Chapter 5: Chapter 5: a figurine

YAWN

That is the best sleep I have had in years. I even had a nice dream where I got transported into the game as Anana. Always wondered how that would be, and according to the dream, it would be awesome.

After stretching for a bit, I realize that I’m sleeping on an old sofa. Why am I sleeping on an old sofa? Looking around the not all that dark room, I see a low table and a few chairs. Huh, this seems like the dream I had. Standing up and looking around causes my tail to wipe the dust off the table. My tail, huh. 

I didn’t have that before the dream, maybe I haven’t awakened yet? Or, maybe the dream is real. Whether reality or dream, I’m starving. What do I have to eat though?

I remember there being a kitchen, so I walk through the doorway, not via the workshop like I did yesterday. Entering, I find the same dusty kitchen that I found yesterday. The knives still lay on the countertops, though looking closer, there appears to be other utilities as well. Forks, spoons, whisks and even a moderately sized butchers knife which I would have loved to have yesterday, instead of the only kinda sharp piece of copper.

Climbing on top of the counter, throws more dust into the air, but allows me to look close at the glass jars. Pickled cabbages, peppers, various fruits, a jar of pickled fish and one of some unspecified meat. It should be safe to eat, assuming it was pickled correctly, though I would prefer to eat something else.

Danievil put something in my inventory, so I take it out. A slab of raw meat with a note on top of it, which reads “You are not human anymore, so you might want to taste it raw before you cook it with your lightning”. I have never tasted raw meat before, so maybe it actually is good? After jumping down from the counter, I put the note on the countertop. I do hesitate for a bit, but eventually take a bite of the meat.

It’s really noticeable that my teeth are different, as tearing a piece away from the meat is very easy. The taste is not bad, though not particularly good either. Chewing is a bit of a chore, as I apparently don’t have any molars. Sufficiently small chunks are indistinguishable from mush, so it’s fine.

After giving the raw meat a try, I fry the meat with my lightning. I hold it with both hands, and it cooks pretty quickly, but fairly unevenly. It’s a bit easier to chew, compared to when uncooked, but doesn’t taste any better. Not worse either though.

I finish the bland meat with a gulp of water from one of the obnoxiously over designed bottles. She gave me enough water to last me for two weeks, but only five slabs of meat. Maybe she expected me to find the pickled food.

Anyways, I have enough to be satisfied for now, and I am really in the mood to create something. Normally I would boot up Blender or Unity when the mood strikes me, but I don’t have a computer handy. Maybe I should try to craft something like I would do in the game. Maybe a figurine or something to get familiar with the tools I now have.

Exiting the kitchen, I find the workshop. It’s a bit brighter than the two other rooms because of the opening left by the golem yesterday. There is a fair bit of dust in here as well, but not as much as the two other rooms. Maybe it’s because of the slight draft.

The work surfaces I saw yesterday have various tools scattered about, and only one of them is bolted to the walls, the rest seems to be metal tables. Using my tail to dust off the table was a mistake though. 

After I am done coughing, I take out one of the rounder pieces of copper and lay it on the dust free table. It’s about the size of my fist. How am I going to do this? Using just my hands, lets me push my claws into the metal, but not really sculpt it. Using mana to reinforce my hands makes it easier, but still rather difficult. 

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What happens when I put some mana into the copper? Trying reveals that it’s much easier to form. Putting in even more mana, and the copper starts to glow a faint red, and becomes even easier to mold. A bit more mana, with a brighter shine, and I don’t even need to touch it to shape it. Still not trivial to do it, but I can work with this. Combining mana shaping with my claws gives me some tools to work with.

I might have spent several hours doing it, and part way through I may have fetched a chair to sit on, but the result is worth it. I successfully made a figurine of myself. I used the mirror to compare, and I did a decent job. Not perfect, but making fur out of metal is not easy.

It would be even better if I had some crystal to use for the staff of the figurine. Wait. I do have some. I dump the crystal I took from the abomination on the floor of the room with a thud. How to get a small piece of it? Should I try using mana, or do I look for a hammer and chisel?

I try the mana method first and find the crystal resisting. I can take mana out of it easily, but whenever I try to push mana into it, it resists, like it is already full. In the game abominite pretty much always gave a decent buff to the quantity of mana you had available, so maybe it acts as a mana battery, and it’s already full of the mana from the abomination.

I’ll tinker with it later, so off I go looking for a chisel. There is a chisel, and even a hammer, but when I hit the abominite, nothing happened. Hitting harder, I managed to chip a small piece off, at the cost of breaking the chisel.

Luckily the small piece is enough. Trying to shape it like the copper, I meet the same resistance. Maybe it has to be my mana, so I take all the mana out of it. It changes color to a dull white as it loses mana. That’s neat. Pushing my mana back into it, it once again changes color, but to the same deep red as my staff. 

Now I can shape it. It’s much harder than the copper, but I eventually manage to make a dodecahedron. I have to re-saturate the figurine with mana to affix the crystal, but it only takes a while to do. 

Putting down the figurine on the table, I admire my work. Pretty good. It does need a bit of paint, but I did a good job for a first attempt.

Now, I feel confident enough to fix the horrific disfigurement that is the misspelling of angel’s reflection. I start by soaking the mirror in my mana, and find that there is already a lot of my mana inside it, doing something. It’s probably the hovering enchantment. Since I am the creator of the mirror, It only requires a bit of focus to change the engraving, but It gives me a lot of joy.

“Take that you meddling gods!” I say out loud, before starting to laugh.

“Is that a challenge?”