Implode ~ 9!

Lay on Hands was surprisingly easy to capture in an orb. That made sense, as the literal instructions were ‘cast spell on orb’, and the spell was cast by touching something. It made him want to kick himself for thinking he couldn’t manage it—getting caught up in the spell’s complexity and forgetting the actual process—but he… refrained. He had to focus now that he was at the key moment in the follow-up ritual, attempting to place Essence Cycle.

It was… not going well.

First, he had attempted to cast the spell while holding the orb, hoping that it would be placed properly. Unfortunately, the only result was that he became so caught up in staring at the resulting energy flows that he held still until he ran out of mana and the ritual self-destructed. The blast was contained, helped along by the fact that it had broken down because it was out of energy. There was one small benefit to watching the energy, as well as observing what it looked like as it broke down.

Essence Cycle has reached Apprentice 0!

Joe had taken several deep, calming breaths before starting again—opting to fit the ritual with three Ritual Circles instead of two—and it was evening before he had felt ready to try again. It was growing dark as he stood staring at the orb, knowing better than to activate the spell but finding himself unable to will it into the orb.

“Abyssal spell… what are you? A spell, or a skill? Pick one, blast it!” Joe slapped the orb, knowing the strike wouldn’t impact anything that he was attempting. “How do I assign a skill? Forget this. Query!”

What would you like to ask Tatum?

“How do I assign skills to the Ritual Orb?” Joe snapped at the input command, angered that an artificial layer had been created between his deity and himself to intentionally make it harder for him to get information.

Processing… response earned: Say ‘assign next activated skill to Ritual Orb’ before activating skill. Feel free to ask another question tomorrow!

Query has reached Novice VIII!

“When was the last time that doing stuff like this required a verbal component?” Joe grabbed the orb, said the words, and activated the skill. The familiar feeling of loss arose, but then the world faded away into energy, and he watched it for as long as he could. When the real world came back into focus, he worried that he had failed once again… until he saw the message waiting for him.

Ritual Orb (Essence Cycle) energy remaining: 0/1,213

“Celestials, it only ran out of mana?” It suddenly occurred to Joe that he had been standing in a park, at night, staring at energy movements that only he could see. He was lucky that he hadn’t been attacked, and even more lucky that the ritual had ended cleanly without exploding him into another world. He shivered at the memory of that void and distracted himself by inspecting his orbs. “This could be a potent weapon… touch it to someone, and they’ll get locked down as if I managed to put them in an illusion. Better keep the amount of mana in the battery low, either way. No need to pump it up and starve myself.”

He quickly got to the next part of his plan: setting up the remaining Ritual Circles required for the activation of Planar Shift. Joe needed four in total, and he couldn't count the orb that the spell itself was bound to, as that was needed as the spell focus. “Yikes, that means that five of my six total orbs are going to be devoted to casting the spell. Was that a bad idea? Should I have thought this through more? No… I might as well at least give it a shot, since I've done all of this work. I'll keep one of them as an activation ritual or something.”

Once the rituals were set up—which he had generated with Somatic Ritual Casting to make sure they were floating in the air—he opened his orbs and tossed them at the Ritual Circles one at a time. It was strangely fun to watch all of the internal wire twist and bend itself into the shape that he had generated in the air, then suck an orb in and snap closed around it. If he were still back on Earth, he would have made that into a video with the tag ‘satisfying’ and gotten thousands of views.

With all of the work done, he desperately wanted to try out summoning the… Abomination wasn’t the correct word. He didn’t want to have to call it a Pseudo-Lich each time it was necessary to explain the thing, so he hoped that whatever creature he brought through would have a name that he could call it instead. The spell had a hefty price attached to it: four thousand, nine hundred and eighty mana would be pulled each time he used it, and the creature would only remain for an hour at maximum.

All of that together meant that he could only cast the spell four times in total before needing to either replace the Mana Battery or recharge it. “I suppose that means I can't just try it out for funsies. Plus, you never know how the guards in this city might react to a kinda demon summoning happening in a public setting.”

Resolving to only test it out right before a battle, or when he thought he might be in danger, Joe packed away his orbs and started walking away. He quickly came to a stuttering stop as he realized that he still needed to make a deal with the creature that was pulled through, and doing so directly before combat was obviously a terrible idea. Plus, he had to ensure that the spell had been put in place correctly… right? “No! No, I can do this when we are outside the city walls.”

Very, very reluctantly, he managed to gather the willpower necessary to ignore testing out his new pretties, and instead went back to the inn where he and his team had rented rooms for the evening. They would need to spend at least one more day in the city in order to meet with Aten and learn what was going on, but he had a feeling that the time would at least be used productively.

What little remained of the night passed quickly, especially since he only needed a few hours of sleep a day, thanks to his enhanced Constitution. In what felt like no time flat, he was up and sipping his first coffee of the day while he planned out a new training regimen. “I can start with curls and keep boosting my Strength and Intelligence by working them against each other. The great thing is, thanks to feeding ten percent of my Intelligence into it, if my Intelligence does go up in response, that will also slowly increase my Strength! It's a double win for me.”

“Ooh! Whatcha got there? That one seems different.” Jaxon reached out and poked the orb that Joe had assigned Essence Cycle onto, his jaw going slack as Joe noticed the charge in his orb starting to drop right after he had returned it to full power!

“Jaxon!” With a simple mental demand, the orb flew away from the Chiropractor, who swiped his hand in an attempt to catch it. “Leave it, it’ll drop you into a trance-”

“Jo~oe!” Jaxon whined as he tried to retrieve the orb that kept dancing out of his reach. “It’s so pretty in there! Let me see it again!”

Joe thought about it for a moment and decided there was no harm in letting the Chiropractor be entertained while he did his own thing. He narrowed his eyes, and allowed a devious plan to form. “That’s fine, but you’ll need to recharge the orb with your own mana. Deal?”

“Sure! There’s nothing strange about that; of course I’d happily replace what I use.” Jaxon smiled at him so winningly that Joe felt bad for planning to fully drain his mana at least once a day. He was still going to do it, but now he felt bad about it. The orb dropped into the Chiropractor’s waiting hands, and his pupils dilated as drool instantaneously began dripping from his mouth.

“No wonder I couldn’t get anyone to come and shake me without paying them.” Joe muttered with slight disgust. “I bet I looked just like this when I was using the skill.”

Satisfied that Jaxon was fully occupied, he turned his focus to his other orbs and started applying pressure to push the weapon away while using his muscles to force it back to him. “This is some… intense isometrics!”

If his Neutrality Aura hadn’t been in place, he knew for certain that his clothing would have been absolutely soaked with sweat after the first few minutes. Joe put everything he had into lifting the orb just one more time, just one more time. Over and over, he lifted, until, after nearly a full hour, nothing happened. He almost gave up, then remembered that he was attempting to train two characteristics at the same time. The training requirement was doubled, and his efforts were likely to require a full one hundred and four minutes to get them both higher.

“I shouldn't complain; thanks to being a Ritualist, I'm managing this four times faster than I would have with any other class,” Joe grunted as he continued his intense workout. “There are people that are doing this all day, every day, just to boost their characteristics. Got to… use my… advantages!”

Jaxon had come out of his trance a while ago, saw that Joe was busy, shook the orb twice to make sure there was no more fun-sight juice left in it, and wandered off. Joe could barely think straight by that point, the repetitiveness of the actions nearly driving him crazy. At one hundred and three minutes, he was almost entirely spent, and he used the few remaining seconds in an attempt to lift the weight one more time while also pushing it away. Just before he was about to give up entirely, he was granted a notification that he hadn't seen in far too long.

Characteristic point training completed! +1 to intelligence and strength! These stats cannot be increased further by any means other than system rewards, study, or practice for twenty-four hours game time.

Artisan Body has reached Beginner VI.

“Yes!” Joe collapsed onto dry ground, his clothes perfectly cleaned each time he rolled around on the not often-swept surface. “The system works! I can use my own weapons against myself to become better, faster, and stronger!”

He studied his other orbs with excitement, wondering what they would turn into when he managed to bind them to his characteristics. He tried to temper his exhilaration with the fact that there were increasing downsides, which would likely be more noticeable with each new characteristic he tied to the orbs. Not to mention the fact that he currently only had six orbs, and in order to assign every single one of his characteristics to an orb, he needed nine of them—if he could consider Karmic Luck as an assignable skill. “That means I will need a Sage set—also known as a Mythical set—if I actually want to use every one of them. I will need to unbind them, and rebind them, and…  that's a lot of work that’ll eventually need to happen. Better not think about it too much right now.”

That, more than anything, allowed him to bring himself back into the present moment. Not only would he have to upgrade the ritual to fully utilize his weapons, but he also needed a greater theoretical understanding of the currently ambiguous characteristics in order to do so. As it stood, he wasn't sure how several of his skills even affected reality, especially the more esoteric ones such as Luck and Karmic Luck. Attaining the Karmic King award while he was fighting the Hidden Guardian had opened his eyes somewhat to the mysteries that lay within, but it was going to be a long road to true understanding.

He took care of a few other minor tasks, though he mostly ended up spinning his wheels while waiting for his meeting with his Guild Commander. Joe wasn't exactly certain what the meeting was going to entail, but the fact that Aten thought it was important normally meant that it would be. Aten hadn't gotten his position by chance, and Joe remembered how well the man had handled the pressure of mediating between two sets of leaders from warring civilizations. Deciding that he would rather be early, he went over to the restaurant that had been designated as the meeting spot and sat down.

Almost immediately, a man wearing dark sunglasses loomed beside his table. “You fit the description. Are you Joe of The Wanderers?”

The Reductionist nodded, keeping his mouth shut as he privately assessed the man. Frankly, he fit whatever description could be used for Joe as well, being equally as bald. Likely, the phalacrosis was a choice for this man, though Joe could not fathom why someone would choose to have such a  hairstyle willingly in a civilization where the quality of your hair dictated your position in society. The man motioned for Joe to follow him, leading him to a private back room in the restaurant.

Aten noticed his arrival and came to greet him, a strange look of sheepishness on his face as he shook Joe's hand. “Glad you can make it. I wanted to give you the chance to meet my father and ask him a few questions; he has a lot of knowledge regarding what is coming, and what we can expect in the next couple of Zones. If you wouldn't mind, I'd really prefer if you would keep his identity between us. There are a lot of people looking for him.”

“Is he a criminal?” Joe turned to scan the room, freezing in utter shock when his eyes landed on the only person—thanks to the Guild Commander’s preface—that could be Aten’s father. “Uh… a pleasure to meet you, President Musk.”

“Likewise.”