CC 9: Tenacity ~ Six

Joe sat in the smithy that he had created, waiting for some brave Dwarf to come over and ask to use it. Until then, he figured he could work on his plans for the area. “Something normal? Normal? If you want normal, you need to talk to some construction focused Dwarves. Hmph! Well… at least she was polite about it.”

He let out a quiet chuckle, and allowed his dramatic acting to seep away, leaving behind a stone-sober, focused Ritualist. Dozens of ideas were flashing through his mind, but almost everything that he'd done up until this point had been nearly the opposite from what could work in this area. Joe had needed to create enormous heat sinks in The Shoe to keep the area from melting down, but that was a simple matter of taking the ambient thermal energy and converting it into power for a magical air conditioning unit.

Cold was literally a lack of energy, so he couldn't as easily solve this issue by converting it into a useful power supply.

“If I could get volunteers to sit around and pump mana into some oversized rituals that would generate heat, that'd work.” Joe mused quietly as he looked through his currently available options. “Can't imagine anyone would be really willing to do that, though. Not for any length of time. Oh, you’re a powerful, mystical warrior who's survived centuries of conflict? Can I use you to replace propane for a few months?”

That forced a chuckle out of his mouth as he realized how hilarious he was. “Yeah, that probably won't go over too well. Maybe I should focus on a slightly larger picture? The wind is going to be stripping away any heat we do generate, so maybe I adapt my Ritual Bubbles? Put a large dome over our population center, that could work for blocking the wind, though I'd need to make it semi-permeable to allow air through.”

Ever so slowly, Joe refined the key requirement areas that his project needed. His hope was that as the tasks were laid out, a single guiding principle would take over and let him solve all of the issues at once. Eventually, he had a rough version of what he needed, but still no ritual designed to implement his concepts. “Comes down to the fact that I can either make one enormous bubble that covers a specific area, or I can make a ton of bubble ‘tents’.”

After a significant amount of consideration, Joe decided that a single, enormous dome would essentially be an invitation to destroy the only protection against the elements that they had. It would also require significant upkeep, mana investment, and multiple other factors that he likely didn't even know about at the moment. “If only I could figure out how to harness the wind, it wouldn't be such a huge jump from collecting thermal energy to collecting kinetic energy. But… that'd probably make it a lot harder for us to enter or leave. At least without destroying the fragile bubble structure.”

He groaned and stretched his back, rubbing his bald head as he tried to decide how he could make everything as autonomous as possible. Eventually, Joe gave up and just started scribbling notes. “Tons of smaller rituals it is. If I set up a ritual on a Ritual Tile, I can make it generate a ten foot bubble that will block the wind. As long as no one’s poking the outside or inside with sharp objects, they should be able to move through the bubble, if they go slow enough. That way, everyone can be in charge of their own comfort.”

Drawing out a rough design, he placed two different handprints in the center of a circle. “Pumping mana into the right-side activation sequence will create a bubble tent,  pushing it into the left will convert their mana to heat. If a couple people at a time are in each tent, they can share the cost so that no one gets too low to defend themselves if there’s an emergency. Good. I like this. Simple. Effective. Also, not my problem after I make it. I like that part best.”

Since what he was making was actually two distinct rituals, he was able to keep the design as a simple Beginner rank. Creating a prototype, Joe placed his hand on the right outline of a hand, and began imbuing it with mana. Sparks started to fly off the original tile, and the entire stone item shattered as though it’d been made of glass.

Damage taken: 73 penetrating damage.

Exquisite Shell: 11,596/11,669

“Well. Right. Gotta account for our location.” He needed to make the design at least Uncommon, also known as Apprentice rank. Thinking it through, Joe realized that there was a simple answer: first, he'd combine the two rituals, keeping it as efficient as possible. Second, he added the patterns needed for the bubble to be reflective on the outside. That way, those resting within would also have privacy from anyone who wasn't meant to be a part of the small group.

Those simple changes brought it up right to the edge of what could still be considered an Apprentice ritual, while still keeping it compact enough that he could rapidly rattle these off. After laying out his stabilization cubes, Joe felt a subtle shift in the air. That was his cue to get to work.

Apprentice Ritual creation complete: +100 Reductionist experience.

“Ah, that’s right. Experience from crafting is always nice. Now, let’s see. Takes about fifteen minutes for each of these to be created.” Joe muttered to himself as he let his Aspect Inscriber flow across tile after tile. “Let's assume that four people can comfortably stay in each bubble, and we'll set up six rotations of four hours a piece for sleep—thank goodness everyone has massive Constitution scores—I’ll need… only about three hundred and sixty of these to make sure all of the eighty-five thousand people in the area get a chance to recuperate. Wow, that's a lot less than I'd expected to need to make.”

Then he realized that even if he was able to continuously make these until he had everything he needed, that was still nearly ninety hours of work that had to be done. “I can get close to forty-eight of these done before the Beast wave hits, but then I'll probably be pretty useless. Luckily I had some coffee, but I have no idea when the last time I slept was.”

The *scritching* of his inscriber burning aspects into stone was the only sound that reached his ears over the next few hours, until someone politely knocked on the door. He looked up as it opened, meeting the eyes of a slightly surprised Dwarf. “Ah, sorry about that. Didn't know anyone was in here. Am I correct in thinking that this is a smithy? Would you mind if I…?”

Joe nodded to a stone bench that was a part of the building, not wanting to split his attention further until he'd finished on his current Ritual Tile. As soon as the last line had been drawn minutes later, and the aspects were stable, he pushed himself to his feet and stretched. Then he turned to address the Dwarf, “Thanks for your patience, those suckers tend to explode pretty violently if I don't finish them in a single sitting.”

That earned the haphazard pile of stone next to Joe a casual glance, the Dwarf merely nodding in acceptance. “These things happen when you're pursuing your craft.”

Her nonchalant understanding of the situation put a light smile on the human's face; Joe enjoyed finding like-minded individuals. “As it turns out, I was looking for a manager for this building. You interested? You’ll be able to use the workshop as much as you want for free, so long as everyone else who wants to use it gets charged. To be fair, I'm not sure what exactly we're going to be using as currency on this world, but I'm sure we'll figure something out.”

“Of course we will! There's no way to tax us if we don't have a standardized way of paying those taxes.” The resignation in those words made Joe cackle, and put a small smile on the till-now stoic face of the mustachioed Dwarf. “I’ll take the job. I assume everyone needs to figure out their own fuel and ingot source?”

“You know it.” Joe extended a hand to shake on their deal. “I'm Joe, what can I call you, Ms…?”

“Just call me Smitty, everyone else does.” Now her smile was extremely wide, causing the ends of her mustache to be level with her pointed chin. “Ya gonna finish up what you're doing there? Do you mind if I start heating up the forge?”

“Yes, and no, in that order.” Joe dropped back down to the floor, waving for her to do as she pleased. “Any word on the Beast wave, or what else is going on out there?”

“Kind of.” She shrugged as she walked over to the closest forge and pulled a sack out of some storage device, producing lumps of coal in the next moment. She arranged the first few, then pointed her open palm at the black chunks and concentrated. An instant later, they began smoldering, and she nodded approvingly. “The scouts have been shouting at each other for the last hour or so. I guess living on an enormous, flat wasteland has a few benefits. One of those is that you can see the monsters waaay before they get here. Far as I can tell, we've about a hundred minutes until the first of them closes in on our warriors.”

“Any concerns about pulling through?”

“Not unless a whole lot more monsters show up then we expect.” Smitty scoffed as though the question was directly offensive. “Almost everyone was told to stay back, and go about our business. So, here I am.”

“Fair enough.” Joe considered his pile of tiles, deciding to work until he'd finished seven more. He should be able to get through six and two-thirds before the first group of monsters showed up, which meant he'd only be five minutes late to the battle if he wanted to see how it was going. It was tough to get back to work after finally having someone new and interesting nearby to break his focus, but he knew that this was important. The Ritualist pushed on, completing all of his work and managing to ignore the sounds of battle until his ritual was completed.

Then he jumped to his feet, swept everything into his codpiece, and hurriedly waved at Smitty, who was just starting to heat up the first ingot of metal that she was going to be using for her craft. Just before he rushed out the door, he came to a sudden halt and looked back at the Dwarf with a cheeky grin. “Sorry, forgot to mention, this building is unstable. There's a forty percent probability that anything you make in here turns back into molten metal just as you finish it. Don't worry, there's also a one in five chance that it’ll gain the ability to self-repair… slightly.”

He heard a light curse, which was bit off as Smitty recognized the potential value of the second option. As he closed the door, the swearing was reduced to mere grumbling instead. Joe had no problem with grumbling. So long as the work was getting done, and getting done well, he knew that grumbling was something that happened in every industry.

Rushing out into the cold, he followed the bellowing and sounds of combat. As he took in the view of what his allies were fighting, the human's mouth dropped open. “This is the first wave? You've got to be kidding me! Those things are massive!”

He inspected them as he hurried closer, wondering if he could figure out an easy counter for the monsters.

Defeatist Fluttering Penguins. These are the world's standard prey animal. At the bottom of nearly every food chain on Jotunheim, the Defeatist Fluttering Penguins fully expect that their assault is going to fail. Typically, upon taking 30% losses, they will scatter in all directions. During a Beast wave, they are compelled to attack their target: the Town Hall or guildhall governing the rank of the settlement.

The flightless birds were able to hop enormous distances, flapping their fin-like wings to allow them to hover slightly. The smallest of them was fifteen feet tall, and there had to be at least four hundred of them in this first wave. Strangely enough, they didn't surround the area and attack from all sides, instead following the bird in front of them as if they were sheep following a shepherd off a cliff.

It was a slaughter; to the point where Joe couldn’t remember when he’d ever seen the Legion have such a collectively good time.