CC 9: Tenacity ~ Thirty-Five

“This next wave is going to be a rough one.” Joe muttered to himself as he put the finishing touches on the ritual that would inscribe enchantments on his behalf; gmaking the careful and precise changes to the structure of a core to turn it into a Mana Battery. “I really need to figure out how to make a recharging station… making a new battery so that it has a full charge right away isn't exactly efficient.”

Joe had gone through his notes, almost positive that he had the information that he needed in order to make the recharging station somewhere. Sadly, to his growing dismay, it was nowhere to be found. He’d only ever discussed making one before now… apparently. “Didn’t I make one back on Midgard…? No, that was just one of these battery makers. Huh. Wild.”

Most of his regeneration was going to the largest battery he’d reclaimed, though he had dozens of other people working to fill the others. Frankly, his mana pool and regeneration was absurd for his level, a direct boon from Occultatum. Even while devoting his strength to multiple projects, he still had plenty for the creation of this ritual, if not enough to actually activate it on his own. “If I remember correctly, this one is particularly finicky, already unstable, and this world is only going to exacerbate that situation. I'd better put this in the back room of my workshop.”

Joe put action to his words immediately, going into the back, locked vault area of his workshop and setting up the ritual—which he knew would act like a rapidly swirling gyroscope when it was active. As a testament to his familiarity with the diagram, the ritual itself had undergone a remarkable reduction of its overall size. What once had occupied nearly ten feet of floor space now fit in the distance between his hands when they were positioned just in front of him with his elbows bent and tucked to his side.

Seeing the dense spell hovering in the air put a wide smile on his face. “I don't know what it is about human nature that makes us want to miniaturize all of our creations, but it’s always either super huge, super tiny, or a focus on being super fast. Not a terrible thing, I suppose, but an odd observation.”

Beast wave 3/25 will be starting in 24 minutes!

“Yeah, I get it, stay focused.” Joe couldn't even be annoyed with the intrusive message, as he’d been letting his thoughts wander off on a tangent. “Focus… follow one course until success. I should write that on the wall somewhere. Or, or, I could activate this ritual and get my batteries filled.”

The Ritualist had recognized an uncomfortable truth. As the Beast waves grew larger, going from hundreds of monsters to thousands of them, he was either going to need to add a mana recharging station directly to the ritual tower—hopefully that would work with the Rare towers that Socar had specifically designed to be modular—or he was going to need someone on standby next to the tower, ready to switch out the drained battery for a full version as soon as it failed to generate another attack.

“I wonder if I could convince an enchanter to make me a battery pack, so I can stuff a bunch of these onto a tower and not worry. Otherwise, I'm going to have to convert an enormous Core into a battery just to get through a single wave.” Surprising himself, that realization that he had a multitude of choices made Joe calm down. Somehow, having four distinct options felt freeing, and filled him with a deep sense of relief. “Huh. Finding out new things about how my brain works every day.”

Cutting off the flow of his mana to recharging the battery, Joe waited a moment to reach full capacity for himself, planning on empowering the ritual that was currently motionless and enervated. After ensuring that his stabilization cubes and alchemical candles had been properly aligned and lit, the Ritualist poured power into the activation sequence. Ever so slowly, the ritual circles were converted from glowing lines of aspects, into eye-catching, bright blue swirling lights. Upon completing the project, Joe double-checked to ensure the stabilization was holding properly, then tossed a Rare Core into the center of the swirling energies.

Its momentum vanished as soon as it reached the center of the diagram, and a bright light began tracing along the shining gemstone. Joe let out a breath he did not know he had been holding as the ritual showed that it was working properly.

“That Rare Core could be converted into six thousand experience, which if I recall correctly, means it'll have a total mana capacity of twelve thousand.” Joe did some quick mental math, forehead furrowing with concern as he realized how close he’d come to disaster. If he hadn’t recognized that the batteries of his towers were about to go out, they would have been forced to deal with an entire wave unassisted. At this low level, that might not have been enough to overrun the Dwarves, but the waves had combined and the Boss Monster had come early.

If the Boss had joined instead on the third wave, that would certainly have been enough to bring down the Town Hall unless the Masters or Grandmaster Snow intervened directly… and they had made it quite clear that they would not.

According to Havoc, even though everyone still in the Village was back on good terms, the Dwarven Council wasn't opposed to joining their fleeing brethren and building out their base more carefully if this place was destroyed. Joe had been able to extract a promise that Snow wouldn’t actively seek the loss of this Village, but none of them would engage unless they were specifically pulling their people out of harm's way.

Apparently, even though Joe hadn’t seen it, that was what they’d been doing during the previous attacks. Anytime one of the Dwarves was about to be slain, they tried to fully remove that person from combat. Still, there were only so many warriors a double handful of powerhouses could save at a time, and losses had been high.

Back to the issue at hand, Joe recognized that imbuing a ritual with Dark Lightning Strike to blast the swarming mobs would cost the tower one hundred mana per lightning strike. He could also overcharge the tower, allowing it to strike again without coming off of the standard cooldown, but each time that happened, the cost would increase by ten percent. “You know, that might not be a terrible option for the last little bit of the labyrinth, but putting that at the start would drain the tower down to uselessness as soon as the wave began.”

If he were to take this Rare Mana Battery when it was finished, that meant the tower could strike a hundred times—standard attacks—before the battery needed to be replaced or recharged. As the damage was based on his personal skill level, that meant the tower would output forty-seven thousand, six hundred and forty damage to the target it struck directly; while also dealing approximately twenty-six thousand damage to every creature within… checking the description of the skill again, Joe realized that the splash damage would actually spread for twenty-seven and a half feet.

That was better than expected, but unless the monsters were crawling all over each other like they had been in this most recent wave, that meant likely only up to four or five additional targets would be damaged. “Still, substantial damage output. I think I’ll make at least five more of these-”

A horn was sounded at that moment, signaling that the monsters had been spotted moving toward them. Joe was forced to run out of his workshop, slamming the door behind him as he gently cursed. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off for a few minutes, he collected as many fully charged Mana Batteries as he could. Knowing he was out of time, the Ritualist was forced to entrust a few other people with the task of collecting and replacing the others as soon as they’d been topped off.

Then he ran as quickly as he could, Omnivaulting to the top of the walls and bounding along until he got to the outermost tower: the first that the monsters would need to pass. He opened the panel on the side that housed the energy source, placing the core carefully, then closing the panel gently. Above him, the inert ritual started flooding with blue light, then spinning in place. Joe let out a quick sigh of relief, as there was never any guarantee that everything would begin working perfectly again after a ritual had been without power for a time.

The wall he was standing on began to tremble lightly as the high-level monsters sprinted toward the entrance of the walls as quickly as they could. Unwilling to waste any time watching them thunder toward him, Joe hurried along; following the same path that the creatures would need to move along. As carefully and rapidly as possible, he replaced the Mana Batteries and moved to the next, all the way until he was out of supplies. “I really hope someone else is working toward me from the other direction…!”

But, at this point, he’d done everything possible to help bring down the monster density that would be able to reach the Village. Everyone had planned for a larger scale, pitched battle: digging trenches and erecting barriers that would not be enough to fully block any monsters coming through, but would afford the Dwarves themselves some modicum of safety and security.

Joe descended to the final tower, his mind teeming with ideas for what he could do to improve the setup of defensive towers that would crown the walls. Lightning and acid were his current go-to's, but he needed to either bring in support that could assist in the creation of fire-based attacks, or find someone who would train him as rapidly as possible to get a fireball spell or something similar up to snuff and converted over to a ritual.

Fireballs and other spells of that nature had been more than plentiful back on midgard, and he cursed at himself for avoiding them. At the time, he had slightly looked down on the sheer commonness of those spells, and had intentionally not dedicated any time to learn them. Certainly, his lack of fire affinity at the time would have hindered his progress, preventing him from quickly advancing, but he had not even bothered to acquire the most basic Novice version.

He internally chastised himself at the realization that he didn’t grab the spell because it would have been ‘hard’ to learn. It was an oversight, as he had never anticipated gaining a natural affinity for fire, but at this point acquiring additional spells, enchantments, and similar abilities seemed out of reach thanks to the influence of Jotunheim. “Bleh… I'm probably going to have to leave this world entirely in order to find ways to learn the spells that would be the most useful here! A little bit of ‘hard’ work back then would have been useful for the current me.”

Joe promised himself that he would one day delve deeper into his own research and unlock the secrets of volatile elements, but as with all learning, he needed a starting point. As he rushed back to the central area of the Village, he hoped silently that Havoc would have an answer for him, or at least be able to offer guidance. “Ooh… maybe I can use one of my ‘Apprentice’ slots with him to get this! Where else had I been offered Fire spells…? The engineers of The Shoe offered training with fire, but I don’t remember if that was proper blastin’ magic.”

The thought that he might be able to undergo some intensive training with Havoic and get past this block simultaneously excited and concerned him. On one hand, he would be able to have powerful spells that he absolutely needed. On the other hand, the last time he had done something to that effect with Havoc, the Dwarf had brought him to the edge of death at least eight times a day and called it ‘proper teaching’.

Howling from the frigid monsters followed him, and the bitter-cold air swirling around him as the enormous volume of the horde impacted the air pressure. For once, he was glad for the noise. Joe could only be thankful that the current icy conditions helped pull him out of his shiver-inducing memories.

Then he frowned as he realized that their presence felt more menacing than usual, as though they recognized the fact that the defenses had been weakened, the towers weren't at capacity, and an enormous number of people had fled. As he got closer to the nearest thing they had to safety, Joe realized that the bloodlust was being diluted, then fully shoved back by the intense defiance radiating from the Village. Joe took heart at that thought, even if the sensation was just a placebo that he was creating within his own mind.

Novusheim needed to be filled with silent determination, refusing to be brought low and trampled flat like every other attempt at civilization on Jotunheim had been. Rather… he needed the town to be defiant. It was frustrating to him that he was so bad at balancing the needs of the town against his own desires, but the first step in being the requisite amount of empathetic was working to recognize that difference.

Far behind him, he heard the whistling shriek as an acid-filled bubble was launched forth, impacting the front ranks of the horde. He could imagine it well: a bubble roughly the same size as one of the Penguins striking the frontrunners, a geyser of acid sprang forth, corroding the hides of the invaders with a malevolent *hiss*.

As he launched himself over the final barrier and came down into the open area of Novusheim, the first notification of a monster being slain reached his eyes. He pushed it to the side without bothering to read over it, knowing that it had to have been a Defeatist Penguin had just been slain for the kill to happen that quickly.

There was no time for casual reading of system notifications right now. The remaining forty thousand defenders were currently bracing themselves for the coming storm, weapons gleaming in the ever-darkening dusk of Jotunheim.

Joe couldn't join them, not for this. He’d need to trust them to break the tide against their shields, to bring it low with their weapons. There was a proper wall that needed to be built, and not another soul with the ability to erect it before the horde was upon them.