CC 9: Tenacity ~ Thirty-Six

The Ritualist spent the entirety of the Beast wave in his workshop, perfecting the buildout for a single section of wall. He’d forgotten how ruinously expensive the wall was by itself, but he had to merely grit his teeth and accept the burden of creating it. “Can't say I'm unhappy that my bargain for resources handed over to the council was after expenses. Otherwise I'd be a whole lot less willing to invest. But now? Now it’s just using up resources I’d lose to them anyway. Heh.”

He had all of the schematics that he needed in order to make a Tier five wall, which was what had been in place around Ardania itself, but he’d only ever made a Tier two version, the Beginner version, back at his guild-owned Townie McTownface. At the time, it had been due to his shocking lack of resources. Well, not particularly shocking at the time, but now? Looking back at how little he had, even with all of his presumed wealth, as well as what his Guild could provide? That was the shocking part. If he were to convert his aspects to material right now, he could probably buy half of the entire human capital city with the Legendary aspects alone.

The most difficult part of creating these walls wasn't going to be the actual structure itself. No, it would be the enchanting, and everything that went with setting up what the Dwarves would consider ‘genuine’ defenses. Currently, although Joe had the ability to create enchantments, his skills in that arena would be of extremely limited use in this environment. He’d need to rely on other people to pick up his slack, and he only hoped that being back on good terms with those in charge would elevate that need to a higher priority.

Strolling out of his workshop, Joe made his way determinedly through the charnel house that his front yard had become. Every step was a stab at his pride, as most of the monsters of this wave had been easily brought down by the tens of thousands of defenders. Perhaps it was the fact that no one had been relying on his ritual towers to take down the creatures, or it could be the fact that the temperature in the area had risen to the point where no one was getting the ‘chilled’ debuff without standing outside for at least twelve hours… but he felt that the truth of the matter was that there was a fraction of the fatalities that had occurred during the Boss wave. Even then, that number was close to ninety-eight percent human deaths.

Conversely, there were thousands of wounded. Various healers were moving throughout the makeshift medical area, and Joe paused for anyone in his direct path to heal them as needed. His presence alone was enough to stabilize anyone with severe debuffs, his Neutrality Aura giving them a small but constant amount of Health while actively targeting and removing the issues that arose from open wounds, poisons, and hygiene.

He powered forward, knowing that there were others that were handling this situation at least as well, if not better, than he could. But if the walls didn't get built and the gaps in their defenses went unfilled, the next wave of more, stronger monsters, would cause the same—or worse—issues.

Within minutes, he had his survey tool out and was preparing to replace the Trash stone barriers serving as barriers with actual, proper walls. “There’s fifty feet of open space on the first, leftmost section. The right side needs multiple fortifications, making an ‘L’ to cut off this path leading directly into the Village, instead forcing them to circle one more time. Across the corridor we need two sections of one hundred feet each… no, let's turn that into four sections of fifty. If we leave a six-inch gap between the walls, that should be enough to account for attacks and shock on them.”

That would also lead to greater visibility for the defenders, and as he listed the positives of this type of building in his head, he became ever more sure that this was the best path forward. The supermassive monsters wouldn’t be able to fit through that small of a hole, but his allies could have archers and spell casters peppering the onrushing forces as they swarmed down the corridors. “After this, I'm going to have to work with the engineers and city planners, then coordinate with the geomancers so that we can knock down and replace the simple stone directly adjacent to the town.”

Eyeing the aforementioned rock critically, he continued murmuring to himself as he made his plans. “We need all of it to get sunk back in, then we raise the entire inner wall in one go. That means I'm going to have to measure that space, and prepare a ritual for each section so that we can rush over and activate as soon as we complete the previous one. We’ll build it with a constant, fairly gentle curve. That'll force the monsters traversing it to slow down, or at least not be able to build the wildly destructive momentum that they’re managing currently.”

Deciding he’d wasted enough time planning for the future instead of pushing for success in the present, Joe looked at what would be the most important thing to fix at this moment, rightly deciding on choosing to fix the ‘L’ bend of the walls. Partitioning off an entire section would grant them valuable time to whittle down their enemies. “I'll have to do this in two separate rituals. Luckily, those are at the Journeyman rank so that I can make a full, tier five wall section.”

The main expenses for this ritual came from the fact that crafting a Journeyman ritual meant substituting Rare aspects—as aspects at the Journeyman rank were ‘Special’ aspects. Because of this, the highest cost of completion was the one thousand Rare aspects needed for every hundred feet of wall. Even then, that was a rough estimate between the cost of the actual formation of the wall, as well as the creation of the ritual itself.

Joe could only soldier on with a grimace, doing his best to ignore the fact that he could create a fully functioning workshop at the Journeyman level for the same cost as forming what was essentially a huge stationary shield: excellent for blocking direct attacks, but useless for anything else.

He tried not to let any miserliness sink in: these barricades were absolutely key to their continued success. After positioning everything exactly as he wanted, heavily relying on the survey tool, Joe turned and faced the large crowd of gawkers that had gathered around to see the pretty lights that he was making. “Excellent! Volunteers!”

Many people tried to break and run, and he chastised them lightly by sending a ritual orb *thunking* into the back of their head. Joe was able to bring down a few of the most likely candidates for high mana pools, rushing over and dragging them back to help him as they fought and clawed at the ground.

“No! I've seen what happens to people that build these things with you, I just ate lunch!”

Joe casually dodged a weak punch sent his way, though his shadow coalesced into a clone of him and smacked the offending Dwarf right in the face. “Enough games, people! This will start the expansion of our city, or at least our eventual city! Don't you want real walls? That's what this is! You saw what it'll look like, mostly. At least you saw a framework for it. Get over here and help out! If you have nothing better to do than watch me set it up, you have nothing better to do than help me finish it off.”

No one had a good argument against his logic, though a few tried to beg off on account of being wounded or the like. Joe had no mercy, simply chucking a ball of healing water at them and watching as it froze on their skin before dissipating into motes of healing energy. “Great, now no one has any reason to avoid their duties!”

So saying, he positioned everyone and activated the ritual. Over the next few minutes, the wall built itself from the top down, hovering in air as the ritual circles spun around and generated the stone wholecloth. The creation traveled down until it reached the ground, firmly ensconcing itself in the frozen surface of Jotunheim. Once complete, Joe inspected the wall section with a critical eye, eventually finding no issues, and declaring the ritual a success.

Then he turned and released the Dwarves that had been volun-told to help, and cheerfully shouted that he was looking for more people to help him set up the next piece. With the bright white stone glistening and reflecting the brightening daylight that Joe's sky barrier was creating, people were much more apt to join in on the process. The Ritualist helped that mindset along by reminding everyone that they would be able to directly claim that they’d been involved in creating the majestic walls of the city—hundreds of years from now, when they were showing off a proud, successful city.

Being a living part of history was a point of critical success for Joe, and soon he had people lining up all the way back to the edge of his workshop to join in on raising the walls to higher heights. In what seemed like no time at all, the first two, most critical sections had been completed, followed by the couple hundred feet of bulwark that he’d been hoping to get done. At that point, there was only a one hundred foot stretch of wall that needed to be constructed before the breach had been fully repaired, but it was in a manageable position, the hole merely allowing a huge opening into the Village.

At that point, Joe had already burned through twenty-five hundred Rare aspects, and wasn't particularly keen on continuing further until this operation had proved its worth. Still, after looking at his remaining cores and aspects, he simply kept his mouth shut and charged onward. He had already committed this much, and he wasn't going to stop just because it was getting expensive.

Realistically, did the safety of the people he was trying to protect have a price tag he wouldn't be willing to pay? He mulled over that thought as he erected the final two sections of wall, deciding that… yes. Joe did, in fact, have a few hard lines. First and foremost, he refused to put himself in a permanently bad position. The reason he was willing to continue at present was because that wasn’t actually a huge concern; monster material would be flooding into his coffers sooner rather than later.

Pushing those thoughts out of his head, he inspected their efforts and felt a deep sense of accomplishment. The walls exuded security and durability, sharply contrasted to the Trash-tier stone palisades that they were erected next to. By the disgruntled words and furtive motions his assisting Dwarves were making between the two structures, the Ritualist realized that he likely wouldn’t have any issue getting up the next sections. Most likely, he would never need to literally hunt down volunteers again.

“Now we’re talking.” Puffing up his chest, he softly voiced the words that were crawling through his mind at that moment. “When it looks this good, people are going to fight for the chance to join in.”

Horns began sounding, and Joe looked out at the true night sky, realizing that he’d been working on this project for nearly an entire work day. He glanced around at the people that had helped him with a deep sense of affection, knowing that he’d have still been working on the second piece if they hadn’t been willing to jump on board with him.

Exhausted but accomplished, full of feelings of gratitude for those around him, Joe made his way back to his workshop to sleep through the next wave of monsters. It was the best way to prepare himself to complete the next of his never-ending duties.