Cenotaph of Bones: Chapter 20 (Patreon)

Chapter 20: Alloys

I woke to the sound of shouting and explosions.  It wasn’t the first time, and it most likely won’t be the last.  That didn’t make it any more fun to deal with, and I scrambled to fight my way free of my blankets to see what was wrong.

Jamila and Chu weren’t inside, and Donny and Valerie were already on their way out the door.  I took a shortcut and dove through the empty window next to me, and rolled to my feet at a sprint toward the rear gate, where I could sense qi being used in rapid fashion.

The sailors were all along the wall, with a few standing in the gap where the gate should be.  Three of them were blasting the blocked tunnel with qi attacks, so I spun up my heart core to help me leap on top of the wall.

“What’s going on?”  I asked the nearest sailor, who was frantically searching the dim cavern, whipping his head around to try and look everywhere at once.  “Did you see something?”

“I didn’, bu’ Bruck did!”  He pointed to one of the men throwing qi constructs at the collapsed tunnel.  “He seen eyes peekin’ o’er the top o’ them rocks, an Bruck ne’er lies!”

“Cease fire!”  The captain had finally shown up, and he was waving his arms to get their attention.  “I said cease fire, stars-damn your souls!”

I jumped down and approached the captain as he got his men back under control.  Before I could suggest we go and inspect the tunnel, he was already marching off with a small contingent of his men.

“Well, that was exciting.”  Chu had jumped down from the opposite side of the gate, and was still holding his mace.  “Should we go and see if there actually was something there?”

“No.”  I shook my head, and turned to go back to our area.  “Even if there wasn’t something there this time, it’s only a matter of time.”  He hurried up to catch up to me, so I slowed my steps a bit.  “I had another dream, and it wasn’t a good one.  There is a whole undead army down here, and I need to help us prepare for it.”

“An army?”  He stumbled a bit, but still kept pace with me.  “When you say army, do you mean a small army, or, like, an army-army.”

“I didn’t have time to count, but I would guess somewhere in the three-thousand range.”  We had reached our building, and I went inside and pulled out my mobile forge.  “So, I guess you could say an army-army.”

“Stars…”  He looked back outside, where the rest of our group was returning.  “I’ll tell the others.  We’ll get to work on the formation plate stockpile, and make sure our gate is sealed up.  You do what you have to do.”

I gave him a sharp nod, and started pulling out ingots of metal.  We were facing a new kind of threat, one that I didn’t have a good idea of their full capabilities.  The sheer number of enemies we might have to face meant my friends and I would need full-body coverage.  Getting swarmed by greater numbers meant I couldn’t leave gaps in our armor, like I had before.  I would need to incorporate everything I had done thus far, and maybe throw in something new.

The metal would need to be an alloy, one that used the qi-dissipating effects of orichalcum, without blocking my friends ability to use qi when fighting.  I also wanted it to be strong to physical attacks, so it needed to be resilient, yet flexible.  I also wanted to incorporate the qi shield ideas I had used on the buttons during our fight in the Western Capital, to protect everyone long enough to escape if we were surrounded or swarmed.  Basically, the perfect armor.  This might take a little bit.

The style of armor would have to be similar to the set I had already made, a brigandine.  It would allow me to use a layered approach of smaller pieces, and improve flexibility.  Instead of small rectangles, I would use long horizontal strips that overlapped.  I could also use a base of leather to attach them to, and have spare pieces ready to replace any parts that were worn or broken.  The rivets that held them onto the leather would hold the runes for the shielding, and I could inlay grooves where liquid qi could be poured onto them to activate the different types of shield.  It would be small, and burn through the energy quickly, but in an emergency it might give us the time needed to heal, or recharge our cores enough to keep fighting.

My early experiments combining orichalcum with the oily adamantine were not good.  They were like, well, oil and water.  Mixing seemed impossible.  Orichalcum was hard to deal with, and it was brittle if heated up too much.  Getting the adamantine to a malleable state was exhausting, as it used huge amounts of qi, and required extremely high temperatures.  I didn’t see a way to get the two metals to work together.

So, I was forced to change things up a little.  I had a decent supply of mithril, especially if I included what had been in the ring of the dead man that had been in the old shipwreck.  Initially, I had thought about returning all of it to the clan, but I had a continent to save.  I needed to use everything at my disposal to make that happen.  Mithril wasn’t as strong as adamantine, but it was pretty close.  It would have to be close enough.

I tried combining mithril and orichalcum, and thankfully it worked.  Five ingots of mithril with one ingot of orichalcum turned out to be the perfect mix, and it diluted the effects of the qi-blocking material enough that it wouldn’t stop the internal use of qi.  External attacks would have to happen through the hands and feet only, but that would be the only place they could hurt us with qi as well.  I would have to make some new weapons that allowed us to enhance them easily, to make up for the lack of versatility.  A massive qi attack or construct might be able to get through, but it wouldn’t be as damaging.

Mithril was normally a silvery metal that reflected light with a pale and beautiful sheen.  Now that it was combined with orichalcum, it had a red tint that cut down on the mirror-like effect.  It would make it less visible, which was certainly a positive, but I would need to add a rough polish to cut down on it even more.

Once I had the alloy figured out, I went and took measurements of my friends.  I had lost track of time, and they already had a massive pile of formation plates and popper stones ready to split between us.

Donny was even experimenting with new combinations, and testing them by tossing the plates over the wall.  As I watched, a column of stone shot into the air before exploding, sending shards of sharp rocks raining down all over the area.  “Nope, not concentrated enough.  It needs more energy in the explosion, and less in the vertical expansion…”

I left him to it, after collecting his measurements and axe.  Everyone else had handed over their main weapons as well, except for Valerie.  She had kept her bow, but handed over three quivers of homemade arrows.

“I like my bow just how it is, but if you can improve these somehow, I would appreciate it.”  They were thicker than the arrows I would normally use, but the arrowheads were still the same size as a regular arrow.

“I think I can come up with something.”  I stored them in my belt as I walked back to the forge.  I had been cultivating as much as possible while taking a break, but the progress I had made so far had drained more than three-quarters of my core.  I would need to take a break after figuring out an alloy to enhance our weapons.

There wasn’t enough mithril to make both the weapons and armor, so I went back to the adamantine.  I still had a ridiculous amount of the metal, making it my best option.  A quick experiment with malachite showed it suffered from the same high heat issues as the orichalcum had, so I would need to do something else.  Since I only had a limited amount of malachite, I decided to just inlay it into the weapons.  A thin strip of the qi-enhancing metal would allow for a minor increase in the six main elements, and adamantine already allowed for the easy passage of light and dark qi.  Just like with the armor, it wasn’t perfect, but it was better than the plain steel versions of the weapons that everyone carried right now.

After deciding what I was going to do, I sat down on the floor and started to draw out the plans for each person.  Jamila, in particular, wouldn’t like how restrictive this armor design would be, but it would be necessary to keep her from getting ripped apart by the death cultivator’s minions.

“Ready for some food?”  Chu walked in with a plate of meat skewers, and a large piece of flatbread to go with it.  “You have been at this all day.”

“I can work on these while eating, and cultivating to refill my cores.”  I took the plate from him, and turned back to my sketches.  “We need to get moving, before the necromancer can mobilize his forces against us.  That means I need to finish with these as soon as possible.”

“Do you think you can finish this by tomorrow?”  He looked around at the massive mess I had made.  “I mean, our old armor is plenty serviceable.”

“No, it isn’t good enough.”  I pointed to the drawing of an armet, a full-face helmet that hinged along each cheek and had a visor that dropped in place to hold the sides against the head.  “This will protect you better than what we currently have, and provide better protection from qi attacks across your entire body.”  I then pulled out a piece of parchment with my rivet design.  “And each rivet will provide you with a small shield, like the buttons we used before.”

He bent down to look them over.  “Why do they all have that deep groove along the edges?  Wouldn’t that make them weaker, where the metal is thinner?”

“Yes, but it’s worth the trade-off.”  I held up my first attempt, and pulled out a vial of liquid qi.  “Watch.  When I pour this over the rivet, instead of it just running over the top of it, the liquid collects here.”  A sixteen-inch round shield of shimmering qi formed around the small piece of metal.  “It is only enough to power it for a minute or two, but that’s all we’ll need.”

“Okay, looks good to me.”  He poked at the shield, causing the runes on the small rivet to flare brightly.  “It just seems like a lot of work to get done in a short period of time.”

“I know, and I could use your help.”  I pulled out the designs for the leather base and cloth lining the armor would need.  “If you and the others could work on these, I would really appreciate it.”

He took them from me and headed for the door.  “We can handle this part.  You get the rest finished.”

Chu was out the door before I could say anything else, so I got back to work.  The forge had to be powered by my qi, and I had to infuse the actual metal while shaping it.  Pretty soon, the sounds of a hammer ringing against an anvil filled the large cavern.

After making enough of the alloy, I started shaping the various pieces into the necessary parts.  It took much longer this time around because I couldn’t just make a mold.  Each piece required a different shape, and I made two of each so everyone had a spare section if something broke.  At one point, I heard shouting coming from outside, but I just ignored it and kept working.  It sounded like people complaining about the noise I was making, and not an attack.  They could just deal with the lack of sleep.  It was my friends and I going out there, not them.  The sailors were going to stay here and turtle up inside these safe walls, while we put our lives on the line to save them.

It took the better part of the rest of the next day to finish, but when I finally popped the pure mithril rivets in place, the end result was worth it.  I felt as though a Grandmaster blacksmith would be proud to wear it, even if it was light on enchantments.

The five sets of armor and weapons were far from identical, but they all looked brutally effective.  I had made Donny’s new axe thinner, and Jamila’s dual katanas longer.  The mace for Chu was almost the same size, but the handle was a little thicker to manage the weight of the heavy end of the mace-head better.  I had also added a brutal three-sided pyramid-shaped spike at each end of the eight-bladed mace, to give him more versatility and reach.  Valerie now had a wide selection of arrows, including heavy armor-piercing tips, barbed tipped for maximum damage, and some broadhead tips that were sized properly for the larger arrow shafts she had given me.  For myself, I had made a dozen new spears made of solid adamantine, as well as several improved throwing knives that I could use with my whips.  The rows of runes along the hilts and blades would be very useful in the coming battle.

Finally, I had designed new tower shields for everyone.  Instead of the massive door-sized steel versions, these would only reach our shoulders if they were set on the ground. I had used plain adamantine, without any of the modifications.  They were the last item I had made, so I didn’t have the qi left to do anything fancy.  The top and bottoms had a row of short, thick spikes, and the edges were sharpened like an oversized axe blade.  They were good for both offense and defense, and should prove especially useful in these tunnels.

“Wow.”  I turned around to see my friends lined up across from me.  “That’s some impressive work, Jim.”  Donny approached and picked up his new axe.  “Why don’t you get some rest, and we can practice with this new gear for a few hours.  It looks like it’s going to take a little getting used to.”

“Yeah, get some sleep.  You look dead on your feet.”  Jamila glanced over at me while checking out her armor.  “It’s going to take more than a little getting used to this armor.  I have no idea how I’m going to fight while wrapped up in this metal cocoon.”

I didn’t bother arguing, I just stumbled to bed.  It had been a long two days, and despite being a Saint cultivator, my meridians were still sending spikes of pain through my body.  It was a reminder not to slack on reinforcing my cultivation system, and to keep up with my daily exercise regime.  I had been neglecting it since we had shipwrecked, and a few rock trolls were no excuse for falling behind.

As I finally laid down to sleep, it finally hit me.  Why would a nox be using a tool that helped open a doorway to the vorare?  I didn’t like any of the answers my brain could come up with.