by Dakota Krout
“That’s awesome.” Alexis’s eyes shone in wonder even as Bard looked disgusted. The Skald held his tongue though, much to Joe’s relief. “What do you need us for, then?”
“Well, I need people to help me activate the ritual. Adding the extra effect onto the ritual tripled the amount of mana needed to activate it. It would cost three thousand mana normally, but with me leading the ritual we can reduce it. Nineteen point five percent of fifteen hundred… two-ninety-two point five. Add on coalescence and mana manipulation… so minus twenty-eight percent…” Joe put down his chalk and looked up. “It’ll cost eight hundred and sixty-nine mana, then we will need to add in a thousand mana to give it enough power to dig.”
“You are out of your mind! I have four hundred mana total,” Alexis cried out at the astronomical sum Joe quoted.
“Two fifty,” Bard grunted in agreement when Alexis spoke.
“So six hundred fifty extra to work with.” Joe cracked his knuckles. “I can invest the points for the main event on my own… how fast can I regenerate that mana?” He looked over his status sheet. “Ten point six three per second. So we can do this if the entire ritual takes at least thirty seconds. That’s… manageable. I think we can do this!”
“What can we expect while this is happening?” Alexis nervously looked over the dried bloodstains on the wood.
“Machines!” Bard muttered before beginning to snicker softly.
“You say something, Bard? No? Alright. Um, well, you will start to feel suction from your mana; just do your best to keep it in your channels, and you’ll be fine. It’ll take all of your mana, so you will feel pretty… drained.” Joe couldn’t think of a better word to describe the sensation. “If I screw it up it might hurt a little, but it’s nothing I can’t fix. Any questions?”
“So many.” Bard crossed his arms. “What are channels, first of all.”
“Oh my gosh, I was just going to ask that!” Alexis beamed at Bard and tapped his arm playfully before looking away with a mortified expression on her face. She was a grown woman for goodness’ sake!
“No channels yet? Yikes, maybe we should postpone this… but then you’ll have less mana…” Joe’s brow furrowed and he ran a hand over his shiny head. “Mana channels appear to be a way to improve access to mana and make it so that your magical skills cost less. Talk to Terra if you want the skill, but I should warn you that the two skills she’ll teach you will drop your total mana by thirty percent.”
Alexis nodded, apparently over her embarrassment or hiding it well. “I’ll ask her about it. What happens if we don’t have the channels?”
“The total mana depletion will hit you like a truck,” Joe stated frankly. “It’ll suck for a little while.”
Bard shrugged after a drawn-out moment. “At least ya warned us. Ah don’ fancy comin’ back here to yer house of horrors again; let’s do this.”
When Joe glanced at Alexis; she nodded as well. “Great, thank you both. I need you to stand here, and you go… here.” Joe positioned the two of them around the ritual, walking over to the other side of the diagram to form an isosceles triangle. “Perfect, now, when the ritual gets started it is very important that you don’t say anything. This rank of ritual magic requires chanting, and incorrect words at the wrong time could make it… explode. Here we go!”
“When you say explode-” Alexis began fearfully, only to be cut off as Joe clapped and started pouring mana into the ritual diagram.
As per usual, the first and innermost circle began accepting the mana. Joe’s mana poured out at a manageable pace, and he remained calm as the flow subsided momentarily. The second ritual circle lit up, and the pull on Joe’s mana doubled in intensity. Having experienced this before, he simply breathed deeply and chanted calmly. His mana channels had been forcibly altered by his time in the Mage’s College, so this level of throughput was easily handled.
The other two were watching him, waiting for something other than a light show to happen. Joe braced himself, wincing and nearly faltering in his chant as the third circle began drawing power. He would have lost control of his mana, but the bonus spell stability from his mana manipulation skill saved him from lighting up like a roman candle. Mana poured from him in a torrent, the connection between himself and the diagram becoming visible to the naked eye. Moments before his mana pool dropped below five percent… the ritual was completed.
Joe stood in his designated spot, heaving in great gulps of air as his mana slowly regenerated. His eyes went round as he saw the next portion begin to activate. “Crap, it’s only been fifteen seconds…!”
Bard yelped as the ritual connected to his mana pool. He slid to his knees as a torrent of power was yanked out of him over four seconds, and his nose began bleeding freely. Alexis almost ran over to him, but luckily for all of them, the ritual connected to her at that moment. The same process repeated itself, but the bleeding was far worse for her. Her body wasn’t up to the task of releasing so much power in such a short time, so she began bleeding from her eyes and ears as well.
“It’s only been twenty-four seconds!” Joe braced himself as the power draw flipped back to him. All the ritual needed right now was a collection of mana; it didn’t need to flow into specific channels, diagrams, or in any fancy maneuvers. What this meant to Joe was that mana could leave his body as fast as it could be collected. By the time the ritual had all of the mana it needed from them, they had each been forced to pay in health points while their mana regenerated. Alexis seemed half dead while Bard simply seemed profoundly angry. Joe was on the ground wheezing, trying to generate enough mana to heal himself before he bled to death.
Ritual created: Unnamed. Would you like to activate this ritual? Yes / No.
Joe exhaustedly selected ‘no’. The option to name the ritual appeared, and he waved that off as well.
“What tae abyss was tha’?” Bard snarled at Joe. The Ritualist waved him off, still wheezing, so Bard threw his hands in the air and strode over to Alexis. “Tae baw’s on tae slates, ahm oot.”
“I’m… *gasp*… so sorry! *Gasp*. Please don’t go!” Joe managed to speak. “It went way faster than I expected, and then it kept leaking mana because we lost spell stability! Then it took more mana to restabilize. If I didn’t generate a huge amount of mana that would have definitely killed us.”
“This had better have worked because I’m never doing this sort of thing again,” Alexis threatened furiously as she tried to get blood out of her hair before it dried.
Joe sat up, groaning in pain as his mana rapidly regenerated. As his power returned so too did rational thought. “It worked. If it hadn’t… actually, I’m not sure. I’ve never failed a ritual. I think dying is likely?”
“Never again!” Alexis stated harshly.
“Please don’t say that!” Joe begged her, eyes wide and hands clasped in front of himself. “This was a mistake; I completely overestimated myself. I should have had another person at the minimum for this or a contingency such as a mana potion. This was worse than any other time anyone has helped me with a ritual.”
Alexis hesitated and wavered but didn’t rescind her comment. “It had better have been worth it.” She stalked toward the door, growling lightly.
Bard stared after her, a smile slowly spreading on his face. “Ah think ah like her. See ye at tae teleportin’ spot. Bring snacks. Some booze wouldn't go amiss either.” He waved nonchalantly back at Joe as he followed Alexis out of the building.
Joe carefully walked to the center of the ritual diagram after they left. Very cautiously, he picked up the small item that had been the focus of the ritual. The needle–the taglock–was humming and vibrating in his hand hard enough to be painful, so he placed it in his storage ring and followed his teammates out with a smile on his face. “Totally worth it. Almost positive.”
Joe trailed after the rest of his group, thinking hard on the next things he needed to do. As they approached the town square, Joe almost slapped himself. He had forgotten to te
ll Aten about the new teleportation point! He pulled out a piece of paper and quickly wrote out a note, sealing it with a bit of mana. Joe flagged down a courier and paid three silver to make an urgent delivery to his guild leader. He gave access privileges to Aten as well as permissions for the guild leader to allow others to use the travel locations.
Looking up at his impatiently waiting team, Joe realized that he hadn’t explained anything that he had been doing. Bleh. Bad habits really unbefitting a leader. He was getting too used to the lone wolf mentality. “Sorry all, I needed to send a letter to Aten before we could go. Everyone ready?”
“We were, but Jaxon just noticed a slouching lute player and ran after him,” Alexis responded archly.
Panic followed by resignation flashed across Joe’s face. “Have the guards gone after him yet?”
“Naw tha’ we can see. Yons a right chancer.” Bard chuckled as he watched Jaxon at a distance. He pointed him out to Joe. “Ah don’ mind if he busts tha’ man up a wee bit though. He’s ah mean cuss. Slaps puppies around when he thinks naw one’s watchin.”
Alexis’s head whipped around, and she stared at him in shock. “Are you being serious?”
Bard coughed lightly and flushed a bit. “It’s… it’s jus’ a saying. I’ll go get Jaxon back here.” Alexis and Joe waited awkwardly until Bard came back, dragging Jaxon along with him. Joe looked out into the crowd and saw what he had been expecting: guards were beginning to swarm the area. He was pretty sure he knew who they were after.
“Time to go!” He grinned nervously and accessed the fast-travel point. When all of his teammates accepted the invitation, they instantly vanished from the city without fanfare. Also without being arrested. Perks.
~ Chapter Sixteen ~
Instead of going back to the small town right away, Joe had asked the others to accompany him to the mine so they could activate the ritual. There had been some minor hesitation from Alexis, but the others quickly decided to go with him. It was a short walk to their destination now that they knew the way, and barely fifteen minutes later, they were standing at the entrance to the mine.
“So… how does this work? It seems quite interesting, but I haven’t seen anything like it before.” Jaxon followed Joe a bit deeper into the mine.
“Well, the ritual will activate and do what it was designed to do.” Joe shrugged helplessly. “It is similar to creating a machine that has a singular purpose, like passing the butter. Very simple stuff, at least until the higher levels of rituals when I can hopefully make versatile rituals that would do intricate tasks. The difference between a single purpose machine and a… car, for example.”
“How exciting!” Jaxon watched curiously as Joe got to the approximate center of the mine and set up the ritual focus he had been carrying in his ring. Alexis and Bard rounded the corner, having decided that they wanted to see the activation of the ritual they had nearly died to create.
“Hey, guys!” Joe waved happily. “Ready for this? It should move pretty fast once it’s going.”
“Go for it!” Bard pronounced in a grand, ringing tone. Joe gave him a thumbs up and activated the ritual. A bit of light was released and a high pitched whine filled the area as the stone beneath the ritual focus was shoved apart.
Multi-stage Ritual: ‘Unnamed’ activated! Stage one: This ritual will dig until it runs out of mana or finds a target. Any excess mana will be used to grant extra effectiveness to the second stage of this ritual. If no target is found, the ritual will pause until mana is supplied. If 24 hours elapses without an influx of at least 500 points of mana, the ritual will destroy itself. Stage two: This ritual will apply the effects of ‘Gravedigger’s requiem’ to the target, boosted by any remaining mana from stage one.
“Wow, that’s getting deep pretty fast.” Alexis held a torch above her head and stared down the hole as stone was ground up and compressed against the wall.
Jaxon looked around at the others, then cleared his throat. “That’s what she said. No one else thought that?”
Alexis ignored him. “Joe, have you thought of using this portion of the ritual for more… mundane things? For instance, this might be really useful for making wells in town or something. Get reputation by improving quality of life or some such.”
Joe blinked owlishly. No, he hadn’t considered that, but now a whole slew of business options were appearing in his head. Once again, he was startled by the transition Alexis underwent when they were in a dark space. She seemed to lose her bashfulness, becoming calculating and focused. “That’s an awesome idea! Actually… there are a bunch of rituals that I’ve never been able to find a purpose for that might be intended for that sort of thing. I’ve been looking more at combat utility… but…”
Before he could finish his statement, the whine from rock splitting became the horrendous screech of tortured metal. They all clapped their hands to their ears and looked at Joe. He motioned that they should go to the exit, then looked down the hole to see what was happening. The ritual had dug almost forty feet straight down by this point, which should be an indication of how powerful it was. With his Darkvision ability he would have been able to see the bottom quite easily, but right now there was no need for that skill.
At the bottom of the hole was a brilliantly glowing area full of molten metal. This ritual, which had descended five stories through rock in a matter of moments, was barely moving through the thick metal alloy it had reached. Joe certainly had mixed emotions about this; on one hand, he could likely consider this proof that they had found a Rock Monster. On the other hand… how long would it take to get through that thick plate of metal? How dense and strong was it?
Joe looked at the active ritual and was pleased to see that he could tell how much power was remaining. To get a good reading on it, he watched the ritual and took notes for ten minutes. So far, it had gone through four hundred and sixty-seven of its allocated one thousand mana, but the ritual had slowed its drain considerably. Now it was only losing about four mana every three minutes, which should mean a loss of about twenty mana an hour. Unless something changed, Joe had lots of time before the power was used up.
Touching the ritual, Joe channeled mana into it until it had returned to a full thousand points. After doing so, he walked outside and healed his ears. He didn’t want tinnitus, and judging by the ringing in his ears, he was close to the danger zone. Looking around at the expectant faces, he plastered as realistic a smile on his face as he could manage. “Definitely a Rock Monster.”
“Excellent!!” Jaxon pumped his fist into the air. “How soon do we have before your magic kills it?”
When Joe didn’t respond, the others began giving him dark looks. Had he lied to them about this spell thing? Alexis had to stop herself from reaching for her oversized crossbow as Joe’s face flushed and twitched. Finally, he spoke in a rush. “I have no idea! None at all. All I know is that it’s going and should continue digging until tomorrow night.”
He tensed up, waiting for them to be angry or leave his group but was surprised once again as they simply nodded, calmed down, and moved on. Alexis started walking away, speaking over her shoulder as she strolled along. “Back to the town, then?”
Seeing Joe’s reaction to Alexis’s words, Bard thumped him on the back. “What? Just ‘cause ye can’t kill a big ol’ beastie in ah few seconds, ye thought we’d be peeved?”
“I guess I expected that you would all want to see results right away,” Joe admitted as they walked or, in his case, skipped. He still needed to add his jump modifier onto his movement if he wanted to be able to keep up with even the slowest of his teammates.
Bard snorted while Jaxon replied, “You’ve been reading too many newspapers. No matter what the media says, people don’t actually demand instant gratification. That’s already intensely improbable, and we all play this game and know what it takes to do big things. I, for one, am impressed that you may be able to reach the monster at all. I had no chance of doing it.”
“Beside
s, if we can’t complete the quest…” Alexis trailed off momentarily, taking a deep breath to settle her nerves before continuing, “Oh well, I guess? We were up for quitting on it yesterday. You weren’t, but we certainly were.”
Joe felt touched and was even more pleased with his current team. They were proving to be good people. Bard coughed into his hand and broke the peaceful feeling with his next words, “By the way, how soon do we start getting paid?”
Terror filled Joe as he remembered that he was in charge of making sure the team had income, and his resolve firmed into steel. “As soon as we finish the quests in this town!” Going door-to-door after returning to the small town proved fairly fruitless. Though they gained a few minor quests and were usually able to complete them within a few minutes, most of the quests in town were locked behind what Bard called the ‘reputation wall’. Until they had a high reputation with the town, they could only get to the quests they really needed by smashing the wall with a level of charisma they simply didn’t have.
As night began to fall, the dejected group teleported back to Ardania. Joe was exhausted, and from the look of them, the others weren’t doing that great either. He made a snap decision, trusting his instincts from long years in the military. “Look, guys, we did a whole heck of a lot today. Heck, between all of us we completed twenty-six quests today!”
“An’ gained ah grand total o’ three hundred and twenty-four experience apiece,” Bard chimed in unhelpfully.
“I delivered almost thirty letters today before I found out that the villagers were illiterate and sending an empty envelope back and forth just to make fun of us,” Alexis spat furiously.
