CC 9: Tenacity ~ Thirty-Nine

Trying to leave the oddities of the system behind him, Joe turned his attention to the task at hand. There were huge, gaping holes in the walls, and without some immediate intervention, the Village was likely to be destroyed. As far as he could tell, there would be no nice, easy, uniform solution to the issue, as the walls were entirely different shapes and sizes. “Come on brain, I know you’re trying to race, but you're just spinning your wheels!”

The Ritualist continued his journey, traversing the entirety of the remaining simple maze without running into a single idea. He looked at the hole that he’d come to a stop at, his mind blank as he let his eyes wander along the jagged edges of stone, traveling up until he saw the leaning tower that somehow was holding on, if barely. Joe muttered to himself, “Well, that has to be throwing off the formation. I bet Socar would be losing his mind and ordering me to put a new tower up right away.”

His thought process sparked something in his mind, and as he pulled in his awareness, it lit into a bright fire of inspiration. Going over his own abilities, his spells, the innate power of his rituals given to him by his base class, Joe realized that he did have a potential answer… his talent didn't lay in creating bulwarks and defensive gear, it wasn't about generating enormous weapons of war to lay siege to the oncoming enemy. No, those were merely a byproduct of what he could do, and were at best on the fringes of his specializations. “I design rituals to make buildings. Everything else is only a subset of that, or using similar skills!”

He didn't have the time or resources to construct solid walls, and since that was what had been here, that was the only solution his mind had seen. Until now. “I could set up a Trash rank structure in something like… what? Five minutes a pop? Abyss, even now the idea of doing that makes me queasy. Why would I intentionally make Trash?”

After considering his options for a few fleeting seconds, he firmed his will and swept around, sprinting toward his workshop in the distance. Jumping over the steep drops between walls, sprinting along the tops of them, and soon catching himself with his ritual orbs as he came in for a landing outside of the main door, Joe slammed open his workshop and rushed over to the table. “It's got to be huge, and something that can easily expand to fill any hole out there. Size is the only thing that matters, not at all how I can use it. I’m sure I got my hands on something that can…”

Joe rummaged through his codpiece for a long moment, using both hands to reach in and pull out… “Yes! A Trash-rank warehouse!”

Energized by his idea, Joe sprang to action, piecing together the series of enormous Trash warehouses that he would need. He had eyeballed the distances, and hoped that any gaps remaining would be small enough to block the majority of monsters. If only a few got through, that wouldn’t be much of an issue, as they would be the smallest of their brethren. In fact, as he realized that, Joe resolved to leave one or two holes that Penguins could move through in order to help spread out the threat level of the creatures that would be coming after them. “These are going to be pretty dang makeshift, but if I don't need to have the resilience of the traditional, Common or better warehouses, I can make practically an infinite supply of these.”

Using his Student ranked Architectural Lore to its maximum potential, Joe stripped the ceiling off of the blueprint that he was creating for his ritual. Everything else was copied over, and he ensured that the building wouldn’t fall apart until at least after it had served its purpose. “As a Trash warehouse, it’s going to be a rank below Novice. That means we’re going to have constant degradation of the building, so I'm going to have to time all of this perfectly.”

A glance at the countdown timer showed him that he had several hours until the twenty-fifth and final Beast wave, when the enemy forces would be on them. He was going to make that time limit with ease, as these structures were essentially going to be four-sided stone boxes without a lid. “Triple the size of the door, make sure it goes all the way up and into open air… you know what? No door. Only the door-way.”

Carefully coordinating the placement of walls, floors, and exits, Joe used his power and deep understanding to instruct the magic exactly on how this would be built. He finished in record time, then stared at the clock as he tried to think of what else he could do. His eyes narrowed, and he turned to look at the building plans laid out in front of him. “These are going to be constantly weakening… I can use that.”

Setting out his stabilization cubes and candles, Joe swept everything off of his table and got to work creating a new and enhanced Ritual of Slaughter. Following the instructions that he’d been given by Socar, Joe planned for the worst case scenario and set out meticulous instructions for the activation of this ritual. His words were barely intelligible as he whispered to himself; deeply focused on his task. “The more narrow I can make the requirements, the deeper the power of the final activation will cut.”

By the time he was done, and the ritual only needed to be powered in order to be ready to go, he was down to the last, precious hour before the main assault. This close to the brawl, he had difficulty finding anyone who was willing to weaken themselves by donating mana, but he finally convinced enough people that they would be fully restored long before any fighting reached them. Nearly half of the time had passed when Joe found himself striding toward the Town Hall towing the completed Journeyman rank ritual circle with his mind.

There, he was met by a cadre of Masters, with Grandmaster Snow once again looking at Joe with deep confliction in her eyes. “Haven't we been over this? We don't want you putting untested magics onto this building. You may end up causing more harm than good.”

The Ritualist paused in his movement, thinking over the positive engagements he’d been having with the council recently. He didn't want to lose that, but he also needed this to be in place. “Grandmaster Snow… you’ve already shown your hand, in telling me that neither you nor your other members will raise a weapon to aid in the defense of the Village. I fully understand that you are instead planning on rescuing your people, perhaps pulling everyone back and into the Ritual of Bubble Travel that I’ve set up for all of you. All I can ask is that, if you aren’t going to help, you at least don't stop me from doing my very best to keep everything intact.”

After a few more moments of the weary standoff between the groups, the Grandmaster simply shook her head and stepped aside, waving her hand at the building. “I suppose you should just go ahead and do whatever you want.”

Joe didn't move, though his eyes certainly focused more sharply on her. “I’m not trying to cause further issues, Grandmaster. If we manage to make it through this, it certainly won’t be unscathed. I hope… I hope that in the near future, we’ll be working hand in hand once more. When we have a proper Town, the next step up is a City. All we will need to do is hold out, prepare our foundations, and then go for a mighty push. I don't want to have to shoulder that burden alone.”

“Well, perhaps we can-”

“But I will if needed.” Joe coldly interrupted her. “Let me ask you this, Grandmaster. Do you want to be a part of the city? Do you want to have ownership of who can come and who can go? Will you allow outsiders to decide that they need instruction from Elven teachers, and allow them to import them? Not everyone in my Guild joined the same side that I did, and I'm certain they’ll have their own goals. If I have to do everything myself, I will exclude no one. Everyone will be welcome into the city, and the laws created will be mine—and my Guild’s—alone.”

He waited a beat before stepping forward, once more dragging the ritual circle. “I don't want to cause issues with you. I'm not asking for much, only for help in creating a city worthy of our people. If I can get that much, I'm done. I’m ready to make my stand here.”

There were many frowns being sent his way, and Joe could see that arguments were raging behind barriers that blocked sound and blurred lips. As the ritual circle settled into place, it seemed that they’d come to a consensus. Joe turned to face them, and Grandmaster Snow stepped closer to him.

“You have been good to us, Joe.” She sighed deeply, seeming to sink in on herself as she shook her head. “We will return that with trust. If we are able to hold this Village without catastrophic losses, then we will agree to your plan. But you must trust that we are going to attempt to do the very best for our people, to ensure the continuation of our species. You brought an empty field up to the edge of a Town in under a month’s worth of time. That simply won’t be possible when attempting to create a city, and if we don't have everything ready for a months-long siege, any other preparation will be wasted. Do you understand?”

“I am so more than ready to get some help, and listen to advice.” Joe expressed with a much-relieved smile. “All I want is to be able to travel around as I need. Once all of this is behind us, I'll vanish into my workshop for who knows how long and leave the decisions and running of things to the people that should be in charge.”

“As all Master craftsmen do.” Snow stated wryly, glancing over at Havoc. “I am looking forward to the time when we’re able to sip tea and go over the finer points of an item’s creation, instead of scrambling to survive while also withholding suspicion and letting go of our deeply-held prejudices.”

With that, her eyes flicked over to Master Stu, who had remained in the Village against all of Joe's expectations. Now it made sense to him: the Master had remained in order to spread disgruntlement over Joe's rising influence as a civilian. While he had his suspicions, that gesture confirmed where this strange malease between the two groups stemmed from. Stu met Joe's eyes directly, a hint of challenge in them as he firmly held his gaze.

Joe simply lifted an eyebrow and walked away. There were rituals to enact, buildings to create out of nothing, defenses to place, monsters to kill, and his new home to protect. The human wouldn’t allow himself to be caught up in strange power plays and politicking of the Dwarves: those were the tools of wealthy and bored Oligarchs.