Chapter 27. Dread

“What’s going on in this town?” Janica said. “We have to figure out what’s different here than everywhere else.”

“Warren? Is that you?” Ilrune's voice carried from across the park. “Rowan, Cassandra, Henry, Janica! What are you all doing here?” Ilrune walked toward us, arms out in welcome. A group of wardens stood behind him, their training paused. Their levels ranked between six and sixteen, putting Ilrune near the highest with a level of 15 on his name plate. They were all NPCs. They stared at us in awe. We must be the first gamers that they had seen.

“Hi Ilrune!” Cassandra beamed. “We came to visit.”

“Well,” Henry said. “Not just visit. We need to do some crafting and to look around town. We’d like— ” He paused, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “We’d like to try and figure out why mana is working here still.”

Ilrune nodded. “Okay, I can’t talk now. We’re in the middle of a training session. Would you like to join us?”

“That… wouldn’t be weird?” Rowan asked.

“Not at all,” Ilrune said.

“Cass and I planned on collecting some leather,” Rowan said. “Maybe another time.”

“Uhh…” Ilrune started, “by yourselves? Even the small game is level twenty. And most animals travel in packs. The ones that don’t travel in packs are higher level or elite.”

Rowan shifted, nervously. She turned to me and shrugged. “Sounds like the plan needs to change a bit. Cass, you wanna train with Ilrune?”

“Sure,” she said.

“I’m gonna go investigate the area and town,” Janica said. “I want to figure out what’s different about Feygrove. Besides, I don’t want to watch Warren sew. I’d rather get a sewing needle in the eye.”

We split up. The girls stayed with Ilrune, and Henry headed to the alchemy lab. Ilrune sent me to see a friend of his who did tailoring and leatherworking.

I stepped through the door of a place called Dread’s Threads to find a woman sewing a pair of pants down the inseam. She ignored me. Hands worked in perfect sequence, popping a needle in and out faster than any seamstress had a right to. I wondered what her Expertise level was, reminded that every point increased speed by 1%. She was a middle aged woman, short, with long hair and pointy elven ears. She had a set of spectacles on. Not normal glasses. The kind that sticks out a few inches from your face and magnifies something ten fold. Her nameplate read .

Sets of armor were mounted on mannequins all over the room. She had displayed simple leather vests, bracers, boots and leg pads on one wall. On the opposite wall, she showcased gear sets that looked like such you’d find on an advanced character in a game. These sets had hardened leather pieces layered together and dyed in reds and blacks that appeared to provide both protection and flexibility. The back wall had the most unusual pieces. Breastplates with bones incorporated like skeletal frames. Bracers that glowed with blue light. Feathered headpieces. Shoulder pads with metal spikes erupting out of them.

She looked up at me with her spectacles still attached, her eyes magnified in her lenses. She raised the lenses. “Who are you?”

“Warren,” I said. “Ilrune sent me. Thought you might be willing to help me.”

“That old fool,” she said. “He’s way too nice. Thinks that others are nice too.”

I smiled.

She went back to her work.

I browsed the different sets of armor on the wall, inspecting the designs, running my fingers across the seams. Unlike in sewing, it appeared that she had connected hard leather pieces in layers using a combination of rivets and thread.

I heard a breath next to me and startled. Dread stood right next to me.

“Have you worked with leather before?” she asked.

I took a step to the side to avoid the awkwardness of talking to somebody too close to me. “I’ve made leather pieces,” I said. “And I’ve worked with clothing… probably too much. But I’ve never made leather armor.”

“What’s your Leatherworking Expertise?” she asked.

Dread was nothing if not direct.

“Nine,” I said.

She winced. “I have an extra work bench in the back, but apprentices don’t get paid. Usually, they pay me. Can you pay?”

“I’m a little short on money,” I said. “Can I do work for you in exchange for teaching me?” I showed her the leather pieces that I had made in Jamon’s shop.

She inspected them for a long time, then at me. I thought she might lower her spectacles and start staring at me like I was a misshapen armor piece. “Maybe,” she said. “Let’s see what you can do first.”

#x200e She set me up in the back and pointed to a line of animal carcasses that hung from a chord. They were larger than rabbits with big fangs and skinny faces. On closer inspection, they kind of looked like wolverines. “Make as much High-quality Leather as you can. Medium-quality is fine, but not ideal. And you’ll pay me three Silver for every carcass that you ruin. When you get that all done, I’ll help you with your own projects so long as you don’t bug me too much.”

I got to work. I skinned, scraped, and stretched. I cut out brains just as Jamon had taught me, gagging again in the process. Dread had a large variety of frames of different sizes, and had directed me toward some medium sized ones. At the beginning, I worked very slowly. The thought of having to pay her money every time I ruined a carcass served as ample motivation. For every skin that I completed, I earned a point in Leatherworking and, like a god-send, increased my speed by 1%. With enough points, I could work more and more quickly while putting more care into every movement. Even better, the process felt easier than before. Since my last foray into Leatherworking, my Dexterity had gone up by seven. I wasn’t exactly sure if that’s why my movements were more exact, but it made sense in the world of gaming. It was something I needed to ask Janica about.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

After an hour, I had skinned, framed, and treated twenty carcasses. I was pretty proud of myself, which reflected in a big grin on my face as I presented them to Dread. Even more exciting, I had discovered a pattern.

You created Medium-quality Medium Leather x 17.

‎ You created High-quality Medium Leather x 3.

‎ Your Leatherworking Expertise increased to level 29.

‎ You discovered a new Leatherworking pattern: Leather Vambraces.

Dreads eyebrows raised when I handed her the stack. “Okay,” she said. “Better than I expected. Still not great, but it’ll do.” “So what is it that you want to make?”

“Well,” I said. “I’d like to make my group some armor. I just discovered a pattern for vambraces. But all I have right now is five Low-quality Leather, three Medium-quality Light Leather, one High-quality Light Leather, four Shark Skins, and eight Shark Sinew.”

“Shark Skin and Shark Sinew!” She seemed pretty excited about that. “How’d you get those?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I teased.

She laughed. “Fair enough. Well, I don’t think you’re ready to use the shark yet. You should save that for a breastplate or a shield. If you could get more, we could make a whole set. Haven’t used shark skin in ages.”

“A set?” I said, getting excited. “What advantages does that give the armor?”

“Well,” she said. “Three pieces make a set. Not two. Unless you have two unique crafting items that are, in some way, tied together. But every piece you make from the same set of uncommon crafting materials adds a set bonus to the gear, depending on the material. If you make a set of three pieces you get one bonus. If you make a set of four pieces, you get another bonus. And so on.”

My eyes must have opened pretty wide, because she laughed at me.

“How many pieces can you get in a set?” I asked.

“Well, kinda depends,” she said. “Uncommon materials can make sets up to five pieces. Even if you make more, the set bonus won’t go bigger than four. Rare materials can make sets of five. Epic materials can make sets of six.”

“What about legendary materials?” I asked.

She chuckled. “One step at a time, kid. Let’s get you started on those vambraces. First step is to make the pieces you need. Then we’ll harden them. Then connect them together.”

She walked over to a bench that had pencils, knives, awls, bevelers, mallets, punchers, and a variety of other tools. “If you’ve worked with cloth, you should be able to figure out how to get started. Make sure you use your Low-quality Leather first. These are practice pieces, so don’t expect any of the Low-quality Leather to be a finished product. I’ll come check on you in a while.”

I opened up my Leatherworking menu to the page where it showed Leather Vambraces. In the factory, they would give us a print out with all the pieces we needed for an article of clothing pre-designed. All I would need to do was copy the patterns onto cloth, then cut and sew. I didn’t know what to do without my print-outs, and it seemed like trying to freehand draw the pieces onto leather would cause me to make a bunch of little mistakes. Those inaccuracies added up.

“How am I supposed to get the pattern from my menu onto the leather?” I hollered to Dread, who was working at her own bench. “Do I have to redraw it by hand?”

“Certainly not,” she said. “Just pick up the image and lay it on the leather. You can expand or contract the scale by pinching or moving your fingers apart.”

“Oh… kay,” I said, frowning.

I pinched at the holographic image from my menu and pulled. Like magic, the pattern seemed to come off the page as a transparent film. I placed it on top of a piece of Low-quality Light Leather. It didn’t fit onto the leather as I had lost large parts of this skin when I was trying to scrape it clean. I turned the image and contracted it until it fit within the bounds. The process was amazing, allowing for so much flexibility. I realized that crafted goods in Integration Online were not one-size fits all. Before I made any advanced gear, I was going to need to get my team’s measurements. For the bracers in front of me, though, there was a belt-type apparatus with a buckle and tongue holes that allowed the wearer to expand or contract the size.

“Good,” Dread said, again startling me by being way closer than I thought she was. “Now you’re going to use one of those knives to cut the outline of the different parts of the vambraces. Then use your puncher and mallet and punch all the holes through.”

I cut the outline, wincing every time I went within the lines. These mistakes couldn’t be fixed. I punched the holes. After a few minutes, I had four smaller pieces of leather that would layer on top of two larger pieces and three straps. Vambraces were effectively guards for both the forearm and the elbow. The elbow piece would be linked to the forearm piece using cords at one place, allowing it to bend. The straps were used to tighten the armor onto the arm. Generally, these types of bracers would have designs on them. But I wasn’t ready for detailed work.

Dread showed me how to clean up the edges using a beveler. Next I put the smaller rectangles on top of the larger pieces and stitched them together. I showed these to Dread.

She grunted, then pointed out all of my mistakes. In detail. Twice. “Go turn the water on,” she said, releasing me from the lecture.

When the water boiled, I dropped the leather in. After exactly two minutes, Dread took over the process.

She pulled the hardened leather from the water, attached the straps using rivets and thread, then formed the leather by tightening the straps and pulling and pushing parts until it was shaped just the way she wanted. “This has to be done while the leather is still warm, okay?” she said, handing it back to me.

“Uhh… okay.”

I attached the elbow to the forearm with a thick cord, then saw a prompt appear.

You Created Low-Quality Light Leather Vambrace x 1.

‎ Your Expertise in Leatherworking increased from 29 to 32.

Light Leather Vambrace

‎ Item Class: Armor

‎ Item Quality: Common

Armor: 1% damage reduction

‎ +1 Constitution

‎ Requirements: None

“I did it!” I said, holding up the piece.