Untapped ~ Chapter Twenty-Six!

“I'm starting with stabilizers, which even someone with a Novice-rank forging skill is able to make.” Joe grasped at the air, his aspect hammer manifesting in his hand as he settled in next to the anvil. “Since I'm going to be creating an Expert-ranked ritual, and I don't actually have the required skill level to do so, adding in stabilizers and such will probably help me keep it from exploding long enough to actually complete the diagram. Now, that means I need stabilizers at the rank of each of the circles, starting with three at the Novice, five at the Beginner…”

Carefully explaining each step of the process to his coven members—who to their credit listened with rapt attention while taking notes—Joe worked both on completing the task as well as boosting his teaching skill. He could practically see the moment each of them either earned Smithing Lore or leveled it up; something about the way they shifted in place, or maybe there was an echo of the energy of the system infusing their eyes for just a moment. 

As he lifted his hammer, his mouth constantly spouting information, Joe remembered how generous the system used to be when leveling up or gaining skills. It had been a thrilling experience, really sending electric, addictive tingles through the body. “Musta patched that. Too bad.”

“Wait, I missed what you just said!” Kirby looked up rather frantically from her notepad.

“Eh…” The Ritualist pretended to be very focused on his anvil, where a glowing blob sat in a cage of a perfectly aligned Ascendant Matrix. “Just that this will be somewhat different when you do it, since the materials you'll use are actual metals and the like. Now, I could just make this according to the template, but I have a Hammering Pattern that lets me boost the chance of success, so long as I’m saying a mantra. According to the description, I can use any kind of mantra. It just has to have some kind of repetitive beat, but since this is the first time I'm using it…”

A farmer stumbled at that moment, almost losing his balance while taking a few sharp steps toward Joe, the hundreds of pounds of stone he was hoisting on his shoulders dangerously close to falling on to the kneeling Ritualist. The bald man stared up at the too-close rock, which slowed and changed course as the farmer managed to regain control. 

“Uh… never mind. I'm going to repeat something probably not as dignified as I had planned.” The others chuckled nervously as Joe took a deep breath and began to chant, a single, slow-moving ritual circle appearing in the air above the blob of aspects and slowly shrinking, brightening for half a heartbeat at the same moment as Joe's hammer came down on it. “Don’t move too fast, I like my head. Dropping rocks that big makes people dead.”

It only took a few minutes for the first stabilizer to fully form out of the aspects, and by then, everyone was already sick of the mantra Joe had made up. Feeling he had made his point, the Ritualist casually tossed the triangle-shaped stabilizer to the side and started on the next one. “The metal is strong, a triangle feels right. Wide little base, pointy and light.”

Technically his mantra didn't need to rhyme, but it helped the words flow off his tongue effortlessly, letting him keep a steady beat as he slammed his hammer down in the center of the glowing circles that appeared, pleased that the Mantra of Metal had essentially turned his forging into a minigame. 

After a while, he was getting too into it, especially now that he was able to compete against himself, and this felt more like fun than work. It took Robert gripping his wrist as he was about to start on another triangle to make Joe blink and snap out of the trance he’d fallen into. 

“Sorry, it's just… how many of these do you really need?” 

Joe followed Robert’s pointed stare, a weak smile appearing on his face as he saw dozens of tiny triangles stacked neatly next to each other. “Ah, yeah, that should be plenty for all of us as we get used to using them in conjunction with our ritual combat quests.” 

The Ritualist blustered, trying not to lose any face in front of his trainees. “Why don't all of you take six of those to get yourselves started? You only need three when you’re casting a Novice circle, but two sets will let you leave one functioning as you get ready to activate the next one. Yeah… while you're doing that, I'll start on the Beginner-ranked version, and please feel free to stop me once I have fifteen or so. Ya know, since you guys don't really need those yet.”

Having made these extremely regularly on Jotunheim, Joe was familiar with the process of creating the forged item, so he powered through them for each of the ranks he needed. The triangles were replaced by flat squares for the Beginner-ranked version, then pyramids for the Apprentice, and finally cubes—Student ranked, and his current limit with the equipment he had on hand. “Eleven Student versions… should I make a second set, or is this good enough for now? Maybe just one or two more? In case one of them breaks and needs replacing?” 

“Do you know your eyes are dilated?” Kirby breezily pointed out as Joe licked his lips and started forming another blob of aspects to hammer. “I have to ask… since you left Midgard, when's the last time you did something that was just fun?”

“Oh, constantly.” Joe stared at his infernal flame-wreathed aspect hammer, staring in wide-eyed excitement as four ritual circles appeared above the blob of aspects resting on the anvil. “Hang on. Just one more, then I'll work on the tree.”

Each circle drifted independently, rotating in lazy orbits that only aligned for the briefest of moments. His pupils darted back and forth, tracking each of the circles as they came together. The hammer dropped, passing through each ring in unison, only to slam into the blob of aspects. It was obvious that this would be a serious challenge for someone with far lower Perception, Constitution, and Dexterity. But for Joe? 

It was just fun. 

Perfect strike!

Each time the tiny system message floated up in the corner of his vision, he felt a little thrill. When the ritual circles vanished, he immediately frowned and tossed the cube to the side, ready to start again, only for two of his coven members to grip his wrist and pull him to a stop. 

Before he could complain, Hannah was standing in front of him with an excited look that gave him pause. “Joe! Now you get to make the taglock tree, and that should get you working at this for a long time, right?”

His lips parted in a tiny ‘o’ shape as he nodded along, turning the page of the manual over to where the little tree was waiting for him. He barely even heard Kirby mutter to the others behind him, “If I hear ‘Cubes, cubes, for these rubes, cube, cube, square forge bloob’ one more time-”

“The worst part is that it's catchy when he’s hammering at the same time,” Robert was complaining as Joe began swinging again. “Cube bloob. Rube cube. Slippery-”

“Let's stop rhyming and go get these set up. Looks like the platform’s ready.” Big_Mo firmly interrupted, dragging the others out of Joe's immediate vicinity. 

Now firmly in the grip of his efforts, Joe rapidly constructed the central pole of the taglock tree. There was a momentary disappointment as he started working on the first needle, only for it to form on the first perfect strike. But then he realized there were nine hundred and ninety-nine more, and his excitement returned in full force…

…and his mantra shifted to ‘needle deedle dee-dle’ to the beat of a turtle-stomping plumber.

These strikes were more about finesse than they were strength—gentle taps that resulted in a needle somehow manifesting with the strike, instead of needing to be pulled from molten metal and shaped. In under ten minutes, he was finishing the tree, debating internally whether he should intentionally smash it with the hammer so he could start again or just move on to the next step. Hearing his coven members returning, he reluctantly finished the project and pushed back from the anvil, promising himself some more relaxing work in the near future.

“The tree is done, the stabilizers are… set up? Great work.” Joe stood, grabbing the tree at the base and carefully avoiding each of the needles as he whispered under his breath, “Needle deedle- *Ahem*. Let's get going!”

Going to the center of the new, near perfectly smooth platform, the Ritualist crouched down and created an Ascendant Matrix, dissolving the platform and creating a perfect square underground where they could place the ritual while leaving it in an easily defensible spot. Thankfully, he only had to adjust the positioning of the Novice and Beginner stabilizers, as the ritual didn't care if they were in the same ‘Z’ plane, only the ‘X’ and ‘Y’. 

At least, it didn't matter at this rank, as they didn't have stabilizers for the higher-rarity circles they would need to take into account. Gathering his coven members in a horseshoe pattern around himself, Joe began drawing in the air, painstakingly slowly—for him—as he verbally explained his reasoning for their benefit.

“Believe it or not, even if the Novice circle is the simplest of them all, putting it just so is critical for the functionality of the others. Technically, it doesn't matter so much until you get to the Journeyman rank, but why form bad habits?” The first circle formed without almost any effort on his part, and he pointed out the exact alignment he needed them to focus on. 

He did the same for the second, third, and even fourth—where he paused to explain more than the math. “Now you can see why we need space. Look at this, and it should be obvious how the ritual rotating around itself is critical.”

With his off hand, Joe traced the sympathetic links between the sigils and equations packed into each and every one of the ritual circles. “Look at how these connect. If I go from out to in, it’s a clear, linear set of instructions. Do this, then this, then this, followed by this, or do only this, if that fails. Tell me, what would happen if we bypassed this sigil, and instead connected to the alternate line of instruction?”

The others, though trying to follow the logic behind what he was saying, eventually had to give up—the circles quickly became too advanced for their skill levels. Kirby tried for the longest of all of them and had the blood flowing from her ears, nose, and eyes to prove it. She pushed on so long that Joe started getting seriously concerned for her and decided to interrupt her thinking and just explain. 

“Here's the thing. Think of these sigils as either a set of instructions or perhaps a couple of words, if you don't want to think in math terms. But! If I spin the ring and flip it around, not only does it invert the sigil in relation to the others—making the outer ring have a different meaning all by itself as it connects to the others—it also generates a completely unrelated effect.”

He moved to the next ring in. “Look here. Putting this on a tilted axis creates an abbreviated set of instructions meant to decipher these two rings, allowing them to skip a step in the process, if it’s required at the moment. It’s mainly a power saving feature, at least for this particular line. At five rings, these words and conditions intersect and combine in new ways, not forming magical commands but sentences and conditional logic.” 

Flashing a smile at them, Joe casually added, “I know that it's a long way off, but At the Master rank, getting this in place is essentially as complex as writing out the entire instruction manual of getting a rocket off the planet and landing it on the moon. Then bring it back. As for Grandmaster? Well. Even I'm going to have to wait and see what that looks like.”

He took the time to answer their questions for a few minutes then held up a hand. “Since none of you are able to create Journeyman-rank diagrams, I'm going to focus on just finishing it and the next ring as quickly as possible. Try to keep an eye on what I'm doing, and I’ll try my best to walk you through it as I'm going.”

After another hour of grueling focus, Joe completed the final Sigil of the fifth ring with a flourish. Giving himself a momentary breather, the Ritualist did his best to ignore the sweat trickling from his temples. Thanks to Stoic Constitution, his hands remained firm and steady, and his Neutrality Aura took care of keeping him hydrated while healing his cramping fingers. 

Steeling himself, Joe got back to work and pushed into the next ring. Almost immediately, his inscription tool shifted ever so slightly out of position as a strong gust of wind blew through the area, and the newly forming circle began to whine. Mana surged, welling out of the broken line at a frequency that warned of impending meltdown.

…Bang. Blast. Detonation. Eruption. 

Joe jerked his hand in the other direction as the magic whispered into his mind, his inscription tool drinking in the mana and aspects he had just written out—the new effect of his Somatic Ritual Casting skill coming into effect for the first time. It allowed him to undo a line he’d drawn within half a second of putting it down, and the ring restabilized, crackling pressure smoothing away as the noise faded, and the magic harmonized with itself once more.

Magical Synesthesia (Student II → Student III).

“System,” Joe ever-so-calmly stated as his hands continued tracing lines through the air. “You know better than to interrupt me in the middle of something like this. That was very rude of you.”

The notification faded away, replaced by a faint, non-distracting light in the bottom-right corner of his field of vision. Joe continued working, twice more needing to undo some line he had just drawn or recalculate an equation he’d incorrectly input a variable into. But, as the fourth hour since starting the layer came to a close, the Ritualist completed the circle and stepped away with a sigh of relief. He watched with great pride as it stabilized and remained in place without his will holding it there. “Got it in one.”

The system also noted his success, rewarding him lavishly. Joe could only think that perhaps it was feeling guilty.

Somatic Ritual Casting (Journeyman VII → Journeyman IX). Wow! You created a ritual an entire tier above your skill level. Keep at it, and you'll be an official Expert in no time! 

“Now we just need to power it up.” He froze in place, eyes flicking to his heavily capped mana pool. “Know what? Before we do that, maybe we round up some volunteers.”

Seeing as they needed everyone in the guild to come and prick their finger on the tiny pine tree anyway… as people formed a long line to poke the tree and get poked in return, it was easy enough to snag seventy-one people—including himself and his coven—to act as power sources. Together, they spread out the mana draw of activating the ritual, and soon it was humming along, the rings rapidly building up speed.

While Big_Mo supervised the remaining guild members to make sure they actually bled on the taglock tree, Joe and the others stared at the active ritual, trying to see if they could learn anything else. 

To help them along, the bald Ritualist did his best to point at interesting features. “There! See how the third and fifth rotated at the same speed for two full seconds? When they do that, they never form more than one phrase. Seems stagnant, yeah? But right after that, the fifth shifts to moving just a hair faster. Because of that, they’re composing new instructions with each pass and stabilizing every seventh second as they come into alignment.” 

Letting out a low whistle, Taka stared at what looked like nothing more than a floating ball of glowing energy to his senses. “Going to have to get a whole bunch more levels before I see what you're seeing, Joe. That's not just math, it's magical math. Angry math.”

Just then, another person bled on the tree, and the entire configuration shifted in a way that was so subtle even Joe almost didn't notice—only the golden line of light that suddenly extended from the orb to the farmer letting him track it. “This is so cool… I can't wait to get you guys to the level where we can theorize on this together.” 

Quest updated: Student Reductionist II. Unique crafts created: 4/5.

Class Quest complete: Apprentice Reductionist V. You didn't just complete this quest, you did it with Verve. Sorry, no extra benefits just because you’re being extra. 

Reward: Ritual pamphlet of Area Defense (5 rituals).

Glancing down at the five ritual diagrams that had just appeared in his hands, Joe double checked to make sure that was the end of that particular quest line, then allowed himself a moment of relaxation and triumph. “I love it when I get rewards for things I’d completely forgotten about.”