CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Twelve!

“Well, this is an issue I need to fix,” what felt like several seconds later, Joe managed to say the remainder of his sentence, “as soon as is humanly possible.”

He needed several things in order to unbind and rebind his orb, which meant the Ritualist needed to leave his workshop and go over to the Pyramid of Panacea. Steeling himself for an unpleasant time, Joe threw open the door and walked out into the false sunlight of the area.

Scanning the area, he didn't see a single person. Brow furrowing, he commented to himself, “that doesn't seem right. There's tens of thousands of people here, and it's not like we have apartment complexes to retreat into. Where is everyone?”

Knowing he wasn’t going to be getting answers without fixing his current issue, he started hurrying along to the pyramid, every moment feeling as though he were watching a slideshow instead of real life; as if he were watching the world at twenty frames per second. “What did this do to me?”

Having nothing better to do as he hurried along, the Ritualist pulled open his character sheet and nervously laughed at the information it contained.

Name: Joe ‘Tatum’s Chosen Legend' Class: Reductionist

Profession I: Arcanologist (Max)

Profession II: Ritualistic Alchemist (4/20)

Profession III: Grandmaster’s Apprentice (14/25)

Profession IV: None

Character Level: 26 → 27 Exp: 379,972 Exp to next level: 26,028

Rituarchitect Level: 11 Exp: 65,950 Exp to next level: 50

Reductionist Level: 6 Exp: 27,891 Exp to next level: 109

Hit Points: 2,491/2,491

Mana: 3,769/5,163

Mana regen: 72.68/sec

Stamina:1,870/1,870

Stamina regen: 6.65/sec

Characteristic: Raw score

Strength (bound): 182 → 172

Dexterity: 184

Constitution (bound): 179

Light Intelligence (Binding broken): 190 → 95

Wisdom: 180

Dark Charisma: 142

Perception: 180

Luck: 116

Karmic Luck: 23 → 25

“No wonder I felt weaker, I thought it was just my mind.” Joe shook his head, grimacing at the odd dissociation he felt between his brain and his body. “I totally forgot about the ‘Mind Over Matter’... thing. Since my strength is being boosted by my Intelligence stat, to help bring them into balance, of course my Intelligence being cut down would also make me physically weaker.”

*Humm.*

Joe's arms flailed as he tossed himself backward, away from the explosion of snow that had just erupted in front of him. He looked to see what had created the effect, but only saw snow hopping into the air like a wake from a passing ship. “Is this… my Perception is able to see where people have moved, but my Intelligence is just too low to process the information?”

The world was eerily silent, all but for the slow, constant howl of wind across the landscape. Carefully walking—ensuring he didn't fall into the temptation of Omnivaulting—Joe hoped he didn’t slam into someone, or get obliterated by a Dwarf that was simply strolling down the road. “I've never missed the ‘basically a child’ lane that was in the Dwarven capital as much as I do right now.”

Thankfully, he was able to make it to the pyramid without further incident, and knocked on the enormous doors. Just like always, it took a while for the doors to fly open, but this time there was no one standing there waiting for him. Joe looked around curiously, wondering where Jake the Alchemist could possibly be, and decided to simply start cautiously walking into the building. An instant later, the world around him was flashing by, and he found himself sitting on a chair deep within the pyramid.

Moments later, Jake appeared in the chair across from him, sitting there as though he'd been comfortably waiting for quite a while. “Can you understand me, Joe?”

“Yes!” Joe practically shouted in excitement, having not realized how much this situation was throwing him off. “How are you doing that? Why couldn't I see anyone, wait, no, I think I figured that part out. My Intelligence binding broke and I need to unbind and rebind my Ritual Orb.”

Jake started talking practically as soon as the final word was out of Joe's mouth, obviously having had plenty of time to process and think about the information that the Ritualist was presenting. “I'm able to speak with you because I've had to have an enormous amount of practice speaking to people at such a low threshold. Basically, I plan out the conversation from the start, and start speaking well in advance of you finishing so that it feels like a normal conversation to you.”

The Ritualist processed that for a long moment, wondering when he would need to start doing something similar to speak with regular people in the future. If he ever managed to get back to Midgard, would speaking to someone like his own mother feel this bizarre? Before he could ask any follow-up questions, Jake vanished again, and multiple alchemy stations began smoking and brewing compounds as if by magic.

He didn't need to wait long, within five minutes Jake reappeared in front of him on the seat, gently setting several vials on the table between them. “I color coded them for you because I know your Intelligence is broken right now. Red unbinds the Characteristic, green is the binding agent I believe you require. Obviously, in your current state, I'm not about to allow you to use my tools. Good luck, and goodbye.”

The world spun around Joe once more, and he found himself standing outside of the pyramid with the door shutting behind him. Looking down at his hands, he found two stoppered beakers, one in each hand. Immediately he stored those in his codpiece, and looked at the open field between himself and his workshop. Swallowing his nervousness, he stepped out and began running as quickly as he could toward the building.

Almost immediately, he fell, bouncing off the ground dozens of times as he failed to properly control his extremely powerful body. Pulling himself out of the furrow he'd carved into the ground, Joe took a deep breath and focused on taking slow, careful steps. “Right… my other Characteristics are still two thresholds above Intelligence. Don't do the dumb, Joe.”

He was certain there were numerous eyes on him, mocking conversations happening, and a bevy of other things he would have to deal with in the near future. But for the moment, he didn't need to worry about any of that. If anyone showed up and started insulting him, Joe was certain he wouldn't even notice. Their lips would move like hummingbird wings, and his brain would be unable to decode the information it was being sent.

A painful hour later, he had set up the Ritual of Unbinding and managed to get his orb back to its original state. Holding the now spherical, silvery orb in his hands once more, he was faced with a challenge he hadn’t been expecting. “Abyss, I don't know enough about my Intelligence’s alignment to light. How could I turn that into the sympathetic connections I need?”

Pondering that issue while standing still, Joe found no easy answer. He could try to force a binding as it was, but it was unlikely to succeed, merely causing him intense pain and further damaging him if he did it wrong. Knowing that there was no escape from good old-fashioned work, the Ritualist decided to follow the same steps that he'd taken the first time around.

Settling himself in a comfortable position, he started to meditate on his own mental state as deeply as possible. He tried this for a dozen minutes before giving up, and deciding to cheat a little bit. Letting his finger brush against the orb containing Essence Cycle, Joe surveyed the workshop he was in, hoping that he would find some remnant of the fickle energy that had suffused his Intelligence.

Unfortunately, due to the chaotic nature of Jotunheim, there was no hint of the change. Yet, simply watching the flows of power sweeping through the world was enough to allow Joe to sink deeper into his own mind, practically hypnotizing himself as he began to think deeply on the nature of the odd power and his own connection to it.

His eyes were closed, yet Joe stood at the precipice of his mental state as his damaged Intelligence weighed heavily on him. Just as with the world outside himself, internally his brain was a dense cloud of fragmented chaos. The deeper he sank within himself, the more he started to pick out patterns.

There was no true imagery; only what his mind could conjure for him. Still, as it was his brain, Joe understood what was happening around him. Oscillating, strange images told him that his ears were hearing sounds, his body was feeling sensations, but they were stunted because his brain currently didn't have the strength to process what his perception was feeding into it. If he understood what was happening correctly, part of the reason he was so confused at the moment was that an enormous amount of stimuli that he'd grown used to was simply gone from the range of understanding… but still attempting to flood his brain.

Attempting to further remove himself from his senses, Joe tried to drop further into his meditation, setting aside all outside perceptions. Moment by moment, he became more practiced and successful at doing so. A mental image of himself appeared in the chaos, and for a moment he felt a bright glimmer of hope. Realizing that he was still connected to his Ritual Orb and caught in the throes of his Essence Cycle skill, Joe understood that the light he was seeing was the very energy he'd hoped to witness in his workshop.

Vibrant hues were dancing and swirling through the air above his mental self like an aurora painting the sky above the polar ice caps. Watching the light, he was filled with the desire to bring positive change to the world, to allow everything around him to come into a harmonious whole.

As he stared at the lights, meditating upon their meaning, they began to come into focus more and more clearly. Each strand of the light soon represented a facet of the intent behind his Intelligence, and began coalescing into actual images that his mind generated to help him understand. They changed every second as the Ritualist strove to understand his own place in the energies, ever so slowly settling into the solid pictographs he desired.

Inside of his murky thoughts, Joe slowly began to find clarity as he understood what the alignment with the light meant for him personally. It meant that he could bend his mind, what he considered his most powerful asset, into being a catalyst for positive change. Pursuing this further would allow him to become a wellspring of inspiration… or at least that’s what his mind associated with his subconscious thoughts and desires.

As the lights settled into perfect, continuous patterns that he would be able to remember and replicate on his orb, Joe realized that when taken together, they formed a small story. “What does being aligned with the light mean, other than offering order to a world sinking into entropy?”

This resonated with him on a profound level, and a sense of fulfillment washed over him. Joe already knew that when he inscribed this short story onto his orb, the end result of the binding would be far more powerful than what he'd originally put in place.

With an unexpected confidence, Joe let himself surface from the depths of his mind, buoyed by a renewed sense of purpose and satisfaction.