CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Fourteen!

Joe stared down in disgust at the shirt that he'd once more failed to enchant. He was out of free space on the material, so he threw it to the side along with the other failed, rejected samples. The Ritualist tried not to think too hard about how quickly that pile was growing. At least there was a positive effect from all of the failing that he was doing.

Skill Increase(s).

Enchanted Ritual Circles (Apprentice I)

Enchanting (General) (Apprentice 0)

“Somehow it seems appropriate that neither of my enchanting skills gave me a bonus when I got them up to the Apprentice rank.” Joe rubbed his head, removing a slick of sweat. Cringing away from the filth on his hand, Joe reached over and used his recently rejected garment as a dew-rag. Since he was alone, and working on extremely mana-intensive crafting, Joe had canceled every passive effect besides his ever-present Exquisite Shell. “Something about enchanting feels cold and calculating, even more so than any of the other crafts that I work on.”

Amending that thought, he shrugged and muttered, “Except maybe, maybe low-rank rituals. But those feel much more personal to me, so maybe it's just my bias coming into play.”

Even though he was consistently failing, Joe knew that repetition was the path to success. Either by accident or design, he would eventually succeed in making the Rare enchantment, so he took a few minutes to try and calculate the odds. “Let me see… Enchanted Ritual Circles is currently giving me a twenty-one percent bonus chance to use enchantments correctly in the creation of my ritual circles. Standard enchanting is giving me half a percent per level, so that equates to about a ten percent bonus. If I toss in my Enchanting Lore, at Student—hey! Knowledge: Enchanting Lore!”

Mana ripped through his body, condensing in his brain and resolving into knowledge on enchanting. Even through the odd enlightenment, Joe noticed something in the ambient energy of the air in his workshop. There were strange ripples of power bouncing back and forth, just on the edge of his ability to perceive them. Before he could put too much thought into that phenomenon, the notification on his skill increases appeared once more.

Skill increase(s)

Enchanting Lore (Student V)

Knowledge (Student III)

“Ah, abyss, I can use that skill on two Lore skills at a time now, why do I keep missing that?” With the skill back on cooldown, Joe resumed his train of thought. “Enchanting Lore doesn’t actually give me any increased odds of creating the ritual successfully, simply reducing the overall cost of the components I use, as well as giving me the knowledge to fine-tune the enchantments better. So, I think that comes out to something like a thirty-one percent boost, and the odds of creating an enchantment a rank higher than I should be able is something like five percent. All told, that should put me at a… six and a half percent chance. Wait, that’s it?”

As soon as he realized how low the probability actually was, Joe let out such a deep sigh that he sank into his chair and let his head rest on the table. “I really don't want to have to go and buy more shirts. They're going to look at me funny.”

Deciding to simply bite the bullet and get to work, Joe grabbed his next shirt and made each design as miniaturized as he possibly could. The first attempt failed when he was halfway through, as did the second, third, and fourth. On the fifth try, the shirt lit on fire, and he needed to scramble to slap a blank ritual tile down on the material before the flames could spread too far. Sadly, he'd gotten so used to this that he had one on hand and completed the action nearly automatically.

By the twentieth attempt, he'd gained another level in his Enchanted Ritual Circles skill, and so had high hopes for the next attempt. “If I'm getting rewarded for using my skills, I have to be doing something correctly, right?”

There was only one area left non-charred on this shirt: directly on the chest, front and center. It was a large space, almost big enough for two attempts, but not quite. Joe gave himself a bit of extra room, and began working in earnest, as carefully and meticulously as ever. To his surprise, and slight consternation, the enchantment snapped into place and *hummed* to his Magical Synesthesia senses.

He held the shirt up, smiling at the oval-shaped shimmering space that was outlined by what almost appeared to be circuitry that had been three-D printed onto the material itself. “Hello, beautiful! I suppose I should be glad this only took me twenty-one attempts, but all I can think is how badly I want a nap. Mate! Can you fix me up?”

Caffeine jolted directly into his veins, and the irises of Joe's eyes constricted slightly. He hopped to his feet, a manic smile on his face as he practically waltzed into his vaulted area. The door shut behind him, and Joe placed the enchanted shirt into the center of his ritual circles. From there, it was a simple matter of creating the sympathetic links with a combination of aspects and mana, and the ritual shrank down further and further, until it was all but sucked into the enchantment itself.

“The final component, and some mana to get the ball rolling.” Joe laid the shirt flat, pouring the vial of Daniella's blood onto the open space. It hovered in the air for a few seconds, the ritual condensing one last time and altering its properties until the blood was gone, and a simple dye remained. From there, the ritual sucked in all of the mana that Joe was willing to give it, and the ‘dye’ sank into the large oval space.

With a shimmering flash of light, the enchantment and the circle merged into a single, complete diagram. The altered blood then seeped over the open oval space until it was completely coated. Seeming to dry in an instant, the red coloration vanished, leaving behind a somewhat goofy, picture-perfect image of Daniella. Joe looked at the shirt, his face as still as stone. Then he reached down, grabbed the garment, and tossed it onto the pile of rejects.

“Yeah, we're going to have to put that in a place it isn’t quite as noticeable.” He glanced over at the shirt once more, realizing that each of the incomplete enchantments on the shirt had also been replaced with Daniella's face. “Such cringe. Very nope.”

Unfortunately for him, he ran out of shirts before being able to recreate the enchantments again. That reminded him that he only had the single vial of blood, and no more was forthcoming. With a groan of frustration, he pulled his single, gaudy success out of the pile of garbage and contemplated what to do with the remainder of the shirts. There was far too much magical contamination on them to simply burn them to hide his shame, and he didn't have a convenient hollow mountain to drop them in.

Luckily for Joe, he had an alternative option that he was happy to take.

A single instance of his Field Array later, all evidence that he didn’t perfectly create his items on the first try had been reduced to mere aspects. Holding the shirt out in front of him with two fingers, Joe contemplated it with a grimace. “I guess I better make sure it works?”

Sliding the garment over his head, his arms through the holes, Joe pulled the shirt down and tight. “Bleh. I look like a-”

His head snapped to the left as an overwhelming understanding of where Daniella was appeared in his mind. “Bearing: one hundred and eighty-three degrees off assumed Jotunheim standard North. Distance: fluctuating, approximate range of ten thousand two hundred eighty-three miles.”

With a force of will, Joe managed to completely remove the shirt and drop it on the table, and he stood there panting in exertion. After a few deep breaths, he realized that he stank, and so activated his Neutrality Aura. The stench that had been building up on him, and in his workshop, vanished over the next few seconds; allowing Joe to take additional gasping breaths without making himself nauseated. “I am… so glad I didn't activate that in my own head. No wonder the first target would hate the second in no time flat.”

He took some time to go over his notifications, which had started appearing as soon as he’d completed the enchantment, only stopping after he had a complete, working tracking item.

Congratulations! You have created a Basic Hoardling Fur Enchanted (Blank) shirt (Rare). This item is specifically geared toward accepting a magical effect from an outside spell, but is less durable because of the partially empowered nature of its enchantment. Effects: Spell absorption and retention. - 50% durability.

You have activated the Ritual of the Unrequited Bloodhound! (Journeyman). Reductionist experience +400.

Congratulations! You have activated a Journeyman-rank ritual of your own design for the first time! Reductionist experience +500.

Your Reductionist class has gained a level! Reductionist 7 → 8!

You have created a new item: Shirt of ‘I Stan Daniella’. This basic shirt has been Enchanted half with standard enchantment, half with a ritual, to allow its wearer to always find ‘Daniella’. Upon donning the shirt, the wearer will have an intense understanding of their relative distance and direction from ‘Daniella’. It has been nicely decorated with twenty-one images of her face, as well as a bright header over the main enchantment with the words ‘I Stan’.

Joe was happy about the completed enchantment, but a little annoyed over the fact that the system was slandering him with slang that meant ‘someone who is a very zealous fan’, or a mix of ‘Stalker and Fan’. Letting out a sigh, he stored the shirt in his codpiece, resolving to only wear it when he absolutely needed to decide which direction to go.

“Good thing I don't care if I have a stellar reputation.” Joe got back to work, pausing a few seconds into creating another ritual of bubble travel. “But… maybe it’d be better if I made sure to burn this before she sees me.”