Chapter 46: Knick-Knack (Patreon)

Meditation has reached Level 12!

Level 12: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 60% correction.

Extensive training has increased Kinesthetics.

+1 Kinesthetics

Extensive training has increased Endurance.

+1 Endurance

Extensive training has increased Strength.

+1 Strength.

Come on! You can do it! just imagine Kala and Ella in negligees! Three more pushups and they’ll take them off! A hundred more and they’ll start making out! A thousand more and –

“Fuuuck…Yooouuu!” Cal groaned as he did another pushup, keeping his body held flat with his toes on the wall, his stomach and chest burning with effort as he did the last core exercise of the day.

Oh, looks like I miscounted, you finished like, a minute ago.

Calvin hit the floor hard and groaned, reduced to a puddle on the floor by the burning that went all the way around his torso back, sides, shoulders, stomach and chest.

When I agreed to help motivate you out of concern for your well-being and definitely not utter boredom, I didn’t think I would get so much sass.

He would never understand meat-heads like Karen and Jinnei who enjoyed exercise, but he understood intellectually that raising his physical abilities would increase his survivability in the long run, and not dying was one of Calvin’s favorite past-times.

Eight days had gone by since he’d been wounded, and sooner or later, Andra was going to put him back up on the wall. He needed to be ready by then.

Calvin dragged himself to his feet, glancing around the room. It was comfortable, if sparse, an odd mismatch of silk sheets and a complete lack of furniture beyond a simple cabinet for his clothes.

He dunked a cloth into the basin in the bathroom and wiped the sweat off before dressing to go out. Ella was out with Kala, probably devising some way to bedevil him.

They get along suspiciously well. You sure your girlfriends aren’t making out with each other behind your back?

That would be awesome. I fail to see the problem there, Calvin thought, grabbing his cane and heading for the door.

The door opened before his knuckles could brush against the handle, revealing Andra in all her steel-clad glory.

“How’s the recovery?” She asked, looking him up and down.

“Coming along,” Calvin said.

Andra kicked the cane out from under him and eyed his response time as he caught himself. He was a little slow because of his burning core, but Andra seemed satisfied.

“Looks like you’re in good enough shape. Report to the wall tomorrow morning for duty.” Just as quickly as she showed up, she turned and vanished, on her way to accost someone else.

“Damn.” Calvin was not looking forward to going back up on that wall. No matter how quiet it had been since his unfortunate turn on the damaged stone, he couldn’t help shake the feeling that as soon as he set foot on it again, he’d get caught up in another bloody conflict.

Calvin fake limped all the way out of his side wing of the palace and into the stream of citizenry walking back and forth through the street.

The usual horde of pedestrians had thinned out since the Ilethan navy had arrived four days ago, choking the port city’s flow of fish and trade. The ilethan army had established a makeshift wall surrounding their own, preventing messages or supplies from coming or going.

The people who remained on the street looked haunted and hungry, while the others shuttered their windows like ships trying to weather a storm.

It was a real siege, now.

Calvin walked half an hour to the alley where he’d stashed the dismantled corpse of the metal creature. In the confusion of the day, he was one of the few people who remembered the damn thing existed. Most of the others were dead or severely wounded.

The blade that Calvin had been storing in his body was a simple steel knife he’d bought from a local blacksmith, but that wasn’t quite enough to serve as reliable armor, especially when people had Skills and Abilities that allowed them to punch through steel like paper.

Upgrading his skills and equipment was a must, but the monster’s hooked leg was too large for the Blade Body mutation to absorb, which is why Calvin had planned on having a blacksmith work the Jerrytanium into a blade.

That had gone poorly. During the forging process, the heat had burned up some of the elements in the metal, poisoning the smith, ruining the man’s forge, and winding up with a lump of normal iron.

When Calvin had shown up the next day, the man had tried to have him arrested, and it had been a real challenge to calm him down.

So, the material can’t be worked like iron, Calvin thought to himself, hefting the tiny diamond he’d purchased from a jeweler. The thing was small, and cloudy, so he’d been able to get it at a good price.

The look of disgust on the woman’s face when you asked for the cheapest diamond in the store was priceless.

All he needed to do was use Shaping to create a stamp and press out of Jerrytanium, load several thousand pounds on top of it to forcibly stamp out a rough blade shape, then grind the profile into shape with a diamond file. The diamond was a little small to casually make things out of, and if he had the opportunity, he’d like to get a bigger one to hang on his belt beside his Jerrytanium marble. Calvin had already tried removing the hook at the end of the blade with a normal whetstone and got nowhere, so he knew he needed to go harder.

“All right,” Calvin said as he turned into the shady alley where he’d secreted his pile of materials. “Jerry-tanium processing attempt number f-“ Cal stopped in stunned silence, staring at the tiny metal…people? Their arms and legs were composed of two metal rods on joints, their feet were spring steel and their hands were large claws spilling over with odd-shaped tools.

Their bodies were unique. Some of them had shiny rounded bodies, their centers looking very similar to the Bent Engine that Elliot had mentioned, while others thrummed in place, covered in soot and putting out little puffs of smoke over their shoulder.

They were odd looking creatures, and they were swarming over his haul of precious materials. As a matter of fact, two of them were carrying one of his Jerrytanium legs toward a hole in the nearby building, looking for all the world like successful lumberjacks moving timber.

“Hey! That’s mine!” Calvin shouted, waving his arms and running toward them. The little monsters scattered in seconds, some of them curling into balls and rolling while others flew away, trailing little smoke lines behind them. One seemed to turn into a crab and walk up the side of a building, hiding in the rafters.

Calvin ran up to where they’d dropped his loot and inspected it. Nothing was damaged, but nearly everything was gone. The armor plating, the colored wired, the Bent Engine, nearly all of it. It seemed like the blade was among the less desireable scavenging materials.

I guess it makes sense that if there are metal monsters, there would be metal scavengers too, Calvin thought, picking up his blade and putting it over his shoulder.

Damn.

Damn, damn.

Now he only had the one longsword-sized blade left, and the marble in his pocket.

unit has property dispute?

“What?” Calvin oriented on the odd buzzing sound coming from his left. In the hole, a single glass lens on the end of a brass tube seemed to…look at him.

“What did you just say?”

unit has property dispute?

The words were all garbled up, and calvin couldn’t quite make them out. There were parts he almost recognized, but for the most part it was gibberish. Maybe they could understand him?

“I stored this monster here, it was mine. This,” Calvin said, holding out the blade, “This is mine.”

This street is a recognized neutral zone, and penis-bearing flesh unit has no claim of ownership. Please put down the weapon.

“I understood maybe a quarter of that,” Calvin said.

Your inefficient meat-brain is no excuse for being an idiot. Please put down the weapon.

“Put down the weapon?” Calvin asked, frowning. That’s what it sounded like it said, anyway. he glanced at the razor sharp blade in his hand, and saw opportunity.

I think he called you an idiot.

“Okay, I’m going to put down the weapon,” Calvin said, slowly lowering the blade to the ground. “I’d like to talk to you, is that okay?”

The penis-bearing flesh unit has proven to be amenable, so we will hear out it?s mewling, however the salvage has already gone toward the creation of more knick-knacks, and its return is therefore non-negotiable.

The metal creature stepped out of the hole, its eye retracting into its head as it stood in front of him, arms crossed.

The…penis-bearing flesh unit? Calvin thought as he tried to decipher their speech. It was coming a little easier now, but the way they spoke made it difficult.

Elliot started chortling in earnest.

“Your people stol – took – those legs,” calvin said, pointing at the remaining scythe-like silver blade. “Does that mean that you know how to work the metal?”

Ah, I see what you’re getting at.

The creature’s lenses flicked down to the blade then back up to Calvin.

The penis-bearing flesh unit wishes to barter for services?

“Could you stop calling me ‘The penis-bearing flesh unit’?” Calvin said. “My name is Calvin… and yes, I would like to barter for services.”

***

“Stand back, Cal-VIN unit,” the Knick-knack said, motioning to Calvin. “Your fleshy human eyeballs are weak to sparks.”

^ Translated from Knick-Knack.

One of the little metal creatures took Calvin’s stencil for a knife and laid it down on top of the blade. With a flick of its wrist, a strangely glowing arc of light popped out and traced the stencil, creating a tidal wave of sparks as it followed the outline with inhuman speed and accuracy.

Calvin squinted his eyes and covered his face from the sudden eruption of light and heat, waiting for the creature to finish.

In a matter of minutes, the form was cut out, then sharpened, and Calvin had his first Jerrytanium knife. It was a silvery thing, one solid piece of incredibly tough metal that had been cut, grinded and polished in the amount of time it took to get a suitable bribe for the little creatures.

“There,” Calvin said pulling the payment out of it’s bag. “One jar of Blueroot sap.” Blueroot sap was a resinous substance that came from a dark blue tuber. It dried hard but flexible and and was often used as a roofing sealant. Sometimes as syrup.

“Why do you want something like that, anyway?” He asked as the Knick-Knack’s leader took the thick blue sludge out of his hand and opened the jar, rubbing a bit between it’s steel wrench-like fingers. It seemed pleased at the sticky ropes of blue gunk.

“Cured Blueroot makes an excellent insulator, but it is far too rare and expensive to acquire in large quantities. How did a meat creature like yourself manage to acquire this much in one trip?”

“Ummm…”

Calvin don’t –

“They’re selling it down at the shipyard for cheap. Stuff’s got nowhere to go because of the, so the merchants are trying to offload anything they can before it spoils.”

The Knick-Knack’s fingers opened in surprise, dropping the jar to the ground, where it chipped before another of the tiny creatures picked up the jar.

The creature began to let out a strange wail, as if their voices were fluctuating to fast to be perceived, then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped.

“Thank you for the information, here are your knives.”

Three of the metal creatures, one shiny and smooth, one trembling with some kind of internal purr, and a third with strange geodesic shapes painted on armor plates, approached Calvin with the three knives.

We could have gotten so much more out of them.

We got goodwill.

They’re machines. I don’t think goodwill is a factor.

At least they’ll factor that I’m trustworthy, and be more inclined to work with me again.

Fair point.

Calvin absorbed the first knife with Blade Body, replacing his old one, then tucked the next two in his belt. When he got Knife Work to level ten, he would be able to absorb a second.

“We’re going to go capitalize on your human fascination with hurting each other and causing misery. It has been profitable working with you, meatbag.”

“Likewise, scrapheap,” Calvin said, and saw the aperture of the creature’s eye twitch. “Do you have a place in town I can find you for more trade, or are grimy, stinking alleys your natural habitat?”

“1337 Speech Road. We own that location.”

Elliot gave a chuckle at that, but Calvin had no idea why.

Calvin and the tiny swarm of metal gremlins went their separate ways at the end of the alley, and Calvin paused to watch them roll/fly/crawl down the cobbled streets.

The people on the street never gave them more than a second glance. Calvin had never been in a city this large, and non-humans still gave him a bit of shock every time he saw them, but judging by the way others reacted, they were nothing too out of the ordinary.

What would be completely out of the ordinary, I wonder?

Did you notice?

Yeah, Cal finished Elliot’s thought. They run in a swarm.

Well, you gonna kill one or what?

I’ll think about it. The fact that they’re sapient makes the summoning a poor fit. If they are still cogent enough to work a spanner when they’re summoned – which is what we want – they should be able to disobey me. Also, moral implications.

Bah, moral implications. Trust me, they don’t care one way or the other. They’re machines. Do you think I made AI with the desire to continue living and multiply? Hell no, that would be the end of mankind. Besides, one of those sumbitches with a multitool would be a hell of a good swiss army summon.

What’s a swiss army summon? Calvin asked.

You’re focusing on the wrong thing here.

Alright, then tell me how I’m supposed to eat thirty pounds of metal and a bent Engine, which, according to you, Has material that is toxic to life as we know it.

Grab Consume.

That’s in the Chained Spirit Skill. Would it even work with Calvinian Summoning?

Of course it would. It doesn’t say consume and add to Chained spirits slots. It only says consume. The wording suggests that it could be triggered at any time, even with full slots, and would effectively give you all the benefits of consuming a creature, thereby triggering the Calvinian summoning request to add the creature to a slot.

You’ve put a lot of thought into this. Calvin thought.

If I’m gonna be backseat driving for the rest of your life, I might as well be engaged.

Huh, Calvin thought glancing toward the Knick-Knacks, who were already long gone.

Alright, not gonna do it until you’ve got a good way of negotiating one of them to serve me faithfully in death, forever.

Calvin turned and headed for a couple blocks over, where there was still a spark of life on the streets, and he could get himself a carpe while planning his last day before they put him back up on the wall.

He needed to increase his survivability.

Calvin sat down with an overpriced cup the blood-red juice while he mentally brought up his Skills.

Skills:

Stealth 6

Talking to Girls 8

Acting 8

Read Expressions 7

Sense-Grafting 8

Knife-Work 5

Dupdomancy 13

Hunting 5

Meditation 11

Chained Spirit 5

Calvinian Summoning 10

Your Princess is in Another Castle 3

Fishing 3

Genosian Language 4

Beli Ma 3

Calvin drummed his fingers on the cup as he thought. He already knew for a fact what was in each of the Skills at five or above. Prey’s Body from the Hunting Kill would be good for keeping him alive, but he’d have to gain five levels of Hunting in one day. Hunting was much slower to level on account of it’s tedious nature, not to mention the experience penalty form Shadowboxing.

He could select a Chained spirit mutation and continue leveling the skill, but without an actual summon, it didn’t give him any inherent boost to his defences.

Beli Ma had only leveled twice in a week, so Calvin didn’t expect he’d be getting himself to level five in one day.

Use Shadow boxing to train Your Princess is in another Castle to find out what the abilities do?

Calvin chuckled to himself, picturing breaking into Kala’s bedroom and then running off with her over his shoulder. She might even help if he explained it was for science.

Then he frowned, looking at Genosian language. It was almost level five.

Cal took a sip of the bitter juice. It tasted like it was starting to go off, picking up a coppery tang that made it taste like blood. Combined with the appearance, it wasn’t a great feeling.

I’ll never understand how you savages can drink that. Elliot made retching noises in Calvin’s head.

How about I Shadowbox Fishing and Genosian Language to level five? He thought,

I don’t see why not.

Calvin left the shop and found a quiet place to meditate. In his dream, he taught a gaggle of Genosian children how to fish, so they didn’t have to be gods-damned cannibals.

Fishing has reached Level 4!

Level 4: Boosts effectiveness of bait and line strength. 20% correction

Genosian Language has reached level 5!

Genosian Language level 5: Boosts acquisition, comprehension, and cultural nuance of the Genosian Language. 25% correction.

+1 Stability!

Please choose an ability or mutation.

Abilities:

Language barrier: User may coach their thoughts in Genosian or any other language they are fluent in, typically whichever is more poorly understood by the enemy, making Mind reading/controlling magic significantly less effective unless they are fluent in all languages the user is.

Exotic accent: The user may flawlessly adopt a Genosian accent which lends an air of exotic mystery. Applies the Genosian Language correction to the user's attractiveness to women.

^Triggered by Talking to Girls

Private Conversation: 1 bent: the user and the target may freely speak in a manner that conveys a great deal of meaning while seeming innocuous to observers.

^Practical. I like it.

Mutations:

The Genosian tongue: User's tongue becomes long and prehensile, without affecting the user's speech. Used for speaking Genosian more clearly.

^Sure, THAT'S what you'd use it for. Have I told you the story about the fugly guy who got all the babes in the bar? He just kept licking his eyebrows.

The gift of Tongues: Pay one Bent and consume the tongue of a fluent language speaker to gain fluency in that language. Permanently.

^Well, that's pretty Genosian for you.

Tribal Dentistry: The user's teeth become stronger and any teeth the user loses will regrow over the course of two weeks.

^ Good skill for retirement. Gumming food is annoying.

Full-On Genosian mouth: Combines the effect of The Genosian Tongue and Tribal Dentistry, in addition to changing the user's teeth to more closely resemble those of the Genosians

^Yeah, but why?

Calvin scrolled through them.

I choose Consume and The Gift of tongues.

Wait why-

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutations are taking place.

Calvin felt his organs begin painfully shifting inside himself, making room for…something, moments before he lost consciousness.

When Calvin opened his eyes again it was early evening.

Why those two? Elliot asked.

“Because sooner or later, I’m going to have to eat a dragon with steel plates for scales or something, and I’d rather not have to do that manually, and second,”

Calvin reviewed the choices again.

“If I get eight or more fluent languages, then Language Barrier should be very difficult to get through for an Ilethan mind-mage. As it stands right now, though, I only speak Genosian and Gadveran fluently. Among the Ilethans, that probably isn’t particularly uncommon. They trade with the Genosians, after all. I speak a bit of Malkenrovian and Ilethan too, but the ability specified fluency. Consuming people’s tongues enables fluency.”

Still, you’re gonna have to wait until Genosian language hits level ten, and you don’t exactly have a lot of people to practice on.

“I’ll figure something out,” Calvin said, closing his eyes again and dropping into a dream of the spawning season of Deinos, when there were so many fish that the shallows turned red with the shape of them.

All it took was a bundle of eggs, and the fish would snatch them up, trying to carry their young upstream. It was a cruel ploy, but undeniably effective.

Calvin was casually hauling in his twentieth imaginary Klum under the envious gaze of the rest of the villagers of Deinos, when the entire riverbank bucked violently, shaking Calvin to his core.

“What the-“

Something punched Calvin in the nose, and when he opened his eyes, he was face-down, kissing the wooden floor of the Inn he’d come to meditate away from the distractions of the palace. Namely Kala, Ella, and the snoopy general.

Calvin pushed himself up and tried to stand, but his legs were tangled in the sheets. Matter of fact, the bed itself was toppled over, leaning partly on him.

The room’s lamp had shattered on the ground, and in an instant, half of the room was on fire, blocking his way to the front door.

The rumbling of falling buildings and the shrill screams of women – and possibly men – echoed through the slatted window.

Something’s wrong.

Calvin was deciding whether to spit at the fire and create one hundred sixty-nine pounds of drool to smother the flame for a quick escape down the stairs, or to break through the window and aim for the outside, bypassing whatever hazards were in the oddly listing building.

While he was thinking, the world made his choice for him.

The slatted windows burst open, and one of Elliot’s hunter-Killers landed in the room, it’s razor sharp limbs sinking into the floor. It inspected Calvin for a moment, it’s blunt head cocked slightly to the side as it’s unnatural eyes focused and unfocused on him.

***Kala***

“So, what are we doing here?” The towering Genosian girl asked as they entered the musty bookstore. The owner, an ancient Malkenrovian man with a shock of white hair and a glass eye watched the sharp-toothed girl suspiciously.

“We are exploring.” Kala said, inhaling the nostalgic scent..

“Is that what that was?” Ella asked, pointing a thumb at the attendants hauling a cart full of pots and pans, flour, chamberpots and other sundries. All things she planned on giving to the poor once their little shopping spree was over… except for a bolt of dark blue velvet that would look great on the Genosian’s grey-purple skin.

The thought of having the tall girl model for her sent a little thrill through her body, causing her heart to slam against her ribcage and stomach to flutter for an instant before she calmed herself.

“That was a little bit of exploring, but we wandered around buying things at random mostly to reassure everyone that I’m still alive, and that everything’s normal. To be seen being a princess, you know?”

She directed her attention to Ud, the man pulling the wagon. “Could you take all of that to the slums?” She lowered her voice. “Except the velvet.”

One of the attendants pulled the cloth aside while Ud went his own way.

“I don’t know,” Ella responded to her question. “I never had to prove that I still existed.”

“Politics become increasingly odd as they scale up.” Kala said. “People are ignorant and rumors travel fast. The day after I disappeared, everyone thought I was dead or captured. Only by making a big production of simply existing, will the rumors be quenched.”

“Huh,” Ella said, poking a bookshelf. “That’s annoying.”

“Right!” Kala said, bringing herself back on task. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about anyway.” She stepped up beside Ella and briefly noticed her body heat before grabbing one of the tomes.

“This,” She said, pointing to it, “is a book.”

“I know what a book is.” Ella said with a hint of ire. “They tell you how to do things. Father has one on traps and hunting. I learned how to make snares from the pictures.”

Did she not know how to read? This might be harder than Kala had thought. It made sense, but illiteracy was…unusual for a Gadveran. So unusual that she hadn’t even considered it.

“Well, books are also for stories.” Kala said. “For example, one of my favorites,” she reached out and grabbed the well-used book from its familiar slot.

“Clan of the cave gardor, where a noble woman is exiled to the wilderness to die by her family for a crime she didn’t commit, then she’s rescued by a clan of cave-dwelling savages. To get revenge, she’s forced to rise through the ranks of these well-muscled, lusty men and women using the only currency she has: her body.”

Kala’s body warmed a bit as she recalled all the specific needs that the numerous cave people had, and how much Evelyn found herself enjoying giving them what they wanted.

Then she realized Ella was watching her with a frown.

“What?”

“Why would they rescue her? if she was a soft noblewoman, she would have been more of a hindrance than anything else, and surely delicious.”

Kala blinked. “because otherwise the story would end there.”

“Ah. True. But why hard labor? If she was one of your noblewoman, her interpersonal and language Skills should have been relatively high. They could have used her to negotiate trade deals with foreigners that would have more than paid for her keep.”

“It wasn’t hard labor per se, They were isolationist, and-“

“Then why didn’t they eat her?”

“because she was pretty and-“

“Well, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Because the book is about sex! Okay!?” Kala said a bit louder than she had intended. “Lots and lots of sex! That’s what the story’s about. It’s a fantasy about a woman getting passed around by cave people, and logic kind of messes that up!” The owner of the library gave her a raised eyebrow and her attendants pretended not to notice.

“Oh.” Ella glanced down at the cover contemplatively. “Can you read some?”

***Later***

“Grog made the mating sign, one brutish hand clasped around the other, but this time, he was facing Evelyn, expectation glittering in his cruel eyes.” Kala looked over, enjoying the girl’s horrified expression.

“No, he can’t do that! She was claimed by Bared in front of the whole tribe!” Ella shouted, lunging out of her comfy recliner to shake Kala’s shoulder. “Grog’s a total aneuhenaha!”

“Le-e-e-t me-e-e F-in-ish.” Kala said, her voice trembling as the bigger girl jostled her.

“This better turn out okay for Evelyn,” Ella said, putting a threatening finger under Kala’s nose.

“Noted,” Kala said, returning to the book. Maybe I’ll skip chapter fourteen.

“Grog advanced on her, pinning Evelyn’s hands to the cold stone floor, assaulting her nose with his barbaric musk. She could feel the blood rushing to Grog’s loins as they pressed insistently against the thin piece of silk that lay between them, her last reminder of the life she’d had before this horrible place.”

Ella kicked Kala’s seat.

“I’m getting there,” Kala said with a scowl. Kala skipped past a bit of the more graphicly descriptive paragraphs and got to the rescue so the impatient Genosian would stop kicking her chair.

“At the final moment, Bared appeared at the entrance to Grog’s smoke-cave, his muscles glistening from exertion. At the sight of Grog atop his mate, he let out a thunderous-“

The sound of a distant explosion slammed through the library seconds before the entire shop seemingly hopped in place, sending the two of them up into the air, then down again in a pile of books.

The lanterns that had been lit to read into the night had smashed down around them, lighting the library on fire. The owner was struggling weakly under a shelf, blood pulsing from a wound on his scalp.

“What was that?” Kala breathed, flexing her lip where the book had slammed into it.

“Nothing good.” Ella said, coming to her feet, skin turning silver.

“Calvin.” Ella said, turning toward the Northeast.

“Mr. Grosh first.” Kala said, heaving the shelf off the old man with one hand and sliding him out with the other.

“My store –“

“Mr. Grosh?” Kala said sweetly in her princess-voice, kneeling to make eye contact with the dazed man. “As your princess I am ordering you to go to the castle, because your store is fucked, and if you don’t get moving right now, you’re going to be burned alive or cut down by Ilethans. Do you understand?”

He nodded and climbed to his feet, holding one hand to his head as he stumbled out into the quickly filling streets, turning toward the west.

“Now Calvin?”

“Now.” Kala said, glancing at the link in Ella’s aura that gave Calvin’s direction.

“He’s that wa-“ Ella was already running past Kala’s dazed retainers, giving Kala no choice but to put her head down and sprint after the Genosian. Kala wasn’t worried though, she knew where she was going.

I wish I had one of those Guya links, then I could find him whenever I... Ah, damn, we left the velvet in the fire.