Chapter 4 - Making an Armor
As Fabious sees Leon getting out of the room he waves his hand to catch his attention.
“How was it, son?” the minotaur asks.
“It’s hard to say.” Leon answers. “It's good, but it's also bad. I can see the path forward, and it’s awesome, but it's so hard. I don’t really know what to do now.”
“Well, your future is yours to make, but i can tell you what i did.” His dad says with a comforting smile. “Come, let’s go to a good place.”
Fabious takes his son to a peak of a mountain near, not the tallest one, but still one kilometer tall.
The Black Bull City is in a mountain chain, with the most important people living at the peak of the biggest mountain.
Arriving at the top of the mountain is an easy feat for two grown minotaurs, so they reach there in no time.
Looking at the beautiful landscape, Leon and his dad sit on some rocks, and stay silent for some time, just appreciating the beauty of the scene.
“When I was your age, and had just received my bloodline, I also didn’t knew what to do so I researched this in the library, and found a formation perfect for this.” Fabius says. “It’s a formation that records everything that you live for a certain amount of time, and then displays it on your mind in a second, to make you remember the whole recorded period as if you had a perfect memory, and this helped me a lot, to look at me from a third person perspective, and create my personal formation out of this.”
“I think it’s a good thing to do. Use this formation for some time, and live your life normally, just cultivating a little harder now, and after some months you activate the formation and see if you can create your personal formation.”
“Yeah, that’s good, but i think i wanna go on a trip as well.” Leon says. “Now that i’m an adult, i wanna explore the world a little.”
"Sure, just don't go to the territory of the other tribes." His father says. "We may be in peace, but you never know."
Taking a scroll out of his spatial ring, Fabious gives it to his son, and says. "Here, you can read the instructions for this formation now, we still have to buy the ingredients."
Some formations need specific ingredients to work. To reach more than two thousand degrees with a rune, you need a specific type of metal to make the runes. To make spatial rings, you need diamonds. And lots of other formations require other things as well.
To make this one, the only special ingredient is an eye of a certain rare species of lizard. You need to make it into a paste, and write the runes with it.
The rarity of this lizard is thanks for its incredible ability to change the color of its skin to match the environment, and to isolate enough its temperature to make even heat vision useless. And it has the ability to see emotions, so if you are near it, and wanna kill it, it will see the emotions like a cloud and hid,
Finding the best store for formation ingredients, Leon buys more than one eye, in case that he fails.It’s a little expensive, but it’s a fair price.
The runes for this formation are a recording rune, a vision set of 3 runes, one to let the formation see the superficial thoughts and what the eyes are seeing, other to see the inner most thoughts, and the other to see the body position, sending all this information into the recording rune. covering the three vision runes is a rune of the ability of the lizard, acting like a lens. Last is a rune to let only the right amount of mana enter the formation.
Writing this formation in the top of Leon’s head, in the center of the two horns, the formation starts working, and starts to fuse with his fur and skin, letting nothing to see behind.
“Now, when you think it’s enough, you just use the remaining rune to change the formation, making it pour the memories inside your head again.” Fabious says then asks. “So, where do you wanna go?”
“I’ve always wanted to see the ocean, so i think i’m going there first.” Leon answers. “There is a city of humans, so I'll go near it, maybe work a little, and explore the beach.”
To the east of the Black Bull City, is a city controlled by the minotaurs, but with the majority of the population being pure humans. The majority of the other races just use that city as a temporary station. This city is the biggest port that connects the Black Bull Tribe to the Ocean Tribes.
This planet has more water than land, but not by much, so there’s also a lot of ocean tribes. most almost never come near the shore, thanks to them being not able to breath outside the water. Of course they have techniques to breathe outside the sea, but they mostly ignore the land, as the majority of the races of the land do the same.
Stopping in some stores, Leon starts to buy all the things he will need to travel. The travel to the port city is long, thanks to it being a thousand kilometers away. The path Leon is planning to take is the main one, passing through three big cities, and some small towns.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
He could use teleportation arrays, but they are expansive, and it would kill the purpose of traveling.
Finishing buying all the normal travel supplies, Fabious takes out a ring from one of his fingers, and passes it to Leon. "Here, this will be your supplies of cultivation materials."
Looking inside the ring, Leon sees lots of cores and some mana stones. Mana stones are crystallized mana, and depending on the purity and quantity of mana inside, the price of one can go up and down.
"Now we need to make your body armor." Leon's father says. "Let's go back to the inn, and make the design."
"Great, let's do this!" Leon exclaims.
The normal type of armor for a Minotaur is a skirt to protect the ass and front, two shoulderpads, two graves and shoes, a plate to protect the heart and gloves.
In the inn, the design that Leon and his father makes follow those lines, but with some more pieces.
The armor has a skirt, with scales made out of steel in the exterior, and a special cloth, made by the silk of an arachne, in the interior.
The shoulderpads are designed in a way that if the arm is down, it looks like a ball, but as you raise the arm, the pieces of the armor enter below the others, letting the wearer have protection, but not hindering any movement.
Fixing the shoulder pads in place are two large metal stripes, going down diagonally through the chest, with a layer of arachne cloth inside, a chainmail in the middle, and scales of steel in the exterior, covering both chests and connecting to the piece on the back.
The piece on the back is a new piece of armor that is rising in popularity lately, thanks to a famous minotaur losing the ability to walk in the middle of a fight, thanks to an attack at the spinal column.
It is a long strip of, again, arachne cloth, chainmail, and small scales. The scales need to be small, to not hinder any movement. It connects with the skirt, the shoulderpads stripes and to a piece of collar in the base of the neck.
This collar is a protection to the neck and head, it will have a formation to shield them from any attack with a mana shield.
To the hands, forearms, shin and foot, they designed a glove, bracelet, greaves, and shoes following the same design, it has arachne cloth interior, chainmail in the center and scales outside, making it in a way that even if his muscles contract, and the arm's or calf’s size expand, the scales will not hinder his movements, but still fit tightly on it.
The gloves, and shoes are the same, the only difference is that there's no scales in the interior side of the hand, just cloth and chainmail, and the shoes will have a hole for the hooves.
Now to the runes and formations.
Each scale will have a durability formation, raising the resistance and power of the steel, making it a lot harder to pierce through. Coming from each scale will be a transport formation, through the chainmail, transporting the mana from the core to the formations.
In the arachne cloth will be a heat, cold and water resistance set of formations, to make the whole armor stronger against high and low temperatures. The water resistance is just to make it always dry.
In every piece of the armor is also a set of runes, that when activated together will form a formation to give the wearer a boost in speed and vitality, consuming a lot mana from the cores, but potentially saving the wearer's life.
In the collar, they also put a shield barrier that will shape itself in the format of the whole head, forming a kind of second skin, protecting it as a helmet.
This whole armor will have eight cores. One in the collar, one in the front and one in the back of the belt, one in the center of the chest, one on each greave, and one on each forearm.
The next morning, as the sun has just risen, Leon and his father enter a courtyard. It is a place they rented from the Runesmith association.
This time, as Leon isn’t trying to prove himself to anyone, he makes his father help him in creating the armor faster.
Leon makes the chainmail, while his father is making the scales.
To make the chainmail Leon bought yesterday hundreds of meters of steel wire.
Forming two mana hands, Leon takes a 3 meters long tube of metal, in the right thickness to make the rings of the chainmail. Forming a rune for connection, one for spin, one for control, and one for hovering, he sends them into the rod of metal, making a formation to make it spin as he wants and hover in the air.
Passing a small amount of wire through a hole in one side of the tube and holding it there with the mana hands, Leon activates the formation, making it spin and bend the wire around it, creating a spring.
After some minutes, Leon deactivates the formation, cuts the wire from both ends, takes off the spring and resumes the formation, making more 3 meters long springs.
Taking the springs and a strong scissors, the young minotaur starts cutting the rings of wire from the spring, putting them in a jar.
While his son is doing the rings for the chainmail, Fabious starts hammering the first plate of metal. It is a three by two meters plate of steel. He first let it crismon hot with the furnace, then took it out and cut in rectangles three meters long and ten centimeters wide.
Returning all the rectangles but one to the furnace, and controlling it to keep a constant temperature, to keep the metal hot, Fabious starts working on the rectangle of steel in front of him.
He first cut it in the middle, then hammer the whole thing down, to bring it to the right thickness, and start working on cutting the scales out of the rectangle.
It should be repetitive and boring, but Fabious is so proficient in it, that he barely thinks before doing.
With two cutting hammers in hand, he starts making precise cuts with both hands, cutting a scale off every ten strikes.
He takes barely more than one hour to cut all the scales they will need, so he starts engraving the runes for the formations. This is a more delicate work, so he takes his time to do it perfectly.
Finishing cutting the rings, Leon puts them inside his furnace formation, and let them heat up to the right temperature, then keep it there.
Taking one at a time from the furnace, he put the open part one over the other, and hammer down, fusing it. Still holding it with one mana hand, he takes another from the furnace, passes it through the first ring, and hammer it closed. Doing it to every ring. In the second layer of rings, he passes the ring through the one from the side and the one above, then hammer it closed.
After making a certain amount of rings, Leon starts making them faster and better, so he finishes doing all the chainmail little after his father finishes engraving all the runes into the scales.
Taking the right measurements, Leon makes openable rings, to close everything. He could use ropes, but they are too easy to cut open. These rings will make the armor harder to take off, but also better to defend.
putting the chainmail on, his dad helps him to check if it is tight and loose in the right places. After some little readjustments, he is satisfied with his work, so he takes the arachne’s cloth and starts cutting it in the right shapes and sizes, to fit the chainmail.
Taking out some sheets of gold, so thin that it’s almost a real sheet, he makes the runes for the formations in the cloth, and as he finishes, he makes a formation in the air, using the runes for fire, control, ball and connection. Passing this fireball near the sheet of gold, the gold becomes almost liquid, and as he passes his mana hand, pressing it into the cloth, it fuses with the cloth perfectly.
As Leon finishes all the runes on the cloth, he seams it with the chainmail.
Now, taking the finished scales from his dad, Leon measures where he will put them, and take a wire of silver and connects all the runes on the scales to the place the core will be. Looking from above, the wires of silver look like veins, and the core the heart.
After fixing all the runes into place, connecting all the wires of silver into each rune, and the cores in the right places, Leon put the whole armor on.
It fits perfectly, has the right weight, and doesn't hinder any movement.
“Ok, activate all the formations, let’s see if it’s working.” Fabious says.
Sending the command, Leon activates the only two formations that have to be activated, the helmet shield, and the speed and vitality formations. The formation to make the armor sturdier is already in effect, as soon as the core is connected to the formation.
The tests are successful, and all the formations are working perfectly well.
“Great, it’s done!” Leon exclain and jumps in happiness.
“Now let’s go have dinner, tomorrow you can go traveling as the sun shows up.” Fabious says with a smile.