~Hegatha’s Swamp Island~
Jay held his hands over the fire, warming them while listening to the occasional crackles. The ends of the logs dripped and bubbled a sappy ooze as the moisture was forced out.
While the fire burned away, Red and Archers had been busy. A number of rat-sized moths occasionally swooped towards the light, annoying their master in doing so. That was enough to seal their fate, being cut in two or plunging themselves into the flames and setting themselves ablaze.
A small family of cat-sized slugs had also made its way over, attracted to the light, their slimy forms displeasing Jay, and were just as easily cut apart and tossed back to the slimy water they crawled from.
Jay’s half-opened eyes relaxedly watched as Red’s ossein arming sword waved through the air, but began to frown as he watched. The reach of its blade was barely high enough to find the swooping moths.
“You guys need new swords.” He murmured.
He had been calling their weapons swords, as they were suitable to their smaller bodies at the time, but the skeletons were more or less human size now, and the ossein swords were really just larger versions of the bone daggers he’d crafted. Heavy daggers, their blades were much wider and shorter than other swords he’d seen adventurers using, so at the edge of the fire he began to mold some bones together.
I’ll only need one, then the skeletons can make molds of it. He thought.
Using his practice from crafting spears he easily formed a shaft as long as his shoulder to his fingertips. He gripped one end with his necrotic gauntlet, knowing the skeletons would need to wield it comfortably with armor in the future, then added a cross-guard just above his armor-clad thumb and a thickened pommel just below his grip.
After a few swings, he thought it felt good enough, but he improved it by making the grip into an oval shape rather than a cylinder, which fit more comfortably in his hand.
The oval shape also helped him to hold the sword at a particular angle, which would help when adding each side of the double-edged blade. This way, when holding the sword, he wouldn’t even have to look at the blade to know which way the sharpened edges would be facing. After all, it would deal nearly no damage if he slapped an enemy with the flat side of his sword.
Next came the edges of the blade itself. He took a more tender approach and as he slowly seeped his necrotic mana into it, condensing the bone material into a harder form of bone before flattening it and shaping its razor edges. In his older weapons he ignored that some parts of the bone weapons retained the honeycomb structure and other parts of the bones they were made from since it made them lighter, but now he opted for strength, knowing his skeletons could handle the extra weight.
After some refining, he had his first full-length one handed sword; shorter than Handy’s two-hander but just as wieldy. Jay gave it a few swings at some of the scorching logs, sending clouds of embers as it battered the fire.
“Nice.” Jay said, looking at the sword’s silhouette with the flames behind it, a gleam coming off its hardened shell as if it had been polished.
He planted his feet down and lowered into a combat stance, swinging it will full force, but as he struck the wood the sword shook, vibrating so much that his hand screamed at him to loosen his grip.
“Dammit. The honeycomb parts of the bones must have been dampening the vibration before.” He said, holding the brittle blade in one hand and tapping the end with his gauntlet, feeling each vibration in his grip.
It was easily to tell that it was prone to shattering, so using it as a template, he designed a second version.
The second version was the same in every way except for the very beginning of the process. Jay used some of the stronger blue silt-wolf bone and formed another shaft, but made it skinnier than the first sword. He encased the cobalt-blue shaft in the white bone, bringing it to the same size as the first shaft he made with the brittle sword, then repeated every other step except one.
This time, he didn’t condense the outer white bone as much as he had previously, guessing that it would help to absorb some of the vibration as well as making it less prone to shattering. The sword would get much of its strength from the internal blue shaft.
Because he removed excess white bone to flatten and sharpen the blade, a blue hue emerged as the blade went along, and ended in a piercing blue tip, which gave it a unique look.
Jay smiled as he held it up, pleased with the look of it, as well as that the stabbing end would also be the much stronger blue bone too, which would stop the slender point from snapping.
As for the weight of the blade, it was slightly lighter than the first brittle one he had crafted, but there was one drawback to the sword.
It’s a little too advanced for the skeletons. He thought, and neither did he want to share from his stockpile of precious silt-wolf bone, so he quickly thought of a workaround.
The skeletons can just condense a shaft of the white bone to make a stronger internal core, then form the rest of the sword around the outside.
Jay summoned Dark to return so it could carve a mold into the ground, then began to teach, or see, if Red was actually capable of condensing bone. Melting it to a liquid was one thing, but forcing it into a pressurized shape was another entirely, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it was beyond the skeletons to do so.
While Dark returned, Red began to learn from Jay and practice alongside its master. At first, Red didn’t seem to understand what Jay wanted. It crafted a bone shaft that was similarly sized to Jays, but only realized the differences after it wielded the condensed bone, feeling its heavier weight. Thankfully it only needed a tip from Jay to add more mana and to squeeze the semi-liquid bone tightly to get rid of any bubbles or cartilage that may have mixed in, and in no time it had a condensed bone shaft.
“Good.” Jay said, glad there were no problems. After Dark returned and dug out a mold, he guided Red through the rest of the sword making process, modifying it slightly to help the skeleton craft it using the dirt-mold technique.
The resulting sword was exactly how Jay wanted. He only had to sharpen some of the edges and remove some bumps that the dirt mold caused, but otherwise he was content as he swung the final version of the blade.
< [Skeletal Sword - Level 2] >
[11 Damage] (Slashing) (Piercing)
[Lifespan - Requires necrotic essence to maintain its form]
[Current lifespan: 96 hours]
“Hmm. Not bad.” Jay said with a nod.
He expected it to be level three, but it was a product that a skeleton had made, so he was more or less happy with it. Jay remembered that his ossein arming swords did 12 damage, but those were made from purely silt-wolf bone and level three, so in a way, this was still an upgrade, which he contributed to his new design choices.
Jay had three new swords now. The brittle one, the blue-core one, and the final design that Red crafted. Checking the stats of his blue-core sword, it did 13 damage, but was still level two. He melted the brittle sword back to bone, kept the blue one for himself, and handed the new skeletal sword back to Red.
“You’ve earned it.” Jay winked.
The skeleton ceremoniously bowed, accepting its new sword and began killing the rat moths with renewed fury. But Jay wasn’t done.
(Blue, return to me. You’ve got some swords to craft.) Jay ordered, deciding Blue and Red could do the rest of the work in upgrading his minions armaments, and that teaching more skeletons to make weapons would only benefit him in the long term.
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