PenguinKills
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Chapter 39 - Idle Worries
🕑 Added 2024-06-02 21:42:58 +0000 UTCThe night sky was marvelous to look at. The stars twinkled in the night, unknown constellations coloring the black canvas. It was a nice way to decompress after the day I had.
The wave this morning revealed something that I didn't quite like. [Barbarian's Rage] had more of an effect than I was comfortable with. I didn't like how it colored my thoughts and made me feel unnaturally angry.
I would have to get used to the new skill and learn how to control it so it wouldn't affect me. In time, it should be nothing more than an afterthought.
"I thought I'd find you up here." A voice broke the silence I had been basking in, "What are you thinking about?"
I turned to see my father climbing up on the wall behind me. He had been so mad earlier he yelled for 10 minutes straight. Abigail took over afterward and took up the baton.
Jonathan had ratted me out under pressure and revealed that he had told me what he was planning to do. Bastard. I knew Abigail was scary when she wanted to be but he didn't have to throw me under the bus.
"Nothing. Come to yell at me again?" I queried.
"No, I did enough of that earlier." He said with a sigh as he sat down. His voice made it sound like he came up here for something else.
"In my defense, we never specified the exact definition of rough." I don't think that helped my case very much from the look he was giving me.
"You know what I meant, discussing semantics wasn't what I had in mind when I asked for your promise." He didn't appreciate it when I did that, used technicalities. He let out a light laugh and shook his head before making to say something else.
I knew what he was going to say so I beat him to it before he could get the words out.
"It's the spirit of the promise, not the letter." I mocked.
Over the years, we've had many an argument about that very statement, especially in my rebellious teenager phase. Back then, I did it just to spite him.
"A man is only worth as much as his word, Chris, and you deliberately lied to me." He said.
"Technically, I didn't lie." I chirped back.
"Now you're being obstinate." He flicked me on the back of the head to show his displeasure.
What he said stuck in my head though.
"Why do you keep talking about honor and keeping your word? This is like the fourth time you've brought it up. It's a lot, even for you." I asked. I didn't mind it but it was starting to get repetitive.
"How much have you thought about the future?" He answered my question with another question. Real helpful.
"I don't know, as much as the next guy I guess," I answered. I didn't know what he was getting at.
"Do you know that you could easily kill everyone here singlehandedly?" He said.
What the hell, that was morbid. It also wasn't wrong.
I didn't know how to respond to that so I just grunted.
"In this new world personal power means more than anything. Words and discourse aren't going to hold as much weight as they used to. Civility will go by the wayside." He let out a deep sigh and looked like he was contemplating something.
I still didn't know how this was answering my question.
"I don't think I'm cut out for this new world." Before I could cut him off and ask what the hell he was talking about, he continued, "I'm old, son, and not as spry as I used to be. The stats help, but it's a mentality issue. I was preparing to retire in a couple of years and live out the rest of my twilight years with your mother. And now I see how this tutorial is going, I watched my brother die, my nephews die, and I don't want to leave anything unsaid, should the worst happen."
"Don't even say that. Don't even bring up the possibility. Everything is going to be fine, I'll protect everyone. You can't just give up" Some anger seeped into my words. He was acting like he had already given up.
"I'm not giving up son, I just need to prepare for the possibility I won't make it back." He said.
"And how are you doing that?" I didn't see how that was relevant. My original question was forgotten.
"You've taken this whole change better than I could've imagined and you're rising in power at a considerable pace. You and Austin both." He said, "You'll have the ability to wield power over others that aren't as strong as you. In the case that I'm gone I need to make sure that you're responsible and I've passed onto you everything that needed to be taught."
"I can already see people coming back from the tutorial, with their newfound power, ready to take control of towns or cities. People will become warlords and proclaim themselves king. History's already full of self-proclaimed rulers and this system is going to make it easier, maybe even reward it." He turned to look me in the eyes.
"You have this drive in you, Chris, this unyielding spirit that I think will carry you far. I want to make sure that when that day comes, you will be a man of honor. A man of his word. I wouldn't go so far as to say righteous, but you get the picture." Based on his tone he was being serious and wasn't making a joke.
"Who do you think I am, I'm not going to become some tyrant or killer." I defended myself. I thought I was a good guy, at least a decent guy, I wasn't about to start going around murdering people.
"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." He quoted. Him and his quotes. "I know how I've raised you and the man that you are, but the world isn't going to be as nice as it was. It won't be as easy to hold onto your morals. As a father, I can't help but worry."
We sat in an uncomfortable silence. I didn't know what to say to that, it came out of left field. I thought he was coming up here to yell at me, not discuss morality.
He stood to walk away, "You don't have to think about it too hard, son. Just take it as a father's idle worries."
I let him walk away without saying anything further.
Well that was pleasant.
~~
The sun was high in the sky and shined brightly through the windows of the forge. I had been at it since I got back from my morning hunting trip with Austin. I had one goal since the wave and I was close to finishing it.
I quickly activated [Identify] on my latest creation.
[High Carbon Steel - Crude]
Hah, I finally did it!
Steel, glorious, magnificent, amazing steel. It took a while to get right and iron out all the kinks. Ha. Just adding carbon and iron together and hoping for the best was not the way it worked.
Incorporating carbon into the iron and making sure that it was spread throughout the entire piece was difficult work. I also had to make sure I didn't add too much or too little or it wouldn't be as strong as I was going for. [Sense Metal] helped with the process but until it recognized the piece as steel, the carbon wouldn't show up. It wasn't metal and the skill was treating it as such, making it all the more difficult.
It was odd the way the skill worked, one moment it was showing iron with impurities, and the next, it said it was good-quality steel.
I wished I could have a recipe book from a steel mill to help with things. Knowing how to make high-carbon steel would have hastened the process considerably.
[High Carbon Steel - Crude]
I couldn't stop using [Identify] on it like it was going to suddenly change its material structure and leap from the table it was on. I had been trying to get the right combinations for two days. The clean-up from the eleventh wave didn't take very long and a few healing spells fixed me up so I could start working on it the same day. I worked late into the night yesterday before picking it back up today. Thinking of last night made the conversation pop into my head briefly before I dismissed the thought.
The healers didn't have to heal anyone else yesterday and could use all of their mana on Austin and me even though it wasn't as efficient. It was nice not having to rest and recuperate, wasting a day of production.
I had been doing other projects in the forge while I was experimenting, like small repairs or little things like making nails. It gave my mind some time to think through the process and get a better idea of what I was doing wrong.
Buying the steel from the store was an option but this was something I wanted to do myself, not to mention expensive. I didn't have a lot of points to spend after using them all on the wall. The eleventh wave gave me a lot back and our hunting trips gave some, but not enough to be spending on something I could make myself.
Not only was it nice to finally have steel to work with, but it also came with a huge boost to levels. The experience it gave was a tremendous boon that I hadn't expected, it was more than any one project I had done thus far. Even the failed steel ingots gave some experience.
It got me to level 10 where I got to choose my third skill. [Metallurgy] was an option I considered but I went for [Create Armor] instead. [Metallurgy] would give me a sense of the properties a metal had and what metals might be combined into an alloy together well.
I knew what kind of metal I was working with and knew the properties of steel. It had been a while since my materials class in college and I couldn't tell you the exact yield strength in psi, but I knew the broad strokes.
It was good enough for now and I'd save the skill for later. Maybe I could buy it instead, no, I'll save the points for a class skill. I had been eying [Meditation] in the store. Austin had it and it did a great deal toward recovering after the wave.
It boosted his natural healing and sped up the time it took him to heal. With the healer's skills not working as well as before, it was starting to look more important.
It would also let me use more mana on my blacksmithing projects. I used every scrap of mana I had trying to imbue it into the piece to increase the grade. I didn't know if what I was doing was right, but it couldn't hurt.
Working with steel was considerably harder than with iron. It was not as malleable as the softer metal and took more strength to shape. My strength stat, now over 100, made my swings function more like a drop hammer than a normal human's swings.
I had to be careful to not use too much or risk cracking the metal. I had gotten used to the level of strength iron required and had to find what worked best with the new metal.
Making my new axe took time and I put just as much care into it as the first one. A part of me considered just making a hammer instead because that's what it would end up as once my strength outpaced the metal again.
For now, I wanted an axe. If it so happened to turn into a hammer, so be it. [Heavy Weapon Proficiency] worked with both. Speaking of that skill, I recently got some good news about it.
From the many spars and fighting I had done, I was more comfortable fighting with the two-handed weapon. The 'Great' System must have agreed and upgraded my skill. It was now [Heavy Weapon Proficiency(Novice)].
It didn't feel that impressive to go from beginner to novice, but it was an upgrade all the same.
It was odd how the proficiency skills used a different ranking system than the others. Most skills and items used the same rarity system.
Crude
Common
Uncommon
Rare
Epic
Legendary
Mythic
Crude being the lowest tier and only my creation skills were that low. Proficiency skills followed the same ranks that the profession names did.
Novice
Apprentice
Journeyman
Adept
Expert
Master
Grandmaster
Beginner was the lowest and didn't even have a profession dedicated to it. You were considered a beginner when you were learning to get the profession in the first place.
Or, in the case of my weapon skill, a total novice who had never picked up the weapon before.
During the class with the alien, Cypteris listed out all the ranks and what they referred to. It was a little embarrassing to have a skill below what the lowest lank was considered. It wasn't my fault I hadn't picked up a heavy weapon before.
It made me think about what other people started at. Like a professional fencer with a rapier, there's no way they started at the beginner tier. What did the System consider adept, or expert?
Was the best fencer in the world a master? Or the kendo practitioners in Japan, how high would they start? Thinking about the advantages that some people had made me wish I was into HEMA or something similar.
Thinking about it more, I don't think they would have started that high. Maybe Journeyman at most. You had to consider that the only thing they knew was fighting at base human strength and speed.
The stats we now had access to added a lot of variables into a fight that they wouldn't be accustomed to, that wasn't even considering the [skills] that were now involved.
They would be able to adjust quicker with their experience but people like me wouldn't be that far behind. At least I didn't think so.
Anyway, the upgrade was a nice boost that happened while I was sparring the other day. After the upgrade, I made sure to always fight in my heavy armor to help that skill move up in rank as well. It couldn't be too far behind, then again I only start the fight with it on before it mysteriously falls off.
Sadly, steel wasn't the answer to my [Create Weapon] skill. It was still considered crude. I could feel that I was close though, I was just missing something.
There had been talks of upgrading the pylon surfacing and I wanted to create a better weapon before then. I didn't think that it was necessary for the upgrade, it was just an arbitrary deadline I set for myself for motivation. The last upgrade was level 5 goblins which we easily handled. How much of a challenge would upgrading our outpost into a village be?
The city ranks were another thing to keep track of. All the different levels of things were confusing. Admittedly, it was only three lists so far but it was still annoying. I had to admit it would be odd to use the two previous lists as the different levels of a city, like a crude city or grandmaster city. It didn't make much sense.
With the walls upgraded it required another pylon upgrade to increase them further. Having a pylon at the village level would also unlock some new things in the store that would be useful.
The last upgrade revealed the information tab and also let us buy better gear from the store. It also increased the list of available skills for purchase. [Ice Wall] wasn't on the initial list of available skills when we claimed the pylon.
Maybe it would unlock common-tier weapons?
People were more receptive to the idea than the first time we had the conversation and I could see it happening shortly. If not after this upcoming wave in two days, then definitely the next.
The main reason that we wanted to upgrade the pylon was to stay on top of the wall upgrades so something like the tenth wave wouldn't happen again. If we always had the highest level of wall we could then we wouldn't have to worry about monsters breaking it down.
The gates would always be a weak point, history had proven that, but I had plans for that. If we designed the gates as kill boxes and left them open it would funnel all the monsters into an easy spot to kill them.
We could construct barriers to lead them along a certain path to control where they could go. Everyone with a ranged skill would have clear shots and the warriors could use it as a choke point.
I would be standing in the gateway to stem the tide but the others could stand further back where it wouldn't be as dangerous.
I envisioned an alley, boxed in on both sides, starting from the gate and leading in a circle around the camp. The monsters would be forced to circle the camp while we picked them off little by little. We could also add escape points along the alley so warriors could escape before they got overwhelmed.
I had a lot of grand ideas, it was making them come to fruition that was the hard part.
The downside to my plan was that the boss would just break his way through without being hindered by the barricades we would put up, ruining the whole thing. We would have to fight it outside the wall somehow. How we managed that, I don't know.
Suffice it to say, the plan required a little more thought on how it would work.
It's just that knowing that the monsters would be able to break through the gate if we gave them enough time, I wanted a plan that alleviated that issue. Especially with the number of monsters going up every wave, they would get through over time.
Like a droplet of water eroding a rock, the light but many attacks would eat through the gates. It wasn't something we had to finalize now, but it was something to keep in mind.
Comments
Alexander C Hyde
Jonathan had ratted me out under pressure and revealed that he had told me what he was planning to do. This sounds weird. Maybe say he had told her what I planned to do?
Kyle
It feels disconnected sometimes. Sorry I can't help more
PenguinKills
What about it feels odd. Is there something I'm doing wrong? I try to edit my chapters as much as possible but some things will get through. Especially with how many I put out a week.
Kyle
The perspective feels odd sometimes I don't know why either.
