CC5 ~ 54!

~ 54 ~

When Joe woke up, he wasn’t feeling… good. In fact, he was feeling pretty ragged. Blood was soaking his white robes—currently dyed red—and a terrible headache was situated right between his eyes. He lumbered to his feet and rubbed his grainy eyes. “What in the abyss happened?”

He looked around, discovering that all the Dwarves that had joined him were little more than mincemeat contained by armor. The sight made him gag, and he stumbled back in horror. The only people in the area that weren’t destroyed were the ones that hadn’t participated. Joe slapped his status screen open and read over the notifications.

Attempting to start ritual!

Caution! Mana requirements cannot be fulfilled with the current cadre of mana donors! Ensure that you have enough for stage two!

Ritual stage one activating… ritual expansion has been completed! Mana requirements not fulfilled. Ritual is pausing. Please ensure mana requirements are prepared for stage two before resuming!

“Nothing in here about what happened… were we attacked?” Joe looked frantically at the… armor that surrounded him, then down at the ritual. All that remained was the initial, central Novice ring. His eyes widened, and he frantically looked for what had destroyed… “Wait. Ritual expansion? Paused? What does that mean?”

Major Infraction stepped toward him with a weapon in each hand, yet past the bluster, Joe could see a hesitation to come closer to him shining through. “Joe! Candidate, you just killed over a hundred-”

“Not now, Major!” Joe barked at her, his hoarse voice laced with frustration and anger. He wasn’t immune to the grisly sight. A failed activation had never done something like this. “What happened? Where is my ritual?”

Silence reigned for a moment, the only sounds echoing down from the tunnels that had been carved into Gramma’s Shoe, or the distant thunder of more Legion reinforcements closing in. Then one of the people that had been selected for an Eye of Argus stepped forward. “Reporting, Teamkiller Bro! Those fancy circles started rotating, then raced off into the distance. They became bigger as they moved, which I’m pretty sure breaks the law of conservation of-”

“They moved?” Joe stared the Dwarf down until the words stopped. Even as he started realizing what that meant, Joe was running toward the sound of incoming troops. “They didn’t break, they just moved? No! They expanded!”

It didn’t take long for him to reach the next ritual circle, it was about eleven meters from the Novice circle to this one. Just as he had hoped, it wasn’t broken. As the notification had stated, it was paused. He stepped on the circle, and a strange thing happened.

He got feedback.

Ritual of Argus: Beginner Circle. Current requirements: filled.

He stepped over it, and a dark glow—which he hadn’t even originally noticed —vanished. Joe kept going, reaching the next circle after travelling seventeen meters. “Okay, they’re arranged out in prime distances. Next one should be… eleven, seventeen… twenty-three meters if the pattern follows.”

Ritual of Argus: Apprentice Circle. Current requirements: Not filled.

This time the circle hadn’t lit up, making Joe nod. He couldn’t supply a circle this large by himself; he had known that was going to be the case. Right now, what he really needed was a truckload of charged mana batteries. Were ley lines a thing? Could he tap into them if they were? The sound of metal-shod boots on stone became louder, and he glanced up to see more troops arriving. “No batteries… but this might work.”

He rushed over to the front of the column and body-blocked them from moving forward. “Legion! I have a change order!”

They came to a halt as his Candidacy impacted them. The platoon sergeant stepped forward and hollered at Joe, “Get the abyss out of the way! I heard that we’re authorized for war crimes today!”

“War crimes!” The Dwarves shouted, heat appearing in their tired eyes.

Joe walked over to the platoon sergeant, took three Ritual Orbs out, and hit the Dwarf with them and a Dark Lightning Strike all at the same time. With the pure constitution score that the Dwarf had, it was Joe’s equivalent to punching him in the face. “I said there was a change order! This operation was put into play by me, and the success of the Dwarven Oligarchy is relying on my orders being followed. Follow your orders, or are you going to take the blame for the Elves overrunning this position?”

Not waiting for a reply, and wanting to keep the Dwarves confused—which was unfortunately a little too easy—Joe directed the Dwarves to split by highest mana pool and take a position on the nearest ritual circle. The entire platoon fit onto the Beginner circle, but the circle had only lit up when there were at least half of them on it.

“Split this unit; a quarter of you follow me. As for you, sergeant, get on the road and get all of the reinforcements onto these circles until I tell you to stop!” Joe sent the glowering Dwarf away, then started populating the next circle. It took a few minutes before the next contingent arrived, and his ears caught a familiar conversation after a dull *thud* resounded through the area.

“-or are you going to take the blame for the Elves overrunning this position?” The sergeant’s voice reached Joe’s ears. He laughed that his own confusing argument was being used again, but he wasn’t about to complain. Joe started directing the Dwarves into position as they arrived. The Apprentice circle took twice as long to reach the ‘fulfilled’ condition, and he lost count of the troops needed to fill the Student and Journeyman areas. By the time the Expert circle was filled, an unbroken line of Dwarves trailed off into the distance in both directions.

Joe watched the uncomfortable Dwarves shifting slightly, their chest plates scraping against the armor of the person in front of them. The circle was glowing, but he knew he needed to hurry. If something didn’t change soon, his orders would lose their potency and the Dwarves would wander off before they missed the chance to fight. One small problem was that he was on the outside of the ritual, but it was only a small problem. He got a running start, hurdled over the line of Legionnaires, and landed in a sprint, repeating the acrobatics until he was standing at the center; the only person on the Novice circle.

Mana requirements fulfilled with the current cadre of mana donors! Ritual of Argus Stage Two is ready to activate!

Wasting no time, Joe activated the ritual with a chant and the first influx of mana. “Omnes videntes oculo. V videre. Si opus fuerit, his comedent!”

Ritual requires targeting mechanism.

The notification was unexpected, but Joe’s eyes lit up after a moment of panic. He dug through his ring and found an item he had been saving, but forgotten about. “Use this Taglock!”

Targeting mechanism accepted.

The bright sun was hidden as darkness covered the land. Each of the literal thousands of Dwarves that Joe had forced to help cover the mana costs of the ritual cried out and slumped as the small amount of mana they had in them was drained away, circle by circle.

Novice circle: complete.

Beginner Circle: complete.

After this message, the Dwarves in that circle slumped to the ground, and cries of alarm rose in the Apprentice circle. Before anyone could react, the circle drained them as well. The circle completed, but Joe winced at the notification that appeared.

Apprentice Circle: complete. Stability compromised! Attempting to stabilize… failed.

Just as he read the last word, a *whumph* like fireworks exploding in the distance reached his ears. The Dwarves that fell were in a similar state to the ones that had helped with the stage one activation: nothing left but armor.

As each circle activated after that, Joe could do nothing but take a deep, shuddering breath. He was really, really wondering if allowing five people to ignore illusions was going to be worth the death he was causing to his own side.

Student Circle: complete.

Journeyman Circle: complete.

Expert Circle: complete. Stability is partially compromised! Attempting to stabilize… partial success!

Shouts of alarm, then disgust, reached a crescendo as roughly half of all the Dwarves standing on the Expert circle disintegrated into filthy armor. The remaining Dwarves were in the blast zone, abruptly covered in the gore of their closest comrades. Joe felt countless eyes on him, each glaring with fury and planning their revenge.

Then, one more gaze turned on him.

In the darkest area, directly above the center of the ritual circle, an eye snapped open in the sky. It seemed as large as the volcano they were standing on, and the slitted pupil focused in on Joe for a long moment, then shifted ever so slightly to the Taglock.

Ritual complete! Use of Taglock will apply an ‘Eye of Argus’ to up to five individuals! The effect will last up to seven days.

Reductionist class experience gained: 800.

Congratulations! You have reached Reductionist level two!

Bonus: all aspect and mana costs are when reducing items or recombining aspects into items are reduced by 10%!

“I… I have no idea what just happened.” The eye in the sky went bye-bye, vanishing with a blink and windy sigh. Joe swept his eyes across the area with a horrified expression on his face. He closed his mouth and hoped that no one outright attacked him for what had just happened. “Stability? The only thing I’ve ever seen that can help with that is forging…”

“Deciding to get your war crimes out of the way early or something?” Major Infraction’s words were pure ice as she leveled the accusation at him. At that point, Joe noticed that only a few Dwarves remained standing after being drained; none of which had participated in the ritual. All of the others were out cold, waiting for their mana to regenerate.

“Major Infraction… I have no idea what happened.” Joe waved at the ritual diagrams. “This is the first time I’ve ever done something so large with my new crafting materials. I think that the magical matrix I used was designed with the original components in mind, and switching to a more pure form-”

“Just stop. You abyssal prove this was worth it, or I’ll come after you with my personal forces.” One of the people Major Infraction had nominated walked off in a huff, muttering to himself. “Stupid magic. Stupid human. I knew better than to get involved. Now I need to find clean underwear.”