CC 11: Thunderplump ~ Four!

Everyone involved in the creation of the new type of ritual tower let out a deep sigh of relief as the ritual reached completion and winked out of existence. The only signs that the swirling, swooping spell diagram drawing from all of them had truly existed was the tower gently swaying with the wind… and their emptied mana pools.

“Did you need to make it so unsteady?” Socar the Mage inquired in a gently despairing voice. “Do you know how difficult it’s going to be to account for its motion in the Formation we’ve been layering?”

Joe shrugged and waved at the tower. “I'm just going to hook up some guide wires. It should stay very steady. At least, that's the plan… if you don't want to try pushing for new levels in your skill.”

An expression of pleasant surprise washed over Socar’s face as he realized that Joe had come in with a plan, and the Mage paused for a moment to make his decision. “Hmm. Go with the guide wires for now, but I’ll see if I can figure out how to account for it. Good call, hard to grow quickly if we’re staying only in our comfort zone, right?”

“Exactly.” Joe shooed off everyone else, and the majority of them started on their way to the Town Hall to get paid for the work they’d just done.

Daniella strolled over with a bright smile on her face, eyeing the ‘tower’ that was no thicker than a light pole that could’ve been seen along the road in old Earth. “It worked! I'm not surprised, exactly, but I wasn't sure if the system would accept it as a valid structure. A foot and a half thick, a hundred and twenty feet tall. What are you going to use it for?”

“It's our first Journeyman tower, so I'll have to do something extra special.” Joe shot a half-grin at her, not bothering to tell her that he wanted to use this for his new ritual that created slowing fields of darkness. He was looking forward to surprising them. “The thing I'm most shocked about is that they let us set it up in the center of Town. I thought for sure it was going to be shoved up next to a wall.”

Socar snorted at the imagery. “Well, unless you have space and resources for ten more of these, there’d be no way to balance it if it wasn’t central. Before I go, last reminder to let me check out the yin affinity before you put a ritual in place. As the center, it needs to have be an intense draw of the ambient field, or the whole thing will-”

“I've got it, buddy.” The smile remained on Joe's face, though it dimmed by a few degrees. “Our skyscraper masquerading as a lamppost is complete, and as long as no one sneezes too hard near it, everything should be fine.”

“As if something that common would be able to take down my design.” Daniella flipped her hair in faux-haughtiness, then dropped the act as her eyes twinkled. “What do you think? Celebrate over dinner tonight?”

“I need to go hit some metal, how about I see you at sundown?” Joe blithely answered, not quite certain why her face fell slightly. “It's only sixty or so hours away, and I need to finish up my push into the Journeyman ranks. This project is driving me nuts with all of its prerequisites.”

“No, I totally get it!” Daniella pushed her smile wider, then turned as they parted ways. “I should really get over to the Bowyer workshop to supervise the new hires anyway. See you at sundown… I guess?”

“You got it!” Joe waved at her as he turned his eyes toward the workshop in the distance, then practically sprinted toward the forge. “Today's the day, I can feel it!”

As he entered the forge, Joe tied on a thick leather apron and looked around at the ever more familiar space. Even though he didn’t see his tutor, the anvil was practically beckoning him, and he felt no desire to resist its call. Deciding to at least get some practice in while he waited, the Ritualist on the verge of leveling up to the Journeyman rank began pounding away at glowing aspects; just like the other smiths in the area, though they used molten metal and glanced at him uneasily every once in a while.

A short while after he finished his newest Ebonsteel coffee mug, Growmore bustled into the forge full of apologies and new excuses for his tardiness. Joe waved that away, and positioned himself to better see and learn from the Expert Dwarf .

“Alright, human, today I'm going to have you work on one of the more annoying things that we have to deal with as metalworkers. I just got an order from the council for three thousand meters of braided wires that some yokel is going to use to hold something in place. It’s low-level Journeyman stuff, so you should be able to pull it off and rapidly gain some levels at the same time.”

Joe wasn't entirely sure whether he should groan or laugh maniacally at the fact that he’d be the person fulfilling his own request, and getting paid for it to boot. On the plus side, as he knew exactly what the wire was going to be used for, he knew better than to offer any that would be of subpar quality. After being handed the blueprint he was to follow, and making his own adjustments to convert the material cost over to aspects, he lifted his hammer and got to work.

Each of the braided wires needed to end up seven hundred and fifty meters long, and each attempt took him a full hour to complete. Between the difficulty of the task being outside of his skill range and combining with the utterly infuriating curse of the building—which caused forty percent of all items made to revert to base material—it took Joe a full eleven hours to get the first of the four coils completed.

Ritualistic Forging has reached Student VIII!

As soon as the metal was properly spooled, he closed his eyes and tipped back, allowing himself to fall flat on the floor. He wasn't worried about hitting his head or taking any damage, as his Exquisite Shell shifted and gave him extra cushioning to reduce any impact.

“Uugghh. One skill level?”

“Ya only made one item, whaddaya expect?” At Joe's first visible sign of his intense frustration, every Dwarf in the room burst into laughter at the same time. Growmore had tears in his eyes by the time he grabbed Joe by the shoulder and hauled him back to his feet. “Welcome to the real craft, my friend! It's not all Legendary weapons and life-saving armors. It’s work, and we all have to do it.”

“One of us! One of us!” The other Dwarves began chanting as Joe was shoved back toward his anvil.

“No~o~o.” The Ritualist gently protested as his hammer was pressed into his hand.

“You're in the thick of it now, boyo! The first one’s the hardest, but you’re geared up to succeed now!” Growmore encouragingly stated, even as alternate viewpoints were made known.

“Second one is the hardest, for sure!”

“You want four of them? Then the fourth is the hardest!”

“Prepare to fail the rest of the day!”

“If you have the Stamina, keep that hammer in your hand.”

The last comment was once again from Growmore, but even though he still had a smile on his face, the mirth was gone from his voice. “A warrior doesn't drop his sword, a wizard casts until they’re drained. A smith, smiths! Next time you lose the hammer, you’re banned from the forge for twelve hours.”

Deciding against testing his tutor, Joe got back to work.

Fifteen hours later, a second spool of high-end braided metal wires was spooled and the Ritualist’s eyes were practically crossed from his intense marathon of staring at glowing magical aspects. Unable to muster up the mental energy to open his status screen, Joe gave a verbal command for the first time in… he didn't even know how long. “System… what's my Stamina at?”

Stamina: 242/1,991

Stamina Regen: 6.72 per second

“I don't think I've been this low on Stamina since I had below ten points in Constitution all the way back on Midgard.” Joe chuckled gently to himself as Growmore walked over with a plate of food. Not bothering to ask any questions, he took the plate and dived into the food. In what felt like an instant, the dish was empty and the Ritualist let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks for that. I never realized how much I use stamina while crafting. Frankly, I haven't been able to do anything to make that resource pool drop in a long time.”

“Great for you, but now you owe me dinner.” The Dwarf took the plate back with a grunt of exasperation. “Pretty sure you knew that was for me.”

Joe's mind went blank for a moment, then he noticed that his instructor was chuckling, and realized that he was being teased. “Abyss, does low Sitamina make me think slower?”

“All of your stats impact each other, somehow. You want a better answer than that, find a Master Philosopher.” Growmore looked at Joe searchingly, “Well? What sort of progress have you made?”

Not quite sure what else he could mean, Joe checked his skills and saw that he’d already reached Student nine in Ritualistic Forging. “What! But I only made one item!”

“Why should that matter?” Growmore let out a chuckle as Joe sputtered and shoved a finger at the ornery Dwarf. “What matters is that you’re pushing through your limits, fighting against a slew of disadvantages, and still managing to produce quality items. The lower your Stamina as you work, the higher your chances of making a mistake and failing. The success of the item needs to be balanced with your resource pool extraordinarily carefully in order to consistently make items at your own skill level. Now, when you’re exhausted, failing over and over, and still make me a spool of wire that I can pass on? Well. That’s when you grow more.”

Joe rolled his eyes as his instructor shamelessly used his own branding as an explanation. Staring at the anvil and feeling his aching muscles, he took a deep breath and picked his hammer up where he’d carefully set it down when he finished the last spool. “Does that mean if I keep on right now, with my Stamina nearly bottoming out, success means the most rapid skill increases?”

“You’re in pain, you're exhausted… sure, you might be able to get some extra skill experience, but I think you should-”

“Lay on Hands.” Healing water washed out of a Ritual Orb and over the Ritualist, and he stood up straighter as the microtears and stress fractures in his arms vanished in an instant. “Extra skill experience, you say?”

A bright, glowing blob of aspects appeared on the anvil, and a moment later his ingot hammer sent sparks flying as it slammed down. Growmore slowly closed his mouth, cutting off the arguments that would’ve flown out otherwise. A grudging respect grew in his eyes as he stared at the bald human who refused to stop.

“You woulda made a good Dwarf.”