Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! Some crafting done and some cupid played on this chapter!!

ANYWAY, today there was a storm here where I live, and then boom, my pc turns off. Imagine how desperate I was when I thought I lost half of the chapter? Auto-save, I love you! Also, today's chapter is a bit on the short side, being less than the usual 4000+

ALSO, I plan on going back to the races lists in this weekend and loosen a bit of my restrictions while re-reading the recommendations, so there might be a good amount of new races entering the list before Monday.

ALSO(2), some people were asking for me to put up my old works on Google drive and leave them public. I might just do that after selecting a few of the less worse ones… No promise on updates on them, however. Insania is right now taking all my imagination.

ALSO(3), I know next to nothing of leatherworking, so I cannot guarantee any precision on the methods mentioned on this chapter.

Have a good read!

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“Hunted… Wild dogs?” Melinda was surprised at my answer, and looked at me in confusion, so I could only smile wryly while she tried to place the pieces together.

Ah! Looks like she failed. She shook her head as if saying that it doesn’t matter, then let go of me and invited me to her home. I quietly followed her until she took me to a fairly empty room, with only a bed, desk and a small wardrobe. Not exactly understanding what she meant by this, I looked at Melinda in curiosity.

“If you just came from my father’s, you probably just arrived at the city and don’t have anywhere to crash, right?” She said while scratching her head awkwardly. Was she saying that I could take the room? “And since it seems that my old man really likes you, I’m kind of worried if I were to treat you poorly…” And there is the real reason! Well, not that I can blame her.

“Thanks for the offer, but there is no need for that… I can just go to a nearby inn or something if I needed…” As I was about to deny it, she made an awkward smile.

“I… Wouldn’t recommend that… You see, although crafts are fairly cheap in this city, things like lodgings and foods are kind of…” She even turned her eye away, making me rise an eyebrow. “The cheapest inn in this floor costs three silver per night on their worst room…”

“I’ll be taking your offer.” And here I would have dropped my bag on the bed, but, you know, inventory.

Still, I took out the shield and left it at the bed even if only so I could mark my territory. Melinda nodded at this then beckoned me towards the back of the house.

After passing a fairly large door, I found myself in something similar to the studio besides Wallace’s place. I blinked in surprise at the similarity, but I guess… Like father, like daughter. As I got to the middle of the place, Melinda turned to me and said.

“It might be a bit late, but I guess I could start teaching you a thing or two… But do you have any leather? If not I could give some surplus I have.”

At her words, I opened my inventory and selected all the hides I had, and unloaded them upon a empty table that creaked under the sudden weight. There were two piles, the larger one for the Wild dogs and the smaller one for the lynxes.

Melinda’s eyes shot open after seeing the piles appear, and she became even more shocked when she finally examined the pieces. She looked at me with pure shock.

“Are… All these manually skinned?” She asked in disbelief. I nodded happily. She started to examine me from head to toes and seemed even more shocked. “And… Is that really the beginner’s gear you are using? That trashy equipment you get when starting your adventure?” Another nod. “And… These are red-claw lynxes?” Another one. Right now she was looking at me with a mix of respect and confusion. “Would… You mind If I asked your level?”

“Just got to level eight this morning!” I said stuffing my chest with pride.

“Wha… What kind of monster are you?” She almost shouted this, making my ears go deaf for a moment. “With so much leather like these, you probably didn’t reclaim any of the bodies… And you want to tell me that you still managed to kill the lynxes without even being level eight and with that equipment?”

“Well… To tell the truth I did have some help…” She widened her eyes and then sighed in relief. “It was a level two magician!” She almost fell to the ground. Maybe I shouldn’t mention I was level four at the time.

“Haa… Haa… No wonder the old man took a liking to you.” She let out a dry laughter, taking a few seconds to recover herself.

After a long sigh she finally recovered herself and started to separate the piles even further into three piles for each. After finishing that, she went to the back of the studio and started to gather a few tools here and there and throw then in a small box.

“Here. This will be your starting set, there is everything you would probably need in here, from needles, to pencils, brushes, a few good lines, scissors and so on. You might want to add a few things with time, but this should be enough for you to start, now come here that I will pass you the skill.” I nodded and approached her. She laid her hand on my head and the window appeared before me.

Melinda, the leatherworker has taught you the Crafting Skill: Leatherworking. Skill: Leatherworking [lvl 1]

0% Allows you to use leather and hides from animals to create armors.

You can use the system help to create your items from now on.

You have received a few beginners recipe.

What? No wall breaking forehead-aimed finger-flicking? Kind of anti-climactic.

“Normally my work would end here and I would send you off, only telling you how to ask the goddess for guidance… But I have the feeling that you probably want to do it the hard way, right?” I looked at her and smiled widely. She knew me so well already! She sighed and shook her head, but she smiled like she was looking at a kid playing around. Not that it was far from the truth… “Then, I take this is your first crafting skill?”

I almost nodded automatically, but then I remembered.

“Actually, it isn’t. I got this other crafting skill yesterday… Crystal Tinkerer, but I haven’t used it before.”

“Crystal tinkerer?” She stopped to think for a moment. “I don’t think I have heard of it before… Who passed it to you?”

“No one… I actually got it when I created this.” I passed her one of the flash bombs I still had on my belt. She picked it up with curiosity and started to examine it. Feeling a bit mischievous, I told her. “To use it, you just activate it like you would activate an elemental crystal.” She looked at me, clearly suspicious for a moment, but it seems that her curiosity won in the end.

And we both went blind.

I started to laugh loudly while my vision slowly came back to me. As soon as she recovered she hit me in the head, but even then I couldn’t stop laughing.

-30 (300/330)

“I really should give you a good beating here and now…” She said angrily, but soon calmed herself. “Anyway, that is quite a nifty item… How do you do it?”

“You get a light, a fire and a chaos elemental crystals, break them into eight equal pieces, mix in a six to one to one proportion and grind it to a dust.” I explained her quickly. She nodded a few times, but then became a little more serious.

“Okay, we’ll talk a little more about this later. For now, let’s start with your training.” She turned to the piles of hide and pointed to one with wild dogs and one with lynxes pelt. “We will start with these two since they are in worse shape, so even if you mess up, there won’t be any big problem.”

Seems fair to me.

We started with the poor-quality dog pelts, and she took me to the tanning rack. There she taught me that there are multiple ways for removing the fur, but she and her father particularly preferred the whole knife-scrapping thing because it doesn’t damage the hide too much, although some scraps of fur do escape here and there.

The other methods involve the use of alchemic made by alchemists, but this one affects too much the leather for their tastes, the last one is to use a magic item specific to leatherworkers, but they said that it’s too expensive to use in the hide of low level animals like the red-claws and wild dogs.

We cleared a few pieces of leather before going to the crafting itself. First she taught me to mark the shapes of the equipment I wanted to craft. After some thought, I decided that the best idea would be to start with a jacket. Why? Because jackets.

She showed me briefly the shape I had to cut and helps me to mark it with a pencil. Despite being sure that I would have difficult in marking it precisely, my hand seemed to be stuck in the right path. Is this the help of the system? It doesn’t really feel like that.

Oh, maybe it’s because people who are just beginning the game have no skills and this happens to help them. This would actually make sense.

Leaving this thoughts aside, even if I have this assists, it’s not like the shape came perfect, there were a few mishaps here and there, but for a handmade drawing, it was incredible. Afterwards, we came to the cutting. Since the hides were fairly small, I couldn’t simply cut it from one single piece, so I had to separate it in five parts, right side, left side, upper back and sleeves. After taking all of these, came the curing.

She had me pick a pot with some salt and spread it over the hide. She told me that if we left this as is, it would take a few days before the leather was ready, so she taught me that, with access to the leatherworking skill, I could simply use the ‘cure’ skill and end the process in a moment.

Then she had me open a pot with some stinky and strange brown paste. I had to use the brush she gave me to spread it over the hide. When I asked her what the reason was for that, she said that this was a special product to increase the leather’s durability to rotting and such.

Now, it would take a few hours for the leather to absorb the compound, so she had me repeat the same process for all the other pieces of clothing. I had decided to use the poor dog leather to make me some city clothes so that I wouldn’t need to walk around in my equipment around the town.

And whenever she wasn’t watching over me, Melinda would go back to her corner and would continue to work on her own jobs. From time to time we would talk about somethings.

“Hey, why are you learning leatherworking if your equipment is made of chainmail and scale-mail?” She asked me after some time. “Wouldn’t it be better if you were to learn blacksmithing?”

“Oh. That’s because I plan on making armor from the strongest monsters, so I will probably end up using lots of leather and scales from their bodies. And I can use those scales to make my own scale mail.” I quickly explained to her, and with the corner of my eyes, I see her nodding. “By the way… Don’t this city have blacksmiths? I didn’t see any of them when coming here.”

“Oh... Well, this IS a dwarven city!” She said with a laugh. “The reason you won’t find any of them in this sector. They have a whole sector all for them! They are on some of the lowest floor.”

“Oh, good to know. I was afraid that I would have to burn this city to the ground…”

“What?”

“Nothing… So, do you have someone to recommend me for a teacher as a blacksmith?”

“So you also plan on taking blacksmithing after all?”

“Well. It’s not like will only use leather armor after all… And I’ll be needing weapons!”

She laughed loudly before going back to her work.

In the end, even preparing the rest of the leather ready, I still needed to wait for some time for the leather to be ready for sewing. Thinking on what to do, I remembered about the mythical quest on my quest log.

I quickly excused myself and went back to the streets. Taking the second map from my inventory, I went back to the main elevator entrance on the first floor of the sector, and traced my way to the forty-second floor from the sector.

From there, finding the library was a fairly easy task, since the building itself was big and showy. It was a two story building just like Melinda’s home, but it easily went around a hundred meters to each side of the main entrance. The outside was simple, with large wooden doors and a large window every so many meters. Marveled at the size of the building, I stood in front of it for a moment before finally walking in.

When I got in, I noticed that it was even bigger than what I had expected, eating through the floors and probably with another entrance on the upper level. The amount of shelves within was simply ridiculous, and the books even more.

Thinking what a pain it would be to find the book, I walk to a nearby desk, where a girl with light blue hair is reading a book. She notices my approach and raises her head.

Her eyes kind of remind me of Cygnas, shining lightly, and she also have some kind of long metallic piece on place of an ear. If I’m not wrong, they call this race the constructs. If Clockworks are for technology, golems are for alchemy, constructs are for magic. But in here they kind of remind me of the androids you would usually see in manga and anime.

“Good afternoon, how may I help you?” She asked me with a business smile.

“Good afternoon. I’m looking for books that may have something on the four gods of disasters. It seems to be an old legend, but I’m not entirely sure…”

The girl stopped to think for a moment.

“Hmm… These are some really old stories you are looking for.”

She raised herself from the seat, walked towards a small shelf besides her desk, and started to look at some of them. Then she picked one of the books and quickly skimmed through it, but shook her head in the end. Picked another book, and this time she found whatever she was looking for.

“It seems we still have a few books about them in the ancient legends section.” She pointed me to a place on the upper floor. “They should be on the fourth left shelf in the corridor. I would recommend you the ‘Compilation of Histories of old’, ‘Minor gods: A re-reading’ and ‘Disasters and how they happen’. Near every shelf there is a light crystal, all you have to do is activate it with the name of the book you want and the crystal will bring it to you.” I nodded then thanked her.

But just as I was about to reach the stairs, I stopped and made a full turn before going back to her desk once again. She looked surprised for a moment then raised her eyebrow.

“Excuse my suddenness, but, could your name be Nova?”

She became even more surprised, then wary.

“Well… Yes, I am… And you are?”

“The name is Gondorrer Gravelheart, pleasure to meet you.” I gave her a slight smile. “But my name isn’t important here. You see, earlier I met with this gentlework that worked in a information booth right outside of the city called Rusty. Rusty Blackjoint. And he asked me to tell you that he said hi!”

It took her a moment for the message to sink in, and then her face suddenly went all red in a matter of tenths of a second. Then her eyes started to wander and she tried to hide her face with her hands.

God dammit! Aren’t they a couple of lovebirds? Even their reactions are the same!

I smiled teasingly at her and gave the final attack.

“And he would also like to invite you to dinner tomorrow!”

She froze for almost ten seconds. I could swear that I saw the blue screen of death in her eyes. Then her face became even redder and I could pretty much see the steam raising from her head. Then after some time she started to fidget and asked shyly.

“Re-really?”

“Well, to tell the truth, no.” I said and she immediately looked dejectedly. “But when I gave the idea he didn’t seem all that opposed to it, you know?” Her eyes shone up again. “Want me to pass the message that you accept?” She nodded weakly.

I left towards the books with a wide smile after having done my good deed of the day.

I reached the shelf she told me and found a small crystal embed into it. I touch the crystal while thinking about the books and they come floating down.

Nifty!

I take the books to the table nearby and sit there, starting my research through the ‘Minor gods: A re-reading’. Sadly, I didn’t find anything about the gods of disasters besides a few lines saying that these guys were mostly told on legends, and most aren’t even sure whether they even exist.

But I did find something interesting. In this world, there is a whole pantheon of gods, with Cyg being the all-powerful Grand-goddess. Maybe I should add that her weakness consists of window-balls and its variations…

Right beneath her, there are four Great-gods. One for healing, one for war, one for stability and one for freedom. I didn’t bother with their names, before you guys asks. It probably isn’t important anyway. Each one of them have two gods that serves them, and these gods are related to the elements.

The healing god have the water and light gods beneath, the war god have fire and darkness, stability god has earth and arcane, and the god of freedom have the gods of chaos and wind.

Yup, they just divided the elements… Pretty nice if I do say so myself.

But none of this helps with my quest, so I set the book aside and start with the ‘Compilation of Histories of old’. This is mostly an old story book that talked about some old, old legends. Mostly they were of heroes and whatnots, but there were a few interesting things, like this legend of huge monsters appearing in some very specific places.

But still, it wasn’t what I wanted, so, on to the next book.

Which, despise its name, is actually a book about legends. Being far smaller than the previous two, I read it quickly, and I am pretty sure I just hit the jack-pot!

This book told of how people thought that disaster happened in a distant past, and some of them spoke of monsters. Huge monsters. Monsters so big and powerful, that the people started to revere them as gods. Coincidentally, they were known as the Gods of disasters, and there were… Ding ding ding! Four of them!

There wasn’t much description about them, as they are mostly told only in legends since no one have ever actually seen them, but it wasn’t like there was nothing. I did get some names and a few other things.

The first is known as Alsh-tahar of the quaking earth. Seems to have the shape of a snake and brown scales and a body large enough to circle a village. He swims in the desert sand like it’s water, but he can also go through solid stone with ease. Whenever he does, the very earth screams in pain.

The second is Baltamur, the Tide Bringer. Not much is known about this one, except that it was seen on glacial seas. No description of the body except the fact that he is massive and his very roar can create tidal waves.

The third is called Razzasahks, the raging tempest. His body is a mix of a bird and a dragon and his very presence can cause the clouds to thicken and create thunderstorm. No idea about his size since he is always flying.

The fourth is Ultgor, the erupting king of magma. As the name implies, he lives in volcanoes around the planet. The few descriptions there are of him tells of a massive scaled hound that can make the volcano erupt with only a swing of his claws. From the four, he is the only one who does not seem to be in the same place all the time, with matching sightings of him coming from all around the world.

I may have gone a little tiniest bit above my head…

MYTHICAL QUEST UPDATE:

The four gods of disasters Wallace, the Dragon General, was once one of the strongest men of his time, and in his quests for a true challenge, he met with one of the four Gods of disasters and found himself unable to even lift his sword. Now he passes on to you his dream of defeating these monsters and make armors and weapons of them for yourself.

After some research, you have found some pieces of knowledge about these monsters, however it is still far from enough, so you may need to research some more.

(Mythical quest: completing this quest can change the very story of the world.)

Status:

- Alsh-tahar of the Quaking earth (alive)

- Baltamur, the Tide bringer (alive)

- Razzasahks, the Raging tempest (alive)

- Ultgor, the Erupting king of magma (alive) Rewards:

???????

Looks like it’s a hit.

So, I have a snake, a something, a dragon-bird (Drird? Bragon?) and an oversized dog to kill?

Heh, a walk in the park! I’ll flash bomb them to death!

Yeah…

Anyway, I turned my attention back to the book looking for some more information, but the only thing that I got was the fact that these stories are from around two thousands years ago…

WAIT A MOMENT!

The quest window is saying that they are alive, you don’t mean that these guys are the same ones as from back then, are you? You’ve gotta be kidding me. They literally had thousand years to get stronger, what kind of freaking level do these guys have? Heck, even if they climbed one lever for year… It’s over two thousands!!!!

Hmm, where is my energy reader to break at times like these?

I sighed loudly. It seems that it will still take some good time before I would manage to even scratch these guys. And, besides the Baltamur guy, I don’t have a good idea from their positions. A desert and a volcano is too vague of a description, and the Razzasahks guy don’t even have a description of the place where he is found!

After some time of deep thinking, I finally took the books to the shelf and used the crystal to send them back to their places.

On the exit I gave my good byes to nova and reminded her of the dinner tomorrow with Rusty. She blushed furiously again while I left laughing.

Before going back to Melinda’s place, I took the main elevator to the floor I came in. Which by the way, isn’t the first floor of the mountain, there are even a few underground floors and the mountain isn’t exactly placed on a leveled terrain, so some deeper floors can be accessed from other sides.

I got to the gate just in time to see Rusty entering the city. Still wearing his military-like uniform, but holding the hat beneath his arms.

I approach him and put my arm around his neck.

“You, are a lucky clockwork, and you have a dinner with Nova tomorrow at night. You might want to see her at the library before she leaves to adjust the details, ok?”

The clockwork looked confused for a moment, then his pipes started to chime furiously as a steam cloud formed around him. I went back laughing leaving the two lovebirds to finish what I started by themselves.

I think that he actually stood there for almost an hour before coming back to his senses.

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(dead) Author's corner: Fancy table for fancy quest is fancy...

What do you guys think about the gods' names?