Invent ~ 5!

I get to introduce one of my favorite characters this chapter!!

He ran, jumped, and skipped—whatever he needed to get ahead of any pursuers. Joe was over halfway to the Shoe before he remembered to stop and look at his notifications, so he hopped to the top of a tree and pulled them open.

Quest complete: Ranker. You have achieved the highest possible marks of any human!

Title gained: Major-General Pyrrhic, Noble Candidate for Baron (Upgradeable). This is both an active and a passive title. Passively, this title allows you to hold official and Noble rank in the Dwarven Oligarchy as well as own land for creating a settlement.

This title activates automatically! In active use, this title increases damage dealt by yourself and any troops under your command in a one-hundred-foot radius by 100%, only when you have lost at least half of your forces, or you are in a situation where there is a greater than 50% chance that you will die.

At any time this title is active, if you do not have at least half of the units you started with within range, you will take double damage from all sources.

Upon your death, if the title was active, all troops under your command deal 150% bonus damage for one hour.

“Celestial feces… now anytime I win, it’ll literally be a pyrrhic victory? No one is ever going to want to be under my command.” Joe grunted as he read over the activation conditions. The branches of the tree he was in creaked loudly, swaying slightly as a breeze rolled past. He ignored it as he kept going over the notices.

Quest gained: Ranker II Peerage. You are tasked with creating, maintaining, and defending a settlement in the land you have been granted through your actions in the first portion of this quest. Your progress will be judged by (Pending). In order to join the peerage as a Baron, you must complete one of the following two options:

1. Take an Elven city for the Dwarves.
2. Flawlessly fend off five major Elven incursions into your granted land.

Joe nodded along as he read over what he was only now realizing was a chain quest, and adjusted his position as the branches moved slightly more aggressively. “This makes sense. At least I’ll have all the Cores I need to build up a solid little town right away…”

Grant of land approved! You now own the internal cavern system of ‘Gramma’s Shoe’, and have full authority to develop the land any way you so desire.

“Perfect. Let’s get moving, Cleave! All we need to do is…” Joe looked at the ground and frowned. He looked up the trail, around the area, but couldn’t find Captain Cleave. He started to turn to look behind him as well, “Drat, I must have lost her when I was leaving the city. I suppose I should-”

*Blam!*

The sound of a gunshot going off next to Joe’s ear was enough to deafen him, and the sneak attack critical impact to the skull dealt massive damage to his Exquisite Shell and sent him tumbling out of the tree and to the ground; bouncing off branches and scattering leaves. He hit heavily, stunned and confused from the sudden and brutal attack.

Four people were suddenly standing over him with malicious grins on their faces; in the next moment they were beating on Joe with a variety of weapons and skills. His only defense was his Retaliation of Shadows slapping them away, but the reactionary spell wasn’t able to dissuade the men from bringing his health down to a fraction of full in only a few moments.

Joe’s watery eyes focused just enough to see a man sitting on the branch he had fallen from, holding a smoking pistol and looking down at Joe with a wide smile as the men stepped back for a moment... “Who are you? Why did you—Mend!”

The Reductionist’s health shot upward, and the smile weakened fractionally on the strange man’s face. He spoke with a strong put-upon German accent as he hopped out of the tree and fired three rounds into the arm and hand that Joe had used to heal himself. “Oh, now, that will just not do. *tsk, tsk, tsk*. Hello, Joe of the Dwarves. I… am Herr Trigger, and I have been tasked with taking down high-value targets for the Elven nation.”

“How did you even find me?” Joe flipped off the ground and healed himself once more, sending two of his Orbs flying at the assassin at the same time as the thugs backed off.

“What can I say? I am highly trained, exceedingly well-paid for my time, and have a love of hunting monsters such as yourself. I know of your crimes on Midgard; things like mass murder of half the plane of existence tends to follow you no matter where you try to hide.” Herr Trigger spoke all while dodging Joe’s attacks contemptuously, dashing across the ground at full speed while avoiding the flying metal balls with ease. He dove forward and tackled Joe to the ground, one barrel pressed to his heart and another to his head. Joe froze, ingrained instincts from his life on earth overpowering him.

Herr Trigger lifted the pistol off Joe’s chest and waved the barrel under his own nose; taking a deep sniff. “Oh-h-h, ye-e-es. I just love the smell of gunpowder in the evening. Now, little mage, I’ll answer honestly, for that is who I am. I found you purely by chance today, and you were too distracted to even attempt to keep yourself safe. I was hunting another reviled human target by the name of ‘Jaxon’, who has a standing bounty with my mentor, BackAttack Beastbane. My team has already removed the Dwarf that was following several miles behind you, and this was simply a lovely chance encounter. Now, it is time for you to go to respawn, and for me to collect your bounty.”

The man paused as he looked over Joe’s face through his perfectly bround, “What is it that used to be popular with you Americans? Ah yes… Trigger Warning.”

The blonde assassin unloaded his weapons into Joe, each blast shaving off a solid fifth of his health with each impact.

You have died! As this was player vs player combat, you lose 5,250 experience! You will respawn in 12 hours!

Skill increase: Mental Manipulation Resistance (Beginner II).

Joe blinked and found himself in his respawn room, and—after a moment of shocked realization—started flailing around on his beanbag chair in a rage. He calmed down quickly, taking deep breaths and reminding himself that everything else had been utterly awesome today.

Over the next few hours, he messaged his mother and her new husband, answered questions from his Coven, and even found a few pending queries from his guild: The Wanderers. Aten had reached out directly, and was hoping they could meet up soon. Joe messaged back, resolving to check his mail more often. He normally only did so when he died, and it had been quite a while since the last time that had happened. As he typed one final message to Jake the Alchemist, informing him that the Artifact-ranked Alchemy building was ready for him, Joe muttered, “Hopefully, the next time I die will be even further away.”

As soon as his resurrection timer ended, he sprinted out of the portal and to the command tent, basically the nicest non-permanent and usable structure in the Shoe. He grabbed the Ledger of Souls, finding Cleave right at the top, and paying the cost to bring her back. A glance confirmed that there were a few additional Dwarves in the Ledger, far too many for day-to-day accidents. “Gotta give my people a warning about Trigger… ugh, now I’m doing it. I hate that he found such a good catch phrase!”

The cost for Cleave was higher than expected, and as she appeared in front of him, he saw why. Her full title was now Major Cleavage. She had been promoted, and higher rankers were more expensive to bring back. He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Congratulations on the promotion.”

“Sir.” Her eyes were obsidian points as she glared at him. “My duty is to make sure you’re safe. You can have me fulfill my duty by being with you at all times, especially when traveling outside of here, or I can toss you in a pit and make sure you have enough food and water not to accidentally die off or defect to the Elves in secret. Your choice, Major-General.”

“No threats, please. I don’t do well with those.” Joe rubbed at his head and groaned as he tried to think about where exactly he had dealt damage to this relationship. “Major, I’m not wonderful with people. This is reflected in Charisma being one of my lowest stats. If that hasn’t come across by now, please realize that although I love what I do, and how it helps people, I’ve always run face first into my inability to be political. There’s a reason I don’t pursue relationships, or lord my abilities over people. I just want to do what I do, and get out of the way.”

She stayed silent, her mustache blowing slightly in the artificial breeze. Joe shrugged and looked at his hands, flexing the powerful digits as he explained a little more of his thoughts. “All I have going for me is that I’m highly skilled. I am not highly attuned to people’s wants and needs. Take that as you will. I’ll do better if you remember to treat me as a proper member of your party instead of needing to act like a constantly-trying-to-escape convict.”

“Yes, Major-General.” Came the bland reply. Joe realized that he had likely burned this bridge too badly by letting her die alone in the woods while looking for him. Unable to find any more excuses, and unwilling to debase himself further, Joe simply grunted and walked out into the open area of the volcano, getting slapped with a new tab in his character sheet as he did so.

Gramma’s Shoe, Hidden Camp (Tier 0)

Town Level: 0

Residents: 0

Morale: -125 (Dissatisfied.)

Resources: none.

Living areas: 0 (-25 morale).

Air Quality: Livable (poor, increasing. -25 morale).

Heat: Dangerous (Hot. -25 morale).

Water Sources: 1 (Mineral Water. Tainted. -25 morale)

Light: Poor (-25 morale).

Now that he had the ability to use his personal resources, Joe decided to get to work right away. He was going back and forth between what the first building he should raise was; either a barracks or an apartment building. It finally came down on the side of ‘make someone else choose’, and so he decided to go talk to the city planner.

He got to it right away, asking around until he finally found the man drawing something out on the ground in the distance. As he was hurrying over to the Dwarf, the Reductionist passed by the chunk of rubble that he had set up with his ritual. He glanced at it, then the city planner, and decided that there were still plenty of great reasons to go ahead and do this building first.

With a few extra minutes using his inscriber to bring the quality of aspects—as well as the building cost—higher, Joe pulled out the highest-value of the ten Rare Cores and activated the ritual ‘Architect’s Fury’. The four circles blazed out, and since he had charged it previously, he was able to simply power the entire process himself.

Joe now had a huge mana pool—a great benefit of getting Tatum free—and now he was struggling to find ways to use it all effectively. With so much power just sitting around not in use, he kept finding himself feeling lazy by casting whatever came to mind, compared to the days when he needed to carefully control each and every spell that went out so that he could use the next one that was needed.

That aside, the project began and moved quickly and efficiently. Aspects flowed out of his Natural Aspect Jars while he checked his bound core to see how he was doing on energy.

Core energy: 4,198/5,498 (Rare-ranked core)

Everything was within expected parameters, so Joe ignored the pain and pushed through as the drain started sucking away the last of his reserves. His brand-new workshop was being built right in front of his eyes, and a huge part of himself was cheering at the fact that he would finally have a place where he owned the land and the building, and could work at without interruption. As the ritual came to completion, he looked it over and smiled at the messages that appeared.

Magical workshop (Ritual-focused): Common-ranked, reinforced.

Architect of Artifacts activated! All building characteristics increased by 10%,

Durability: 1,650/1,650.

Features: enhances ritual power, decreases time required to create a ritual, and decreases cost of all rituals by 1.1%, for all rituals made inside the building.

Joe looked over the workshop, absolutely pleased with the results. It was no Pathfinders Hall, but it was all his. Nothing short of a war or criminal act could take it from him… the thought filled his mind as another message popped into his vision.

Class quest prerequisites fulfilled!

• Own a plot of land.
• Build or buy a building to use as a workshop on that land.
• Have ‘Ritualist’ class.

You have gained a quest: Ritualist Novice.

Ritualist Novice: You have taken the first steps on the path of the Ritualist! In time, no magic will be able to hide its secrets from you. To get started down this path, create 100 Novice rituals! Reward: New Novice ritual module!

Novice rituals created: 0/100.

“Yes! I got my class quest!” Joe whooped as he looked over the details, his excitement waning slightly as he looked at how many he had to make. “Feces, nothing I’ve made up to this point counts? Not even the Pathfinder’s Hall…? I didn’t own the land. What an aggravating requirement.”

He looked over at his new building, the city planner who was looking at the fresh structure in horror, and the ratings for his eventual town. “No… I can use this. Novice rituals? I can make a hundred of those in… thirty seconds each, that’s fifty minutes. I’ve got this.”

He rushed into his workshop, eager to get started and allow the unhappy memories of the day to rapidly fade into background noise.