CC 5 ~ 11!

11

“At least some of this needs to be salvageable… right?” Joe slapped his hand on the cube that stood roughly twice as tall as he was, and activated his… it was Intrusive Scan, but not, at the same time. He decided to think of it as ‘Ritual of Reduction’. In a flash, his mana had washed over his cube and returned with a base value.

Item: Hyper-compressed cube. Note: most items compressed within this cube are raw resources. Anything not a raw resource was destroyed, dropping its aspect value greatly, and increasing ‘Damaged’ aspects. Several Cores are trapped within, as energy cannot be destroyed.

Reduction value: Unknown.

Reduction cost: estimated at 125 mana per second.

Viable bound storage device detected.

There was a lot of information to unpack in those few simple sentences. “What in the…? One hundred and twenty-five mana per second? Why is it so much more than before? Why didn't my ring count as a valid storage device?”

Determined: valid query about ability. Mana cost is determined by the rarest aspect contained in the object to be reduced. Each aspect above Common rarity adds a multiplier of ‘5’ mana per second. Common = 5. Uncommon = 5*5. Rare = 5*5*5. Ritualist class bonus to Ritual of Reductions’ cost has already been applied. Increase class level to drop cost further.

Bound storage devices must be soul-bound to be valid as aspect storage. The energy of raw aspects is especially volatile and deadly if used incorrectly. Soul-bound devices can only be accessed by the bound user or a skilled thief.

“Learning any fun things, human? Care to share?” Though Havoc’s words were caustic, he had affixed Joe with a hungry stare. “Let's tell each other information all the time, so that one of us does not need to put the other in a lab for testing or dissection. Lots and lots… of testing.”

“Calm down… Sir,” Joe muttered and held up his shaky hands while digesting  the information he was learning. He looked at the cube and paled. In a sudden panic, he grabbed his hand and sent his mind into the storage ring on his finger. “Oh, thank the celestials above, it's still there.”

Never had he been so glad to forget to do something. Joe still had his cauldron in his ring, along with various blueprints and a few other miscellaneous items, like his weapon-equipable Taglock. If he had lost all of that, specifically the cauldron, there was a good chance that a shadowy organization of Alchemists was going to try to melt chunks off of him until they were satisfied that he no longer had the Cauldron in his possession. Noticing that Havoc was about to start pulling out his own beard hair, Joe explained what he had just realized, and Havoc nodded consideringly.

“Hold on.” The Dwarf stopped Joe from attempting to reduce the cube. “How about we try out your ability on a few different things before you tackle that gigantic beast? What happens if you can’t finish reducing something? Does it all fall apart, or can you keep going after you regain your mana? Sure would be a shame to lose all those… aspects.”

“Good plan.” The two of them grinned at each other, each feeling surprisingly comfortable with one another. Joe was wondering if perhaps he should have been hanging out with other magical-classed people; perhaps his obsession with growth and development of his skills in magic were not so strange after all. Maybe it was his desire to do everything alone, or in secret, that was the actual hindrance.

Havoc started bringing out various items; so many, in fact, that Joe started to hesitate at taking them. The Dwarf noticed his discomfort and laughed. “You think this is a lot? You could technically requisition every single thing that I have, everything that I own, and you are daunted by a few scraps?”

“I think I could try to take it all. Something tells me I wouldn’t be able to actually do it.” Joe watched a smug expression appear across the Dwarf’s features for a moment, then took a deep breath and attempted to adjust his mindset. “That's right, I have the ability to ‘requisition’ stuff. I know it, logically, and I have been planning to use it. It still feels… strange. It’s like getting a massive student loan that you might not have to pay off if you get perfect grades your entire college career, but you would need to pay double interest on if you got a single ‘B’ in a course.”

Havoc waved away Joe’s concerns and shook his head, handing over a simple dagger. “Just shut up and start small.”

Item: Iron Dagger.

Reduction value: 8 Common aspects, 19 Trash aspects.

Reduction cost: 5 mana per second.

Viable bound storage device detected.

Joe let his mana pour out of him, and his body lit up with the intricate tattoos that signified his Ritual of Reduction. One… three… five seconds passed, and the dagger simply vanished as though he had stored it in a spatial device. In a way, that was exactly what had happened.

Aspects captured: 7 Common aspects, 11 Damaged aspects, 19 Trash aspects.

“Hold up, I didn't get all of the aspects?” Joe’s bald brow furrowed as he opened his logs and attempted to find exactly what had happened. He read over the process carefully, and his lips pressed into a hard line.

Iron Dagger suffused! Capturing aspects… bound storage device is not specifically designed for capturing aspects. 10% of Common aspects have been damaged, lowering rarity! Common aspects converted into Damaged aspects.

“Let me guess; by the look on your face, something went wrong. My bet would be that you do not have a storage device that is designed for these ‘aspect’ things, and so you lost ‘em all?” Havoc scratched at his beard and tried to think of a solution. “We can do some research, but I've never heard of aspects before, so I have no idea how we can put something together to hold them.”

“Me neither.” Joe sighed and waved at the other things in the area. “Perhaps when I level my class up, it will give us more information? Let’s do the next test.”

They used another iron dagger, as similar to the first as possible. This time, Joe supplied Mana for only four seconds and then abruptly cut off the power supply. The dagger shuddered and cracked, falling apart completely when Joe applied just a little bit of pressure to either end.

Aspects captured: 5 Common aspects, 15 Damaged Aspects, 40 Trash aspects.

Iron Dagger destroyed!

Joe attempted to convert the remainder of the dagger, but only got Trash aspects. He looked over at Havoc and winced. “Good call on holding off on the cube. The rest got turned into trash.”

“I thought that might be the case. If you take out the essential parts of something, the Rarity is going to drop. Abyss, if you take a Legendary sword and snap it in half, you might only have two chunks of a Rare sword because the Magical Matrix on it has been damaged so badly.” Havoc had Joe continue testing on rarer things, culminating in a Unique-ranked breastplate.

“Six hundred and twenty-five mana a second.” Joe gulped as he looked at the armor. “If it took five full seconds to reduce a dagger, how long will this take? I can only hold out for two and a half seconds. Are you sure we should do this? The armor is definitely going to break, and I am not going to be able to capture all of the aspects…”

“Did I tell you to hesitate? Or did I give you a task to complete?” Havoc waved a hand imperiously at Joe. “Get after it.”

Joe started pouring his mana into the ritual, and the breastplate began to shine. One second passed, two… and Havoc slammed a bottle into Joe’s mouth. The human was so shocked that he almost failed to continue, but he gulped the liquid down and watched as his mana was restored. It stayed at full for another five seconds before starting to drop slightly, and the breastplate vanished at the end of ten full seconds from the beginning of the process. “Havoc! What was that?”

“Rare-rank Mana Philter. Hard to come by, very expensive. Using those like bathwater will really make the court-martial stand up and take notice. Mainly because I think we have a single Dwarven alchemist in the entire Oligarchy?” Havoc ignored Joe’s sputtering and demanded, “Well? A breakdown, please!”

“That’s… I… over six thousand total mana used.” Joe deflated and started going over the details. Havoc listened greedily, writing Joe’s words out on a pad of paper. “I gained one hundred and eleven Unique aspects, eighty-two Rare, two hundred ten Uncommon, and a bunch of the lower ones.”

“Good. Now, any class experience gained?” Havoc smiled knowingly as Joe checked and found a big fat zero waiting for him. “Now, what do you think you need to do to get experience?”

“Since reducing things does not give experience by itself, I can only assume that I will get experience when I make things with the aspects.” Joe was almost bowled over by Havoc clapping a hand on his back.

“Good! Oh, if you got that wrong, I was going to punish you so badly. Now, how do you make items out of aspects?”

“I have… let’s just start testing, alright?” Joe pulled paper and ink from his ring and started to draw a circle. The paper took the ink, but as soon as the circle was complete, the entire thing burst into flames. “Ow!”

“You aren’t hurt,” Havoc scoffed as Joe dropped the flaming paper. “You were just surprised. I know you are wearing a shield of some kind. What was that all about? Why didn't that work? You’re so bad at coloring that the deity of artistry cursed you or something?”

Joe pulled up his notifications again, already sick of needing to open them so frequently.

Attempt at creating a ritual circle detected. Warning: all crafting can only be completed via aspect usage!

“I can only use aspects?” Joe slapped at the screen, only to have his hand go right through it. “How! How do I use them?”

Checking… no skill trainer available. Aspect crafting tutorial is available for purchase! Cost: 5,000 reputation with a deity of your choice. Reputation loss must leave you at neutral or above!

Joe stared at the black-hearted fee listed. “Kind of pigeonholing me here, aren't you? This seems like a blatant attempt to force me to regain favor with Tatum.”

There was no response, though Havoc looked at Joe a little strangely. Joe shook his head. “I just got the opportunity to get a tutorial on crafting with aspects. What do you think? Is that usually worth doing?”

Havoc’s eyes practically bulged out of his goggles. “Never, never turn down a system-generated tutorial. You cannot get a better, cleaner, more direct tutorial or method of training anywhere. It practically offers to make you the subject matter expert for the entire Zone!”

“Guess… I’ll buy it then.” Joe accepted the cost and watched as various numbers dropped precipitously from his status screen.

Aspect crafting tutorial purchased! Would you like to take the tutorial now?

Joe didn’t hesitate to accept. He was practically useless without his ability to even make a simple ritual diagram, let alone draw a circle. “Yes.”