Chapter 6: 6 – Crafting With Vampires

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Arriving back in my stair room, I knew I wanted to make a bag and some type of leather armor. I just had to come up with a plan for it. 

Sitting down to gather my thoughts, I tried to organize what I knew. For armor, I remember hearing the term 'boiled leather' armor at some point. I have no clue what else goes into it, but at the very least the name gives me a place to start. Hooray for self-descriptive names!

I want to at least test boiling the leather for a first try, since I don't have any better ideas. But to boil it, I need something to hold the water.

(Navi, I assume my earth magic can make something like a large pot?)

(With a higher level and more mana, definitely! But for now, you would be better off either hardening clay or dirt. You could also try to meld rock or stone together.

(If the materials are already there of the element you are using, your magic can get a lot more bang for your buck instead of making it from pure mana!)

With that said, thinking on my options, I could head up the stairs and use the rubble blocking the dungeon entrance to build up and fuse some sort of large, standing pot with some legs to be able to get a fire going underneath. My fire magic certainly wouldn't be able to last long enough to boil the water, but I can gather enough sticks and logs to probably make something work. I can just fill it with water magic too, and stoke it with air magic. That would help me practice those types some more anyway. 

I will probably still have to piecemeal the whole thing together in multiple attempts with my current MP. Fusing the rubble would probably be best like the mind hitchhiker said. I'll use dirt that I harden to stone as a mortar.

With that as the idea, I need to get dirt and a lot of sticks or logs. That's a lot of carrying shit, and my storage isn't up for the task yet. I need a bag. Time to try my hand at my rucksack again! This time with the thicker razer wolf pelts and not the tattered jackalope. 

Getting down to business, I carefully shaved off the vast majority of the hair on four of the pelts. The first pelt I used to cut into strips. I made two thick strips for what will be the sacks strap. Then using the remaining hide I cut a bunch of thin strips along the length for tying various parts of this project together.

Laying out my second hide, I grabbed some of the longer strips and rubble to weigh them down. Using the strips to make a guide on the pelt, I laid them across to form a rectangle I could cut out. Taking my longest strip, I even used it to match my diagonals to get as good of a rectangle as possible.

I had an elementary school teacher that always said 'do it right or do it twice.' After the jackalope bag that shall not be named, I'm going to do this as nicely as possible.

Using my nail to lightly mark the hide down the lines, I took everything off and had a decent guide to cut the rectangle.

Once done, I laid the completed rectangle on top of the third hide and marked another guide to cut.

Taking the fourth hide, I folded it in half and butted the edge up to the short side of one of my rectangles. Taking a strip to measure, I found the center of the edge of the rectangle and used the strip from that point as a compass to draw a semicircle on the fourth pelt.

Also marking where the center of the circle of the fourth pelt would be, I unfolded it and continued with my compass strip to mark out a circle to cut.

Now, I had all of the pieces I needed for my leather sack. Happy that I also paid attention in geometry class.

Using my dagger to mark and then drill as clean of matching holes as possible, I slowly made my way down long sides of both rectangles. 

When I got to the short side, I made a hole in the center and edges, then alternated holes back and forth so that I had the same number of holes on either side of center on both pelts. With the circle I cut, I begin drilling the same number of holes. Spaced as equally as I can.

This all took quite a bit of time, and my MP was filling up. Standing up to stretch, I went and gathered a decent amount of rubble. Before I committed 100% to making my stove and pot for the armor, I wanted to do a test on a cut of the scrap wolf leather. Nothing would make me feel like more of an idiot than spending so much fucking time cutting all the pieces, just for this to end up not working.

The sunrise was approaching soon; I didn't have too much time. I go outside to gather what I'll need for the test. I went around and dug up some dirt and used a goblin cloth to carry it, along with a large bundle of wood for a fire.

I killed a pair of goblins while out, but thankfully didn't see any orks. I even found a couple of nice looking sticks that could make a halfway decent spear. 

After retreating back into my hole, I gathered up some rubble and used the dirt I had between pieces.

Doing some trial and error with my earth magic, my MP was down quite a bit but I had a standard sized cooking pot.

Filling it up with enough water to do this trial, I got to building a fire and some rubble stands to hold the pot over it. I placed the scrap in the pot to soak up water while doing so.

Building up the pile of sticks and lighting it with fire magic. Stoking it lightly with air magic. I finally had everything ready and placed the pot on the fire until it got boiling. With no idea if this would work or not but sending a light prayer to the two that sent me here, I watched the piece of leather.

After a bit it started to change and became noticeably darker. Watching a bit more I decided to see if this crazy idea worked. I would do more tests later on how long is too long.

Fishing it out with my goblin spear, it was still flexible. I grabbed a rock and when cool enough to handle without burning my hand, I formed the piece over the top of the rock and used other rubble to hold it in place.

Content with my little experiment and just needing it to dry, I went back to my fur bed and called it a night.

Waking up, I immediately went to check on my leather. Anxious but excited, I removed all of the rock and was surprised. 

"Fuck yes!" I let out at seeing the results. Overnight as the leather dried, it hardened considerably. "This could work!"

(You really should watch your language more, Lia. You're a lady now!)

"Suck a bag of dicks, Navi."

Even my brain worm's peppy snark couldn't take my smile away. Now I had a way to make myself some halfway decent protection!

Quickly using some rubble and more of the dirt I grabbed yesterday, I started piecing together my pot/stand until my MP was almost gone. Thinking about it, I'm basically making a stone bathtub for a fire underneath. As convenient as magic is, soaking in a tub would be pretty nice. 

Getting hungry, I ran the first floor and got some breakfast and more white fur from the boss. I even tried out my goblin sword and was pleasantly surprised with how well it cut the horned rabbit.

Using up more mana on the rubble, I got down to finishing my bag.

Taking thin strips of leather, I threaded them through the holes using my sharp nails to push the tip through in a whip stitch. Would have been easier with some type of needle, but I'll take what I can get. 

With that done, I turned the sack inside-out so that the overlapped edges were on the inside, and smiled at my nice, cylindrical leather bag. 

The last thing I did was to stitch on the strap and make holes along the top with a thin strip going through so that I can somewhat cinch the top of the bag.

I could only grin at the notification I got.

Skill learned - Leatherworking 1

With a decent bag, I used the rest of the night in a loop of gathering wood or dirt, building my bathtub, and running through the first level to eat and fill my mana.

At this point, I just ran by slimes and only fought jackalopes when I wanted a quick meal. My fire magic and earth magic became strong enough to kill the jackalopes as well.

At one point, I used my horn dagger to shave off the bark and twigs from the two sticks I wanted to use as spears. Splitting the tips, I used the dagger teeth from the wolves and sawed a notch on the sides of them with a piece of rubble.

Using a leather strip, I wrapped the new tooth spearhead in place and tied it off, then boiled the water in the pot again with the tooth inside and leather wrap underwater. Overall, I had myself a pair of halfway decent spears. A hell of a lot better than my goblin spear.

Once I finally had the bathtub complete, I ran into a snag I hadn't thought of. How the fuck am I going to get a pattern for a chest piece so that I'm not just wearing some weird trash bag looking potato sack of leather?

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I'm not a tailor or anything like that. After messing around with trying to cut a pattern with pieces of goblin cloth, I got fed up with it. 

By this point, I have come too far to turn back. And honestly I was a tad bit obsessed with this project. Plus I was kind of enjoying the challenge of working through ideas to make this work. Committing myself to going all the way, I settled myself for the next part of my mad plan.

I made trip after trip with my bag gathering dirt. After many trips I finally got down to working on my idea. I laid a couple inch layer of loose dirt on the floor with excess piled up on the sides. 

Then I laid back on it like I was making a snow angel. Wiggling slightly to get an impression of my back in the dirt.

Using my outstretched arms, I gathered up the dirt from my sides and covered the rest of my body in a couple inches of dirt.

I could only laugh at myself when I thought how ridiculous this must have looked. A naked vampire, in a dark room, piling dirt and burying themselves. What the actual fuck.

Once I had my torso down to my hips and over my shoulders and neck buried, I got to work making a mold of myself. Using earth magic, I channeled it to the dirt around me. Hardening just a couple of inches all around. But not to the hardness of stone to save mana. More of a hard clay.

I did my best to keep a thin seam of dirt along both sides of what will be my body mold, and once done, I tried to move. Even while being careful, the top part cracked in a couple places while I was extracting myself. These pieces were easy enough to fuse back together though. Cheating with magic is the best.

After hardening it a bit more and placing the chest part of the mold on the ground, I began filling the mold. Piling it up a bit so that when I placed the back piece on and shifted it around, everything would compact together. I felt like I was making a sandcastle. But with dirt and a cast of my body as the mold.

Using earth magic on just the inside dirt, I worked on hardening it. Careful not to fuse it to the mold. It took quite a while to do, and I ended up with a really good pile of soft mofu mofu furs from all of my in-between runs of the first floor. I even made a fluffy leather pillow! But I eventually finished. With all the work that creating this took, I'm pretty sure the fantasy earth magic staple of creating instant walls of rock in a battle is damn near impossible.

Sitting in front of me now was a perfect stone statue of my torso. With no head or arms it kind of reminded me of those old Greek/Roman statues in museums. Only more dirt colored.

I've had plenty of time to think about what I want to make over the past couple days. I even tossed ideas around with Navi. And we finally came up with a good concept and path to execute it. 

We'll start with the chest piece. Forming something around my breasts would suck if I tried to make it fully conform to them. What I did was pile on dirt in between the breasts of my statue. Then added more on the sides, top, and bottom. The shape I sculpted was a trapezoidal prism. Think of a gold bar shape, where it is flat across the front and the angles out slightly on the sides.

I also added almost a half inch layer all around the statue, and smoothed it out. This was to account for the boiled leather to shrink slightly and also make space for my finishing touches.

For my idea, I will need some sort of glue as well as wax. Thanking my prior life for late night online video tangents, I had some idea of what to do for this. It might take a couple more days, but all of this extra work would all be worth it.

I made three decent sized stone bowls and went outside to get to work. For glue, one part I needed would be tree sap. Some of the trees around my home were coniferous trees. Using a sharp rock that I made better with earth magic, I went around and shaved off the bark on a decent amount of the trees close by. 

Using the rock I also scooped up what sap I could into one of the bowls. I'll scrape it off over a couple days as the tree bleeds until I get enough.

Exterminating a few goblins along the way, I head to get some wax. I'm just glad the entrance hole to my home is very hard to find and the entire entrance area is well hidden. Even with all the fires I have been making, the smoke seems to disperse and diffuse at the top, making it not even visible from outside. 

Arriving at the beehive I saw when I was first coming to my cave, I steady myself.

Taking a spear, I jam it behind the nest and stab a few times, knocking off a majority of the hive. After just a second or two of this I bolt as fast as I can away from there back to my cave.

I may be able to heal myself. I may have already been stabbed, hit with a club, and mauled. But fuck bees.

After a couple hours, I cautiously headed back to the hive, hoping that the majority of bees had calmed down and that the pieces on the ground were vacant. 

Thankfully, both were true and I was able to grab the broken hive pieces and wax caps with a goblin cloth hobo type bag and head back home. All without a single sting.

Using my trusty smaller pot, I placed the hive pieces inside and boiled the hive. Once I felt like it was done, I carefully and slowly tipped the pot over and poured the hot beeswax into my other bowl, using a cloth as a crude strainer. 

Once this cooled off and solidified, I was left with a nice chunk of beeswax. Admittedly, the quality wasn't great. But I'm making this in a fucking cave for the first time. I'm satisfied enough with it.

The third bowl I had gathered charcoal from my fires and ground it down into a powder. With this, I had what I needed for a later step with my armor.

Taking my shaven wolf hides, I began cutting out the template pieces for my chest piece.

I also made a two feet long flat stone bar with evenly spaced and pointed nubs to make an impression on my cut pieces so that I know where to drill holes and they will all be evenly drilled.

Once I had all of the pieces cut with holes drilled, it was time to soak and boil them. Placing all of the pieces in the water of the bathtub, I began to get a fire going under it. Keeping an eye on the leather so that it doesn't become brittle. A previous test I did on boiling times became really brittle when boiled for too long.

Once I took the pieces out, I immediately went to my stone statue and placed the pieces over it. I didn't tie any of them together at this point since the ties may pull and deform them a bit. I laid them on and then wrapped strips around them to hold them in place for drying. 

I gave the pieces a full day to dry. In the meantime I finished making a statue cast of my legs and arms. If I'm going to have chest armor, I'm damn well going to have matching greaves and vambraces. 

After cutting, boiling, and shaping the greaves and vambraces I wanted, I began the part that I had been looking forward to.

Taking all of the hardened pieces off, they seem like they would hold up pretty well. However, wearing hard leather directly on me would chafe pretty easily. I also want just a bit more protection if I can have it.

That was why I added that bit of extra buildup on my statue models. Even with the leather shrinking, they were still just a bit loose. I went to my pile of soft, white, horned rabbit furs. Taking my time, I matched and cut the furs to match the inside of the armor. 

With the bowl of tree sap, I placed it on a low fire until it was a sticky liquid mess. Using a stick, I stirred in charcoal powder until I had a nice consistency. Once dry, this sap resin will make a good glue. 

Taking the mix over to my leather pieces, I placed a generous coating with the stick onto the inside of the hardened leather pieces. Is this a literal glue stick?

Finally, I placed the leather side of the rabbit furs onto the glue and finished the soft fur lined pieces of armor.

Once the whole thing had dried, I threaded strips of leather to connect the pieces that needed it. I then took my beeswax and rubbed it over all of the hardened outside pieces, giving it some water/blood resistance.

The front and back are solid pieces, with a slight gap on the sides of my torso that the fur leather overhangs slightly from the edge. This allows me to cross stitch up the sides, keeping the strips long so that I can loosen them to get the armor on and off.

I burst out laughing when it was finally on. The fit is comfortable and snug, and the fur is soft. Even just having my breasts more secure feels great. From where I stopped the bottom of the chest piece, I still have a great range of motion for my torso. Time to make the final pieces.

I take the armor off of myself and grab my pile of rabbit furs. What I cut out are the final pieces to this extremely long DIY project. 

All of the pieces have the fur doubled up with a couple of small dabs of glue on the leather between just to tack both sides together while the edges are stitched with thin leather strips. 

For my neck, I added pieces that rose up to cover the back and sides while coming together in the front. I still have near full range of motion of my head and neck with this.

On my shoulders and down the side of my upper arm, I have multiple loosely cut pieces that overlap a bit and are tacked with a leather knot as a hinge on both sides. All giving my upper arm and bicep some armor while keeping the motion of my shoulder and arm mostly free.

Hanging from the front and back is a wide strip dropping to about mid thigh in length. On the sides, wrapping around my hips and down to knee length, are a piece of the furs. Having these lets me keep the majority of my leg mobility, while also protecting my thighs, crotch, and lower stomach from harm.

Complete with my sword belt with new sword and leather scabbards for everything, hair tied back with a leather strip into a ponytail. I look like a boss ass bitch that will kick some ass.

Walking up to the iron door, let's fucking test this shit out.

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