Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6) Dakota Krout (sci fi books to read TXT) 📖

he could not manage to get into that frame of mind. He was too elated. Ecstatic, in fact. “I have a working model of a Sage-ranked ritual! It’s… I’m barely touching the potential of this class!”

Beyond the direct excitement of having such an interesting class with a huge amount of growth potential, there was something about dying for new knowledge that was practically nostalgic. He was trying to think back to the last time he had been working on a spell model that had backfired so badly, it had actually managed to kill him, and he could not easily think of one. It did resurrect a different, unpleasant thought in his thankfully reconstituted head, however.

“Have I been getting… complacent?” Joe’s brow furrowed. “When was the last time I was really pushing the boundaries of my magic? I know that I have been focused on my class, but… I'm so far away from even being able to study the depths of my own abilities that I died when I tried. What do I need to do? Just get my intelligence to that level? No… I need to get my skill to a point that I can use it. I need to have the intelligence to match… I'm… I'm so excited!”

Pulling open his status sheet, Joe instantly started wincing as he saw the downgrade in experience. “Feces… I lost three levels.

Name: Joe ‘Tatum’s Chosen Legend’ Class: Reductionist

Profession I: Arcanologist (Max)

Profession II: Ritualistic Alchemist (1/20)

Profession III: None

Character Level: 19 Exp: 192,704 Exp to next level: 17,296

Rituarchitect Level: 10 Exp: 45,000 Exp debt: 14,714

Reductionist Level: 0 Exp: 176 Exp to next level: 824

Hit Points: 0/1,573 (Currently respawning)

Mana: 0/2,152 (Currently respawning)

Mana regen: 44.55/sec

Stamina: 0/1337

Stamina regen: 6.36/sec

Characteristic: Raw score

Strength: 129

Dexterity: 129

Constitution: 125

Intelligence: 138

Wisdom: 118

Dark Charisma: 80

Perception: 118

Luck: 60

Karmic Luck: 8

“I'm all the way back down to level nineteen… yeesh.” Joe puttered around the room, messing around with various things. Then he noticed that one entire wall was filled with a flashing icon of an unopened letter. He tapped it and found hundreds of letters from his mother, his guild members, and his Coven. He paled as he went through them, concerned that things had gone wrong. After a short while, he had to wipe out his moist eyes.

His mother had written him a letter every single day, ever since he had been exiled. He sat and read through each one, then composed a reply that went over most of the things that he had been going through. His Guild had questions for him about the new Zone, which he offered answers to as much as he could. Finally, his coven had mostly technical questions that he was happy to resolve. It was always refreshing to see someone else's work and discover ways that he could help them improve or improve his own things, based on their creativity.

Before Joe knew it, the portal had opened and it was time to leave. Thanks to the large amount of time that he had been forced to spend in the room, Joe had gone through all of the emails. He promised himself that he would take time to regularly answer questions and emails in the future, but he needed to find a spot where he could access the mail portion of the game. He had thought that he would need to find an actual post office of some sort, but once again, the game came through in a way that he did not expect.

Feeling refreshed, re-centered, and ready to roll, Joe stepped out of the portal and came face-to-face with Havoc.

“Do you have any idea how bad it looks for me when my trainee’s brain matter is splattered all over the room I gave him in my house?”

Chapter Twenty

“What are we doing?” Joe finally broke down and asked the question. He was standing in an empty room with Havoc staring at him; the only thing that had moved in the last five minutes as they watched each other was a long line of smoke that lifted into the air above the Dwarf.

“We are doing nothing. You are about to impress me.” Havoc's words were not a guarantee, nor were they a plea; they were a demand. “I let you go into one of the most highly restricted, most dangerous, and for you… potentially most profitable places under the protection of the Dwarven Oligarchy. You are about to show me that you did not waste your time huddling in a corner the whole time you were down there.”

Joe made a ‘what the abyss’ motion with his hands. “I already told you that I went and did all sorts of things! I found a Guardian-”

“Oh look! I can turn lead into gold and fart rainbows!” Havoc rudely interrupted. “There, I told you! Now you are going to believe me, right?”

“Just…” Joe’s arms dropped to his sides. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”

“Make me something new. At the minimum, I need you to make me something that we can use to conquer a minor fort.”

“That’s unreasonable!” Joe declared without a second thought. “We were going to do a whole bunch of little stuff to start with, weren’t we? Infiltrations, an Uncommon alchemy house, a-”

“No, that was a lie to get you to go along with my plan to dump you in the garbage. I never expected that you’d pull through.” Havoc didn't hold back at all, his voice rising as Joe gaped at him in shock. “Let me explain something to you. You, if you haven’t noticed, are a human. You are trying to get nobility among the Dwarves. Whoever sent you to me had it out for you; they want you to fail. They expect you to fail. Do you actually think we can convince the upper echelon to make you a noble if we try to play it safe?”

“But… I thought everything was based on merit?”

“Think, for pyrite’s sake! Do you think normal accomplishments will get you into the nobility? You’ll get a rank, at best! Unless you