Weaponsmith - Chapter 119 (Patreon)

- [Serpent’s Tooth {Large}] -

- Quality -

High

- Quality Effects -

 None

A massive, yellowed tooth that belongs to a giant serpent that lives in the southern regions of the world. Despite being long detached from the body of the snake, it continues to drip with a thick, deadly venom.

Weight: 8.4 kg

Hineni whistles, looking at the massive tooth that lays on top of the workbench. “Damn…” says the man, considerably impressed, as he looks at it. It reaches all the way from one end of the table to the other. “Must’ve been one big snake.”

“It was,” says Sockel, knocking against the yellowed tooth. She nods her head to the deep-forest that has resumed exploding for the day, as the war-effort progresses onward, spending the lives of hundreds of people a day to achieve what is perhaps the greatest stalemate of all time.

— Honestly, there doesn’t even seem to be a point to it at this point, the war.

Hineni doesn’t really understand why the humans don’t just stay on this side of the forest and the elves don’t stay on their side. The result will be the same as it is now and the whole ‘mass death’ thing will come to an end.

But he supposes that he just doesn’t have a head for politics at the end of the day.

“- Like I said,” says Sockel. “The forest is full of stuff you’ve never seen.” She taps the tooth. “These snakes? They get as big as houses.”

Rhine stands there and rubs his lip with the back of his thumb. “So uh… what do they eat?” he asks. “To get so big?”

“Other snakes,” replies Sockel dryly.

“Oh…” Rhine stares at her and then at the tooth for a while. “Is that it?” he asks. “I was expecting them to… I dunno, eat more exotic things than themselves.”

Sockel leans sideways, looking at him from up close. Rhine straightens up, becoming oddly stiff. “- Are you telling me that ‘giant snakes the size of houses’ aren’t exotic enough for you?” she asks. “Back in the north, the weirdest thing I ever saw was that slime that looked like a person.”

“Wait, what?” asks Rhine.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” remarks Sockel, straightening herself back upright. “Anyway. This is your work for the day,” she says.

“Is it?” asks Rhine. He looks towards Hineni. “I thought we were doing repairs today?”

Hineni nods, looking at Sockel. “We’re doing repairs today, remember?” he says, reminding her. “We just talked about it last night.”

“Mm… mm…” says Sockel, sounding somewhat disinterested. “That would be true, if you had anything here to repair,” she notes.

“The cart should be here any minute,” replies Hineni, shrugging.

Sockel shakes her head, pointing over her shoulder towards the front-line. “Cart’s not coming, boss-man. Or did you not see it get carried off by a drake this morning?”

Rhine looks past her, towards the chaos. “Uh…”

“I might have missed that,” says Hineni.

Sockel nods. “I figured,” she says, wiping a strand of dusty, blonde hair out of her face. “That’s why auntie Sockel brought you this,” she explains, nodding to the tooth and turning around. “Well. That’s my work done for the day. Bye,” she says, waving them off and immediately leaving without any further context or clarification.

The two of them watch her leave and then Hineni turns back towards the giant tooth. “I try not to think about the money I pay her…” he says, shaking his head. “Gotta let go of the material things in life, you know, Rhine?”

Rhine doesn’t respond. Hineni looks over his way. The boy is still staring off into the distance.

“Boy.”

Rhine jolts together. “Oh! Yeah. Material things!” he affirms. “- Avarice sure loves that kind of stuff, huh?” he laughs, somewhat oddly quick and awkward.

Hineni stares at him, lifting an eyebrow.

“I’ll get the forge started!” he says, running off.

“- Rhine,” says Hineni. “We haven’t even decided what to do with this yet.” He looks him over. “Did you sleep right? You seem a little off your game today.”

Rhine stares for a moment and then shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says. “Just need to start working, I think.” He looks at the tooth. “So, what’s the plan? Are we going to grind it down too, like we did with the drake-talons?”

“No… I don’t think so,” replies Hineni. “We only did that because those were so small and fiddly. But this -” He knocks on the tooth. “- This is more substantial. We’ll make something out of this as is.” Hineni thinks for a moment. “A spear,” he says, deciding.

“A spear?” asks Rhine.

Hineni nods. “The tooth is already mostly the right shape.” He runs his finger along the mostly straight, conical thing. “We’ll flatten it and sharpen the edges. It’ll be pretty easy, I think.” He thinks about it for a moment longer, but it seems like the best idea for this particular monster bit. “Let’s get started.”

_________________________________

The tooth, being made of a hard, but relatively brittle material, requires a certain level of caution while working with, in order to not break it apart. There’s also the issue that teeth aren’t solid masses of bone, as Rhine had explained to him. There’s a lot more to a tooth than just that. So they need to carve the conical-shaped tooth down into a flatter edge of a spear’s blade, but while not going deep enough that they break the tooth apart by removing too much of its exterior material.

This is a slow, but fairly calm process. They’re using a hobble, a tool usually reserved for carpentry. It’s essentially a wooden block with a hand and a protruding blade, used to take off thin layers of a material by scraping it across its surface.

— Of course, given that the material of a tooth is somewhat different than normal wood, they’ve replaced the blade on the hobble with a custom made adamant version that has little trouble cutting off fine, flaky bits of the tooth, leaving a rough, porous surface behind.

The two of them take turns, as the process takes a while.

_____________________________________

Hineni nods, looking at the ‘flattened’ down head of the spear. It’s still very, very thick for a spear, especially near the base. But he finds that it gives it a very interesting look. It’s like someone took an entire lance and then just squished it down.

“It’s gonna be pretty fragile like this,” says Rhine. Hineni nods, agreeing. Rhine points at the tooth’s surface that has been scraped flat. “This porous stuff here is going to break the moment it hits something hard, I think.” He says. “Look. There’s nothing really structurally integral left.”

“Yeah,” says Hineni. “I’ve thought about that.” He points at the back of the tooth, where the root was. “I want to reinforce the inside of it with metal. We can just pour it in, I think,” he explains. “Then the exterior here, where all these holes are, I want to coat with something.”

“Metal?” asks Rhine.

Hineni thinks for a moment. “I think that would defeat the point,” he says. “If we make the exterior out of metal, then we could have just done that from the start.”

“Hmm… well… the enamel on a tooth is one of the hardest parts of the body,” says Rhine. “But I don’t think we can make anything like it.” They consider their options for a while. Rhine looks around the area, his eyes landing on the construction site of the house. “What if we used cement?” he asks.

“Cement?” asks Hineni.

Rhine nods, running a finger over the holes in the tooth. “We’ll just use a light coating here on the exterior. Not a lot,” he explains. “If we mix it right, it should be able to blend together with the tooth.”

“Great idea, Rhine,” says Hineni and the two of them set to work, commandeering some of the cement from the construction site. It’s technically theirs anyway.

_________________________________

It is several hours later.

Hineni and Rhine look over the coated serpent’s tooth, which they have painted over in a thin, reinforcing layer of a special blend of cement and some other things that Rhine had thrown in, saying that they needed them for the materials to properly bind. Hineni didn’t really understand it, but he just shrugged and trusted in Rhine’s words and it seems to have paid off. The tooth itself is rock-solid and has been carved into a sharp blade with a small hole at its tip, that poison continues to secret out of.

They have reinforced the inside of the tooth with a lightweight blend of aluminum and steel.

At the base of the top of the tooth, where the root once was, is now a threaded hole, to allow the blade to be removed and replaced fairly easily. Although, Hineni doesn’t know how often this can happen, considering that it’s a custom item with only one such blade in existence.

But still, the design matters. It signals professionalism.

Hineni, meanwhile, has made a shaft for the spear out of rare-wood, from the old, ancient trees of the forests here.

“Go ahead,” says Hineni, nodding. “It’s all yours.”

Rhine smiles, sticking the shaft into the socket and then turns it into place until it hits base.

- [Serpent’s Tooth Spear]{Gift of the owl-god}{POISON} -

 -Quality -

High

- Components -

• [Giant Serpent’s Tooth Blade]{Spear}(High)
• [Rare-Wood Shaft](High)
• [Leather Wrap](Normal)
• [Black Cloth Wrap](Normal)
• [Black Cord](Normal)

- Quality Effects -

None

- Title Effect -

“Treasure of the owl-god”

• +9 OBSCURANTISM
• +9 WIND DMG*
• +9 LUK

A strong, lightweight spear furbished out of the tooth of a giant serpent from the deep forests of the southern regions of the world and an intricate, sturdy shaft, made from rare-wood.

Deadly venom continuously drips from its tip.

‘Made by Weaponsmith Hineni - Chosen of the owl god’

‘Made by Rhine, the River-Wizard - Follower of the Owl-God’

09 PHYSICAL DMG

Effect: All successful strikes apply stacking status: [Deep Poison {01}]

Weight: 1.13kg

Durability: 50/50

Value: 5000 Obols

Hineni nods, happy with today’s project.

They use some of the drake-talon goo from the prior project to coat the weapon and then deliver it to the owl-god to enchant and then to Sockel to find a buyer for. By the time that all is said and done, it is late in the day. The war effort grinds down for another night and Hineni goes to bed, content.