Travail Online: Transcend: LitRPG Series (Book 3)

by Brian Simons

  The cheetah’s torso lay there in the shape of a loose vest with a lifeless head lying in the grass. Its empty eye sockets stared up at Coral accusingly. They had to go.

  Coral pressed the open blade of her shears against the place where the cat’s jaw met with its neck. She had been careless to leave the skull in place, and was surprised the tanner didn’t mind it. He had removed the brain for her, thankfully. He said something about brain oil that still made her queasy, but she was thankful for his expertise.

  Coral dragged her blade across the cheetah’s neck, slitting its throat long after its death. Her scissors cut a slow, smooth arc around the fiend’s face, up its cheek and across the ridge above its eyes, down the other cheek, and then under the neck, completing the circle. She pulled the face away, revealing a clean, smooth skull underneath. Removing the skull relieved her of the feeling this pelt was still alive. What was left was a velveteen coat of exquisite fur in a few manageable patches.

  It dawned on her that she would never wear fur in real life. She reviled the thought of it. Yet, in the game, crafting with fur was just another challenge she happily rose to. That realization bothered her. There was a disconnect between who she was in real life and who she was in the game. It was minor, but it was there. She wondered where else it would show up.

  She also wondered how it showed up in other people, like Daniel. He acted the part of the bold adventurer to the point of making rash, even self-centered decisions, but she knew he meant well. She knew he wasn’t really selfish. She shook those thoughts aside.

  Coral left the cheetah’s neck complete and used her suture thread to close a seam around the cheetah’s missing face. Now the pelt bore a completed hood, but the rest of the monster’s limbless top half was still an open vest. First, Coral enlarged the arm holes. Then she created eyelets in the vest and strung suture thread through them, closing the vest as high as the sternum but still leaving room for Varta’s ample everything.

  The arm pieces would need some improvising. First, the paws had to go. Second, leaving the cat’s narrow arms as they were would cut off circulation to Varta’s strong, thick forearms. Coral cut the cylinders of fur open, separated them at the joint, and sewed the upper arm section to the lower arm section to make a wide pair of bracers.

  Boots would pose a challenge. Coral removed the pads from the cheetah’s four paws and sutured them together in pairs. The pads were soft and somewhat springy. She expected the game to nudge her along, but she was at a loss for what came next. Then inspiration struck. Coral took the cat’s skull and set it in front of her. She needed to chop this thing in half.

  She opened the small box that contained her spools and needles, but the sewing kit had nothing that would saw through bone. The tackle box was larger, but similarly lacking.

  Coral closed her fabric shears and dug the tip into the top of the skull. The bone was too hard to cut. She kept the point against the cat’s skull and gripped one hand around the closed blades. Then she took the tackle box and slammed it into the shears’ handle over and over until the shears wedged their way into the bone. A few more whacks and the skull split in half.

  She made a mental note to find a hammer and a chisel for moments like this.

  Each half of the skull was just round enough to fit a foot under, like the top half of a slipper. The paw pads would support the bottoms. She just needed some extra fur to strap the two pieces together. Coral took the tail next and cut it into long strips. Using one strip for each boot, she laid the tail fur out, sewed the pads to it, and wrapped it around over and over, cinching the skull in place. She lifted the finished product to inspect her work but gasped at the mangled ball of bone, paw pad, and fur she had cobbled together. It was too small for an ogress’s foot.

  It wasn’t like her to botch a project like this. Coral surveyed the bits and pieces she still had lying around. A lower jaw, some scraps of fur. A long strip from the tail she had reserved for the belt. There were no extra parts for boots.

  She dug into her sewing kit, hoping for inspiration. There were spools and buttons, a thimble she never bothered to use, and something with a very small, but sharp, point. A seam ripper!

  She used the small tool to tear apart the suture thread and start over. With a paw pad at the front of the foot and the heel, she added enough fur scraps to support the middle of the foot and then wrapped it all up in fur again. This time, the finished product looked complete. She wiped the sweat off her brow, thankful she hadn’t bungled the whole thing on the boots.

  The belt was a simple strip of fur, happily uncomplicated.

  The last piece was the leggings. Unlike her other Skinweaving skills, Coral had improved leggings to the standard tier of Skinweaving. She was eager to see what she could do here.

  First, Coral cut the legs so that they would end mid-calf. Then she cut a few inches down each hip to widen the waist and filled in the gaps with extra fur she had cut from the ankles. Her hands moved to the soft fur behind the cheetah’s knees and slit holes in each. She felt like the game was helping her along again, but she puzzled over what good that step did.

  Then she remembered the leg bones she had felt compelled to save. The bones were sturdy, with the tibia and fibula bound tightly together. Coral slipped the bones into the lower half of the leggings through the knee holes and sutured them into place. The bones stuck out a bit at the bottom, but provoked a transport bonus like everything else in the standard tier.

  >> Cheetah Leggings (+). They’re grrrrrrross! Not as sexy as you’d think. Strength +14, Stamina +20, Constitution +10. Durability: 55/55. Jump range increased to 12 feet.

  >> Congratulations! You have improved your Skinweaving ability to 12. +16.5% additional crafting speed when Skinweaving. +1% chance to conserve materials when Skinweaving.

  Hopefully Varta couldn’t read the flavor text. Coral reached over to pack up her things when she noticed a large shadow across her sewing kit.

  “Varta!” Coral said. “And Aga, and Sal. You guys need to not sneak up on me when I’m crafting.”

  “Sorry,” Aga said. “I told her you like privacy, but she was too excited.”

  “It’s fine,” Coral said. She scooped up the armor set and handed it to Varta, who ripped off her cockroach vest immediately. Her green breasts hung free as she pulled the vest on. Miraculously, the stitching held. The vest hugged her body, making the paunchy green woman look almost lithe.

  She pulled the hood over her un-styled hair and donned the rest of the suit to match. She looked like an absurdist painting of Tigger trying to swallow Shrek whole, but it worked for her. More importantly, the boots supported her weight.

  “Rawr!” she said, clearly pleased by her new duds.

  “Now,” Coral said, turning to Sal, “we have to rescue Grum.”

  “I’m coming too,” Aga said. “He’s my husband after all.”

  “Me too!” Varta yelled.

  “Great,” Coral said. “How do we get to Havenstock? The front gate is off limits. Sal and I are persona non grata there.”

  “Person au gratin?” Varta asked.

  “We could take a dirigible,” Sal said.

  “A what?” Coral asked.

  “It’s like a blimp,” Sal said. “Now that the orcs are back in action they’ve started tinkering. They make some clever contraptions. There are only a few dirigible platforms so far, but they did set one up within walking distance of here. I think Daniel PM’d you about them, said you were welcome to fly up to Hiber Mountain for a visit any time.”

  “Ah,” Coral said, “I haven’t really checked my messages.”

  “Well,” Sal said, “there should be a launch pad just north of here. The castle has a few towers we could land on. We’d have to fight our way down the stairwells and into the basement level, but that could be fun.”

  “If you think it’s doable,” Coral said.

  “Yeah, let’s do this,” Aga said.

  Sal led the way north through the flat grasslands. Va
rta pulled Coral aside and the two hung a little further back. “You and OgreEater,” she said, “are dating?”

  “What?” Coral laughed. “No, no, we’re friends.”

  “Ok!” Varta said, then followed up with, “Exes?”

  “Nope, just friends.”

  “Interesting,” Varta replied.

  As they rounded the outskirts of the Ogrelands, a blimp came into view. The passenger platform was a flat wooden board with a railing that only rose two feet high. Above it floated a balloon made of a thin ribbed fabric.

  They walked up to the captain. “How much to fly to Havenstock?” Sal asked.

  “Anywhere in Havenstock is 1 gold per person,” the orc said. “Introductory rates to get passengers used to our flight services.”

  “I’ve got it,” Coral said, reaching into her coin pouch. They were helping with her quest, the least she could do was pay the forty cents it would take to fly them all there. “Here you are, mister…”

  “Call me Captain Pell,” the orc said. “All aboard!” The captain lit a fire in a tin bucket below the aircraft’s large balloon and walked to the southern railing along the platform. While the railing only came up to Coral’s knees, it was waist high on the small man.

  Attached to the back of the platform was a propeller. The captain sat onto a small contraption and started peddling to power the propeller, using a hand crank to change its direction.

  “We want to land on the castle,” Sal said. “Like, actually on it. Can you do that?”

  “I like a challenge,” the orc said. “Enjoy the view, I’ll have you there soon.”

  The Ogrelands shrank below them as the blimp rose into the air. Coral looked out at the purple mountains of The Ersatz to the north, and the larger Hiber Mountain to the west of that, its peak cutting into the clouds above. Diardenna, further west, was too far to see. It was just a dark green splotch on the horizon.

  Below Coral, a crowd of a hundred or so players gathered by a footbridge over the River Rove. “What’s going on there?” Coral asked.

  “Mud golems,” Aga said. “Everybody wants mud golems.”

  “It’s getting harder for players to find mobs they can reliably farm,” Sal said, “so there are camps like this all over Travail now. One lucky player will get the kill and the loot, while the others all wait for the respawn.”

  “Such a smart man,” Varta said. It was clear she was trying to flutter her eyelashes, but her eyes closed too slowly and tightly. It came across as obsessive blinking. She started to lean against the rail next to Sal, but a creaking sound scared her away. It hardly seemed sturdy enough for an orc to lean on, let alone an ogre.

  “Good luck with mud golems!” Varta yelled. Her loud, gruff voice shot like a cannon from their aircraft. A handful of players turned back to gaze up at them, shielding their eyes from the sun.

  “It’s like this for crafters too,” Sal continued. “They all crowd around mining sites, trees, and other resource nodes. Half the time what spawns isn’t even any good. It’s all rotten and mushy.”

  “Ruined souls,” Coral said. She activated her video recorder and panned across the ground below. There were a dozen groups like the one surrounding the mud golems. Hundreds of players stood idly waiting for the game to generate a single mob or to replenish a single resource. All that wasted time meant earning nothing for most of the day.

  If hard play makes fun work, what does no play make?

  Coral shook her head and opened her inventory bag. She had these patches of death’s veil that she hadn’t figured out what to do with yet. She gave her sewing needle a try, but got the message:

  >> This activity requires Basic Etherworking.

  Etherworking? Coral looked at her skills menu and saw one Garmenter skill that fit the bill:

  Mind Over Material. Weave ethereal components into armored auras that replace mundane armor with tangible versions of incorporeal energies.

  What a mouthful.

  She spent a skill point to open the skill.

  >> Congratulations! You have unlocked the Basic Etherworking skill. You are now at Etherworking 1.

  She saw the same familiar options as her other skills: helmets, body armor, gauntlets, belts, leggings, and boots.

  Coral had 13 skill points left, so she spent six of them opening every item in the basic tier. She took out a death’s veil and the delicate fabric wafted in the wind. She folded it over into a long strip and over once again into the shape of a belt that would tie at the hip. Oddly, the fabric was so thin she couldn’t feel it between her fingers. It was as if it weren’t even there. She tried to sew the sash shut, but her needle passed through it without the thread catching. Regular thread, arackid webbing, suture thread — they all moved through the space the veil occupied without interacting with it.

  Finally, Coral pressed the folds between her fingers as hard as she could and stared at it, wondering what she needed to fasten it together. Then the fabric seemed to melt in on itself, looking more substantial even if she still couldn’t feel it. Just the act of pressing the fabric together was enough to craft it.

  >> Decayed Sash (blighted). Like a noose for your hips. Constitution +2, Defense +2, Spirit +1. Durability: 20/20. Part of the Ravager’s Rags. Set bonus: +6% resistance to Blind and Darkness debuffs per piece equipped.

  >> Congratulations! You have improved your Etherworking ability to 2. +2% additional crafting speed when crafting Etherworks.

  She wasn’t impressed. The armor had similar stats to the sahuagin suit she wore.

  “I have extra if you want it,” Sal said. “While you were gone, we hunted down a few ruined souls that got away after the festival. This stuff gives me the creeps. It doesn’t weigh anything, and it’s cold to the touch.”

  “Thanks,” Coral said, not sure the gauzy patches would amount to anything. She had six skill points left. She could open Standard Etherworking for two, unlock one item for another two, and still have two skill points to spare. She didn’t want to chase good skill points after bad, but even if the death’s veil didn’t work out she could look for materials that would.

  Basic items only conferred passive bonuses, but Standard items provided transport bonuses. She was too curious not to try, but Standard Etherworking was still grayed out. First, she’d have to grind.

  It took 18 patches of death’s veil to make enough belts to get to Etherworking 8. This allowed her to spend two skill points to unlock the Standard tier, then two more to unlock belts there.

  >> Congratulations! You have unlocked the Standard Etherworking skill.

  This time she crafted by tearing off three long strips, folded each over, smoothed down their creases, then braided them together into a belt. It looked sturdier, and offered a strange combination of stat boosts. Notably, it didn’t improve Defense at all.

  >> Decayed Sash (+) (blighted). Like a noose for your hips. Constitution -5, Spirit +25. Durability: 35/35. Part of the Ravager’s Rags (+). Set bonus Shiftwalking: 1 piece (metal and bone), 2 pieces (glass and stone), 3 pieces (magic and fey), 4 pieces (night and day), 5 pieces (another dimension), 6 pieces (death’s ascension).

  Coral hadn’t heard of Shiftwalking before, nor did the set bonus make much sense yet. Losing five Constitution would drop her HP by 100 points, but she tried the belt on anyway. It rested on one hip and hung loosely off the other one. As soon as she equipped it, she heard something clatter to the floor and she received a notification:

  >> Feed Ravager’s Rags? Y / N

  She selected “yes” with her mind. Her belt glowed black and purple.

  >> Ravager’s Rags (+) (1 piece) consume 6 Defense.

  “What!” Coral exclaimed. “This belt just ate my Defense!”

  Sal laughed.

  “This isn’t funny!” Coral said.

  “It’s just,” he said, “in a way, you’re a fashion victim.”

  Coral rolled her eyes, but smiled nonetheless. Meanwhile, Varta continued to bellow encouragement at the groups of
players on the ground.

  In the course of crafting, Coral’s Ring of Force had slipped off of her finger. She reached down to retrieve it, her fingers pinching the emerald gem set in the golden ring. She tried to put it on, but the blimp kept jostling, forcing her to miss her finger. She dropped the ring into her inventory out of frustration and turned her attention back toward crafting.

  Reluctant to spend her last two skill points to unlock another Standard tier item, Coral started crafting Basic tier armor from the death’s veils Sal handed her. She pulled on a pair of pants and boots, both requiring nothing more than the warmth of her fingers pressed together to melt the seams.

  >> Congratulations! You have reached Level 42. To apply your 3 skill points now, open your Skills and Attributes screen.

  At least Etherworking provided solid XP. She opened her stat menu, disappointed to see that her Defense had, in fact, gone down since the last time she checked, thanks to her ravager’s rags.

  Name: Coral_Daring Gender: Female

  Race: Human Class: Garmenter

  Level: 42 Diplomacy: 10

  Constitution: 58 Dexterity: 89

  Defense: 46 Intelligence: 58

  Strength: 31 Spirit: 92

  HP: 1160 Stamina: 215

  MP 184 Skill Points Available: 3