CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Nine!

Joe spent the hours of forced relaxation and recuperation sending messages to his guild, his mother, and even penning one out to Daniella in case she managed to get access to her mail in the near future. During that time, he stumbled upon what he thought might’ve been either a strange bug in the game, or a mechanic he didn’t fully understand the purpose of.

As far as he could tell, not nearly as much time had passed on Midgard as had passed for him on Alfheim and especially Jotunheim. Figuring this out had been fairly simple; the letter to his mother had included a portion apologizing for not writing more often during his adventures, and the reply—which came nearly instantly as far as he was concerned—showed great confusion from her. Apparently, he was sending her messages fairly consistently and she hadn’t been worried. Not until now, at least.

Follow up messages to Aten confirmed the disparity. Time was moving fastest on Jotunheim, medium on Alfheim, and slowly on Midgard. To top it off, being in the respawn room messed with all of his calculations.

“Great. I’m never gonna get rid of this abyssal ‘Despised by Humanity’ title.” Joe could only groan softly at the mess this was making for him. “Uuuhhhggg. I'm already terrible with time, this is just going to make everything so much worse. People on different worlds are moving at a different time dilation? Does that mean that the strongest will get even stronger, faster? Is it meant to separate out groups of people?”

He thought about that question for a few minutes, deciding that Eternium wanting them spaced out was the most likely answer. “That means by the time someone currently on Midgard levels up high enough to go to Alfheim, then gets here, I’ll likely be a world or two away even if I spend a lot of time getting stronger here. Is it meant to partition off groups? Or is there a world coming up that will be at a much slower time dilation and mess with everything again?”

Having no way to test his hypothesis at the moment, Joe could only give up and decide to live in the moment. Just like everyone else.

With nothing else to do beyond study for the next several hours, he pulled out the Mana Manipulation manual given to him by Grandmaster Snow. Even though he couldn’t practice the incredibly intense methods, getting a better understanding before attempting to dive in was crucial to his eventual success.

Much later, the portal crackled open and Joe was able to step out of his respawn room and into the Town Hall of Novusheim once more. Joe wasted no time in querying the receptionist that always hassled him. “How long was I gone?”

“Not nearly long enough.” The bearded Dwarf rumbled instantly. “But the last time you stepped foot in here was approximately one hundred and twenty hours ago.”

“Five days?” Joe gasped sharply, only calming down as he realized that getting furious wasn’t going to help him in the slightest. “Okay… yeah. I'm back now, I just need to hurry.”

As usual, the clouds were swirling in the sky, causing any warmth that the glowing sun could offer to be converted into an icy chill. As he hurried along toward his workshop, Joe's fur-and-leather cloak billowed in the stiff breeze, his face set in grim determination as he rushed along toward his goal. Waving down a messenger, he sent out a request for Socar, Heartpiercer, and Jaxon to be sent to meet with him; tipping the bored human with a bar of luxury soap to ensure that the missive would be delivered quickly.

Leaving the door slightly open behind him, the Ritualist hurried over to his table and got to work putting together the Ritual of the Insomniac Stalker. As far as he was concerned, it was time to get out into the wilderness and find his lost friend. Seeing as the ritual was only a Journeyman rarity diagram, he was able to get it almost fully complete by the time the first of his chosen teammates arrived.

Continuing on with his work, he explained to them what he’d found about the time difference between this world and the previous ones. To Joe's consternation, they took it in stride. With a sigh, he reminded himself that they weren’t bearing time-locked titles taking up a useful spot. Sure, they might be Excommunicated, but that wasn’t something time alone could heal. “The reason I called all of you here is that I’m planning to start traveling into Jotunheim. If you want to go with me, I’d appreciate the company.”

“I’m out.” Heartpiercer immediately replied, turning on her heel and walking toward the door. “All you’re going to do is spend all day in a bubble, touch down, build a shrine, and be back here anyway. Find me when there's something interesting to do, someone to fight, or somewhere to explore.”

“We’ll be exploring—and she's gone.” Joe grunted with annoyance as the bitter wind blew in from the open door. He walked over and secured it, turning around to see guilty expressions on the faces of the other two. “Oh, come on! You guys are going to sit out on it as well?”

“She had a point.” Jaxon pointedly pointed out the point. “At least you’re a class that can gain benefits from sitting and studying all day, casually glancing out at the horizon to see if there are landmarks. I would just need to sit in a cramped bubble, watching you do work and having my hand slapped anytime I tried to adjust your hunched form.”

Joe turned pleading eyes to Socar, who let out a light groan and nodded; clearly showing that he was doing so under duress. “I can fly along with you every once in a while, but I have my own research to do. Don't expect me to come every day! Rare!”

“Yay!” the Ritualist cheerfully clapped, earning a few eye rolls for his effort. “I just need to gather a few supplies, activate this ritual that will let me stalk Daniella, and we’ll be on our way. I'm just trying to figure out a way to have it automatically cancel when I get in range of her, otherwise I might accidentally detonate the entire camp that she's staying in.”

Jaxon and Socar exchanged glances, but it was the wizard who leaned forward. “Sorry, did you say you were going to stalk her? Joe, that seems a little-”

“No, no! All this ritual will do is let me know exactly how far away she is, and the exact direction I need to go in order to get there. Sure, it makes it so sleep doesn't do much for me, and technically it’ll make me want to, you know, kill her on sight-”

“Perhaps some alterations to the ritual are in order before you ever, ever activate that.” Socar offered with a wary smile. “You didn't come up with it yourself, right? You found that? Didn’t make it?”

“Of course! But this is the fastest way to-”

Jaxon gently pulled the aspect inscriber out of Joe's hand, where it exploded into a brilliant shower of sparks that set his hand on fire. “Ow. Anyway, I’m certain that using it may be fast, but just go ahead and don’t.”

With even the anti-Charismatic Chiropractor calling for a moratorium on the use of the ritual, Joe had no choice but to take a breather and rethink his plans. Ever so slowly he came around to the idea of taking what he currently had and making it into something different, something far better.

The question was, who could he seek out for advice on changing or improving a ritual? Havoc was out of the running, as Joe was pretty miffed at him for causing his recent death. Not to mention he would likely throw Joe back into the scrum if he came back and was asking for more right away. To be fair, the training had been effective. Looking at how Infernal Conflagration had gone from Novice seven to Beginner four in under twenty minutes? Yeah. That was impressive, even for Joe.

It was unlikely he could get someone like Grandmaster Snow to take the time with so much else going on, and it wasn't like there was another Master that was easily available for… Joe closed his eyes and shook his head, hoping he could come up with another, better solution. Thinking hard, nothing came to mind and he let out a deep sigh of annoyance. “Thank you both for stopping me from activating that. I've got an idea of what to do now, I just... really don't want to.”

Each of them stepped out into the blowing snow once more, and Joe began trudging to the Town Hall. Normally he could get there in under a minute, but currently he was fighting against himself every step of the way. When he finally entered the building, he marched over to the receptionist and cut off the snide comment coming his way with a sharp question. “Who’s in charge of Master Stu’s punishments and community service?”

The bearded Dwarf closed his mouth with an audible *click* and glared at the bald man in front of him. “Who wants to know?”

“What? Literally me.” Joe rolled his eyes in contempt at the Dwarf that must’ve been a devoted student of Master Stu Sarcasm. “I thought of something he could do to help commute his sentence. Something that wouldn’t be life-threatening to him, and would show immediate returns on investment for the population.”

Still looking at Joe with great suspicion, the receptionist leaned over and pressed a button on his desk. He didn't say another word, and Joe simply waited patiently until the door to the council room opened. Grandmaster Snow poked her head out, huffing in annoyance as she saw the situation. “Topher! Master Joe is on the council. He can just walk in. Bother us with your inane pettiness again at the risk of your position.”

“Bro. You literally could’ve just said the council is in charge of him.” Joe walked past the annoying Dwarf, who had a name that matched his personality. “Abyssal Topher. Sitting out here being a butt.”

Entering the council room, Joe noted that only three others were in attendance, which made sense for the time of day and lack of scheduled meetings. Giving a polite salute to Snow, Joe addressed the others heavily. “I need some assistance with the alteration and improvement of several of my rituals. I had a thought that perhaps Master Stu would be an acceptable teacher, or at least someone that could help to improve their quality. Please tell me that I’m out of my mind and should look for someone else.”

Snow looked at Joe with a pensive stare, gently fondling her mustache as she thought about what the human had proposed. “No… in fact, Master Stu is likely the closest to my own skill in Mana Manipulation of the masters. Certainly if you could get any of the Grandmasters to assist you, they’d be far better choices, but…”

“Surely you aren’t suggesting that Stu goes and works with the person that made him need to plead temporary insanity.” Another council member scoffed at the idea. “I think Stu would rather go to the mines and gain his first real calluses than work with this particular human.”

Not seeming too worried about that, Snow shrugged and casually waved Joe off. “All he's doing now is sitting in a room, being forced to wear a muzzle anytime he comes out or is within earshot of another person. If you want to take responsibility for his conduct, I can have him brought to your workshop for… let's say six out of every twenty-four hours? I’ll sweeten the pot by giving him double time toward his community service while working for you, as he’ll be proving himself reformed. Also, just to be as absolutely, hmm, smart about this as possible, bring me the final diagrams you make with him before you activate any of them.”

“You'll check them over?” That made Joe's ears perk up, and he smiled hopefully at the Grandmaster.

“If he messes with them, I’ll assign him triple the doubled hours of his community service that he had removed.” Snow grimly promised. “Feel free to inform him of this fact, at your leisure.”

“You know…” Joe chuckled at the thought, “I think I might keep that to myself for the first one or two projects he works on. Thank you for the assistance, and… I’m looking forward to his help.”