Untapped ~ Chapter Twenty-Two!

Three days later, Joe stared hungrily at the slowly roasting meat he was twirling over the campfire. “Looks like it's just about done…”

Grabbing the stick, he began to pull it off the heat, only for it to instantly blacken and crumble into charcoal. Caught somewhere between hunger and betrayal, the Ritualist threw it on the ground and let out a frustrated snarl. “Why is cooking considered crafting?”

“Maybe you should stick to cooking up alchemy potions, like you have been the last couple of nights? Here, this was made by someone not hated by food.” Taka handed over a pan of fried potatoes and wild onions. “How long have you thought you could cook? ‘Cause I have to say, it’s pretty obvious you can't."

“I have no idea!” Joe accepted the offer with a long sigh of defeat. “Do you know how often I've had to cook since I got my specialization? Never! I've either eaten only prepared foods, travel rations, raw ingredients, or bought food from restaurants or stalls. But I actually can't cook? I don't even know how I would go about gaining the skill using aspects!”

“Aspect of the burnt offering.” Big_Mo elbowed Robert and jerked his chin at the smoldering remnants.

Taka rubbed his chin. “That could actually work as the name of a barbecue place. It would fit right in back in town.”

Surprisingly enough, Joe’s abject failure in this particular arena helped to put the rest of his team at ease. Although terribly frustrated, Joe appreciated how they immediately began to tease him—it was clearly meant in good fun, and it was nice to see that they were warming up to him again. 

“Here, protein that doesn't puff away as powder when you go to take a bite.” Hannah added a filet of smoked fish to the potatoes, sending him a winning smile. “Hey, want to know something interesting about human interactions?”

“Um, sure?” Joe responded around a mouthful of piping hot taters, trying to hide the chewed bits with a hand.

“Do you know that the best way to build trust with someone is not to do a bunch of things for them?” Hannah correctly interpreted Joe's raised eyebrow. “They say that allowing other people to do things for you is the only way to quickly build trust. When someone invests in helping you, they start to care more about what happens to you. It creates a bond… so if you want loyalty and trust, you don't need to only show strength.”

She pointed at his plate. “Being able to hand you this fish? Do you have any idea how much I hate eating fish by now? But I've gotten really good at making it taste awesome. Now… I guess I am not as mad about it? I feel like I'm finally able to contribute to the group, even if it's only a little.”

“Same,” Taka called over. “I mean, except that I've never hated potatoes.”

Not quite sure how to respond, but having an excuse for not speaking right away thanks to everyone quietly eating their meals, Joe dipped his chin in a thoughtful nod. The silence lingered, and though it was comfortable, he soon decided to pull open the notifications he’d been waiting to open until they were settled for the evening. 

Once they had started hunting in earnest, the last traces of humanity left far behind them, the Ritualist had been pleased to find that some of his oldest quests had brightened and reactivated, no longer grayed out and all but invisible in his quest sheet. 

More out of a sense of nostalgia than any need for the reward, Joe had at long last completed his ‘Playing Your Fake Role III’ quest. When they had been rushing by monsters, he had acted as a distraction, jumping out of the way of their swipes and chomps at the last moment, moving in unpredictable ways as he bounced around the small battlefield. With his capabilities, it was practically child's play to dodge the attacks or vanish into the canopies with a powerful Omnivault as his coven members finally activated their ritual circles and took the beasties down.

Quest complete: Playing Your Fake Role III. Reward: Null.

You are too powerful for any Characteristic points to be added with this low level of a quest. No experience can be awarded. The associated skill is too strong to be upgraded. Assigning follow-up quest… nope. You have surpassed the bounds of system-guided progression for this level of quest. The training wheels have long since come off. Here, have a cookie.

Joe glanced at the chocolate chip cookie which had materialized in his hand, blinking a few times in consternation as he felt a hint of disappointment. “Abyss, I thought it might scale up and help me push further.” 

Another glance at his quest sheet showed that almost all of his quests for Midgard had just vanished, leaving behind only quests which gave reputation upon completion, as well as ‘The Other Three’, which had been denoted as extremely high difficulty when he had first gained it. 

Trying to shake off the feeling, he glanced around at his small group, who were now chatting animatedly. Wanting to have something noteworthy to contribute to the conversation, he checked the next notification and allowed himself a moment of triumph.

Quest complete: Mastering Ritual Combat I. 

1) Use 500 Novice ritual combat circles in live combat. (500/500)

2) Use 300 two-discipline ritual combat circles in live combat. (300/300)

3) Use 200 three-discipline ritual combat circles in live combat. (200/200)

Reward: +6 to skill: Enchanted Ritual Circles. +50 blank Tokens.

Ritual tokens: These blank tokens are each a perfectly round, 1 inch in diameter smooth stone, with an internal crystalline structure which makes them ideal for enchanting. 

Quest gained: Mastering Ritual Combat II. This is the second of five Ritualist-tower generated chain quests consisting of increasing difficulty, which will help you determine your final specialization for combat-based rituals.

This first quest was meant to help you gain an understanding of your personal combat prowess, and teach you the tools required for fusing the various sub-disciplines of ritual magic for the purposes of combat. This second quest is meant to widen your horizons further.

1) Use 300 two-discipline Novice ritual combat circles in live combat. (46/300)

2) Use 200 three-discipline Novice ritual combat circles in live combat. (2/200)

3) Use 500 Beginner ritual combat circles in live combat. (72/500)

4) Use 300 two-discipline Beginner ritual combat circles in live combat. (33/300)

5) Use 200 three-discipline Beginner ritual combat circles in live combat. (0/200)

6) Use 100 four-discipline Beginner ritual combat circles in live combat. (0/200)

Reward: 1) Upon completion, choose one of the skills used in the creation of any of the rituals you created to receive: +10 to the skill if it is currently in the Beginner rank OR+8 to the skill if it is in the Apprentice rank OR +6 to the skill if it is in the Student rank OR +4 to the skill if it is in the Journeyman rank OR +2 to the skill, if it is in the Expert rank.

2) Gain a two-circle flourish along the cuffs of your Ritualist Tower robes, denoting you as a Beginner combatant. The circles will be embroidered in silver thread and will shimmer faintly in direct light. Though almost entirely ornamental in design, your portion of the spoils increases by 1% from successful combat challenges on behalf of the Ritualist Tower.

Progress toward the next quests in this quest line, such as using higher-ranked rituals, will be tracked but locked until the current quest is completed. Additional rewards and profession opportunities may be unlocked based on your performance. 

Joe glanced at his gains, which had been slowly yet steadily increasing—especially since he had been making sure to activate his Knowledge spell the instant it came off cooldown. There was only one major problem… 

Alchemical Rituals (Alchemical Rituals Apprentice V → Apprentice IX).

Enchanted Ritual Circles (Student II → Student VIII).

Alchemical Lore (Journeyman VI → Journeyman IX).

Architectural Lore (Journeyman VII → Journeyman IX)

Calculus and Number Theory (Journeyman IV → Journeyman IX).

Celestial-Arcane Interaction Lore (Journeyman III → Journeyman IX).

Enchanting Lore (Journeyman VIII → Journeyman IX).

Knowledge (Journeyman VI → Journeyman IX).

…He had managed to bring all of his current Lore skills up to the peak of the Journeyman rank, but his Knowledge spell hadn't rolled over into the Expert ranks. In other words, unless he gained additional Lore skills or had a moment of enlightenment that pushed the individual skills up a tier, he was stuck. Still, there was no need to be down about it, at least not at this moment.

“Good news, everyone!” Joe firmly placed his fork on his plate, which was already sparkling clean, thanks to his Neutrality Aura getting rid of the final few scraps. “I have the details for the next quest in the line, and you'll be pleased to know that, while it is a lot more difficult to complete, there are still a ton of Novice rank rituals you need to complete. In other words, don't feel wasteful because you’re overdoing it with one version right now. It’ll still be tracked, counted, and useful for the next one.”

Big_Mo seemed especially relieved, as he had been practically unable to hit his targets to this point without first adding a drop of their blood to his rituals. It was only after Joe had seen how the alchemical reagents seemed to slip off his circle, or a gust of wind would cause him to miss perfect placement of it that he had started to appreciate what it meant when his alchemical rituals skill stated that it gave him a ‘twenty-nine percent chance to use alchemical components correctly in the creation of ritual circles’. Until now, he had assumed that meant something along the lines of creating the potions and such themselves. 

Frankly, it made Joe question each of the times he had failed dramatically with his own ritual diagrams—was it truly his failure, was the world conspiring against him because his skill levels hadn't been high enough, or was it somewhere in between? “We've been pushing hard the last few days, and I'd say we must be getting pretty close to the edge of the kingdom.”

“Probably.” Robert pointed in the distance behind them with his fork. “Haven't seen so much as a trail in the last hundred miles or so, let alone a proper road. Gotta love that mobile barrier you walk around in—you running face-first into stinging nettles is better than a machete for clearing a path.”

“It's because the hole I make is person-shaped,” Joe offhandedly explained, the corners of his lips twitching as the group shared a laugh. “Look, I'd appreciate it if everyone would keep an eye out for anywhere out here you think would make for a really good… let's call it a town. A big town. Natural resources, water, whatever. I've got a land claim token I'd like to use, and if there's something that’s just perfect, I'd love to lock it down before someone else does.”

The night passed quickly, with Joe focusing his efforts on creating Novice substrates in his cauldron while simultaneously devoting some of his mental energy to keeping his Ritual Orbs floating around the camp full of his sleeping coven members. Whenever a creature came too close, one of his floating weapons would seek it out and leave behind a flattened mess before resuming its orbit. A few hours after midnight, he finished for the evening, woke Taka and Kirby up to have them keep watch, with bleary instructions to trade off with the others each hour until dawn.

The following morning started gray and quiet, the canopy above their heads gently allowing the light drizzle falling from above to drip through. They sat by the fire for a short while, each person warming up and enjoying a hot cup of coffee, thanks to Mate, who was absolutely thrilled to provide a great start to the day for as many people as possible. 

“Num-nuum!” the elemental spoke in a sing-song voice when Kirby tried to turn down the mug being offered to her. When the elemental started waving its arms back and forth, dancing in place, her willpower failed. Seemingly quite proud of himself, Mate looked around with a pleased expression before sinking into the Ebonsteel mug tethered to Joe’s belt with a happy *burble*.

The group had grown used to early starts, and now their movements were confident as they packed, put out the fire, and followed the path Joe generated by sprinting through the long grass and shrubs. No longer was anyone complaining about leaving behind their routines, as the allure of once again gaining levels and completing quests broke through their passive contentment with the status quo.

“I think I figured something out,” Taka called to Joe as they caught up to him. “You know how I like to push the limits of the rituals?”

“You mean how you like to introduce unknown variables but try to console yourself by doing math before you activate them?” The bald Ritualist motioned for his coven member to continue, even as rain sloshed off of his Exquisite Shell and as-ever failed to wet his skin.

“Yeah. Check this out. Remember how you asked if I could make the overcharging of the Elemental Burst repeatable?” Lifting the ritual diagram they had all grown intimately familiar with over the last few days, Taka pointed at a slight alteration he’d made. “Look, if we make it so this sigil is serrated instead of a smooth curve on the circle-”

He explained the formula he’d come up with, using the words ‘cosine’ and ‘tangent’ far too many times in quick succession for comfort. “Then what we should get when we add the elixir is a burst of energy, the first acting like normal, while the second shifts in on all sides like a piston to compress it further. That should increase the range fairly significantly or deal a lot more damage if the target is in regular range.”

Instead of pushing forward with the conversation, Joe did what he had wanted to start making into a habit—he gathered the other coven members around and had them look for issues on the circle. At a glance, he could see at least seven areas which could be improved immediately, but he held his tongue while the others offered their own critiques. After all, there was no way they’d be improving their Lore or Class Skills if they had him solve everything… not to mention, what Hannah had said to him the night before had really started to sink in.

No one brought up anything he hadn't thought of, so after Taka added in what he wanted to change, Joe simply handed over an elixir and let him give it a try. Mana poured into the activation section, and the air around the circle compressed quickly enough to cause a gentle wind as it was pulled to a singular point. An instant later, the air lanced out, spiraling as it sunk into the trunk of a tree. Bark blew off, and sawdust filled the air as the powerful attack drove through the wooden barrier, leaving behind a perfectly clean hole filled with gently curving grooves.

After that singular attack, the ritual circle fractured, letting out a high-pitched whine before detonating with a rush of mana and air. Taka screeched as his hands were flayed by the lashing winds, his hair starting on fire from the intense friction and rampant energy. Joe moved, patting out the flames at the same time as he cast Lay on Hands, instantly reversing the damage that had been done to his mentee. Taka took a deep inhale to scream, only to let it out in a long, shuddering exhale when he realized the pain had vanished. 

“My bad, Taka.” Joe immediately apologized, before anyone else could say a word. “I saw a few flaws, but I didn't think they would be enough to cause it to explosively rupture like that. I thought, at most, it would burn itself out, maybe be a waste of resources, but completely forgot to account for how the elixir overlay would shift the end result.”

“Uhh…” Taka still stared at his hands, his mind still stuck on the mess he’d seen just moments before. “I guess we’re good? What went wrong?”

“I'm still working on figuring all of this out, but I think we need to start adding in other implements and such that help to balance our class out.” Joe gave a brief explanation on stabilizers, which could be made with Ritualistic Forging, and how each of the class skills seemed to offer something which would make the others more efficient and deadly yet safer for the caster. “Every other class uses tools, so why are we the only people that seem to think we need to brute force everything? I'll look into it on my end.”

The day proceeded normally after that, the only real standout being whenever it was Kirby's turn to attack whatever creature had come in range. Somehow, the Elemental Bursts generated by her rituals took on more rare variants—capturing light, fog, and other effects that could still technically be considered ‘elements’, even when everyone else seemed to only have a singular effect. 

A burst of compressed water from Hannah’s ritual would be followed by a soup-thick cloud which manifested around a creature's head and gently suffocated the animal when Kirby took her turn. Stone bursting through the underbrush from Robert would be followed up by the dainty Ritualist’s exact duplicate somehow interacting with the minerals in tree roots and causing them to stab out of the ground and into an unfortunate porcupine. 

The bizarre effects irked her to no end, but were a source of intense scrutiny for Joe: if he could figure out her tricks—or as she called it, her ‘curse’—he might be able to generate an entirely new subskill, or…

“Hold on a moment.” The bald Ritualist whirled around as he firmly put his academic interest to the side, fingertips tapping against each other as his thoughts spun. “Before I go searching through the weeds for an answer, is it possible that you have any traits? Failing that, any active curses or blessings?”

All he got in return was a blank stare. “Is that supposed to be on my status sheet? I can't see any of that.”

Face falling, Joe remembered that his close ties to Tatum allowed him to see portions of his status sheet, or combat logs, that were generally hidden from other people, unless they had specialized skill sets. “Ah. Right. Maybe we'll find someone with a high-level inspection spell that can help you figure that out.”

Surprisingly, after Kirby, it was Big_Mo’s rituals which remained wildly inconsistent. With Joe's steady guidance, and the support of the others who were also struggling with new aspects of their class, his aim quickly grew steady. Soon he was hitting the targeted monster more often than not, and when he did succeed, the power he brought to bear was an order of magnitude above the others. Somehow Big_Mo’s diagrams squeezed out every last drop of mana he put into the ritual and hit just that much harder.

As they became more confident, Joe began to step back and let them figure things out. The coven began to function as a unit, each of them covering the others with their own strengths. They were learning and growing in power quickly; by the end of the first full week, each of them was at least in the Student rank. 

Joe's teaching skill had really started to show its usefulness, especially when combined with his Master rank in Ritual Circles. For his part, the Ritualist had been planning to work on his Beginner quest line for ritual combat but had gotten completely sidetracked with a passage he had found in the dividing line while reading up on the differences between the tiers in the manual.

The transitional threshold: what does it truly mean to go from Novice to Beginner? 

Novice rituals capture structured mana within the framework of mana-reactive materials, then release it as a singular expression. Each Novice ritual allows for three branching instructions: convert, target, release. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Novice combat questline only extends to three disciplines being used. While it is possible to push past and forcibly add additional inputs, the stability of the ritual diagram will rapidly degrade. 

While some, especially utility rituals, are adept at rapidly switching targets, you will still find that they are following a singular set of instructions. 

The core distinction of going from the lower rank to the higher is instructional complexity. The three instructions allowed to Novice rituals is raised to eight at the Beginner rank. This increase is not linear throughout the ranks, as you will see in later chapters, but expressly exponential, then, as the new generation says these days, quantum. 

Let's have an example. Where a Novice ritual may capture mana, then slowly decompose into wavelengths to generate gentle light or rapidly consume it to focus it into a low-damage beam attack, a Beginner ritual may cause that light to split into more dangerous wavelengths, avoid the eyes of allies, or add on additional effects, depending on the design of the ritual—only to be further stretched with the inclusion of additional disciplines of Ritual Magic.

At that point, the author turned to esoteric ramblings, trying to sound wise with the analogy he created, but only managing to greatly confuse the topic.

—Remember, oh ye Novices, as you push forward into the mysteries of magic. The second circle reaches backward as it moves forward, a mirror of greater intent of the first. One speaks, the other listens, but in reverse. To bind a fluxline across sympathetic sigils via early stage array math is to convince mana it has always been two things, not just one. To create a Beginner circle is to make the echo before the sound- 

After reading only a few lines, Joe quickly set the manual to the side and reached for his coffee mug. “Ugh. When are people going to realize that the smartest people out there are the ones who can take a complicated topic and explain it clearly and succinctly? It's only when you don't know what you are talking about that you speak around the subject.”

Taking his first sip on the ninth morning, now absolutely certain they were either outside of the kingdom of Ardania or right on the edge, Joe looked into the distance and choked. A splash of coffee shot out of his nose as he saw an enormous column of black smoke rising into the air, surrounded by smaller, wispy pillars which he had only ever seen come from campfires… or perhaps chimneys. 

“Wake up! Someone’s under attack, and we weren't invited?” He managed to force out of his throat, his aura helpfully removing the sloshing liquid from his lungs. “Let's go crash that party.”