Invent ~ 39!

As the turkeys were coming up to slash him, Joe found a new and interesting application for his jumping. Twisting in the air, he dropped an axe kick in between the heads of the foremost turkey, finding that the motion almost gave him enough upward lift to vault away from the resistance that met his foot.

“If these things were heavier, or moving faster, I bet I could use them like a platform to push off of!” Joe heaved with effort as he spoke. An interesting side effect of wildly increasing his characteristics was that he really didn’t need to hyperventilate during combat, while running, or engaging in other strenuous activities. Essentially, he was a superhuman in that regard. Even so, his mind told him that he should be utterly exhausted and near collapse. This was one of the ‘walls’ when it came to increased characteristics: until he was able to get his brain to accept the fact that this was actually normal, it was going to be difficult to break out of old habits and reach new heights.

He forcefully activated his Battle Meditation, concentrating to make his body fall into a regular breathing pattern as the ground rushed up toward him. Nearly in a trance, he tucked and rolled, his Exquisite Shell taking the entirety of the damage as the flock of malicious turkeys converged on his location. “Dark Lightning Strike!”

Bringing the power down on himself—as he was mostly immune between his defense and mitigation of dark magic—the Reductionist managed to send the entire swarm of birds tumbling to the ground, twitching from the electric damage. He smirked and voiced a thought, “Looks like electric damage is still super effective against flying types.”

“You better get out of there before they’re up; you should know by now that they’re twice as fast on the ground!” Cleave called out in warning, only a hint of concern in her voice.

“Hey! I saw smoke in the distance. What's over there?” Joe pointed toward the horizon behind the hill, and Major Cleave followed his finger. Her eyes locked on the grassy mound, a hint of surprise flickered in her eyes, and her face set into a grim expression.

“Are you sure about this?” Her extremely confrontational tone gave Joe pause, but he still signaled yes with a confused nod. In a flash, she was next to him. Her axe lifted into the air, then slammed down repeatedly onto the turkeys until the final chunks of meat stopped trying to regenerate. “If that is the case, playtime is over. The only thing in that direction—or should I say, the only place in that direction—that could be smoking is the main Legion training facility.”

Cleave started shouting for Jaxon and Kettlebell, zipping over and killing anything attacking them as soon as she had their location. “The three of you need to get back to the Shoe. I will be going to assess the situation at the training facility. If I am not back in six hours, alert the capital. Use all the authority and means at your disposal.”

“You just want us to go home and-” Before Joe could finish his sentence, the Dwarf was already gone, a trail of torn-up grass flying into the air giving the only indication of where she had gone. “I guess so. Abyss, how much do I need to put into Perception to be able to see these people moving at top speed?”

“No idea!” Jaxon cheerfully spoke up as he swung a brace of turkeys back and forth. They were all conscious, but for some reason, every single one of them was completely silent. Jaxon looked at them, and the one he focused on began shivering in fear, continuing for a few moments after the man’s attention moved away. “But it looks like the next few weeks will be fun for me, at least! Do you think the Elves’ land grab was a distraction? That's what I think. Get the Dwarves all riled up and thinking they’re in a resource war, then sneak in a whole bunch of sappers to take down the training facility. Smart. Probably what I would have done.”

“I don’t think you’re that coldhearted.” Joe waved his hands to stave off the confusion in his friend’s eyes. “All I mean is, for all your lackadaisical attitude toward fighting and dealing damage, I've never seen you launch an attack on intelligent people unless they have done something to you. In fact, now that I think about it, I can distinctly remember several times where you were going out of your way to help people attacking you, even in the middle of combat.”

Jaxon shrugged and took the lead, answering Joe over his shoulder, “Hard to get new clients when you’re mean to them. Look at these turkeys as an example. Look how well-behaved they are, and all I needed to do was adjust their attitude over and over until they stopped being aggressive. It's a beast tamer skill that my trainer back on Midgard had never seen before. Eventually, they will be so afraid of disappointing me that they will fall in love with everything about me!”

“Stockholm Syndrome, turkey style. I like it.” Joe snorted with laughter, then the three of them went silent as they raced back to the Shoe.

Jimathy Kettlebell almost won, but Joe vaulted past him with a backflip and winked at the huge man as he shot by and entered the tunnel ahead of him by a nose. For the first time since he met him, Joe saw a grin begin to spread across the muscular man's face. There was a sharpness to that smile that made Joe realize that this particular person only really had fun when they were competing with someone else. “Any chance you like board games?”

“No.”

The smile was gone, and it appeared that they were now racing toward the hamlet. However, they were in a tunnel, and Joe had the absolute advantage. Ever since the attack on his town had ended with him almost being slain in the tunnels, Joe had practiced bouncing around the enclosed spaces nearly every day. Now he was able to keep his momentum in all circumstances, and corners were simply launch pads for him. When he reached the open airspace surrounding the town, he blasted out of the tunnel like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle.

“Yeah!” he bellowed as he hurtled toward the ash-coated igneous stone. Joe had long since been able to ignore the looks that he got from other people that didn't know how to have fun, but now he felt something that had been missing since he had come to this Zone. Competition. The fact of the matter was that he could not compete physically with the Dwarves, and achieving a high rank in the military had only required of him what he would have been doing anyway.

With his thoughts on competition, his mind focused on the person that he was most contentious with at present. “You know, maybe I should hunt down Herr Trigger and set up a real rivalry between us. I bet setting a hand-sized meteor to follow him and send him to respawn a few times would do it. I do need to make a few Student rituals that I’ve never used before… could I make a homing meteor?”

That reminded Joe to look at his current class quests, and he had some time because he had arrived way~y ahead of the others. “Heh.”

Beginner Reductionist. Create a Special rank permanent array. Reward: 125 Unique aspects. Array created: 0/1.

Student Ritualist. Congratulations! You are a Student of the path of rituals! Students must learn: for you, this means plenty of fun things to do! Draw out and activate twenty Student rituals you have never used before. 0/20 rituals activated.

Apprentice Rituarchitect II. Scan five Uncommon structures that you do not have the blueprints for currently. Reward: 5 peak Uncommon Cores. Access to the next class quest.

Joe was struck by an idea and began rubbing his hands together like a fly planning to land on someone’s food at a nice restaurant. “You know what? I didn’t make my buildings here Uncommon… that means I don’t have their blueprints.”

There was something nice about using old rewards to earn new and better rewards. On his way to scan the two warehouses, barracks, apartment building, and smithy, he informed one of the Legion members about the pillar of smoke and Major Cleave’s departure, giving him an order to send a message up the chain of command about the attack on the Legion training facility. Unbeknownst to Joe, his order was executed with grim efficiency; the Legionnaire ran off looking like someone had stabbed him directly in the heart.

Knowing that he had some time before he needed to verify whether Major Cleave had returned, he decided to spend some time on his new favorite skill to practice: Somatic Ritual Casting. At the moment, he was flush with Rare aspects, meaning he could craft the Student-ranked Architects Fury ritual without any concerns. Well… a few concerns. Namely that his ability to use the skill was only at Beginner nine.

“Well, nothing like shooting for the moon to let you land among the stars. Ahh, that’s the stuff. Nothing like a pithy saying to help you ignore the dangers of a task you’re working on with your bare hands.” As per usual, Joe started the process of making the ritual by using an inscriber in both hands to draw out the diagram. Once he reached the Apprentice circle, he dropped to using only one hand and full concentration.

The circle pulled in closer and closer… then completed with an outpouring of light that allowed him to relax, and the small crowd that had gathered to begin clapping. Joe wiped his forehead and took a few deep breaths, then reached out to start the final piece.

Skill increase: Somatic Ritual Casting (Beginner IX -> Apprentice 0)! Congratulations! Skill information updated! Reward: 100 reputation with the Dwarven Oligarchy, 1,000 Uncommon aspects.

Somatic Ritual Casting (Apprentice 0). This skill allows you to create a ritual in midair! No longer will you need flat land or perfectly smooth paper. When creating Apprentice ritual circles, the stability of the circle is set at 100% for the Novice and Beginner portion, and 80+4n% where n = skill level in the Apprentice rank. Each rank of ritual circle above Apprentice will be calculated at 80+4n-30T where T is each tier above Apprentice.

The tip of Joe's inscribing tool was shaking from nerves. If he had started writing out the next circle, the excitement that notification generated in him would have absolutely broken his concentration and resulted in a catastrophic failure. As his Neutrality Aura wiped away the sweat that was trying to drip into his eyes, he took in the new information and let it flow through him. After a few moments, his mind was once more centered and focused on the task at hand, and he began drawing out the Student-ranked portion of the diagram.

“Going by the updated skill information, creating this circle should have something like sixty percent stability.” Joe knew that meant he needed to remain absolutely focused, in the moment, while keeping his movements sure and concise. He had a better chance of success than failure, but distraction and cockiness would absolutely wreck him if he let it. As the circle came to completion, he stepped back and admired the Student-ranked ritual with a blueprint floating in the center of it.

“I can swear right now, I will never get tired of magic.”