Chapter 23

A few minutes later, I see the second Black Tailed Fortiler. It looks terrifying like the last one. If I ever make a haunted house, I'm going to plaster the bitch with pictures of Fortiler faces. For now, I can start with killing the Fortiler.

I release an arrow aimed at the Fortiler's head, and it swerves to the side to delimb an arm. Nasty, but now the fortiler knows my location. In addition to having one less arm, the fortiler is now screeching loudly and running towards my location. I get out another demon arrow, and this one zooms right through the head of the fortiler.

I'm down two demon arrows, which comes to 40 credits. I have four left, so I'm not completely out, but I think I will stick to iron arrows for now. Iron arrows do not hurt so much when I lose them, so I can afford to fire a little faster at enemies.

Once again, I take the whole body of the Fortiler in my inventory, but this time, I am unable to find the demon arrows. The next fortiler is close, so it only takes me a minute to reach it.

With one arrow, I damage its leg, inhibiting its ability to charge me. The fortiler still screeches like the other two, but I am fast enough to get a second arrow out and fire it. The first Fortiler died after a few hits with arrows and a blast of Intermediate Fire magic, and the second fortiler died from two hits of demon arrows. This third fortiler brushed off the second arrow and continued to run towards me, slightly limping. I let the fortiler get close, and then I meet it with an explosion of fire magic. I didn't say anything cool like Papa Bless this time, but my meme magic still worked.

Three down and three to go, I head off for the next one after taking the dead fortiler into my inventory. About twenty minutes later, once I've killed all six fortilers, I decide to head back to my house. The shop day will last for a few more hours, it is probably only four or five in the afternoon.

>**Inventory**

>Steel Bow

>Iron Arrow x64

>Demon Arrow x4

>String

>Rope

>Nails

>Coal x43lb

>Axe

>Orchelium Pickaxe

>Knife

>Shovel

>Hammer

>Hand Saw

>Grind-wheel

>Torch x2

>Mountain Hare Meat x26lb

>A shit ton of stone

>Wrought Iron x1lb

>Dead Black Tailed Fortiler x6

Back at the house, I tan the hides from the fortiler. I make one hide into leather, and I decide to make the rest into tailored outfits, that is at least until I learned I needed sewing materials. So, I leave five tanned to sell to the shop. Once everything is made, I sell the five tanned hides for 75 each, totaling 375 credits. With the money from the kills, that makes it 975 credits I now have. I kept the fangs and the tails because I can't make those into hides and the quest needs them.

In the next few days, I'm going to visit the closest town and get support beams for the mine, then return to the far away town to turn in the quest. I'll get another quest to spend time on, and I can also mine for more iron or other ores.

With the one pound of wrought iron I have left, I use my Smithing skill to flatten the iron into something resembling a knife. Once that Is done, I take out the grinding wheel and place it on the ground a few feet from the smelter. This time, instead of using the torch to light the smelter, I used my Intermediate Fire Magic. From what I can tell, the magic took 25 mana per second to use, but it was able to quickly heat the inside of the smelter.

When I have the knife sharpened to my liking, I place leather around the handle and put it in my inventory. Among my other items, the knife I just made appears.

>Low-Quality Knife

This doesn't bother me much. I will get better at making knives with practice, and I already have a good enough knife to get me through other things. Instead of keeping my first knife, I go to sell it. In the shop, the knife is only worth 30 credits. Not a lot, but it brings me up to 1005. For 200 credits, I buy the skill Sewing. For 50 credits, I buy materials I will need for making things with cloth, and for 100 credits I buy 100 yards of cloth, and for 100 more credits I buy 100 pounds of coal.