Implode ~ 8!

“I have a somewhat strange title effect,” Daniella admitted as they all sat together drinking cappuccinos. “I’m such a workaholic that I accidentally died of starvation, continued working in my respawn room, and got kicked out of the room… without noticing that I had died. It’s called ‘Hardworking Ghost’, and it decreases my respawn timer by a set amount.”

“Not gonna lie, that’s a sad story.” Jaxon patted her on the hand, earning a simultaneous eye roll from Daniella and Joe. “I hope you get the help you need to feel better.”

“I like what I do!” Daniella was blushing furiously, setting Major Cleave and Joe to laughing, which only made the color creep higher. “I’m glad you made it back safely, Major.”

“Not much choice when you’re given a direct order.” The Dwarf tried to glare at Joe, but he met her eyes, and she turned away with a quiet grumble.

“I told you, you need to live. To that end, I need another couple days here.” Joe ignored their collective complaints and merely shook his head. “I need a few failsafes, and I have a few rituals that require advance preparation. Beyond that, I need to try to see if I can find some spells or skills that will be useful on the road.”

“Don't bother.” Cleave explained her thoughts right away, a nice change from keeping them in the dark all the time, even if it wasn’t intentional. “When we get to Dehur Bethi, I’m certain you'll be able to find whatever you need, so long as you convince the Grandmaster to work with you. That’s our city of magic, and all centers of magical learning are within its borders.”

“All I need is a few spell books, but a teacher would be nice.” Joe started to say more, but she shook her head.

“You should make a better habit of keeping your secrets safe.” She eyed him dubiously from across the table before taking a sip of her drink. “Also, do you really need to be drinking out of an Ebonsteel mug? Someone is going to mug you. Do you have any idea what that stuff is worth? It’s the only metal under Legendary that completely ignores corrosion.”

“I do, Major. I absolutely do need to use this.” Joe slurped loudly, causing AutoMate to burble happily as it produced fresh coffee for him to sip on. “Never-ending coffee that tasted good the entire time I was drinking it was only a dream for a long time. Now that it’s a reality? No way am I going to ignore it.”

“Right. Well, I’m going to go to the practice yard to see if they need any help training people with axes.” Major Cleave shoved back from the table and took her leave. That seemed to be the signal for the others to start on their own way, and Daniella excused herself to go and check out some interesting buildings. Joe glimpsed some of the sketches she was making, and realized she was sketching a preliminary blueprint for each one on a separate page as she went.

Jaxon started to depart as well, but Joe caught the Chiropractor before he could go too far. “Jaxon! That was super neat how your hand did that… I want to say, ‘snake shifting’? I didn’t know it could convert into multiple forms.”

“I suppose we never talked about that!” Jaxon seemed almost surprised and settled into the conversation by rubbing his hands together in excitement. “When you came to this Zone, I followed a super neat Profession and eventually learned that a fully completed Profession can sometimes be used to create a new Specialization. I used that knowledge to upgrade my class to a Vile Bonecrusher and managed to earn a reward that allowed me to start slowly draining the essence of a Pond Hydra into Lefty and Terror!”

“That’s… a lot to process.” Joe separated out all of the pertinent points and looked at Jaxon’s wiggling fingers. “Where did you get the essence of a Pond Hydra? That sounds expensive.”

“Not at all! I tamed one, and then I drained its essence into a Targeted Assimilation Mutation Egg, or T.A.M.E. I tamed it twice! Ha! See what I did there?” Jaxon wiped a tear of mirth from his eye and sighed in contentment. “Of course, since I recently died, I’ll need to get back to level twenty-five in order to keep absorbing that beast. Eventually, I’ll be able to convert both of them into full hydras!”

Jaxon abruptly walked away from the conversation, fully lost in his own thoughts. By contrast, Joe remained rooted in place, shocked that his friend had achieved such a high level so far ahead of him. “I just gotta get on top of things and work harder; no point in being jealous.”

The Ritualist decided that it was time to start putting a few of his own plans in place. If he couldn’t acquire new skills, it was time to rearrange his current ones in such a fashion that he would remember to use them properly. He made his way to the park and dropped a bubble ritual around the rock he planned to be sitting on while he worked. That would keep any accidental misfires contained, as well as affording him some protection while he was focused on his task. Shaking out his hands, Joe started the process of creating an Enchanted Ritual Circle.

He didn’t use his Somatic Ritual Casting—as he was still unsure how to add enchantments to a ritual that was hanging in midair—instead using a Field Array to lop off a large section of the boulder to create plenty of space to work on. “It seems counterintuitive that the easiest of the spells to convert to a ritual is the summoning spell. Why is Lay on Hands such a giant sack of bloat?”

Ignoring the fact that the healing spell was able to restore practically any living being that he had encountered, and the fact that Essence Cycle used extrasensory perception at a level he couldn't currently fathom, Joe grumbled under his breath as he set up the diagram. The sun slowly crossed the sky as he *skritched* away at the surface of the stone with his inscription tool, leaving behind complicated formulae as glowing strands of fire. When he had finally completed the ritual to his satisfaction, he huffed out a blast of air as he let the feeling of succeeding suffuse him.

“That was so much easier to do than it was back in the Caves of Solitude, even with the enhancements required to contain a Student-ranked spell.” Joe chose one of his unbound orbs at random and set it in the center of the Ritual Diagram. “Alrighty… all I’m binding to this is the basic spell portion of Planar Shift in order to generate a Pseudo-Lich; not sure what that’ll look like when it’s supposed to be a whole ritual.”

He strategically placed a couple Mana Batteries to provide energy input to the Student ranked ritual, then stood to the side and began casting. Mana poured out of him, arresting a moment later as the batteries took on the burden. The ritual circles lit up in rapid sequence, until four were swirling around the slightly hovering orb. “Looking good thus far. Here comes the full activation…”

Cast the spell you want to assign to the orb directly onto the orb!

“Huh. I wonder what you’re supposed to do if you want to bind a skill.” Joe shook his head and snorted at the fact that he could have just as easily set up this Enchanted Ritual Circle to apply either of the other options he had been considering. He had been needlessly building this process up in his head, making a minnow into a whale, instead of just doing the work. “Totally forgot that I just needed to cast the abyssal spell on the orb, because it’s a completely different process than binding characteristics. Silly me… Planar Shift! Ahhh!”

For one long, terrible moment that seemed to last hours, Joe stood in the void, surrounded by hundreds of seemingly inanimate skulls. He was there just long enough to watch darkness filling their empty eye sockets as they started to turn toward him… and then he was back, standing at the edge of a scorched rock. He surveyed his surroundings in a daze, eventually coming to the realization that he had physically moved to a different dimension for a moment, and that the ritual had destabilized and exploded in that time frame.

Planar shift has reached Student IV!

“Wh-what just happened?” Joe’s teeth were chattering, and he found that he was freezing. He rubbed his arms and hopped in place as he inspected the damage. “Good thing I had that shield in place.”

He checked his normally-hidden deeper notifications, the ones he had to really dig for, and found an explanation.

Luck is two thresholds below Wisdom! Spell instability drastically increased.

Excommunicated! Your spell has backfired!

Caution! You have been reverse summoned to a different dimension! Your body cannot handle this transition. As you didn’t cross Planes of existence correctly by utilizing the Bifrost, all teleportation safety features have been activated. You have two minutes to return to the Plane of origin, else your current body will implode and be returned as energy, and a tiny demon will be summoned in your starting location as a warning to others and will cause mischief!

You have safely returned to your point of origin! Luck +3!

“I reverse summoned myself? I came back, though… even the system agrees that was some insane luck. Thank goodness that spell only pulls something through for a brief moment unless a contract is made.” The Rituarchitect shook his head at the narrow miss as he finally started to warm up. “This title is unbelievably inconvenient.”

With that restriction hindering his process, there was nothing else to do beyond reshape what was left of the boulder and get back to work. Almost two hours later, he had formed the ritual again and bent slowly to add a few lightly scorched Mana Batteries to their locations. “Here’s hoping this works properly.”

The ritual activated without issue, but that had never been the question. When he got around to casting the spell, instead of lazily sending it toward the orb as he had the first time, Joe focused entirely on following the path the spell made through his body before being ejected into space and crossing the distance to the orb. With such care devoted to the process, it was no surprise to him that the orb accepted the spell readily, and he felt all of his knowledge on how to cast it slip away.

Magical Matrices has reached Student I!

Enchanted Ritual Circles has reached Beginner VI!

“Urg. That always feels so disgusting.” He held his head as the last dregs of the spell faded from his memory and the ritual ended. Grimacing, he inspected the area, where the only signs of his ritual being completed were a few burns in the stone. He inhaled deeply and set up a new Field Array. “Lay on Hands next, then I gotta figure out how to get Essence Cycle bound to one of these bad boys.”