Raze (The Completionist Chronicles Book 4)

by Dakota Krout

  Highest stat: Intelligence

  Ongoing effects: Burning Mind. Unification. Mana-well Shielding. Empowered by Many. Enemy of the Forest. Hypnotism Aura. Amphitheater Amplification. Arcane Double Damage…

  The list of active effects continued for another two lines, but they had vanished before Joe got a chance to read them when the Hierophant slammed the door. “Yikes. This is… yeah, this is going to be really hard, you guys. Listen to some of these effects that guy has.”

  As Joe explained the names of the effects, the expressions around him turned defeated. To Joe’s delight, he got a notification as soon as he stopped speaking.

  Skill increase: Intrusive Scan (Novice IV). Hey. You shouldn't have been able to scan him. Just saying. He critically failed at blocking it. Big ol’ boost because of that. Tootles!

  Weird message aside, Joe was happy to see some progress on the skill even if he didn't know what would happen as it got stronger. Maybe people would be less likely to notice it happening? Bard interrupted his thoughts, “Ya think tha’ hypno-aura is why we were humming tha’ garbage tune?”

  “Likely, and the way the wall is pulsing with light is probably from the effect of the ‘Amphitheater Amplification’. I bet the building is boosting his ability,” Alexis stated after a moment. “Joe, have you ever gotten bonuses from being in a temple or anything?”

  Joe was taken off guard by the sudden shift in conversation but couldn’t think of a proper answer. “You know what? I bet I would if I ever spent any time in one. Usually, I’m on the go way too much to accumulate bonuses, but I know a lot of clerics tend to stay in one place. There has to be a reason. I’ll try it out sometime.”

  “Right, I think we are going to need a plan of attack,” Poppy spoke out to the others. They agreed and started very quietly discussing their options. Twenty minutes later, they had narrowed it down to a pretty standard distraction snatch-and-grab.

  “I think that if we can take over the building, that is, convert it to Tatum, we will be able to take away the majority of the active effects that the Hierophant is getting.” Joe was not entirely sure of his plan, but it was their best option right now. “Plus, we would get a few of the temple guardian-golem things. For the life of me, I can't remember what they are called right now. Oh, Juggernauts! I have a major issue with this plan, though. There is no way that I have enough mana to convert this place on my own. A roadside shrine drains me dry right now.”

  “What if we were all joining you?” Alexis asked him.

  “No, think about it.” Joe shook his head sharply. “We need someone defending us, and the only way that we are able to get here is to go to the Wolfmen. We can't exactly bring other people with us to do a proper raid, right?”

  “Good.” Bard harrumphed. “Didn’t relish the idea of being a battery, anyway. Not what I signed up for.”

  “Wait! A battery!” Joe’s eyes sparkled, and he opened his mouth to say more. Right then, the walls of the building flashed again, and the doors began to creak open. Joe shut his mouth but indicated that they would talk later. The humming started up, and soon, the scene from before played out. Two hundred people walked out, a Beast charged, and the two sides fought.

  “None of the survivors from the last group are here,” Alexis pointed out. Joe hadn't even thought to look for them. “Back to the highest level being seven.”

  This time, combat ended very differently. All of the humans were wiped out, and the Beast advanced on the building. The doors opened again, and Alexis pointed out two people in the crowd of about fifty that exited. “There’s our survivors.”

  Still, the group was unarmed, but now, the average level was twelve, and the Beast was weakened. A dozen humans died, but the rest shared the experience and grew stronger. Then they reentered the building, and the doors closed again. The Scout with them spoke in a harsh whisper, “It is time to leave. Every two hours, they flood out of the place of power and seek anything in the area. They are thorough.”

  They descended from the tree and made their way to the edge of the forest. Originally, they were going to go back into the Wolfman area, but the team had convinced the Wolfmen that they needed access to many things that weren't available in the current area. After the slow walk to the exit, one of the Scouts passed Joe a small object that fit on his wrist like a watch. The Scout spoke then, staring at Joe with hard, deadly eyes, “This will bring your party to our area if you return. I do not want to let you go, but The O’Baba has spoken. Do not…”

  The other Scout gripped his partner’s arm and pulled him into the woods, where they vanished. Joe started walking, knowing that if they were in the same situation… well, he might not listen to someone else. He’d fight anyone that might hurt his family. It was late evening when they got to the small shrine on the side of the dirt road, but from there, a single step pulled the entire team all the way back to the Pathfinder’s Hall at the low cost of the majority of their mana and stamina.

  As much as they all wanted to relax and come down from the constant stress of being in such a deadly area, the two-week time limit was nagging at all of them. Joe took a moment to fully explain the rest of his thought process for the attempt they would make on the place of power.

  “Guys, I found an… I’m not sure if it’s an enchantment or spell. Whatever. It converts a Core into a Mana Battery. I need someone to go out and find the highest-grade Core they can find, use the guild if needed. You know what? Make Jess do that. Ah… I’ll talk to her about the tasks we need completed actually, just so that I can answer any questions right away.” Joe paused, thinking about what he should say.

  “Right, so. Here is the plan. Please, please tell me if you come up with a better idea.” Joe looked around, meeting all their eyes. “This is what I need each of you to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Alrighty, Jess-a-mundo!” Joe's enthusiasm bounced harmlessly off the iron defenses of Jess’s single-track focus. “I have a few really important tasks for you. I need a couple Cores for testing purposes and one that is the most powerful that you can find. Use the guild for this if you can. They promised to fund our operation.”

  “Can do.” Jess whisked a note into a small notebook. Joe nodded approvingly; people were starting to take note when he spoke.

  “Great. Next, I need an update on finances, both for myself and for my party members. I don't know what they are getting paid or what I’m getting paid, and that needs to be fixed. What else…” Joe snapped his fingers. “Interviews. I need to hire a few people who have high mana pools. I don't care what level they are, but I can offer them pay, a class, housing, and stuff. They can keep their day jobs; I’ll just need them at various times. Put them on retainer.”

  “You’re just going to trust that I’ll pick out the right people?” Jess seemed surprised.

  “Yes, but also no,” Joe decided to clarify. “They’ll apply with you, but after you give the initial okay, I’ll do a second interview and see if we mesh. There will be a huge benefit to working with me, but there is often a lot of pain and failure. I need people that will only care about the great benefits. Most of the people I need right now are going to be part of my Ritualist Coven, but check around for people hoping to be clerics; I'm pretty sure I can get them that class too.”

  “What are you going to be doing while I do this?” Jess already seemed resigned to being overworked. Poor gal. “Where will you be?”

  “Only place you’ll be able to get to me is at the coffee shop. At all other times, I’m gonna be a little… hidden.” Joe replied evasively. “One last thing, I need a way to capture, hold, and transport a high-level, captured, Rare beast. See if that’s doable?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Jess looked at him with a twitching eyebrow. “Anything else?”

  “Not so much. You get the class you were after?” Joe’s personal question seemed to disarm her.

  “Oh. Yes. It took a bit, but… I’m training up some pertinent skills right now. Even found a class traine
r, though he keeps pretending to be a ranger.”

  “Gonna give me a hint?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Excellent. I’m off to achieve the improbable!” Joe pointed into the air and marched off, getting a laugh at his antics. Good. No need to be unapproachable! Joe only had a few days to make his goals come to life. Every member of their party had their tasks, and frankly, Joe felt that his personal requirements were quite a lot harder. The reason he hadn’t delved into the mana battery book thus far was that there was a lot of misinformation in it.

  He needed to compile the correct information, tinker with areas about why the creator of the process seemed to think this was important, and then turn the spell into a useful process. From there… well, there was plenty to do from there. This was one of the final steps needed in capturing the building. They needed a distraction, and they needed a way to take down the Hierophant. Joe knew that last chunk might be the actual difficult portion of this quest. The enemy was smart, and Joe had no real understanding of his capabilities. Joe hadn't even recognized some of those active effects.

  Entering the lower, hidden area of the Pathfinder’s Hall, Joe was fully secluded for the first time in days. It elicited a feeling of both relief and a longing for companionship. Maybe he would hire a bard to play music for him while he worked. Nah. None of the instruments here would work for making EDM or the various video game music he listened to in order to help him focus. A lute wasn't going to be able to beat silence.

  Joe got over to his desk and rifled through it until he found the Mana Battery manual. He took a deep breath and resigned himself to wasting a lot of gold on paper in the next few days. As planned, he started with compiling, he made sure that all the correct information among the various pages all went on a fresh sheet with plenty of space for more info to be added around it. The book was thick in comparison to most spell manuals, and as the info came together, Joe realized that his initial hunch about this was correct; this was an enchantment. He wasn't sure if everything was going to translate into a usable form, but all he could do at this point was try.

  Surprisingly, the information that was useless was the explanation of why the enchantment worked. That had some impact on the spell diagram that was in the book, making a few of the lines go from golden to a gray coloration. They weren't black—which indicated completely false—so it was likely that the lines would work in a limited fashion. To be included in the Mage’s College at all, the enchantment must have worked at least once.

  “You know what this means?” Joe scribbled at his paper excitedly. “I bet this diagram works perfectly on a certain type and shape of Core but not on all of them. That would make it succeed in some cases, and maybe work on others, but I bet they would be… unstable…”

  At that moment, Joe remembered the Archmage of the College. He had tried to use an unstable Core to destroy the city when it was obvious that he was going to lose. Was this the spell book he had used to create it? If Joe failed to enchant a Core properly… would it detonate and take a chunk of his surroundings with him? In that case, it would be better to do this off-site like a nuclear test. While he could potentially make a potent weapon… how did someone stabilize a Core that was going out of control? Better not risk it.

  “Let me see. This going here should work on trash or damaged Cores, but the higher density of power in other types would make this wobbly line go haywire, leading to an explosion.” Joe started picking apart that section of the diagram, poking and reshaping. “If I treat this portion as an open-ended equation, I should be able to compensate for higher-tier power throughput. The downside, obviously, is that there will be a loss in efficiency. I’m going to lose some of the potential, but I don't know at this point if it is one percent or eighty.”

  Joe cracked his neck and pulled out a fresh paper. His increased intelligence score was showing its usefulness; making spell diagrams was essentially a combination of discrete mathematics, calculus, and trigonometry. The difficulty was an order of magnitude more difficult to him than making a ritual, which was similar to using a programming language. Hard, yes. Of course. But creating a spell diagram was more similar to determining the breadboard layout of a CPU but first proving it with math so that you didn't blow up a facility.

  Though he was unsure what an intelligence score of seventy-five translated into in terms of IQ, the modifier of two-point-two-five told him that he was currently two and a quarter times as smart as the pre-Eternium Earth average. Joe smiled as he worked down the list of variables, angles, and power flow diagrams that would have made him run screaming when he first joined the game… and made alterations that fixed some of the issues. Still astonishing to him.

  He frowned as he made a line that wobbled and glared at his hand. Oh? It seemed that his hand was shaking. Low blood sugar? Must be it. Joe checked the time and realized that he had barely moved in fourteen hours. That needed to stop happening! He set down his quill with a sigh and walked to the surface. He needed food and a nap, but there had been an unexpected gain from his work.

  Complicated work success! Intelligence +1!

  Skill increase: Ritual Magic (Journeyman VIII).

  Training the body to withstand hunger, thirst, and ignore the need for sleep and bathroom breaks is unpleasant, but your outstanding focus can pull you through! Constitution +2!

  “That’s insane!” Joe looked at it again, and he had indeed gained three stat points just by working at this issue. He decided right there that he was going to have to reevaluate every step of this process to make sure it was done correctly. Perhaps he was still not treating this with the actual danger level it represented.

  You have made three choices within eight hours that averted disaster! Wisdom +1!

  Make that four stat points. Joe swallowed on a dry throat, then cast Cleanse to hydrate up. Were enchantments really so deadly and difficult? He should check in with Terra to see what she was getting out of her experience. She was trying to become an enchanter, right?

  Joe entered the mess hall, finding that it now had a pavilion over it instead of being an open-air picnic area. There was the guild food area as well as an entrepreneur who had opened a small restaurant. It was about the same size as a food truck and seemed to be doing well—if the number of people in line was any indication. Joe hoped they could stay in business as food shortages started to hit.

  He swallowed the tasteless standard fare that the guild was offering members, realizing why there were so many people uninterested in it—but it was filling and nutritious, and everything was secondary to coffee anyway. Joe looked up as Mike walked over, a gleam reflecting off his glasses. “Joe! There you are! I was hoping that I might get your assistance on a few construction projects.”

  “Hi, Mike! I was hoping to exchange contribution points for useful items! Whatcha got?” Joe enthusiastically stood and reached out a hand for a fist bump.

  Mike stuttered to a stop and looked pained. “We, ah, we’re still working on setting up a contribution shop…”

  “Oh, no problem.” Joe grinned wickedly, “Let’s talk about getting a few more buildings up better and faster than anyone else could do!”

  “Ugh. Yes, let’s talk,” Mike replied sourly, knowing he had been played. “Look, I’m gonna be straight with you. For some reason, the barracks you made is just… better than the ones we have been making. Better bonuses when in use, higher quality sleep… just better.”

  “I have a title. Any construction of a new structure will boost the building’s overall statistics and potential boosts by ten percent.” Joe nodded as Mike realized the potential of such a title. “Got it from setting up that beast.”

  Mike followed Joe’s thumb to see the towering egg-structure of the Pathfinder’s Hall. “I see. Well… please help us out. We need a whole lot of work done. We need houses, barracks, walls, storage facilities, sanitation, baths, sewage… everything. If we can make all of this with the bonuses that you provide, we will be able to make a stable ba
se, turn it into a town, and get the town to rank one a lot faster than we could otherwise.”

  “Rank one?” This was the first Joe had heard about town rankings.

  Mike nodded and started to explain, “We get certain bonuses as a guild for having a town under our control. While we own the land around us, we can't do too much to make use of it. Ranking up helps with that and allows us to petition for new and better building blueprints from the Kingdom’s Architect and Carpenter Guilds. No point in having a granary if we don't have grain fields, right? No point in a sewer system without points of collection like buildings or restrooms. We are stuck with latrines and such, which lowers morale over time.”

  “I see.”

  “Listen. We can't do too much, but… how about this.” Mike took a deep breath. “I know that you don't want to run a guild, but the amount of work you’ve already done to help us to this point has not gone unnoticed. If you can help us get to town level five, forgoing other rewards, we’ll give you a new position.”

  “I’m listening…”

  “At level five, we will have the option to choose which direction our guild grows. We decided that at that point, we will upgrade our guild into a Sect. This will change around the structure—a lot—and open up a new position. There will be ten spots for a ‘Guild Elder’. You get a say in the direction the guild grows if you want it, more pay, direct sponsorship of projects from the guild, and straight up a ton of respect. You will also be able to add or remove people from our guild—Sect at that point—so long as another Elder doesn’t contest the choice.”

  “Interesting,” Joe muttered, thinking on the decision. “Better me than someone I don't trust, and this would go a long way to clearing the air from when I quit the guild. Alright, Mike. Deal. I can't do this all day every day, so make a choice about which buildings you need, and I’ll try to do one a day.”

  “Deal.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight