I’d like to carve Mom something nice before I leave.
That one woman in Home Village has a statuette allegedly carved by a craftswoman with [Carve Wood] at Rank 16 from Panecasa.
I’ve seen it. And yeah, that’s a true statement. But the item was clearly some practice piece or a reject. Just because you have the Skill at a certain Rank, doesn’t mean that it applies consistently without effort. There’s still thought, care, and patience to be taken in anything, which can easily improve or worsen performance by half the number of Ranks. If we appraised them in such a means, I’d classify that statuette like an average piece from someone with [Carve Wood 11], not as special as that woman makes it out to be as she’s gossiping with the neighbors.
But what to make before I leave? We’ve got wood and bone aplenty in the village, and those seems like the best options for materials around here if I don’t pull some crazy shit out of my ass. I’ve got [Carve Wood 30] and [Carve Ivory 32], the latter of which treats bones as ivory for some reason.
Actually, it can’t be too nice. But I don’t want to do a crap job. Mom’s been a great mom these last twelve years and she deserves the love and care I’m going to put into it.
Ooh! I’ll do something intentionally simple and rustic looking. To a casual observer, it’ll appear to have been made by a low Rank carving Skill, but the experts (not that I would expect any around here, myself excluded) would recognize the piece for what it truly is.
I mean, Mom’ll appreciate it because I made it. Ten years of village wonder-child of the hunt, and she still treats me like a little kid, even though I’m two meter twelve and a hundred kilos.
What, I’m twelve? [Demonkin] grow a touch fast.
Still, I could carve a dried out turd—would [Carve Stone] cover that?—and she’d still think I’m the light of her life. I’d feel extra bad, but her and Dad popped out a few more after me.
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What my kid siblings need a gift too? No way. I mean, I love them, but they’re my siblings and we’re a bunch of peasants out in the middle of nowhere. They’d probably break it in a week.
At least I only need one going-away present. Dad’s got the gruff-loving thing going on and I don’t really feel the need to have him tearing up a little when I leave. That’d be weird.
What’s next? Well, after my little cartographical tour of Panecasa in my first year of life, I gave myself a few months to allow my natural growth to bump up my mana pool. Once that was big enough, a took a quick jaunt over to Machidiel ◐’s little mountain treehouse on a flying sword.
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*Knock knock*
A dark-haired [Celestial] [Ranger] opened the front door and stared down at a fifty centimeter tall [Demonkin] toddler.
The toddler stared right back.
The pause was exceedingly pregnant.
“Hi Zeke.”
The [Ranger’s] face went through several strange contortions, before settling on confused hope. “Ada?”
“Yep. I see you’ve moved in.”
“Err….”
From there, the awkwardness rapidly flowed back to Gur’godor ◮ as he had to relay his ignominious death to Mack ◐. Killed by a rock! Indeed.
Still, it’d only been five years since the Big Battle—and yes, they were calling it that for lack of any better names and the fact that only a handful of people even knew it happened. And Mack was comfortable that the containment was stable, so Gur’godor was going to get to grow up mostly naturally.
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Still, the last few years as the village’s hunting prodigy had been a high life. Most everyone knew I was leaving soon, though none knew where to or for what. And while my nighttime jaunts hunting had been a steady, even large, influx of XP for many years—officially, since I was 8; unofficially since I was 3—I really needed to spend at least six months, maybe a year, just slaughtering every monster I could find. I mean, yeah, I was a third of the way to our goal, but I’d been limited to about an hour’s flight time in any direction and for some reason no [Eldritch] wandered by, which put a crimp on my XP. So definitely needed to shed some blood for, uh, a good cause.
But before I leave, I still need to carve something for Mom.