Invent ~ 38

Joe was pleased and relieved to find out that the Pointed Turkeys’ nesting grounds were not a terribly far distance from where one of his tunnels opened out of the Shoe. Especially at the speeds all of them could achieve on a straightaway, the others running while Joe vaulted along. There was something deeply satisfying about doing backflips over your friends as they ran along beneath you. He wasn't sure what it was; most likely some form of ingrained competitiveness that he would probably never get over.

Not when it was this fun.

“Pointed Turkeys are one of the mainstay meat animals in this area. Usually, people go ahead and let them run wild, as not only can they fly, but they tend to thrive in the wilderness. The other piece of that puzzle is that they are difficult to tame and extremely aggressive.” Jaxon was giving a breakdown of his reasoning for going after these birds. Even though it might not affect him very much, Joe found that it was still nice to have conversation going. He had forgotten exactly how pleasant it could be to be surrounded by people, get new ideas, and learn interesting information, even if it wasn't directly applicable to himself.

Humans needed other people, no matter how much they tried to ignore that fact sometimes. Just like that, Joe felt his dream shift. A giant tower where he could study in peace and solitude until the end of time just wouldn’t cut it. As the replacement dream settled in, he knew that most of the same elements remained. But there were new additions: people. Friends, support staff, even students. His mind still shied violently away from the idea of family there. He figured his mother was happy enough on Midgard, and he had tried the romance route once; it hadn’t worked out.

“Bird!” Kettlebell called just before punting a two-headed turkey so hard that it exploded into loose feathers and flying meat. “First!”

Jaxon patted the man on his back, shaking his head slightly. “Good find! Now remember, your goal today is to hold a creature in your hands without accidentally or intentionally killing it. Let’s work on that, yes?”

“You got it, boss.” Kettlebell seemed doubtful about his ability to carry out those instructions, but his clenched fists relaxed into open palms. Joe looked at those hands, uncomfortably reminded of his first version of a table: just hard-edged slabs of stone.

“Takes a monster Chiropractor to make one, I guess?” Joe softly chuckled under his breath as he brushed away the few feathers that drifted down to rest on his shoulders as the group came to a full stop. “Jaxon, ‘Pointed’ Turkey just means that any sharp object kills it just fine, right?”

“You know it!” Jaxon gave the Reductionist a double thumbs-up before dropping to the ground and scuttling into the long grass like an oversized crab. “I’m going searching for eggs; let me know if you need anything from me!”

Two-headed turkeys sounded like they should be an easy type of prey, since the birds that Joe knew of were animals not known for their intelligence. Here, though? He wasn’t sure what to expect. So, when the first of the feathery fiends burst out of the grass with a shock-inducing *gobble, gobble*, he sent his Ritual Orb in, and then through it as hard as he could manage.

Damage dealt: 168 penetrating cold!

His next Orb hit for the same amount in blunt damage, then the third hit for only one hundred and twenty-six, though that was enough to send the turkey flying. It hit the grass, its wings spread open, then forced itself upright and eyed Joe with one head, spitting out blood with the other. It wiped a wing across its beak, noticed the bloodstain, then charged at the human who dared to make it bleed its own blood.

Joe settled into position, an Orb in each hand, which he was planning on using to smack the bird. His launched Orbs were coming back, and this bird was going to learn what it meant to fight a full-power Ritualist-

*Pow*. The turkey let out a mournful gobble as it shot into the sky, Kettlebell’s leg following through on the kick so well that he almost booted himself in the head like a ballet dancer. “Intercepted!”

“That was my… wouldn’t a kick like that be a field goal?” Joe’s attempted correction was ignored as the bird came zooming down at the muscular man like a mortar round, only to be plucked out of the sky and slammed to the ground.

“Spike!”

“Touchdown!” Joe yelled at the same time, stumbling over his thoughts as Kettlebell sprinted off to continue the fight against the bird. “Right… why am I even trying to argue right now? I’m just gonna go have my own fight with my own bird.”

Finding another bird that was approximately the same size as his first target, he sent his icicle after it. During the half-second charge up, Joe hit the fowl with a Dark Lightning Strike, immobilizing the beast for an instant. His Ritual Orb took the bird in the chest, his follow up Orbs striking the flat end and driving the spike deeper akin to using a maul to split logs. Only a moment later, the bird had been fully bisected, a head on each wildly flopping portion.

“That’s a bad idea, Joe. Either burn or freeze it if you want it to die,” Cleave calmly warned Joe, who gestured dismissively at the fallen bird halves.

“It was cut in half. That’s not enough?” Even as he spoke, fresh meat grew along the wounds, and the birds got up—the halves falling over as they attempted to run at him on rapidly growing legs. “Okay, they have some kind of freaky regeneration. Got it.”

When his icicle Orb hit, he directed it to discharge Cone of Cold into the beast. A moment later, only a feathery meat popsicle remained. Joe got an experience notification but ignored it in favor of leaping out of the way of the other turkey, who was already growing an additional head. Cleave was watching from the edge of the path, leaning casually on her huge axe and smirking in amusement. “They aren’t all that dangerous. Like one of your cows back on earth.”

“Cows killed more people than sharks every year, so that doesn’t help.” Joe set a new path for his icicle Orb, and it whipped through the air and slammed into the bird, pinning it to the ground. His other Orbs converged and started beating on the wildly flapping monster, but the blows didn’t seem to do any lasting damage.

“They don’t have regeneration; they have passive flesh magic combined with a lovely Constitution,” Cleave informed the consternated human with great amusement. “They’re known for attacking anything that enters their territory, no matter how much stronger it may be. Only reason they’ve survived this long is that they’re prolific breeders, and they’re known to hold a grudge forever. Get too high a percentage of the flock mad at you, and their chicks and grandchicks will hunt you, and perhaps even later generations if you kill those ones.”

“These things are trolls,” Joe whispered as he made the realization. “In all senses of the word. Super regeneration, chasing after you forever just to make your life a tiny bit harder, all while knowing that they can't do anything but annoy you. These aren’t Pointed Turkeys, they’re Troll Turkeys! Are they even good for farming?”

“Oh, yes, they are excellent for meat generation,” Cleave confirmed in a matter-of-fact tone. “But there are reasons that they are left in the wild. First of all, you only need a single breeding pair to produce a nearly unlimited number of eggs and additional turkeys. Second, as you just saw, you can split the birds apart if you need more of them. However, every time you do that, you lose some trust and gain some aggression from them. Too little trust, and too much aggression, and you’ll gain a title that makes their entire species hostile toward you.”

“Is Jaxon making a bad move trying to use these?” Joe bluntly questioned her. “Should I put a stop to this?”

“If anyone can get these birds to love them to the point that they don't mind getting chopped up several times a day for someone's meal,” Cleave shook her head in wonder at her own admission, “I’m thinking your odd friend can. Even if he can't, something tells me he does not mind drawing the ire of an entire race of creatures.”

Joe nodded along, fully agreeing with her. “Totally fair. In any case, this is still active combat. I'm going to work on my fighting skills to see if they progress faster out here.”

“As per usual, I'm going to be here to save your skinny rear if you mess with something you shouldn't.” Cleave stoically took a position scanning the horizon for actual threats.

As the sun traveled across the sky, Joe fought bird after furious bird. Usually, he had to face just one at a time, but every once in a while, he would come across a larger cluster and had to adjust how he fought them. It was excellent training in dealing with creatures that would attack him straight on, although it would not be all that useful against creatures that might use strategic tactics against him, such as humans and Elves. Even so, he learned a few new tricks and found that his control with his weapons was slowly becoming smoother and more practiced.

Eventually, Joe got so used to dealing with the turkeys that he started to try new things, even going so far as to use Omnivault to get into the air while holding a Ritual Orb in each hand. When he reached the apex of his jump, he mentally commanded both of the Orbs to generate a tiny bit more upward thrust.

There were extreme limits to what he could do with the Orbs. For instance, trying to use them to hover in place in the air just did not work, but they could function as a touchpoint for his feet to enable him to achieve a classic double jump. While holding a pair of them, Joe found that he could greatly reduce his momentum, though he could never come to a complete stop.

He tried for a follow-up jump after the first, but for some reason, he was unable to keep the Orb in such a position to make it happen. The next time he left combat, he tried one more time, and failed again. Planning ahead this time, he realized that he might be able to make a triple jump work if he sent the Orbs into the air, then focused on holding them in position before he started his first Omnivault. He sprang into his first jump, followed quickly by his second. “Woo! Ha!”

As his feet touched the second Orb in the sky, a full twenty feet in the air, he pushed off with all his strength and screamed like an Italian plumber. “Yaa-haa!”

At the thirty-foot mark, four things happened in quick succession. One, Joe realized that he was thirty feet up and didn’t have a landing plan. Two, he noticed a huge column of black smoke on the horizon that had been hidden by a hill. Three, he got a notification that he had surpassed his self-imposed limits and brought Omnivault to Expert nine.

Four, a rafter of turkeys responded to his scream of joyful success by bursting from the long grass and flapping toward him—a feathery promise of painful death by a thousand pecks.