CC 9: Tenacity ~ Fourteen

As soon as his role in attaching the Mythic core to the building had been completed, Joe was unceremoniously cast outside of the pyramid. Utterly bemused, he had to watch as Jake ran to the central cauldron while squealing in glee until the door finally firmly closed. It wasn't a sight he'd ever expected to see from his stoic, menacing mentor, but he could understand the sentiment. Frankly, he perfectly understood Jake's attitude at the moment. If he had access to a Grand Ritual Hall, he'd be doing the exact same thing.

Even though he landed on his feet, Joe felt the need to brush off his shoulders as though he had dirt on them. Perhaps it was just the fact that bruises were forming where Jake had been holding on to him when he chucked the Ritualist out of the entrance, though luckily those were already fading thanks to his constant healing aura. Joe took a moment to view the notification he'd received, shaking his head in wonder.

Pyramid of Panacea (Legendary). For all intents and purposes for the creation of items, this Alchemy Hall will be treated as a Legendary structure. It will allow for the creation of Injections of the Legendary rank at a 5% greater success rate. Sage-ranked Concoctions can be attempted with a 0.5% greater chance of success. Other functions exist. See the building owner for a full description.

“Not a huge fan of the information being stuck behind a paywall, but if that's how it's got to be, I get it.” Joe let out a small exhalation containing every last drop of jealousy he was feeling at the moment, remembering wistfully the Grand Ritual Hall back in the previous zone. He still didn't have the bonafides to own or control that building, but the sheer fact that it allowed him to create things greater than his personal skill level meant that he could progress at a monstrous rate. “As soon as I can grab my building from Midgard, I'm taking that core back; favor or no.”

If nothing else, the fact that the Mythic core was safe for the moment was a huge weight off his shoulders. As it stood, Joe didn't have the method or means to protect it on his own. Now he would feel comfortable pushing forward with his plans to fight and collect his own resources. As he lamented the fact of how few people had the tools or workstations they needed in order to complete their own tasks, the Rituarchitect realized that he could likely create a profitable feedback loop if he was the first to make those displaced workers some hope—even if that might step on the toes of his erstwhile allies.

“Am I okay with ramping up the friction with the Dwarves? I guess… yeah, I am.” Taking a breath, Joe found that he was filled with a newfound resolve. With the Hamlet's upgrade likely drawing to a close soon, he decided that he was going to start creating as many buildings and businesses as he could get away with. “I need to ensure a steady supply of resources if I want to execute my new plan: ‘Nibbled to death by ducks’. Long code name, amazing results.”

Each now-confident stride he took was accompanied by a resounding crunch; the snow and frozen earth submitting to the weight of his feet as he pushed himself forward with a renewed vigor. A lack of planning was the largest detriment to his overall success, and he'd once more allowed himself to get swept up in doing what others needed from him, or thought of him, instead of seeking and achieving his own goals.

No longer.

Now, he'd fight for every ounce of what he believed that he deserved, and if anyone had an issue with that… well, the fact was, he could always start another settlement somewhere else.

Soon he had crossed the tundra that this Hamlet had been built upon, reaching the wall and directly Omnivaulting to the top. Joe did a flip in midair, pushing off a Ritual Orb that he'd thrown out at the last moment to execute a mid-air double jump. Landing on the top of the battlements with a whoop of excitement, he looked into the distance—where he could see monsters swarming toward the very walls he was standing on. “Let's go get my hands dirty!”

Moving directly into a sprint, he ran along the top of the wall until he found what  appeared to be the smallest gap between the stone protections. He pumped mana into his Omnivault, launching himself across the distance and easily landing on the next wall over. “That's a bad sign. If I can make that jump, a monster three times my size definitely can. I'll let someone know, and… I guess I can only hope they’ll listen!”

There was something freeing about knowing he was no longer in charge. That he could focus on his character build, and just have fun for the first time in a long time. He was going to chase that until he was inevitably drawn back in; when the Dwarven Council realized that they simply couldn't expand quickly enough without his assistance. “Either that, or they’ll want to move as slow as possible, losing all the momentum we've gained from diving right in. That seems like a very Dwarf-civilization thing to do. Only allow the possibility of a city after a hundred years or so? Nah, forget that. I've got to make sure that doesn't happen.”

Omnivaulting another three times was enough to bring him to the end of the walls. Even if that was a concerningly short amount of distance in his own mind, Joe reminded himself that these walls surrounded a vast area of land that they were planning to build the last bastion of Dwarven civilization in. The fact that they had already made multiple rings of walls around the city was to be commended, and it was clear to see that they had plans to expand further. There was nothing to do but not worry about it for now.

Joe looked out over the edge of the defenses, taking stock of the situation and holding himself back from his initial plan of throwing himself over the edge and straight into the fight. “Throw myself in…? What? Where’d that thought even come from? I can do so much more from up here than I could down there, surrounded by enemies. Go, Ritual Orbs!”

Currently he only had two of his orbs bound to individual Characteristics, the first to his Intelligence, the second to Strength. Happily, he had another option for dealing extreme amounts of damage to large, single targets. Thanks to increasing the rank of his Ritual Orb skill, he was able to lift each of them into position before having them unspool into the Ritual of Summoning. Just before he activated the ritual, Joe remembered to set out his cubes in a formation to offer the ritual additional stability.

Pushing mana into the orb, in his mind called orb five, Joe activated the spell that had been captured. Planar Shift flared to life as the preset ritual began drinking in power. Moments later, the orb was surrounded by a desiccated skull with oversized fangs. “Welcome to Jotunheim, Morsum.”

He wasn't expecting an answer, which was perfect as the summoned Pseudo-Lich skull merely contemplated the fleshy human: hunger being the only feeling it exuded. Joe wasn't concerned, as the skull had only ever spoken in times of intense emotion, such as being offered a contract so that it could fly, or after draining a particularly delicious enemy of their life essence. Controlling his first two orbs, one of which was shaped like a dumbbell, and the other like an oversized needle, the Ritualist  targeted the closest of the monsters and got to work taking them down.

Thanks to his skill reaching the Apprentice rank, the base damage of his attacks with a skillfully-used orb was two hundred and two points of damage. In the case of the Intelligence orb, that was automatically converted to piercing damage. The Strength orb gained a hefty bonus, dealing two hundred ninety points of damage per strike. When he was using his remaining weapons in a non-skillful manner, they took a slight hit to their output, only managing one hundred fifty-one damage per hit.

Even with throwing everything he could at a single creature at a time, Joe realized that it was going to take on average fifty strikes to bring just one of the Penguins down. “These things have something like ten thousand health? That's boss level on any other world so far!”

“Morrr-yum.” The Pseudo-Lich skull groaned at him, eyes locked on an oversized Penguin speeding toward them.

“Yum? Oh, you see the elite out there. I thought we had more time before the final wave.” Joe gave up on his current target, deciding that it would be more fruitful to take the resources from an elite monster than a standard one anyway. As the extremely oversized avian was speeding toward them at double the speed the lesser Penguins could achieve, he didn't need to wait long.

He pulled the orb with Morsum attached back, lining up the shot and shoving forward with his hand and mind at the same time. The summoned creature was launched forward as Joe shot-putted it at the bird in the distance, his control over the orb allowing him to account for sudden shifts and turns. Joe dropped a Dark Lightning Strike on the beast, interrupting its concentration and allowing Morsum to nestle into place unimpeded.

The skull struck and stuck just behind the left wing of the bird, teeth digging in and beginning to drain the creature just as it let out its first cry of pain for this round of combat. Joe spread his arms to the side and brought his fingers together to cut off the view of anything other than his target in the center of his makeshift sight picture. The remainder of his orbs blasted out, slamming into the creature one after another. Damage notifications began accumulating, but Joe ignored them in favor of controlling his orbs in a parabolic arc upward, followed by a straight line slam into the Penguin from behind.

The elite Penguin didn't even attempt to avoid them—except for the Intelligence orb. Each of his orbs were like tiny rockets, but the sharpened one? Even though it was faster than the others around it, the Penguin took great pains to dodge. Joe fully understood that this was due to the thick layer of feathers and blubber mitigating blunt damage, and the orb in question was able to pierce directly through that and inflict all of the intended damage. “Abyss, I just realized that Cone of Cold is going to be practically useless in this world. I should unequip that and put something else in its place…”

Only the fact that Joe was safely ensconced far above the creatures allowed him to take the time to think through future combat even whilst being embroiled in it at the moment. “Acid Spray could work, it should be able to deal more damage than a frost-based attack against a creature seemingly immune to the cold. Feces, it sped up!”

Joe hadn't been the only one with the idea of claiming the rewards of the elite monster for themselves. Half a dozen Dwarves conglomerated around it; their axes, swords, and spears lashing out in an attempt to be the one to achieve victory. This made the human grumble slightly, but happily, or concerningly depending on how he thought about it, even with all of the enhancements to their bodies, the Dwarves were simply not able to keep up with the elite monster in its own frozen domain. For a long moment, as the Penguin raced toward Joe's location, he didn't quite understand what it was attempting to do.

Then his eyes widened. Joe mentally called his Ritual Orbs back to himself, finally abandoning them at the last moment as he sprinted away, Omnivaulting to the next wall over. Even as he was jumping, the Penguin had launched itself off the ground and shot over the barricade like a dolphin breaching the surface of the ocean. The odd sight typically would've made Joe laugh, but as the Penguin reached the apex of its overhead arc, it angled itself to its fall with a sharp beak: clearly intent on penetrating his soft human flesh in passing. “Jumping was a terrible idea!”

Just before Joe gave into despair, his Strength-bound orb reached him, and he pushed off the metal rung in a second Omnivault. The increased speed, and slight shift in angle meant that the Penguin zipped by him with a mere half a foot of clearance instead of going directly through his chest. Morsum and Joe locked eyes for a split second that seemed to last a full minute thanks to the dense adrenaline pumping through his system. The Ritualist could've sworn that the Pseudo-Lich was smiling.

“At least one of us is happy right now!” Joe grumbled to himself as he scrambled to land on the wall and keep himself in position. Just after he got his feet under him, the wall shook from an intense blow, the elite having rammed it. A section of wall crumbled immediately, the hastily constructed protections failing under the first direct strike from a monster.

Only half of his orbs had made it back into his hands, but that was all Joe needed for the moment. As the Penguin flapped its wings, jumping roughly twenty feet in the air and slamming its head into the stone wall like a woodpecker into an apple tree, the Ritualist tried to figure out why it was furiously attacking instead of joining up with the main group and hunting the Town Hall.

In an instant, Joe discerned that the stretch of stone he was standing on now formed a self-contained box, entrapping the Penguin on all fronts. Evidently, a stone-headed geomancer had failed to understand that creating barriers without an exit meant the destruction of everything in the monster's path. Now devoid of the enigmatic signal directing its course, the feathered menace would plow forward relentlessly until it achieved its goal, or entered a section that would reignite that odd compulsion.

Until then, Joe could only start working to grind its health down, seeing as no one else had access to the monster at the moment. “Note to self, complain about the sandstone walls, and make sure someone yells at whoever is making these until they all connect back to an opening that goes to the Town Hall.”

*Nom nom.*

“Yeah, yeah, I get it! Glad you’re enjoying yourself, Morsum.”