Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6) by Dakota Krout (best romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

experience building structures was anything to go by. Joe could see why the ‘Air Spirits’ were such an issue here; there was likely very little that these people could do against them if the monsters were as powerful as they sounded. He inspected the people more closely as he went past, and revised that thought. They were all at least a little battle hardened; there was no way they could be otherwise if serving in the Legion was mandatory, as he had been led to believe.

“Don’t go up there!” a bearded Dwarf shouted in Joe’s face, causing the human to flinch back and nearly topple over. “They’re blamin’ the spirits for all the deaths, but they aren’t naturally aggressive! There’s Elves in the ground, I tell ya! Let me help you; listen to me, bro!”

A few of the vendors swiftly surrounded the exceedingly filthy Dwarf and started marching him out of the area, offering soothing words and comforting thoughts, all while the bearded Dwarf was shouting that people needed to listen to him. Joe began to feel uneasy and decided that, even though it was starting to get late in the day, he should begin his climb.

Since he already had everything that he needed to survive for a solid week or so, Joe powered right past the ‘Solitude Market’ and onto a path that wound up the cliff face. The hike lasted about an hour, though there were some Dwarves zipping past him from time to time, making it obvious that higher stats would mean a faster ascent. Every time he thought he had found a cave, it turned out to be a divot with a smooth stone wall closing it off. Joe was starting to think that the caves were actually a myth, and the open air was what the Dwarves were after.

“It would make sense,” he grumbled as he found yet another switchback. “Hammer beast? Hit it with a Hammer. Air Spirit means earth elemental; it would make a perverse sense if the ‘caves’ were an open air campground.”

Just past the switchback, a large opening in the rock face loomed ahead. He stared at the opening accusingly, wondering if this world was intentionally messing with him. Joe looked around to see if he was being watched or followed, but there was no sign of anyone. The Dwarves he had seen earlier were long gone, and the sun was starting to dip below the horizon. “Sleeping in a cave, here we go.”

He braved the opening and took a few cautious steps inside. Just past the mouth of the cave, the space opened up into a large room that had clearly been worked by someone. The walls were too smooth to be natural, and the ventilation was vastly superior to what he had been expecting. One thing especially stood out: a sign with a dial below it.

Set duration of solitude.

Joe thought it over and decided that three days should be enough. He turned the dial and instantly heard a grinding of stone. Looking back at the entrance, he found that a smooth wall was sliding to block the entrance, and his eyes shone as he realized that all the ‘not-a-caves’ that he had seen before were actually just occupied caves closer to the ground! He had simply been unlucky, in that he had been too slow to get an easy-access area. Once the door finished closing, a small slot flipped open next to the dial, with another small sign.

Core rates for formation.

Trash: 10 hour expansion.

Damaged: 50 hour expansion.

Common: 100-200 hour expansion.

While he wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, he wasn’t too worried about using up a Trash-ranked Core for testing purposes. He put a small, dull Core into the slot, and it fell down a chute. A moment later, the room started to grow. Joe watched in wonder as the cave that had been maybe four hundred square feet expanded in size until it was at least two thousand square feet of open space. “Well, I like that. I wonder what the difference is between rituals, enchantments, and formations?”

He sat down on a large pillow that he pulled from the camping supplies, and tried to decide what to do next. “I need to start raising my ritual skill levels up to a respectable level. That means I need to work on my crafting skills, which will also increase my class level. What I really need to do is find ways to work on all of them as much as I can.”

Joe examined his Ritual Orbs, and thought again about how they seemed to require every part of what he could currently do as a Ritualist: Enchanting, Forging, Alchemy, Circles, and Matrices. “I suppose I could try to work on those skills…? Maybe start guiding my orbs where I want them to be? Oh… I can… yeah. How am I supposed to do any of this, though? I don’t have any specialized tools.”

He was stumped. While he did have aspects, he had no way of making anything other than ritual circles with the gear that he had with him. “At the most basic level, I need fire and an anvil. That would let me control the cauldron, as well as use an aspect hammer to forge tools. Ugh. I need to make tools, so I can make the tools that I have to use to craft the tools I actually need. I have some kind of an affinity to fire thanks to Hansel, but… no fire spells.”

“Okay, I think I was woefully unprepared for this trip.” Joe stood and walked over to the dial, trying to figure out how to get the door open. However, nothing he did could make the time go down, and he accidentally twisted it and moved the dial to four days! “That… wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

Sitting back down, he started going over his spells and skills, hoping for an epiphany. On that note, he also remembered to use Knowledge, which brought Alchemical Lore to