CC 9: Tenacity ~ Twenty-Two

After tearing a hole in the ground on either side of himself, merely long, vertical shafts created by his Field Array, Joe activated his ritual and set the cavities as the target for his ritual’s output. Making sure everything was well-stabilized, he activated the new ritual and eyed it carefully as it slowly spun into effect. “Hmm… snail’s pace at ramping up. I'll need to find a way to streamline that portion.”

Notepad out and fiercely scribbling, Joe continued to observe the progress of his new, active ritual. The snow and dirt rapidly became visible as sanguine fluid was leached out of it. To the untrained eye, it appeared as though two crimson snakes were slithering across the ground toward the human, lifting their heads up out of the snow only to be ever-so-slowly disintegrated.

Blood was sloshing toward him both from deeper into the city, where the warehouse was situated, as well as a small tidal wave speeding through the killing ground where the monsters had originally been butchered. The fluid flowed into the set point in midair where the ritual effect was being manifested; liquid coming in on one side, a thick powder and clear water pouring out the other. After only a few minutes, the water cistern was completely filled, and Joe paused the ritual without ending it.

As an unintended side effect, all of the blood that had been drawn toward him sloshed to the ground as a rapidly spreading puddle—moving right toward his holes! Cursing softly, he dropped to his knees and generated a Field Array over the top of his clean water. Then he pumped mana into it, instantly converting any blood that would have fallen in into aspects. After the strangely warm flood had subsided, he double checked his handiwork and confirmed that none of the blood had tainted the water. Breathing out a sigh of relief, he settled in to see the results of his experiment.

“Forgot a control case!” Joe cursed himself for a second, but eventually could only shrug. He’d already seen water freeze in one of these holes in only a few minutes when he had made his bubble tent, so he could safely assume that it would be the same here unless this water was different for some reason. Ten minutes later, he dipped his finger into the collected fluid and was relieved to find that it was still fairly warm. Pulling out his notes, he worked on another project, only dipping his finger into the hole in the ground once every half hour after that.

Three hours had quickly passed as he worked his observations into a new version—completing a variant updated ritual—and the water was starting to get cold enough to freeze. As soon as he noticed frost beginning to form, he scooped out roughly a gallon and brought it into his workshop. Applying heat to it in a pot brought the fluid to a boil in a fraction of the time he would've normally expected. Still, no matter what test he ran on it after that, it appeared to be pure, clean water.

“Looks like water, tastes like water, the system says that it is… but it doesn't freeze as rapidly as water does.” Joe could only assume that this was magic shenanigans, some intrinsic property of the monsters on this world that persisted so long as the material he was using had been taken from one of them. “If it does this with the water that was once blood, what kind of clothes are we going to be able to make? Weapons? Will they absorb heat so well that bringing them to another world will require us completely changing into another outfit so we don't burst into flames?”

Deciding those problems were best suited for someone else to figure out, the Ritualist finished up and walked closer to the Town Hall. As he approached it, he noticed that there were now guards stationed outside of the doorway. Surprisingly, he walked directly past them without being stopped. This time, he let the receptionist block his path, though the Dwarf was watching him extremely warily. “I'm here to get a quest!”

New mail has arrived!

The jovial tone that Joe was using seemed to be unexpected, and it took the receptionist a few moments to compose himself and determine how he was going to reply. “That's an interesting… assertion. If you want a quest from the village, even if we don't actually have any to offer you at the moment, I need to make sure that you're a person in good standing. That means that you have no negative titles with the council, you're in compliance with all of the laws of this Village, and that you qualify for whatever the quest will be. Are you okay with signing off on letting me run a background check for those qualifications?”

Joe was twice as glad at this moment that he'd remembered to offload the ownership of the smithy before coming here. Without Cleave informing him about this law, he might’ve not only lost out on a chance to get paid for his services, but could've even been charged with a minor crime. “Absolutely! Unless strange new, specifically targeted laws have been put into place, I should absolutely be in compliance with everything that you just rattled off at me.”

In an instant, Joe felt a very unpleasant tingling wash over him as the receptionist's eyes glowed a swirling purple. The Ritualist had given up his own Intrusive Scan, but Joe decided that if he was going to feel uncomfortable, so was this receptionist. He touched a finger to the ritual orb that had captured his Essence Cycle skill, which he'd heard from his companions turned his eyes a disturbing, stygian black.

The Ritualist could see the flows of power around him, the collections of energy that represented people, more intense around some than others. Peering deeper, Joe realized he could also see how this building in particular connected to the village as a whole, strands of sympathetic energies reaching between each of the buildings that fell under the purview of the village. The world itself was saturated in dense, roiling-

“Sir!” What appeared to be the fifth or sixth time the receptionist had called out to him was accompanied by a light shove that broke the contact Joe's finger had with his orb. The human blinked several times, his eyes instantly returning to their normal coloration. “Good, for a moment there I thought you’d been… never mind. As I’d told you already, but somehow doubt you heard, everything seems to be in order. Did you want to submit a request for review?”

Composing himself, Joe gestured toward a large, constantly shifting chart that was in plain view for the public to see, so long as they stood within this room. “I'm working to boost our morale modifier to exceptional heights. I've solved the issue with water freezing, and want to offer the Dwarven Council first option on securing the rights to the services I'm providing. Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy to create a utilities company that they have no control over.”

The human paused for a long moment, then realized what he was saying and chuckled to himself before he started walking out the door. “Actually… never mind! I just realized I don't need a quest.”

“Wait! That sounds like something they would be very interested-” Joe let the door fully close behind him before the Dwarf could finish speaking. To his surprise, the receptionist followed him out. “That’s something I'm sure they’d be very interested in generating a quest for!”

Joe flashed a smile over his shoulder, “I'm really glad to hear that. Unfortunately, a better opportunity has arisen, and I am going to pursue that. In the future, the best way to get a deal with me is to take what I offer right away, instead of trying to delay me with pointless bureaucracy; therefore giving me a chance to think of a solution that’s better for my personal success and happiness. Because from now on, that is what I’m focused on. Toodles!”

As he jauntily walked away, Joe opened his new mail and found a reply from Daniella that seemed to have been hastily jumbled together. In fact, there was a counter next to it, showing that there were multiple letters.

Subject: You replied!

Celestial feces! I can't believe you wrote back so quickly! Seriously you have no idea how cheerful I'm feeling at this moment, it's like a burst of confetti in my stomach. I've missed chatting with you, how is Jaxon doing? Just trying to get my thoughts in order right now, I'll send along—no! Don't send!

The message cut off there, and Joe snorted as he realized what must have happened. “Gotta love autocorrect and auto-send functions. She said ‘send’ twice, that must have been enough to have the mail go out.”

Exactly as he expected, the next letter was much better put together and he could practically feel a wave of embarrassment rolling off of it.

Subject: You replied! (Ignore the last one)

Dear Joe,

I hope my letter finds you well! if you got a different letter with the same subject line before this one, I hope you ignored it. It sent before I had a chance to edit it. That will teach me to drink 20 oz of coffee and try to put together a letter entirely with voice-to-text.

Anyway, let's focus on the positives! I'm super grateful that our paths have crossed again, the thought of being friends again is the only thing keeping me going right now. Work has gotten… strange and difficult over the last few days, and I'm not sure what has changed. My boss is looking at me with strange eyes, as if I'm guilty of a crime I didn't commit.

Hopefully, we can be great pen pals over the next few years, until we are finally able to meet up again.

The letter continued in that vein for quite some time, and Joe put together his own draft, which he would include more details on over the next few days. Luckily, he didn’t have to worry about the mail sending on its own, as he could only find connection to the outside worlds when he stepped into the Town Hall. He detailed some of the challenges they had been facing, and some of the most comedic moments that he had been a part of.

“Next time I see you, I'll have a giant penguin beak for you to keep as a super bizarre token of our friendship. I will absolutely expect to see it as a centerpiece on your table anytime I come to visit. Save message as a draft.” As soon as he was done speaking, he found that he couldn't stop chuckling about his mental image of Daniella throwing a beak into a cupboard, only to have to reluctantly put it out as a decoration whenever he came to visit in the future. It would be satisfying, if petty, revenge.

Feeling much more lighthearted, Joe began flipping through his options for creating a water containment facility. Thanks to his spree in the human capital back on Midgard, Joe had a plethora of building blueprints that he'd never bothered to look at before, and he knew that at least one of them had to be a fairly straightforward and simple water tower. In a city of hundreds of thousands of people, these had been so common that he hadn't needed permission from anyone to scan it. “New plan, I'm going to need to build and ‘sell’ enough buildings that there are forty total when I make the water tower; at least if I want to stick to the five percent or fewer requirement.”

Pulling open the note he'd made, and Joe reviewed his options for rarity.

35/50 Common slots remain.

12/25 Uncommon slots remain.

0/10 Rare slots remain.

“Seven more buildings, then the eighth one can be my water tower.” There was only one small issue with that: between all of the buildings he'd created so far, and his cubes for stabilization, Joe was running extremely low on low-end aspects.

Aspects Gathered

Common: 3,373

Uncommon: 122

“It's astounding how quickly I can go through those.” The Ritualist could only sigh as he realized that his crafting abilities were currently running on fumes. He could always convert higher-ranked aspects to lower, but that came with issues of its own. First, the rarer an aspect was, the harder it was to collect, for obvious reasons. Wasting it on something like this just wasn't worthwhile. Luckily, Joe had a simple solution. “Time to go collect rent!”

The first thing he did was unload all of his stabilization cubes in his workshop in a hail of ringing metal that poured out of his codpiece while he sighed in contentment at the feeling. Then Joe went to each of the buildings to which he'd transferred ownership, picking up the percentage of complete goods that he was due. His final stop was the warehouse. Upon walking in, he was led to a side room with annoyingly noticeable subterfuge.

Once he was tucked away, it was the work of merely a handful of minutes to set up a Field Array in the room and convert his percentage of corpses directly into aspects. As a fringe benefit, as the bodies vanished, the cores contained within them clattered to the ground, unable to be converted into any other raw material. His embezzling partner watched this with great interest, and didn't even complain as Joe scooped those into his spatial storage. They wouldn't be much use to the Ritualist, as he didn't particularly need cores that were under the Rare rank. “Suppose I could eventually turn these into batteries, though. Better to not waste them.”

Then the human turned on the Dwarf with a bright smile. “Hello, kind supply manager! My name is Joe, I'm here to purchase a large batch of unprocessed corpses. May I ask your name, and what you’d be willing to accept as payment?”

“I don't understand what game you're playing at.” The bearded Dwarf brushed off his beard in a sharp emotion, something Joe understood was a sign of either confusion or contempt in his society. Possibly both, given this situation. “Carpe Commeatus Maximus is my name. As to the price-”

“Hold on, your name is ‘seize the important supplies’?”

“Strange. Is that how it translates in your language?” The Dwarf moved on quickly, “As I was saying, until an official currency has been generated, we don't have any good metric for exchange.”

“I'm going to call you Max.” Joe loudly decided to interrupt, taking the opportunity to splay out dozens of samples of the goods he had access to. “Any of this catch your eye? I bet the soap especially would be well-received by your workers. Always getting covered in goo and such.”

As he looked over the goods on the floor, there was a subtle but clear shift in both the Dwarf’s posture and temperament toward the situation. “Can you get these in bulk?”

“Yes, I can get these finished products in enough bulk to make trades for raw materials. Unprocessed raw materials that will require lots and lots of work before they’re useful to anyone else.” Joe knew that the negotiations had already begun, and he was ready to drive the hardest bargain he could.

“Well. In that case,” Max stated with a twinkle in his eye as he twirled his beard with one finger. “I suppose you can call me anything you want, and Max is close enough. As payment for that favor, I'm thinking I'll take seven of those, three of this, and at least a dozen of those bars of soap per Penguin, but if we want to discuss Hoardlings-”

As they bickered back and forth on the final barter agreement, Joe realized that this was the longest stretch of fun he'd experienced in a long time. Maybe it wouldn't be such a terrible idea to set up his Wizard Tower somewhere nearby, then spend a few decades just growing and exploring this immense, frozen world.