Steel Orc- Player Reborn

by Deck Davis

  Try being the key word, there. Something never changed. Now, sitting in the tavern, Tripp didn’t want other players to see him mess up. Every man was a mess of flaws, and one of Tripp’s was that criticism stung him worse than a needle made of hot glass.

  He put the steel sheets and his repair hammer on the table and placed the gauntlet crafting card next to these. Next, he took off his left gauntlet to use as a guide, and so he could work with more dexterity.

  “Not going to take your chest plate and shirt off?” said Bee. “Konrad will be disappointed in you.”

  “I’ll work better without people staring at my naked orc chest.”

  “Suit yourself, Tin Man.”

  “Don’t you start with that name.”

  “I thought friends give each other nicknames all the time?”

  He took another look around. This was a tavern for crafters and it felt like a place he could belong. He needed to earn that, though. So far, all he’d done was repair his steel armor and sharpen a bone dagger. He was hardly the Thomas Edison of armorers.

  Forget everyone else, he told himself. Just focus on the work. That was what he loved about craftsmanship. When you got sucked into it, it was like everything else faded away, leaving you in a kind of meditative state.

  “Here we go. Using skills is intuitive, so I guess I just need to do this…”

  He picked up his repair hammer and began hammering the steel.

  It seemed aimless at first; he was hitting random spots, hearing the tink of the metal, seeing the hammer make dents in parts of it, but without knowing if what he was doing was right.

  “Hey,” said Bee, “this is starting to come together.”

  He could see what she meant now. Well, kind of. The edges of the steel sheet had started to bend upwards and then inwards, like paper curling up when you put a flame to it.

  He guessed his carpentry instincts were helping with in-game crafting. It didn’t look like much, but he guessed the change in shape was the beginnings of the gauntlet, the part that would fit around his hand.

  “This is taking longer than I thought,” he said.

  Bee nodded. Was he imagining it, or did she look a little drunk? Was staring at beer code enough to get her inebriated?

  “It’s the grind,” she said. “Earning a skill is one thing, making something with it is another. Lucas always says anything worth having takes hard work.”

  “I guess I’ll get better the more I do it. Every time I put points into technique, it makes my crafting quicker.”

  “Yup. Hard work and practice. Nothing comes easy.”

  He set about hammering the steel again. His arms began to ache, but with each blow, the steel transformed. It warped, changed shape.

  The next time he raised his hammer, his strength left him. He tried to strike the steel, but it was like his muscles resisted him. It was like a spiritual vampire had suddenly sucked the energy from him.

  He set the hammer down. “I’m so weak all of a sudden.”

  “You’ve used up your manus,” said Bee. “You increase them when you level up, remember? They deplete when you use a skill, and then you have to let them recharge.”

  “Right.”

  He remembered his benefits as an orc; his manus would last longer for simple things like running and, he guessed, swinging a sword, but more complex tasks would drain it.

  There had to be a way to level the playing field. Being an orc went against his desire to craft, so he had to balance it. Pumping points into technique would help, but what else? Could he craft something that would increase his manus, or at least let him process his existing manus better? Another thing to add to the list.

  He finished the rest of his beer while his manus recharged. He drummed his fingers on the table, willing the bar to load faster. When he checked his character sheet and saw that they’d come back, he got back to hammering.

  He began to see the outlines of the gauntlet fingers emerge. First a pinkie, then a thumb.

  This was working! Soon he’d have the right gauntlet, and he’d put it on and then he’d have the whole armor set, and then…

  …then, he heard a worrying-sounding crack.

  The steel split apart, the new gauntlet fingers fell apart from the whole, ruining the steel.

  Crafting failed.

  He stared at his broken gauntlet, at its cracked pieces, and felt disappointment crash through him. He slammed his repair hammer down. “Damn it!”

  “Mind if I join you?” said a voice.

  It was Stefan, the reptile he’d seen near the bar with his friends.

  Tripp patted the bar stool next to him. “Sure.”

  Stefan settled down. “When I saw you in the adventurer’s guild, I figured that you’d chosen the orc race because you wanted to go around smashing stuff. I thought it’d be monsters, though, not steel.”

  “I was only there to ask about the sleel.”

  “I never figured you were into crafting. I feel bad for calling you Tin Man now.”

  “Don’t worry; I get that a lot these days.”

  “Lemme offer you some advice.” He looked at the crafting card. “You’re making a gauntlet, right? Pretty low-fodder for an armorer, and you should be able to do it easily. I was watching you, and you almost had it. Then you got this faraway look in your eyes.”

  “He does that a lot,” said Bee.

  Stefan smiled. “Well, here’s the thing. Crafting isn’t so different from meditation, in a way. You need a kind of relaxed focus. You need to concentrate on what you’re making, but keep your mind loose and easy. You were thinking about something else while you were hammering, weren’t you?”

  Tripp nodded. “I’m a crafter of sorts outside the game, and it’s so second nature that I’m used to thinking about other stuff while I work.”

  “Outside skills don’t translate into the game. A giant part of any skill is muscle memory, and this isn’t your real body. Make sense? Your knowledge comes with you, but nothing else. What were you thinking about?”

  “I only need the gauntlet to finish my armor set, and I was thinking about that.”

  “And then you’ll be a full Tin Man, right?”

  “A steel orc, actually.”

  “Tin or steel, it doesn’t matter. When you’re crafting, don’t let your mind wander. Focus on the hammer, the material, and the crafting card. Keep that in mind, and your stuff will break less. It wouldn’t hurt to throw a few points into the mind attribute to help your focus. I bet you’ve been maxing technique and power, haven’t you?”

  “Power?” said Bee. “I wish. He hardly puts anything into it.”

  “That’s good that he didn’t, little orb. If he wants to be a crafter, power won’t help. You can’t neglect mind, either. Technique and mind go hand in hand when it comes to crafting. Most people think the mind attribute is only for mage spells and charisma, but that’s not true.”

  “I need to concentrate more and level up my mind attribute?”

  “Yup. It’s especially important when you’re crafting that you stay in the present moment. Not thinking about the past, the future, but now. Just you, the hammer, and what you’re trying to make.”

  Stefan spoke about crafting in an almost mystical way, and with an undercurrent of passion. Tripp liked it because that was how he had always felt.

  Before Uncle James introduced him to woodwork, reading was the only thing that he could focus his thoughts on, but even that was tough sometimes. Working with wood, creating stuff, had given him a way to shut off. He wondered what kind of things Stefan needed to shut his mind off from.

  “I guess I better go and level up. It’s a pain, though; most of the critters easy enough for me to kill are frorargs, and the little bastards are too fast.”

  “You need to draw them to you,” said Stefan. “Most of the Soulboxe creatures’ behaviors are driven by their senses and instincts. Your aroma might draw aggressive creatures toward you, while it might make others flee. The frorargs
will mostly run away from a big lunk like you, and even if they choose to attack, they’ll be too quick. You need to draw them toward you by making them think you’re something that you’re not.”

  “This sounds almost as mystical as the sleel clue you gave me.”

  Stefan held his hands up, smiling. “Sue me if I don’t want to give answers on a plate. Anything worth knowing, you have to-”

  “Work for it,” finished Tripp.

  “Right. You’re bright, Tin Man. I like you. The last thing I’ll say is this; do you have a Deconstructor mallet?”

  “Konrad gave me one.”

  “The dwarf artificer? Most people don’t learn from him. The human armorer in Goddenstone is easier. I might have guessed you’d choose the hard way.”

  “It was Boxe’s idea, not that I’m complaining.”

  “Even so, you have the Deconstructor mallet. Maybe if you could get hold of one dead frorarg, you could use it to draw the others to you somehow. Think about it.”

  Tripp worked through the problem in his mind as he left the Slaughterman’s inn, crossed the plaza, and went to the Mountmend library. He found a book called Ashes and Gold – a Guide to Alchemy, where he saw a listing of some basic alchemy recipes written in the same style as the crafting cards.

  That gave him another idea to check out while he was in the library. If he could get alchemy recipes in a book, would there also be crafting cards in the library, too? After searching rows and rows of books, he couldn’t find any of them with crafting cards. That would just have been too easy, and Boxe wasn’t going to give him that kind of thing on a plate.

  After finding the alchemy recipe he needed, he went out of Mountmend and back onto the plains. By the time he was out in the fresh air, he was feeling good about what he needed to do.

  The rain had turned into a shower now, and it was quieter as it peppered down on his armor. Lines of dew ran down Bee’s orb as she floated alongside him. It was the kind of day perfect for staying indoors and playing video games. Funny how he used to play games to escape the rain, and here he was getting soaked by a digital drizzle.

  He ventured away from the town until he’d judged that he’d gotten far enough that he’d left its safety zone behind, and that NPC creatures would be prowling around.

  He took the frorarg flesh that he hadn’t cooked yet from his inventory, and he grabbed his Deconstructor mallet.

  “Taking your anger out on flesh?” said Bee. “A novel way to relax.”

  “I was thinking about what Stefan said about instincts and stuff. There might be something to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Watch.”

  He pounded the flesh with the mallet, hearing it squelch each time he struck it.

  “Go on, Tripp! Pound that flesh!” said Bee, which made Tripp look at her and wonder what had gone through Lucas’s mind when he made orbs like her.

  While Konrad had pounded the sleel tentacle only a few times before his Deconstructor had separated it into its components, it took Tripp a lot longer. Soon, though, he was happy to see two piles of material in front of him.

  Frorarg fire essence

  Frorarg pheromone essence

  Underlay skill leveled up to Nickel 2!

  - Underlay field of vision extended

  - Underlay processing time reduced

  “Cool! Another skill level up. You’re really cooking today.”

  Tripp smiled at his level increase before dismissing the notification. “That’s not all. See the essence? I can use the fire essence on my blade once I learn the artificery skill, but I’ll need Konrad to teach me.”

  “Then we can start slicing things up, cooking them with every swipe. Imagine that. A fire sword, a mobile cooking stick to sizzle the flesh of your enemies while they scream for their mothers.”

  “It’s the pheromone essence I’m more interested in,” said Tripp.

  He took his cooking pan from his inventory. Remembering the recipe he’d found in the library, he sprinkled the granules of frorarg pheromone essence into it. Then he held the pan out and let rain collect in it, before mixing it with his finger to create a paste.

  “Not your best culinary effort,” said Bee. “I don’t think I’ll taste the code of that.”

  “Me neither.”

  He rubbed the frorarg pheromone paste over the parts of his skin that weren’t covered by steel armor, resulting in a pasty beard on his face, and smears on his uncovered right hand.

  Effect gained: Frorarg attraction

  You might look stupid and you might smell as bad as a fat-bellied dragon frog, but boy, do they love it.

  Skill Gained: Alchemy

  Level: Nickel 1

  By experimenting with essence and producing an effect, you have gained the alchemy skill.

  Bonus: When correct ingredients are mixed, effects of the mixture increased by 20%

  Need: Advance alchemy requires a burner, alchemy pot, and recipe list

  Related Skillsets: Artificer, poisoner, herbalist, cook

  When he learned a new skill, it wasn’t just about reading the text. He felt a rush of warmth spread through him, and it was a rewarding feeling, like eating a delicious meal when you were hungry. Part of him wanted to just go out and learn dozens of new skills so he could experience the feeling again and again.

  If only he didn’t have a frorarg problem to solve.

  “How cool is that?” said Tripp. “I almost have the 3 A’s now: armorer, alchemy, and artificery. Now I just need to finish up here, make my gauntlet, and then Konrad can show me his stuff. I can’t wait!”

  “You know, I find your relentless positivity endearing. When we first met, I thought it might wear thin, but I dunno. Lucas wiped my memory after my last playthrough with someone, but I still get vague recollections. Glimmers of things. I just remember him being a bit of a grump.”

  “Same for you, Bee. Maybe it’s good to have a blood-thirsty orb around. Kinda balances us a little. So I guess that now you’re going to get what you want.”

  “Which is…?”

  “It’s time to kill stuff.”

  Equipping his morning star, it didn’t take much walking across the plains before tiny creatures bounded over to him. He saw five frorargs heading his way, only they didn’t look as hostile as before.

  This time, they had a scarier look on their faces; lust.

  “I’m not much of a looker, as an orc,” he said, “But I guess the frorargs like the pheromone paste.”

  The frorargs made ribbit sounds to each other, and soon they surrounded him and sniffed his legs. They were so unafraid of him now, it was almost a shame knowing what he was about to do.

  But then, this was a game. It wasn’t as if NPCs critters had the kind of semi-sentience of Konrad or the complex thought patterns of Bee.

  Picturing the steel gauntlet he’d finally make, fixing his crafting goals in his mind, he cast back the glimmer of guilt and raised his morning star and started clubbing.

  Before long, five dead frorargs lay dead at his feet, and their corpses, as well as the gold and loot he’d earned from them, was soon in his inventory bag.

  “Stats incoming,” said Bee.

  “Hold off; we’ve still got a couple hours of daylight left, so I’ll make the most of it. Save my stats for when we head back to town.”

  He spent the rest of the afternoon drawing the frorargs to him and then killing them. The hours flew in a haze of ribbits, blood, swings of his morning star, and the squelch of spikes puncturing flesh.

  When the sun was finished with its work for the day and had started to pale, he headed back to Mountmend. His right bicep sang songs of aching and his steel was covered in blood, but his inventory bag felt reassuringly heavy.

  It was a good day’s work. He felt proud when he thought back to his first frorarg and how it had been a chore to kill it, whereas now, he’d managed to find a way to slaughter them without having to load points into power.

  Bee seemed
to have enjoyed herself, too. She’d shouted so much encouragement as he killed the critters that her voice was hoarse.

  “Okay,” said Tripp, at the dwarf town gates. “Lay it on me. Can I see my level stats first, please?”

  You have leveled up to level 10!

  You have leveled up to level 11!

  You have leveled up to level 12!

  - HP increased

  - Manus increased

  - 17 lootpoints gained

  Please choose a stat to add [3] attribute point to:

  Power [2]

  Mind[1]

  Technique [7]

  “Three levels? I thought a day of indiscriminate slaughter would be worth more than that.”

  “Diminishing returns, remember? The higher your level is, the more things you need to kill to increase it. Froargs won‘t cut it anymore. Plus, you got an EXP penalty when the Bastard Brothers snuffed you out.”

  “I guess when I finish my armor and craft a new weapon, I can start looking for tougher monsters.”

  “And on that note, I recall that we made a deal.”

  “Yeah, hitting level 12 unlocked a new skill slot for you. That’s three we still need to allocate.”

  “I’m still thinking about those,” said Bee. “I was talking about power. You said you’d put one in every five points on power.”

  “Things have changed since then. You heard what Stefan said; a crafter needs mind and technique.”

  “But our deal…”

  “C’mon, Bee, don’t be glum. If I put a point in power, it’s not like you get it.”

  “I told you, I live vicariously through you. It's not much fun being an orb with no hands.”

  He felt a little sorry for her. “We’ll get you a body so you can actually touch things. Then you’ll have three skill slots to use, and you can choose the most destructive, blood-thirsty ones out there. If you want to shower yourself in blood and guts, so be it. You won’t have to live through watching what I do, you’ll be able to do it yourself.”