Lviyr, Seliel, and I stared at our viewers.

The Vanquisher title is given to a champion who defeats a champion or inhabitant that the system deems to be certain death to fight.

This is something that almost never happens, as it's certain death!

Usually the lesser target simply runs in an attempt to let the greater enemies kill each other first, but it seems nobody told the lunatic known as Andrew The Unorthodox, who just killed a champion double his size.

"What was that?!" Seliel yelled in exasperation. "How did my champion lose to someone with a Strength of two?!"

"To be fair, Manglow had the massive disadvantage of environmental weakness to heat." Lviyr offered.

"Wait what?!"

Jyn laughed hysterically at Seliel's misfortune. "Manglow was killed by what? One of those metal quadruped things?" He asked smugly.

"He was killed by an enemy champion, mine in fact." Lviyr countered.

Jyn's eyes went wide. "The Unorthodox killed The Mauler then?" Jyn's rows and rows of teeth went on full display as he smiled. "This is going to be so much fun!"

I took one last glance at Lviyr's viewer.

Jyn might just be right.

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Andrew

After a bit of reflection, it occurs to me that it's not really fair to say that Manglow was a kill of The Great Stabbinsky per se, because my saw also pulled more than its own weight in that fight.

Maybe as an apology, I should name it too?

"Maybe something like 'The Cuttinator'... or 'The Devil's Maw'?"

Hmmm...

Something for later I suppose.

In either case, it was at this time I finally got some peace and quiet to work on my effing waterwheel.

"Isn't it beautiful?!" I asked, admiring my own completed waterwheel.

I was able to salvage a bunch of wood from all the trees thrown around, even if most of them were smashed to pieces.

This was my plan: to build a lathe powered by a waterwheel.

The idea was that by using gear ratios, I could convert some of the torque into rotational speed, allowing for objects to be made perfectly round without having to make a motor of any kind first.

Particularly, I was going to use a pulley/sprocket system so that I didn't have to make literal gears and still get all of the benefits of the ratio shifting.

However, physics had some things to say to me about my plans...

Unexpected issue number one: The ropes made out of thorn vines don't have enough grip to turn the sprockets properly, causing massive amounts of slipping.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And even if you add something to make it stick, like tree sap for instance...

Unexpected issue number two: The ropes snap.

"Son of a-!"

After that incident, it became apparent that I needed to get better rope than I've had thus far... or I needed to make gears, but I didn't want to build all of the pieces a second time except worse, so I went for better rope.

I frankly wasn't even sure what to look for, other than other plants I guess?

So, I searched for the thinnest vine I could find to wind around itself over and over, like a real rope made by non-idiots.

After a bit of doing, I did find a vine that fit my needs and got a whole lot of it.

I then tried to wind it by hand and determined it to be too much effort.

Instead, I tied one set of ends to the waterwheel, the others to a heavy branch, and let nature do the work for a while.

In the meantime, I got to work making a bunch of prototypes for better pulley things, in order to offer better grip to the rope once I had it made.

The solution I came up with was to score the inside of the pulley things' ruts, whatever that's called, with The Great Stabbinisky.

Hehe, that name is still funny.

Once the rope was done weaving, I set it to weave again, and when that was done, I tested it out.

The strength was as good as I had hoped, and its total thickness was about the same as the stripped thornbush "rope".

So, I tried the waterwheel again, and found the grip was much better, it still took a bit more fine-tuning, but it was done.

Unexpected issue number three: The rotating head of the lathe spins out of orbit so much that I constantly worry about it trying to escape the atmosphere, causing inaccuracy in the cuts.

Now, that may not sound bad as-is, but keep in mind that this motion completely defeats the point of having a lathe in the first place.

My solution?

Making the one pulley-thingy that drove the head into like eight of the suckers, each from a different cardinal direction.

At this point, it kinda reminded me of that one game people play with the strings, all cradled up like that.

I realized that the lathe would 'skip' if you will, as in suddenly stop for a second within a rhythm every few seconds.

The reason?

Unexpected issue number four: The waterwheel does not have a stable enough rotation.

The solution?

I had to remake a large part of the waterwheel, including the axle.

"Why me?!"

At this point, it actually started working properly as far as I could tell.

I had put in something to turn on the lathe.

Unexpected issue number five: The rotating head of the lathe doesn't have enough grip on the object that is rotating.

The object flew directly into my ribs.

"Ow~"

Finally though, after I stopped crying, it was working mostly well, all I needed was to shore up the rotating head's grip a bit and I could start my real objective in earnest.

Unexpected issue number six: There's no way to make it stop.

"Damn it!"

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Yuluulth

"Yuluulth, look at this." Lviyr beckoned.

I held up a claw to express that I needed a moment. "Sorry, my champion's using a lot of [Skills] right now, I'll look in a second."

After my charge's tenth champion was slain, I shifted attention to Lviyr's viewer. "Okay, now I'm read- what the quizblech, where did he get that from?!"

"He's been making it all this time, he finally finished the last part... he couldn't make it stop for a while."

"What's he making now?" I asked, pointing at the viewer.

Lviyr looked back at the viewer as well. "I'm not sure, it looks like... a metal bow? No, wait, he's keeping the strip of metal attached to side... a really weird crossbow?"

"But why did he make such a heavy draw weight? Look, he can't even draw it."

Sure enough, Andrew The Unorthodox attempted to pull the string back, but couldn't manage it... but for some reason, this seemed to make him happy?

I looked away, tired of trying to guess the intentions of a strange alien creature.

"I'm sure that whatever he's doing, it'll be ridiculous." I looked back to my champion as he began his eleventh champion hunt. "Not that it will matter in the end."

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Andrew

After all that hard labor, came even more hard labor!

I had one last thing to make.

A pump-action crossbow that has a draw weight well beyond what I can draw!

Wait, hold on, it's not stupid I promise!

The idea is that I can substitute reload speed for immense draw weight by setting up another gear ratio... this time with a couple actual gears.

After five pumps, the crossbow's string is reset and ready to fire again.

I also made a number of metal arrows... or I guess they're actually bolts, because they're for a crossbow...

I digress.

Now that it works, it's time to finally explore this world properly!