CC 9: Tenacity ~ Twenty-Eight

Only a fraction of an inch from Joe's eyes, a thick sheet of ice had appeared. No matter how he struggled, his entire body was utterly immobile. From the outside, he was certain that he looked like an ice sculpture, but his Exquisite Shell had collected the dense ice along its edge instead of allowing the attack through.

Damage taken: 9,065 frost damage! You have been Immobilized! Exposure to absolute cold is sapping five Health per second!

Exquisite Shell: 2,604/11,669

Health: 2,322/2,327

Luckily he was in no danger of suffocating, as his Neutrality Aura constantly refreshed the air around him and in his lungs. Still, even struggling with all of his strength didn’t allow him to budge a fraction of an inch. He wasn't certain if the monster was going to follow up the breath weapon with an attack to shatter him, or if it’d assume that he was dead and would walk away. Either way, he still needed to escape from this immobilization as quickly as possible.

“I don't have any spells that will help me get out of this.” Joe mumbled against the ice, which had frozen against him so perfectly that it shaped itself around his lips and ever so slightly into his mouth. He had to be careful not to accidentally overextend any part of his body past his protections, or his tongue would instantly freeze against the shimmering frost in front of it. With his spells failing him, his body too weak to make a difference, he realized that he could still rely on his mind.

Concentrating carefully, he gripped his orb of Intelligence with his thoughts and set it to spinning, then launched it out and away from his body. It shredded the leather pouch that contained it, but the spinning, drill-like orb blasted through the ice, shattering over half of it in an instant. Joe forced himself forward, breaking his way out where he could and shimmying his body out of each opening where he couldn’t.

Knowing that he’d be under attack from the moment he emerged from his frozen cocoon, Joe wasted no time in launching himself forward and upward. As his feet touched the ice that the ground had been converted into, he lunged and struck the wall and fell into a squatting position like a leaping toad. The air behind him crackled as a breath weapon was unleashed once more, and he forced himself to continue moving without pause.

His dangling shoes and robe gained a flash-frozen sheet of solid frost as he barely evaded the upper portion of the attack, and he flipped in the air to gain some additional momentum. Looking down at what was coming after him, all Joe could see once more was the shimmering haze and mist that formed where warm air met cold. “What are those things?”

There was no time to find out; he needed to get to safety and reset his shield. The fact that he'd survived a perfect sneak attack while he'd been distracted was a testament to the power of his defenses, as well as a hefty bit of luck. Enough so that he half expected to gain a stat point for it, or possibly lose a point of Wisdom for his foolishness in diving into the active combat zone.

When nothing changed, he assumed that the system had considered it a wash, and he was perfectly fine with seeing no change at all.

Now that he didn’t need to circle the Village, it was the work of only a few minutes to return to the populated central area. He landed next to a large group of Dwarves, and snapped out a sharp request for information. “I need a situation and damage report! Somebody get me numbers on those things, and-”

“Hey, calm down civilian bro!” A sergeant of the Legion shouted him down. “That's on a need-to-know basis, and we don't need you running back to the others with a wild story and causing a panic while we’re busy. Why don't you get to a bunker or something, since you're clearly not open to getting involved in the fighting!”

“What’re you even talking-” Joe's hands clenched into claws and he let out a snarl of frustration as he recalled the fact that he'd lost his Major-General title. “I'm the guy setting up the automated defenses! I need to know an estimate of how many monsters are coming in, because the walls are already starting to fail!”

Apparently he was the first person to come back with information of that nature, and after a moment of hesitation, the sergeant acted on the new data and began snapping out orders. Yet, Joe was completely left out of the conversation and was even regarded with hostile eyes as he tried to eavesdrop on what was going on.

In an effort to get information for himself, Joe pulled open his character sheet to start calculating how much experience he'd gained, checking it against the combat logs to figure out how many creatures had already been slain by his defenses.

Name: Joe ‘Despised by Humanity' Class: Reductionist

Profession I: Arcanologist (Max)

Profession II: Ritualistic Alchemist (1/20)

Profession III: Grandmaster’s Apprentice (14/25)

Profession IV: None

Character Level: 23 Exp: 298,158 Exp to next level: 1,842

Rituarchitect Level: 11 Exp: 57,000 Exp to next level: 9,000

Reductionist Level: 5 Exp: 15,541 Exp to next level: 5,459

Hit Points: 2,121/2,327

Mana: 5,957/8,160

Mana regen: 69.85/sec

Stamina:1,837/1,837

Stamina regen: 6.64/sec (3.32 reserved for Artisan Body)

Characteristic: Raw score

Strength (bound): 176

Dexterity: 178

Constitution: 170

Intelligence (bound): 185

Wisdom: 173

Dark Charisma: 126

Perception: 173

Luck: 110

Karmic Luck: 42

“Looks like my Artisan Body was hard at work, I didn't even notice when I got that point in Constitution.” Joe's mind had gone off on a tangent because he was comparing the value of the experience he'd gained against the combat log. Finally, he couldn’t ignore it any longer. “Accounting for the bursts of experience I got here, and ignoring the tiny amounts I earned in previous Beast waves… I've only killed thirteen total monsters so far this wave? Sure, they’re worth six hundred a piece, and that's great, but how tanky are these bad boys?”

Just then an additional notification rolled into his view, this time he didn’t need to push it to the side to focus on his surroundings.

You have slain an Ancient Ice Salamander!

Just reading those words was enough to make Joe facepalm. “They have a frost aura! What am I doing sending acid at them? I bet it does a tiny bit of damage, then freezes into a slush and falls off and to the ground. How much do I need to revamp my rituals in order to have them be effective here? Thank goodness I gained a fire affinity for adding that Berserker deity to the Pantheon… gah! I’ve forgotten to build even a local shrine here!”

Twisted up in his self-reflection and annoyance, Joe failed to hear the first time that an outsider began speaking to him again. Only when they tapped his arm hard enough to cause his Exquisite Shell to flare did he sharply look up and meet their eyes. He faintly recognized the Dwarf in front of him, her mustache was a hot pink instead of a standard red. Two blinks later, he remembered that she was often in the company of Bauen, which should make her an engineer for the Legion Corps.

“Joe! They told me that you saw the walls failing. I need specifics on that, and an action plan to deploy geomancers to reinforce the damaged sections.” For a moment, the human stiffened as he took in the authoritative demands that were being sent his way, then shook himself out of his affronted mindset; remembering that they were in a deadly situation at the moment.

He shoved his finger at the walls nearest them, “The ones that I saw starting to crack were the third and fourth set north of the Village, not too far from here. I'm guessing that they're not the only ones that are starting to go. Anything under Uncommon ranking rapidly degrades unless it's maintained thanks to the entropy the chaotic energies of Jotunheim inflict. Combining that with the frosty aura these Salamanders are emitting is only speeding the process up.”

“The walls are failing even without being attacked?” The Dwarf gasped in shock, making Joe frown slightly before he realized that he'd failed to bring that tidbit of information back to the council and have it shared around. “The geomancers have just been focused on building the walls out further and further… I don't think we’ve done any preventive maintenance checks and services! Why would the walls fail without being attacked? No, don't answer that, I understand the situation.”

Without another word, she turned and sprinted away, a blur of chrome and pink to his Perception. All Joe could do was hope that she could handle the situation: his Rituals of Repair wouldn’t work for this problem. Since the walls were only raised stone, not a proper structure, targeting them with his ritual would be the same as targeting the ground in Arizona and hoping that he could fix up the Grand Canyon. “If we make it through this, I'm making them implement a proper wall.”

Joe paced back and forth, his eyes scanning the threshold of the towering stone walls that protected the village. Every nerve in his body was on high alert as he risked himself by entering the field and meticulously arranging a network of ritual traps and barriers, each designed to be deployed only in the direst of circumstances. Closing off the entrance entirely was a risk, for it’d only entice the ravenous monsters to seek another path—potentially letting them bust through the very walls that currently protected this not-so-safe haven.

His only hope was that if they did need to activate this last line of defenses, it might grant them precious minutes to fortify their defenses and brace themselves for the impending onslaught.

As always, it was the unseen that troubled Joe the most. Humanity had long felt that monsters lurked in the darkness; had felt their palpable presence at the edge of their perception. Here, it was all too real. The uncertainty gnawed at him, a relentless torment that infected him, passed along by the ranks of defenders standing in defense of the fragile Village behind them. As time continued to pass, tempers flared like sparks in a dry forest threatening to ignite into a conflagration that would weaken them all.

Just as tensions reached their most dangerous peak, a gust of freezing wind swept through the opening, throwing a layer of frost over the stifling heat of their fears. The clash of the contrasting fronts of air—one frigid, and one warmed by the invaders of this world—spawned a veil of chilling fog, shrouding the approach in an ethereal haze. That icey whisper of winter tamed the fiery passions of the prepared warriors, pushing them to come together as a cohesive group.

In that moment, as they stood united, shivering in the numbing embrace of the wintry fog, they believed they were ready to face whatever horrors Jotunheim would send their way.

A set of eyes glowing a white light so intense that it stood out against the snow, opened in the fog. The low *hiss* accompanying the striking visage announced the arrival of the Salamanders.