CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Thirty-Two!

The defenders of the Village were prepared for the attack; eager for it, going by the zeal that they put into each and every blow against the massive creatures coming for them. Arrows whistled through the air, so many that Joe wouldn't feel safe being anywhere in range while hiding. Clearly trained by their ‘betters’, the Archers rarely missed, their projectiles finding their mark with impressive accuracy.

A half dozen of the Penguins were brought down every couple of seconds, the metal-tipped shafts of the arrows piercing through the thick feathery armor of the birds. When Joe compared the ranged attacks of this Village with his own, all of which were almost entirely his own devising, the scales in his mind didn’t balance. Novusheim might be lacking in that department. “Take it easy… there's no way they’re going to be able to match us in our close-combat efficiency, so we've got that going for us.”

A few seconds later, enough of the creatures had approached the walls that the spellcasters took their turn. It was clear they’d been standing at the ready, because the tops of the walls lit up in scores of areas near-simultaneously. Incantations echoed through the strangely-still night air, bolts of arcane energy crackling and detonating amidst the swarm. Fireballs erupted, engulfing the creatures in flames, beams of light sliced entire creatures in half over fractions of a second, and enormous boulders rained from the sky as if they’d been thrown by trebuchet.

“I guess we know how they've been able to progress so quickly.” Heartpiercer whispered into Joe's ear. “Their efficiency with each kill is off the charts. I don't know if we should try our luck here… it's clear to me that the entire population of this town is elite.”

Joe didn't say anything for a few moments, watching as the attacking creatures were pushed back in a symphony of martial prowess and magical might. With each arrow sent flying, every spell cast, the ranks of the onslaught were brought to a standstill. Even when larger creatures began to show up, managing to get close enough to try their luck at the barrier in their path, they were met with the unyielding magical resistance that had been imbued into the walls themselves.

He turned to his companion, his expression grave. “I totally understand where you’re coming from. This is going to be a crazy risk, and… you don’t have to take it with me.”

“We need to plan out a pace.” She returned without hesitation, earning a blank look from the Ritualist. “A primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency plan. Pace. From the look of this place, I think you should try and replicate your merchant act. That was pretty abyssal successful, and it’ll let us get the lay of the land. We have no vantage point, we can't look down from above and plan our route. This is going to have to be a snatch and grab, where we get Daniella and high-tail it outta here.”

“Yeah, I can get behind that.” Joe pondered her words for a long few moments, then motioned for her to follow him. They retreated approximately a quarter mile from the walls, and he dug a slanted tunnel down through the frozen ground. Then the Ritualist created a large room with the use of his Field Array, having to relocate only once due to the top of it collapsing immediately. “I'm going to build a shrine here, so that we have an escape route built in. It's pretty close to the other one, so there shouldn't be much mana cost. If we only do a single hop, we can come in here practically empty and still get away.”

“Good. What's our alternate?”

“Plan B is smashing our way in-”

Heartpiercer shook her head sharply, cutting him off before Joe could finish his thought. “That is contingency at the earliest, more likely emergency. I don't think you're going to like this, but I think that if you can't get in as a merchant, you should be thrown in as a prisoner.”

“You're right, I don't like that.” Joe's lip curled in a sneer as he thought about allowing himself to be trussed up like a turkey and tossed into a cell with the minimum space available for him to survive.

“Rig yourself to be sent to respawn.” As the Archer continued talking over him, Joe made a few sounds and held a hand up to his ears.

“La, laa. Strange, I can hear myself, can no one else hear me?”

Heartpiercer lifted an eyebrow in annoyance. “If you think we can get this done with no risk whatsoever, you're dreaming. Are you seriously going to tell me that you would go into an Elite area like that as a fake merchant, with no backup plan in case you’re captured? I know you can set conditions on your rituals, so make one of them blast you into a crater and take a chunk of the town with you if you need to do it. Otherwise, you'll be in a cell without an escape plan.”

“Gotcha.” Joe let out a deep sigh of frustration, knowing that she was right about this. “If I hate it, but if it works, it's still worth doing. Can we at least make the contingency something that doesn't involve me offering myself up like a present to the theocracy?”

“You can. I've used up all my ideas for this project.” The Archer sat against the side of the shrine and pulled out a small jar, then began oiling her bow to keep it in top form.

“Fair enough.” Joe winced as he realized he’d been taking his frustration at the situation out on her. “Look, I'm sorry, I've just been working on this for weeks now and I'm so close to being done. Then this enormous, seemingly insurmountable obstacle jumps in the way? I somehow have to get into a prison, inside of a fortress, then get back out while making sure Daniella—who has very few combat or survival skills—doesn’t get sent to respawn as easily as those Penguins just did.”

He needed to sit down as the seriousness of the situation crashed over him, and he took a few deep, calming breaths before trying to speak again. “Contingency. I think I might be able to set up a few Rituals of Raze to take down the walls during a Beast Wave. I’d want more than one going, just in case they’re able to quickly find one of them, or there’s some interference or backlash from the enchantments. Hopefully, that’d cause enough mayhem that I’d be able to slip in and raid the prison while they’re fighting off the creatures.”

The Archer paused in what she was doing, still not looking over at him. “Emergency?”

“Blast it to rubble, send every single person to a new spawn point after this place is completely leveled.” Joe's eyes hardened and he stood straight while pulling his coat tight around him. “Then I'll just need to hope that Daniella goes to one of the nearby towns when she respawns, and can find someone sympathetic enough to help her get away. I will… need to figure out some new way to find her, but with enough time anything is possible. Good enough for me. Action time.”

“Are you going now?” Heartpiercer looked at him quizzically as he started crawling up the air shaft he’d created. “During a Beast Wave? Are you looking to get filled with arrows?”

“You know me. New experiences are always my target, and I think this one might really hit the mark. Depending on how this goes, I’ll either be quivering with excitement… or just a-quiver.” His humor sailed over her head, but Joe ignored the droll stare and finished ascending to the surface.

What he wasn't telling her was that if he wanted to be able to get to his contingency plan in time, he’d need to activate the Rituals of Raze when the Boss monster approached. At this point, Joe was absolutely certain that requirement was the only one holding the Village back from moving to the next settlement rank. If all else failed, he needed to have that contingency in place. “Still, gotta admit, she has some great ideas.”

“Also incredibly sensitive ears.” The comments and a chuckle floated up out of the hole in the ground, and Joe blushed slightly at the knowledge that his inner thoughts had been overheard. Doing his best to ignore that, he kept low to the ground and started moving ever so slowly toward the walls in the distance.

He hoped that a combination of keeping a low profile, having a much smaller size than the monsters, and not moving quickly enough to cause concern would be enough to keep him from being noticed. More specifically, to keep him from being attacked.

Crouching was never his favorite thing to do, but his inflated Characteristics allowed him to function without any pain in his joints as he moved along. As he went, the Ritualist mentally flipped through all of the different options he had available to himself for mutually assured destruction in case his ruse was seen through. By the time he was approaching the firing line, he’d decided on a combination of keeping a few of his stronger rituals, such as the Ritual of Infernal Conflagration, primed to a certain phrase.

The changes needed were easy to make: all Joe needed to do was remove humans from the ‘safe’ list and he would be the first target. Between that and planning to completely remove his Exquisite Shell before entering the town, the Ritualist knew he’d be able to get back to Novusheim even if the worst outcome came to pass.

During his movement from the very edge of the range of the Archers until he managed to get to the wall, Joe had been stepped on no less than eight times. Happily, the fact that he was crawling along the ground at this point, the attackers were drawing the aggro, and the compulsion of the Town Hall forcing the monsters to focus on the destruction of objects instead of people all worked together to keep him from being targeted for more direct attacks.

All in all, it was an only slightly painful, if surreal, experience.

Finally, he was pressed against the wall and out of visual range for any of the defenders. Pulling out a Ritual of Raze, he placed the tile against the wall and resumed his crawling. “Let's do three more of these, then see if I can charm my way inside when the wave ends.”

For some inexplicable reason, the thought of playing pretend with the people inside the walls made his stomach churn. “Why’s that worse than inchworming through a monster assault with arrows and spells whizzing overhead? Oh, right. It’s because the beasts at least don’t pretend to be something they aren’t. They won’t invite you in and stab you in the back.”

As he placed the second tile he planned to use to backstab the people that would invite him in, Joe amended his ironic doomsayer thoughts. “Then again, who knows? They might be perfectly pleasant, reasonable people. Then I can be as well. Here's hoping.”