CC5 ~ 21!

~ 21 ~

“It’s been three days, human,” Havoc whispered into Joe’s ear, the deep voice buzzing unpleasantly. That, combined with the surprise visit, caused Joe to slap out in shock. He missed by a wide margin, and Havoc waved at him to hurry. “Time to step up to the plate and grab the bull by the horns.”

Joe frowned at the Dwarf with slight disgust. “Where did that come from?”

Havoc looked surprisingly proud about his terrible mixed metaphor. “I took a council-designed course on humanity. They only let a hundred people in, but it gave us a nice look at your world's previous technology and conversational ability. Stop trying to dodge the question. Either show me what you have and what you are working on, or get out.”

“Fine, take a look. Chill.” Joe produced his redesigned ritual diagram and handed it over. “I know this spell, ‘Wither Plant’, and I’ve reached Apprentice five with it. I managed to make a scroll, and converted that into a ritual. Thanks to the spell scrolls that you ‘acquired’ for me, I was able to join this with a draining spell, making a first generation ‘Mana Wither’ spell.”

“Why did you do that?” Havoc tapped the diagram, making Joe wince. “What does it do?”

“Careful with that, please; it is the only prototype right now. As to why, you need some background information first.” The Reductionist took the paper back and gently set it on the floor. “One of the difficulties of my rituals has always been the fact that I need to assign the targets before I activate the ritual. That is, I need some blood from everyone who wants to participate or will be forced to participate. Unfortunately, that is considered a component, meaning I can no longer use blood as a targeting method. Even trying to reduce my own blood only gives me common aspects. Nothing special. However…”

Joe tapped at the inner circle of the ritual, “I am still able to create a… let’s call it an ‘opt in’, which is made with what is essentially my personal mana frequency. In short, I can directly build myself into the ritual. That allows me to activate it, direct it, turn on or off, and so forth. The draining element serves two functions. One: it is terribly and intentionally inefficient, as it drains mana impossibly fast from anyone that is participating in powering it. Two: I don't need to build in selected targets anymore. Anyone who uses mana within the bounds of the ritual are automatically considered to have ‘opted-in’ to powering the ritual. I thought that perhaps I could use this to empower other rituals or store energy, but…”

“Just doesn’t work?” Havoc nodded knowingly even as Joe looked at him with hope. “If you constructed mana batteries, you might be able to use this idea to charge them, but ambient mana won’t just get pulled in, am I right?”

Joe regarded Havoc with great interest. He had not been able to figure that detail out and had thought that perhaps it was an idea he would need to let go, but it sounded like something Havoc was familiar with. “No, I can't just use ambient mana. You’re right. But if I cast a spell in the area, it starts to drain me as long as I am within the area of effect. Why won't it grab from the environment?”

“You only have basic Essence in the air; nature doesn’t generate mana. It collects it. That’s how you get mana-imbued objects. First thing you’d need to do is find a way to suck up what’s in the air, then combine it together to make Quintessence. Still, that’s not mana, but it might serve as a supplemental power source if your target is natural, or flowing through a body.” Havoc rubbed his beard consideringly. “Things breaking down do generate mana, but only things that have been imbued with mana. Throwing away a banana peel and facilitating a breakdown will generate Essence, but not mana. Damaged gear, components, anything that is tossed away will release their stored mana as they decompose… you see what I’m getting at?”

“What’s the difference between mana and this ‘Essence’? Oh, you’re thinking that I could use the mana released from the landfill to power rituals in the landfill?” Joe shrugged at that thought; it was something he had already planned on pursuing. “I would need an extremely powerful ritual to be able to impact something of that size. Or a significant number of smaller rituals. We'll put it on the back burner for now. Point is, I am pretty sure that when I activate this ritual, it will allow me to start withering all plants in range. Anyone or anything that starts releasing Mana will help to power the ritual once it gets going. My concern is that it does not differentiate between friend and foe.”

“What you should be worried about is someone breaking it.” Havoc rumbled as he eyed the paper that Joe was being so careful with. “I’m not just talking about this prototype. Elves are excellent spellbreakers. Got nothing better to do than look at strands of mana and figure out how to wiggle it. Plus, I got you those incredibly difficult-to-acquire scrolls so you could learn the spells, not so you could slap it into a one-time effect.”

“Yes, we will need to protect the ritual. As for the ritual diagram, well…” Joe shrugged helplessly. “I could have learned the spell, but I have a chance of failing, and I would need to use it constantly to get it to this level again. Right now, I can use it at an Apprentice level in a ritual, and I might be able to improve it further in the future. Even so, I had to strip away all of the ‘active casting’ portions so that it didn’t blow up in my face when I was converting it. It’s rare that it happens, but better safe than sorry. Now the scroll isn’t usable for learning to cast it, so is there any chance you can get me another Scroll of Mana Drain?”

“I just told you that scrolls are very difficult to come by… usually we can only get them if we take a major fort relatively intact. Think about how rare that is.” Havoc decided that Joe had a good point, however, and let the issue go. “So no, as far as this is concerned, we do not have a duplicate of the scroll. How will this be useful against the Elves?”

“Basically, I set this up, it passively drains the mana from anyone in the area, and hopefully kills the Guardian by destroying the root system.” Joe waved at the small model of a fort that Havoc had set up. “In terms of combat utility, as I said, it will drain the mana from the Elves as soon as they cast even a single spell, making them weaker over time and reducing their ability to regenerate their mana. This is perfect for an enclosed space like a fort; a place where we can set the bounds of the ritual without having to worry about our targets making a break for it or escaping. In addition, if they get drained far enough… it will start taking health from them if they try to cast anything. I can tell you from experience, that is very distracting.”

“I like it. Perfect little surprise.” Havoc waved at the little structures that Joe had set around the model, “Even if it will likely only work once. That should be enough to cover what we've done so far. What's the rest of this for?”

“Defensive structures.” Joe’s face scrunched up in frustration as he studied the figures. “I've been trying to figure out how to replicate your magitech cannons, but I'm running into issues with the power supply and enchantment, and… wait a second… why will it only work once?”

“Hmm… oh? You’re using a magical attack, right? Any Elves that survive will be able to parse that and create a counterspell. Big, magical effects only work once against them. Remember, they figured out a way to break what I hit them with, and we thought it would keep them away forever. Little ritual like this? A known draining spell? We’ll be lucky if they don’t break it while we are attacking.” Havoc’s eyes were drawn back to the defensive tower replica. “You said that you were having issues with power supply? Enchantments? Why are you having issues, and when did you have time to look at those enchantment formulae?”

“Basically, I need to study them for a long enough time to make my own versions. As for when I looked at those, a higher constitution means less need for sleep. Combine that with my coffee elemental-” Joe was going to say more, but Havoc cut him off.

“You don't need to do everything yourself, Candidate. If you can figure out how to construct the towers, we can have the enchantments ready to be placed on them. That's easy enough.” He paused for a moment to chuckle at Joe's slightly open mouth. “Modularity is a big deal to Dwarves. Things blow up too often not to have easy replacements. As for the power supply… what’s the issue there?”

Joe nodded in thanks. “That’ll work for the enchantments. I appreciate it. As to the power supply, I can't figure out what you are doing with these. As far as I can tell, every time you fire, the cannons should have about a… I’m estimating a twenty percent chance of just… self-destructing? I have no idea what you are doing here to keep that from happening.”

“Formations, arrays, and liquid cooling,” Havoc replied dryly, getting an eye roll from Joe. “You are correct; they tend to blow up for… just… no reason whatsoever. In all honesty, the Cores that power everything eventually overload. The enchantments don’t get damaged, and the towers themselves are not an issue; the actual trouble is the fact that we don’t have stable power sources. We use Cores directly, and that means we are taking Quintessence and trying to use it as a mana source. The inefficiency of doing things like this means that, obviously, they overload themselves sometimes.”

“The formations that we use are made to protect against this; they are the very  reason for modularity. Essentially, we judge when a Core is about to overload and slingshot it a few hundred feet out—hopefully into the ranks of the Elves. In fact, that is partly why they are towers, not just defensive encampments, or things that we can move from place to place easily. Gotta be able to dump the danger. Hopefully on someone else.”

Joe stared at Havoc long enough that the Dwarf started reaching for something in his pocket as a nervous tic. The Reductionist didn't really notice, simply struggling to find the words to ask the question that was forming in a non-disparaging way. “Why… in the absolute abyss would you use Cores… right… you can’t convert them to batteries. Okay. I think I found a solution to this problem.”

He immediately sprang into action, pulling out a ritual that the Dwarf had never seen before. Joe, far too used to working alone, started muttering to himself as if he were using a voice-to-text program. “I could create the ritual directly, using aspects. I'm still going to need to find something that can withstand the energy conversion. Maybe I should forge it myself as well? I wonder what that would look like… will the aspects just directly convert into matter as I am making something? It did in the tutorial… let's see. Havoc, here.”

Joe pushed over his notes, “What sort of metal do I need to use in order to resist a meltdown with this kind of power requirement?”

If there was one thing that Havoc understood, it was material compositions. He swept a practiced eye over the equations and data summaries while his right hand left his pocket. “From what I am seeing, you could use regular iron with a core of silver, but that would only last so long as you did not want to use it fairly consistently. High Steel would be a better choice, but…”

Havoc chuckled at a thought before saying it aloud, “if you aren't making it yourself, and you are going to requisition it, I would highly recommend Ghost Silver with a High Steel core instead. You would be able to throw a Core in there up to the Artifact rank and keep it going pretty much permanently. What am I looking at?”

“It’s a Ritual of Enchanting, mana-battery specific. I forget the proper name for it off the top of my head,” Joe absentmindedly answered the Dwarf. “It allows me to directly enchant Cores and turn them into mana batteries. You know, so that I don't blow myself up when I am making a defensive building?”

“Hey. If we could do it, we would do it. I could make this, sans the ritual part, but it would take a ton of my time for each individual Core. Is it worth it? Can I really make a difference with just a few?” Havoc shrugged at the diagram carefully, clearly understanding almost all parts of it, but still disregarding it. “Clever workarounds are what we do best. We’ve also got metal to spare, one of the benefits of mining like we do. You want me to requisition enough metal for you to make this? Does it need to be shaped like this, able to move… hey, when this expands, is it a gyroscope?”

“It is.” Joe was completely unsurprised that the Dwarf understood the intention of the metal frame. “It has to be able to enchant a Core from all sides. Also, yes, if you can get someone else to make that, I'll be able to focus on just completing my rituals. If we can delegate this, it would save me a lot of time. Actually… the metals you mentioned? I think I would need a higher blacksmithing level before I could even heat them properly.”

“It'll take a week or two, but I'll get it done.” Havoc lazily glanced to the side as an alarm sounded. His eyes sharpened as he recognized what the klaxon call was shrieking about. “Well, human… looks like you will get a chance to show off your fancy magical device. We just lost a fort. I’ll make them hold off on the counterattack and claim the assault in your name. That means that the success is yours, but the failure would be as well. We don’t have to worry about that, though, do we?”

“I… t-this is only a prototype! I’ve done no testing! If we just charge in-” Joe stuttered as Havoc started tapping at something only he could see. He gave Joe a thumbs-up and shut him down with a simple sentence.

“It’s done; you have twelve hours to get this ritual up and running.”