CC5 ~ 23!

~ 23 ~

Havoc’s battle with his Elven rival wasn't something that Joe could participate in, but frankly he didn’t even know that it was happening at this moment. His entire focus was on the walls ahead of him, specifically the need to destroy them utterly. Joe had been on this Zone for almost a couple months now, and he felt like he had accomplished nothing of note.

Now he was running along with a river of shining metal and steam, while fire and dust tried to choke him. The Dwarves were chanting their war cries, the automatons were rumbling alongside them, shaking the ground with every step. Spells and arrows were impacting the ground around them with the force of artillery shells; the blasts made sense for the spells, but Joe could only assume that each individual arrow was heavily enchanted. “This is a lightly guarded fortress?”

A ballista bolt tore directly through an automaton, the well-placed projectile managing to damage and expose the internal Core to the open air. The light around the construction dimmed as the Core itself seemed to suck in everything around it. Joe pounded the ground with his feet, trying to get away from the blast zone. However, it seemed that the Dwarves were used to this occurrence. Instead of fleeing, two of the other automatons grabbed at their falling comrade. One stabilized the machine, while the other pulled out the Core mechanism and threw it like a fastball over the wall in front of them. The explosion it generated shook the air, but more importantly, it slowed down the attacks raining down on them for a few precious seconds.

“Shields up!” a squad leader called out. Smoothly, gracefully, every Dwarf that was carrying a shield lifted it at the same time. An artillery spell landed directly above them, detonating in the air to inflict the most amount of damage as an attempt to scatter the unit. The well-timed order caused the mana of the attack to be reflected, the powerful wind spell turned into a simple breeze by the dense and interconnected enchantments on the shields.

Joe marveled at the efficient movements the Dwarves were showcasing. Back on Midgard, if he had been able to get his guild to move like this, they would have been untouchable, even during the mass incursion by the other Noble Guilds. Another order rang out. “Let's knock on the door, Legion-style!”

Contrary to what the order actually stated, no one went near the gates of the small fort. Joe wasn't entirely certain if it was because they knew it would be more heavily trapped, or if everyone was truly focused on the fact that he was going to take down the wall. Or, perhaps, this was their standard tactic? The only reason Joe thought that might be the case was the fact that the automaton running alongside them shifted into a low configuration as they reached the metal-clad stone of the walls. Their fists came together, their arms and back locking into the form of a gigantic battering ram.

The feet of the automatons dug into the ground, providing a stabilizing platform. With a discharge of power, one of the newly-conjoined battering rams rocketed forward, retracting almost as quickly once it dug into the wall. A second attack landed at the same spot a moment later as another got into position.

*Slam. Bang. Slam.*

In just a few seconds, the two battering rams had hit the wall five times, six… and there was already a hole in the defense that was as deep as the length from Joe’s knuckles to his elbows. They kept going, and to cover them, the Dwarves pulled out grenades, of all things. Joe shook that thought out of his head; they weren't grenades as he knew them. They were round, enchanted consumable items that would release all of their power in one burst to destroy themselves; all so the enemy could not use them against the Dwarves in return. Fire, force, electricity… there were even a few sleeping spells snuck in among the others. Were they back on Midgard, Joe would liken this to throwing fistfuls of gold at the enemy and hoping it held them back just a few seconds longer.

Mainly because the—he was just going to go ahead and call them grenades—were not actually effective weapons against the Elves. If they did do damage, it was only because the affected Elf was unprepared. Every single one of their enemies had some form of shield, shell, barrier… something that stopped the actual damage from getting through to them. The concussive force was merely throwing off their spells, their aim, and possibly pushing the lighter foes off the wall or away from an advantageous attacking position.

It did make Joe wonder what kind of enchanting force the Dwarves could muster. Enchantments, even single-use ones like this, were expensive and hard to create. He knew that much. In fact, he was almost positive that they would get a better weapon if they made a similar thing with alchemy, though Havoc had explicitly stated that there was apparently only one decent Alchemist in the entire Dwarven Oligarchy. Still, if they could make something that would get in the air, it would likely go right through whatever protections the Elves were using to shield themselves from the blasts. He jotted that down in his mental notebook, “I should actually keep that in mind.”

Even with all the protective measures that they could put in place, the Dwarves were no match for an entrenched force. Spells were starting to come down thick and fast, flaming oil was being poured over the wall, and large stones were being dropped on them. One of the squad leaders grabbed Joe and shoved him forward as the left automaton was pancaked into the soft earth by a boulder four times larger than Joe. “Magic Bro! Get up there and break that wall, bro! We’re all counting on you; we believe in you! You can do it!”

The Dwarves around him cheered as Joe raced forward and embraced the scant protection hugging the wall provided, trying to put as much of his body as possible into the freshly dug hole. A ritual diagram appeared in his hand, the prepared Ritual of Raze that he activated as soon as he could target the wall itself.

Class experience gained (Rituarchitect): 400.

Class experience gained (Reductionist): 200.

Joe sunk mana into the ritual, and the ritual Rings spread out from the points of activation and began moving along the wall. One of the ritual rings settled around Joe’s feet, moving with him as he turned and ran back into the protection of a Dwarven phalanx that had coalesced for the express purpose of getting him out of the danger zone. He was hustled to the back lines, the entire time targeted heavily by the defenders. For every few feet that they moved, one or two Dwarves were taken down by the concentrated spells… all so that the ritual would go off without a hitch.

The human could only hope that their sacrifice had been worth it, and that they would be able to take over the fort and resurrect them here within the next few hours. Even though Joe could die and resurrect on his own, he knew for a fact that if he was killed while this ritual was in effect, it would stop working entirely. Until the wall was down, at least enough for them to get over it, Joe's only duty was to stay alive. This gave him some time to wonder why he had gained class experience in two different classes. Looking over the logs gave him plenty of information.

Ritual activated. Ritual falls within the purview of the Rituarchitect class. Calculating experience based on ritual tier and difficulty level of deployment. Ritual of Raze is a Student-ranked ritual for tearing down buildings. Difficulty assessed as ‘Medium’. Active combat zone mitigated by defensive forces.

Ritual activated. Ritual has been created using the abilities of a Reductionist. Calculating experience based on crafting tier. Assessed as Student-ranked. Experience allocated: 200.

“I can't tell if it is a blessing or a curse that Reductionist does everything by multiples,” Joe sighed as he tried to figure out the math behind his experience gained in the Reductionist class. “This should be easy to deduce. I know that when I made a Novice-ranked ritual, it gave me twenty-five experience. How do I extrapolate two hundred out of twenty-five? Novice times four? Nope, I would only be one hundred. Twenty-five to the fourth? That’s… big no. Doubling? Twenty-five, fifty, one hundred, two hundred. That works this time, I guess I will have to make more things and see if it is correct every time.”

+100 DE. Congratulations! Since you have found hidden information without going through a tutorial to learn it, a portion of the cost of the tutorial has been granted to your main deity as Divine Energy! Normally this is not a message you would see, but as you have a quest to gain Divine Energy for your deity, you have been granted access.

“Got experience as a Reductionist for making and activating the ritual, as a Rituarchitect for taking down the wall.” Joe read the message and realized that he had not looked at his quest to help out Tatum in months. Still, there was only one actionable piece of information he could take away from it. “I think that notification proved that doubling was correct. Going in the notes!”