CC 9: Tenacity ~ Ten

“Knowledge, Ritual Lore.” Joe used his ability to increase his skill rank for the third time since coming to Jotunheim, having either been too busy or asleep, and missed out on a few opportunities to activate it in perfect sequence. In order, he'd increased his Alchemical lore, Architectural lore, and Ritual lore, to Student rank one, two, and three respectively.

Joe's chosen purpose in life was to gain immense magical potency and knowledge. It was very difficult to have one without the other, but in a place like this, it was incredibly difficult to gain a deep level of insight from the environment and he couldn't go to an established magical university, which left him with only two options. The first, which he was utilizing at the moment, was to do his own research and use his skills and spells to directly boost his understanding. Other than that, he could only go out and find a tutor.

With the Dwarves focusing inward, apparently becoming insular and less friendly—at least in his opinion from when he'd been sleep deprived—the only other option was to extort smith's for training at his smithy, or go to the pyramid and make Jake the Alchemist fulfill the obligations that he had to train him. “You know what? I'm sick of seeing facial hair. Let's go learn some alchemy.”

He knocked on the door of the pyramid only a few minutes later, his travel having been unimpeded by traffic or other structures. As he'd been Omnivaulting on his way to the Alchemy hall, Joe had been given the great pleasure of seeing a couple hundred reflective bubbles glinting in the slowly brightening daylight. While he'd committed to staying under the radar on this world, for once, it still brought him great pleasure to see other people relying on his research and technologies.

Several minutes after his first knock, the door opened and Jake ushered him into the building, slamming the door behind the Ritualist in order to keep the chill of the day outside. “I'd say it's a pleasure to see you, but you only ever seek me out when you want something. So, I will happily skip directly to the important bits. Are you here for training? Or do you need some concoction? You reek of self-doubt, do you need a love potion, perhaps?”

“Please don't analyze my pheromones.” Joe realized at that moment that he'd allowed his Neutrality Aura to slip, and snapped it back into place with a thought. If nothing else, that would make it impossible for someone to sniff him out in a literal sense. “Training is what I'm after. I've been considering binding another of my attributes with my Ritual Orbs, and I'm a little bit too far away to be comfortable creating the binding agents that I need.”

“You could just ask.” Jake informed him blandly. “It would make my day far easier to take three and a half minutes to create it for you instead of several hours of instruction. Not to mention that the Alchemist Hall is still only functional by the barest of margins. Enough to make Philters, at best. I cannot get the cauldron over five thousand degrees until I have a steady supply of energy being collected and coalesced from the core of this planet.”

“Seeing as my Ritualistic Alchemy skill is only at Beginner five, I don't think that will be necessary.” Instead of waiting for what he was certain would be a non-committal minor insult, Joe pushed past the Alchemist, knowing that he wouldn't refuse to help. Seeing as they had made a bargain, if the Alchemist was the one to break the deal, he'd suffer immense consequences. “I could probably use a standard kitchen oven for what I need to make, right?”

Joe allowed a tiny smile to hover on his lips as he heard a choked sound of annoyance from behind him, followed by rapid footsteps as Jake caught up to him and directed him around the strange, bubbling experiments that were running at the moment. Jake brought Joe directly to the main cauldron, and started giving him a lecture on the properties that he'd need to create for the basic binding agents he needed. When he was finished, he wrote out a detailed recipe and gave Joe a few minutes to convert the information over to an aspect version of the list.

“I know you are set on this path right now, but I would once again urge you to consider learning Alchemy as a whole, instead of merely this small subset of skills.” Jake was the first to break the silence as Joe finished his altered recipe. “It’s narrow, too specific, and you have a surprisingly large grasp of the basics. With such a firm foundation, wasting your abilities on such a small target irritates me greatly.”

“Mmm.” Joe hummed noncommittally, “I do have my Alchemical lore in the Student ranks, even though it’s low level. However, before I focus on such a broad topic, which would take me potentially decades to achieve Mastery in, I need to pursue my current path; just as you'd mentioned.”

No further words were exchanged as the Ritualist attempted to create a Vial of binding agents. That was the specific name of this rank of alchemy item, and Joe had more than once gotten on Jake's bad side by casually labeling everything they made as a ‘potion’, which was actually a Trash-ranked alchemy item. Unfortunately, that was the only thing that his efforts produced. Trash.

For multiple hours, Joe spun aspects in the cauldron and attempted to heat, cool, contain, and mix as needed. Each time he approached what looked like it would become a viable product, the aspects would convert into a liquid and immediately blacken and release noxious fumes. Eventually, the Ritualist grew sick of the smug, condescending look on Jake's face and slapped his hand down on the edge of the cauldron. That would've been a terrible idea were he not covered in an imperceptible layer of magic protecting him from the superheated surface.

“Please, just tell me what I'm doing wrong! We've been at this forever, and I haven't made a single passable item.” Joe’s seething fury was cooled in an instant as Jake shrugged.

“Nothing.”

“I'm doing nothing wrong?” The Ritualist narrowed his eyes as he watched for any sign that the Alchemist was teasing him. “Then I should've succeeded by accident at this point if nothing else!”

“No. You shouldn't have.” Jake took a deep breath, centering himself before trying to speak words that would make sense to the alchemy-curious human. “If you had the requisite skill level, you would have succeeded on your third attempt. Do you perhaps recall that I gave you guidance until then, and then stopped talking as you continuously repeated the same failure? Your Skill level is that of a beginner, and you are attempting to make something that can only be created consistently by an Apprentice.”

“Ah.” Joe let out a sigh and got back to trying to succeed. “Is there anything that I can be doing to increase my chances of success?”

That put a smile on Jake's face. “Now you are asking the correct questions! Wonderful. In every industry, the most difficult thing to do is know the terminology of what you need. If you at least know that much, you can search through tomes of information for that particular keyword. If you don’t know it, you need to ask someone so that you can get the nomenclature correct. With that life lesson out of the way, in this case the issue you are running into is the incredible instability of the magical matrices of Jotunheim. There is something about this world that actively disrupts the lowest ranks of magic and skills.”

“I should set up my stabilization cubes?” Joe pondered hopefully, even as the cubes started popping into his hand. “I suppose this makes sense—hey!”

The Ritualist was startled as Jake whisked the cubes out of his hand and started looking at them. After giving them a thorough inspection, he shook his head and handed them back. “Great for smithing, useless for alchemy and spellcasting. Those only stabilize the surroundings so long as magic is being imbued within the bounds of its containment. They will do nothing to stabilize the reagents that you are using. It may sound arbitrary, but it is a fact of the matter that those are simply outside the realm of the craft of alchemy.”

“You’re wrong.” Joe's instant refusal caused Jake to clam up and cross his arms.

“Am I now? Please, enlighten me.”

“I've used them for smithing and casting spells. In both cases, the cubes have been enough to stabilize everything that I'm working on. I even tested it by slowly moving them away, and they have a clear and undeniable impact on my rituals.”

Jake pondered that for a moment, sharply nodding a single time. “I think I have determined where your confusion stems from. But first, I will inform you that, while I do have to teach you, I don’t need to do it in a room not filled with itching powder that could make a World Boss scream in pain. If you won’t respect me enough to mince your words into a palatable smoothie, you will suffer for every minute of my education.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and Joe was the first to look away. “Sorry about that, sometimes I fall back into old habits. I also tend to spend quite a bit of time alone, and it can impact my social niceties. Please allow me to try again. As far as I'm aware, these cubes should work for any craft, as they’re currently already working for two of them. To my knowledge, it seems that should extend to other professions, and if I'm wrong, I'd truly appreciate your guidance on that matter.”

“Better.” Jake allowed, pleased that his reprimand had gotten through Joe's thick skull. “To answer your original question, if you want alchemical stabilizers, you need to make them. Look around you. What do you see?”

Joe took the time to study his surroundings, not wanting to give a flippant answer after having annoyed an entity that could slap someone like Havoc around if he wanted to. “I see all sorts of alchemy things: equipment, empty space, storage, bottled reagents, finished products.”

“How are you seeing it?” The Alchemist slowly began guiding him toward the answer.

“With my… eyes?” Joe winced as he answered, even though he was being sincere. There were far too many potential answers, so he'd decided to go with the literal response. It appeared to have been the correct one, since Jake began launching into an explanation as soon as his words had left his lips.

“Correct.” Waving around the room, Jake pointed out various recessed sconces built into the building itself, which exuded light without releasing any residue, such as smoke. “This room has excellent lighting, but you will notice that there are scores of candles throughout the room, each of them burning brightly and steadily. If you look closer, someone with your aptitudes should be able to notice the fact that those same candles are set in specific patterns, with specific meanings.”

Now that Joe knew what to look for, it was readily apparent that the candles were set in prime number sequences, exactly as he used his stabilization cubes. He could also tell where high-level alchemy was being performed just by the fact that some of the experiments had candles around them numbering in the hundreds. “I see. Thank you for the explanation. If you don't mind me asking, it seemed that you'd noticed something that might be relevant to why my cubes worked with multiple professions? Would you mind…?”

“After your attitude adjustment, I am more than happy to explain.” Jake waved Joe over to the center of one of the rings of lit candles. “Go ahead and create a Novice ritual circle. Light or something equally easy, as I have seen you make those by the hundreds.”

Figuring that the powerful Alchemist knew what he was doing, Joe didn't waste time asking questions, instead forming a ritual in the air and activating it immediately. Unlike the flickering that happened when he was using his cubes, the ritual was solid and perfect from the moment he'd started placing the aspects. “The candles stabilize my rituals as well? Why does it work for them and not other things?”

“Unless I miss my mark…” Jake let his head loll to the side, “Your ritual skills encompass more than just rituals. In fact, I'm certain that you could achieve the same effect with your stabilization items made in a smithy, candles from alchemy, enchantment foci, and potentially even calculated matrices—specifically placing your rituals in formations so that as one becomes stable, it stabilizes its neighbors. You can speak with your Dwarven friends about that, their race is known for their impeccable formations. Part of the reason they are such a terror on the battlefield.”

“You know… I'd heard of that.” Joe scoffed at his own naivete. “Here I thought they were just talking about how they aligned their troops, and it was actually about the magical resonance of their placement.”

“In other words, yes but also no.” Jake reached out and patted Joe on the shoulder comfortingly. “The world is a vast place, and the depths of magic have ever deeper waters. For now, I think you should focus on the fact that you have a handful of ways to boost the stability of what you can create, while everyone else has only one. Here is your homework for the night: think of how you can use the additional stability to your advantage.”