CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Sixteen!

Joe never realized how popular his work was becoming until he started using large chunks of his day flying along in a bubble where no one could contact him for any reason. He’d expected to be able to spend a week or two floating along in his magical transportation, creating shrines without any interruptions. Instead, what actually happened was that he’d come back, appearing in front of the shrine only to be met with half a dozen messengers that each demanded his attention for one reason or another.

He’d never seen his ritual towers need as much attention as when he was gone. At some point someone had wandered into his workshop and messed up the sky by dumping a half pint of ale on the otherwise unsecured ritual. Another petitioner needed help, making it his problem by pointing out that he was an investor in their shop. They were threatening to go under because they simply couldn’t gather enough raw materials—an issue Joe had an easy solution for. Still, between those and a dozen other tiny things that required his specific attention and couldn’t be delegated, the Ritualist was swamped.

Beyond the concerns the people in the town had, there was also the fact that Joe had finally created what he hoped would be a working version of the Ritual of Infernal Conflagration with the specific intention to create a lingering field of infernal flames. He needed to take nearly an entire work day to set up just one of them, as Socar simply wouldn't allow him to place that particular ritual almost anywhere. Apparently the ‘heavy Yin influence’ was liable to throw off the entirety of the delicate Formation they had been layering; resulting in subpar performance from all of the other rituals.

That was obviously a concern that the Ritualist couldn’t simply ignore, and so he had to not only set up the tower, but move a half dozen of the other ones to preserve the integrity of the powerup. As a silver lining, this had led to another breakthrough. Joe got so annoyed with manually ripping down and putting up the towers that he realized he had a perfectly good Ritual of the Traveling Civilization lounging around Town doing not much at all.

From then on, all of the towers were marked by that ritual, and he was able to move the towers as needed. The new method of tower management sparked additional work, as Joe could now create a huge number of the towers and keep them in reserve at the edge of Town, not active nor impacting the formation. Those backups could be used to replace any of the currently active towers, and all too soon some lazy but effective employee realized that it would be faster to swap out the towers than to simply swap out the Mana Batteries at their source.

This led to a complete overhaul of how the towers were built, shifted, placed, charged, and repaired. A new tower would be built, swapped out with one that wasn’t currently blasting monsters, and the old one would be recharged and repaired in a nice, safe, warm environment.

For everyone else, this was a spectacular upgrade. But all it meant for Joe was that he not only needed to build dozens of additional towers, he also needed to generate the rituals that would be put into play on those towers. That meant additional stabilization cubes as well, and he found himself working alongside Dwarves, pounding on aspects even as the Dwarves reshaped his failed attempts into workable items.

Two weeks passed in a flash of incredibly intense work followed by long stretches of sitting and studying in a cramped environment before Joe finally found something in his flight path.

He’d flown over so many monsters at this point that it had stopped being a notable experience; but he’d never seen them moving like this from the air before. Hundreds of them were gathering, streaming toward a location in the distance, and the Ritualist realized immediately that he was seeing a Beast Wave that was just getting underway. Straining his eyes, he could see some flickering light that indicated a fire of some sort in the distance, and tried to decide on a good spot to burst his bubble.

“Yeah, that's one of the major downsides of flying in a ritual-made bubble.” Joe grumped to himself as he pulled a dagger out of his codpiece. “The ritual itself stays wherever I place it, and I just have to hope I get a good landing spot. Or, make my own.”

With that, he shanked the air next to him, and fell toward the ground at breakneck speed. “Abyss! Too high! I knew I should’ve taken some time to make the Ritual of Featherfall-”

Luckily, Joe slammed face first into dozens of feet of powdery snow, arresting his momentum and allowing him to pop back to his feet without having taken even a single point of damage to his Exquisite Shell. His rapid descent had a secondary benefit, it hadn’t given either monsters or people living in the area the chance to see him arrive.

Taking advantage of this fact, the Ritualist kept low to the ground as he moved closer to what must’ve been a Hamlet. Currently, the population center lay in ruins, its streets bustling with people. However, where Novusheim was boiling with activity as people created things and pursued objectives, this place was mired in combat. Screams, growls, shouts, and bright sprays of arterial blood were common sights.

Eyes scanning the devastation, Joe assessed and tried to determine what would be the best way to take advantage of the situation. The monsters were still active, and every once in a while he caught a glimpse of a pointy-eared Elf as they cast bolts of sizzling light magic through the ranks of Penguins and Hoardlings that were swarming through their base. “Okay… I have multiple thoughts on how this should go. I need to save the humans, kill the Elves off, and it wouldn't hurt to progress the quest with Havoc by being the one to destroy the Town Hall.”

All Joe could do was shake his head as he watched the Elves band together, back to back as they fought off the unending swarm of monsters. It wasn't difficult to notice the fact that there weren’t any humans within their ranks, no doubt a byproduct of their theocratic hierarchy. “If I can get rid of the Elven overlords, and make sure they can't respawn anywhere nearby, maybe I could even persuade this population to come back to Novusheim with me.”

Slowly, the Ritualist nodded at that idea. In order to reach the status of a City, their population needed to be far higher than it was currently. There were no other groups on the planet that were already aligned with the Dwarves, but if he could take these people back willingly, recruiting from villages in the future would be far easier. He’d be able to prove that they had good treatment and weren’t being harassed due to their choices from the previous planet. “Which means I have to make sure to convince the Dwarves not to treat them badly.”

That thought made him wince, but he figured he could perhaps do something about it. Even as he watched dozens of people and monsters being torn apart, he was also plotting out how to build a smaller settlement somewhere in the walls that surrounded Novusheim. “Maybe I can bill it as a first line of defense for the city, giving all of the people here a chance to prove themselves before eventually earning the right to live in the city itself?”

All too soon, the time to act had arrived. Joe exploded out of the snow bank with Omnivault, racing toward the already badly-damaged Town Hall. When he’d closed half the distance, all of his ritual orbs swarmed into the air around him like wasps flying out of their hive to attack a random innocent passerby. The various shaped weapons flew forward, barely staying ahead of him as he pushed them with his mind while he pushed his body with might and magic.

The Town Hall, unsurprisingly, was modeled after the Elven versions on the previous world. It was beautiful, spacious, with perfectly fitted windows, carvings, and embellishments. If this Hamlet would have been able to progress all the way to City rank, it was likely that a building like this would be a beacon of hope to anyone aligned with these people. To Joe, all the flowery artistry meant was that the structure itself was extra flimsy.

His weapons barely arrived before a squawking Penguin, knocking out the final support structure and reducing the final durability of the building to zero. The tilting remnants of the structure collapsed in a cloud of dust and snow, and a dark surge of accomplishment-fueled adrenaline rushed through Joe's mind. He pumped his fist in the air, smirking over the fact that he’d secured the last hit, claiming the victory for himself and advancing his questline.

Quest updated: This planet isn't big enough for both of us. 1/3 Elven settlements destroyed.

His exuberant dancing came to a swift end as beautiful voices cried out in alarm and fury at his interference. Joe immediately threw himself to the side, avoiding a particularly nasty spell that went on to hit another damaged building, bringing it down as well. “Time to switch over to guerrilla tactics!”

Seeing a likely escape route, Joe dove into a snowbank and began pushing through it with his enhanced physique. He burst out of the other side, keeping low as spells flitted through the snowbank behind him, melting it rapidly but giving him enough time to break out of the Elven line-of-sight.

The Ritualist called over his ritual orb of Constitution, the heart-shaped metal coming to a rest in front of him. With a fleeting thought, several of the other orbs unspooled, and Joe activated the bound ritual and spell, Planar Shift, summoning Morsum into the world around his orb in no time flat. “Hey there, my creepy friend! Want to chomp on an Elf or two?”

The cold, dead eyes of the Pseudo-Lich were already lit up with ghastly, ghostly green fire; but that didn't mean they couldn't shine. The head couldn't move itself, so Joe controlled the orb to make the summon nod vigorously. Then it rocketed into the air, twenty feet above Joe's shining, bald brow. Preparations complete, the Ritualist peeked around the corner of the rubble he was hiding behind, immediately locking eyes with an Elf that was obviously on the hunt for him.

The Elf was caught off guard by his sudden appearance, having apparently assumed he would need to root Joe out and then he’d be an easy target. As magic began to collect around the beautiful hands, Joe sent Morsum down from above even as he attacked with his prepared Dark Lightning Strike.

Gold-tinged lasers blasted out of the Elf’s hand, the spell moving even faster than Joe's own. It struck Joe directly in the face, as he hadn’t even had an instant of time to dodge. His Exquisite Shell dispersed a good amount of it, the tiny facets of the spell causing him to shine like a disco ball as a chunk of the damage was mitigated before being absorbed.

Exquisite Shell: 10,859/12,002.

The lightshow cut off almost as soon as it hit Joe, his own dark aligned lightning sizzling into the Elf and causing him to freeze for a moment.

That was all the time Morsum needed in order to latch onto the flailing opponent’s neck like a vampire, its terrifying fangs piercing through the magical defenses surrounding the caster with ease. As Joe’s current nemesis let out a gurgle of horror—somehow managing to still be melodious—the human forced himself back into the fight, shaking off the lingering realization that the attack he’d just been hit with was meant to be a channeled spell.

If he hadn’t already had a duo of attacks on the way, he was near certain that the Elf would’ve pumped his entire mana pool into the attack; likely eventually melting Joe's head like a magnifying glass over an ant hill.

Belatedly, Retaliation of Shadows came into effect, slapping the Elf across the face even as it attempted to pull the Lich skull off its throat. That was when Joe realized that he was finally starting to truly participate in high-level combat: the spells and attacks were moving so quickly that even his automatic defenses were slower than the exchanges. Not wanting to give his adversary any help, but also unable to stop himself from taunting the shining being that had nearly destroyed him, Joe called over, “What’re you even doing? If you actually manage to yank him off, all that does is rip your throat wide open!”

That earned him a pained glare, and the combatant Mage began struggling to cast additional magics. For a fraction of a second, Joe was confused as to why he hadn't already been hit by two or three more spells, but then realized that the fangs clamped onto the foe’s neck likely were acting as a form of a spell silencer. If the Elf was trying to cast anything that required vocalizations, the spell would fail or rebound onto the caster. As he realized that he couldn't have planned this better if he tried, Joe let a ghost of a smile appear on his face and whirled a hand; the motion copied by his ritual orbs.

The remainder of his weapons began to orbit the Ritualist, and he sent them forward one by one to attack his target. The ritual orb of Intelligence was the swiftest, flashing through the air and driving into the Elf’s inner thigh, where it was held back by the magical barrier the Elf was coated in. Sparks began flying as the drill pressed forward, attempting to sink into the flesh only fractions of an inch away.

Two more orbs had already been sent at that point, but seeing the sparks flying, Joe changed the target of his next one. It was a standard sphere of metal, having not yet been bound to a Characteristic, yet it worked perfectly as a hammer on the back wedge-shaped portion of the sharp one. As the orb slammed into the Intelligence-bound version, it provided enough force to shove the barrier out of the way. Golden-tinged blood flew as the spike drove into skin, then flesh, and a sharp whine announced it had found a bone and was attempting to move through that as well.

Joe activated Cone of Cold with a thought, the spell erupting from the tip of the spike and directly into his foe. Without giving his opponent a single opportunity to recover, the Ritualist beat him down with a barrage of magic, weapons, and the ever-increasing life drain from Morsum.

You have slain an Elf!

“No experience?” Joe waited a long moment, recalling his orbs to his bandolier, all except Morsum, who went back to hovering in the air. “You know what? I'm okay with that. I'm not a huge fan of incentivizing the murder of intelligent, sentient beings. Or… humanoids, I suppose. Kind of hard to forget that the highest level monsters on Jotunheim are going to end up being at least as intelligent as we are.”

He’d been surprised that their fight hadn’t been interrupted, but as he began running down the street, Joe immediately understood why that had been the case. The final group of Elves had been overrun by monsters, likely when they’d sent one of their few remaining Mages to hunt down an intruder instead of focusing on self-preservation.

“Excellent! Now all I need to do is clear out the monsters and establish a connection with any survivors. I'm sure we'll have a great rapport after I helped destroy the last little bit of their town and leaders. This is going to go great.”