by Dakota Krout
“We would have been in trouble eventually if we hadn’t gotten the cub, too. Seriously, don’t think too hard on it, or you’ll jinx us. I know what is going on, and it is pretty common: your mind is still in battle-mode. It used to happen all the time when we got back from deployment.” Joe quieted as his memories of his time in the Army washed over him.
“The military now enforces a couple months of ‘normal’ activity and relaxation after really stressful situations. It’s for the best, and I should have given us more downtime to recover. My bad, I’m still not used to being a leader. Think about it a little differently; we were only in the dungeon for a few hours, but it was likely more intense than any combat you had ever been in before, right? Your mind is just stuck there for now. That’s not a bad thing when we are in unknown territory like we are currently, and it is likely that… that you will get over it quickly.” Joe nearly growled the last line, remembering that this game was able to influence their mental state directly.
After a moment of consideration, Poppy responded in a more positive tone, “Huh. Thanks, that actually really helps. It’s always nice to know why I feel like I do. Makes it easier to manage. Why do I know nothing about you, and how close are we getting?”
“Well, Poppy, we just met. I’m not trying to hide myself; it just hasn’t come up. Also, if we keep going at this pace and the terrain is this easy the whole way,” Joe looked at the map again and judged the distance they had already traveled, “three hours or so.”
“I should have asked for money,” Poppy jokingly complained. “Worst escort quest ever.” The conversation died down to a companionable silence after that, the two of them focusing on walking and staying alert for ambushes. Three long hours of relative boredom and several very minor encounters later, they were nearing the location marked on Joe’s map.
“Two hundred and sixty-two experience for all of that.” Poppy spat to the side. “Long walk, substandard results. Where is this place?”
They were now standing at the entrance to a flat, open grassland. As far as Joe could see, an ocean of green grass extended into the distance. “I have no idea. Maybe it’s underground or hidden by the grass? This could be a misdirection, maybe that grass is really high.”
It was a combination of his assumptions. Even with his supposition, he hadn’t expected to be correct to this degree. As they got closer to the grassland, the ground sloped downward though the height of the turf stayed the same. By the time they were at the edge of the grass, they realized that the weeds were as tall and thick as trees. Poppy looked at the plants that made trees look small, and at an insect who made a brief appearance. “Did we shrink, or was that ladybug really the size of a hippo?” Joe stepped into the verdant grass forest, and both of them received a notification.
Achievement unlocked: Exploration! For being the first Travelers to enter the Gargantuan Grasslands, you are awarded 500 experience! Being the first to walk a path can have great rewards!
“I like that a lot,” Poppy cheerfully commented. “To be fair, I wouldn’t normally have entered what looks like an endless plain with nothing in it either. It’s entirely possible that other explorers came here and just… turned around in total disappointment. An optical illusion like that could be a great defense if we did it right.”
“You aren’t kidding.” Joe looked at his map, which had updated after they entered the grasslands. “We are close. I’d say… ten minutes?”
“Lead on, boss man.”
They walked deeper into the area, flinching every time a truck-sized bug lumbered by. A few times they had been evaluated by the bugs but were deemed not to be food so the insects continued on their way. Poppy, on the other hand, was evaluating the bugs as potential gold mines. “How much experience do you think that one is worth? Do you think we could use their exoskeletons to make chitin armor?”
“I think that until we have a full party, I don't want to see what happens when one of those things gets mad,” Joe replied bluntly. “We are on a mission, remember?”
“A boring mission.” Poppy pouted at him, “Boo. Boring!”
Joe rolled his eyes and marched onward. A few minutes later, they stopped after circling a small area for a while. Joe was looking at his map, a bit confused. “It should be right here. We are on the dot.” There were no structures, no holes in the ground. There was no difference in this area except perhaps a slightly thicker cluster of grass. “Should we dig…?”
Poppy was looking around, and he tapped Joe to get his attention. “Digging would be going the wrong way.” He pointed upward, and Joe followed the direction with his eyes. A few stories above them was a structure that had grass growing through it in a way that made it appear that it had been abandoned long ago. The tilting building gave lie to the thought that it had been intended as a treehouse. Grasshouse. Whatever this would be called.
“Up it is.” Joe exhaled softly, eyes alight with excitement. The issue at this point was that there was no real way for them to scale the stalk of grass. There was a branching blade of grass about seven feet above their heads, but… Joe chuckled and jumped straight up. His stamina dropped to a quarter, but he easily got his arms over the blade and pulled himself onto the vegetation. “Whew! That was fun.”
“How the heck did you just do that, and do you have any rope?” Poppy questioned conversationally.
“Ah, no, I don’t. Also, Master jumper, remember? I do have a few skill levels in ‘jump’.” Joe looked for another way to get Poppy up with him. “Maybe jump as high as you can, grab my hand, and climb up?” Poppy waited until Joe had recovered his stamina then hopped up and grasped Joe’s hand. The blade of grass Joe was resting on started to bend, obviously unable to support both of their weight at the same time.
The Duelist let go without needing to be asked, sighing wistfully as he landed on the ground again. “Just go… make sure to tell me if it is amazing in there.”
“Sorry, buddy! I will definitely let you know, though. It’ll probably be incredible and amazing.” Joe waited for the grass to stop bouncing then got into position to make another leap. He jumped at a rough spot on the grass, catching himself at the fold of the next blade. Using that as a foothold, he once again refilled his stamina and hopped to the next safe spot.
“Fee fie foe fum!” Poppy called up to him in a deep voice.
Joe had paused to catch his breath, so he glared down at the grinning man on the ground. “You are going to feel so bad if I get eaten by a giant.”
“Not as bad as you would feel. That would hurt like crazy,” Poppy easily shot back. Joe shook his head and kept moving, getting higher and closer to the small building the entire time. By the time he was close enough to look into the windows, he was exhausted. After taking a bit longer to rest, he built up some speed and jumped the remaining distance. Right as his foot left the ground, the wind picked up and the entire building swayed away from him.
What should have been an easy hop turned into a flying tackle that allowed him to just barely make it onto the stairway that led up to the main entrance. He landed heavily, his legs dangling over empty space for a long moment, but with great effort, he was able to roll to safety.
Skill increased: Aerial Acrobatics (Novice VII). Practicing without a safety net is the best way to increase skills quickly! Do it more often!
Yeah, no thank you to that. He would settle for slow and steady skill progression if this was the alternative. After catching his breath, he walked up to the door and paused. There was no handle; instead, a simple and faded ritual diagram was etched into the wood. Joe looked at it deeply, searching for hidden meaning, but after finding none, he shrugged and input mana into the activation site that led to the commands for ‘open’. The ritual flared and vanished, and the door opened.
Joe silently cursed himself. Even if that ritual had been simple, it was one he didn’t have access to. Now it had vanished, and it would take quite a bit of research to re-make it. He resolved to take screenshots of any ritua
l he came across as he continued. Easing forward, he tried to make sure there weren’t any traps or hidden dangers that he was about to set off. As his eyes ran over the interior of the building, his jaw dropped in wonder.
All around the single-room building were active rituals. These rituals had diagrams that were moving, spinning, and seemed to be hovering above the ground. Joe felt like he had just walked into a watch, so fluid and regular were the movements. What eventually caught his attention was the pedestal set against the back wall; a long tube sat on it and seemed to be the focus of the various rituals in the area. The walkway to the tube was clear, so he walked over to inspect the item.
Perception check + knowledge check success! This is a protective scroll case. It most likely contains some form of document.
“How… useful.” Joe ignored the text and tried to touch the scroll. His finger stopped a few inches from the case as if he were pressing against glass. There was no pain, luckily, so Joe scratched at his chin in thought. “Force field? I could use a few of these.”
He walked over to the nearest ritual, reading over the diagrams and trying to understand what was happening. After a few minutes of study, he decided that this was the ritual creating the force around the case. He tried to touch it to stop the flow of power, but another dome of power blocked him. “So a puzzle then? I bet I need to find the first ritual in the chain then stop each of them without blowing myself up.”
With that thought in mind, Joe activated his Exquisite Shell, pumping a thousand mana into the protections. He walked to each of the rituals, taking a picture of them and seeing where they sat in the hierarchy. He did find the terminus fairly quickly, but he made sure to check all of the rituals first. It seemed that a few of them were set as traps, designed to trick the unwary into a force field that would last for weeks before running out of power. Those ones could be activated either by messing with them directly or failing to correctly dispel the others. This could be a fun anti-theft device.
Joe went to the first ritual that he needed to stop, looking it over one last time. It was simple, a Novice ranked ritual. He needed to input power into it right as the diagram twirled into a certain position. Right… now! The ritual flared and halted, and in his peripheries, Joe saw two others waver like they had been caught in a heat haze. He walked over to the first and found that the shielding around them was gone. Perfect.
It seemed that this room was set up as a test of sorts for potential specializing Ritualists. Each layer of rituals had an impact on more and more rituals, and each layer also became more difficult to correctly unravel. The outer edge was simple Novice diagrams, spinning at a pace that was easy to discern. This was followed by Beginner key-rituals which had two spell circles spinning in different directions. An Apprentice layer followed this, three circles spinning. Clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise. Joe’s head was beginning to pound, and it took a solid ten minutes to finish this layer.
Taking a breather, he went to the door and yelled down to Poppy that it might take a while. A lazy reply drifted up, “Whatever, just wake me up when you are done.” Joe snorted and returned to the rituals, happy to be on the final layer: Student circles. This is where things became tricky. Joe hadn’t really created many Student-ranked rituals, and the ones he had made were nowhere near this complexity. The circles were spinning, but their diagrams were no longer simply spaced flat and further away; now they were at slight angles, taking up less room than they would have otherwise but enmeshed in a three-dimensional orbit.
Joe was gaining quite a bit of insight into the creation of higher-tiered rituals, even without ranking up. He had a sinking sensation that the Journeyman tier would include rituals that swirled as if they were set into a gyroscope, which incidentally is what he planned on purchasing to create his rituals on if he got to that point. These free-floating rituals… Joe had no idea if they were created with solidified illusions or if they were the after-effects of making this tier of rituals, but he knew one thing for certain: he had no idea how to replicate them.
Skill increase: Ritual Lore (Beginner V). Sometimes it is not about what you know, it is about admitting weaknesses that you can work on. You have a lo~o~t of weaknesses. Admit them all and see if this skill skyrockets! Intelligence +2.
Joe wasn’t bothered in the slightest by the return of the snarky messages. His lore skill was amazing, and it had given him more statistic points when leveling it than any other skills he currently had. He needed to spend some time in research, really crank up the numbers in that skill. His eyes returned to the floating ritual in front of him, and he felt that he understood it just a tiny bit better. As it turned out, it was enough.
The four spinning circles stopped one by one. There was an audible hum that filled the room for a moment before fading, and the ritual vanished into motes of light. All the other visible rituals in the room soon followed, leaving particles behind for a few moments that made the room appear to be filled with fireflies. He walked over to the container, picking it up and popping off the end. Slowly, carefully, he pulled out the large sheet of paper inside. As he unfurled it, a smaller paper fluttered almost to the ground, stopping and flattening a few inches before it would have touched the wood of the floor.
Joe was looking at the large document, confused by what he saw. The paper seemed to be… blueprints? And the detail was, simply put, astounding. The same three-dimensional effect that had allowed the rituals to exist filled these blueprints. The plans on it seemed to stretch and turn. Staring at the same position on the page allowed you to see new details for a full five seconds before they began repeating themselves. What in the world did this do? Joe reached down and picked up the paper, reading through it as his eyes widened and a smile grew on his lips. Just… wow.
~ Chapter Twenty-eight ~
If you are reading this, my hopes and dreams have been answered, and the murdered art of ritual magic has been rediscovered and refined once more. I don’t need to tell you, obviously, but anyone trying to brute-force the rituals guarding this container would have slowly starved to death for their transgressions.
“This guy was probably the life of the party,” Joe muttered condescendingly, shaking his head before continuing to read.
This is my final work of art, the blueprints to a building whose existence has been forcefully hidden by the various guilds, sects, and unions. This building is the reason that ritual magic became taboo or disparaged in the world. Guilds, Kingdoms, associations, and sects have hunted down any of the existing buildings, doing anything they could to either capture or destroy them.
As far as I know, there is only one still left in existence deep in the most protected sanctuaries of the Dwarven people. Even they, with all of their skill in creating stone and metalwork, cannot replicate this structure, and so they guard it jealously. Any knowledge of its creation will die with me… unless you are successful in activating and using this ritual.
If you manage to make the building, the knowledge of how to make it without this blueprint will be lodged in your mind. You will be able to re-create this building anywhere you want. Provided you have the requisite skill and needed materials, of course. Even in my day, the resources were difficult, dangerous, and expensive to acquire.
Following this paragraph was a listing of all the raw materials that would be needed to make whatever the building was. If Joe had been drinking something, it would have been sprayed across the room as he read over the list. Just… no. Where was he even supposed to get six tons of black marble or a ‘Sunburst Beast Core’? He skipped the list and continued reading.
It goes without saying that you will need to protect this building. Included in the design are the plans for a mid-sized temple. I would suggest finding the cleric of a god you trust and have them dedicate the temple to the deity. Depending on which deity is used, the building will gain extra effects and protections. Now, onto the actual building itself.
These are the plans for a building that you will know as a Gra
nd Ritual Hall. Everyone else will know it as a ‘Pathfinder’s Hall’. This building allows you to create and perform rituals that would otherwise be outside of your capabilities. These Halls used to be less than rare in the world, as the creation of the building imparts an otherwise unobtainable specialization path upon the Ritualist who leads the ritual to form this building.
Others will see this hall as a place to gain power in ways they never could before because the building will offer several functions to them. One: it will allow them to see the exact requirements that were needed to gain their current class. Too much in the way of hard-to-obtain classes and skills is simply guesswork without this building.
Two: by paying a fee that the building owner can set, people will be able to see what specializations they have met the requirements to move into and what they need to unlock more classes. This includes the needed titles, statistics, and experience. There is a caveat here, as the building can only offer knowledge that it currently stores. A third-tier specialist can offer details of his class to the building, which will open his path to others, but he will not be able to find a way to the fourth tier unless that knowledge has already been offered by another at that rank.
It is a travesty that these centers were destroyed so that certain classes could hide their progression paths from others that may seek them. This was a time of great greed and darkness, and I hope that in your time, these issues have faded into tales for children. Best wishes, and good luck, Student. ~Sage Cognitionis.
Quest complete: Building a specialization. You have found the steps needed in order to progress to a powerful new class! Good luck making it happen! You’ll need it.