The next few days went… okay, they were slow as hell. I wasn’t allowed to eat anything but soup and some stale black crackers for the entire first day. I didn’t even have much company, because Lilith was busy doing a temporary job of her own. Apparently, she had the choice between working as a waitress at a nearby restaurant, or as a saleswoman for the tailor that was housing her.

I think it might have been because of a desire to repay him, but Lilith agreed to work as a saleswoman. When she came to show me her uniform, I couldn’t help but stare. He actually put the dangerously seductive demoness in a frilly maid uniform, with thigh high socks that stopped just below the bottom of the skirt. This man is evil, truly evil.

While I was recovering on the second day, I decided to finally check my status. I knew my health wouldn’t be fully recovered, but I had hoped that I would have earned some experience from fighting all those shadow lurkers.

Name: Grim Styles

Level: 3

Race: Human

Class: None

Strength: 21

Vitality: 20

Dexterity: 20

Health: 24%

Wisdom: 18

Intelligence: 19

Luck: 13

Magic: 100%

Points Remaining - 2

Titles

Conqueror of Hell

+10 all stats

Skills

Equipment Mastery

100% proficiency will all equipment, and the ability to use all nonmagical equipment-related skills. Ability to identify equipment.

I couldn’t help grumbling when I saw just how low my health was. Why couldn’t I be like a cheat game character, and recover from near death in under a minute? Layers of Hell, sadly, had real recovery times unless you either died or used healing magic. Speaking of which, I wanted to ask about that the next time--ah, there he is.

As I heard the door open, I saw a man enter. Like the guards we had first seen at the gate, he was a dark elf, with dark gray skin, silver hair, and pitch black eyes. His hair was long, almost down to his waist, and his body slim and feminine. If not for his low voice, it’d be possible to mistake him for a woman.

“So, how’s my patient doing?” Drezon asked, moving in to check if I had a fever. After placing his hand against my forehead, he nodded slightly to himself. “Almost suggested to your friend to just put you out of your misery and have you try your luck on the next floor down. She didn’t really think that was such a good idea, though.”

I gave a bitter smile, nodding my head. “Thanks. Hope I’m not any trouble.”

Drezon grinned mischievously. “Oh, please be more trouble. That way I’ll be able to work you harder when you are able to move around.” I felt my eye twitch at that comment.

“Right… speaking of which, is there anyone in this city able to teach magic?”

Drezon lowered his head in thought for a few moments when I asked that. “Well, there are a few people that can use it, but I don’t know if they’re taking any students. Even if they were, you definitely can’t afford it right now.”

I nodded my head slightly. “I know, but I was hoping that you could help me with that.” This time, it was his turn to be taken aback. “If you can bring me some cloth, a portable loom, and a few tools, I should be able to work from here. Figure, if I make something nice that sells, can earn a part of the money?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

He paused for a few moments, before laughing loudly, clutching his stomach. “Oh, I think that would work fine. You said you made your friend’s clothes from shadow lurker silk with nothing but a pair of toothpicks? I’m eager to see what you can make when you have the proper tools.”

With that, he turned and left, and I slowly began to grow nervous. I had a theory for how the Equipment Mastery skill worked, but I was not positive. I would need to do a couple more tests to be sure, and this was one of them.

A few minutes later, he returned with a big cloth bag, setting it on a chair beside my bag. “Should have everything you need in there. Went ahead and included the rest of that silk you showed up with. Figured you probably want to make something for yourself to wear, aside from those rags you came in with.”

I offered a nod of thanks, and he turned to leave the room. Reaching over, I opened the bag and retrieved the loom, or the pieces of it. As if guided by an unseen hand, I quickly began assembling it in my lap, my hands moving as if this were second nature. Within a minute I had a fully assembled loom, and that same prompt as before. The loom itself took up the entirety of my lap, but it was not too big to be manageable.

Do you wish to equip Portable Loom?

I nodded my head slightly, and felt the familiar rush of skill knowledge. Reaching into the bag, I pulled out two of the spools of silk thread. Refine Silk Cloth. Again, my hands began moving on their own, working the thread through the loom to quickly turn it into cloths. When that was done, they moved into the bag to fish out more thread, repeating this process until I had turned all of the silk threads into cloth.

With that out of the way, I grabbed the sewing needles and scissors from the bag, and set to work creating myself some pants. Pants would be nice, and I can’t say I’ve ever worn silk pants before. Anyways, now that I had proper tools, the process only took me a few minutes, rather than an hour or two, before I had a full pair of glossy black pants.

Next was a shirt, though again, tools really make the job easier. Ten minutes later, I was done with it, and had my new clothes ready. Sadly, there wasn’t enough silk left to make underwear for either myself or Lilith, but we could make do for now. I’d make us some underwear with the extra material from Drezon after we paid him back for letting me stay here. Before I got working on making more clothes for him to sell, I used my Equipment Mastery to identify the clothes I had just made for myself.

Silk Shirt +2

Damage: 0%

Special Options: Lesser Magic Resist

Silk Pants +2

Damage: 0%

Special Options: Lesser Magic Resist

I smiled in satisfaction when I saw the +2 attached to each of the items. Another thing that you wouldn’t find in Layers of Hell, aside from health potions, was item enchanting. This made the magic items spread out through the various floors even more valuable, because it was impossible to make your own. Although crafting would let you get bonuses like this, or the +1 on the axe I found in the tutorial, those were simply marks for how well crafted an object was.

With my unique skill, I should be able to pull out the full potential for the materials and tools I use. As such, a +2 should be the highest that shadow lurker silk clothes can get when made with standard tools. When I had played through the game before, I acquired an enchanted crafting hammer, and after working with dragon scales and mithril ore below the eight hundredth level, I managed to make myself a +8 sword. However, that was the highest I had ever reached.

There was a theory on the forums for Layers of Hell, that if you managed to make a +10 item, it would become an artifact, similar to the greater items you can find throughout the game. Sadly, nobody had been able to confirm whether it was true or not, as the highest anyone had managed to get was a +9 item.

Maybe actually being here, with the Equipment Mastery skill, I’ll eventually be able to make something of the highest level? I thought to myself with a smile, before starting to work on the clothes for Drezon. Included with the normal cloths of various colors were spools of glowing threads. For a layer like this, it was common to find clothes that had glowing designs, so I did my best  to work those in.

The first thing I made was a long, red dress, fit for a woman of a slim build, just under five and a half feet tall. It only had one shoulder strap, the other side coming down to give a teasing view of her upper chest. The cut in the back went almost all the way down the back, while the one in the front only went a few inches below the collar. For the glowing thread, I wove it in patterns which almost seemed to move as you looked at them. Of course, this was only an optical illusion based on the placement of the threads, but I was sure it would be popular.

After that piece, I began making similar dresses of various colors, and then had to call Drezon back up to bring me more cloth to work with. He seemed impressed when he saw the dresses, taking them back with him to display while I got back to work. The next set of items I wanted to work on was for men, though for these I was notably less motivated. I mean, if I was making these specifically for someone, it would be easy to come up with cool designs. However, when you are making general clothes, you just have to hope that either someone comes along who they fit, or someone likes them enough to ask for a special commission.

Naturally, I was hoping that there would be beautiful women coming by to commission some more dresses if they sold well, but it was hard to get excited about staring at a guy and trying to think what he would look good in. As such, I made simple suits, modeled after tuxedos with long coat tails hanging down from the back. Though, I had to have buttons sent up to finish them, but it was still better than nothing.

On the fourth day, my health had increased to 55%, and I was finally able to get out of bed without feeling like my back would split open. Thanks to that, I walked around the house, soon discovering that the shop Drezon ran was actually on the first floor of his house, with a few bedrooms being upstairs. Guess I should get this over with… I muttered to myself, waiting until nobody was around to walk over to the large loom in the back room.

Placing my hand on it, I focused to try and equip it, waiting for that rush of knowledge I had grown accustomed to. However, such information never came to me. I was no more able to use the loom before I touched it than I was back when I was alive. This confirmed my suspicions for how the skill registered an item as equipment.

Most importantly, an item could only be considered equipment if it was something I was capable of carrying on my person. A portable loom was acceptable in this case, but a full sized one wouldn’t work. This likely meant that I wouldn’t be able to use this skill for help with blacksmithing, as I highly doubted there was a portable forge I could get anywhere.

Next, the item had to have some purpose, beyond simply being there. For instance, the rags that I started with in the prison did not qualify as equipment, because they offered no defense or utility powers. However, the clothes I crafted from the shadow lurker silk did, because they offered low defense and magic resistance. This made them the equivalent of light armor, which meant that after I put them on I became able to use the various light armor skills concerning the legs and torso.

I couldn’t be sure if there were other hidden conditions, but at least I figured this out before anyone asked me to demonstrate on this big loom, or I offered to do so in order to speed things up. I’d rather take the extra time to use the smaller, portable loom than make a fool of myself. Besides, it seemed like I should still be able to make quality items even with the smaller set.