Invent ~ 19!

“Major Cleave, I’ve decided to assign my Intelligence to this Orb and hope for the best!” Joe declared as he began lightly coating the entire exterior of the Orb with the purest of white aspects. “Don’t try to stop me, this is something I need to do!”

“No, no…” Cleave called out as Joe *scritched* away at his Ritual Orb, drawing out a fair likeness of himself and highlighting the interior of his head. “I think likening your Intelligence to a chunk of dead metal is fairly accurate.”

“Thank you. See, in the past people have—hey!” Joe chuckled at what he hoped was a joke coming from the Dwarf. “That’s a good one, but you aren’t gonna make me mess this up that easily. Here’s the interesting part of the enchantment: did you know that the thickness of the lines on the X, Y, and Z axis are important? Enchantments are three dimensional at all times, even when they’re ‘flat’. You see, the sympathetic…”

Joe waxed eloquent as he worked, doing everything he could to tamp down his own nerves over the process of what he was working on. He remembered all the warnings that were assigned to the Ritual Orbs, and how dangerous it was to do what he was doing. If something happened to this orb, he would need to repeat this process on another orb, with his intelligence effectively halved. “Gotta find a way to automate this… just in case.”

“Can you stop?” Came an unexpected call from Major Cleave. “I just gained Enchanting Lore at the Novice rank, and I have no interest in this subject!”

“You did?” Joe blinked at her owlishly, then a wide smile shot across his face. “That means you were really listening… you do care!”

“I’m requesting reassignment right now.” She grumped at him half-heartedly.

“You’d lose your promotion! I’m guessing you would, at least.” The Ritualist called back as he finished his final few markings. “This was a Beginner enchantment… I’m kinda surprised by that. Perhaps it was because this is such an easily understandable concept? Or is it because there’s such a clear downside to using this enchantment?”

“Perhaps each one you make will require higher tier aspects.” Major Cleave finally gave up and decided to just get invested in the conversation. “You know, I will always cherish the initial misconception I had about you. You seemed so professional, intelligent, and ready to do anything you needed to do to stop the Elves.”

“Glad you got that out of your system, then.” Joe tossed back his head and laughed over-exaggeratedly. “Magic time! We see if my brain gonna do work hard.”

“Fill out form PH ten thirty-one EZ for transfer to a frontline combat unit.” Major Cleave muttered as she wrote on a notebook she had pulled from a storage space. “That’ll let me stay a Major.”

“Don’t be like that!” Joe walked over to his hanging ritual and willed his Ritual Orb into the center. Using his only Rare-rank core, he powered up the ritual and began pouring mana into it. Eschewing his previous antics, Joe watched each and every reaction that was happening with hawkish attention.

As the ritual came fully online, for lack of a better term, the enchantment on the Orb lifted away. The mathematical equations, sympathetic lines, and various formulae were drawn off of the Orb and into the ritual, which slightly shifted its configuration to hold all of the new information it was being fed. After a few long, question-filled seconds, the ritual shifted its focus and roughly grabbed Joe.

He was held as still as if he were in a Ritual of Stasis, as his mind was scanned, poked, prodded, and tested by the ritual. Thanks to the Ritual Orbs coming with the first diagrams that he needed for this particular ritual and enchantment, Joe knew that he hadn’t created them incorrectly. Yet, it was a terrifying feeling to have something of his own design hold him in a way where there was no stopping; even though it was supposed to do it.

Mana flickered from the ritual, and sunk into his head. A moment later, a ghostly image of a brain was etched on the side of his Orb. Then, power streamed out of his head bit by bit, increasing until a flood of blue lights was connecting him and his Orb together. As the ritual finished, both Joe and the Ritual Orb dropped to the ground with a *thump*. With a final spark of power, the ritual ignited itself and burned away in an instant; a not-so-subtle reminder that this process had completed… and it was permanent.

Skill increase: Enchanted Ritual Circles has reached Beginner 0! Congratulations!

Words of Power (Written) has reached Apprentice II.

Somatic Ritual Casting increased significantly to Beginner V as you have proved your personal ability!

Magical Synesthesia has reached Beginner 0! You are now able to better understand how magic is noticed by your senses!

Essence Cycle has reached Beginner IV due to being forcibly cycled through your brain without causing permanent damage!

Quest updated: Student Ritualist. 1/20 rituals activated.

Joe blanched as he looked at all the skill gains that seemed… slightly ominous. Something told him that an error in his work would have had even worse consequences than he had been expecting. As he glanced at his orb, he had the strangest feeling that it, too, was contemplating him in return. He touched it, and read the description that appeared.

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 blunt -> shifting in progress.

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 assigned: None.

“That’s a lot more information than you used to give me.” Joe breathed in wonder as he had the Orb fly over and hop into its holster on his bandolier. “If I’m reading that correctly right now, this is working on changing from blunt damage to cold damage?”

The etched brain on the side of the Orb caught his eye as it gleamed, and he wondered if that meant that this Orb would eventually have thoughts of its own. Joe didn’t know how he felt about that, but… too late now. His next thought was to do another Orb, but the invasiveness of the process made him shudder. He wanted to see how effective this was in combat before he put himself further at risk.

Name: Joe ‘Tatum’s Chosen Legend’ Class: Reductionist

Profession I: Arcanologist (Max)

Profession II: Ritualistic Alchemist (1/20)

Profession III: None

Character Level: 21 Exp: 236,309 Exp to next level: 16,691

Rituarchitect Level: 10 Exp: 50,500 Exp debt: 2,300

Reductionist Level: 2 Exp: 5,186 Exp to next level: 814

Hit Points: 1,864/1,864

Mana: 4,955/6,788. (1,832 reserved)

Mana regen: 52.7/sec

Stamina: 1,524/1,524

Stamina regen: 6.46/sec

Characteristic: Raw score

Strength: 146

Dexterity: 146

Constitution: 142

Intelligence (bound): 152

Wisdom: 133

Dark Charisma: 100

Perception: 137

Luck: 79

Karmic Luck: 15

“You know, maybe one of the reasons I was having so much trouble with Charisma is that I have Dark Charisma.” Joe pondered that for a moment, reflecting on the change and what it had told him. “I’m more easily able to influence people toward actions that cause fighting… I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe I should go and incite a riot? No, that’s a bad idea. Might be good training, though…? No! Must keep attention on making traps, alarms, and… oh, shiny notification! I got a new quest?”

Beginner Rituarchitect. Gather enough materials to create 10 Uncommon buildings. Damaged aspects: 0/20,000. Common aspects: 0/10,000. Uncommon aspects: 0/1,000. Reward: +3 to your choice of relevant Lore skill. Current options: Architectural Lore.

“I can use that to save a ton of time.” Joe stared at the reward, telling himself that he could hold off on completing this quest until the town upgrade quest was completed. If he did that, and used Knowledge as much as possible, he could jump the Lore skill to the Student rank. With that plan set in stone, he turned to his currently empty workshop table.

“I’m almost out of Rare aspects, so I need to focus my rituals on three circles or below.” Pulling out a notebook, he wrote out the things that he thought would be the most beneficial, cost-effective defenses. “Major, would you mind taking a look at this?”

She took the paper, looking at it with more concern for each list item. “What is this, Joe? Alarms, barriers, healing rituals, holding rituals, attack rituals, explosion… collapse? Are you planning to kill us all?”

“No, I was just writing down what I could start working on for defenses. I put it in order from least to most dangerous.” Joe tapped the paper, and showed his teeth as he smiled at Major Cleave. “We’re going to be attacked, which means I’m gonna fall back on what some people might see as bad habits. Where do you think I should start?”

“Alarms, if you’d be so kind.” Cleave answered in an instant. “Least number of chances to accidentally murder us in broad daylight.”

“Ooh, so close.” Joe tapped the bottom of the page. “I’m gonna rig every tunnel to collapse based on the proximity alarms going off, so that actually has the most chances to take all of us down. Great advice, Major Cleave!”

“What if there are others? Noncombatants? Hostages?” Cleave didn’t bother to hide her displeasure with the idea. “You aren’t a Candidate anymore. War crimes against your own people will not be so easily forgiven going forward. Don't you think this is too… ruthless?”

“Yeah.” Joe’s sclera flashed black for an instant as he looked out at the myriad tunnels that had been dug through the volcano by the Elves. “Being ruthless is what The Wanderers are good at. We even get a bonus. That’s why I said I’m falling back on old habits.”

“You said they were bad habits, sir.”

“Did I?” Joe muttered softly as he imagined lava rushing along enclosed tunnels, drawing and incinerating human and Elven aggressors alike. “I think I said other people saw them as bad habits. I just call it keeping my town safe.”