CC 11: Thunderplump ~ Five!

Only seven hours passed before Joe was able to create the third spool of wire, and he held his breath with an expectant gaze as he stared at his skill sheet, hoping to see it update. After thirty seconds, he was forced to accept the fact that he wasn't pushing into the Journeyman ranks that easily.

“Abyss.” Once again he allowed some healing water to flow over his body, and got back to pounding aspects.

Three hours later, Growmore walked into the smithy and tried to convince Joe to pause for the moment, but his arguments about the benefits of proper sleep and coming at this with a fresh perspective were all but ignored. Six hours later, Joe lifted a spool of wire into the air with a triumphant expression, only for it to turn into liquid metal, drop on the floor, and resolidify.

At that point, he was forced to take a small break as he worked frantically to put out the infernal flame that he ‘accidentally’ blasted the solidified metal with. “Seriously, isn't the entire point of these leather aprons to be fireproof?”

“Fire resistant, and that's with normal fire.” Growmore waved down the trio of glowering Dwarves that looked like they were going to take out their anger—over their projects failing due to Joe’s interruption—on the Ritualist’s face. “If you have a career as a smith or a welder, it's just a fact that you’ll eventually set yourself on fire. The mark of a professional is how quickly you put it out. As for you? Still clearly a student.”

“For now.” Joe vowed as he twirled his ingot hammer and got back to work.

One hour later, he finished spooling the metal wire and picked it up off the anvil cautiously, staring at it with the expectation that something was messing with him. Moments later, he got the notification that he’d been waiting for.

Congratulations! Ritualistic Forging has reached Journeyman 0! As a bonus, all Rituals you activate which use metal that you have forged will be 1+ n% more stable, where n = skill level!

“Yes! I'm officially a Journeyman! I even got a nice… wait a second.” His eyes narrowed as he stared at the ‘benefit’ he’d just received. “I can't use metal that I forged in rituals. The aspects just convert over.”

Before he could write off the benefit as something useless to him, the system came through with a minor clarification.

Items such as stabilization cubes are considered when your new perk is activated.

“OhThankGoodness.” Joe let out the phrase in a single breath, and his faded grin returned twice as bright.

“Congratulations, Joe.” Growmore clapped him on the shoulder and smiled brightly. “Unfortunately, lessons for a Journeyman are twice as expensive as they are for Students. I think we’re all done here, since I'm pretty sure I just put myself out of your price range.”

The Dwarf had a fairly decent idea of Joe's finances, as it came up fairly frequently while they worked with expensive materials. Between Joe's constant need for high level cores and monster corpses so he could craft, as well as needing to pay various employees, his enormous income of aspects went out the door almost as quickly as it came in. The human sighed and fistbumped the Dwarf, “We'll see about that soon.”

“What’re you going to do now? Give up the anvil so someone else can work for a little bit?” someone called over hopefully.

“Ha!” Joe shook his head and placed his hands on his anvil. “No, just for fun I’m going to see how difficult it is to make this recipe I found.”

Before he did that, the Reductionist needed to craft a new ingot hammer, at Journeyman quality. For a moment, as he stared at his gathered aspects, Joe was flummoxed as to how to make the tool. “I don't have any… oh right, Journeyman rank is the same as ‘Special’ for aspects. I guess the question is, do I just make an Expert version, or do I give my hammer some flair?”

“Oh?” Growmore’s slightly singed eyebrows lifted, and he hesitated as if he were holding back from saying more. Joe waited patiently, and the Dwarf broke down. “Why not both? Tell you what I'll do. I have some very special trinkets that I've pulled off some enemies over the years. They're not doing me any good, don't even have a bedroom to hang them up on the wall as trophies anymore. Since you can do your magic mumbo jumbo, and just make proper tools out of pretty much nothin’, I'll make you a deal. You break these things down, add what they give you to an Expert-rank hammer, and I'll let you keep what’s left over.”

“I don't think you'll be able to use my aspect hammer, though. I can't just-”

“No, none of that! I get that your hammer made out of magic, sunlight and rainbows probably isn't going to work in my hand.” Growmore snorted and waved him away as Joe offered his current ingot hammer for testing. “I don't want to give these up only for you to make a tool for Alchemy or the like. If they’re going on to better someone in my own craft, I'd be okay parting with them.”

Joe shrugged at that, agreeing easily. A few minutes after he left to collect the trinkets, Growmore walked back in the room and put a small pile of wands, amulets, and what appeared to be individual metal teeth on Joe's anvil. “Every single one of these was pulled off an Elf a world and a lifetime ago. Maybe I should say, a few of these were pulled out of an Elf.”

“I can only hope you mean the teeth.” Joe chuckled but decided he didn’t want to know the answer if he was wrong. While it was likely that these items had been cleaned, the Ritualist decided he didn't want to touch them with his fingers for any reason. Moments later, a Field Array was set up, and he began to reduce them into aspects.

New Special Aspect gained: Arcane.

There were plenty of Rare aspects and below, but the only thing that caught his eye was the new Special type. “Oh, I think I saw this in the pamphlet I got as a reward once. Let's see… here it is. Special aspect usage pamphlet. Arcane… boosts magical conductivity. Okay for an aspect, I guess. Just as a heads-up, I've never tried to put these in my tools before. Let’s give it a whirl.”

Over the next few minutes, Joe shaped his aspects into an intricate new ingot hammer, studded with various protrusions and intricate designs to get it to the point where it would allow itself to be considered an ‘Expert’ quality tool visually. Now knowing what he did about intent, he was starting to understand that this was the tool itself having a very limited sentience. With that in mind, he slightly shifted the design to look like what he would expect an Expert to be using. Not gaudy: simply impressive quality with high functionality.

When he was finished, Joe was holding an indigo hammer that had bright veins of slowly undulating green light tracing through the entire tool.

Arcane Ingot Hammer (Expert). This Hammer, which looks like a dragon fused a sapphire and an emerald, is imbued with aspects of the arcane; allowing for a 15% increase in enchantment power for any item created by it.

Adds a 5% chance of creating an item of a higher rank (Maximum: Master.)

Requirements for use: Expert rank. You didn't think just anyone could swing this beauty around without consequences, did you? (Bonuses halved for each rank below Expert. Example: Journeyman: 2.5% chance. Student: 1.25%.)

“Celestials.” Joe whispered as he read over the boost for getting an item of a higher rank. Even if the hammer would be able to take most of the credit, getting a higher rank item meant a surge in skill experience, as well as… well, a higher rank item. He remembered seeing a Grandmaster nearly cry over getting a one percent boost, and so recognized how impressive this truly was.

“Mind if I take a look?” Growmore leaned in, then let out a low whistle and stared at the Hammer with a pining gaze. “Now there’s something I’d try and buy off of ya if I could wield it. Too bad about needing to be an Expert to swing it properly, I know you're a ways off.”

“Still better than what I was using!” Joe stated chipperly. He looked at the door of the forge, then back to the anvil, waffling between taking a break or continuing his plan of trying out his blueprints just for kicks. “Mate, I’m going in. Can I get a cuppa?”

*Burble!* AutoMate replied energetically, doing its part to help keep the Ritualist in the zone.

Joe sipped at the fresh cup of coffee as he pulled out his modified blueprint for Jotunheim Alloy. As he studied the intricate weaves of metal that he’d need to replicate, he shook his head slowly. “This is wild. It's this complicated just to get the metal itself, I can't imagine what items made out of this would look like if they had a specific template. On the plus side, if I can figure out how to make this properly, I can literally come here and make my own money whenever I need it. Abyss, the council would even thank me at the end of the day. Pretty hard to collapse a currency that’s constantly being turned into other items and taking itself out of circulation.”

For the next few hours, Joe carefully followed along with the instructions, seamlessly blending aspects together with light taps of his hammer. The design itself was strange, with constantly repeating fractals, almost as though he were working to capture a harmonic frequency. In fact, one of the instructions on the document clearly stated that if he didn't strike the metals at least every half second, it would automatically be considered a failure. Faster was better, but only if he could keep blending the material in the perfect shape.

Never before had he needed to tap something instead of hammer it while standing at the forge, and the impact the project was having was absolutely astounding.

“Why? Why are you doing that?”

“Are you making something, or were you possessed by a woodpecker?”

The comments came toward him in a near endless stream, and Joe could only laugh out loud at the strangeness of the very real project that he was working on. As he reached the final step, the aspects began to dim. From one end to the other, they shifted into metal, reaching the final point… then the room dimmed slightly as the near-finished product was reduced to base material. Even though he knew it had been a long shot, Joe felt a wash of disappointment that he had gotten so close; only for the building itself to destroy his work.

Then his hammer flashed, and the liquefying metal firmed up and set fully as a bright ingot of alloy.

Joe stared down at the huge bar, reaching out and picking it up with a grunt. “No way. Is that what the chance of creating an item of higher rank does? It forces success even if it was about to fail?”

Congratulations! You have succeeded in creating a new item a full rank higher than your skill level for the first time. Reward: +1 skill level in Ritualistic Forging.

Ritualistic Forging: Journeyman 0 → Journeyman I.

Dozens of ideas flashed through Joe's mind over the next few moments. Part of him wanted to take the bar and squirrel it away for when he needed to pay someone for a favor. An extra greedy portion of his mind told him to do this a dozen more times and start a bank. But the only part of himself that mattered, the part that loved magic and couldn't wait to get even better at it, had a much better idea.

“I wonder how thin I can slice this. I bet I can get at least five ritual tiles out of it if I’m careful.” Without a backward glance, Joe rushed away to his workshop, slamming the door behind him.

Everything else in his life could wait: he finally had a material that could contain the Ritual of Cleansing.