CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Thirteen!

Setting up his new Ritual of Binding was practically child's play at this point. The power linking to his Characteristics flowed so smoothly that he wouldn’t have even noticed the intrusion of the magic had it not been for the way his mind cleared up nigh-instantaneously. There was even a tiny bonus thrown in for his efforts to regain his full mental power.

Intelligence +2!

Skill increase: Ritualistic Alchemy (Apprentice II)

Joe wasn't entirely certain if he'd gained the points to Intelligence for being forced to deal with his altered mental state for a while, or if it was the fact that he'd been able to create a mindscape of himself in order to fix the issue. “Then again, seeing as how I got two points, maybe it was one for each?”

Looking at the orb, Joe noticed another small change compared to the previously bound weapon. Whereas his Orb of Intelligence had previously been an icicle shaped, pointy orb, this one was sharper, and had alternating bands of bright and dull metal. With a thought, he caused his weapon to start spinning, and it responded faster than ever before. The striation on the weapon created a mesmerizing display; something Joe was certain would mess with the depth perception of anyone trying to track its movement through the air.

Directing it around the room, Joe also found that the Ritual Orb of Intelligence responded to his mental input far more efficiently. It was faster, turned more easily, and he was certain it would penetrate deeper when striking a target. “Thank goodness, hopefully the next time I need to attack a Hoardling, this goes through its skull instead of glancing off and smashing my walls.”

Walking over to the door of his workshop, the Ritualist flung it open and breathed a deep sigh of relief at the bustling Dwarves moving through the area. As far as the eye could see, hundreds, thousands of bodies were moving. The air was filled with noise as people shouted back and forth; Joe could process all of it. That didn't mean he wanted to hang around and watch people from his doorway like some kind of creeper, so he retreated back into the depths of his gloomy workshop and started preparing the final pieces he needed to start tracking Daniella.

Thanks to the unwitting, unwilling help of Master Stu, Joe finally had what he believed was a working version. He made a copy of it and sent it off to be checked by Grandmaster Snow, happy to wait on a reply as he got everything else up and running.

“I'm going to need dozens and dozens of Rituals of Bubble Travel.” The bald man began working furiously as he waited on a reply from the exceptionally busy Grandmaster. “Who knows how far away she’ll be, and I'm going to want to stop anytime I find something interesting. Not to mention whenever I'm at the maximum range that the shrines can reach.”

That made him realize he would need plenty of shrines as well, so he began alternating his creation of rituals. Two towers of potent magical effects began piling up in front of him, stacked casually as if one of them breaking wouldn't create a chain reaction that would level his workshop. He’d made fairly decent progress when he got a return message from the Grandmaster, giving him the all-clear to attempt the activation of his new ritual.

Joe wasted no time at all, his heart beating with anticipation as he rushed into the empty vault-like room he would be activating all of his untested, dangerous rituals in. the Ritualist closed the door behind him, barring it from the inside, and began setting out his stabilization cubes. From there, he added in stabilization candles from his alchemical exploits, then finally began drawing out the full ritual using his aspects. The brilliant lines of fire hung in the air wherever he placed the nib of his inscription tool, a beautiful effect that shifted the area from a completely dark space to a brightly lit, shimmering space.

“Kinda looks like the top of an oil spill in the ocean.” Joe muttered to himself as he surveyed his circles, looking for any issues or blockages that would impact the power flow. “Or would, if someone threw a torch into it.”

When the ritual was completed, Joe began placing out his Mana Batteries, but stopped just before he would normally activate the ritual. His hand was hanging in the air, but with great frustration he pulled back and looked at the ritual once more. “I've been wanting to expand on my skills, and even if it’s something like this, I should be working to do better. How can I… what should I do to turn this into an enchanted ritual circle?”

Now that he'd drawn out every part that was required, there was very little concern that it would explode, at least until he actually activated it. In this in-between phase, of being created but not yet working, it was as stable as properly stored dynamite. So long as there was no shock to the system, it should remain without breaking for a decently lengthy amount of time.

The Ritualist started thinking about what he was making, and tried to look for drawbacks that he could mitigate. “Think, Joe, think! How could this be better? What does it do… okay, it sets two distinct targets, one is always able to find the other no matter how far away they are. It’ll tell me the direction to the target, and… and it’ll be a perpetual effect. Yeesh. What if she's something like a million miles away? Will I always have her distance and heading at the forefront of my mind?”

That didn't sound pleasant. Conversely, it sounded like a great way to lose sleep. For a long moment, Joe wondered if this portion of the ritual was the one that caused the ‘insomnia’ portion of the Ritual of the Insomniac Stalker, but he shook that thought off and instead started casting about for a solution. “What do I know about enchantments? I’ve got plenty of lore, much less practical experience. First off, enchantments are always on a physical item. Unlike my rituals, which can just hang in mid-air, enchantments are designed to create or hold permanent effects. Okay, that's a good start…”

It just so happened that all of Joe's magical clothing had recently been destroyed, and the likelihood of getting a new set was close to zero while he was still on Jotunheim. Then, if he considered the issue further, he realized that his enchanted clothing dealer, Minya, had already warned him once about taking care of his gear. “I'm not going to be able to get new stuff even if I get off of this world. Abyss, I guess there's no time like the present to start learning how to dress myself.”

His Lore skill wasn’t just for show, granting him a firm foundation in the fundamentals of the craft that he was attempting to pursue. Seeing as the ritual he was trying to contain was a Journeyman-rank spell diagram, he had to—at the minimum—put his planned enchantment onto a Rare item. It’d be even better if he could get a Journeyman unenchanted item, but it was a well-established fact that materials could hold enchantments up to a single rarity above them. “Yeah. It's totally fine. It'll just break down twice as fast.”

That was perfect for his plans, as he didn't really want to have an item that could seek out Daniella in perpetuity. He was fairly certain that she wouldn’t appreciate him creating something like that either. Currently, he didn't have anything at the Rare rank that he would be comfortable enchanting, so Joe carefully locked the door behind him as he left his workshop. It was time to hunt down a Rare or better item from one of the shops he had equity in.

Thinking about what he was trying to do, Joe chuckled softly to himself, “I'm so glad I've always been super paranoid about people getting my blood. This curse of baldness was a blessing in disguise; at least it's really hard for someone to grab a fistful of my hair and run off.”

After visiting a couple of shops, Joe had two options. The first was a monocle that he could wear on his face. That had been his first choice, for several reasons. The first was that it was a circle, and the sympathetic links to his ritual circles would be easier to ingrain in an item similarly shaped. The second was that he would feel like a character from an anime, able to see the distance and direction he needed to move as numbers that would pop up in a HUD-like format. “How many miles away is she? Over nine thousand!”

Joe chuckled to himself as he gently set down the glass eyewear. Unfortunately, his enchanting skills were simply not good enough to inscribe the enchantment onto the extremely thin ring of metal, or onto the glass of the monocle itself without shattering it. That left him with his second choice, a plain white shirt made from the fur of a Hoardling. That would give him plenty of space to attempt his enchantments, and even if he needed to restart on a different part of the cloth, that wouldn’t mean the destruction of the shirt.

Luckily he didn't need to buy dyes or threads made from the same fur, as his Reductionist class allowed him to use aspects for any attempt at crafting. After a quick round of polite bartering, Joe returned to his workshop one shirt richer, and an entire Hoardling corpse poorer.

Staring down at the shirt, Joe decided to begin practicing right above the lowest hem, which would hang a quarter inch above his rear if he was wearing the shirt. Placing his inscriber against the fabric, he started burning the pattern he had in mind into the fur.

Almost instantly, he needed to slap his hand down on the material as it lit on fire. “Uuugh. Sure, my Enchanting Lore is at the Student rank, but both my Enchanted Ritual Circles and my general Enchanting skills are in the Beginner ranks. I'm going to need some stabilization items, aren't I? What’re they called for enchanting again? Foci?”

Joe looked down at the already-singed shirt, to the inscriber in his hand, then thought about what he wanted to generate. “I'm going to need to make a Rare enchantment on this garment to contain the Journeyman-ranked ritual. I'm going to need at least a double handful of Foci for the attempts… yeah, I might as well get back over there and buy a couple dozen shirts to practice with.”

If he could get his Enchanted Ritual Circles skill up to the Apprentice rank, the Ritualist knew that he had a chance of making a Student-ranked enchantment, the crafting equivalent to the ‘Rare’ rarity on the general rarity chart. The chances were low, but he hoped that he could mitigate that by already having his Enchanting Lore in the mid-Student ranks.

Standing up and walking toward the door, Joe rubbed his smooth head in frustration at himself. “I just have to make everything more difficult, don't I?”

A chill wind blew around him while he hurried to try and secure all of the items he needed, and Joe slowly became more happy with his decision to be working on his skills. “You know, I think this is good, Mate.”

*Burble.* The coffee elemental agreed with him without poking its tiny head out of its nice, warm, Ebonsteel home.

“No, I'm serious! Think about it like this, if I'm always doing the easy thing, I’ll make my life hard in the long run. Since I'm doing difficult things when I don't need to do them, I’ll be prepared for when I do need them. If I can just front load the hard work like this every time, my life will be easy when I need it to be. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, instead of difficult, difficult, lemon difficult, right?”

Mate didn't look completely convinced, but before Joe tried to explain further, he shook his head and smiled. “Sorry, Mate, I just realized that I'm arguing philosophy with my coffee. You don't need to worry about that, you're perfect as is.”

*Burble!*