"Finally!" Kael muttered as he finished, the word coming out in a breath that sounded more like he’d been holding his lungs shut for an hour than actually working at a desk.
His shoulders ached in that dull, unfamiliar way that ca from repetitive precision rather than heavy labor. Construction work was simple in its cruelty: lift, carry, swing, repeat. This was different. This was the kind of effort that demanded focus. One wrong cut, one wrong seam, and he’d waste material that had taken blood and risk to earn.
In front of him, he had three decent-sized pieces of Black Basilisk Leather instead of the damaged ones. The transformation still felt a little unreal. A few taps with Brokk’s hamr and sothing that had been half-ruined, chewed and torn and rotted at the edges, turned into clean, usable sheets like the Tower itself was reluctantly admitting he’d earned the right to make sothing decent.
Thankfully, each piece was large enough to be used for a jacket’s back, front, and the remaining one could be cut in half to make sleeves. It wasn’t perfect armor. It wasn’t so legendary set that would let him walk into fire like it was rain. But it was sothing, and in this place, sothing was the difference between bleeding out and living long enough to hate tomorrow.
But he had an issue.
He was unable to get a proper asurent for his own body to make anything remotely usable. He didn’t have a tailor’s tape. He didn’t have a mirror. Hell, he didn’t even have the calm environnt to stop and asure himself without feeling like the darkness outside was gathering teeth.
He stared at the leather, then at his own body, and felt the faint frustration rise. If he made it too tight, he’d rip it the mont he moved. If he made it too loose, it would snag, flap, and get him killed the first ti he needed speed.
Then he did sothing that was rather smart, smart enough that even he felt a flicker of satisfaction at the idea.
He removed his own tracksuit.
It used to be burnt, cut, and barely worth the heat it could even provide anymore. But thanks to Dragon fixing it, it was now of service and back to its original form, minus the mud that stank of goblin piss, which was also a bonus that he was thankful for. The fabric no longer slled of smoke and sweat, but was like it had been pressed and dry cleaned in an expensive drycleaner. And most importantly, it gave him sothing he desperately needed.
It was a perfect fit for his body. And that ant it was all the asurent he needed.
Kael laid the leather on the table, flattening it with his palms until the curls at the edges stopped trying to lift. Then he spread the tracksuit on top of it, smoothing it out like a pattern. He realized imdiately he could still have spare material once he made the back side, since the leather piece was a bit larger than the tracksuit.
Enough spare for patching. Enough spare for reinforcent, a reinforced collar and sleeves, pockets, and so straps if needed, not to ntion enough spare to correct the inevitable mistakes.
So, he needed to start cutting.
"Ah, shit... I forgot about scissors..."
The sentence ca out automatically, like a reflex from a normal life where forgetting scissors was a minor inconvenience instead of a problem you had to solve with monster parts and improvisation.
Stumped by the realization, he sighed and looked around the room as if the universe might suddenly rember it owed him a toolbox. The underground facility gave him nothing but humming boxes, broken monitors, and cables sprawled like dead vines.
"There isn’t anything remotely close to scissors here..." he muttered, eyes scanning the debris anyway, "not that it’ll matter."
And even if he did find scissors... they wouldn’t be normal scissors. He could already feel it. Basilisk leather wasn’t cotton. It wasn’t denim. It was thick, dense, stubborn material that had spent its entire existence resisting teeth and claws. If he wanted to cut sothing like this cleanly, it would need to be a system item, or sothing close enough to mana to ignore reality’s usual rules.
Scissors needed to be mana ones. One from the system to be able to cut sothing this thick. And no matter how hard he looked, the world wasn’t going to provide it for him if he simply wished for it; this isn’t that kind of fantasy.
His gaze drifted back to the pile of loot, and he paused.
"Oh wait..."
He glanced at the claws on the table, especially the Black Basilisk claw.
They were old. Damaged, too. So edges were chipped, so had faint cracks, like they’d been through fights before he ever touched them. But the tips were still wicked, curved like hooked knives. The kind of sharp that didn’t look sharp until you made the mistake of touching it.
He pulled one of them and slid it across the table.
It didn’t et any resistance.
It left a large groove in the desk, wood or cheap composite flaking aside like paper, a testant to its sharpness. Kael’s eyebrows rose slightly. If it could carve the table that easily, it could carve leather.
Kael then used the hamr to try to "change" the structure of the claw.
He didn’t even swing hard. Just a controlled tap, the way you’d test a nail before you drove it in.
[You have destroyed 1 Black Basilisk Claw]
"Shit," Kael whispered, staring at the snapped, useless piece. The claw had cracked like glass under pressure, falling apart into brittle segnts. No reshaping. No miracle.
For a second, he felt the familiar annoyance bloom, the Tower giving with one hand, slapping with the other.
’Okay. I guess not everything can be altered. Sothing as basic as a claw would simply break...’ He exhaled slowly, forcing himself not to spiral into frustration. ’The leather, I guess, and tal are a bit more malleable... the claw was just too rigid.’
He believed his own analysis, but he didn’t despair. There was no ti for despair. Despair was expensive.
He still had more claws to use. So, he didn’t need scissors if he had a knife.
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