this talk about experimental designs is fun, but-”

The Ritualist didn’t hear the rest of whatever the question was, a deep ringing filling his ears. Taking a few deep breaths, he called himself enough to meet the eyes of the Enchanter and grind out, “What did you call me?”

“Master Joe.” The Enchanter responded with an innocent grin and a mischievous wink at the Dwarf sitting next to him. “I just added in your status as a fully hairless individual.”

“Is that why everyone flinches when they look at me?” Contrary to the expectations of the Dwarves, Joe started laughing harder than he had in weeks. “Cultural customs… are the worst! Not having hair means that I’m at the same status as the most elite warriors assigned to protect Queens and Princesses? I thought they were grossed out; but they were nervous?”

He thought back, working hard to remember every interaction he’d ever had with Princess Dawnesha. As far as he could remember, she had always seemed perfectly comfortable around him—never wincing, always being willing to get into his personal space—and finally, finally he knew why! Wiping a tear of laughter out of his eye, Joe looked at the dumbstruck Dwarves and shook his head. “Don't worry, you'll stay plenty busy here. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I can hear our lead Enchanter approaching even now.”

Joe's words were practically punctuated by a scream from a Dwarf that went tumbling past the window. A guttural voice followed along shortly after, “You should’ve accepted the coupon! It's barely even expired.”

“Wait…” Beard-braids’ eyes went wide.

“Is that-” Coffee drinker choked and started coughing, and the cautious Dwarf turned and tried to escape out the back door—but there was no back door.

A moment later, Havoc appeared in the room, having kicked open the solid metal door that Joe had put in specifically to accommodate the chaotic Grandmaster; leaving a foot-shaped dent projecting an inch from its surface. “Joe! You said the Town is paying for all of this, right? What kind of budget can you allocate for… side projects?”