CC 9: Tenacity ~ Four

Besides having the blueprints, knowledge, and stability required for activating a ritual, the next most important thing was having all of the materials required. Joe hadn't volunteered anything when Grandmaster Snow had told everyone that Joe had used up all of his resources by getting them here, but the fact of the matter was: that wasn't even remotely true. In fact, as most of the work on the escape turtle had been done by Grandmaster Havoc as well as the engineers that he had employed, Joe's only investment had been setting up the Ritual of the Wandering Civilization, and the bubble beam transportation.

Aspects gathered

Trash: 130,123

Damaged: 65,061

Common: 21,687

Uncommon: 2,383

Rare: 261

Special: 10,003 (Zombified). 100 (Anima). 111 (Molten)

Unique: 1,719

Artifact: 357

Legendary: 0

Mythical: 0

If he wanted, Joe could kickstart their expansion, building out the town at a fairly rapid pace. But he had learned from his last attempt, which had culminated dramatically in the town turning into a super volcano and destroying almost all of his hard work, as well as most of a city. It had been necessary at the time, so he didn't hold it against Havoc, but it was clear that after they had left The Shoe, either all of the buildings had been destroyed by the lava, or out of sheer spite by the Elves that had lived through the cataclysm. Frankly, the fact that the pyramid had come through—albeit almost as rubble—was shocking.

“Okay then, let's take a look.” Joe went through the stack of blueprints that he carried around in his underwear, finding the version of a smithy that he needed at the moment. He only needed a Rare ranked smithy in order to build the equipment that he needed, and he wasn't going to go crazy with upgrades unless someone paid him for that privilege. This wasn't going to be his personal workshop, after all. As he would be leaving it in the care of someone else, Joe was certain they’d be happy having something instead of nothing.

He walked back to the guildhall, finding the concerned-looking city planner that had finally shaken off the compliance powder and been freed from a stone coffin, and ran his ideas by him. The Dwarf was ecstatic to have something to do, even though it seemed that his mind was on something else at the moment. Perhaps it was the fact that he had suddenly woken up and missed the arrival and destruction of a Phoenix.

Joe followed the bearded Dwarf's lead, bemusedly listening as he chatted away. “With a structure of this sort, we're going to need to find land that’s very stable, so that as the building settles, everything remains level. As it's going to be a strategic resource—the only place we can repair or create weapons for the foreseeable future—we need to keep it near the hall and the pyramid. That brings me to my main concern…”

Joe was surprised by the abrupt halt in conversation, but motioned for the Dwarf to continue. “I'm all ears, what's on your mind?”

“Well, you see, there’s an Artifact building right over there.” The Dwarf pointed sharply at the pyramid that was slowly reassembling itself as mana washed over it from eight directions—the only skyline-blocking object until the horizon. “For some reason it isn't counting against the town’s building count. I'm uncertain why that’d be the case, but I fear it won't last. I believe that as soon as it's fully repaired, we may be forced into a town upgrade in order to open enough structural slots to build shelters.”

The Ritualist went pale as he realized that the city planner was probably correct. “Not only that… but it'll make it impossible for us to build anything until we do! Quickly, where should we put the smithy?”

Now moving with a sense of urgency, the two surveyed the area until they found a suitable location. The city planner was about to run off to get some people to help them clear the area, only to be stopped with an impatient motion by Joe. He dropped to his knees and put his hands out, creating a Field Array at the maximum size that he could. With his familiarity with the spell, combined with his increased Mana Manipulation, he had been able to expand its range out to eleven meters on each edge. A moment later, a huge chunk of the frozen slurry that was the ground had vanished, and he hurried to recreate that effect three more times.

Now they were standing on firm ground, which was laser-level straight and a perfect cube. Joe pulled out his survey tool, touching the blueprint to it and getting a ghostly image of the smithy projected onto that space. He adjusted its position several times, until the city planner was happy with it.

Joe activated the ritual, needing to suck in a breath as the circles and carefully designed diagrams tried to warp and distort under the ambient energetic fields. Thanks to his experience dealing with aspects, the Ritualist had a firm grasp on what he needed to do to correct the situation. Correcting the instability with his willpower and Mana Manipulation, he held firm as he activated the ritual fully and forced the power to move along the swirling pattern.

He was slightly curious as to what the process looked like in terms of his character sheet, so instead of watching the actual building being created, for the first time he merely watched the notifications of his crafting attempt.

Ritual activation commencing.

Caution: Enhanced instability is leading to loss of aspects—40% increase—as the aspects are not properly contained in an aspect jar.

Aspects drained!

Trash: 20,000 → 28,000.

Damaged: 10,000 → 22,400

Common: 4,000 → 5,600

Uncommon: 1,600 → 2,283

Rare: 800 → 1,120 Failure! Insufficient aspects!

Joe was hit by a wave of nausea as the ritual began to fail, mana pouring out of him as he did everything he could to stabilize the situation while panicking and trying to think of a way to salvage the situation. Hitting upon an idea, he barked out a command. “Substitute insufficient Rare aspects with Special Aspects: Molten!”

Determining… request accepted! 100 Molten aspects converted into 1,000 Rare aspects, Unstable Molten energy, 3,000 Common aspects, 10,132 Trash aspects.

Heaving in a deep breath as the pressure on his mind alleviated, Joe refocused on his task, completing the smithy over the next few seconds. He collapsed to the ground as the strain vanished, then took a few moments to collect himself before looking at the information of the building that he had just completed.

Smithy of the Unstable Student: This is a smithy that has been imbued with Unstable energy. There is a 20% chance that any item created here will have the ability to make minor repairs to itself. There is a 40% chance that any item created will return to a molten state upon completion.

“Not ideal, but that was really pushing it.” Joe wiped the sweat off his brow, flinging his hand to the side and watching as the small droplets of water turned to ice before hitting the ground. Walking into the building, he went directly to a smithy station and pulled out his aspect ingot hammer. “This instability is absolutely insane. We need to fix that before anything else can get done.”

Luckily for him, as he was working directly with aspects and mana, he didn't need any fuel for a fire. Joe didn't need to heat anything up, he just needed the correct area and tools to work with his materials. Since he was attempting to make a Student ranked stabilization item, he decided to make cubes instead of tiny pyramids. The first one was made in only a few minutes, as he had practiced making plenty of these back on Alfheim.

Just as the first cube was completed, the properties of the building he was working at kicked in, reducing the completed item to molten metal. The Ritualist helplessly considered the smithy that he had created, and couldn't help but practically feel the debuff emanating from its walls. To an omni-crafter like him, this was a cursed place; where magical crafting could easily go wrong. Even knowing that he needed to be careful, that he had executed his efforts perfectly and flawlessly, the two in five chance that anything he created within its walls would fall apart had activated: leaving behind an unusable mess of metal.

This caused Joe to realize that even though what he had just created was something still reusable to others, it was utterly worthless to him. Since the item was reduced to metal, instead of aspects, it was no longer a crafting material that he could work with. “Hopefully I’ll be able to hand that off to a smith that will put it to use. Drat, I didn’t think that through.”

He could try to reclaim some of the aspects he had put into the object by using a Field Array, but since he was using his spatial storage device instead of an aspect jar, there would be a loss of potential both on the way in, and on the way out. Joe sighed heavily, realizing that the time and effort it would take to restore the object to its former state were simply not worth it.

“I need at least seven of these, and now I'm down to one hundred thirty Rare aspects. At ten aspects per try, I can only fail seven times before I’ll need to go and find something to break down.” Over the next hour and a half, he only failed another two times, completing the set of seven stabilizers that he needed for most of his everyday work.

Joe looked over the seven cubes, trying to convince himself that this was all he needed for now. “Two in a straight line with me as the center, five in a pentagram around that to make the prime of seven. I bet it'd be more stable with a set of three forming a triangle within the pentagram. This’ll just have to do for… no! I have forty more, I can at least try!”

The next cube that he attempted to make melted into a puddle of metal as soon as it was nearing completion, but all three that he could make with his remaining resources gained the bonus that this building could impart, becoming able to heal from minor damage automatically. “Just like that, I'm down to only a single Rare aspect. Yikes.”

He was swept up in the realization that everyone else must be feeling this exact feeling at this moment. Joe had the benefit of being a traveler, someone who took practically everything he owned with him, or was willing to leave it all behind when he got the urge to move around. Now that he had invested a huge amount of time into creating a town, only to see it destroyed and needing to flee to this world with practically nothing; the Ritualist suddenly felt an uncharacteristic amount of empathy for all of the Dwarves that were suffering more deeply than he was.

“Only way to help them, is to help myself!” The Ritualist fought off the invasion of empathy and got back to work. His mind definitely didn't turn toward another person that he was concerned for, and missing deeply, even if he was confused by his own thoughts. Daniella had betrayed them! But… she had also saved them. Frankly, he wasn't certain which action he was affected by more. On the plus side, she wasn't on this world, and he had no way of leaving it to go and find her. Not until the city was complete.

That realization had absolutely no bearing on why he was suddenly working faster, a small smile growing on his face.