The Sneaks
We had all gone to bed, it was only an hour or so till dawn but the scouts were cooked. And I had stayed up all night whittling, I wanted at least three hours rest. I hoped my increased Vitality would help me recover my energy, it had been another long day.
I left Sentry Totems and Grubs watching the entrance, and took a short nap.
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I woke and joined the others, everyone was there, crafting various things or collecting maps of the surroundings that Indaya and Elina had made.
Tobias was making a raised relief on the wall showing the surrounding terrain in detail.
I grabbed some fruit and looked over my club, the carvings were amazing. Whorls and patterns covered the flat sides of the rectangular body like flowing water, and I had made grooves down each edge ready for obsidian, tungsten or steel… What ever was easiest. Someone had neatly wrapped the handle in thin strips of catfish leather for me, winding it up the handle in a pretty criss-crossing pattern.
It was glued in place with sticky sap, making sure the leather wouldn't unwind in battle. It looked great.
“Thank you.” I spoke aloud holding the club in the air, addressing the whole room.
“You are welcome sweetie.” Delia answered, she must have wrapped it while I was napping.
I asked Keisuke if he had any obsidian, or even tungsten he could use to make the bladed or spiked parts I wanted.
“It is like the Lizardman war leader’s weapon… I can make tungsten spikes quickly if you can make a stone mould and add the heat.”
I spent a few minutes making a mould, I made them like short wide cones. A rivet at the end to attach it to the body of the macuahuitl. I watched Keisuke carefully pour the molten metal into the moulds, he had created a small furnace, a crucible and some basic tools out of stone with Tobias and my help yesterday. As we poured the tungsten I bled heat off the metal with [Fire Manipulation], cooling them evenly and Keisuke used [Metallurgy] to strengthen the final result.
After only an hour we had a whole set of spikes. And I helped Keisuke clean up his furnace.
I returned to the main room with my tools and started attaching the teeth to the club, waiting for the scouts to rise.
We needed to discuss the so called city of Lizardmen.
While I waited for the others to rise, I finished my weapon.
I bored a row of holes along both edges of the club and inserted a cone shaped spike of tungsten in each one. I asked Keisuke to help with [Metallurgy] again and I slowly heated up the end of the rivet with [Fire manipulation]. Once they were hot enough to shape Keisuke would flatten the end of the rivet squashing it into the wood making a seamless fit. Once all the spikes were added I gave it a swing and me and Keisuke headed back to the furnace.
It was way too top heavy, the tungsten was too dense. The heavy spikes pulling the centre of gravity too far forwards towards the tip, instead of down at the handle like it should be.
I carved out a hole in the rounded pommel while Keisuke made a disc like mould, I used my magic to control the temperature once more, and when I opened the mould there was a circular coin shaped section of tungsten with a small hole in the centre big enough to fit in my palm. I attached it to the insert in the pommel fitting it into the hole I made with a few minor corrections. Testing it again, the balance felt much better. Keisuke had accurately guessed the correct weight needed, by eye.
I headed out to Delia to see if she would use [Inscribe Runes] on it for me, then [Enchant] it making a holistically magical weapon.
She placed the weapon across her knees and paced a palm on top of the flat blade like club. I reached out with [Spiritualism] and guided her inscription of runes, allowing the wood to ‘speak’… Telling me what kinds of runes would be best and where. It ended up being a spiralling pattern of durability runes that followed the decorative carvings that I had finished early this morning.
Delia had made them small, and had plenty of practice with durability and permanence runes from weaving them into her cloth regularly.
It didn’t need anything fancy just extra toughness, it was a club... A direct weapon made for smashing.
before she used [Enchant] she cut some catfish skin into a pair of tassels and looped them through the hole in the pommel, inscribing them with runes as she went. I would be able to strap my wrist to the weapon, in case the handle was slippery.
Delia started enchanting the club filling the material with magic as the skill bonded all the materials together and unified their purpose.
She finished and passed me the weapon, its appearance had changed, there was a deep lustre to the wood that made it dark and glossy, the tungsten spikes were seamlessly bonded to the wood and the metal disc in the pommel had grown a matching swirling design by magic. The line of tiny faintly shimmering runes flowed down each side of the body. They swirled to a stop just above the grip joining into two bands
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I held it up and gave it a swing, it made a heavy sounding whoosh! As it cut through the air. Feeling perfectly balanced in my hand.
I called my Codex to my hand and touched the club to its pages. We had made a magic weapon!
[Unnamed]
Maul
Expertly formed from Spiritual Ironwood Gum and studded with Wolfram spikes, handle wrapped with expertly tanned Juvenile Nematog skin.
Magic Weapon:
Increased Durability and Toughness
Spirit attribute adds Damage
I had learnt the local names of all the materials, and the durability increase had appeared like I hoped.interestingly it was classified as a Maul and not a Macuahuitl, the Codex is affected by my own perception of the weapon I suppose. or maybe the Wolfram cone spikes changed its classification?
‘That massive Nematog was only a juvenile? Wonder how big mum is?'
It was amazing. Our collective low levels made it so we couldn’t [Enchant] more than one effect into a weapon at a time, but our combination of adding runes and our experienced crafting techniques gave it two effects!
The effect of adding Spirit to damage would be useful, and allow me keep up with my lower physical attributes. It probably came from my continued use of the [Spiritualism] skill during the weapons creation, it wouldn't add much damage but I would take anything I could get.
I showed Delia and Keisuke, and they cheered happily. It was the first serious weapon we had made. I decided that I would ask the others not to range out too far today without all of them having a weapon of similar quality. We had the materials to make enough for everyone.
“It needs a name.” Said Keisuke, “The spikes make it look like a Kanabo, maybe Tetsu-oni?”
“The carvings look like curling water so maybe River Smasher?” Said Delia at the same time.
They had both been part of the crafting process, so the Codex would recognise either of the names. You had to be careful when naming your creations out loud in Potestas.
[Blood-Thirsty Iron]
Maul
Expertly formed from Spiritual Ironwood Gum and studded with Wolfram spikes, handle wrapped with expertly tanned Juvenile Nematog skin.
Magic Weapon:
Increased Durability and Toughness
Spirit attribute adds Damage
What a weird name… What even is an Iron… I guess the system behind the Codex had jumbled up all the words, and it came out like this. River Smasher and ‘Oni’ the Japanese word for demon, became Blood-Thirsty somehow. Tetsu the Japanese word for iron became... Iron…
I looked at Keisuke and Delia frowning, they both blushed.
“Weird name…”
“Sorry.” They said bashfully.
“Still it is a good weapon anyway, everyone needs one.” It was true, we had been using primitive tools. Everyone needed an upgrade.
I kept underestimating the Mah’raxian Jungle.
I identified why, during my spirit searching last night... I was weak again.
A few weeks ago, I’m guessing everyone in our group could have moved through this Jungle with no worries. High level attributes would let a tiny human wrestle a dinosaur bare handed, and skills that would've let you raze the trees to the ground in a 500 meter radius were gone now… too expensive to bring to Potestas.
I had to stop thinking I was high levelled, the safety of our cave and the minimal danger we had faced so far had gone to my head. I needed to be more grounded. We needed to adjust our mindset. Otherwise we would suffer a loss we couldn’t afford.
“We all need… Gear…” I spoke to the group holding up my [Blood-Thirsty Iron] to everyone. except Indaya, Elina, Jack and Oleksiy we were all present.
“We are weak… Cannot be… Complacent.” I looked everyone in the eyes. I hadn’t been vigilant enough, and the worms had nearly killed Keisuke and Paula.
And they started discussing what their preferred weapons were and what kind of armour would work in the stinking hot jungle.
Tobias and I spilt off with Keisuke, we needed to get him set up for proper forging. We tunnelled off the side of the crafting chamber and made a medium sized room. Making a pair of large furnaces one for cooking wood into charcoal the other was a Tatara furnace.
Keisuke carefully instructed us on how to build each one, his standards were exacting and we were there for some time correcting small faults.
"It took years for me to build one of these in the trial, this one will be perfect."
The Tatara furnace was the traditional Japanese method for making high carbon steel, charcoal is added to the clay lined Tatara until a temperature of 800 degrees Celsius is achieved. The master smith will... Over the course of several days, add iron, sand and charcoal into the top of the rectangular clay vessel. The ingredients melting and slowly falling down into the receptacle at the bottom, as the iron and charcoal join carbon mixes and bonds to the iron creating a quality steel.
With magic we could skip a lot of the more complex and time consuming parts of the process, [Air Manipulation] and [Fire Manipulation] in conjunction with [Metallurgy] would make better steel than anything on Earth, and the iron and charcoal would be spiritual in nature. I would purchase a skill to get the most out of our limited resources, I should have the Cassa needed from the worms.
When we finished the forge room a while later, we were called back. The others were awake.
“So, what happened?” Tobias asked the scouting group. He was looking inscrutable, still distancing himself from the group… Giving evaluating looks.
“We swam down the river. Jack wanted to check the ambush site.” Oleksiy started narrating, standing tall eyes forward.
“I took us through the jungle making sure to leave no trace. We made it to the ambush site, the flames must have burnt for a while much of it was still charred.” Oleksiy continued.
He was experienced in bush-craft, and I was confident he wouldn’t have left any trace of our heading for the Lizardmen to follow back to the waterfall.
“I wanted to see if we could find any trace of their path, back to their village or something…” Jack added sheepishly.
“There were drag marks and heavy footprints leading back to the clearing we arrived in.” They must have dragged the wounded back.
Oleksiy continued, “We followed the trail, it heads this direction.” He traced a finger along the raised map Tobias and Paula had made. It was headed north and west directly opposite the clearing away from our waterfall hideout.
“We walked for four hours, until we reached a clearing in the trees. Looking from the clearing was a wide band of felled trees around 100 metres wide… and a curved wall maybe one kilometre long.”
They were about a ten hour hike away from us then, that was good at least.
‘No wonder they all got back so late...’
“It was a thick stone wall, four metres tall. Larger Lizardman patrolling along the top, they had domesticated animals as well. I doubt we were spotted... Over the wall we could see rooftops of buildings and the tip of a massive pyramid.”
“How many?” I asked wanting an estimate of their numbers.
“T-thousands in a city that big…” Jack was scared.
“O-out in front of the gates. there were ten tall S-stakes.” She stammered out. They had seen something that had rattled them.
“Stakes?”
“With humans impaled through them, hanging tall for all to see.” Oleksiy reported his face blank.
“Another Secta… As a warning…”
“Fuck.”