Invent ~ 22!

Joe fiddled with his table, joined a group of Dwarves that were gambling to try and boost his luck stat, and made a few more rituals for town defense. Each ritual that he made was ever so slightly closer to the town proper, meaning they were starting to become very difficult to hide.

The glowing manifestations of power simply hung in the air, waiting for anyone foolish enough to enter their proximity. To mix it up, Joe made sure to put some rituals directly on the surface of the volcanic floor, then covered them with ash and dirt when they were ready to go. He wouldn't want someone to win a fight simply because they could see where he was defending.

The week went by slowly, and when the timer had only a little more than a day remaining, Joe finally perfected the method for placing a ritual in his Ritual Orb. The only reason it had been so very difficult for him was because—as a Reductionist—he was forced to use aspects for every personal creation, from dinner to ritual circles. Too bad for him, the Ritual Orb was a physical object, and he could not simply replace the entirety of the wires that made up its internal structure.

To his great embarrassment, he finally stumbled upon the answer by mere chance, and not due to any kind of research or understanding. Joe had created the Novice ritual, leaving it free floating in the air so that he could at least activate the Rituals of Minor Earthquake that he had set up if he needed to do so. Several days of attempting to draw out the wiring and arrange it had only netted him frustration, especially after he found that he needed to replace the wiring manually when he opened it with his hands.

To be fair, the shape of the Orb had shifted significantly, turning into something that looked much closer to a frozen-metal icicle than an orb. It had taken hours to figure out how to close the outer shell of the not-exactly-an-orb-but-he-was-still-gonna-call-it-that-out-of-convenience when he was sick of trying.

Even then, the only reason everything worked out was that the casing of the icicle-orb popped open after he thought he had it. In abject frustration, he had thrown the Orb at the wall with a low growl-scream of frustration. The orb’s trajectory had it passing through the ritual diagram, and it paused in mid-air and arranged all the wires neatly, using only a portion of them to mimic the diagram as it drew the ring of fiery light into itself.

Ritual Orb of Intelligence (Masterwork). This Ritual Orb has gone through an Alchemic treatment as well as an extra round of enchanting via rituals.

Base Damage: 100 piercing cold.

Characteristic assigned: Intelligence. Any spell assigned to this Orb will have the primary damage effect increased by 10% on spell cast. Base damage will shift over time to be the damage type provided by the spell.

• Automatically grants Orb the ‘recall’ ability; it will return to you after five minutes if left behind, forgotten, or stolen.

Core assigned: 375/1,545

Spell assigned: Cone of Cold (Beginner V, awaiting unbinding for skill upgrade).

Ritual Diagram captured: Ritual of Remote Activation (Sender)

“Do I really need to just make a ritual, then throw an Orb into it like I am trying to catch a flying fish with a net?” Joe pulled the Orb back to himself and examined it, exceedingly leery about opening it up and looking at the wiring once again now that it had closed. “I don't understand why it is so easy to pop it open to remove the core if needed, but pulling out one little wire turns the whole thing into an unraveled ball of steel wool.”

“Hello, Joe!” Jaxon’s muffled voice reached Joe’s ears through the door as the man pounded on it. “I’m here to ask for a building where I can offer my Chiropractic services! Havoc told me that I need something like that to get access to my class quests, and I could only ask when you had brought the town up to a new level. I figure we’re close enough.”

“Just you out there?” Joe quizzed as he started opening the door.

“Oh, my, yes.” Jaxon cheerfully intoned as Joe pushed open the door; revealing Jaxon and Kettlebell. “Just me and this wonderfully attentive student. Do you know he’s almost to Student rank as a Chiropractor already? His attention to detail, love of twisting people, and the musculature to back up the skills? He’s a prodigy!”

“He’s also banned from my workshop.” Joe rubbed his head as he snuck a glance at Cleave. He had the feeling that she wouldn’t be amused that he had let someone in without even looking to see if they were alone. His glance revealed that she appeared upset, so he let out the breath he had been holding. Thank goodness; nothing had changed. She always looked like that. “Run that by me again… you need a building?”

“Yes!” Jaxon stepped in happily, slamming the door in Kettlebell’s face. “I’d like it to be out near wherever there will be animals living. Cattle and the like. Or a beast training area. Then I can give classes and test things on people and creatures alike!”

“Efficient.” Joe stated dryly. “But starting a whole practice here seems-”

“Exactly! Wonderfully efficient!” Jaxon clapped his hands together. “Now that I have a student, I don't even need to worry about what would happen to the practice if I went out on a hunt for a few weeks! Once he is trained up a little more, I could leave my patients to him without a single concern in the world! Just between you and myself, Lefty and Terror need some tender love and care; I've only been able to let them out to eat twice in the last week!”

That caused Joe to pause, and he glanced dubiously at Jaxon's hands. “Do they need to come out and eat?”

“I don't think so? Why does it matter?”

“The way you said that made it seem like… never mind.” Joe always had trouble understanding Jaxon's motivations, but he had long since chalked it up to the multi-generational difference between their mentalities. “We can make it happen, but you need to find everything you need for it. Blueprints for the type of building you need especially, since I'm sure this is going to be a custom building. You’ve always gone out of your way to help me, so I'll make sure that most of the cost is taken care of. Problem is, I've got no idea what you need, and so ya need to do that research yourself. Sound like a plan?”

“Excellent.” Jaxon twisted to the side, covered his eyes with one hand and extended the other. “When we agree on something, we are supposed to do this ‘dab’ motion, right? That’s what I was told by-”

“No, Jaxon.” Joe shuddered as he watched the cringefest in front of him. “That was… no. No one has ever done that to seal a business deal.”

Before they could discuss the intricacies of popular culture, and how far away from popular culture both of them were—and should stay—the sound of a gong echoed through the entire enclosed volcanic space. That was soon followed by a siren that sounded like a klaxon call mixed with screaming pigs.

“What on Svaltarheim is that?” Jaxon wondered idly as he tried out a few new ‘dab’ positions.

“I think that's one of my alarms? Are we under attack?” Joe opened the door and looked for the origin of the noise, not seeing anything but a pillar of black smoke in the distance. Then something appeared in the volcano that never should have been able to under natural circumstances: a massive sheet of ice.

That was followed by an explosion, which cracked the ground around it deeply enough that fresh magma bubbled up to the surface. Jaxon nodded sagely as he looked on, “It certainly appears as if we are under attack. Should we do anything about that? Or just head to the speakeasy you don;t know about, grab a cup of tea, and wait for it to blow over?”

“Jaxon!”

“What?” The chiropractor put his hands out to the side in a ‘what did I do’ gesture. “The last time you got involved with defending a town, you got banished for a whole year! How am I supposed to know if you want to be a part of town defense again?”

“To arms, Bros and Dudettes! There’s hundreds of ‘em coming through!” A pained scream echoed through the cavern. “It’s a full-scale invasion!”

“Is he serious? What are we supposed to even do about that?” Major Cleave stepped forward and put her hand in front of Joe, stopping him from proceeding. “My last headcount showed us at thirty-eight total people living in this Hamlet. There might be a few more, mostly because of whatever traders have started coming in, but a full invasion of hundreds of people? This is over. It's time to evacuate, sir. Let's get you somewhere secure.”

“So, they can chuck me in a room and make me write technical manuals until I finally escape in a blaze of glory?” Joe hollered to no one in particular, ignoring the confusion that she exuded. The Reductionist was determined to choose his own fate. “How about we try things my way first?”

He swung his arm out in front of him, his Ritual Orb floating up to hover in front of his outstretched palm. “Activating bound ritual.”

His Orb twisted in place. Over the next half second it unlocked with a *click* and released a huge amount of spooled wire that popped into an oversized version of the Ritual of Remote Activation. The wire was sucked back in until it had shrunk down to the proper size, with Joe’s hand directly in the center activation portion. Taking a deep breath, he began pouring mana into the ritual.

It may have been his imagination, but he could have sworn that the air in front of him vibrated as his ritual came into effect. Upon activation, the Ritual Orb’s open form only lasted a moment before collapsing back down to its standard combat form. Joe smiled grimly, knowing that the ritual had been successful. After all…

The effects were hard to miss.