CC 9: Tenacity ~ Twenty-Five

With a simple Ritual of Unbinding, Joe was able to remove the currently bound spells from his orbs. He started with Planar Shift, as was his intention, but the notification he received as soon as he did so made his eyes go wide, and his hands begin flying as he created a second ritual.

Delayed spell experience allocated!

Planar Shift (Student IV → Student VI)

That was rapidly followed by a series of additional notifications as he pulled the spells off of his orbs. The longer they’d been attached, the more drastic and dramatic the final results.

Delayed spell experience allocated!

Cone of Cold (Beginner V → Apprentice VII). Congratulations! The spell has broken through into the Apprentice ranks, gaining a 100% chance of inflicting ‘Brittle’ upon use!

Corify (Beginner V → Apprentice II).

Lay on Hands (Student VI → Journeyman I). Congratulations! The spell has reached the Journeyman ranks. When using the spell to heal other people, there is a small chance to bless them with a small random buff!

“How long has it been since I first equipped those spells, that almost all of them were able to jump at least a rank?” Joe rubbed at his bald head as he thought it over, realizing that he'd never unbound any of the spells until now. “Now I know to do that more often, I guess.”

Still, it was difficult for him to be unhappy with the results of waiting. As he worked to unspool the metal wire mesh that was within the orbs, Joe tried to determine if it would be worth it to figure out a Mana Battery recharging station. It was something that he'd been thinking about, and he even had a rudimentary diagram for one that he had guessed at, but he knew that creating a real version would take an extreme amount of effort and the assistance of an outside enchanter. “That means… I'm going to have to figure out a way to bribe Havoc into helping me out with that.”

A Mana Battery recharger would need to be a pure enchantment. While he could eventually create a ritual, to then create the enchantment, That would necessitate a completed, working version with a carefully constructed blueprint diagram. Not only that, but the recharge station would need to scale with the size of the Mana Battery that he wanted to fill.

Creating a Rare ranked version meant that an Expert ranked battery would charge at a substandard rate, possibly even causing the enchantment to fail as it worked to overcome the denser power of the higher ranked material. Using a high-rank charger on a low-ranked battery would cause explosions. “I'm going to need one for each tier, aren't I?”

He thought about it for a few moments, realizing that he really only needed a few to start with. Uncommon cores were the most common that he'd seen on Jotunheim. Rare came from elites, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Special or Unique ones would come from bosses. It was highly improbable that he was going to be using his best cores as batteries, so he decided to plan for a Rare, as well as an Uncommon station.

For the time being, he simply held one of his batteries in his hands as he walked along, devoting his mana regeneration to it. The process was slow, inefficient, but at least he could slowly fill it up without fear of causing it to explode. As he walked toward the warehouse to start collecting his materials, he shook his head at his past self. “I just had to put a twenty thousand capacity battery in that orb, didn't I? It's going to take like… three hours to fill up!”

That gave Joe pause. He lifted the battery in front of him and watched as his mana regeneration pumped into it. With a regeneration of nearly seventy mana per second, he should’ve been able to fill the battery in under an hour. Yet, the charge it gained was a mere fraction of what he pumped into it. “Forget three hours… that's closer to ten!”

Doing some quick math, he realized that he’d be able to invest two hundred fifty-one thousand four hundred sixty mana per hour, but at the rate it was being converted, the battery would only accept two thousand and twelve per hour. “Where’s it even getting that number from?”

For the time being, he could only shake his head in confusion and allow the power to naturally accumulate. Walking into the warehouse, Joe found several lines of fighters, porter's, and craftsman waiting patiently for their allocation of goods. Max saw Joe and moved directly over. He had been wandering the floor, assisting his employees each time there was a question or confusion. Once more, Joe was pulled into a side room, though this time there was a substantially larger piles of bodies.

“This looks pretty good, Max. Smaller than I was expecting?” Joe let the question hang in the air, hoping the Dwarf would become flustered and give him more. Instead, he was met with a firm shake of the head.

Pointing at several charred places along the corpses, Max explained his reasoning. “You did lots of damage to lots of creatures. Unfortunately acid and other effects ruin pelts and meat, while only counting as superficial damage. Overall, your contribution was already increased by nearly thirty percent because of the assistance you Provided by creating critical hit strike points. No one can deny your effectiveness, but most of the work to finish them off was still completed by the legion, which is why you earned this much.”

“I think-”

“No.” The Dwarf cut him off sharply. “There are no discounts or bonuses right now. Respect my expertise in this field. I’ve spent three of your lifetimes learning how to properly calculate contribution, and I'll not have my craft disrespected by haggling. We already have a deal, we already have established additional payouts for you. I guarantee that none of this is a cheat, on my honor. Question that at your own peril.”

“Abyss, Max.” Joe took the corpses into his Field Array without another complaint, only the minor grumble to show his reluctance at accepting what someone else told him at face value. Soon he was back out in the snow, and decided to check in at the Town Hall to see if he could figure out why the morale modifier had reached such an inflated height before getting doubled during the Beast Wave.

“Joe!” Jaxon came slithering through the snow like a cross between the Penguin attackers and a giant anaconda. “Look, I created a new movement technique!”

“That’s great, I hate it.” Joe backed away from his friend as he slithered up to him, rearing up like a cobra and transitioning into walking on his feet like a regular person. “I've barely seen you since we got to this world, what have you been up to?”

“Oh, this and that. More of this than that, if you know what I mean!” Jaxon rambled as they stepped into the small center of bureaucracy for the town. “With such large monsters, my hands have been eating well. I've been focused on advancing them from T-Rex Head Hands to T-Rex Head Hydra Fingers. Joe. Do you have any idea how much meat ten dinosaurs eat on a regular basis? At least if I'm trying to rank them up, which I am. Precious babies.”

“Uh-huh.” Joe looked at the morale modifier diagram that was constantly in view from the reception area, trying to line up the numbers that he was seeing with what the system had informed them of upon the completion of the most recent wave.

Jaxon lightly gripping his shoulder caused Joe to give the man his full attention, and he found himself staring deep into his friend's eyes. “I just want you to know that I have not been ignoring you for no reason. Both of us are busy, and at some point, I'm certain we will resume our forays into the unknown. Until then, I'm not just going to sit in your office and watch you read books and alternatively frown, curse, or giggle.”

“Is that what it looks like from the outside?” Joe blinked a few times as he realized that, yes, that was probably exactly what he looked like while lost in thought. “Don't worry about me, Jaxon. I know that you're working hard so that we can both move on to the next world together, when we’re ready for it.”

“Exactly!” The Chiropractor patted Joe's back, adjusting his spine before turning, dropping to the ground, and slithering out the door. “Sssee you sssoon!”

“You’re not a snake!” Joe shouted after his friend, who didn't seem to hear him. “I know you can't taste the air, you're just sticking your tongue out at me! Celestial feces, I really hope he's not actually turning into a snake.”

“Is there something that I can help you with… that will get you to close the door?” The receptionist called over, the passive aggressiveness of the Dwarf never failing to get under Joe's skin immediately.

Biting back a caustic retort, the Ritualist managed to put a pleasant expression on his face. “Yes, I'm wondering if you have certain knowledge that I seek. I noticed that the morale modifier has grown exceptionally well, and am wondering what factor has affected that the most.”

“Bro. Speak regular words, will you? If I need to get a thesaurus for every time you show up, I'm going to lock you out.” The Dwarf gave a long-suffering sigh and started explaining the situation to Joe as if he were speaking to a child. “You see, human, when a bearded Dwarf is very happy, he’s more productive. When a mustachioed Dwarf is more productive, she’s more happy. When both of them are happy and productive, they make little morale babies.”

“You know I can burn this building down with a single word and a half-formed gesture, right?” Joe's intrusive thoughts finally got the better of him, slipping out of his mouth before he managed to force his teeth together with a *click*. “Let me try that again… what’s the direct correlation here? What specific action increased the modifier?”

“Well, someone out there’s been extra industrious and built a whole lot of buildings.” The receptionist shook his head as if he were confused as to who it could have been. “Those facilities by themselves give us a base morale increase directly correlating to their rank. Trash is a negative twenty-five, Damaged is worth nothing, Common gives us ten, Uncommon is twenty-five, increasing by twenty-five until we reach Artifacts, which are worth two hundred. You may have noticed that we had a base two hundred back when the town was founded, right?”

“Kinda.” That hadn’t been something Joe had paid much attention to, but when he thought back… nope, he hadn’t seen that anywhere.

“Well, it should’ve been a lot higher than that!” The Dwarf actually gained a grin when he saw Joe flinch away from the guttural roar he'd just let out. “Somebody set down an Artifact in place instead of a whole bunch of other, more useful buildings. A Town Hall, and utilities, are all worth fifty morale by themselves. Then of course there are all the individual choices of the people living here, which just means everything is impacted by the kind of day someone’s having. Everyone's individual thoughts on how things are going will adjust the modifier accordingly.”

“That… sounds like a nightmare to try and track.” Joe was just glad that he didn't need to sit on a computer somewhere and individually account for everything that was going on. “I guess I'm glad the building does it for us automatically. That's all, thanks for the information.”

“Hey! Where are you going? Did you come here for a reason?” The receptionist called after Joe. “Every time you show up here, things get weird.”

The Ritualist tossed a dramatically sad face at the receptionist, though his eyes were dancing with glee. “Don't worry about what I'm doing! I'm just going to go and fight monsters until I've enough resources to make a Town out of this hole in the wall.”

The Dwarf rolled his eyes, then looked down at a paper on his desk as Joe was leaving the Town Hall. Words were appearing on it, and as the page continued to fill out, his expression deepend into a scowl. The door closed fully, and the Dwarf couldn't hold back his mutter at what he was reading any longer, his head already shaking in frustration and rage.

“-‘let me tell you about these crazy huge Penguins’. This human is such a traitor. Giving foreknowledge of this world directly to our enemies?”