CC5 ~ 19!

19

Joe didn't go over the majority of his experience with Havoc, but the details were certainly on his mind. He had learned a few interesting things while he'd been in the landfill, and while the hidden Guardian was certainly the most interesting, it certainly wasn't the only information he had found.

At one point, he had nearly died because he tried to rely on an old gaming trope he had heard about over and over. He cast ‘Mend’ on a zombie as it was coming at him, expecting that the healing of the spell would damage the undead creature. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that Mend was a dark spell. In practically no time flat, the zombie had gone from jogging at him to sprinting at him. He wouldn't be doing that again.

When he had managed to return to Havoc, Joe had been on his last legs. He wanted to hear the Dwarf out, but instead found a bed and slept for nearly twelve hours. The rewards will be there after he woke up, after all. Once he regained consciousness, he decided that he should take stock of the changes over the last week or so. First, he browsed through his spatial devices.

“Eighteen Trash-ranked Cores, some Unique garbage that I need to break down; I have my ritual and spell books, ritual papers, and… that’s about it. What about aspects? I feel like I made a good haul…”

Aspects gathered

Trash: 10,253

Damaged: 8,312

Common: 5,951

Uncommon: 2,983

Rare: 1,132

Special (Zombified): 323

Unique: 735

Artifact: 0

Legendary: 0

Mythical: 0

Core energy: 81/81 (Trash)

“I…” Joe stared at the numbers, “…really want to make this into a ritual that I can use on large chunks at a time.”

Pulling out a small chunk of garbage, Joe tried to reduce it at the same time as studying the ritual on his body. He saw the glowing lines appear again, but they did not mean anything to him when he saw them. A couple more attempts, and he’d made no progress whatsoever. He rubbed his eyes, then paused as he had an idea. He activated Essence Cycle, then reduced the-

“Wow.”

The ritual within him lit up, shining lines radiating out from his spine until they reached his skin. It was… beautiful to the extreme, but also incredibly abstruse. The only thing that Joe could really compare the lines to would be a spatial device. There was no way that the sheer size of the ritual should have been contained within a fleshy body; it was within him, it was him. “Is this what a class looks like?”

It was not just the energy within him that was impacted. With Essence Cycle, he could see that all of the floating energies in the air were being condensed, swirled, pulled to enter him. The energy that was taken in flowed along his skin, intermingled with his mana, and exited the ritual that was Joe, the Ritual of Reduction. The power flowed back out of him, and for the first time, Joe was able to see a physical object being reduced into aspects.

Caution! You are attempting to see into the inner workings of Sage-ranked spellwork! Calculating… intelligence threshold far too low!

Joe's eyes bulged, his mana backlashed, and his head exploded with a retort like a grenade detonating.

He ignored the message that appeared to him when he was in his respawn room. He had died twice in the last day, and Joe had a fleeting thought that he should be upset at this point. However, he could not manage to get into that frame of mind. He was too elated. Ecstatic, in fact. “I have a working model of a Sage-ranked ritual! It’s… I’m barely touching the potential of this class!”

Beyond the direct excitement of having such an interesting class with a huge amount of growth potential, there was something about dying for new knowledge that was practically nostalgic. He was trying to think back to the last time he had been working on a spell model that had backfired so badly, it had actually managed to kill him, and he could not easily think of one. It did resurrect a different, unpleasant thought in his thankfully reconstituted head, however.

“Have I been getting… complacent?” Joe’s brow furrowed. “When was the last time I was really pushing the boundaries of my magic? I know that I have been focused on my class, but… I'm so far away from even being able to study the depths of my own abilities that I died when I tried. What do I need to do? Just get my intelligence to that level? No… I need to get my skill to a point that I can use it. I need to have the intelligence to match… I'm… I'm so excited!”

Pulling open his status sheet, Joe instantly started wincing as he saw the downgrade in experience. “Feces… I lost three levels.

Name: Joe ‘Tatum’s Chosen Legend’ Class: Reductionist

Profession I: Arcanologist (Max)

Profession II: Ritualistic Alchemist (1/20)

Profession III: None

Character Level: 19 Exp: 192,704 Exp to next level: 17,296

Rituarchitect Level: 10 Exp: 45,000 Exp debt: 14,714

Reductionist Level: 0 Exp: 176 Exp to next level: 824

Hit Points: 0/1,573 (Currently respawning)

Mana: 0/2,152 (Currently respawning)

Mana regen: 44.55/sec

Stamina: 0/1337

Stamina regen: 6.36/sec

Characteristic: Raw score

Strength: 129

Dexterity: 129

Constitution: 125

Intelligence: 138

Wisdom: 118

Dark Charisma: 80

Perception: 118

Luck: 60

Karmic Luck: 8

“I'm all the way back down to level nineteen… yeesh.” Joe puttered around the room, messing around with various things. Then he noticed that one entire wall was filled with a flashing icon of an unopened letter. He tapped it and found hundreds of letters from his mother, his guild members, and his Coven. He paled as he went through them, concerned that things had gone wrong. After a short while, he had to wipe out his moist eyes.

His mother had written him a letter every single day, ever since he had been exiled. He sat and read through each one, then composed a reply that went over most of the things that he had been going through. His Guild had questions for him about the new Zone, which he offered answers to as much as he could. Finally, his coven had mostly technical questions that he was happy to resolve. It was always refreshing to see someone else's work and discover ways that he could help them improve or improve his own things, based on their creativity.

Before Joe knew it, the portal had opened and it was time to leave. Thanks to the large amount of time that he had been forced to spend in the room, Joe had gone through all of the emails. He promised himself that he would take time to regularly answer questions and emails in the future, but he needed to find a spot where he could access the mail portion of the game. He had thought that he would need to find an actual post office of some sort, but once again, the game came through in a way that he did not expect.

Feeling refreshed, re-centered, and ready to roll, Joe stepped out of the portal and came face-to-face with Havoc.

“Do you have any idea how bad it looks for me when my trainee’s brain matter is splattered all over the room I gave him in my house?”