Chapter 31: Crafting for Fun and Profit_The Incompletionist

So the field to the south of the Emerald Sea is home to not one, but two types of dangerous, nocturnal rabbit monsters. Shadow rabbits use low visibility at night to get close and deliver extremely high speed strikes. Lunar rabbits use stealth to hide while sending “blades” of solid air off of their kicks as ranged attacks. Both types of rabbits are populous and use their skills in concert to deliver a dizzying and devastating number of strikes to anything foolish enough to invade their territory at night, which incidentally was exactly what I was going to do.

The rabbit meat was delicious and the gray pelts of the shadow rabbits and white pelts of the lunar rabbits were valuable. Unfortunately, harvesting anything from these relatively small monsters required precision. The magic particle pistol would run the pelt and likely the meat. The magic particle buster rifle version would obliterate the whole rabbit. This was essentially a training hunt in speed and precision and I was using pistols that fired small, heavy slugs at very, very high speeds using, you guessed it, magic. They were specialized equipment for this type of hunt and were designed to kill the rabbits with a headshot.

I know that this sounds pretty brutal, but these rabbits killed anyone that ventured into their territory unprepared and they were pushing their territory closer to the Emerald Sea every day. This task was a necessary part of the population control required for public safety and would likely be handled by an adventure guild in the future, but in the less formal administration of the fae I was just given a rough quota by Deldes and Delirin.

The elves would be standing by at a safe distance with Reginald, as this type of fighting was too dangerous to do in close proximity to others at any skill level. On the plus side, this task gave me a chance to improve my pistol skills and work on my combat speed and awareness. It also gave me a chance to practice with the newest addition to my defensive arsenal, an extremely hard and dense ceramic alloy disc that I could position around me using technology and principles similar to the positional disc that I made as a gift for Lierin. These shield discs were a supplement to my standard energy armor and had some neat interactions with that technology as well, but they had to be controlled through visualization. I had multiple discs, so I was hoping to get the hang of using one during this hunt and then work toward the goal of adding a few more.

I was wearing my goggles to help me see in low light conditions and I also had my training device to provide me with “feedback” when I was struck despite the damage mitigation of my energy armor. I hadn’t run into anything quite like popcorn in Region Eleven yet, but Deldes and Delirin were loaded up with snacks over with Reginald and from how joyfully they were anticipating this show I could tell that this was going to be unpleasant.

I walked out into the field. One second everything was fine and the next all hell broke loose. The rabbits were running and jumping all over the field. Shadow rabbits hit me in the head, the back of the neck and my right calf within the first couple of seconds. During this time lunar rabbits had launched half a dozen projectiles that impacted all over my body as I staggered from the shadow rabbit strikes. I got off zero shots.

You had to track the stealthed lunar rabbits by their projectile attacks and shoot quickly after one appeared to hit the rabbit. To do this you had to dodge the shadow rabbits and shoot the lunar rabbits before multiple strikes pushed your aim off target. I wasn’t taking much damage through my energy armor, but it felt like I was in a front load washing machine full of rocks. When the rabbits got into their rhythm, it was a constant beating. I had plenty of opportunities to practice with my shield disc, but I was having such a hard time focusing that I wasn’t making much progress there either.

I turned off the feedback device to give myself a chance to get my bearings and reset the fight. There wasn’t exactly a pattern to the rabbits attacks, but there was a logic to what they did based on the situation. The rabbits worked well together and I needed to disrupt their coordination if I was going to have a shot at this. I decided to focus on the extremely fast shadow rabbits, as I could see them clearly with my glasses and the lunar rabbits were stealthed well enough that I couldn’t target them effectively with my current gear. I started to get at least a few shots off and by the end of the first night I had bagged a few shadow rabbits, but I didn’t turn the training feedback device back on until the second night.

In the end it wasn’t a pattern thing, though understanding the rabbits’ behaviors better did help. In the end, it was about always moving and choosing your moments to shoot. You couldn't stand around and look for your shot, you had to let the shots find you as you evaded everything coming your way. Eventually, I got a second and then a third shield disc going, which allowed me to adapt my tactics further into something that became relatively successful. I blocked the shadow rabbits with the shield discs and if I stunned one, I immediately switched targets to that rabbit and dispatched it. Otherwise, I watched for projectiles to form in the range that the lunar rabbits favored and took a shot with each of my long barreled pistols every time I spotted one.

It took me five nights of quality rabbit hunting, six including the disastrous first night, to meet my quota. It was an absolutely asinine way to hunt these rabbits. If you were a serious rabbit hunter you would deploy nets to capture the little monsters or something like a flashbang to blind and stun the nocturnal creatures before finishing them off. However, it was a good training exercise for me and I can see why Deldes and Delirin suggested it. If I am honest, I think that part of the reason that they did suggest it was because they wanted to watch me getting the stuffing beaten out of me. Those two probably would have loved reality television.

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With our rabbit hunt done, it was time to push on to the Slime Fields. I mean what could possibly go wrong in the Slime Fields. Right?

***

Depending on the specific activities chosen, crafting could leverage any of an awakened’s base stats, but Ingenuity was always the critical factor. Ingenuity essentially described how well you could combine ideas and your skills to make things. The party members taking part in the tutorial were not overly blessed with ingenuity, so Caeda’s lessons in basic magic artifice, the foundation of all crafts that leveraged magic particles, wasn’t going well.

Sarah and Erin were both clearly more capable than the others, which was evidenced by the fact that the projects that they had selected to work on during this session were neither smoking heaps of ash nor completely inert blocks. Karen had actually had to use her healing magic once on herself and another time on Lyle when things got out of hand with their crafting projects. They were now excused from the group exercises for “self-study.”

Crafters could help a party by repairing gear, creating necessary items, solving magical puzzles or earning the odd bit of coin to supplement the nightly ale and pie fund. In this respect the group could have really used me and they still could, magic engineering is a power discipline. Under Tanyl’s tutelage, I had built a strong foundation and pushed into advanced topics and applications of magic artifice in less than six months. The standards of the brownies were on another level and the standards of the inner circle of Galan’s clan were on another level still, but even to them my progress was promising. By comparison what Caeda was teaching and what the tutorial members were putting into practice was just plain not worth talking about any further.

To illustrate this point, here is Karl’s status information. With a fifty-five in Ingenuity, Karl didn’t blow anything up, but he didn’t make anything of value across the full two weeks.

Chapter 31: Crafting for Fun and Profit

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