Implode ~ 4!

“Remind me again why we are walking instead of tearing apart our atoms and sending them across space so that we can appear directly in the next city over as they all come back together?” Jaxon spoke out loud to no one in particular, but it was Daniella that answered him.

“It is a safety feature built into the teleporters,” she informed him with a resigned tone. “In an effort to make it less feasible for spies to gain control of teleportation points and send troops directly into cities, in addition to setting rules and restrictions in place that make it more difficult to send reinforcements during an invasion, major city teleporters are not allowed to connect to each other during a full incursion. It is likely that we could have gotten out to a minor Fortress, similar to how we came in, but the costs associated with that would be astronomical right now.”

“She's right,” Major Cleave affirmed when the human stopped speaking. “That’s something that you should have known, considering the rank that you have. It’s general knowledge, and seeing that you are missing that hurts something inside of me. I forget sometimes that you got to your position in no time flat, through achievement rather than through promotion. There’s a whole lot that you’re going to need to get caught up on if you’re going to be an effective military leader for my people.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna be an issue for long, Cleave.” Joe snorted with unintended callousness. “We have a mission, and I think that the end goal of this chain of events is to escape the Zone entirely, bringing all the Dwarven refugees with me that we can possibly manage.”

“But…” Daniella stuttered as she realized that Joe wasn’t planning to hole up in his hidden Hamlet when the conflict was all over. “What about all your hard work? Your buildings, the town, all of that?”

“Not the first time I’ve had to start over. I’ll do it again.” Joe shrugged and continued walking toward the nearest exit of the city. He nearly stumbled as he abruptly remembered a series of rewards that he had gained the last time he had been in the area, and he decided to go and gather them. “Nearly forgot, I have a reward from Tatum to go collect. While I’m at it, I should go gather whatever aspects managed to get collected in the dump.”

Jaxon looked at the others in the group and pointed at a small restaurant. “Anyone for lunch? I’ll make Joe pay, as he’s the one that wasted our time by not remembering to do all of this when we were waiting for our supplies acquisition specialist!”

“Sounds good.” Cleave cracked a smile for the first time that day when she saw Joe’s narrowed eyes.

“I am getting hungry.” Daniella led the way, the three of them laughing at Joe as he sputtered out a quick to-go order for himself. He chuckled ruefully as they vanished from sight, deciding to head over to Tatum’s Pantheon Temple.

Just like everything else in the city, the roads were planned efficiently and carefully, allowing him to reach the brand-new temple district with only a short few minutes of running as quickly as possible. Soon he was walking past the purple-smoke-releasing Juggernauts that guarded the area, and approached the huge book that represented Tatum’s power on the Zone.

“Howdy, friend.” The Ritualist tapped the shrine reverently, even though he spoke casually to the deity. “If I remember correctly, I earned a reputation-based reward from you?”

Between one blink and the next, Joe found himself moved to Tatum’s actual seat of power, facing the incomprehensible being in person. “Good to see you, Joe. I’m glad you came, because we need to discuss what I can actually do for you.”

“I seem to recall the last time I got a reward from you, I got a really cool boon…?” Joe stated leadingly, wiggling his eyebrows—some of the only hair he had left on his head.

“Then you’d also recall that I got locked away for overreaching what I was allowed to do for you?” Tatum shook his head at the Ritualist and showed only a slight hint of a grin. “Between pulling the king back and letting you build that Pathfinder’s Hall so far ahead of your ability to actually do so, I got slapped silly by… by the system.”

“I understand.” Joe looked around the area, noting the fact that thunderstorms seemed to be gathering around the temple. “Everything going okay with you, big guy?”

“Mmm.” Tatum shook his enormous head as he too watched the brewing storm. “Just another reason to keep the reward I owe you to something more like a token of appreciation. There’s also the fact that I’m not going to be earning a ton of Divine Energy in the coming months, since there’s a good chance that the Dwarven populace is ravaged. That means that I’m going to be back to a bare handful of followers.”

“Well, yeah, with that attitude…” “Joe tried to joke, but Tatum was having none of it.

A document appeared in front of Joe, the inscribed design shining brightly. “I’m just being realistic. Here’s what I can do for you… an IOU, and a token reward. You’re level twenty-three right now, so let’s say that when you get to twenty-five, I can give you a spell variation—and I’ll make it a doozy. I can do that for Extended Family.”

“I’ll look forward to it. For now, I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me.” Joe took the paper, realizing as the glow faded that the document was a blueprint. “This looks like… a shrine?”

Lightning struck at the paper from one of the nearby clouds, only to be slapped away with a casual motion by Tatum. “Yeah, not sure if you remember, but you were once warned away from scanning a shrine. It’s a monument-class structure, and it’s very efficient for what it does and costs. Most of the deities don’t like people knowing how to make these, because they can become a real problem. Building them is always risky, because they can be stolen, but that’s not the annoying part. If someone can make and hide one away in a Zone… then a single pantheon can’t get the utterly massive bonus that comes with being the only pantheon in a Zone.”

“I see.” Joe nodded as he perused the information on the sheet, noting especially that for such a tiny structure, the shrine used a lot of Rare resources. “Probably was used by cults, or something else the leading pantheons declared ‘unsavory’, right? It sure would be a shame if there was a shrine built somewhere super hidden away. Somewhere annoyingly hard to find, so that even if all the main temples were destroyed, some little shrine in a nondescript rabbit hole kept an annoying group from gaining a giant bonus.”

Tatum tapped the side of his own nose and winked at Joe. “Sure would.”

Reputation Quest generated by yourself and agreed upon with a Deity: Ocultatum is ‘totally not’ requesting that you create at least one well-hidden shrine somewhere on Alfheim in order to prevent the Elven Pantheon from gaining a large bonus to their power bases by being the only pantheon collecting DE on the Zone. Reward: a minor boon for each day that the shrine remains undiscovered by the Elven Theocracy. If at least one shrine remains hidden for a year and a day, Tatum will directly upgrade one of your spells to a higher tier. (Maximum upgrade will allow you to reach Expert 0). Failure: None.

“I can handle this, Tatum. Thanks for the-” Joe blinked and found himself standing back in the temple, in the same position he had been in before he was pulled up to see the deity. “-stuff and the fun little side mission.”

Now that his primary task had been completed, the Reductionist decided to try out the reward he had gotten from clearing out the dump. Focusing his mind on the A.S.P.E.C.T. that he had left down there, he tried to move to it directly. Anyone watching him would have observed the Major General as he stared at a shrine for a few seconds, muttered a few words, and then vanished, leaving behind a tiny clap of thunder and a foul smell.

Upon approaching the building that was hovering nearly a hundred feet above the top layer of garbage, thanks to the four small Ritual of Force disks he had built it on, Joe popped into the structure and deactivated the ritual that continually carried garbage, then pulled out the Aspect Jars that had been collecting the broken-down waste. “Hmm, pretty good haul. So glad I automated this.”

*Burble?*

“No, no. Automate means to do something automatic; you are AutoMate, with the extra emphasis on the last syllable.”

*Burble.*

The Rare aspects were making especially good headway, and Joe decided right then that he would spend some of the bounty on creating a small shrine in the very middle of the dump, buried as far down into the garbage as possible. “Let the hiding of the shrines begin. The Elves are only ever going to know me as the shrine bunny, because whenever they think they’ve found the last one, there’s always going to be one more hidden away, rotting in silence until someone accidentally steps into it.”

His eyes shone with excitement as he thought over the next stage of his diabolical plan. “Maybe I’ll leave a little surprise for anyone that thinks they can show up and convert it, too.”

Two rituals were used in conjunction for the first time that day, the combination of which would eventually become a warning to low-level Elves: their instructors would strongly caution them against ever stepping into an unknown shrine shaped like a book, for fear of becoming trapped in a bubble of force that would rapidly fill with acid.

To Joe, it was just a childish part of him that didn’t want anyone to break one of his toys, along with a slightly petty side that wanted anyone impacting his potential quest rewards to pay for it. As soon as the tiny monument was created, the A.S.P.E.C.T. turned back on, and all aspects being collected for later use, Joe exited the dump and found himself only a short distance from the restaurant where his friends had been taking up tablespace.

Feeling good, refreshed, and ready to gain some levels, he happily paid their appetizer-and-dessert inflated tab and led the group out of the city. “Where’s the nearest Grandmaster, Major Cleave?”

“Not the closest, but our best bet is going to be Dehur Bethi, the High City of Deep Thought,” she answered after a moment of consideration. “You only need one more Grandmaster, right?”

“…Right.” Joe looked at her questioningly, “Is there a city that’s closer?”

“Yes, but the other one…” She hesitated for a moment before waving her hand. “You have a good chance of succeeding in Dehur Bethi.  The Grandmaster there likely has a few bonus reasons to join us. As to the location itself, it’s a city created for training enchanters and others that have their minds set on pursuing magical classes. It’s in the central mountains, away from the rest of the population, mainly so that their experiments and ideas can’t get out and corrupt the rest of the monster population.”

“In a figurative way, or do they regularly lose experiments that run wild and attack people?” Daniella questioned the Dwarf as their path was slightly altered. When her question went unanswered, the human grumbled, “I knew it was a literal way.”

“I wouldn’t say it happens regularly.” Major Cleave coughed into her arm to hide her face slightly. “Not after the upgrades in our containment facilities. Now it’s just the strongest or smartest that get out and about.”

“How exciting! Do these creatures by chance have abnormal skeletons?” Jaxon rubbed his hands together as he began to generate his own side missions.

“Usually.” Major Cleave glanced at Joe, who was smirking as he peered closely into every shadow that they passed. “That won’t be an issue for you, right?”

“What? Me? No, ah… no issue,” the Reductionist stated distractedly. “Any chance you know some little areas that are never visited or checked up on?”

“Uh…” Major Cleave looked between Joe, who was clearly planning something sneaky, Jaxon, who was obviously preparing to experiment on escaped experiments, and Daniella… who seemed to be lost in thought while sketching out the capital city’s walls as they walked away from them. “Am I missing something here?”

“Nah~h.” All three of her comrades denied in unison.