Ruthless ~ 36!

~ 36 ~

Sunset was approaching by the time Joe completed his diagrams. He looked over the shifting surface of the diagram, pleased that he was going to have a room to sleep in tonight where he wouldn't be awoken by a drunk barfly shouting from the common room. It had taken so long to formulate the diagrams only because these buildings were Uncommon ranked, right at the edge of Rare buildings. Luckily, his Architectural Lore skill had helped him fix a few of the issues on the blueprint, but that had also added to the time requirement. “Oh… I can even furnish my room by myself if I grab a few beds out of storage.”

With rosy thoughts leading him, Joe left the Pathfinder’s Hall with the intent of finding all the people in the guild that were construction workers. He got some names from the guild, and started his search. At this time of the day, they were either eating a late dinner or on their way to the tavern, so Joe tried the dining area first. He had a plan to start getting the workers onto his side, but he knew that the initial part of things was going to suck.

“Excuse me, are you Emjay?” Joe vaguely recognized the man, as Joe had watched the construction workers to try to build up his lore skill. It hadn't worked, but it had made them look at him less favorably, as he had simply stood there watching while they worked.

“I am. You’re… Joe.” Emjay turned back to his meal without another word. Joe winced, wondering what his reputation score would be with this guy. Probably pretty low.

Joe sat next to the man at the long table, and the atmosphere turned tense. All the people eating here were part of the same crew. “I am. I think there have been some issues between us because we haven’t had a chance to communicate. I’d like to take all of you over to the location where I am going to be building a new apartment building, and we can discuss any issues that arise. Would you all mind joining me?”

Emjay’s jaw was clenched, though Joe knew he didn’t have anything in his mouth. The last time he had bit his sandwich had been before Joe arrived. “You taking us over there to show off, then? Teach us all how little we are needed here? That’s already pretty clear.”

“Exactly the opposite.” Joe’s sincere words made Emjay look at him in confusion. “Please? It’ll all make sense soon.”

“You have interesting timing.” Emjay stood up, and Joe realized that the bench designed to hold ten people shifted upward significantly when he did so. This guy was solid. “C’mon, boys. We’re gonna go learn how to put up a building the right way.”

The knuckles cracking around the table did not make Joe any less concerned. He really hoped that he hadn’t made a huge mistake, but there was nothing to do but follow through. The group of around twenty people went to the southern location that Joe had selected, and looked on as Joe had various guild members arrange the pallets of material in the correct order. When everything was situated, Joe started talking to Emjay directly, as he didn't know the names of the other guys.

“I’m here to show you all exactly why what you are doing is so important to the guild. The fact of the matter is that what I am doing is only going to be available for a short time. I’ll be leaving on the bifrost as soon as possible.” Joe pulled out the three Mana Batteries that he still had and put them in a balanced formation around him. “Even so, for as long as I am here, there is a reason I can't do this sort of thing alone.”

“Oh, now it all makes sense. You’re leaving, so we’ll have job security.” Emjay’s spat out the caustic words and turned to say something else to his people.

“Just watch.” Joe softly implored. With that, he injected mana into the ritual and activated it. In the twilight, the glowing ritual circles that expanded were incredibly eye-catching. Joe and his batteries were lifted into the air, and soon the building materials started floating into position. 

As much as Emjay didn’t want to admit it, this was an impressive sight. The entire process, aside from Joe chanting, was almost entirely soundless. The boards and beams came together, the nails and screws sank into them. It was like watching a movie of a house being built on fast-forward. Something splattered on Emjay’s face, and he wiped it off with a hint of disgust. “Wha…? Blood? Where…”

He looked up at Joe, who was spasming every few seconds. Now that Emjay looked closely, he could see that the shining orbs that Joe had put on the ground were dark now. What did that mean? Ten seconds later, the building finished and Joe was set back on the ground. As soon as his feet were on soil, he collapsed into a heap, gasping for air.

The construction crew ran over to help him up, recoiling in horror at the bloody mess they found. Joe was bleeding from every orifice, his eyes were shut, and every breath created a short-lived dark-red bubble. Emjay, as the foreman on the crew, had one of the highest-level inspection abilities in his group. He looked at Joe with the skill active, wincing at the blinking health bar that appeared. “Celestial, kid! You practically kill yourself getting one of these things up!”

They all knew what happened when you got injured. Returning to full health couldn't happen without magical healing or coming back to life, so there was a chance that Joe would be out of commision for a few days… or he might die right here. He had lost a lot of blood. Emjay was trying to figure out how to help when Joe’s hand weakly reached up. “Lay on Hands.”

Joe’s health bar soared to full in an instant, and the accumulated blood somehow started vanishing shortly after that. If He hadn't been here to see it himself, Emjay wouldn’t have believed it. He swallowed at what he saw, and spoke. “Kid… you go through that every time you get a building up? Even if you can bring your health back, that’s… you're torturing yourself. Losing so much health…  that kinda pain… this isn't right. Is the guild making you do this, somehow?”

“No.” Joe sat up and steadied himself. He hurt all over. “Normally, I have a team of six that helps me, and we are able to share that pain across all of us. If we do things right, we usually don’t get hurt, either. Still, beyond all of that, every time we build a house we need to use one of these.”

Joe tossed over a Core, which was something that Emjay had never seen before tonight. He caught it, and his face went white. “This… this is worth twenty-five hundred experience! We only get a thousand total for building a building!”

“Right.” Joe took the Core back. “Now you can see why what I am doing is unsustainable. If we didn't need to build everything like crazy people, we would never be so incredibly wasteful with our resources. But the fact of the matter is… the other guilds have started a war with us. We are going to be attacked in the near future, and we need every advantage we can get. I just wanted to explain everything to you guys.”

“Well…” Emjay looked at the others, then turned to face Joe once more. “I told you earlier that you had interesting timing. Reason for that is, we were going to leave the guild in the morning. Already voted on it. But… now that we know this… we’ll just suck it up and keep working. I’m not afraid to admit that I’m jealous of your ability to do make buildings, but there’s no chance of me putting my crew through that to make it happen.”

Joe took Emjay’s hand and was pulled to his feet. “I do hope you stay. There are great things coming for the guild, I know it. I’ll also see what I can do to help you guys out every once in a while, if you want that.”

“Same to you, kid. No, sorry. Joe.” Emjay shook Joe’s hand, then turned to his crew and nodded. They all started moving off toward the tavern, all of them pretty quiet for now. They had a lot to think about.

Joe stayed where he was, looking at the building. It was a nice-looking apartment building, but that wasn't why Joe remained where he was. He looked over his notifications again, just to be sure that he hadn't misread the information. This was a classic good news, bad news situation; it seemed that the bonus he gained for advancing his Rituarchitect class to level seven had come into effect.

Structure ‘Uncommon Apartment Building’ has transformed into ‘Hungry Apartment Building (Rare)’, and absorbed a portion of the mana invested in the ritual, combining with the lifeblood of the builder to impart an additional effect! Upon sleeping in an apartment for at least five hours, experience gain will increase by 50% for 18 hours. Every five nights, there is a 5% chance that one of the occupants will suddenly die, whereupon the walls will bleed lightly for thirty minutes. All traces of blood will vanish after thirty minutes have passed. Each day that the effect does not trigger, the chances increase by three percent.

Class experience gained: 1000. You succeeded in upgrading an Uncommon-ranked building into a Rare building, experience gains for a Rare-ranked building have been doubled as a bonus.

“Now… do I tear it down, or just go to bed?” Joe shrugged and went in, taking a room on the ground floor for himself. “I’ll let Mike figure that out…”

“Tomorrow.”