CC 9: Tenacity ~ Three

“How?” That was the question on everyone's lips, but especially Joe's as he sank to his knees. He didn't lift his hands from the ritual in front of him, constantly working to send enough mana to repair the building that had been almost completely destroyed by the World Boss. The Ritualist was shaking slightly, having known that he was about to die. Normally when he had that certainty, he was correct.

He knew that there was only one place that he could go to get answers. Pulling up his character sheet, he looked at the information contained in it, followed by the Core in his inventory, and lastly the combat log to get the information his brain needed to stop short-circuiting.

Name: Joe ‘Major General Pyrrhic' Class: Reductionist

Profession I: Arcanologist (Max)

Profession II: Ritualistic Alchemist (1/20)

Profession III: Grandmaster’s Apprentice (14/25)

Profession IV: None.

Character Level: 23 Exp: 289,193 Exp to next level: 10,807

Rituarchitect Level: 10 Exp: 54,700 Exp to next level: 300

Reductionist Level: 4 Exp: 11,341 Exp to next level: 3,659

Hit Points: 2,121/2,327

Mana: 4,313/8,160

Mana regen: 67.83/sec

Stamina:1,837/1,837

Stamina regen: 6.64/sec

Characteristic: Raw score

Strength (bound): 176

Dexterity: 177

Constitution: 169

Intelligence (bound): 185

Wisdom: 168

Dark Charisma: 123

Perception: 173

Luck: 110

Karmic Luck: 110 → 42

Mythic Core: This Core can be consumed for 40,000 experience. If not consumed in this manner, there are several options for its usage.

1) It can be bound to a single skill, or set of skills in order to move from Grandmaster to Sage. Only one skill or set of skills may be bound per person. This will consume the Core.

2) It can be used as a crafting material for a chance of bringing an item up to Mythical Rarity during its creation. This will consume the Core.

3) It can be used as a temporary accessory to allow an item to act as one Rarity tier higher than it is. It can be removed at any time, by any person with direct access to the Core.

Warnings: This Core can be stolen. It is dropped on death if it is being held, even if it is in a spatial storage device. Until this Core is consumed, the World Boss it came from can not naturally respawn.

Combat log:

You are attempting to use a ritual to open a portal between two distinct worlds. Caution! An outside entity is attempting to resist the ritual.

You have initiated a battle of Might and Magic against a World Boss of Svaltarheim—The Magma Phoenix.

Using the combined power of 11,023 individuals, your battle was a success! The Magma Phoenix has arrived on Jotunheim.

The Magma Phoenix has gone into a frenzy, and is targeting the item that dragged it through chaotic space.

As the Magma Phoenix did not travel across the Bifrost to reach this world, it has been granted a two-minute grace period to return to its world.

The Magma Phoenix has surfaced. Name changed to Lava Phoenix.

The timer has expired. The Lava Phoenix has expired.

Error. World Boss must remain on its own world. Removing excess awards. Canceling titles. Siphoning Experience points.

Joe had seen enough to get the gist of what had happened. Even so, there were a few standout points that he wasn't sure how to come to terms with. For one, his Karmic Luck had never been so massively inflated. He hadn't even noticed when it had jumped from the low double-digits all the way to over a hundred, and he had already lost more than half of it. He really needed to find a time to discuss the issue with one of the Grandmasters, or he could wait until Cleocatra showed up and hope that he could wheedle the information out of her. On that note, “I am actively thinking about you, cat. Don't mess with me.”

Hoping that mini-crisis with the Nyandrathal Queen was averted, he moved on with his day. Thinking logically, Joe decided that he must have gained an enormous amount of Karmic Luck from saving so many Dwarves and transporting them safely to this world. He could only assume that accidentally generating a bug in the system, and killing off one of the seven World Bosses with it, was what had taken such a massive chunk out of that largess. Even so, it was more than double as high as he had ever seen it, and he could only hope that meant good, positive things for him in the near future.

His eyes turned to his levels and experience, which had barely shifted in weeks thanks to his focus on bolstering his skills and ritual abilities. He wasn't overly concerned, knowing that he would have plenty of time in the near future to gain levels. Now that he was on Jotunheim, where the air was heavy and chaotic with power, the experience points would soon be rolling in. Slowly, he was able to calm his breathing and return to the moment, even though he was slightly distracted with thoughts of what he should use his brand new Mythic Core for.

Going by how brightly lesser versions had shone when he pulled them out into the open, Joe knew better than to take the object out of his codpiece and inspect it. The idea that he would directly consume the incredibly powerful object for mere experience points was discarded instantaneously. Looking at his skills, the highest of which was his Ritual Magic at Master level one, he knew that he was far from being able to use it to boost himself. The same went for creating an item that he could imbue with its power; the only Sage ranked blueprints he had were for his weapons, and it would be a long, long time before he was able to craft the Sage ranked version of his Ritual Orbs.

There was no way in the abyss that he was going to give it up, of course. He also couldn't carry it around with him, as that was just asking to lose it and gain no benefit whatsoever. That left only one option: using it as an accessory. Before he could decide what to equip it to, Jake appeared in front of him, looking like a nervous parent whose child was going off to school for the first time. “Joe. Can you repair this damage? I can't do any work in a building that’s so heavily destroyed. How long will it take? What do you need from me?”

The Reductionist had never seen Jake speak this earnestly, and it was making him nervous. He had seen this man put Havoc in his place; though Joe did find it a tiny bit funny that the man was only truly concerned with his ability to work, not the actual state of the building. “I can set up a few more Rituals of Repair, but I'm going to need large chunks of stone like this one. If we can get eight of them set up, four on the cardinal directions, four on the ordinal, that will allow us to repair one hundred damage per ritual, per minute. With a little over nine hundred thousand durability to repair, it should be up and running in a little over… let's say nineteen hours so that I've time to make the rituals?”

Jake took in a deep inhalation, slowly letting it out over a few seconds. “I suppose that will have to suffice. I had expected not to get access to the pyramid ever again, so if I only must wait two-thirds of a day, I will be able to remain in your service instead of exacting punishments for you failing to uphold your bargain.”

“Yeah, I saw the bottle you were getting ready. Good to know it won’t have to be used.” Joe watched the Alchemist walk away, making sure to keep his mana flowing into the ritual as he swallowed his very dry throat. “Yeesh. All stick, no carrot with this guy.”

He knew better than to let the repair of the building stagnate, and so called over the nearest group of Dwarves to take over for him. Each of the other rituals had been abandoned, save for the northernmost one, which had been… Joe looked at it and decided that ‘vaporized’ was a proper descriptor of what had happened. With three rituals up and running, then only needing to make five more, Joe was soon able to step away and let the volunteers manage the repairs.

There were plenty of people that could handle simply inputting mana into something. Thanks to the utter lack of resources or natural landmarks, there was no one else that could create sufficient numbers of shelters against the elements. That meant that if Joe wanted to use his time as wisely as possible, he needed to do what only he could do.

That made it triply annoying when he started the ritual to create a cheap, Common building, and it failed on the spot.

Spell stability too low for completion of this ritual!

“Ah, that's right. I forgot that this world is extremely unstable for spells and such.” Joe closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to remember the warning that he had been given before coming here. “Was it that Novice spells wouldn’t work at all? Or was it all the way up to Beginner? Either way, I should be at least able to activate this ritual, even if the building it makes just falls apart. So why’d it fail?”

Joe tried to remember the exact wording that he had heard about this world. He knew that Novice spells were going to be impossible to use, but he was almost positive that he could still use Beginner ranked. “I'm sure that I can force it, perhaps I should just look into stabilizing the area a little bit? Abyss, I completely forgot that most people are going to need to take their Excommunicated title into account. That adds an additional twenty percent instability to spells and skills that use mana? Ouch. Combining that with the inherent issues this world has; people are going to be having a real hard time getting anything done. It’s not impacting me anymore, and I’m still failing to create these successfully.”

Feeling far more confident in his capabilities, the Ritualist was able to devise a plan for moving forward. After going through his skills, he realized that he had the ability to create ritual stabilizing items up to the Student rank, thanks to his Ritualistic Forging skill. Even with all of the debuffs to his greatest strengths, he should be able to handle this world as soon as he got those up and running. Yet, to create those items, he needed access to a smithy. Seeing as he was the only person who had the means to get this project moving, he could even hand over the workshop for favors and payment when he was done with it.

Joe was reminded of the conversation that Havoc had been having with Grandmaster McPoundy, and felt a chuckle coming on. “It's a three-for-one! I get to get on the Grandmaster's good side, make a new ally, and lightly annoy Havoc.”

He thought about the very strange day he had been having as he scoped out a good location for the new facility. The Reductionist was on a new world, had been a major contributor to defeating a Mythic monster, and was now planning out how to create the tools that he needed, in order to create better tools, so that he could accomplish the bare minimum that he needed in order to design even better tools. “Strange, but profitable day so far.”