Author’s corner: …
Silence is all that comes from the room with the slightly open door. An eerie silence came from it as one approached. Opening the door, the scene of the crime is revealed. A seemingly innocent bedroom that would be perfectly common if it wasn’t for the body laying before the computer lifelessly. As the screen still shed its light upon the dead body, one could notice that the right hand rested into an unusual place, a bit too far from the keyboard or mouse. On a closer notice, one would notice something drawn with the blood of the victim. As if in a last effort before his death, the victim managed to give a clue upon his fate. The drawing… The word it spelt, was but one simple six letters word:
Tables.
Have a good read!
---
“Fluffyness assemble!” I shouted out while falling against the wall outside of the forge heavily. Responding to my call, Aura and Yuu both approached me from different sides and sat down beside me.
I wasted no time into enjoying myself on feeling their bodies… And let’s cut that, that sounded a lot worse than what I had in mind.
Well, I started petting both Yuu’s and Aura’s head, enjoying myself into the fluffy feeling while letting all the exhaustion from the crafting to fly away like there was no tomorrow.
Aah, how had I missed this, ignoring any and all responsibilities and simply enjoy myself in fluffiness! Ignoring all the weirded out glances I was receiving from the non-fluffy ones, and the look of jealously from Crys who wasn’t so fluffy anymore.
By the way, I found out that Yuu was specially ticklish right behind the ears, while Aura really enjoyed when I scratched her under the chin. Bonus point for it having extra fluffy fur.
“…Well, that was quite the experience.” Ozzur said as a yawn escaped his lips. Halfway into the afternoon, his caffeine overdose started wearing out and he started yawning more and more. “Still… Are you sure about me publishing this? This is actually quite big, you know?”
“Meh. Not like it’s any heavily-guarded secret.” I said, and while I would have waved away his questions, I had fluffiness to attend to. “Besides, any crafter half-worth their skills would probably have tried upgrading their gear sooner or later anyway.”
Yeah, as he said, I didn’t spend the remaining of the afternoon simply looking at Hammer McHammer (not actual name, mind you) in awe and then smiling like an idiot. It was only for a couple minutes. I also took the chance to do some upgrade for my gear.
First thing first, I started with making a much needed upgrade for my shield. While it was made with burning tail’s material, the crafting was a bit subpar in comparison with the rest of my gear, so I started working on that from the ground up. Taking advantage that I still had a bunch of material left from the spider, mainly the head-part, I forged myself a shield.
Well, it was a fairly quick and simple doing, and, in a twist of genius, I added the two scythe-like claws to the edges of the shield. Don’t they say that the best defense is a good offensive? If it made any difference in the final product… I have no idea, but at least now I have this badass looking spider-themed shield.
When crafting it, I used the head-pieces of the spider’s carapace and tried to fit them in a way so that they resembled a smaller version of the head and used some fragments of fire crystals in place of the eyes. Finally, I added the two blades on each side of the shield so that they started from roughly the middle, but extended a few centimeters beyond the lower border. It kinda looked like the spider when it was with its claws at ready if seen from the front.
CINDERGUARD (SHIELD)
(requires level 28)
Block value:
113
Magical block:
79
Quality
Excellent
Durability
45/45
Description
May the earth quake and the fires rage, may steel be clashed and blows be traded, for the Impaler wavers for none, and shall soon bring its burning vengeance towards its foes.
Attacks that use the shield gain natural Armor piercing effects.
TGH+22 STR+10 VIT -4 Agi +8
Yeah. A clear upgrade, isn’t it?
And that bonus! That interesting, beautiful, and utterly… Useless bonus.
I can’t feel that it was thrown there as a joke, seeing how my main shield-related attack already ignores armor completely. Well, it’s still cool as hell though. Also, I made it so that the handle of the shield was in perpendicular with the claws, so if I gave a punch with the shield, the claws would go first.
Nifty, huh?
Besides that, I also proceeded to use the scale-iron ore to upgrade my armor set too. Nothing fancy, as I simply removed the chain slash scale mail from inside the pieces of armor that had them and put on the new scale-iron one. For this I had to count on Argento for some negotiations with the locals for a few extra scale-iron ores, as I was kind of running low at this point.
See? Nothing fancy. Even the upgrade was straight up simple, simply adding more defense to the pieces and so forth. That said, the feet and *ahem*helmet*ahem* (it’s a bandana for Cygna’s sake!) had nothing of the kind seeing how they are simply leather.
ROBES OF THE BURNING SOUL +1
(CHEST) (SCALE-MAIL)
(requires level 15)
Def:
32
M. res
20
Quality
Excellent
Durability
50/50
Description
A martial arts robe made with the hide of blazing tails, wearing this armor makes you feel empowered by the raging inner flame.
STR+7 AGI+8 MND+6 INT+5 FIRE RES+4
(Made by Wargon)
PANTS OF THE BURNING SOUL +1
(LEGS) (CHAIN-MAIL)
(requires level 15)
Def:
27
M. res
19
Quality
Excellent
Durability
45/45
Description
A martial arts pants made with the hide of a blazing tail. The soul inside burns with the desire to run wild.
STR+9 AGI+8 TGH+6 VIT+6 FIRE RES+4
(Made by Wargon)
ARMGUARD OF THE BURNING SOUL +1
(HANDS) (CHAIN-MAIL)
(requires level 15)
Def:
25
M. res
18
Quality
Excellent
Durability
45/45
Description
A martial arts arm protector made with the hide of a blazing tail. You feel the very flames are at your reach when wearing these protectors.
STR+11 AGI+8 INT+7 FIRE RES+4
(Made by Wargon)
SHOULDER-GUARD OF THE BURNING SOUL +1
(SHOULDER) (CHAIN-MAIL)
(requires level 15)
Def:
29
M. res
25
Quality
Excellent
Durability
45/45
Description
A martial arts shoulder protector made with the hide of a blazing tail. They fill you with the strength of thousand burning souls.
STR+4 AGI+4 TGH+10 VIT+10 FIRE RES+4
(Made by Wargon)
As you can see, a pretty significant upgrade from their late form. Even received a nifty +1 to the name that I didn’t even know they could have! Isn’t that neat?
And it was as easy as opening the stitching, removing the mail, replacing it, then stitching back together! With silk! Non-Explosive Explosive silk!
Speaking of silk, it was all I could do for the sandals and bandana. Exchanging the stitches for a new silk-based one.
SANDALS OF THE BURNING SOUL +1
(FEET) (LEATHER)
(requires level 15)
Def:
22
M. res
20
Quality
Excellent
Durability
45/45
Description
A martial arts footwear made with the hide of a blazing tail. The ground trembles at your very steps with the potential contained within.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
STR+9 AGI+6 MND+5 VIT+5 FIRE RES+4
In combat move speed +10%
(Made by Wargon)
BANDANA OF THE BURNING SOUL +2
(HELMET) (LIGHT LEATHER)
(requires level 15)
Def:
18
M. res
25
Quality
Excellent
Durability
40/40
Description
A martial arts bandana made with the hide of a blazing tail. The might of the Blazing tails flow through these simple protectors.
INT+6 AGI+6 STR+10 MND+7 VIT+7 FIRE RES+4
(Made by Wargon)
Yeah, only the bandana get the +2. Why? I don’t know. Don’t ask me. It’s not like I’m a master craftsman or anything like that.
Well, at least now I won’t take too much damage from attacks now thanks to the buff in damage. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel that the upgrade to the stats didn’t quite keep up with the upgrades. Maybe it’s some kind of diminishing return for upgrades so that I don’t just go upgrading the hell out of my gear?
Anyway, it’s still a good upgrade and I don’t plan on complaining.
But that’s only for my defensive gear. Let’s now talk firepower.
It will probably come at no surprise that I also upgraded my weapons. And by that I mean my one-handed sword and my bow. I didn’t try to upgrade the long-sword (and death to anyone who calls it a great sword!) because, one, it’s still doing damn good on its own. On the other hand, I don’t feel that the sword and the matriarch’s material would mix well together.
Well, the bow was a rather simple upgrade to be honest. Using the silk and tendons, I simply changed the string of the bow.
I was half expecting a small upgrade to be honest, but…
BLAZING GRACE +2
BOW
(requires level 15)
Attack
8-48
Extra
5 fire damage
Quality
Excellent
Durability
30/30
Description
A bow made in the honor of the majestic Blazing-tail, its shape reminiscing of their most iconic trait, the three large tails. Their fiery soul reside within, granting it immense power.
STR +9 AGI+9 VIT+5
Extra fire damage increase over distance.
(Made by Wargon)
I might have seriously underestimated what a good string does for a bow. Not only did the raw damage increase by more than fifty percent, but elemental damage more than doubled!
Whoop the freaking do!
Beautiful, isn’t it?
That said, I’ll need to look a bit more into how upgrading works in here. I didn’t quite expect for the bow upgrade to be so good with something so simple. Does the quality and impact of the material on the gear impact more than the quantity itself?
Well, if anything, my sword should be proof of that. Taking the blazing tail slash Freezing tail sword I had made, I decided to try and upgrade it somehow, and the idea I had was for me to create a custom grip and handguard, seeing how I had no idea on how to change the blade without making one from scratch.
For that, I used the remains of the bone jelly to mold a new grip and pommel. Making it so that I could attach the pommel to the blade was a bit annoying, but nothing too big, so I managed to finish it quickly.
The result is:
TUMULTUOUS GRACE +1 (ONE-HANDED LONG SWORD)
(requires level 15)
Attack
26-30
Extra
2 Frostfire damage
Quality
Excellent
Durability
35/35
Description
A Sword made with the parts of both, the Freezing tail and the Burning Tail. These two mortal enemies still wage their battle inside the blade, generating it’s conflicting nature.
STR +6 AGI+7 INT+7 MND +4
Reduces the slash skill resource costs by 20%
The Element dealt into the attack corresponds to the target’s lowest resistance.
(Made by Wargon)
The upgrade wasn’t as big as the bow’s, but the very fact that It was an upgrade was strange for me. Different from the bow, where I at least can understand how the string can impact on the damage, this one was all but a hand-guard and pommel. Yes, it does have a slightly better grip now, since I had it custom made, but it shouldn’t affect the item that much.
And true enough, the upgrade was much minor compared to the upgrade of the bow.
Well, with that all my gear is now up to date with my level, kind of, and the remaining scraps of the matriarch and scale-iron, I used to make some consumables. Also known as arrows and throwing knives. Seeing how the Impaler’s material seem to work as a catalyst of sorts on the fire crystals, I made me some powered-up knives and arrows. Roughly twenty knives and sixty arrows came from the remaining materials. Plus a heck-ton of normal scale-iron arrows.
Like, seriously, a LOAD of them. I probably won’t run out of them for a really good time now. To get all that material I had to give my old shield to Argento so he could sell it. And I still had to pay him to get me some herbs to make my potions that I spent on the battle.
“Ugh… I almost forgot the potions.” I said annoyed, breaking me out from recollection.
“There’s no real reason for you to bother with them right now, right?” Crys commented curiously, to which I nodded.
“Yeah… I’ll worry with them later. Good call.” I nodded before going back to enjoying myself on my fluffy-heave…
“Tek-tek~~!” Why is Pebblesworth sitting on top of Aura’s head? Don’t you know you ain’t fluffy? Right now I’m in fluffy enjoying moment!
Well, that said, he is surprisingly smooth. I mean, he does have some irregularities, but it’s not rough as I was expecting. It’s kind of pleasant. Like when you get a marble in your hand and you start moving it around, you know?
“NOT FAIR MASTER!” Crys complained as she flew closer and started tugging my hand that had been patting Yuu’s head. “If he gets petting, I also demand it!”
“Hey! That’s…” I was about to complain, but then I noticed that I didn’t have anything to rebut her on, so I quickly shut myself up. I grumbled a bit annoyed before moving my hand from Yuu to Crys’s head.
Different from Pebblesworth, Crys was surprisingly warm to the touch, and while she was smooth, she had these sharpish edges on the corners of the crystals. Sharp enough to make themselves clear, but smooth enough to not cut me.
Though a crystal cutting a rock is kind of…
Anyway, it’s also amusing to have the feeling of the crystals moving slightly under pressure whenever I touched them, since they weren’t all attached to a physical body.
Smooth things are also nice… If things with fluff are fluffy, does this makes smooth things smoothy?
Still, why do I have this feeling that I’m getting further and further away from the Fluffy sect? Am I becoming an heretic of sorts? I mean, I still like fluffy, but smoothy is also good…
And why do I have this aura of annoyance coming from my left and this aura of sadness coming from my right? Noticing that Aura was looking away in annoyance and Yuu’s ears had drooped made me feel really guilty, so I quickly went back to appeasing the two.
But then, the one to become annoyed was Crys, and the one to become disappointed was Pebblesworth.
“Two foxes and two elementals fighting for petting rights from a Golem. And here I thought I had seen everything.” Ozzur commented with some sarcasm in his voice.
Yeah, why don’t you shut up and help me here? I only have two arms, you know? While I stared holes at him with those intentions, all he did was smirk amused.
…
“Oh, hey Gon!” Hanbei said as we approached her. The cat-girl was carrying with her a small bag while nibbling on some skewered meat she probably bought on the streets. “Hadn’t you said that you finished crafting some time ago? What took you so long.”
“I was stuck between a rock and a fluffy place.” I commented exhaustedly before sighing.
The anime character-wannabe tilted her head curiously but since I had no desire to explain exactly what happened, it looks like she had an idea once she noticed that not only Yuu and Aura were wagging their tails happily, but Crys was humming cheerfully while Pebblesworth was tekking along.
“Hmm? Where’s the reporter?” Shea asked curious once she noticed that Ozzur was nowhere in sight.
“Caffeine crash plus overnight.” I replied back. “Got forcibly disconnected so he could go to sleep.” It was fairly interesting to see him cursing once he received the warning message, before fiddling with the menus trying to cancel the automated log out. I made sure to film everything. “Also, Lily had to go help Argento with something midway into the job, so I have no idea where she is right now.”
“Hmm…” She nodded while nibbling on another piece of the meat. “I was helping Yami level up a bit so she could catch up to us.” She explained. “There’s a good hunting ground a few minutes away from here. Some wild ogres, wolves and the occasional elemental.” She said pointing to some place in the distance. I nodded amused while looking far away.
If I’m not mistaken, wild races are kind of like the monster version of the races in here. Something about they not having a soul or something of the sort. Crys had explained it to me before some time, but I kinda forgot.
“Hmm… I see.” I said while making a mental note of going to the zone and hunting a bit later on. “Hey, know if there’s any rabbit hunting zone nearby?”
“Huh? Rabbits?”
“Have you finally decided to go to reveal the world that fetish of yours?” Yami asked as she approached us from the side, nibbling on the same kind of skewers as Hanbei.
“Nah. It’s just that I need to do some rabbit genocide with my new toy.” I said while summoning my hammer from the inventory. It made a fairly loud ‘thud’ as the head hit the ground, and holding on to the handle, I smiled happily. “I call it: Tectonic Pulverizer!” I said while showing the two the status.
“You know, I can’t quite grasp your naming sense.” Hanbei commented as she stared at the status in wonder, letting out an amused whistle. “Sometimes you come up with some good, cool names… Then comes Lieutenant.” She looked over at the sprite who was sitting playfully on my shoulders while carrying around a cloth thingy with it. “I kind of fear what you’ll end up calling the little gu…”
“You mean Mr. Pebblesworth?” I asked.
Face-palms ensued.
“Tek-Tek?”
“What?” I asked confused when I saw Hanbei covering her face with her hand, while Yami sighed deeply. I looked down at Pebblesworth confused, noticing that it was looking at me curiously.
The earth sprite has accepted your offer on following along and have now become your pet.
This earth sprite is a passive pet and will have the following characteristics:
Unable to learn combat skills.
Able to learn commodities skills.
Don’t assist you in battles, but are invulnerable to any kind of damage and do not draw aggro.
Strange. This somehow feels familiar.
No, wait, that shouldn’t be what I should be commenting!
Congratulations. You have gotten yourself a brand new pet, an earth sprite, and have chosen it’s name:
Mr. Pebblesworth
SERIOUSLY?
No, I mean, seriously? It was a joke! A joke! Jay – Oh – Kyu - Tee – Dobliu! Joke! And to hell joke not being spelt like that! The joke is mine and I spell it as a I want!
As it was my turn to face-palm, Yuu approached me from the side with a curious glance. I simply shook my head before sighing.
“Well, looks like I got myself a new pet.” I said while laughing dryly.
“Tek-Tek-Tek~~!” Pebblesworth sang happily while clacking its little claw-like things, swaying its body sideways as it did that.
“…Really? When did that happen?” Hanbei asked surprised.
“Five seconds ago.” I said while picking up Pebblesworth and showing him to the duo. “Girls, meet Pebblesworth. Looks like he’ll be following us in our travels.”
“Tek-tek!” Pebblesworth said cheerfully, greeting the girls.
While the two had a blank look for a moment, they soon started smiling gently at the sprite before nodding back to him. Once they were done, I put the sprite back on my shoulder and looked at it worried.
“Do you understand that if you stay with me, you’ll have to leave this place, right?” I said, and the little sprite soon froze in shock. “You totally didn’t think about it, did you?” I said while covering my face with my hand once again.
Yep, it totally didn’t. Understanding this, it started looking around nervously as if it had no idea on what to do now. Shaking my head, I decided that we would worry about that later.
“Anyway, what do those skills do?” Hanbei asked curiously. “They sound strong.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I quickly cheered up while smiling smugly. Taking a better grip on the hammer, I grunted a bit as I brought it up, seeing how it was, by far, my heaviest weapon yet, and leaned it on my shoulders with a sigh of relief. “This is going to take some time to get used.” I commented. “Anyway, the two skills are completely different, but they share a two minutes cooldown.” As I said that, I fished an elemental crystal from my inventory and showed it to the girls. “Well, each one of them have a cost, either I have to use the corresponding elemental crystal, or be able to use the correct type of magic. For the Matriarch’s Impalement, I need electricity, and then, it does this.”
I held the elemental crystal in my hand while holding onto the nerve-wrapped handle before activating it. It broke into sparks and it coursed up the handle and then towards the head of the hammer. It took a brief moment before it suddenly changed, a large spike appearing in its middle and four smaller ones around it.
The girls flinched surprised when the hammer suddenly became dangerous looking, but I simply smiled proudly of my work.
“This makes it so that the next attack I do, deal fifty percent extra unmitigated damage as bleeding over a period of time.” I said before difficultly moving the hammer around. “And if I take in account the high raw damage of this beauty, this can hurt. A lot.”
“I can see that.” Hambei said impressed. “Then, what about the other one?”
At her question, I smiled like an idiot.
“Well, I kind of want to test it right now, so why don’t we go see it ourselves?” I said.
…
“S-Shishou… Isn’t that…” Yuu said a bit shocked.
“You… Are a horrible person, Master.” Crys said in a cold tone.
“It’s all for the good of science.” I replied in a cold and sad tone… While having a large wicked smile in my face.
“Only a wicked person like you would take amusement in this kind of undertaking.” Yami said as she stared at the scene starry eyed.
“On one hand… I kind of pity it… On the other hand… I really want to see how this will go.” Hanbei commented while trying to hold back a smirk.
It’s all for the sake of science. So please, forgive me Mr Just-passing-by bunny!
“Heads up Aura!” I said while raising the hammer high up in the air behind me. The fox barked once before taking on a low stance, ready to pounce.
Approaching the rabbit that was happily digging on the ground, I twisted my body a lot and raised the ridiculously heavy hammer high up, before untwisting myself and putting all the power in a single slanted swing that scrapped the ground in its lowest point, the same where it would hit the rabbit.
At the same time I activated the fire elemental crystal in my hand, leading to the head of the hammer acquiring a magma-looking appearance much like the spider when it went berserk.
With all the power of the swing hitting the rabbit, it had pretty much died at that point, but it wasn’t over. Oh no, it’s just beginning.
An explosion occurred near the head of the hammer, dealing even more damage to the unfortunate animal, as well as increasing the impact a good few times.
Since the golfball swing would naturally cause the object it hit to go up, the rabbit corpse was thrown… No. It was launched like a rocket towards the air, flying in the direction of the horizon at high speed that the eye was barely able to keep up with.
No need to say that I was laughing madly while I saw the first non-winged flying rabbit in Insania.
Aura darted after the rabbit like a blue bolt, running excitedly over the snow as she chased down the body.
“You do know you are going to regret that one day.” Crys told me in an attempt to sound cold, but even she was holding back a laugh on how ridiculous the scene was.
I couldn’t say anything as I was trying to hold back a bit on laughing, but I didn’t need any warning from Crys to know that. I knew that these irresponsible actions of mine would lead me to regret one day.
But that day is not today, so let’s do screwy things for fun!
Of course, Aura and I received a thoroughly scolding from Yuu about there being a limit to how mean we could be to the bunnies.
Still worth it, though.