CC 9: Tenacity ~ Forty-Five

He was buried beneath a thin layer of snow, but the Ritualist’s body was broken and his lifeblood was pooling in a sanguine puddle around him. Unable to move his arms, his legs, or his head, Joe was utterly uncertain how he was still conscious. Even though his mind was screaming with pain, the fact that he could think at all meant that he had a chance. Working to channel every ounce of his Battle Meditation skill, he put all of the alarms his body was hollering at him to the side and focused on his Ritual Orbs.

One of the orbs, which wasn’t bound to his Characteristics, floated out of its position in his tattered bandolier and drifted up to rest gently on his face. Even though he knew he was freezing to death at this very moment, Joe was still surprised at how cold the surface of the orb was. Focusing his intent, before his mind drifted further and he was sent to respawn, Joe activated the spell captured in the weapon and his body was flooded with the healing power of his spell, Lay on Hands. His neck snapped back into position, sounding far too reminiscent to what Jaxon had done to the Cyclops only moments prior.

Health gained: 457

Current Health: 647/2,344 Caution! You are bleeding / freezing / chilled / stunned / deaf-

“Ignore remainder of debuffs!” The human groaned even though he couldn’t hear the words coming out of his mouth. With the healing, Joe felt the remainder of his body come back into alignment, which unfortunately allowed him to fully appreciate all of the pain that he was in at the moment. He wanted to get to his feet immediately, but forced himself to wait until Lay on Hands came off of cooldown; then he pumped another heal into himself, followed by a Mend from his own hands.

Current health: 1,361/2,344

As his ears were fixed, the sound of combat, screaming, and an unending bellow of abject fury that continued far longer than it should nearly deafened him once more. “That's going to have to be enough for now!”

Struggling to push through the snow, Joe whipped around and got his legs under him, Omnivaulting straight up and exploding out of the surface of the snow like a porpoise showing off for a group of tourists on a canoe. His eyes immediately went to the Cyclops, who was now moving at its regular speed, flashing through the open area as fast as any Dwarf could sprint thanks to its enormous limbs and lack of weapon impeding it.

It was still holding its club, and both the Cyclops and the weapon appeared completely undamaged, unlike the once nice, level surface of the Village. From this angle, Joe couldn’t even see the bottom of the hole that had just been gouged out. “I guess we can just put a pond there. Maybe a lake.”

Without hesitating any longer, Joe tossed a hasty Exquisite Shell on to himself at approximately a quarter of the power it could be even as he sprinted into the distance; targeting the far corner of the open space. He had originally planned to build his workshop in the far back corner of the Village, but had realized that was a bad spot and decided on setting up shop right next to the entrance of this area. Even so, there was now a building in that location.

The Town Hall.

It was practically rubble, large chunks were missing from it, and it appeared that a stiff breeze could knock the entire structure over. There was a gaping hole in the side that Joe could see, where the club had come down and smashed into its side before he could transfer the entire building using the Ritual of the Traveling Civilization.

“I can't believe how cost-effective that is when I'm not trying to pull an Artifact from another world onto this one.” Joe tried to see the humor while he could, because the Cyclops was ahead of him, bearing down on the building with a cohort of monsters coming along for the ride. He was hoping that the next stage of his plan would work, but he knew that it was going to take a few seconds before… there!

Like a pilot light igniting a larger flame, a ritual circle sprang into existence above the shattered remnants of the Town Hall. It began to spin, and shifted from a bluish-white coloration to a deep metallic silver. Power began to condense in the center, looking for all the world like a swimming pool’s worth of mercury suspended in midair. It sloshed back and forth, shaping itself and being pushed into place by continual surges of power coming from all directions.

Tiny gray specks of this near-liquid material were rising up from the bodies of every monster that had come through the walls, some having as many as four liquid motes of energy lift off them before rushing into the greater collection. They moved practically at the speed of light, hovering in the air for only an instant before streaking to the center of the ritual like a shooting star. Finally, only ten steps before the Boss monster would arrive and be in range of the building, five motes of grayish energy lifted off of it and shot into the core of the building energy.

“It’s too late!” Joe screeched in fear as the club went up, poised to strike. The Cyclops began to bellow in exertion, but as its foot landed, a massive detonation shifted the ground and blew off two toes. The ankle of the Boss rolled, tendons snapping like steel cables as it stumbled and fell to a knee. The creature tried to inhale and ignore the pain, forcing itself to its feet as all the light coming from the sky winked out, showing only the darkness of the true sky above them.

“Ha! I’m so glad I forgot to move that Ritual Tile!” Joe wasn’t too worried about the loss, so long as the Ritual of Slaughter came through now that it had been given enough time to fully activate. “I really hope Socar was correct.”

Joe shifted his position, flinging himself to the side instead of trying to chase down the Cyclops. “Come on formations… activate East Small Metal or whatever the Abyssal final effect was supposed to be for a single target piercing effect!”

The ritual didn’t disappoint, the practically molten metal already condensing down to a flat plane. For one brief moment, the liquid became perfectly reflective, a shining sheet of a mirror hanging in open air. The Cyclops stared itself down, its movement slowing to half speed as it was forced to fight against its own debuff.

“Why didn't I think of that earlier?” Joe shouted in the air as he gripped the sides of his own head, “It literally had a debuff that makes anyone who sees its eye get paralyzed! This is fighting a gorgon one-oh-one! No, it's fine! It’s all notes for the future: use the active effects of monsters against them.”

Then the sheet of metal collapsed to a single point, a singularity of power shining brilliantly enough to create false daylight. The ritual circles containing it flared a single time, so lightning-bright that Joe was forced to blink instinctively. By the time his eyes were open again, the energy was gone. He looked around frantically to see if it had missed its target, as the Cyclops was still moving.

It took two steps forward, then came to a halt and slowly sank to its knees. The son of a Titan fell forward, its face slamming into the ground. A high-pressure stream of blood shot into the air above it, arcing up nearly a hundred feet in the air, only to come down and be captured by the still-active blood collection ritual; weaving through the air like a sanguine snake. A flash of light like the glint of moonlight off an unsheathed blade at midnight caught Joe's eye, and he whipped his head to the side in time to see the remnant power of the Ritual of Slaughter continuing its deadly work.

It flashed to every monster in the area, starting with those nearest the Town Hall, as they were the first to gain the Mark of Slaughter on them.

The larger monsters had holes blown through their skulls, the smaller monsters had their heads directly ripped off by the force of the flying power. Quick as chain lightning, the now much-reduced power flew off into the distance toward the entrance of the Village, vanishing into the masses of monsters still congregating there. Joe tracked it as best he could, but the remaining energy wasn't even enough to enter the maze, simply clearing the open area before dissipating, leaving nearly a quarter of the assembled monsters alive and well.

Joe sucked in a deep breath, filling his lungs to the absolute maximum capacity, before bellowing at the top of his lungs, “The Boss monster has been defeated! Fight off the others, and we win!”

The clamor of battle reached a new crescendo as his call was taken up, but Joe didn’t approach the site of the extermination. He ran over to the building, and immediately got to work setting up a Ritual of Repair. He focused on the area between himself and the entrance of the Village, ready to drop the ritual and throw everything he had into blasting anything that made it past the waves of defenders.

Excellent use of Dark Charisma! Incite that violence! Charisma + 1!

Your call across the battlefield has improved the morale of the remaining fighters! Charisma + 1!

Your announcement has caused 1,000 additional fighters to join combat! Charisma + 3!

Your announcement has caused 10,000 additional fighters to join combat! Charisma + 5!

The notifications rang out every few seconds, seeming to stabilize at a total of ten additional points in his Charisma. Joe nearly let his trickle of mana flowing to the Ritual of Repair sputter out as he sucked in a breath out of sheer surprise. “Celestial feces, there really are some good benefits to aligning to Dark Charisma. I wonder what I’d need to do if I had somehow managed to align it to light, or whatever positive is?”

He considered that for a few seconds as the building to his left continued to reassemble itself brick by brick. Then he shook his head, “I likely would’ve needed to convince people to stop fighting, or connect with them on a deep personal level. This is probably for the best.”

Remaining at his post for the next several hours was an enormous test of his willpower, as he wanted to go and see what was happening. Yet, no one else was coming over to help him guard the building, nor help repair it. That meant that he had to stay wary, alert, and ready for anything. Finally, two and a half hours after the Boss monster had fallen, an alert swept over him.

Congratulations! Your Village has successfully defeated all 25 Beast waves! Your Town Hall is automatically undergoing an upgrade in rarity to reflect its new status as a Rare monument structure! Town Hall (Uncommon) → Town Hall (Rare). Please note, this will not fully or automatically repair the building. If it has sustained damage, you will need to find alternative ways to repair it.

Joe read that message as ‘if you do not have a Ritualist with you that can magically repair this building, you are going to need to find all new materials at the rank of this building and hope for the best’. That was fine with him; in fact, at this moment he would have been fine with another Cyclops coming toward them. They had succeeded, survived, and reached the official rank of Town in under two weeks of being on Jotunheim!

He celebrated alone for a few minutes, until a trickle of people started coming over to inspect the corpse of the Cyclops and look over the upgrading Town Hall. Jaxon came sprinting directly over to Joe, screaming in excitement as he threw himself into a full tackle hug.

“Joe! You magnificent crazy man! I've never considered having a building dodge an attack! That was a work of art. You saw the attack coming, and adjusted the situation to our benefit. I can't express how much I love that idea… perhaps some day I will be able to adjust concepts! Maybe I can even adjust the air and have an attack land somewhere else instead of on me? So many ideas!”

“Technically, it didn't just dodge… it counterattacked.” Both of them laughed at that, and Joe wasn't entirely certain when it had started raining, but there were droplets on his face. Luckily his Neutrality Aura whisked those away before they became annoying. “Jaxon! We won! We have a Town!”

A harsh voice crashed over the jubilation of those in the area, sweeping away Joe's smile like a tidal wave. Stu was stomping toward him, cracking his knuckles as he eyed the building that was being repaired. “All that means is that we have a problem!”