by Dakota Krout
Daisy was ushered out of the command tent, and Aten locked eyes with Joe, a bit of hopefulness showing. “I assume that you coming back to the guild means that you want back in it?”
“I do, but we are going to need to talk terms.” Joe sighed and sat down; he hadn’t wanted to be in a submissive position when Daisy was glaring at him. “I know that leaving the guild put you in a bad position, and I also know that at some point you won’t need my reputation bonuses and travel system. For now, though, I think you do. I also think that fact has been overlooked pretty heavily. I bring a lot to the table, and I’m sorry to say that I think I’m going to have to leverage that now.”
“Somehow, even though I’ve been nothing but helpful, I have a reputation in the guild that isn’t good. Listen, I’m fine with just being a party leader, but from now on, I need autonomy. I’m also going to need to get our deal about this building in writing. We are going to have to get a lot in writing. I am also going to need a list of all the officers, the positions they hold, and where they stand in the hierarchy so I stop stepping on toes. Sorry to say, Aten, I lost a lot of trust after this little episode,” Joe finished his lecture on a forlorn note.
“I know all of that.” Aten looked sadly at his reputation meter for Joe. It had dropped all the way from ‘ally’ to barely maintaining ‘neutral’ in only a few minutes. That was the main reason he believed Joe so easily; you could lie, but the system wouldn’t lie for you. “We can do that, and we can put you outside of the normal command structure. You won’t have more than your party under your control, but you’ll basically have free reign to do your thing.”
“Alright. Let’s get to it.” They went to the scribe the guild had hired on, and within a few minutes, he was able to write out an amended contract. Joe was amazed at the skill the scribe displayed; it was like watching a slightly outdated printer print out a document. Joe’s fingers itched to start ranking up his own skills. After quickly reading through the contract, Joe nodded and signed, followed by Aten signing.
There was a notification to the guild that they had regained all qualifications to be a Noble Guild, and Aten sighed with relief, a smile crossing his face for the first time that day. “Alright, well, we have an entire guild full of Mages on standby waiting to see why they are being fed and relaxing instead of working like I paid them to. I’m sure they don’t mind, but they do get paid by the hour so if we could get moving I would appreciate it.”
“I was wondering about that,” Joe admitted as he was led to the area his ritual was going to be carried out in. “Are they under contract not to talk about the work they are going to be doing here?”
“Yeah. They also have a great reputation for working hard and getting their work done really fast. From what I’ve seen, though, they are usually contracted by guilds full of non-magical folk to go and hunt monsters with them. They also have a few alchemists, so when I told them that the job was essentially going to be them throwing spells continuously for an hour or more… well, they’ve been stockpiling potions for a while, and they brought them all along.”
“That’ll be helpful.” Joe looked around with interest as the people around them suddenly became homogeneous. Gone were mismatched armors and leather clothing, swords and bows; in their place were robes. Sure, the robes had different designs on them, but all of them were the same color. Instead of various weaponry, there were only staves, wands, and orbs. Joe could practically feel the mana humming in the air, and he really started feeling the loss of his own robe to that overgrown bear.
Aten walked directly to the only person who had more than two colors on his robe. “Guild Leader Snake, it’s always a pleasure to see you. Are you about ready to get going? We will start the initial setup now and should be ready for you in no time flat.”
The Guild Leader turned toward them with a smile. “Ah, Guild Commander, ready when you…” his eyes locked onto Joe, widening comically as he clapped his hands. “Joe!”
“What? Wait… Snake… Tsnake?” When the man nodded, Joe stepped forward and gave him a hug. “Tim? What the heck, man; you were supposed to meet me as soon as you could! Where have you been? Why is your face twitching like that?”
“Me…? I could say the same to you! I searched all the newbie areas, all the training grounds, no one had seen you! No one! Twitching…? Oh! Yeah, I got an upgrade after my guild got real popular. I’m in a pod now. Where have you been?” Tim seemed confused and happy at the same time, and since guys aren’t fans of feeling mixed emotions, Joe hurried to explain.
“I’m a cleric, a healer. Got picked up right away when a certain guild noticed that I could rub some dirt in their wounds and it would actually fix them up.” Joe grinned as he stole Tim’s old catchphrase. “Also, you couldn’t find me? I’m in one of the most well-known guilds, and my name keeps popping up in server-wide announcements!"
“Not sure what you mean by the announcements, but I didn’t think you were so unimaginative that you’d use your own boring name! Ugh, and yeah, the game decided that I was more suited to hurting than healing for some reason.” Tim barely got that out before Joe turned it around on him.
“Oh, what a shock. The infamous infected blister-foot epidemic of-” Joe’s laughter was cut off by Aten coughing heavily and extra loudly.
“So, I take it you two know each other, and I do hate to do this, but you guys are paid by the hour… so…” Aten trailed off as ‘Snake’ waved his hand back and forth.
“Twenty percent discount today only. Not on the use of potions but on labor. I’ve been looking for this guy since he started the game.” Tim, uh, Snake, threw an arm around Joe’s shoulders and chuckled. Aten was entirely uncertain what to say as Joe and Tim started catching up. When Joe explained that it had been him who killed the Archmage and proved it with his title, Snake’s jaw dropped, and he made an announcement to his guild on the spot. Cheers broke out, and so many people clapped Joe on the back or shook his hand vigorously that he needed to subtly heal himself after a short while.
Eventually, they stopped reminiscing and got down to business. When Joe explained what they were about to build, Tim went pale and got shaky. “You are going to use us to build an Artifact building? This thing helps to plot out rank-ups and skill lines? Aten, we should work on your bargaining skills. I’ll drop our price by fifty percent right now if you agree to let us use this place too. Give us a fifty percent discount on using it, and we will call all debt paid, potions included.”
“That is a lot of money over time, and to be fair, Joe here is the building owner.” Aten grinned, knowing that he was about to save his guild a couple thousand gold. “Why don’t we say-”
“Look, man, fifty percent off right now, or we will just use this money to put a few people through and have them write down what they know instead of sending a bunch of people through it.” Tim’s grin widened at the pout on Aten’s face. “Deal?”
“Yeah, yeah. Deal.” Aten heaved a disgruntled sigh after he looked at Joe for confirmation and got a nod in reply. “You know where we want it? Good. Our Mages are on their way over to help as well. Let me know if you need anything. Otherwise… I look forward to seeing something amazing soon.”
Snake waited until Aten was an appropriate distance away before asking the question he had been waiting to ask. “Still want to be in this guild? With what I know about you and your obvious skills, you would start in my guild as one of the top brass.”
“Thanks, but… I’m doing well here, even if we have our rocky moments.” Joe patted Tim on the arm and reminded him to focus. They got to work, first ordering the gathered Mages not by level but by total mana pool and mana manipulation skill. Those with lower amounts of mana were to be positioned further away, but in general, all of them had substantial amounts of raw power. Unsurprising for a guild of Mages where power equaled rank.
“Glad that’s over. You have the highest amount of mana in your guild, correct?” Joe questioned Tim offhandedly. When he nodded, Joe took a d
eep breath and activated the setup function of his blueprints. Massive illusionary circles appeared on the ground, causing a few screams to ring out from quickly embarrassed people. “Good. We need the person with the next highest pool over here with us; then we need to start getting into position. Here is how this is going to work: we need to have prime numbers on each layer, but it skips a few each time. There will be us three, then the next layer on the same circle will have five, then seven. The next circle has to have eleven, thirteen, and then seventeen. In total, we need one hundred and ninety-five people to fill all the spots. Do we have that?”
“We have one hundred and thirteen. Including the… Mages from your guild. Remember, until recently, being a Mage was a very expensive process. Most of my people unlocked the class at the start of the game during character setup.” Tim pretended to be disparaging, but Joe knew he was just trying to catch Terra’s attention. He had been ever since she arrived.
“Alright… well, the smallest mana pool we have here is about four hundred. Average is around five hundred, though, right?” Joe waited for confirmation before continuing, “That’ll only give us about a third of what we need in total. What can we do about potions, and we should…”
Continuing the discussion, they eventually unloaded all supplies and passed out the goods to where they were most needed. It was a huge undertaking just to get people to stand where they needed to, and Joe was once again pleased that he wasn’t going to be in charge of other people for long. His head was throbbing as he worked to convince yet another party leader that all they needed to do was stand here, in this spot, and not move. No, he didn’t care that none of them had mana; they were only here to fulfill a requirement. Yes, this was important. Yes, they had to stay right here and not move.
The furthest spell circle had a radius of fifty feet, so there was plenty of space for all of the people to stand. Joe got into position and yelled as loud as he could so that the others could hear him. “Okay, we are just about ready to go! If you haven’t yet added your blood to a chalice, don’t worry, it’s coming around! Let’s see… oh! If you are on the outer ring, please make sure that you stay conscious as long as possible! Things are about to get weird! You just need to accept that fact now; we should all survive this, so don’t panic!”
After getting confirmation that everyone had added their blood to the silver chalice–Joe glanced at the sloshing silver bucket that they were using instead of a fancy cup–he nodded and spoke up again, “Here we go, everyone! Sections one through six, please remember your roles. Everyone, please remember that if you stay where you are supposed to be, you will be fine! If you run away or leave your spot, only you will explode like a kernel of popcorn! Everyone else will be fine. Do not leave your assigned spot! Get ready!”
Joe opened his menus and selected to use his ‘Divine Boon’. Choosing to activate the next ritual without component cost, he felt a wash of golden power seemingly well up inside himself. He took a deep breath, and as he released it, he allowed his mana to flow into the Master-ranked blueprints in front of him. A deep chime rang through the area like a bell being struck, and golden power flowed from him and coated each portion of the ritual where a component of some sort was supposed to rest.
Ignoring the fact that they were supposed to be illusions, the circles they were all standing in began to move, carrying each person like they were on a conveyor belt. Most people were able to handle this without flinching, but then the flat lines started to change, orbiting Joe and the two others at the center of the ritual. Tim, Terra, and Joe reached out a hand each, their fingers almost touching as they made a triangle centered over the diagram. As one, they began to feed mana into the ritual. A disk of invisible power appeared under their position and began to lift them; soon, they were ten feet off the ground. Twenty. Fifty-five.
Remaining stable at that height, they couldn’t help but watch as the people in the outer circles whizzed around them. Two breaths later, they read the first line of the ritual’s activation sequence, “Hoc est ad nocere!”
The three of them grimaced as a seemingly uncontrolled burst of power flowed out of them and into the blueprints. The trio at the center were pushed a dozen feet apart as a series of reddish-gold circles of energy surrounded the document and a column of seemingly uncontrolled power began to rush down into the ground. Lines of mana seeped out of the paper, looking and acting like mist until they reached the disk under their feet. There the ‘mist’ resolved itself into thousands of tiny strings, going taut and connecting to the bodies of the three people and the diagram. More power raced from them, and the ‘mist’ billowed out once more; soon, lines of power connected everyone in the first circle.
“This isn’t too bad. Kind of like a freaky roller-coaster…” Joe heard a female voice comment in the distance. He knew better but didn’t want to scare anyone unnecessarily. The ritual was still unfolding. It was still getting ready, and any mana invested so far didn’t count toward the total they needed. Telling the butterflies in his stomach to calm down, Joe took a deep, calming breath. He hoped he didn’t get sick.
~ Chapter Thirty-two ~
A trickle of vomit sprayed from the second circle, and a few people loudly complained as the spinning orbit brought them directly into the shower of bile. “I get motion sick! How was I supposed to know-” their words drifted away as all the circles continued to rotate and twirl.
“We are about to begin! Remember not to drink your potions until you see the group in front of you sink to their knees! You will be feeling drained, but we need to do this right!” Joe shouted this information as loud as he could, hoping that the practice runs they had done would be remembered. “Three… two… one!”
Contrary to the countdown, it would be almost a full minute before most people even noticed a change. For the three at the center… the party was already in full swing. They would all be drained at the same rate, approaching zero together. Unfortunately for Joe, he had about one third more mana than the others. To him, this meant that the ritual drew from him longer than the others. When two of them had equal mana, it drew from the next, followed by the third. Soon, they were all grimacing, working hard to keep the power flow regulated. Any fluctuations drew power from the others faster as well, so a smooth flow was required.
Unlike all the other rituals Joe had made, this one didn’t seem to activate the ritual circles from the outermost edge, working inwards as the outer circles activated. No, it seemed that the tiny lines of power connecting them to the ritual did something to direct the power. The once-white lines were filling with blue mana. As power trickled outward, the color and shape of the entire circle gradually changed as well. Most concerning was that the ritual didn’t wait for the three at the center to be fully drained before beginning to pull power from the next layer.
There was a collective ‘Oof!’ as the mana draw began with an almost physical blow to the second layer. The five people there were almost as mana-rich as the first layer, though, and easily controlled themselves and their power. Lines of light left their layer, connecting with the golden divine power that was going to be acting as their components. It didn’t do anything just yet, but they were connected. The entire time, Joe kept up a chant, and the other two at the center echoed him a moment later.
“Ducatur fortior!” Joe tried to modulate his voice, no need to shout and ruin the pronunciation.
“Ducatur fortior!” Both Terra and Tim stated together. Terra seemed a bit more focused on the issue at hand, whereas Tim just seemed happy that his whole job basically amounted to touching a pretty lady’s hand and speaking in what sounded like Latin.
Joe continued to chant, reading directly from the words that constantly appeared on the blueprints. Even as his mana waned and exhaustion from that depletion set in, he continued to read aloud. There must have been some sort of system help with the pronunciation of these words because they left his mouth with confidence and exacting perfection. The three at the center slowly sank to their
knees, the only signal they could use to show that the mana draw was going to fall on someone else now.
They almost gasped in relief as the burden fell from them, and their natural regeneration went toward refilling their mana pools instead of empowering the ritual. They kept chanting, even as power began to crackle along the lines connecting all of them. As the final layer of people on their circle began to be pulled from, much larger versions of the small lines connecting them to their circle began to grow. These cables twined away, connecting to dots of mana floating in the air. A gem-like mana structure formed around the entirety of the first circle, seemingly solid but still mainly translucent.
Gaseous mana began to roll off of this structure, flowing outward until reaching the boundaries of the second circle where it stopped and began to spread out. The circle seemed to act as a containment device, and it appeared that a portion of the mana being generated by the first layer of the second circle was being used to maintain that barrier. It should be noted that even though the layers were being activated quickly, this didn’t mean there was less mana being pulled from them or that they were collectively weak. In fact, there were eleven people on that layer alone, meaning that a low estimate placed them at contributing over five thousand points of mana on this pass alone.
“Progressing smoothly. Good,” Joe thought to himself as he continued working. Now he needed to add in hand gestures and slow movements, and the others carefully mimicked him. The third and fourth circles had activated, and Joe once again wondered how a Master-ranked ritual had only four circles… the layers! If looked at another way, they were obviously different, more complex and grand than any other ritual circle he had ever seen before. Mwah-ha-ha! He was positive that if nothing else, this would boost his ritual lore skill.