I struck down the last stingknight drone, the black chitinous demonic-looking insect crashing into the ground. If there was one thing I consciously avoided in the jungle above all else, it was stingknight hives. The huge stinging insects caused a tremendous, primal fear in me, but I was determined to overcome my weaknesses.
I had only ever attempted to take out a stingknight hive the one time, a couple of years prior, when I needed the wax within to waterproof leather. I was significantly weaker, then, and Treepo had yet to evolve at the time. It had been a challenge–I leveraged the ocean to drown most of the swarm–and I had defaulted to fire magic to wipe out the hive’s queen, turning all the loot I could have gained from the beast into ash.
With more confidence and strength, I was able to face my second attempt properly. Treepo scurried through the battle, climbing trees and then leaping onto the drones to slam them into the ground, killing many on his own. I deployed tactical air blasts and stone bolts to take out the insects at a distance, which was my usual combat strategy in general, but I also faced the drones which came at me head-on, taking them down with careful, stabbing knife strikes.
I did get stung, once, and it hurt almost as much as I thought it would. The sting gave me a minor poisoning status as well, but I easily cured the status and healed the wound while engaged in combat. I had taken much more serious wounds in the dungeon and the damage these insects could do paled in comparison. Without 6-point magic of my own, I would have needed to go to the Church for healing. Even knowing I was relatively safe from true danger, these large insects still ignited an uncontrollable fear in me. I worked quickly to kill them all. It didn’t take too long to reduce all the drones to a carpet of corpses.
Feeling pretty fresh and capable, I called Treepo back to me to prepare for the real challenge. I sent a blast of sound magic at the hive, irritating anything that remained inside, and watched as the stingknight queen emerged from the massive, papery construct.
The queen was easily ten times the size of the drones, which were already far larger than the insects I was used to on earth. She was the size of a dog, so I assumed she was flightless given how much she had to weigh. She proved me wrong immediately. As soon as she emerged from the hive, she unfolded massive, steely raven-like wings which started pounding the air rapidly, like a beefy, hellish hummingbird. Her many legs were powerful, thick, and hairy. Massive, pitch-black eyes bore into me.
My hand twitched, and it took everything in my power not to purge the beast with fire. How did the people of this world not render this species extinct? This is pure nightmare fuel.
“Try and get on her back and get her to the ground if you can,” I whispered to Treepo, who grunted with concern and took off into the trees.
The queen sighted me, and was on me in a flash.
I shrieked rather uncharacteristically in surprise at the sudden burst of speed from the huge creature and slashed wildly, throwing myself off to the side in the nick of time. If I hadn’t advanced my acrobatics skill I doubted I would have been able to dodge that. She stopped short in mid-air easily, hovering, and turned slowly before rocketting towards me again.
After a couple of close shaves, just managing to dodge her aerial charges, I noticed that my only real opportunity was immediately after I dodged. For whatever reason, her turning speed was pitiful compared to her overall movement speed, and so I had a brief window to strike then.
It made a huge difference, though, as she was having difficulty staying up and her next charge was much slower. She came at me just the same, but I could track the whole movement. As she closed in, I stepped back just a bit, produced a barrier where her stinger curled towards me, and slammed my knife up. The blade easily slid into her head from below as her stinger skated off my barrier. I twisted to the side and directed the rest of the inertia over and through, ripping my blade out and air blasting her into the ground as she moved past me.
I was on her immediately and sawed off her wings before there was time for anything else, then leapt back to reassess. My knife strike might have been enough in the first place, but I wasn’t taking chances.
She wasn’t dead, at least not yet. She stumbled to her feet and turned to face me, the stubs of her wings wiggling pitifully, spurting ichor. The same disgusting goop dripped from her insectoid chin where I had stabbed her. She started to move toward me on her legs, but she was already weakened from the injuries and was nowhere near as quick on land. I grinned at the pitiful display from the previously-horrifying beast and summoned a large stone spike from my inventory and floated it in the air between us.
In an instant, I shot the spike down and it buried itself in her head. She immediately dropped to the ground with a small thud, only twitching a few times before falling perfectly still. I pumped my fist into the air. Treepo bounded towards me, chittering happily.
“Easy,” I said with bravado to my familiar, who headbutted my legs with affection.
I saw a flash of blue as Gregory glided down from his hidden perch where he had likely slept through the whole battle. He landed softly on my shoulder. I turned back to my slain foe and examined her briefly before reaching out and touching her to place her in my inventory.
I looked around at the mess of stingknight corpses and sighed. “Help me gather these up?” I asked Treepo. He looked at me with an expression of distaste and I laughed, moving in to start the clean-up myself.
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* * *
I held up the dismantled loot against my torso to compare the size. The stingknight queen’s corpse had broken down into chitin and stinger, like the regular drones, and also produced a “stingknight queen scale” which was what gave the impressive sheen to her giant wings. The chitin was significantly larger than the chitin I got from the drones, which I had an enormous amount of now, and was approximately the size of a cuirass. I rapped my knuckles on it and it produced a nice thunk sound. It wouldn’t compare to metal armor, but it was something I could probably use right now with a little ingenuity, and anything would be a leg up on my simple cloth tunics, which were all shredded and patched repeatedly.
I had enough leather to use as a base for a light armor set, which I could probably affix all this chitin to, and maybe the scales as well. I went to revisit old man Fergus, the leatherworker, to ask about boiling and shaping leather as light armor, and what it would take to fasten chitin to the leather without having access to metal rivets.
“Hmm,” the grumpy old leatherworker said, examining the small piece of chitin I handed him. “If you can get a needle through this, you could probably stitch it to the leather. If flexibility isn’t an issue, the right glue could work. Burning or drilling a hole for a rivet would be the best option, though.”
I took the chitin back from Fergus and sighed. “What about shaping leather for armor? Could you teach me that?”
Fergus pondered for a moment, then shook his head. “Not really my wheelhouse, lad. I make leatherworks, not armor. If you need rivets anyway, you should go talk to Mo.”
“Mo?”
“The smith, lad. Only one in town.”
* * *
I walked north along the wall, following the directions Fergus gave me. I hadn’t spent much time in the north end of Mirut, neither the rich part of town towards the port or the poor side of town by the wall. The lord’s manor was north of the markets and port, but out in the east side of town the small cottages were slightly more ramshackle and the children that milled around were slightly more malnourished-looking. I ended up giving a few kids some loaves of bread which I had stockpiled, food my mother Sharma made me for my lunches since she wasn’t aware of my hunting exploits and the sheer availability of meat I had at my disposal. I probably ate a lot better than most of the people in Mirut, aside from the nobles.
As I approached the cliff that closed in the seaside town to the north, I started hearing the repetitive tinging of a hammer on metal. Due to the forge smell and hammer noise which started early each day, the smith was located at the edge of town so as to not disrupt the market and inns that housed the sailors and merchants who stopped in by sea. It was also a more convenient location for the guards to source weapons and armor from, and bring back damaged pieces for repair, as the primary guardhouse was at the wall. There was a secondary location at the port, but they mostly dealt with drunken sailors, not dangerous beasts.
I knocked at the door to the smithy, but when I got no response I stepped inside to look around, figuring it was a business establishment and I didn’t necessarily need an invitation. A middle-aged, incredibly well-muscled man was pounding away at a red-hot piece of iron at a huge anvil in the middle of the floor. I appraised him before he looked up.
Morag Vinalson (Lv 42)
HP: 586/586
MP: 67/67
Status: none
EXP: 2155/4200
Skills: Armoring(++), Butchery(+), Cooking, Needlework(+), Negotiation(+), One-Armed(+), Smithing(++), Strength(++), Two-Armed(+), Unarmed(+)
It was an impressive and even status and skill spread, clearly a man who had dedicated himself to the task of working metal and making weapons. Given how high level he was, I assumed he worked hard every day at the craft, and likely made a massive variety of items, although I also noticed his advanced combat skills which suggested he had seen combat in his history. I wagered that his smithing skill was approaching mastery. I noted the skill “Strength,” which I hadn’t seen before, and wondered how it was acquired. Heaving masses of metal around frequently was probably a big part of it.
I looked around at the smithy and was amazed at what I saw. Tons of blades, metal tools, and pieces of armor were collected on all the surfaces. I looked over a few of the blades and noted the maker’s mark stamped into the steel, and was surprised that I recognized it. It was the same mark as what was on the blades Bosh had purchased for me with my coin. I had wondered where he sourced them, but that solved the mystery. I considered asking Morag about the price, but I didn’t want to know whether or not Bosh had cheated me. I actually suspected he might have contributed some of his own coin to the purchase, which was a nicer assumption that I was happy to maintain.
Morag the smith stopped hammering at the thing he was working on, and turned to place it back in the forge. I took the opportunity to speak up and make myself known.
“Hello!” I called out.
The man looked back and around, then noticed me down below the expected eyeline of a customer. With mild surprise, he stepped around the anvil to get a proper look at me.
“Hullo lad,” he said, jovially enough. “Here to ask about an apprenticeship?”
That caught me by surprise, and my surprise seemed to confuse him a bit. “Uh, I actually had some questions about rivets. And armor.” Learning some smithing could be fun, but I hadn’t reincarnated to become a medieval blacksmith.
He gestured away from the heat and fumes of the forge, and motioned to a younger boy, presumably an apprentice, who headed to the forge to deal with the abandoned work. I pulled some leather and chitin from my pack and showed it to him, explaining what I was looking for.
“Aye, rivets would be ideal. Copper, maybe, as I’d be working them cold,” he drawled, explaining that iron rivets should be heated to work and would burn the leather and damage the chitin. He had a drill which would make nice clean holes through thick chitin, but also had a punch that would work with the thinner stuff. Layering the scales or smaller pieces of chitin would allow for them to be sewn onto leather instead of riveted, which would be a lot less expensive and produce a lighter piece of armor.
We continued talking about shaping leather and light armor, and while it wasn’t his specialty, he knew how to do it. “Don’t get much quality leather here,” he said, turning over the piece in his hands. “Might be a good opportunity for some of the apprentices to get some experience, if that’s good with you.”
I was surprised and appreciative that the man took me seriously and treated me like an adult, without asking too many questions. He probably thought I was just some rich kid who acquired the materials through trade from the port. So long as I didn’t run into him while with my father, this would probably work out.
We talked through my ideas and armor design based on the material I had, and he took some measurements, quoting me a perfectly reasonable price given that he would be offloading much of the work to his apprentices. I made arrangements to swing back around later with the other materials, keeping the fact that I had an inventory secret, and thanked him for his time. Looked like I would be armoring up sooner than I had thought.