Jay woke up to some chopping noises, coming from downstairs - clearly he overslept since Trenly was already here preparing for the day.
[2900 Exp]
“Heh, good.” Jay smiled as he woke up, pleased to see that both his skeletons and employee were hard at work even while he was sleeping.
After freshening up he made his way downstairs.
“Morning Jay” Trenly nodded, still hard at work.
He seemed as focused as ever, and Jay could tell he was putting his entire focus into the job. It seemed like his discipline for training as an adventurer and hunting were transferring to other parts of his life.
“Morning” Jay began cooking his breakfast while letting Trenly work.
“How’s business? Are you getting the hang of it?”
“Yes. Meat has also been easier to purchase lately, I think the forest is recovering from whatever happened.” Trenly said as he cleaved some flesh.
“Oh, good...” Jay scratched his eyebrow, hiding his face.
“Got any gold for me?” He sat down and began eating his breakfast.
“Oh, yeah. Fifty percent right?” Trenly checked his inventory.
“Yeah, the profit after buying the meat and things. Not the actual revenue.”
“Here you are.” Trenly pulled the gold from his inventory.
[130 gold]
“Thanks,” Jay smiled. It was a little less than expected, but Trenly was still new - besides, the butchery had been closed for a while so customers were bound to be lower than usual.
“Hmm I wonder if I should buy something new with this… hmm.”
“Maybe I'll just wait and see how my bone crafting does today.” Jay thought as he cleaned his plate before heading back upstairs.
“Trenly, I'll be busy upstairs; don’t let anyone come up.” Jay looked him in the eye, adding a little more weight to his words.
“Do not disturb, sure.” Trenly stopped chopping for a moment and nodded.
As soon as Jay got into his room he closed the door and braced it with a chair.
Next, a cloud of the dark green mana appeared before disappearing again - a pile of bones being revealed in its place.
“Now… I need to level my scrimshaw up.” Jay thought as he sat on his bed, looking at the bone pile.
“It would be a waste to just create multiple copies of the same thing. I should at least try to make some useful stuff.” He nodded, a thought drifted across his mind.
“They have weapons for offence, they would need defence too…”
“Skeleton armour?” He wondered, “...can they even wear armour?"
The first thing Jay did was summon one of his skeletons. It tapped about on his floorboards before he ordered it to stand still.
There were only three skeletons left alive in the dungeon last night, so this didn't hurt any of their progress. The question was which skeleton was this one?
Thankfully, now that it was level three, it has its name against its level - it was Sweeper.
Jay pursed his lips, "Of course it's fucking Sweeper." he shook his head.
"Alright, let's get on with it." Jay shook his head more as he went over to his skeleton.
"Hmm… I need to make something simple that can easily attach to your body."
A necrotic breastplate was currently a bit too beyond Jay's level. There was simply too much material to focus on, so he had to craft something smaller.
As Jay looked over the features of his skeleton he found that there were some gaps in its forearm and lower legs; unlike some of the animals Jay had butchered, humans have two bones between the elbow and the wrist, with a gap between them.
“Hmm…” he held Sweepers arm out, “I can totally exploit this gap to attach armour to.” A smile began to appear on his face.
“So it seems like I'll be creating vambrace's and greaves first.”
Jay immediately got to work, he grabbed a small amount of bones from the pile and began to channel his necrotic mana into it.
The bones all responded in kind, levitating and turning into lightly glowing, viscous blobs.
In the quiet of Jay's room under the sunlight coming from the window, Jay noticed something new.
“Huh, there's a kind of dust coming out?” he squinted at it.
It just occurred to Jay that there were impurities in the bones - he simply didn’t see it before since he was either in a dark labyrinth or an overcast sky.
The only solution Jay thought of to bring out more of these impurities was to add more ‘heat’, or in this case, more necrotic mana.
Jay happily indulged the process as he forced more mana into it, separating the particles of bone from one another.
Slowly the blob of viscous, sticky bones became more fluid-like while letting out a stronger glow.
Containing this water-like orb took more concentration from Jay, along with more of his mana.
Initially, Jay was only using about 0.1 mana per second, barely noticeable - now it was all the way up to 0.5 mana per second.
Thankfully, as the fluid bones swirled, less and less impurities were falling out.
After burning through 25 mana, Jay decided it was enough.
He began extracting his necrotic mana out of the bones, which served to slowly turn it solid again.
It was at this point in the process where Jay realised he should stockpile these pure bones before using them for crafting.
He didn't just want a weird hard ball of bone, so before it solidified too much he formed it into a rectangular bar, similar to a blacksmith's ingot.
Just like that, he had used half of his mana. It was a taxing process.
"Damn," He rubbed his temples to soothe his mind while chewing on some bondtussle root.
[Mana Regen buff 1%] - lasts for 1 hour(s).
Slowly, a very light-grey ingot floated down before him.
Unlike other bones, there were no stains of red, yellow or black spots in them. The colour was uniform.
In Jay's eyes, they were perfect - of course, a notification revealed it not to be.
[Ossein Ingot - 96% purity] x 1
“Damn. These are way too good to craft with…” he thought as he looked at the glossy sheen. They seemed to be quite high quality.
“I think I’ll hold onto these until I learn how to craft better.” he thought before storing it away.
It would be wasteful to give high quality materials to a novice crafter after all.
“Ok, now to craft some armour.” he looked at his skeleton once more before proceeding.
Jay repeated the process, sending his mana into bones to make a viscous blob before forming a hollow cylinder shape.
Next, he removed some mana to harden it slightly while forcing the material to form a thick trim around the edges for durability, as well as making a bar going through the centre.
The difference between this and a normal vambrace was that it had a bar going through the middle, which would slot between the skeletons' arm bones (radius and ulna), ensuring they wouldn’t come off.
It wasn’t needed, but Jay didn’t trust his skeletons not to lose them.
After moulding it into its form he slowly pulled his mana out of it, solidifying it more.
Finally, he had a finished product.
<[Spectral Vambrace]>
[Common]
[5 armour]
[5 health when equipped by undead]
“Oh, a bonus for undead? I guess it’s because I specifically made it for them? Cool...” he nodded.
Sweeper gazed at the gauntlet curiously as it stood there silently.
Jay wanted to see what the skeleton would do if given armour - would it even understand what it was?
“Here you go Sweeper” Jay casually tossed it to the skeleton.
Immediately the skeleton snatched it out of the air and equipped it on its arm.
“I guess it understands,” Jay chuckled.
“Well, I’ll make seven more of these and then eight greaves.” Jay nodded as he got into crafting mode.
With a keen focus Jay got to work, steadily making them - as he went, he finally levelled up his scrimshaw skill.
[Ability level up]
<[Scrimshaw Level 3]>
[Can use bone to create basic objects]
“Well, that’s a nice surprise.” Jay smiled while reading over the level up notification.
“Huh, I think the description is the same. I guess these are considered basic?” he pursed his lips “Oh well, my crafting skill is only level three anyway… I wonder if those skull-shield projectors are considered intermediate?” he looked up in thought.
“I guess I’ll just have to find out.”
It turns out that after crafting all the swords, hammers and his shield that he was incredibly close to levelling up his scrimshaw to three - achieving it before he even started crafting the eight greaves.
Two more vambrace's and eight greaves later, he was finally done making some armour for his skeletons. The greaves had slightly better stats than the vambrace's, as he crafted them while being level three.
<[Spectral Greave]>
[Common]
[6 armour]
[5 health when equipped by undead]
Jay decided he wouldn’t bother remaking the vambrace's for one extra armour, it simply wasn’t worth it. He would wait till he got better at crafting or until they needed replacing.
Two of the vambrace's had the extra armour point, but Jay decided to save those for Blue, his favourite skeleton.
The plan next was to try and craft some armour for himself - then extra armour pieces for the skeletons.
However, he was rudely interrupted.
*knock knock knock*
Suddenly, a knock came from the door.
“Damn, what the hell? I told Trenly to not let anyone up…” Jay furrowed his brow in frustration, immediately unsummoning Sweeper and storing it in his ring along with the bone pile; then finally storing away the armour pieces.
*...knock knock~*
“Just a sec!”
[Spectral Vambrace] x 6
[Spectral Greave] x 6
Next, he silently took away the chair before opening the door.
***Author here. Brought back the armour (or armor) stat. It was originally called defence. Armour provides a % melee damage reduction.
Calculation: %Mitigated = (0.05*(Armour*0.8)+(0.04*Armour))*((Char.Level/100)+1)
Level 3 skeletons with 24 armour will be getting 1.97% reduction (I will round it to 2% in this case). This is why I kept 'piercing' damage, as it ignores this reduction. Piercing will be much more threatening at later levels.
