Invent ~ 32!

He knew that the horde would be surging toward him like a tide, and yet Joe could not find it in himself to move from his current position, or try to fortify his location further. Joe took a look behind him, seeing that garbage was still flowing into the array. The only major difference that he could see was that the top of the building now had two columns of gray smoke coming out of it, as if this was some kind of refinery. Rolling his eyes at himself, Joe rubbed his shiny head and mumbled, “What am I thinking? This is literally a refinery. The smoke exiting the top must mean the building used all the aspects it needed for repairs.”

The fact of the matter was that he knew exactly what he was doing: procrastinating. He wasn't sure how he was going to handle the incoming waves of monsters; there was a good chance that all of the work that he had been doing was about to get smashed. Joe chuckled to himself, “Well, if nothing else, if the building gets trashed here, no one will know that I messed up this badly.”

The first of the zombies crested the hills of slimy waste matter, and began searching the area. Upon finding the original zombie that had caused this mess, the discovering beast dove into its fallen brother and began tearing away strips of flesh. Apparently, whatever kept the zombies from going after each other during their undead state was no longer in effect after they were dead for good. More zombies were arriving by the moment, and soon began fighting amongst themselves for the scraps.

As he looked on in complete shock, Joe’s mind slowly began to remind him that he needed to get into that mix, and figure out a way to take advantage of the situation. The creatures were already fighting among themselves, even if they were not fighting to the death. Yet. At present, it was more of a dispute for territory and a meal and it was truly brutal attacks. For the first time, he began wondering if these creatures did have some kind of pack mentality, and if not…

*Bonk*.

The metallic sound captured the attention of all of the feasting zombies. One of Joe's Ritual Orbs had shot out of the garbage pile, caved in a forehead, then rapidly drifted over to land in one of the undead Dwarves' hands. Each of them had stopped what they were doing and were staring at an apparent imposter. When all of the eyes had locked onto the metal orb, Joe once more took control of it and sent it into another of the beasts.

The resulting chaos was exactly what Joe had been hoping for, as all of the undead started assaulting the ‘perpetrator’. Moments later, more of his Orbs started to *bonk* zombies. After getting in a few attacks, Joe released control of his Orbs and leaned back against his building. The beasts that were in front of him were tearing into each other, ever-so-slowly whittling down each other's hit points. Settling in, he decided to wait for an opportune moment to finish off the survivors.

He had forgotten that each of them had a massive Constitution. The battle went on long enough that he was nervous of bringing in a much larger group of enemies. Luckily, he didn’t have to worry. Every once in a while, another zombie would appear on a hilltop and take a gander at the commotion. For some reason, when they saw what was going on, they just… left. It did make Joe wonder how common of an occurrence this was; after all, there was garbage that rained from the ceiling on a fairly regular basis.

Even so, he determined that there must be something he could learn, something he could use to keep his area safer. A few minutes later, the first of the zombies were beginning to stumble away from combat. A glance at them was enough to determine that their health was low, and they were likely suffering from multiple debuffs: everything from torn flesh to loss of limbs. The winners were barely better off, and Joe knew that it was time to make his move.

“Dark Lightning Strike!” He hissed to entice the nearly soundless energy to storm down among his foes. A moment later, he regained control of his Ritual Orbs and started swirling them around the head of the most damaged Dwarven corpse. Soon he had the first of what he hoped would be many experience notifications arriving in the corner of his vision.

They had practically destroyed each other, and were being held together by dark magic and sinew. The small group that had remained was easily defeated, nearly soundlessly, and Joe decided that he needed to get rid of their bodies. If the very first one had been any indication, a zombie seeing a corpse of any kind would be drawn to the location for a fancy feast. He tapped at his chin, trying to think of how to bring them in. “The ritual isn’t strong enough to lift them… I can either go out there and haul them in myself, or I need to find a way to chop them into fifty-pound sacks of meat from a distance.”

As much as he did not want to have to put his hands on them, the fastest answer was ‘go do the work’. Joe moved as quickly as he could, hauling the corpses as close to his barriers as possible, then chucking them up and over the rim into the open-topped tower. A concerning point of note was that as soon as they touched the gray ‘smoke’ that was coming out of the A.S.P.E.C.T., their exterior began to dissolve.

“Good to know that clouds of aspect waste are still bad for your health.” Checking the area, Joe ensured that—as far as he could tell—no one could see him, or knew what he was doing. He re-entered the hidden area, got onto the side of the nonagon, and decided to take a small nap.

He was able to get perhaps two hours before his enhanced Constitution told him that he had received enough sleep and his conscious mind was no longer going to put up with being ignored. As soon as his eyes popped open, Joe's stomach rumbled and his head started to hurt. A glance at his to-be-completed quests kicked his fear of missing out into high gear. “Okay, I really want to get back to the Shoe, but I know I can't go back empty-handed. I gotta put in some elbow grease and leg it back there, fully armed with everything I need to succeed, or Havoc will rip me a new… c’mon, Joe. Happy thoughts..”

With thoughts of Havoc going out of his way to punish him driving Joe to take risks, he climbed the small tower and touched the Ritual of Little Sisters Cleaning Service and interrupted the flow of energy within it. All this did was pause the ritual—not destroy it. Over the next few minutes, the clouds of gray aspect byproducts began to vanish, and soon the air was clear. It was finally time to see if anything had been found that couldn’t be broken down by the array he had managed to build up.

It was strange to see a smattering of gear that had clearly been thrown in the dump, but was in a perfectly clean state. There was everything here, from malfunctioning Alchemy equipment, to bolts of cloth that had some kind of red wine stain across them. No single item was in large supply, as he had fully expected. Even so, there was a surprising amount of Rare material that had been thrown away for no clear reason; other than some kind of discoloration or tiny imperfection that had likely kept it from achieving a Unique or better rating.

That reminded him of how Grandmaster McPoundy had casually thrown out Unique swords and even Artifact-quality equipment, simply because it was either not what he wanted to see—or could have been considered embarrassing for such a vaunted individual to produce. “There’s an idea: I should get a map of the city and find out where each Master craftsman has a shop. Then I can focus my attention on those areas for reduction and aspect collection!”

But, in the current moment, that brief memory of a Grandmaster’s wastefulness served as validation that what he was doing had the potential for massive returns. He hurried to get to work and see what he had managed to gather.

Setting up a Field Array within the permanent array made him snort at the strange turns his life had taken, but it didn’t stop him from sucking all the value out of the items. Soon his building was once again empty, and Joe was laying the groundwork for setting up the Uncommon layer of the array.

He grunted in consternation as he began working with the higher-value aspect, finding that the energy had increased in mental weight significantly once again. Joe was able to force it along the mana pathing that he had set out, but was uncertain how many more layers he would be able to work with at this rate. On the plus side, each layer was significantly closer to the center of the room, and covered a much smaller area in total. If nothing else, he should be able to use his Inscriber and trace each of the lines directly.

But that would feel like he was giving up on improving himself.

Array layer complete: Uncommon.

Class quest complete: Novice Reductionist VI. Reward: 250 Rare aspects you can claim at any time, in any storage device that will accept them.

Class quest gained: Novice Reductionist V. Create a Rare rank permanent array. Reward: 250 Rare aspects. Array created: 0/1.

“It’ll give me Rare aspects again…? Ah! Everything I need for the ‘Special’ layer. Nice.” Now that his mental exertions had been completed, Joe received five excellent reasons to continue working his mind and not giving in to the ‘easy’ route.

Skill increase: Mana Manipulation (Student V -> Student VI).

Skill increase: Magical Matrices (Apprentice V -> Student VIII).

Skill increase: Magical Synesthesia (Beginner I -> Beginner IV).

Skill increase: Essence Cycle (Beginner VI -> Beginner IX).

Skill increase: Coalescence (Student IX -> Journeyman 0). Congratulations on reaching the Journeyman ranks with Coalescence! As a reward for your dedication to being dense, both mentally and magically, you gain +5 Wisdom!

The air around Joe brightened considerably, and he could hear harmonic singing just at the edge of his auditory range. The two bonuses that he had gained from the human monarchs confused him slightly; but apparently had been receiving consistent and impressive gains from being around not only the magically potent building that he was creating, but all of the various enchanted items that had been moving around him and getting reduced. “It makes me wonder if the sight and sound of magical gear being turned into aspects is directly boosting these skills? Maybe I will catch the next seat that I see and stare down into the A.S.P.E.C.T. as it converts garbage…?”

Still feeling fresh, having plenty of mana, and now having the Rare aspects that he needed in order to make the next layer, Joe began arranging his thoughts in preparation of designing a Rare array. “It’s strange to think about grinding skills the same way I do about watching a holiday parade, but… if something needs to happen to become more powerful, I’m gonna do it!”

Once again, the aspects were ‘heavier’ than the previous layer, but it was  surprisingly nowhere near what he was expecting. Joe quietly accepted the fact that his skills and characteristics being boosted were helping him significantly, and did his very best to actively train each of them as he struggled and strained to connect the bright blue lines of deadly energy to each other. Whenever he was able to find a straight line to send the aspects down, he was able to slowly build some speed and reduce the mental strain on himself.

The downside was, the closer he got to the center of the building—where he knew Mythical and Legendary aspects would be collected—the more everything became an intricate shape with fewer and fewer long, straight lines. Each time he had to follow a curve perfectly, the energy pressed against him as if he were ten pounds over his maximum curl weight at the gym. He could do it, and he did, but he knew that when he was done: he was going to be hurting.

He finished the layer, and frankly he did not know how he managed to do it. His mind was screaming from the strain, and his body was a shivering mess. “Why does everyone always cheer for people that hurt themselves to succeed, but never mention how long it takes to recover?”

A distraction came at the perfect time, just as his mind started to collapse from exhaustion and strain. The blue lights flashed and turned into a more physical manifestation just as the other layers had, and he knew that he was done. Not just with this layer, but unable to continue on with this work at all. As it stood currently, if he tried to press forward with the next portion, the Special layer, Joe recognized that he would most likely end up destroying the entire building and all the work that he had managed to complete so far.

Array layer complete: Rare.

Class quest complete: Novice Reductionist V. Reward: 250 Rare aspects you can claim at any time, in any storage device that will accept them.

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

The Reductionist slotted his next few Aspect Jars, reactivated the ritual above himself, and started the aspect conversion that would keep this place running even when he was not here. As soon as everything was working as it should, he jumped to the top of his mini tower and activated Essence Cycle. He looked into the distance, where he knew he would be able to find an exit to this place.

Thanks to his active skill, he was able to notice a few areas that were leaking a massive amount of foul energy into the air. Sheer force of habit made him look at the control cuff on his wrist, where he had once worn a watch all of the time. “I need to get out of here… but maybe I can raid just a few treasure pits on my way out? No one’s stopping me.”

He held his hands in front of his face and placed one index finger over the other, blocking his sight of the nearest plume of darkness. “X marks the spot. Arr, matey.”

*Burble?*

“Not you, Mate. It’s a pirate thing.”