OOCS
Chapter 5 : Disappointment/Crafting
Now what war does with the minds of people is grind them down, some rather fast, some slower, still they all get grinded down as it slowly chips away at there kindness and joy of life. The hell that constant encounters with there possible end of there existence, the often asked question of taking other sentient life and the stress of being pushed to your edge of mental and physical endurance and to often beyond these limits, it hardens some and most others become life or soul less husks of themselves.
Now what does this mean for Karl-Heinz and Vaskra ?
This gives them the best way to just walk into the camp one could ask for. No fancy guards on post stopping them after just a general greeting and a to short half glance as they both walk into the camp as Vaskra is known and Karl just stays quiet and walks past them as if nothing ever happened.
After they turn the corner and are out of sight of the guards Vaskra loses her facade of a Soldier doing her duty and asks “Why can you be so calm ? how did this work so easily ?”.With a shrug Karl answered “When you just walk past with confidence and don´t look to much out of place, most will just assume that you belong were you are going, oh and we both are covered in mud and other dirt so we could just as well be enemy soldiers and no one would have blinked, given how bad uniforms or lack of them, are visible now. So tell me were the place to clean yourself is, then you go and do your report , before you wash yourself as that is most likely your orders, then we go to your bunk ? I will look around whilst you report your stuff. Good plan ?”
Before Vaskra could answer Karl-Heinz remembered something and asked “Oh and how does magic work here ? Can you clean yourself with it ?” Seeing Vaskra´s confusion stunned face he quickly reworded the question “Oh mighty, wise NPC can thy clean myself with the use of axiom ?” Punching Karl for this way too blatant mocking, forgetting that he in her mind was mentally ill and needed help, she answered “Yeah of course you can clean yourself with Axiom, I don´t know how but Axiom is in everything you dipshit, now get clean and do your thing while I do my shit”
Vaskra was walking off to give her report and left Karl-Heinz behind, rubbing his side out of reflex more than pain. Then he followed after Vaskra, being ignored from the camp of disillusioned soldiers who look like they have seen enough war to last them 3 life times and just internally gave up, his camouflage was also aided by the mud and smell of his way back to camp, masking his looks and gender enough to be not interesting.
The soldiers themselves were a mix of all kinds of races, just like on the battlefield that he first saw when he exited the temple cave, they were all with female porn start body shapes and in one way or more looking human in there sexy forms. Aside from this common trait, there were many different races, different flavors of humans that look like they are wearing elements in there hair and sometimes skin, the furry aliens that were looking like anthropomorphic animals in varying degrees of human and animal traits, there were the pop culture races which looked like they were stolen from dnd and other sources and lastly there were four armed bunny girls and other such more creative races like crab-taur-women thingy´s. Oddly enough non of them looked like a strong race as they were all his height category or smaller. Sadly they stayed in there small groups around fires and did there little tasks or tasks that made them look busy to avoid tasks and most of them were scarred from battles.
Karl-Heinz smirked a bit at the atmosphere this scene was creating in him and praising the game again and cursing his twisted sens of emotions making him smirk at misery. Karl walked on and followed Vaskra, as he had forgotten that she wanted to first head of and report to her officers, instead thinking they were heading to the cleaning area ´what ever that will turn out to be, by my guess it is lots of buckets, near water with rags to get the worst grime off´. At the same time his mind was busy going thru the menu and see if he could find any starting spells that he could do already, to his luck he found the trusty spell with the name “clean” in some sub menu.
Feeling not very witty, yet good in memory, even if his memory fails him at times, Karl-Heinz silent casts the spell by thinking the name of the spell and about himself as target. The axiom does Karl´s bidding and over the next few steps the mud falls of him and he feels very clean again. Smiling at his success he repeats the spell on Vaskra, which also is completely cleaned after a few more steps. Then Vaskra stops turns around, grabs Karl by his arm and starts dragging him with all her might between two buildings into a quiet corner.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Being more collected this time, Vaskra speaks in a forced calm voice, like one would talk to a child that did something bad, whilst the child didn´t yet know or understand that it did something bad. “Now you are a skillful axiom user ?” Not having the social context, Karl just looks confused at Vaskra and says nothing.
Vaskra tries again as this question has failed to get a result “are you by chance an axiom Adept ? Or was that your only axiom skill ? Why didn´t you clean us when we were walking back to camp?” Followed by a shorter moment of silence than the last time Vaskra asked a question, as this time Karl has a grasp on the questions intention that Vaskra is asking. “No I am no adept, at least not yet. The games system is new to me so I just now found the cleaning spell I just used aaaaaand it seems to have used a good chunk of my mana bar for it. Good thing that mana seems to regenerate fast. Do you know what other classes like adept are in this game ? I wouldn´t want to skill myself into a dead end. Oh wait I didn´t open the reward for completing the quest of following you back to camp yet”
Karl stood there murmuring to himself. Vaskra didn´t quit know how to sort this new insight into the picture she had of Karl-Heinz in her mind so far, so she defaulted back to what the first plan was. “Well you stay at this thinking you are doing while I will go and make my report oki?” No answer came from Karl so she repeated “You wait here for me OK ?” Karl flinched a bit in surprise but then nodded and gave her all his attention. “Good, i´ll be back soon so wait here” and Vaskra turns and leaves him standing in between the buildings to do her duty as a scout.
Now that point one on the half-assed plan was complete, It was time to move on to part 2, disregarding the half order, half plea of Vaskra, Karl-Heinz walked out of the nook they had chated in and walked thru camp like he owned the place, eagerly looking around and after not to much walking, finding the armory and repair facility´s.
Seeing that no one is stopped from just walking up and into the place and just start using the workbench and machines. Karl-Heinz grunts out a greeting and just walks in. The others don´t quite notice him entering as Karl then starts to grab random tools and metal parts to see what the mechanics of crafting look like. A bit confused at how deep the crafting system seems to be, Karl starts to work away, trying to do some simple things like sharpening some knifes, cleaning tools and looking at a disassembled gun and trying to see what he can do to fix it,
On Karl´s internal screen every action in the workshop makes small experience points ping away happily and making him smile wide. So lost in his tinkering and trying to figure out how the laws of physics seem to bend ever so often in this Game, he didn´t notice that the armory gunsmith walked up to him and looked over his shoulder to see what he was doing.
“Ssssssssssssoooooooooo why are you in my workshop?” came the voice from outside of Karl´s focus and almost making him flinch, if not for the bad reaction speed to give him time to suppress that reaction. Behind him was now standing a rather interested and intimidating looking snake woman. Not feeling intimidated and the jump scare shock having blown off, Karl just continues his tinkering task, even if a bit slower as his attention does shift partially to the creature and her breasts, currently pushing into his back. The snake had inched a bit closer after her jump scare had seemed ineffective, so instead she would invade his personal space.
Karl-Heinz couldn´t just ignore the weight of the woman against his back so he answered “oh, just trying the crafting system, fancy stuff you got here, looks like mass produced good enough equipment, I think it could be improved still by at least a bit. I mean all the parts look forged or milled, no stamped parts anywhere and the batteries? look like they could be made to easier be loaded and unloaded to the gun too.”
Not quite buying this confident of a critic on this standard of technical skill she tried to test if this invader of a presumed front line, meat grinder, cannon fodder, foot soldier was just trying to bullshit her way into or out of a situation. “Now if you got such mighty fine ideas, then go ahead and show me what in detail you mean with all that big talk you were just spouting.”
“Eh sure, but what do you mean with that request ?” Karl-Heinz thinking to himself ´is this my first crafting quest ?, maybe I can get a nice bonus if I do a good enough job at pointing out these obvious technical design flaws ?´ “Do you have a PC or drawing board to create blueprints at ?”
“No and nooooo you will have to make due with what you have here” came the slightly venomous reply from behind again, to which Karl didn´t react and just searched for a clean and empty piece of paper, which he didn´t find. The next best thing was that he took a plank of wood that looked like a left over part from construction somewhere and started drawing blueprints with a pencil he found, rather rough blueprints but he slowly managed to refine the idea in his head out into a produce able blueprint over the iteration of sketches and a few more planks.
While he was quickly lost again in his work, it slowly dawned on the Nagasha woman that this intruder was not just spouting big words but was at least a hobby tinkerer and at best a full blown big brain mechanical designer, she didn´t know the names of the big named jobs as they usually only cached her ire for making unaccomplishable demands or presenting impractical designs to the equipment raster. ´Yet this one seems to know what is practical and not just theoretically practical´ was what she thought.
“I still haven´t quit figured out how crafting in this game works bit it seems that it is very realistic, which will be a pain in the ass and a blessing” Karl-Heinz half monologues and half comments. “Now it seems I got some time left on my hands, so can you maybe show me around your workshop and tell me of the machines that I might have missed ? Oh and what was your name again?”
Flicking her tongue out, trying to get a better read on this creature she notices his lack of axiom presence and also recognizes his lack of emotions, but more importantly she notices him being a he by the amount of pheromones he has given off into the air around him. Before a wave of uncertainty can fully wash over her and condemn her to inaction, she pushes forward to try and claim this price of a man for herself with words that come out way to fast to be called proper speech “Himynameis Sarsa ,,, MARRYMEFUCKME!”