37: Nails
Before I got down to the task of making more nails, I checked in on my character sheet. Five percent until level 24. Ugh, the problem with our current targets was how over leveled we were now. The average goblin we were fighting was around level 16 or so. Not a very nutritious meal for the ol’ EXP bar.
At least my smithing was going moderately well. I was churning through Patterns now, having already gained the ten Novice tier Patterns I'd need for Journeyman rank. I still had to master several of them, but right now I was going to focus on just the ones that mattered. Even more exciting, though, was that I was better at smithing in the more real actual skill sense. I knew roughly where to hit to get what I wanted out of the metal, or how hot different grades of steel needed to be so they were malleable. I was still a complete and utter newb, of course. It was a little frustrating, honestly, that I was stuck making nails over and over, and I'd have to continue far past the point where it would be progressing my Smithing. The treehouse would need nails though, so here I was.
An hour later and my nails were starting to look better and better, so at least getting better in one sense. That's when a notification reminded me of the real progression system for crafting, which I saw as I was pouring some water over myself to cool off.
Pattern Improvement Unlocked!You have improved your ability to mass-produce Crude Nails. Any items created using this pattern will receive the following stat increases:
Crude Nail crafting speed: +1%Note: This is a buff to the act of crafting. No bonus will be applied to the item. Nails can’t craft themselves.
“Nice!” I exclaimed quietly, pumping a fist in triumph. I actually forgot that this was a thing. The crafting passives were where the real progression was. One percent might seem like nothing, but as I worked, that speed bonus would increase. The cap for things like this was a meme as far as the Rell community was concerned, too, because literally nobody had ever reached the cap for any of their Pattern Passives. The devs insisted it was there, though!
“What’s nice?” A soft voice asked from behind me, and I spun to find Paisley smiling shyly at me. Well, it was more like she was smiling past my shoulder as her eyes twitched and wandered everywhere but over my near topless chest.
Hefting my hammer onto my shoulder, I had to laugh. “Paisley, you can look. As for what’s nice, I just got a little buff for making nails.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” she replied absently, gaze flicking down to trace the lines of my body. She gulped. “Damn, Keiko…”
Glancing down at myself, I kept my expression guileless as I deliberately swayed my hips a little. “What?”
“The way you move in that body has me wondering how you ever tolerated playing as a man,” she said after a moment.
The wind rustled decaying leaves on the forest floor in the silence that followed. Her chaotic black hair joined the foliage in its dance, distracting me as I tried to think of a response.
While I was playing as my old character, and before that when I was living my life out in the real world, I hadn’t really noticed any discomfort. I was just going about my business, no crippling mental anguish or anything, and yet now that I had experienced what it was like to be myself, to be Keiko… It was like looking back into the past, when photos were just black and white, or the aspect ratio of video content was 1:1. In a few short weeks, my perspective of every memory had shifted until I could no longer recognise the protagonist of those scenes as myself.
“Yeah, well,” I coughed, still unsure what to say. “I’m glad you like it.”
Her face reddened. “Yeah, yeah. You’re hot, even for a VR game player character.”
“Hey, this is my true body now,” I shrugged. “As far as I even have a body.”
“Wait,” she froze, staring at me with widening eyes. “You’ll look like that when you get your android body?”
That was an interesting reaction. “Probably, why?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “No reason. Uh… yeah. Glad to hear about the smithing though. Good job on those nails.”
She finished with an awkward thumbs up, and I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing. It was a very new experience, flustering someone with my body like this. Elena had never given me the chance with how confident and assertive she was about what she liked.
Once I had my impending laughter under control, I gave her a soft smile. “Thanks Paisley. What did you need, by the way?”
“Oh, nothing. I uh, I just wanted to hang out,” she told me sheepishly. “Sorry I’m so awkward. It’s blowing my mind that my Rascal has become this outrageously hot, elegant, and feminine fairy girl with a blacksmith’s hammer on her shoulder.”
“‘Your Rascal,’ again, huh?” I asked. I focused on that part of her little speech because the rest of it had my heart swooping low into my stomach, where it began to flutter around like a butterfly. “I don’t remember you ever claiming me like that before this.”
Now it was her turn to laugh, and as she did so, her cheeks lost some of their embarrassed flush. “Agh! Sorry! That’s not what I meant. My friend Rascal. You aren’t a pet or a toy or whatever.”
My dirty mind just about blew a fuse at the way she’d phrased that, but she didn’t seem to notice. She just stood there with her wide brown eyes staring into mine like she might be able to bridge the gap between our minds and understand what I was thinking. My thoughts, of course, were nothing but suggestive quips I really couldn’t speak out loud. Stuff like, not with that attitude I won’t be, and, yeah, but I’m sure we can work something out.
The gears in my poor little digital brain were still throwing sparks a few seconds later when the tree gave a sudden rumble and the ground shook. Fuck, what was going on now? Couldn’t a girl have a moment’s peace to clean her exploded brain up off the forest floor?
“I knew feeding that shard of stank to the tree was a bad idea,” Paisley exclaimed as we reached the rest of the group, who had gathered around the base of the tree. “Poor thing probably has indigestion now.”
“Shard of stank?” Elena guffawed. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“Slip of the tongue,” the small gnome bard replied, poking out said tongue at her.
My roommate's grin became a smirk, and she wiggled her eyebrows.
Either Paisley didn’t catch the obvious innuendo, or she chose to ignore it. Instead, she pulled one of her gloves off and carefully placed her palm against the bark of the tree.
“Huh,” she murmured, pulling her hand away. “Hey Ethan, can you take a look at the tree?”
“Sure,” he agreed, closing his eyes and placing his hands together in prayer. He muttered an incantation under his breath, then swiped his hand out in a wide gesture, spraying shimmering golden energy in a wide arc.
It settled in the air like an odd haze, then began to twist and bunch together, forming… something? It was faint, but I recognised some sort of network of organic strings, superimposed over the tree. The spell faded, taking with it any small answer we might have gained.
“Anyone have any idea what that was?” I asked, still staring at the faint traces of light that hung in the air.
“It was some sort of magic infusing the tree’s heart and nearby vascular system,” Ethan explained, swishing his hand through the dissipating spell. “It’s a very small amount, and I don’t recognise the type, other than it isn’t holy magic and it isn’t necromancy or demonic magic.”
“It wasn’t eldritch either,” Paisley supplied.
Noah made a thoughtful noise and stepped up beside Ethan. “It seemed almost… familiar.”
The two boys glanced at each other, then held eye contact for a few long seconds. They were standing close and the height difference was especially pronounced like that. Noah was the first to turn away, his gaze darting for the forest floor as he stepped closer to the tree with a little too much speed to be entirely casual.
I wonder how long it would take them to get together. Surely not that long, right? At least as far as sex went, gay guys weren’t exactly known for taking their time.
“I really can’t place it,” Noah sighed, stepping back again. “She’s grown though, that’s for sure. How big do we go?”
She? Ah, wait, it was called a Ghoulmother Willow.
“Once she can walk,” Paisley said. “Her mouth will shift to the bottom and her big roots will become legs. Then we can build above the area where her mouth used to be. It’ll just be smooth wood by then.”
“Love me some smooth wood,” Noah muttered, almost like it was a reflex. When he noticed everyone looking at him, he blushed and bit his lip, trying to suppress a sheepish grin.
Elena broke the silence with a much more confident, “I prefer ribbed wood.”
“Oh my god, please,” I groaned, covering my face with my hands. “You two, stop. We’re planning things here.”
“You don’t like—” Elena began to ask, a smirk forming on her face.
I interrupted her. “You haven’t used anything other than fingers on me, and since this character is my first time being a woman, nobody else has either.”
“Wait, what?” Noah blurted, staring at me with wide eyes.
My face went red, and I cringed as I realized that somehow I hadn’t ended up telling him about me. “A-ah. Yeah. I was… my real body was… you know. Not…”
Noah rushed me, and I flinched, fearing some sort of attack, only to find him wrapping his arms around me. Surprised, I froze up, unsure what to make of his actions.
“Me too,” he whispered, his lips almost kissing the shell of my ear. “Born differently, I mean. I still am, outside here. You mentioned that your old body is kaput?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, finally letting myself hug him back, even if I felt very awkward still. “I’m digital now, so it’s kind of a moot point.”
He hummed in agreement. “Maybe I should follow you. It’s not like I have much out there these days anyway. Don’t tell the others, by the way. About me, I mean. I will if it comes to it but…”
“I get it,” I said, stepping away from him. “Everyone here is cool though, so when you’re comfortable, you don’t need to worry.”
He smiled gratefully in response, and we stepped further back. “Uh… sorry about that everyone,” he said. “Just needed to let our cute little fairy queen know that she’s appreciated.”
“Yeah, well…” I coughed, not knowing what to say. “We should, uh… get back to work. This tree isn’t going to grow itself.”
It actually would, if we left it alone, but that wasn’t the point. What had we even been talking about before, anyway? Something about… oh right, weird energies from the shard of stan— Unseelie obsidian!
