A short time after revealing my thoughts to Halloway, Ryan came into the tavern and told us to prepare, we would be heading out the day after tomorrow. Halloway soon left the tavern leaving Ryan and I alone together.
“I would like to have a conversation about last night.” I broached the subject of our personality clash.
“What?” He said gruffly. “It’s over.”
“I don’t appreciate how you talk to me.” I told him.
“Just do what I say. You are not in trouble.” He said, not bothering to look up from his meal as he talked to me. “There it’s over, I don’t want to hear another word about it.” He said with finality.
I stared at him for a while, trying to reign in my anger.
“And my cut from the spider parts?” I asked after a long awkward pause.
“You are wearing it,” he said jabbing finger towards my jacket. I glared at him. He still refused to look at me.
I got up and left, struggling not to say anything else. If I opened my mouth, I knew whatever would come out would quickly escalate to a full-blown explosion, and I had promised Vikky I’d not cause any more trouble in her Tavern.
As I seethed and stomped my way out of the Fort, Pest raced to catch up.
“What?” He asked me.
“That guy is a shit head.” I told him.
“His scent does have that quality,” Pest said. I gave him a side eye. He was marching alongside me swinging his arms with his elbows bent like a tiny little soldier. His little pockets were bulging.
“You got anything good in those pockets?” I asked him and he protectively put his hands on them.
“Many goods.” He answered and I smiled at him. I’d have to get him his own rucksack soon.
We made our way to the district that held the craftsmen. I first visited the shipyards. Many men milled around working. I stood inconspicuously against a building and watched them work. I wish I had thought to find some sort of notebook to sketch some of the interesting wood joints they made.
They had the skeleton of a large ship laid out atop some cross beams to keep it off the ground. Posts driven into the ground were keeping the ship level. The keel was a single beam giving the ship a sharp V-shaped bottom. Nails and clever joinery was used to hold the ribs onto the keel.
The woodworking tools they used were simple but effective in their skilled hands. They had saws that looked like large-serrated knives. Sharp wide flat blades that looked like little versions of a garden hoe to scrape and smooth boards. Even a drill that they forced through the wood by twisting on the end of a T-shaped handle while leaning against it.
I needed to get me some of those. I was considering how to lay my hands on those tools when I thought. Do I need tools? If I only needed to make something once to unlock a schematic, and then could use that with the System, did I really need to invest in all the tools and training to learn how to use them? Or could I just get these fellows to guide me though making something with some borrowed tools and unlock it here?
Only one way to find out. I approached the working men and made my pitch. For a silver coin I hoped they would show me how to make some of these products. After finding someone who could actually understand my language, the deal was struck quite easily. And that is how I spent the rest of my day. Surprisingly enough Pest seemed to not cause any mass hysteria that he was a little were-ferret running around the place. I guessed that the NPC’s were not of the mind to balk at strange creatures in their midst. I had a feeling he had some sort of hidden ally flag or marker. He was ‘green’ to their perception, as opposed to being a ‘red’ monster or enemy. Most MMO’s had a basic identification like that, and as complex as this place was, it still had some strange gamification at times.
It took a little bit of work on my part to build some trust. I had to show them mild competence before they let me use any of the good supplies. But using scraps and junk to show them my abilities, I won them over and they started to let me do more and more.
By the time the shipbuilders called it a day, I had become at least competent enough to make some basic products. Since I was using their materials, they kept what I made. But they seemed appreciative for the labor I contributed. I unlocked a new crafting skill and range of schematics.
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the Fundamental Crafting skill!]
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the schematic for Smooth Plank!]
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the schematic for Wooden Pulley!]
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the schematic for Block and Tackle!]
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the schematic for Oar!]
[Fundamental Crafting]
Unlock Conditions – Craft a fundamental object using developed tools.
[lvl 1] – Create the fundamental building blocks for wood and stone constructions. MEASURE ONCE, CUT TWICE
These crafting skills were getting a little convoluted. At this point I had Construction, Masonry, Woodworking, Primitive Crafting, and now Fundamental Crafting? Didn’t they all overlap in one way or another. Some sounded like specializations, sure, but for the most part Fundamental Crafting seemed redundant. I decided to put that train of thought on a back burner for now, but if it got any worse, I might make a report to Loki that his skills were a little bit haphazard.
Honestly, I expected it to be something a little more like what I was used to seeing in survival games. Sticks and stones becoming copper, then iron, then into the ‘high-quality’ but implausible alloys like silver, gold and some sort of gemstone or mythical metal.
Fundamental Crafting threw off my assumptions of advancements. I’m pretty sure I earned it when I finished my first smooth plank. Which was a rough plank that I had used that strange little hoe tool on. I found out it was called an adze. We used it to smooth and shape the planks to fit together in the hull of the ship we had been working on. They overlapped like shingles on a roof, not stacked along or atop each other like I had imagined ships were constructed.
The tackle with pulley and block were much more interesting than smooth planks. They were used on the ropes of the ship, to manage the sail and tie things down or real in a fishing net. I loved primitive mechanical gizmos and I could think of all sorts of fun things I could do with these ones. I pictured building a draw bridge and pondered how to build one long enough to span the river at my homebase camp.
As the construction crew started to break up for the end of the day I said my farewells and thanks and made my way back to the Red Wolves cabin.
It was getting close to dark and I remembered to keep my eye out for Vinlanders as I entered the fort. They were not out and about. I wondered what they did all day, if they didn’t do anything like Halloway told me. Unfortunately, as I walked past their cabin I heard laughing and unpleasant grunting noises coming through their walls. I knew what those noises meant and what it meant to the thralls under their ‘employ’.
I was in a foul mood by the time I found my bed, not wanting to talk to anyone else beyond the normal quick niceties of hello and goodnight. I felt powerless to do anything to fix what I saw as a injustice. It may not be against the law in this world, but it wasn’t just.
Pest ended up lying next to me in my bed, as he discovered he was now too large to curl up comfortably in the rucksack. He still made a cute puddle of twisted ferret, just with his longer and beefer limbs it was a lumpy and large puddle. I absently rubbed his fur as I made it to a fitful sleep.
***
[Congratulations! You survived the night! Welcome to a new day in the afterlife. As with all Norse afterlives, you spent all day fighting, pillaging, and plundering. Some lived, and some died. But all those lives lost are returned, to pillage and plunder again until the Ragnarok decides to come and create the cycle again.]
The weariness of working hard last night and staying up late contemplating the demise of my enemies made me startle violently at the blue box and its rude morning announcements. I got up muttering and cursing and glancing around at my bunk mates. Mave and Dark were sharing a bunk and Halloway was sprawled out snoring on his. None of them were awake and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how they could sleep through the annoying box’s daily alarm clock announcement.
Today was the last day in town, with the plan to head out in the morning. I needed to make sure I was prepared for the upcoming trip. I gathered up all my belongings and crept out of the building with Pest in tow. He was always keen on waking up bright and early to do some stretches to greet the morning.
A fog filled the yard obscuring the buildings and corners of the fort, the pre-dawn light filtering through it just enough to toss long shadows into the area. Nobody else was awake and enjoying life yet, so I made my way over to the stables. The horses made little noises as I walked between the stalls. I suppose I should find this modern style stable odd, but another Chosen designed it so I guess odd is the name of the game.
At the back of the stable building was a small room with a small sign made from a rough plank. Someone had written ‘Library’ across it in charcoal and hung it above the doorway. Within was a table with a couple of chairs. I made use of the table to set my armful of belongings. The picnic basket, my purchased odds and ends, and my rucksack of junk. As I look at the collection of stuff, I surmised two things.
One, I like to collect junk.
Two, I wish I had a bag of holding or game-like inventory screen.
Before diving into the collection of junk that were my belongings, I checked the map. It looked less like a map and more like a graffitied bathroom wall of a rest stop. When Halloway had told me about it I had anticipated some large ornate frame around a huge parchment with fine ink drawings of coasts and mountains and trees. I was even envisioning some tiny little caricatures of creatures and scrawled ‘Here Be Dragons’ notes.
Instead, I got a dirty wall of a building with thick ugly charcoal lines and smudges. Multiple people, judging from the differences in clarity and penmanship, had annotated locations on it. Their abbreviations and numbers were meaningless to me without a legend. I reached a hand out and touched the wall, thinking of my own internal map at the same time.
[Map Updated]
The wall did not disintegrate as the other maps I handled had. I supposed that was a good thing, since it would have pissed off a lot of people and possibly made the building fall down. I opened up my map, the white on blue still strikingly reminding me of a classic blueprint more than a map of the region.
The area that the wall-map had filled in was rough. It didn’t fill in fine details and nice crisp lines like travelling had done for me. Instead a direct copy of the poor rendition on the wall applied a blurry underlayer to my current map.
I suppose that made sense, since who knew how reliable the wall map was. I was able to reconcile some of the gibberish written on the map to my own previous travels. Like the notations of FPI for the Fat Pig Inn, and HS for Harold’s farm.
I noticed the dungeon I had met the Red Wolves in was just a smudge with RW written over it. Looking at the wall for comparison I saw that it may have once been a little drawing but was rubbed out before someone wrote RW on top of it. Exploring the map, I saw that there were half a dozen of them such marked.
Not wanting to waste any more time trying to decipher the map, I turned back to my belongings.
Firstly, I inspected my stolen mask.
Name: Kabuki Mask
Material: Wood, Ribbon
Durability: Average
Value: Average
FLAGS: CHOSEN_ARMOR
It was lacquered wood that felt smooth to the touch even though there was some wear and splitting visible. Red ringed the eyes with deep flares on the inside and outside that resembled the classic Egyptian style eyeliner. Sharp lines of red cut down from the top forming angry eyebrows and forehead lines. More red lines from the bottom crawled up to resemble scowl lines. Only eyeholes were present with no gap for mouth or nose. Short red ribbons were affixed to the sides to tie it in place.
I put the mask on and was surprised by how well I could see out of its small eye holes. I felt around the eye holes with my fingers and found that from the inside of the mask it has slight transparent edges when looking out of it, an obvious distortion to reality to allow a Chosen to wear a mask but not have their sight completely limited. I still don’t have the complete peripheral vision I should, but I probably saw about half of what I shouldn’t have been able to when wearing the mask.
It made me consider finding a mask that would do well for combat, since I wouldn’t be using this for anything but protective equipment during my experiments. I didn’t want to become known as some crazy kabuki spirit or something.
I affixed some extra flags to the mask, DURABLE and CORROSION_RESISTANT, which I knew would be safe. Nothing exploded yet, so I was off to a good start.
I brought out the most dangerous collection of things I had to tinker with today. The collection of vials from the snake oil salesmen.
I Inspected one.
Name: Bottle
Material: Clay
Durability: Average
Value: Below Average
FLAGS: FRAGILE
Contents: Water, Honey Mead, Flora – Valerian
Contents Flags: NOURISHMENT, ALCOHOLIC, ANTIHYPERTENSIVE, SEDATIVE
Contents Efficacy: Poor
Okay, FLAGS, and Contents Flags. I’m pretty sure I knew what happened in my last interaction with a container. I had started removing runes to find the word through trial and error. When the error blurred the lines between container and contained it didn’t react well. Boom.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
If I could ever replicate it in a way that didn’t require me touching the object it would make one hell of a weapon.
That was an experiment for another day. Today I just wanted the FLAGS recorded from these potions before the fort started waking up. I accessed the spatial rift that housed the blue glowing rune-code and carefully scanned it. As I suspected, I found FLAGS twice. My assumption had been that the first instance was the container. That proved to be wrong. I recognized SEDATIVE from my list of flags and used it to puzzle out which section I needed.
I carefully began removing the flag on the bottle itself in reverse order. It flashed pink and I winced as the first rune was removed and I closed the rift. No explosion. I reopened and repeated the process until color returned to the vial. On Inspect it revealed the FRAGILE flag was missing.
I repeated the process for the contents, and it proved to me that the contents of the object were separate from the container to the System. Only the liquid within the vial turned pink. I even poured a tiny amount of it out to watch it as I worked. I guess it wasn’t like a potion in a classic RPG where bottle and contents were the same thing, both consumed on use. That always brought a tickle of amusement to me, imagining the player crunching down on a glass potion bottle. I repeated the removal process four more times and Inspected the bottle.
Name: Bottle
Material: Clay
Durability: Average
Value: Below Average
FLAGS: NONE
Contents: Water, Honey Mead, Flora – Valerian
Contents Flags: NONE
Contents Efficacy: Poor
It was an interesting contrast that I could remove the contents flags, but the contents themselves stayed the same. I wondered if the auto-balancing features of the system that liked to decay or rust things would dissolve the contents of the bottle to match the flags it now had given some time to work.
Another question for another day. I went about dismantling the rest of the bottles I had gotten from the snake-oil salesman. At least this one, the valerian root was somewhat medicinal. I ended up getting hemlock, belladonna, and milk thistle infused potions in the other bottles. Those in-turn gained me the HEPATOSTASIS, ANTI-VEISALGIA, NARCOTIC, ANESTHETIC.
I didn’t know all the words, much of the medical terminology I was unfamiliar with. My TODO list was quite a mess of messy translated symbols and flags. I had twenty-three recorded tags copied down. As I looked at it, I thought I had enough to sit down a dictate a translated alphabet.
My next object of interest was the Word scroll. This might be a make it or break it item. If I could replicate this and modify it, that would be an unending source of power. Maybe not for me, but for those that could use magic.
Name: Scroll of the Word
Material: Paper Birch
Durability: Fragile
Value: Treasure
FLAGS: TEACH_POWERWORD – GUIDANCE
This object provided no issues to remove and record the word and its modifier. It safely reattached and I decided to do a small experiment.
I took one of the bottles and set it as far away from me as I could as I crouched behind the table with just enough of a touch on it to open the rune-code. I applied the TEACH_POWERWORD, and an ANALGESIC where the modifier normally went. I closed the rune-code rift and dove beneath the table. Pest was down there sleeping, splayed out on the picnic blanket which had fallen to the floor from my pile of junk. He jumped, startled as I slammed down beside him.
“Okay?” He asked.
“Yea, just experimenting.” I said, my voice muffled by the mask. He nodded and hunkered down next to me, looking out from under the table.
“What?” He asked.
“Up there.” I pointed to the table.
“Oh,” he said.
I nodded at him and got up to look at the bottle. Only it was no longer a bottle, it was a pile of clay crumbles. The liquid that had previously been within the bottle was spread out in a puddle.
“Well, that didn’t work.” I said aloud and set up another bottle to test with. This time I used GUIDANCE as the modifier, thinking maybe I had chosen a bad replacement. However, after repeated my careful entry of the new word and dive maneuver the same results greeted me. A messy and wet pile of clay crumbles. I Inspected the pile of debris, but it just came back as what one would expect from a pile of clay bits. They didn’t even possess a special flag.
Noises in the stables and voices started to filter into my little laboratory so I stopped my experiments and started to sort my belongings. I had to sort out travel gear from stuff that could be left behind. With the magic spoon and never-ending flask, all I really needed to keep was my rucksack. I decided to bring along my ration kit anyway, since spider gruel didn’t really delight me.
As I was going through the random junk in the picnic basket, I found the glass ball that Loki had tossed at me. It was covered in dried blood and stuck to the side of the basket to a good enough degree that it was poking out the other side slightly. I Inspected it.
Name: Spike Ball
Material: Glass
Durability: Indestructible
Value: Trash
FLAGS: None
My mouth dropped open. Indestructible?! If only I knew the location in the rune-code for Durability! There wasn’t even a corresponding flag! I glared at the sky. I knew Loki wasn’t messing with me, since he didn’t know I was ripping his rune-code apart, but I imagined the System was having a good laugh at me. Either way, an indestructible glass ball with hundreds of tiny little spikes poking an inch or more out of its surface was useful!
I could throw it! But how would I hold it?
I could use it as a caltrop! But there was only one of the things.
I could use it as a mace head!
I took the blanket that Pest was resting on and wadded it up around the ball enough to snag and ripped it out of the picnic basket. I wadded it up safely within the blanket and set it to the side before finishing the sorting and cleaning up my mess.
As I was leaving the ‘library’, which I was very skeptical of, not having not seen a book within, I almost shat my pants.
A fucking bear was sitting there.
“Jesus fuck-me Christ!” I most certainly didn’t shriek as I dropped all my belongings.
“What?” Pest asked me as I backpedaled into the room and tripped over him to fall on my ass.
“Bear!” I announced loudly and pointed. Pest scrabbled his way out from under my legs and went to a battle stance, sideways and puffed up as large as he could go. After a moment he stopped and looked around, as if the big fuck off bear wasn’t directly in front of him. He cautiously leaned around the door frame and looked one way and then the other.
“Where?” He asked me.
“Right in fucking front of you!” I yelled and pointed at it as I scrambled back to my feet and pulled my hatchet from my belt. The bear, for its part, seemed to not give two shits about me. It just sat there and stared at me with a bored look.
What Pest did next almost made me give up on life. He went outside the room and walked around the bear to look past it.
“No bear,” he announced to me from its other side. As he was coming back, he actually bumped into the bear’s leg and offered it an apology. “Excuse, Bogart.”
The bear chuffed a small noise at him.
“Fucking Bogart the Bear!” I yelled shrilly.
“No, is just Bogart, no bear.” I blinked at him in shock and confusion as someone came around the corner.
Marcus had a shit eating grin on his face and started chuckling himself as he saw me standing atop his ‘library’ table wielding a hatchet. When had I gotten up here? I wondered to myself noticing how short he seemed at this moment.
“Yep. Just Bogart, no need to get your panties in a twist.” He said as he gave Bogart a pat on the shoulder. He slipped him something that resembled the honey and nut bars that Pest loved. Bogart took it in his large paws and munched away happily. Pest watched Marcus closely.
“Wow, you seemed to have went through some changes.” Marcus said.
“No, I am Pest.” Pest answered him.
I let out an exasperated noise.
“What the hell kinda establishment is this that lets a bear just wander about, coulda killed me!” I muttered to myself as I hoped down from the table and shakily put my hatchet back to its resting place.
“Not likely, more like you adventurer sorts would wander in here and kill someone. Always raiding and pillaging and what not.” Marcus said as he gave Pest a chunk of a honey-nut bar as well.
“You just gonna do me dirty like that Marcus? Just some adventurer sort?” I told him in an offended manner as I started picking up my spilled belongings.
“Do you any way I want to do you in my stable.” He snapped back as he set down a book on the table. I noticed it was well worn, the cover and binding starting to stain as the leather was handled by many hands. The front of it had a short title. A Port For Your Longboat.
“I think maybe you have been reading too many books like that if all you can think about is how you want to do me in your stable.” I said with a sneer.
“You here to give me shit, or do you need something?”
“I was just making use of the library,” I said, “but now that I think about it, we are heading out for a bit of time, let me pay you what I got for while I’m gone.”
I juggled my belongings, dropping one of the vials of potion to the ground in the effort.
“Well fuck, there goes that.” I complained as I gave him the rest of the coins I had. It was only a small handful of copper. I also convinced a very reluctant Pest to empty the coins from his pockets as well. “And there goes the last of our coin too.”
“You are a right fucking mess, aren’t you?” He said.
“I still don’t even know how much those are worth,” I said to him as he glanced at the small collection of copper coins.
“Well, this is worth about three weeks, less if you keep making messes in here,” He said as he began to clean my broken vial from the floor.
“Thanks, hands are full. Guess I am still a bit jittery,” I said glancing at Bogart. He smacked his lips still chewing slowly at another snack that made it into his greedy bear paws.
“I’d say, a copper is worth a shit meal at a fast-food place.” He told me in way of explanation. “A few bucks, you know?”
“Yea, I get you.” I said.
“Twelve of those are worth a silver coin, and five of those go for a gold coin.” He said as he finished cleaning.
“What the hell kind of conversions are those? Aren’t medieval supposed to be like ten to one or a hundred to one?”
“Maybe in games, but not here. They use weights of silver or something.” Marcus said with a wave. “I just know it cost me about a copper to keep your horse fed, and a couple to convince me to feed her.”
“Liar, I know you’d never let her go hungry. I’ve seen how you slip the animals treats as you walk by.” I indicated Pest who was licking his sticky little fingers.
Marcus just grunted at me.
“Stop paying me, and I’ll feed you to Bogart.” He gestured and I swear Bogart gave me an appraising look. I decided that was a good time to go.
“Ah, yea. Good day Marcus.” I said formally and left, hugging the door jam as hard as I could to keep way from the bear as I made my way out.
As I crossed the yard again to deposit my things, a Vinlander was sitting outside his cabin. It was one of the Bills. He just glared at me and smoked on a pipe as I walked past. Seemed the Raid threat against guild on guild violence was a strong enough leash to keep the peace.
Inside I found the cabin empty and deposited my things. One stack for the stuff that would remain behind and another stack for travelling. I still needed gear. I felt awfully lite, but I was also strapped for money. I needed to get out and find another treasure or something to sell. Even with my access to the rune-code and flags of certain things, I didn’t have any stock of things to modify for resell. I could make a very nice vial of snake oil that really could remedy a huge number of ailments, but I lacked the little vials to convert.
If I could figure out what went wrong with the Word scroll I could make a black market of scrolls as well. Maybe it needed to be on a different object to work properly. Possibly the clay vials were too fragile to begin with, since scrolls supposedly disintegrated after a few tries.
I sure didn’t feel like I was making much progress in this after life, but really what did I expect? I started at literal zero and it had only been a few weeks, and I had an assumed eternity left at this tower climb.
Maybe I should focus more on skill and less on rune-code? But if that worked, why were all these people here just kind of stagnating in Volstad.
I left the cabin and went to the tavern. My little buddy following along as he tended to do.
Glancing around as we entered I found the Red Wolves sitting at the table but I looked at the board of postings on the wall instead of going over to them. I glanced at the collection of Welcome to Midgard pamphlets. I didn’t plan on making use of his scheme, but maybe he could be helpful in some of my own schemes. A shady bullshit artist like that had to have some connection to a Chosen black market if any such thing existed.
The rest of the notice board played out like a classic quest board. Small postings of things people needed and a price they were willing to pay on completion. With some amusement I noticed a classic Rat’s in my Basement quest. I plucked the paper off and handed it to Pest.
“This should be perfect for you.” I said as he held the paper with both hands, peering at it like it was a map. “Just the sort of thing a fledgling adventurer needs to start out their career.
“What?” He asked.
“It’s a job, to kill rats in a basement. They pay you.”
“Trade discs?” He looked at me sharply.
“Yep, looks like they will give you a copper for each set of three rats you can kill.”
He clutched at the paper like it would whip away suddenly in the wind.
“A good trade agreement.” Pest said with weight to his words.
I smiled at him and thought about it for a moment.
“We will have to get you some fighting equipment.” I told him and went back to the board. It mostly consisted of missing people and fetch quests. It seemed like the missing people reports were mostly about run away thralls, quite a few of them. Good for them. The price for their return to slavery wasn’t high enough for me to ever consider it. The fetch quests were the regular sort, fetch a handful of herbs here, a few shiny rocks there. Nothing I was fond of doing. I wasn’t working for InstaCart Midgard.
As I was about to leave the postings a man sidled up to the board to peruse with me. He had a clean-shaven head and was an older man, his forehead creased with wrinkles and red skin that was worn from sun damage. I nearly let out a groan, what did this skin head want? I Inspected him, not recognizing him from the other Vinlander confrontations.
Name: Donald Higgs (Donnie)
Race: Human
Type: Chosen
Allegiance: NONE
FLAGS: HAS_BOUND(Bogart)
Health: Healthy
Energy: Full
“Oh…” I said in surprise. He wasn’t a part of the skin heads. I guess on a closer look he didn’t have any tattoos. He raised a eyebrow at me. I tried for a weak recovery. “…Howdy.”
“G’day,” he said to me, and I was instantly delighted. He had a down under accent.
“Aussie or Kiwi?” I asked with a grin.
“Aussie,” he said with a smile and offered a hand. “Donnie.”
“Viktor,” I responded and shook his hand. “I saw the dome and thought you were a Vinlander there for a moment.”
“Oh, those mongrels? Nah, they wish they were this bloody handsome,” he said and ran a hand over his bald head. While it seemed a good majority of the Sisters and guildless Chosen were middle-aged, this fellow was beyond that, pushing into his sixty or seventies. Possibly the oldest Chosen I had spotted so far.
I chuckled and he grinned at me.
“Let’s look at the posties,” he said and started leafing through the overlapping notices of missing people.
Pest eyed him suspiciously and hide his post behind his back. He caught the movement and gave a chuckle.
“No worries, I got plenty of others to choose from, little mate.” Donnie said to Pest. He frowned and muttered to himself more than us. “A bloody lot of them.”
“You track down run-away thralls?” I asked him with a slight frown.
“No, not them that do a runner. The others. I don’t like missing folks. Had a sister that went missing when I was a kid. Had me chewed up for years,” he said as he dug through the thick pile of posts. He finally found one that suited his requirements and squinted at it. I read it over his shoulder, it didn’t have much information. Just a name, a short description of a young girl and a plea for help. Maybe that was what he and his detective bear got up to.
“You do a lot of those?” I asked. “Missing people?”
“Yea, there never seems to be an end to ‘um.” He said with resignation.
“Good luck.” I offered before making my escape. I decided to do something for Pest before we joined the others for breakfast. I put in a food order with Karen before making my way out and to the outhouses with him.
The outhouses were a bit of hell I didn’t enjoy thinking about. They were dirty, stank, and generally reminded me of port-a-potties at the end of a musical festival. Gross in every way. But they did have one benefit, nobody would go anywhere near them unless they needed to do the necessary. I quickly took a knee just outside of stink range.
“Here Pest, this might serve you well now that you have thumbs.” I told him as I removed my knife and sheath. I opened up its rune-code and started tinkering with it. I quickly put in some extra flags that may or may not work but seemed worth the effort. DURABLE, CORROSION_RESISTANT, MENDING, and CHOSEN_ARMOR.
“Okay little buddy, these aren’t the best laboratory conditions, but we are gonna give this a try.” I told him and quickly tossed the knife behind the out-house. The rune-code rift flicked closed as it lost contact with my hand and I had the barest of moments seeing the knife glitch out before it went out of view.
Nothing turned pink, and nothing exploded. Both good signs, so I peeked around the corner of the shit house. The knife sat there, looking just as it had when I pulled it out of my sheath. I leaned around the corner and kicked it before dodging back. Okay, still stable.
Taking a deep breath, which I instantly regretted as the noxious out-house fumes assaulted me, I went to the knife and gently picked it up. Inspect.
Name: Knife
Material: Iron
Durability: Undamaged
Value: Below Average
FLAGS: DURABLE, CORROSION_RESISTANT, MENDING, CHOSEN_ARMOR
I smiled in delight, it didn’t explode and kept the tags.
“Here buddy, take hold of this.” I told Pest who had been staring at me while I did my strange knife dance.
“Okay.” He said simply and I held the knife out to him handle first. As soon as it touched his hand the glitch effect of distorted digital noise surrounded the knife as it tried to change itself. It let out a noise as well, sounding distinctly crunchy, akin to gravel under tires. I panicked for a moment but before I was able to tell Pest to throw it down it stopped.
The knife had tried to shrink down to a Pest-sized object, coming up slightly short of a full transition. It had gone slender enough but ended up a little too long by the time it finished. It ended up looking more like a letter opener than a proper knife, or maybe a Pest sized short sword, but with half the length being a handle.
He gazed at it in wonder. I Inspected it again, but it only had one change.
Durability: Damaged
Seemingly it had taken some damage in its transition. I asked him to hold it out to me and gently touched it and removed the CHOSEN_ARMOR flag. It didn’t react. But at least if I or anyone else happened to handle it, it wouldn’t explode or crumble if the durability bottomed out.
I borrowed it from him and put it back in the sheath, it was a little loose but still worked if you stuffed it in past the little hilt. I noticed the weight hadn’t changed any. I inspected it one more time, and the durability had increased to worn, so the mending was fixing whatever damage I had done to it with my tomfoolery. I handed it back to him.
“It isn’t safe to go alone.” I told him.
“Pest isn’t alone.” He told me, completely missing my epic reference. But I forgave him because it kind of warmed my heart too.
“Okay buddy, lets go get some breakfast.” I said and rubbed my eyes. It was damned dusty out here.