“So… how many do you think it is?” asks Rhine.

It is late in the evening, but nightfall has no yet arrived. This is around the time of day when the hostilities of the war-zone begin to simmer down for the night, as all involved parties retreat and return back to their camps in order to hide in safety from the terrifying monsters of the deep-forest. A sort of first floor has been created for the house, on the elevated edge of the hill. A wooden platform, reinforced with stone and concrete, sits.

And they are all, winding the day down, sitting there atop it, as if it were a balcony.

“Oh, hey,” says Sockel, pointing to the right. “Look. You can see the elves there.” She squints, before looking back towards Rhine. “Probably about a few hundred a day. Gonna say three.”

“— I was gonna say that,” sighs Hineni, following her arm. There is indeed a large cluster of people walking out through the edge of the forest. They don’t leave its shelter entirely, but they stay at the edge, where it is easier to navigate back to their own lines. “Still. Maybe we shouldn’t be guessing about this?” he asks. “It feels kind of grim.”

Obscura hoots, setting down a tray in their midst. It was her turn to cook dinner tonight. They’re just sort of roughing it, at the moment.

“Oh, hey, I saw that guy earlier today,” says Hineni, pointing towards the east, where the forces from their side of the world are converging back together. A man is being dragged out of the forest by his legs. “He was walking fine this morning,” says Hineni, grabbing one of the small bowls, filled with a savory stew of sorts.

“Not anymore,” notes Sockel. “Fine. Three-hundred and one,” she says, freeing up the number three-hundred for him to guess.

Rhine nudges her with his elbow. “But if you take three-hundred and one and break it down in its single numbers, three, zero and one and add them together… then that adds up to four, Sockel. You can’t take that number.” The owl-god hisses excitedly.

Sockel rolls her eyes, taking a bowl. “Fine. Three-hundred and two.”

Guessing the number of people who are being killed every day in these skirmishes might indeed be a little grim. But, well, that’s just sort of what this new world of theirs is. Between all of the screaming, terrifying metal skulls and the various macabre gods of confusing intention, a little, horrifying war-zone is refreshingly normal.

“You mean just from the fights, though, right?” he asks. “Or are we counting the ones the monsters get too?”

“Uh…” Sockel rubs her forehead, thinking for a moment. She shrugs and then blows on her food. “I guess just the skirmishes. I’m sure the monsters are snatching a few people, especially after dark.” She shakes her head. “But they’ll mostly be eating the corpses, which is a problem for them, but great for us.”

Hineni thinks about this statement for a moment, as Obscura sits down next to him. But he doesn’t quite figure out what she means. “How so?” asks the man.

Sockel shrugs, chewing on her first bite. “Well, leaving food outside attracts animals,” says the elf. She nods her head to the forest, in which, presumably, at least a few hundred people are dying every day inside of, going by a cautious estimate. “I dunno about you, but I only just saw one guy getting dragged out.”

Rhine nods. “They’re leaving most of the bodies in the forest,” he explains. “Or like that engineer said the other day, they’re just dumping them into the rivers until they get clogged.”

“— Don’t drink the river-water. Got it,” says Hineni.

“- All of that is attracting tons of monsters, which means even more people are dying. But, on the plus side, we’re going to get a heap of monster parts cheap,” explains Rhine.

Sockel blows on her food again. “There’s always an up-side.”

— A harrowing scream comes from the forest, as a man is torn up into the air, carried away by what looks to be a particularly large harpy.

Hineni blinks and then looks back down at his food. “Huh… neat,” is all that he says, shrugging.

Dinner is good.

Hineni looks down at the monster bit. The flesh and the meaty parts have been removed from it now and it lays across the table, one of many.

- [Drake Talon {Whelp}] -

- Quality -

Normal

- Quality Effects -

None

Drake Affinity: NATURE/FIRE

A bloody, severed talon that once belonged to a growing drake whelp. Old meat still hangs to the black, razor-sharp growth. Weight: 3.11 kg Value: 12 Obols

“How many of these do we have, Rhine?” asks the man, looking at the heap of talons there.

“Uh…” Rhine thinks for a moment, looking at the table and then at the sacks next to it. “…Three hundred?”

Hineni looks at him. “Rhine,” starts the man. Rhine shrugs. “Really? Or is this a numbers thing?” He leans down, looking at the boy. “You’ll get a hold of the whole ‘three’ thing once you pay attention to it long enough,” he explains.

Rhine shakes his head, patting a sack. “No, really. I think there are exactly three-hundred,” says the boy. “Sockel told me she bought that many.”

“Oh…” Hineni stands back upright. “Well, that’s a lucky coincidence.”

“Right?” asks Rhine.

The two of them set to work on today’s batch of weapons.

Given the curved, brittle nature of the talons, they are initially somewhat limited in their use-cases. Each one is roughly as long as his own hand is, but, given that they’re curved, they aren’t too useful to use as materials for things like daggers or arrow-heads.

“We could make wands and curved-knives?” suggests Rhine, shrugging.

Hineni thinks for a moment, but that idea doesn’t really sound right. It’s too… every-day.

“What kinds of drakes were these harvested from?” asks Hineni, looking over the talon.

“Sockel didn’t say, but, I guess just normal nature-element types,” says Rhine. “Considering where we are.”

Hineni nods. “Let’s grind these down in a powder. We’ll make a paste out of the material.”

“Okay,” says Rhine. “And then?” asks the boy, interested.

“And then…” Hineni stands there. The truth is, he doesn’t have an ‘and then’. He’s just sort of making it up as he goes along. But the talons, being from a creature that is attuned with nature, should have magical properties of some sort, if used correctly as material. If they grind them down into a powder and then make a paste from that, they could use this paste to make just about anything.

— But it will likely be very brittle, so melee weapons are out.

Hineni feels Rhine staring at him. The boy expects an answer. He hasn’t yet realized that Hineni also doesn’t have a clue. But, feeling the pressure on himself, he just does as one does and makes something else up on the spot.

“— We’re going to try out enchanting,” says the man. He nods his head to the side. “Go get some books from Seltsam. I’ll start grinding these down.”

Rhine beams, nodding his head excitedly to run off to do as told. Hineni sighs, looking down at the talon in his hands. It’s true that they had wanted to try enchanting out, to increase their profit margins more. But he’s never done anything like this before.

He tosses it down to the table.

It looks like they’ll just have to wing it and hope for the best.

Rhine flips through the pages of the book out open on the table. “It says here that we need uh… hmm…” Hineni, dusting his hands off, looks over his shoulder. “Well, we need someone who has a lot of magic,” explains Rhine.

“Got that,” says Hineni.

Rhine nods. “And we need a primary ingredient,” reads the boy. “It says here to use potent magical ingredients.”

“Got that,” says Hineni again, tapping the bowl full of powdered drake-claws.

“And we need… uh… oh. Water.”

Hineni looks around the area. Water is actually going to be the hardest part. The pump is down the hill.

(Rhine) used: [Droplets]

Hineni looks back in surprise, seeing Rhine holding a hand over another bowl. Water leaks out of his fingers, filling it up to the brim. “You’ve gotten a lot better at that,” says Hineni, recalling the days when Rhine could do nothing else, except summoning a giant cascade of destructive water.

“I practiced a lot,” explains Rhine, proudly. “So, we have everything then.”

“Seems that way,” says Hineni. He reaches over to the side, grabbing an old, steel axe from the barrel of repaired weapons.

- [Steel Axe]{Gift of the owl-god} -

- Quality -

Normal

- Composition -

[Steel Blade]{Axe}(Normal)

[Wooden Handle](Normal)

[Leather Wrap](Normal)

[Black Cloth Wrap](Normal)

[Black Cord](Normal)

- Quality Effects -

“Chosen of the owl-god”

Adds additional attributes to the attached weapon - Title Effect - “Gift of the owl-god” +3 OBSCURANTISM +3 WIND DMG +3 LUK 6.3 PHYSICAL DMG A long forester’s axe, meant to be used with both hands. Its steel blade is keen and sharp. It feels very sturdy. ‘Made by Weaponsmith Hineni - Chosen of the Owl-God’ Weight: 1.33kg Durability: 36/36 Value: 333 Obols

“We’ll test it out with this,” says Hineni. “So what’s the catch?” he asks. “If this is so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?”

“Because of the magic,” says Rhine. “Any good caster can enchant a weapon,” he explains, tapping the axe. “But if you or I did it, the effect would maybe last for a few hours.” He turns the axe over. “Just because you press magic into a weapon, doesn’t mean it will hold onto it.” Rhine waves his fingers over the weapon. “There’s a whole magical balance to everything. The axe, as it is, already has a certain amount of magic to itself. By nature, it doesn’t want any more or less than that.”

Hineni rubs his chin, thinking. “So… that means…?”

Rhine shrugs. “It means enchantments don’t last long and they make weapons unstable. They break easier.”

“Wait, so isn’t this a terrible idea?” asks the man.

Rhine nods. “Yup.” He points over his shoulder, towards the top of the hill, where an owl sits, perched over a growing sprout. “But it’s fine if someone with a lot of magic does it. That’ll break through the axe’s normal levels and pump it full. It’ll last that way.”

Hineni nods. “Get started,” he says. “I’m going to go grab an owl.”

Rhine finishes smearing the paste, mixed together out of drake-talon dust and pure water, over the body of the axe. It’s oddly goopy and drips everywhere.

“That should do it,” says Rhine. “Now you just need to do your thing.”

Hineni holds the owl out in both hands. The creature clicks and hisses in annoyance, her head spun around to look straight back his way.

“It’s just the one for tonight,” promises Hineni. “Just to test it. Then we can go back to the tree,” he says. The ‘tree’ hasn’t really become anything yet. It’s just a little sprout. But she’s deeply enamored by it and watches over it feverishly.

The owl-god lets out an annoyed hoot and turns her head back forward. “Very well.” Hineni lets go of her and she climbs onto his hand and then flaps her wings down towards the axe.

The paste, smeared over its body, begins to dry out immediately, pulling together into hard, thick, uneven layers, like a poorly made cast.

After she is done, Rhine takes a cloth and breaks off the crumbly, porous, hardened outer coat off of the weapon.

- [Steel Axe]{Treasure of the owl-god} -

- Quality -

Normal

- Composition -

[Steel Blade]{Axe}(Normal)

[Wooden Handle](Normal)

[Leather Wrap](Normal)

[Black Cloth Wrap](Normal)

[Black Cord](Normal)

- Quality Effects -

“Chosen of the owl-god”

Adds additional attributes to the attached weapon - Title Effect - “Treasure of the owl-god” +9 OBSCURANTISM +9 WIND DMG +9 LUK 6.3 PHYSICAL DMG Enchantment {NATURE}: Enchanted with a powerful magical affinity for the element NATURE, this weapon has a chance of {03}% with every strike to summon a bolt of lightning down onto the target. A long forester’s axe, meant to be used with both hands. Its steel blade is keen and sharp. It feels very sturdy. The wood is of a rich hue and the metal blade shines with a luster that seems to catch both the daylight and the moonlight particularly well. ‘Made by Weaponsmith Hineni - Chosen of the Owl-God’ Weight: 1.33kg Durability: 39/39 Value: 3333 Obols

"Hmm. Neat," remarks Hineni.

Rhine nods. "Yup. Neat."

"Who~" hoots the annoyed owl that he is still holding onto, bending her head down to bite and nibble on his thumb. She looks up. "Neat," she says, so that it will have been said a third time. She then goes back to biting Hineni.