Ruthless ~ 35!

~ 35 ~

Directly after the meeting with Mike, Joe went to the temple area of the Pathfinder’s Hall to tell Tommulus that he had failed his quest. He was sure that the deity already knew, but it was better to be forthright about it. It was a Bad Idea, with intentional capital letters, to ignore the god of wrath.

Joe walked into the odd interior of the temple, moving around the mid-sized Ents that were growing along the edge of the river. Walking directly up to the flaming altar, Joe sighed and spoke. “I’m sorry, Tommulus. I failed to return with the book.”

There was no reply. Joe waited a moment longer, then turned and walked away. 

Quest complete: The Golden Tome of Divine Favor. Though you failed to return with the requested item, Tommulus has seen the fire in your heart. You failed, but offered no excuses. You accepted your loss and returned to face a possible punishment. Rewards are halved, but you have not lost reputation with Tommulus. Reward: 250 Gold per participant, 2,500 experience. No bonus rewards are granted.

Even as he blew out a sigh of relief, Joe couldn't help but feel disappointed. He had hoped to get the divine buff and see if he could use that to trick his way into his next specialization. Still, perhaps it was for the best that he didn't look for a way around the rules. Perhaps there was a reason the prerequisites were that high, and who knew what would happen if he got the specialization and then lost the requirements to have it?

For now, the best course of action would be to focus on his personal arsenal and the town’s defense. In reality, every time he was able to positively impact the guild by raising a building, he was also increasing his own personal level. In his opinion, having a quest to help boost their power was only an added, yet very welcome, addition. Joe pulled open the town map that he had been given by Mike, and tried to decide what to do next.

In the core guild area behind the inner wall, there were only seven official buildings. There were a few watersheds in the south-east corner, but while people still used them, they had become redundant thanks to the water purification properties of the greenhouse. Since that building acted both as sewage system, food source, and a wellspring of clean water, the final choice for the south-east courtyard to be turned into something more usable. 

As for the north-east courtyard, there were currently grumpy merchants being removed from the area and put outside the inner wall. It wouldn't do to have untrustworthy people in the most protected guild area. Not when an attack could come at any time. Still, the question remained about what to do for these areas. Until that was decided, there was still plenty that Joe could work on. 

Just by looking at his map, he could see that there were twenty-three buildings that had been built within the walls of Towney McTownface, and eighteen of those had been built by him. Well, if the walls counted, then Joe had built twenty of twenty-five. The other five buildings had been put together by twenty-five-man teams of workers that had been working tirelessly. Joe almost felt bad when he realized that two of the buildings that had needed to be torn down after the attack had not been built by him. Joe paused. “Did… I never explained to most people why we had to tear those down and build new ones. Is that why there was such a large group that was egging on that weaponmaster so he would beat me up?”

“Eh… something to look into.” Joe looked at the mapped-out sections. There was a fifteen-meter empty space around the entire inside of the wall that was supposed to stay clear for purposes of defense and rapid movement; as well as to provide a clear line-of-sight if any enemies did manage to break through. Still, even with that requirement, there was enough room in the town to accommodate another fifty standard-sized buildings. 

There would have been room for another seventy-five, but the Artifact-ranked, egg-shaped Pathfinder’s hall took the space of a full twenty-five buildings; it was just that massive. Still, it did contain a medium-sized temple, so that was another concern alleviated. Though it seemed like there was a massive amount of room for growth, the fact of the matter was that the guild now had over twenty thousand members, and was still growing daily. Unless they started getting tier two, or even better: tier three buildings, they were going to fill the area with structures that would need to be torn down in short order.

While they could expand, and had plans to do so, it was better to take the time to do things correctly. Mike had asked him to start working on a new blueprint that they had purchased; a set of apartment buildings that could be rented with contribution points. Right now, anyone in the area could either sleep in the barracks or the single tavern in the town, but there was little privacy and no real personal space at all. The apartments were a quality-of-life upgrade, and the boost to morale might be the difference between a powerhouse staying in the guild or abandoning it when a better opportunity came along. 

Naturally, team leaders and upper-members of the guild would get first dibs on these rooms as they became available. In other words, Joe wasn't about to put off getting these into place. They had the materials for five of the buildings, but each of them would take three building spaces. That would still leave room for thirty-five more buildings, but would be a significant drain on the available space. Mike had left the placement to Joe, and Joe was currently debating whether to put them side-by-side, or to space them out around the town.

In the end, he chose the second option. While it might be nice to have all the housing clustered together, it would make an enticing target for anyone attacking them, and slow down deployment of adventuring parties to the remainder of the town. On another note, putting them in one spot would mean that many people would have a much longer commute through the town if they had a job at one of the other buildings. This way, people could live close to their business if they wanted to do so.

Joe laid the buildings out in his mind as a hexagon that surrounded the inner walled-off area. They would be halfway between the inner and outer wall, and should be good places to live while being protected from anything coming in over the walls; such as combat mages artillery spells. “Hmm… I wonder if there is such a thing as a force field that I could build? Or a stationary mana shield? Something to look into, I guess.”

Joe moved over to the Pathfinder’s Hall and accessed the secret path down into the Grand Ritual Hall. Most of his coven members were down there and working on their own projects, including Big_Mo, who was once again coated in dried blood for no reason that Joe could discern. Joe walked over and allowed his Neutrality Aura to clean the man up as they all discussed various matters.

As the talk wound down, Joe waved Hanna over and gave her a guild quest. “I need you to design four large rituals that I made a long time ago, called ‘Quarantine Area’. The four rituals will need to be modified into arcs that connect to make a large circle facing out of the town, and I’ll connect them so that they can all be activated at the same time.”

“Nice! This will drive off attackers, then? How deadly are the results?” Hannah took the ritual diagram and started looking at it intently.

“Not deadly, unless they are pretty dehydrated, I suppose.” Joe shook his head. “This is a deterrent. It’ll make people feel ill, and people don’t like to climb a wall with, um, messy pants. Try to make it as effective as possible, but remember that we need to power everything. Again, this is going to be something that helps us push people back, so the worst they feel, the better for our defenders.”

“Got it.” Hannah didn't hide her disappointment, looking over longingly at the flamethrower that a couple of the others were working to perfect. She looked pleadingly at Joe, who chuckled and shook his head. 

“This is going to be way more effective in the long run than those are. Trust me. People see fire and avoid it, but it is really hard to avoid a magical field that makes you sicker the closer you come to the epicenter of the effect. This is more important.” Joe looked over at the other project, then tossed them a diagram as well. “Guys, try to find a way to get those two to line up with each other. What I just gave you was a chunk of another ritual called ‘Ghostly Army’. I used that to create a fog bank that was thousands of feet wide, and I created a simplified ritual that absorbs the same amount of water, then releases it as a continuous high-powered stream.”

Big_Mo considered the new ritual, “So… this is going to turn into the ammo for Ze Flammenwerfer? Is that what you are trying to get at?”

“If you can make it happen.” Joe paused, “Why are you calling it-”

“Ze Flammenwerfer?” Big_Mo chuckled at that. “It’s a thing from the internet. When someone was doing something really stupid, you would call someone to bring ‘Ze Flammenwerfer’. Just go with it.”

“Um. Fair enough.” Joe had no idea what they were talking about. “Any improvements? I need to get these in place near the walls soon. We don't know exactly when we will be under attack.”

“So many improvements!” Kirby chirped, her excitement getting away from her. “Not only did we find a way to make stable ritual traps, Big_Mo found a way to collect blood from-”

“Hey!” Big_Mo glared at her, and she sheepishly covered her mouth with her hand. “Let me try that again! Based on the wind blade ritual, and using our research on the flamethrowers, we are able to make ritual circles that make either wind, frost, or fire novae centered on a single point. So, if we put them on large rocks or something, we can start using the terrain to our advantage.”

“What’s the downside?” Joe’s question caused Kirby to shrug. 

“The area-of-effect is pretty small, and once they know that the trap is there, it won’t be hard to avoid it. Using it in the open means that people are only going to be impacted by the damage a single time. Then, it’ll be pretty obvious that the giant rocks are traps.” Kirby helplessly explained.

“No, wait.” Joe’s bald brow furrowed. “We can use that to our advantage. If we scatter rocks all over out there, people will be really cautious about moving near them. We can either funnel enemies where we want them to go, or trick them into thinking that they are safe. Good, I want fifty of those on my desk by tomorrow.”

“Yeah, no.” Big_Mo shook his head. “Too high of a skill level required, we can do twenty at best, especially if Hannah is working on something else.”

“Fair enough.” Joe nodded easily.  He had been joking about getting fifty anyway. Mostly. Partly. “Since all of you are getting pretty busy here, let me offer an additional incentive. When you hit Journeyman in ritual magic, I’m going to have all of you build your own covens and be in charge of them. You’ll get squad leader pay, and essentially become salaried. Also, I’m going up top to build apartment buildings that squad leaders get first dibs on. Work hard, y’all. The rewards are in sight.”

With that, Joe walked over to another part of the huge room and started creating a ritual around the blueprints Mike had entrusted him with.