CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Twenty-One!

“You there! Why are you smiling?” An Elf came practically sprinting toward Joe as he walked down the street, his eyes scanning the area carefully for the Town Hall. “Is a lowly one such as you attempting to show dominance? Pah! Here is a penance sheet, you will do these tasks or your life coach will scourge you on my behalf!”

Joe took the sheet with numb hands, blinking in surprise at the sudden shift in the tone of the town around him. No one met his eyes, or even seemed to realize that he existed. The Elf turned and began walking away, then stopped and looked over his shoulder sharply. The human felt power attempting to drill into him, and quickly set his title as ‘Immovable Object’. “Hmph! For a moment, I thought that perhaps you were an Excommunicated serf that had wandered into town instead of completing a daily task. I suppose all of you humans look alike though, don't you?”

Not trusting himself to speak, Joe simply bowed forward fractionally, the motion unnoticed as the Elven overlord vanished into the distance. Keeping his chuckle internal, Joe stood upright and began following the trail the Elf had made in the snow. “I can’t believe I was planning on establishing trade or something to that effect. Here I was, planning to barter monster corpses for luxury goods or other services. Silly me.”

The Ritualist wasn't entirely sure why he’d expected the Town Hall to be anywhere except the center of town, where it was the most protected with their current setup. As soon as he’d laid eyes on it, Joe began wandering around town looking for anyone who didn’t seem to be happy to be here. That turned out to be a harder task than he expected, as all humans were apparently expected to keep a serene, stone-like expression on their face at all times.

Eventually, Joe found a group of people that were sitting and meditating out in the cold, and they even seemed to be doing so willingly. He sat in line with them and pretended to join in, though his selected location afforded him a decent view of the surroundings. As time passed, he expected that people would get up and leave, but instead they seemed to be in some sort of competition with each other. A few people were even removing their outer sets of clothing to expose themselves to the frigid environment.

He knew from experience that they wouldn’t be gaining any kind of resistance to the deadly cold of Jotunheim; Novusheim had a population of tens of thousands, and no one had figured out a way to gain resistance to the bitter chill. Still, he was able to use the act for its intended purpose. A few hours after he’d settled into position, a group of humans wearing still-bloody pelts of monsters walked into town. Some of them carried monster corpses, some were holding shovels and pickaxes, all of them looked frustrated.

“Hmm, these must be the Excommunicated ‘serfs’ that the Elf mentioned.” Joe watched them with a glint in his eye as they marched over to drop off their collections, then tracked them as they were directed over into one of the shoddiest buildings he’d ever seen. Slowly turning his head, Joe recognized that he wasn’t the only person watching them go. A good amount of their fellow humans in this area were watching with either sadness; or sneering at the misfortune of their fellows.

Joe waited another forty minutes before getting to his feet and beginning to walk serenely across the area. The Trash-tier building was near a gate, far away from the other, more respectable buildings. While he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, it wasn’t like he could wait until nightfall to make contact.

Pretending he was going toward the gate, he casually bent down as though he were going to tie his shoe, and leaned to the side of the wall of the house until he fell over, hopefully vanishing from the view of anyone watching him walk away. There were no doors or windows on the back of the building, but it was put together so poorly that he was able to pull on an oversized plank and slip through the opening that was created.

On his hands and knees, Joe looked up to see half a dozen pickaxes hoisted into the air above him, ready to come down and chip away at his health. One of the men had a decidedly unfriendly smile on his face as he went down to one knee and leaned toward the crawling Ritualist. “Hello there, friend. Come to mess with us? You don't think your babysitters out there are doing enough to torment us or something? Boys, I think we should send this one to respawn. As long as we’re out working when he gets back, no one can pin anything on us.”

A general rumble of malevolence filled the air as the other people started to press closer, but Joe held up his hands to show they were empty in a universal sign of surrender. “Hold! Wait! I'm here to rescue you!”

A moment of silence was followed by mocking laughter as the others began shaking their heads. “Great, we have a bleeding heart on our hands! You’re here to rescue us? To where, baldy? This entire planet is a prison, and your golden friends out there aren't exactly going to be happy if you try to walk off with their prisoners of war and set up a rival settlement nearby.”

“I have just a couple questions before I tell you guys anything.” Joe's serious tone caused a flash of anger across the other men's faces, but they held off as their curiosity was ignited. “Are all of you Excommunicated? Do you want to get out of here, and leave all of these Elves behind? If I could offer you a safe path to making that happen, would you take it?”

Once more he was met with silence as the men scowled at him. “Of course we’d take it! You think we’re here by choice? We're not like you, we didn't get the-”

“Good.” The floor began to shine as Joe's Field Array spread out and down. “Make sure you block anyone that tries to leave. If they do, they’re probably spies.”

In the next instant, the floor was gone, and the group dropped nearly ten feet straight down. Joe set up another, smaller Field Array, cutting into the ground and forming a large chamber that was enclosed on all but one side by rock and dirt. “Be careful, the ceiling isn't exacly stable. I don't usually set stuff like this up underground, since I don't know how to properly protect against collapses, but I'm not going to chance the Elves seeing the light show.”

At this point everyone was silent, merely watching him with calculating, cold eyes. The hair on the Ritualist’s neck began to rise as their killing intent increased. Joe fully understood that if, at this point, he was unable to perform the miracle he’d promised them, they would likely hunt him down for destroying their floor, on top of giving them false hope. Happily, there didn’t seem to be anything blocking him from using his magic, and after he set out his stabilization cubes, he activated the ritual to create a shrine.

Over the next few moments, aspects and mana flowed out of him and into the previously dark dirt and stone room. As soon as the shrine was fully constructed, Joe walked over and activated the fast travel portion of its magics, then turned to the captives. “When you touch this, set your destination as ‘Novusheim wall camp one’. Don't forget to set the shrine you exit at as your bind-point, or you’ll be thrown back here if you die.”

Ever so slowly, with confusion written large on his face, one of the captives walked over and touched the shrine. His eyes went wide, and he turned to flash a smile at the group standing in the pit. “It's real!”

A moment later, he was gone.

Joe was nearly crushed as the others rushed to use the shrine as well, and in moments he was alone in the room. Sitting up from his new position on the ground, Joe brushed off some imagined dirt and shook his head. “Probably should’ve told them I needed them to stick around until I've set the Ritual of Raze up. Ah well… guess I’ll just have to wing it.”

He climbed out of the pit of his own creation, then out the back of the building once more. Part of him was expecting a contingent of troops to be surrounding him as soon as he exposed his face, but it seemed nobody particularly cared about what the prisoners of war were doing in their space. Trying to keep his nerves steady, Joe walked over to the rear of the Town Hall, sitting with his back almost against it while scanning it with his senses.

“Nothing hidden, nothing magical, as far as I can tell.” He continued pretending to be meditating, his light garments helping him fit in with the group he had walked away from a while ago. After sitting for half an hour, he was fairly certain that no one was going to interrupt him, or saw anything strange about what he was doing. Joe leaned back, pulling out a ritual tile and pressing it against the building. He had put some water on the edges, and the tile quickly froze against the wall without any issue.

He stood up, and looked around before walking toward the gate as if he were going to be leaving. That was ri~ight about when things started to go bad.

“You there! The smiler! Why are you not working on the tasks I gave you?” A voice he was already sick of called out to him, and Joe continued walking as though he hadn't heard. The sound of running feet accompanied the Elf snarling a little more intently, “Are you already done with a full week's worth of penance? This one would be delighted to inspect your work!”

The back of Joe's head was gripped by a hand, and he was flung downward, his face impacting the packed snow in the same motion. A crisp *smack* rang out, and a collective gasp from the onlookers informed Joe that he probably should’ve deactivated Retaliation of Shadows before coming into the Hamlet if he had wanted to continue flying under the radar.

His stealth option gone, Joe pushed himself into an Omnivault from his prone position. He rocketed forward, mere feet off the ground. There was a shriek of outrage as the Elf realized what had happened, and as Joe flipped in the air, he chanced a glance backward to see the Elf cupping his cheek as though he had received a mortal wound. This time, he didn’t attempt to mock his aggressor, maintaining his focus on escape.

It wasn't meant to be, as an Elven voice raised in pain was a more effective alarm than any bell ringing. Guards and warriors of all sorts flooded the area, many of them coming out of buildings ahead of Joe. He launched himself up and over, noting that the guards on the walls were now looking in and magical shields were starting to spark to life above the flimsy barriers. “Ah… that’s how they've survived until this point.”

The next time he touched the ground, Joe slightly shifted his angle. Instead of trying to get over the wall, as was his original intent, he shot straight at the slightly open doorway of the shack the Excommunicated serfs had been living in. Spells and arrows began slamming into the flimsy walls in front of him, the best-aimed of them glancing off of his Exquisite Shell, but he had momentum and surprise on his side.

Before anyone took in his objective, he had soared into the building. Unlike the people coming after him, Joe knew that the floor had been replaced by a giant hole. As soon as he was inside, he tucked and rolled. It was still a hard landing, but the magic that had been following him blasted through the walls and over his head.

Letting out a sigh of relief, he pounced onto the shrine even as the building above him started to collapse. He touched its surface, traveling back home as tons of stone, dirt, and rubble fell and buried all evidence of his actions.