Invent ~ 21!

It seemed to take almost no time at all for Joe to complete the next four Rituals of Minor Earthquake, as well as the associated receiving ritual portion of the Ritual of Remote Activation. Major Cleave, apparently now holding him in a higher regard, also helped Joe by taking a few moments and smashing large piles of rubble out of the tunnel walls.

They stacked the rubble around the free-floating rituals, very effectively hiding their glow. As they were inactive, there were no magical fluctuations or feelings given off by them, not even when Joe got right next to them and focused his entire attention on his Magical Synesthesia.

“When they aren’t active they may as well be paint! Beyond the glow that only my eyes can see, no matter what it is I’m looking at them with, I can’t tell they’re magic.” Joe gleefully informed his companion, guardian, or minder; depending on how he thought about the situation. “Even an Elf coming through here should have no reason to start shifting random detritus around, right?”

“Who knows or cares what those pointy-eared…” Major Cleave took a deep breath, allowing a smile to be forced onto her face. “That is, using proper Dwarven logic, no, there would be no point in doing so.”

“Excellent.” Joe rubbed his hands together as he considered his next move. “I think I'm going to go to that section and add alarm rituals near the end of each tunnel, as well as… ooh! You know what I should try? I bet if I set up an alarm ritual, which goes off based on a proximity sub ritual, I could have that sub ritual activate a Ritual of Remote Activation at the same time! I haven't done redstone wiring in a while, this should be a lot of fun!”

“What is redstone? Some kind of tripwire?” Major Cleave looked around, noting that all of the rock in the area had a red tint to them, either from an excess of iron in their makeup, or just the glow from the few pools of lava that were still open to the air. Joe’s Ritual of Heat Draining—though inefficient—had been even more effective than he or the Dwarves had been hoping for. Now, even the large pools of molten rock that had been turning the town area into a kind of lava peninsula had hardened. This was going to allow for more area for the town; the only question now was whether it would be zoned as a building area, some kind of park, or a demilitarized zone so that they could see enemies trying to sneak in.

“Redstone from an old game. Yeah, it’ll act like a tripwire.” Joe mumbled distractedly, daydreaming about his personal preference—turning the unexpected extra space into a peaceful green space, or a nice walking track around the town. He was saving that proposal for a time when he was able to find both the city planner and the city administrator only partially conscious at the same time. “Perhaps a serum of suggestibility whenever Jake the Alchemist gets working?”

“You say something?”

“Yes.”

“Anything that mattered?” Cleave’s tone held a jesting quality to it, something that had certainly been missing from her presence in the last few days.

“Ah… no.” Joe admitted with a wry chuckle. “Just making jokes about being far more devious than what I would actually follow through on.”

After a few more hours of setting up extremely minor rituals throughout the tunnels and especially near the tunnel entrances, Joe was truly exhausted. Worse than that, he had no idea what to do next. He couldn’t complete his Ritualist class quest without quite a few more resources, specifically Rare aspects, but if he went out to collect them, he would be leaving the town mostly unprotected against an assault. Not only that, but he would be wasting some of the viability of the reward for the Beginner Rituarchitect quest; as gathering Rare aspects was guaranteed to get him all of the lower-ranked aspects required for the quest to complete.

“Knowledge, Architectural Lore.” Joe practically heaved as he flopped down onto a chair made entirely of stone. He knew that it would have hurt him when he first came to this world, but his Constitution was now high enough that the blocky seat actually felt comfortable. Mana flooded into his mind, and suddenly he understood buildings at a deeper level.

Congratulations! Architectural Lore has reached Apprentice 0! You now have enough theoretical knowledge on the creation of structures that you may be able to start seeing anomalies or benefits inherent in a blueprint or created building, as well as being trusted to understand what is needed to create Common ranked buildings of nearly any origin. To help you get a job somewhere, have +2 luck!

“That seems like such a backhanded compliment.” Joe softly muttered while silently cheering over the boost to his Luck. He had been eyeing that characteristic nervously recently, as he was two thresholds above the characteristic with his Intelligence, and he remembered what had happened to him the last time he was too far out of balance. “Still, it is really nice to be progressing rapidly again. Especially with my lore skills, I really feel that I have something special going on here.”

He looked over the short list that he had arranged to only show lore skills, pleased with their overall growth since he had gained Knowledge; which he only included in this grouping because it was the skill that directly allowed him to increase the others.

Alchemical Lore (Beginner IX)

Architectural Lore (Apprentice 0)

Enchanting Lore (Apprentice 0)

Knowledge (Apprentice 0)

Ritual Lore (Apprentice II)

Smithing Lore (Apprentice 0)

“Ahh… alphabetized and easy to understand.” Joe stretched out over the stone seat and twisted side to side. “I have no idea why that matters so much to me, but it does. Now, I can see the use and appeal for gaining lore skills. Yet what I really need to know is… are these so useful and so hard to acquire that people will throw things at me if I tell them I had it? Or perhaps throw me in a room and only let me out to write textbooks and technical manuals for them? I suppose I… should probably just go ahead and keep it to myself.”

Low on resources, on constant alert for a possible attack, and without many people in the area to interact with, Joe was uncertain what to do. He had been focusing on ritual circles so extensively in recent days that he was starting to get sick to his stomach whenever he saw curved lines. “What to do, what to do…”

He looked around the still mostly open area, and his eyes came to rest on a chunk of stone that must have been imported by the Elves when they burrowed into this location. The block was a long rectangle of what appeared to be marble, at least a dozen feet long and eight feet wide, standing waist-high on him even though it was flat and on its side. There were large portions of it that had likely made the stone deemed unusable by any other crafter, cracks and damage to the surface that would make it an undesirable material for most things.

However, he couldn't see any damage that went all the way through, and he was itching for something new to do. His conversation with Ciril and Stan was troubling him; how would his guild members be able to get along if they were on opposite sides of this ancient conflict? He, and all other guild officers, would be running around stamping out arguments at all times of the night and day; that is, if they too were not arguing amongst themselves.

“I can only blame Major Cleave for making me think of tables. Time, Talent, and cost.” Joe grinned at his own joke as he started imagining the stone block as a huge, ornate table in the Guildhall  that he would be creating after the town upgraded. “I’ve got lots of time, no talent yet, and the stone is free. Two outta three isn’t bad. If I cut it there, there, and round that section off… maybe I can get Havoc to clean up the design a little bit after he gets back?”

A simple use of his Field Array made the top of the stone block perfectly level and cut-glass smooth. He checked it, double checked, and triple checked before he was completely certain that this table would be able to hold the entirety of the enchantment that he had gained as his level twelve bonus for following Occultatum way back when. “Nice. You’re gonna be a really pretty centerpiece… and I really need a hobby.”

“If you need something that takes up your time, you should start dating that lady architect.” Major Cleave commented as Joe ran his fingertips gently over the entirety of the roughly-shaped table. “She seems to like you even with your glaring, reflective, obvious issues, and you do seem to have many things in common.”

Joe’s fingers slid to a stop, and he continued moving only after a moment of perfect stillness. The Dwarf was unable or unwilling to ascertain that this meant Joe had no interest in continuing the conversation. For a few minutes, she waxed eloquent upon the fact that Daniella had so far been instrumental in making Stan do the work that he was supposed to do, in the order that he was supposed to do it. She brought the conversation back around after going over all of the positives of the new hire, reiterating that Joe should see if she was available to go monster hunting with him.

Eventually, the human had enough, and placed his hands on the table to heave himself upright. “Cleave, while I appreciate what I think are good intentions, I have no plans to do something so foolish as to split my focus away from magic and town construction. If I were to start dating, you may as well light my research notes on fire, and have me give up on my goals of city building for the next few decades.”

“Not big into commitment, are you? Or very into commitment?” Cleave chuckled at her own joke, touching on the fact that Joe had just said he wanted to spend literally decades on a single facet of what he could do. The Dwarven logic in her approved. “You know, in my society, we just fight with our partners until we have gained enough bonds of friendship and camaraderie to commit to them for a few hundred years.”

“Cleave.” Joe’s tone was harsh, and completely different from how the Major had ever heard him speak to anyone before. “I have magic. I get to do things that I have always dreamed about, with resources, power, and amazing discoveries almost every single day. I am also essentially immortal, so I see no reason to rush into a commitment with a single person. Not now, and not again.”

“Ah. There it is.” She stated knowingly.

“I would be an absolutely terrible partner. No one else will be as willing to invest their time and efforts into the same things that I want.” Joe stated calmly, his hands beginning to trail around the previously damaged surface of the stone. “When you are in the pursuit of something, something you want so badly that you are willing to give up anything to get it… you might start to understand what I have here. I am a Ritualist, and I do not want to have to compromise upon expanding my magic. That is what a relationship with another person is: compromise. I don’t have that in me anymore.”

“Listen, Baldy. If you don't want to date her, don't. I don't need your entire life story.” Cleave grunted at Joe in displeasure as she sat down in his vacated stone seat. “For someone that literally has to work with other people all of the time, you sure do seem against working with a special someone. It's just confusing to me, is all.”

“I have my reasons, Cleave. Let’s look at the facts.” Joe found a small crack, and set the Field Array to shave off a slightly deeper section to get around it. “I meet people all the time, but so far I have only seen a single person arrive on Svaltarheim who I used to be in a party with: Jaxon. I’ve already gone through two different parties, five people in each. Let me ask you something… where do you think those other eight people are? I know for a fact that they’re all powerful enough to be here, at least if they want to be here.”

“Probably gearing up or getting ready for the warzone before they make the jump-”

“Wrong.” Joe told her, turning to face Major Cleave for the first time since the conversation had started. “They all fell off their path of progression for different reasons. It’s true that some of them stopped looking for resources, and a couple simply didn't have the mentality they needed to progress further. But three of them, more than half of my entire previous party, stopped because of the people in their life.”

Cleave merely raised an eyebrow, rolling her eyes as Joe went on.

“One of them had excellent reasons to stay, and absolutely did the correct thing. Poppy, an sublime Duelist, is working back on Midgard to prepare for his child. Setting up a life for someone he loves and is responsible for.” Joe shook his head at the next words he had to say, “But Bard and Alexis? They stopped progressing entirely because they wanted to explore their relationship more than they wanted to explore a literal new universe. A universe where they could be anything they wanted to be, have anything they wanted to have!”

“Sounds like they wanted to be together.” Cleave met his eyes calmly. “Seems  more like you resent them for not joining you, then you do for them being together.”

“Don't get me wrong.” Joe slowly let out a long breath, wondering if there could have been a better way of saying this. “I am happy for them. Especially for Poppy. To him, being a parent was the most amazing thing in the entire universe. I get that, and respect it all the way down to my soul. I also know that humans that joined this world cannot have children while they are in it. I read the terms and conditions for coming here. We’re immortal while we’re here, in that we will never die or pass away permanently from time passing. That means any relationship formed here will eventually end.”

Major Cleave allowed him to work in silence for a short while, before breaking his concentration one last time. “Sounds like you’re just running from your own feelings.”

“You’re missing the entire point of this little tirade, Cleave.” Joe shook off his grumpies and gave her a half-cocked grin. “I have magic. I'm not running from anything. I’m running to everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“You are going to end up being one of those lonely wizards who locked themselves in a magic tower somewhere.” She sighed at him, holding up her hand to let him know that she was done with the conversation.

“A magic… tower?” Joe’s eyes started dancing as he imagined it. “A massive building devoted to generating resources that I could use to make this entire universe better? Well-protected, a great landmark so people wouldn't get lost, and reality changing magic pouring out of it for time immemorial…? That sounds spectacular!”