Invent ~ 6!

Just over an hour later, Joe was inscribing the final circle of Damaged Aspects onto a flat square tile. His plan of working for a solid hour and being done with the first quest had been only slightly thrown off by wanting to explore the workshop.

The majority of the area was an open space designed for any number of magical craftsmen, the only reason it was specified to rituals was his intent upon creating the building itself. The main working room had three offshoots: First, there was a smaller workspace that was heavily fortified on the interior, designed for volatile projects. Section B was a small office that could hold two or three people at a time for doing research. Finally, the ending area looked like a large walk-in closet with a bank vault as a door; a heavily defended storage room.

To get into his worksop proper, Joe had gone through the first door and found himself in a small area with another door to the main workshop. When he touched the second, stronger door, he had been required to register his mana signature and claim ownership of the building. Since that had been exactly what he wanted, he had hurried through and locked the door behind him.

After exploring, he had pulled out a stack of flat stone tiles and got to work. He glanced at his quest counter as he finished the tile he was working on.

Novice rituals created: 99/100.

Joe took out one last stone, ran his inscriber in a circle around it, then made a perfect equilateral triangle that broke through the circle in three places. “If these were words… the circle would be ‘hold energy’ and the three points the triangle pierce would be ‘intensity’, ‘color’, and ‘type of energy converted into’. This last one will be essentially daylight, but…”

He had been monkeying with the other triangles, slightly altering everything except the final point of ‘type of energy’, as he didn’t want to accidentally turn these into flames or lightning. Joe was already planning on doing that to make this world’s version of a magical Bunsen burner, both for blacksmithing and alchemy, but had no interest in scorching himself when he was trying to brighten up the area.

Novice rituals created: 100/100.

Quest complete: Ritualist Novice! Congratulations, you have completed the Ritualist Novice class quest in a record time. You are competing not only against yourself, but all previous Ritualists throughout history, so this is a truly exceptional record to break!

Rewards increased. You have gained: one module of Student circle effects (Increased from Novice to Student). Record breaker reward: Somatic Ritual Casting!

Skill gained: Somatic Ritual Casting (Novice V). This skill allows you to create a ritual in midair! No longer will you need flat land or perfectly smooth paper; you can draw out a ritual in midair! Increases ritual instability by 30%-10n% per ritual tier, where n=skill level.

Caution: this skill is usually granted as a reward in the Student Ritualist class quests. Having it early will be a great boon in training it up, but it may be very difficult to use as a Novice Ritualist!

He wasn’t overly worried about the difficulty of the new skill, since he wasn’t actually a Novice. He couldn’t wait to get this skill to a high level and teach it to his Coven when he saw them again; something like this would even allow them to create rituals in combat someday. The practical applications for this skill were whirling through his head, and he almost missed the moment when a half-orb with a button atop it appeared in his hand. “Hello there… what are you?”

*Burble?* Mate, his coffee elemental, poked its head out of the stain on his sleeve, looking at the object in disappointment for a moment before going back into the stain and vanishing.

Module of Student circle-effects. Press the button to upgrade Ritual Lore skill. (Must have Ritual Lore skill.)

He stared at the unassuming half-orb, which looked like an old-school ‘easy button’ from earth. “Should I save this? Give it to a student since I’m already getting close to-”

The information updated, and he sighed as he realized he shouldn’t have been muttering plans aloud.

Module of Student circle effects. Press button to upgrade Ritual Lore skill. (Must have Ritual Lore skill.) Usable by Joe ‘Tatum’s Chosen Legend’ only.

“Well played, system.” Joe slapped the button, and the entire item shattered into glittering motes of light, which then filtered into his body.

Ritual Lore (Apprentice II -> Student IX). Your study of rituals via trial and error, study, or other arcane means has borne incredible fruit. You are now able to ‘read’ ritual circles up to the peak of the Student ranks and be able to alter them to achieve a desired effect with high certainty.

He glanced at the light-tiles he had just made, and simply sweeping his gaze across them revealed what color and intensity they would be. He had been pretty sure of their details before, but now they held no secrets at all. Joe was fairly certain that Beginner rituals would be the same, Apprentice would be slightly harder, and Student would be similar to what he had just been able to do with Novice rituals. “I’m totally fine with being pretty sure. Celestial guacamole, I feel like I’ve been flying blind compared to how they look to me now. Hope this helps me blow myself up less frequently from now on.”

Quest gained: Ritualist Novice II. You’ve shown that you can create rituals! Now, how much trust do you have in your work? Activate 50 self-made rituals, Reward: 500 experience. Rituals activated: 0/50.

“Hah! I bet this sent a ton of Ritualists back to the drawing board back when this class was more common.” Joe chuckled as he took the inactivated rituals and put them in his storage codpiece. He went over to the door and let himself out, locking the inner door behind him with a mere thought. Looking back at the building fondly as he exited, he muttered, “I think I might love this place already.”

Then he had a thought. He went back to the doors, crouched, and jumped straight up and onto the roof. “If this is gonna be my place, it needs some personal flair.”

He pulled out his inscriber and thought over the knowledge that he had gained with Somatic Ritual Casting. Lining himself up to be directly over his doors below, Joe drew a circle of fiery light-gray aspects in the air. His brow furrowed in concentration; this was a lot harder than doing it on a surface. “Gotta keep each side of the circle aligned… wow, that really wants to droop. Mmkay, don’t let that part go too far forward. Stop shaking, fingers! Since when do my hands shake?”

Sweat was dripping down his face, cleared away after a moment by his Neutrality Aura, and he hadn’t even inserted the triangle yet. Happily, three straight lines were understandably easier to create than a perfect circle. He set the intensity of the light to ‘high’, which would have been about a hundred watts back on earth, then connected it to a point that would make the light a royal purple, and finally the point that directed the ritual to convert mana to light.

He stepped back, admiring the circle that shimmered lightly over his workshop, then reached forward and activated the ritual, gaining an insight into the circle that he had never before gleaned as he did so.

Ritual of Glimmering (Royal Purple).

Rank: Novice.

Activation cost: 210 mana.

Time until ritual needs replacing: 179:23:59.

“This is awesome.” His eyes shone with reflected light as he truly felt magical once again. “I want more.”

Rituals Activated: 1/50.

Joe looked around, trying to find the best place to put the remainder of his light rituals, and his eyes landed on the scaffolding that was set up in various places where Dwarves were attaching tubing and pipes to the ceiling to circulate air up to his ritual. His gaze brushed the clunky ritual he had inserted there, and he winced as he instantly saw a dozen ways guaranteed to improve it, and at least as many that he was pretty sure would improve it.

Ritual of Heat Collection, Zombified to become Ritual of Heat Draining.

Rank: Rare, Fortified.

Activation cost: 5,003 mana. (Inefficient diagram, mana invested: 5,519)

Time until ritual needs replacing: 50:13:45.

“Less than two months before that fails? Ugh… nothing to do for it right now.” He casually vaulted along the broken ground, reaching the scaffolding Bauen was shouting orders from. He waited for a break in the bellowing, then waved the Dwarf down. “Two things for you. First, the cooling ritual has fifty days before it fails. Let’s make sure to have a backup ready. Second, I have a hundred lights to install on the ceiling if you can think of good places for them.”

“Fifty days? That’s…” The engineer nodded from side to side as he juggled a few thoughts. “An acceptable time frame. I’ll put out a bounty for a core that would work. You’ll have to pay that reputation cost for it though. As for the lights, do you need to do it yourself, or can you just hand them over and we can place them as we go?”

“I… huh.” Joe grinned as he realized that there were perks to being the leader of an area. “I hadn’t even considered not installing them myself. Yeah, give me a bit, your people can take them as I go.”

Joe separated the tiles into two stacks, then used each hand to activate a Ritual of Glimmer at the same time. He had more than enough mana to accomplish this, so he flew through their activations. In no time flat, he was letting the Dwarves carry off the final rituals.

Quest complete: Novice Ritualist II. You had a lot of faith that you wouldn’t get some backlash, huh? Great! Confidence is needed if you choose to walk this path to completion. Record breaker reward: experience gain doubled. +1,000 experience.

Then Joe got the next notification, one he had been expecting.

Quest gained: Beginner Ritualist. You have shown remarkable dedication to the tedium of highly particular magics. Now do it again. In order to prepare for higher rituals, you need to understand rituals exceedingly well, and also have the massive number of resources needed to complete them. Have the skill Ritual Lore at Novice IX, and collect enough resources to complete the work on 100 Beginner rituals.

Ritual Lore (Novice IX): 1/1. Resources gained: 0/1,000 Common Aspects, 0/5,000 Damaged Aspects.

“It’s not counting what I’ve already collected? Good to know.” Joe was sure this was intended as a method to keep people from simply making a massive stockpile and then getting this class. It was a cute attempt, and he knew that it was going to fail to slow him down; he was a Reductionist! A second notification appeared; one he very much had not been expecting.

Prerequisites for Class Quest met:

• Have Novice base class quest completed.
• Have the Rituarchitect class.
• Have some form of Ritual Lore at Beginner rank, minimum.
• Have some form of Architectural Lore at Beginner rank, minimum.

Class quest gained: Novice Rituarchitect. Using a ritual, scan ten Common buildings and create blueprints for them. Reward: Blueprint for Ziggurat, a ritual-based area buff landmark.

“Hold on… every class has class quests?”