CC 9: Tenacity ~ Nineteen

After discussing with the others for a few hours, Joe realized that each of them had extremely deep insights into their own professions. Even the Dwarf among them seemed amazed, as he had only been able to achieve his level of success thanks to hundreds of years of practice. As they were preparing to disperse, Joe hesitated and asked for one last favor. “Could any of you look at this ritual and offer advice on how you’d set out the parameters?”

He set out the full diagram of the Ritual of Slaughter, as well as his notes on the subject. Each of them took turns analyzing the Journeyman ritual, which was for the most part incomprehensible by each of them. Heartpiercer dragged a fingernail lightly along several points of interest, showing how each of them converged in a specific manner. Frankly it had looked like squiggles even to Joe until that moment, and that was with his Master rank in Ritual Circles. “If I'm reading this correctly, this part details how the energy will be dispersed.”

“I’d been wondering about that.” Joe leaned in and traced along the lines, looking as closely as he could to ensure he understood each part of whatever she was about to say. “What I’d gathered from this was that the first of the targets that fulfills all conditions will be the first hit by the build-up of power.”

“That's accurate, I think, but it also shows how much of the energy will continue on.” She tapped at the spot again, showing how every single line that mentioned direction and discharge connected to this point in the ritual, even if the lines were extremely faint. “I'm almost certain that this means all of the power will hit the lead target, and what remains after the creature is destroyed passes on.”

Joe’s eyes brightened as he realized what that would mean. “Then this is equally effective against a single target, or multiple targets! No, hold on, hear me out. If the first creature to meet the requirements is some little Penguin, then that means there are likely hundreds of Penguins that are about to be slaughtered. But if thousands of creatures are meeting the requirements, and one supermassive monster sets it off, all of the damage will be focused on that single target. All of the damage will accumulate on the one who fulfilled the requirements, making them far easier to defeat even if it doesn’t outright kill them.”

“But also not allowing any of that damage through to the rest of the swarm.” Socar cautioned him carefully. “You know… this has aspects of a Formation. I bet if you set your flags at these trigrams—Black North, Southwest Big Earth, Center Square, West Small Metal, and East First Son—you will create an incredibly impressive single target piercing effect when the ritual activates. Then again, we could also exchange the East First Son with Center Everyone, and West Small Metal with South Fire for a superheated effect that would be extra effective against the swarm of Yin-aligned creatures of this world. Sorry, ice-aspect creatures.”

“I say set all of those up and see what happens!” Bauen slapped his knees and stood up as if the conversation was over. “Hard to know what's going to be the best to use if you don't have a control case and a few use case tests.”

Socar winced and immediately refuted what the Dwarf had to say. “Ooh, ye~eah, I can't recommend that. The problem is, by having your flags out in these formations—by the way, when I say ‘flags’ I mean the requirement points of your ritual. Like… tripwires, landmines, actual flags. Sorry, went on a tangent there, but having the ‘flag’ in one sector, then having a secondary ritual that has the same effect and flags in opposing sectors won’t just dilute the effect, they’ll likely cancel each other out. For maximum *oomph*, only one of these on the field at a time.”

The Ritualist nodded along with what the Mage was saying. Privately, he told himself that after the first test—unless this information was perfectly accurate—he’d be setting up as many of these rituals as he possibly could. They had too much potential power, and using only one at a time would feel wasteful. “Thank you all for your thoughts on this… I think I have a good understanding of what I'll need to make all of this.”

“First thing tomorrow—let’s call it eight hours, actually—we’re going up on the walls and planning our auto-turret emplacements?” Heartpiercer wondered aloud to confirm their plans, and everyone nodded enthusiastically about setting up what would, with minimal maintenance, eventually become a passive stream of raw materials.

“Can we meet at my workshop, right near the entrance to the outer walls?” The group separated after agreeing to his request, leaving Joe wondering what he should do with his time. Having his Constitution past the fourth threshold meant that he required very little time for sleep, usually only every couple of standard days for a few hours. He loved this, because it meant that each day was worth twice as much as it had been when he was closer in stats to a standard human.

“My quests are kind of hard to complete right now, but so long as I'm working on setting up this ritual, at least they'll get some progress soon. Actually, what do I have going on right now with those?” He rummaged with his character sheet for a moment, pulling open the tab and reading over his currently active quests.

“Let's see… Student Ritualist three, need to kill a thousand creatures with the Ritual of Slaughter. We'll call that one ‘in progress’. Journeyman Ritualist, all I need to do there is have someone from my coven back on Midgard reach the Student rank. Nothing I can do there except wait. Unless I wanted to establish a new coven here…? Nah. Apprentice Rituarchitect three. I need to make two more ‘meaningful’ monuments. What counts as meaningful? Useful?”

Pondering that for a few moments brought no enlightenment, so he simply shrugged and looked at what else he had going on. “Apprentice Reductionist two wants me to make Apprentice rank items and then reduce them. We can knock that one out pretty quick, probably. But Student Reductionist two tells me to make five Unique crafts…”

That tickled something in the back of Joe's mind, as he considered the open building slots. At this tier of town level, there were no options for having a Unique structure, which meant that he was going to need to work on his other crafting—“Wait! That's what it was, didn't the upgrade notification include bonuses for morale? Let me see, let me see… yes! Every thousand points in the morale modifier allows for an additional Unique structure. If I want a permanent reduction center, another A.S.P.E.C.T. tower, I need to earn that Unique slot at the bare minimum. Boom, just like that, I have an actual reason to get basic systems that make people happy in place for the city.”

This put a smile on Joe's face, as he’d been feeling extremely hesitant about building up the town further. “I don't mind making my own meaning, and generating projects to give me responsibility for them. With over half the possible buildings in the area offering me a small amount of tribute, combined with my class quests, I've got some serious incentive to go and make cool things happen.”

So long as he could keep up this pace, creating buildings and making bargains that cost him very little but gave him extremely long-term benefits, he wouldn't have to care about what the leadership of the area had to say. As Joe increased the quality of the area, boosting the conditions for people to live and work, everything he made that was earning him passive income at this point would be well worth it. “Finally, I can start saying that I went out there and took charge of my life, instead of waiting for someone to hand me things to do. Let's go figure out the water issue.”

As he cheerfully strolled along toward his workshop, Joe pondered the other non-class quests that he had at the moment. “Still have that reputation quest going from Occultatum, I guess that means not all of my shrines have been found yet. Or maybe they were, and the explorer got dissolved in a bubble of acid? Heh. Couple of quests that I can't do unless I can open the bifrost, so I don't need to worry about those, and then of course figuring out the mining situation… even if it’s just a ‘miner’ problem, I think I’ll still need to dig into it.”

The Ritualist could only hope that he’d get some assistance in that quest from the Dwarven Council, even if that only came in the form of the Dwarves getting an order not to start digging within city limits. He didn't particularly care about the quest reward, only about the punishment for failure. They were nowhere near equipped for burrowing monsters.

“Water.” With his priorities in order, Joe stepped through the door of his workshop and closed it behind him, so deep in thought that he didn't notice his favorite chiropractor standing in the room waving at him until he’d nearly run into the man. “Jaxon! Good to see you, what have you been up to?”

Ever-present grin in place, the chiropractor swept Joe up in a hug and tossed him side to side, cracking his back in eight places. “Learning new techniques, as per usual! Do you know that the Penguins in the area have one of the same issues that was affecting humans before we came to this universe? They have a terrible hunch, and I have no idea how they're finding cell phones large enough to use with those fins.”

“Phones?”

“But of course! Why else would they be hunched forward and looking down all day? Now, to be fair, I haven’t seen anything with a screen that they could be using, but all that tells me is they leave them at home before they come to attack us.” Jaxon sincerely nodded at that, tapping the pads of his fingers together in a constant undulating motion. “Perhaps that’s not the only possibility, but going by historical data, it is the most likely.”

“If they were humans.” Joe stressed that last word, but it didn't seem to be getting through to his friend. “Why am I even participating in this argument? No. Anyway, bye Jaxon. I'm trying to figure out a good way to handle the issue we’re running into with water.”

“There's plenty of snow out there.” Jaxon waved toward the door uncaringly, “It's easy enough to heat it up and drink what we need.”

“For now it is.” Joe consented with a dark undertone. “But what's it going to look like when we have extremely large buildings with a need for indoor plumbing? I'm looking forward to a hot shower, even if I’m constantly getting cleaned by my magic. A soak in a tub? Water coming from sprinklers for when we eventually set up a greenhouse in order to grow food? Large scale industrial projects that require water for any reason? Scooping up a handful of snow isn't going to last us very long.”

“How very interesting! You’re considering problems so far in the future, and I have no interest in them. I'm not going to say that I only come visit you when I’m coated in hot, sticky blood, filthy as a pig, and feel like having clean underwear again… but I'm feeling rather fresh and ready to get back out there. Have a lovely day!” Jaxon swayed back and forth as he sashayed toward the exit; the last hints of the bloody footprints he had made on his way in vanishing under the scouring of Joe’s Neutrality Aura.

Joe watched him go, unable to stop a small chuckle escaping his lips. “At least he's having plenty of fun here.”

With that, he pulled out some parchments and began writing down his thoughts, making notes, and trying to determine what the best solution was. As he broke the large-scale water problem down into smaller and smaller pieces, time seemed to pass ever faster. Now completely absorbed in his task, Joe only spared a single passing thought outside of his work.

“Good thing I told everyone to meet me here. Probably wouldn't look too good if I was late for our first agreed upon meeting.”