CC 9: Tenacity ~ Twenty-Nine

Just as he prepared himself to dive into the fray, Joe received a series of notifications that gave him pause. A quick glance confirmed that they were kills of monsters, and they were racking up faster and faster. By the time he looked over, a half dozen of the messages had appeared, with more arriving every second.

Defeatist Fluttering Penguin defeated!

Hoardling defeated!

“The rest of the first wave must’ve just got here.” The Ritualist took solace in the fact that his defenses were more effective against these weaker creatures, then stopped himself before he could feel too much pride. “Ugh… now that I think of it, is it really so impressive that my defenses work exceptionally well against the weakest of our foes?”

His ritual orb of Intelligence had already been recalled and reappeared in his hand, as he'd forgotten it in the maze during his recent escape. Tossing it into the air, he focused on making it spin faster and faster, before lifting his other orbs up behind it, setting the orb of Constitution just behind the end of it, and slamming the orb of Strength into the one in the middle, coinciding the moment where the leading orb was struck with sending it forward. Joe had used this combination before, but it put a strain on his weapons, so he'd not felt too comfortable using it until now; where he was able to use the most durable of his weapons to accept the strike.

The drill-like orb flashed through the air so quickly that it left afterimages in his vision, striking the third Salamander that emerged into the open area. Even with his careful preparation, the speed of the monsters in this world was something his mind couldn’t currently keep up with. He’d actually aimed at the leading ice lizard, but luckily the entrance was narrow enough that another one had taken its place by the time his attack arrived.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t accounted for the angular, frost-coated scales of the creatures. Instead of striking and drilling directly into the monster, his orb hit the creature’s skull and rebounded up, into the wall. A large chunk of stone was blasted out of the wall itself, and Joe earned himself dirty looks from everyone who knew where the attack had come from. “Oh, come on. I didn't try to do that, that was straight-up bad luck.”

In a practiced formation, the Legion’s defensive line advanced a single step in perfect synchronization. Axes, swords, and polearms were held high, then surged forward, their deadly edges piercing through the air or cleaving monstrous foes depending on the accuracy of their attacks.

Joe's Characteristics promised him that he had remarkable physical prowess, and should be able to match at least the slowest of his adversaries. Unfortunately, his Perception was simply not up to the task, transforming the unfolding clash into a melange of light, gleaming blades, frozen droplets of blood that splashed into eyes and mouths upon exiting the protection of flesh.

Each beast was targeted by at least a dozen members of the Legion, their concerted assault proving devastating as the Salamanders shattered upon impact as if they themselves were made of fragile ice. As the reptilian forms crumbled under the barrage of countless blows, the battlefield became a chilling canvas of frozen remnants, a testament both to the combined might of the Legion and the deadly threat of the Ancient Ice Salamanders.

Only twelve of the beasts had escaped the labyrinth that’d been designed around the city, and Joe was shocked to find that he’d secured over half of the kills before they’d entered into melee range. “There were only twenty-five of them? Total? That few managed to threaten our defenses to this degree?”

His incredulousness was shared by dozens of people around him, going by the over-loud conversations that always occurred after the adrenaline-filled moments of combat. An hour later, after the last penguin had been cut down with a lamenting *squawk*, they received the notification that this Beast wave had ended successfully, very few people were quick to leave the scene. Most people milled around in confusion, waiting and hoping for direction and information.

Eventually, it became clear that none was forthcoming, and small groups began to band together and spread out, some moving to walk through the walls, some to return to their tasks in the village, but most to collect corpses and turn them over for refining into goods. Joe was among the latter group, and was eager to find the remains of the Salamanders his defenses had managed to bring down.

His smile was extremely wide, as he'd taken down the vast majority of the entire wave by himself. “I get to keep a quarter of those for myself, and split the rest with my group. Celestial feces, I love the fact that the Council wasted their first law trying to block me; and that’s probably the reason there isn't a tax yet. Inadvertent anarchy-grown Oligarchy, here I come.”

Instead of diving into the killing ground, Joe collected a large group of porters and the like that would haul the slain monsters back for him. After he had a solid twenty temporary employees, he began marching forward. They trailed along behind, collecting bodies each time they stumbled upon one. Each time they came upon a Dwarf working to secure materials from a body, Joe chased them off with a smile and a reminder that the current rules of the Beast Waves was that whoever earned the kill got the material.

In under an hour, every single one of his helpers had their storage devices completely full, and were carrying a string of enormous monsters on their shoulders, or dragging the bodies behind them with a rope. The Ritualist himself was no exception, and made sure that he was working just as hard as the people that he was paying with luxury goods and promises of ritual-based services. They returned to the open area of the village, depositing a mound of several hundred bodies next to his A.S.P.E.C.T. tower.

Once more, Joe was exquisitely pleased with how he'd managed to snag what had seemed like an undesirable location, and turned it into a profitable, highly sought-after workspace. Then there was the fact that if they’d needed to go further into the city, there would’ve been dozens of complaints over him hoarding resources, possibly an edict from the council forcing him to give up his earned materials, and certainly a general loss of positive feelings toward the shiny-headed human.

He had all of the types of creatures divvied up, even taking one fewer Hoardling to make sure he didn’t go over his allotment. Then he sent the porters away with those portions, with instructions to deliver them to his temporary teammates.

As the energies spun up, Joe began bodily throwing corpses into the opening of the building, which he'd created at a ninety degree angle compared to his previous version. Now, they did not go into the top like it was a hopper, instead simply needing to pass through the opening on the side to start being reduced to aspects. Joe's reasoning for this was simple. He could always set the building upright, if he got a working ritual set up to drag the bodies in for him.

Until then, Joe had known that he’d be having other people toss enormous monsters into this, and didn't want to have it get clogged and backlash against him if someone stepped into it in an attempt to push the monsters through. Even thinking about what it had felt like to have a living creature in the tower while it was active made Joe’s stomach painfully clench in anticipation of pain. He shook that off, reaffirming his decision as he set out the aspect jars and ensured only materials for breaking down remained within the walls of the building.

As mana flowed into the reduction chamber, the bodies simply vanished, and the aspect jars rapidly began to fill. Every few seconds, Joe would hear a *plink* as a core was dropped out of the array and onto the metal floor. When the final portion of his allotment had been reduced, Joe powered down the array and stepped inside to collect all of his goods. “That's a pretty good haul… two Rare Cores? Those must’ve come from the Salamanders.”

It was a shame that all of the Uncommon cores and lower were essentially useless to his pursuits at this time. He paused on that thought and amended it, recognizing that perhaps they would be useful for other crafting purposes, or to advance his Professions further. Joe shrugged off that thought and turned his attention to his aspect jars, getting an updated amount of aspects he'd collected with this venture.

Aspects gathered

Trash: 615,539

Damaged: 312,268

Common: 58,131

Uncommon: 19,484

Rare: 6,388

Special: 10,003 (Zombified). 100 (Anima). 111 (Molten) 638 (Phoenix), 44 (Stellar Ice)

Unique: 8,309

Artifact: 5,518

Legendary: 12,902

Mythical: 0

“Approximately eight hundred total monsters, and I got the kill for almost half of them. I might’ve only gotten to keep a quarter of that for myself, but so what? Abyss, even my Unique aspects increased, although that’s just thanks to my Natural Aspect Jars.” In fact, it’d have been even higher than that if he hadn’t needed to invest two hundred and fifty aspects into the permanent array.

He shook his head as he took a moment to bask in amazement at the effectiveness of his rituals against the monsters. “I've got to hand it to Socar, the output of those rituals must have actually been boosted by an enormous amount thanks to his Formations. Otherwise, there's no way all of those would’ve fallen to my rituals.”

He stiffened in surprise as he realized that he'd not yet received a notification for experience, and excitedly opened up his character sheet to see what sort of massive benefit he'd gained from his ultra kill spree.

Calculating Experience gained…

Joe stared at that message for a few moments, but it didn’t change. His eyes slowly narrowed as he realized that there must be some malarkey going on behind the scenes. “I'm not going to get the full experience credit for slaying them, am I? This is Midgard all over again, but at least this time I intended to kill all of those things!”

The system had the good grace not to make a joke about the situation, remaining silent throughout whatever internal debate was occurring. Eventually, Joe could only shrug helplessly and continue on with his day. It wasn't like the world would listen if he whined at it to give him what he wanted. “They can balance and rebalance all they like. So long as my personal power continues to increase, it doesn't matter what numbers they assign to my power. I'm not just going to sit around and wait for it to be handed to me, I'm going to go out there and force the world to work overtime.”

For a bare moment, his entire body was covered in dark black lines, archaic symbols that had been placed there upon receiving his class. “Just try and stop me.”

You have been cursed with-

“Wait, no, it's just a turn of phrase! Don't actually try to stop me!”

Curse canceled.