The Rifleman - Ch.42 (Patreon)

Chapter Forty-Two

It’s not a bug; it’s a feature!

The moment they were outside the dungeon and back in his Domain, Malia bathed and went to sleep. Wesley, feeling the bone-deep ache of exhaustion himself, didn’t blame her in the slightest, but sleep was not the first thing on his mind despite his entire being aching for it.

Instead, Wes set up the new repair materials next to the ones he had organized before and then sat and stared at them for almost an hour. The whole trip had been to get him to this exact moment, and he was completely blank. 

His instincts were still screaming at him, but as for an actual idea as to what to do with them?

Bupkiss.

Somehow, he had been convinced that the moment he saw them all laid out, it would just come to him. He could feel the knowledge swimming around, just out of reach, but nothing at all was changing.

Tired of just staring at them and partially to fight off the ever more insistent demands from his body for sleep, Wesley picked up a Power crystal, running his hands over the smooth planes. That helped, and Wes moved on to examining the other materials. Picking them up, holding them, studying them.

An instinct caused him to shift into Were-wisp, and he ran his translucent hands over them all again. 

Twice.

It was so close he could almost taste it, and he decided to close his eyes and think about it, just for a minute.

Just one little minute.

Wesley woke up several hours later, his forehead resting on the repair bench, and the smell of food cooking was the first thing that he noticed. 

“I didn’t know you could sleep like that,” Malia nodded to his still-wispy body. “Is that more restful?”

Wesley dropped the wisp form and shifted around a little. “Actually, I think it is.”

“Nice,” Malia gave him a half smile. “Any luck with your mysterious memory?”

“Nothing,” Wesley hissed. “I swear, I almost had it….”

“And then you fell asleep?” Malia guessed.

“Pretty much,” Wesley yawned.

“Well, come and have some breakfast before you get back to it,” Malia waved the pan at him. “I don’t cook often, so come and take advantage while you have the chance.”

Wesley, never one to turn down a free meal, agreed readily and joined her at the table, enjoying some kind of stir-fried vegetables that carried the perfect hit of spice to wake him up the rest of the way.

Many appreciative noises were made, but he was mostly thinking. He thought about how the different spices in this world added up to almost the tastes he was used to, but it was never quite the same. One day, he would find the exact combination needed to recreate the precise taste of something from home. All it would take would be to find the missing pieces of a particular—

“Where are you going?” Malia looked up in surprise when Wesley suddenly dashed back to his repair table. “Too hot for you?”

“I’ll show you,” Wesley said, calling her over. “But it might not make a lot of sense.”

“It’s all about the food,” Wesley said as he gestured to the table with its neat piles of materials. “You take the right things, use them in the right way.”

“You aren’t going to eat them, are you?” Malia teased.

“I don’t think so,” Wesley grinned. “But it is all about how they taste.”

“Taste?” Malia was starting to look concerned.

“I’m not explaining this very well,” Wesley admitted. “Okay, it is difficult to explain to someone who isn’t a wisp.”

“Just slow down,” Malia said. “Take me through it step by step.”

Wesley stopped and took a deep breath, trying to force himself to be calm even as his blood felt like it was made of lightning. 

“Wisps can sense energy. We can sort of taste it. Taste isn’t the right word, but it isn’t entirely wrong either. I honestly don’t know if the right word exists, so let’s just use taste instead, okay?” He asked.

“Fine, go on,” Malia was still frowning.

“Okay, so all the scraps that can be used to repair items have a little bit of energy that isn’t in other items. It is what makes them repair materials instead of just the base items. It is really subtle, but as I was thinking about the breakfast you cooked, I realized they all had a sort of incomplete feeling—something missing,” Wes said excitedly.

“My breakfast was missing something?” She asked, her entire body screaming her feelings of insult.

“No, it was actually amazing; it just didn’t taste like something from Earth,” Wesley clarified hurriedly. “I was trying to think how to find the missing element to make it taste like food from home when I realized what it meant.”

“Go on,” Malia crossed her arms and nodded. Wesley was suddenly sure he would pay for that ‘something missing’ comment about her food, no matter how much he tried to explain it away.

“So I figured it must be just like cooking, a recipe of some kind,” Wesley gestured to the mats. “I just need to figure out how to cook it, so to speak.”

“To do what, exactly?” Malia asked. 

“No idea,” Wesley admitted. “But it has to be worth finding, right?”

Her doubt was clear, but she just shrugged and went back to the table. 

Wesley turned to the materials, running his fingers over them one at a time, trying to find the common ‘tastes.’ At first, he was having no luck, until he eventually started to try ‘tasting’ different amounts of each item.

Over the next hour, he lost himself in figuring out the perfect amount of taste in each individual material. For Cloth scraps, the magic number seemed to be four, while leather needed six, and oil was two. 

None of it made sense to explain, but it was still right. He could feel it. 

Wesley didn’t notice when Malia went back to sleep or when she woke up again, shooting him worried looks as he fussed over the materials. 

After a time he had long lost track of, he had the materials all sorted into their ‘optimal’ tastes. If there was an interior logic to the numbers, it escaped him. A steel bar was fine as a single, but iron bars needed three, and so on.

The next couple of hours passed as he tried to ‘taste’ the similarities, but he was stuck thanks to one simple problem. It was difficult to know what was missing when he had never ‘tasted’ the complete recipe. 

In an effort to get a sense of what that ‘taste’ might be, Wesley took one portion of each of the materials over to a second repair table and set them out. Slowly, he moved them closer to each other but soon found that some were clashing badly. 

So, he reorganized them and tried again.

Then again.

And so it went for hours. When Malia started to approach him, carefully asking if he was okay, Wes finally found what he was looking for.

“Okay,” Wes blinked his glazed eyes at her. “I think I have it.”

“That’s good,” Malia said gently. “Why don’t you get some sleep, then show me?”

“No, I want to finish this first,” Wesley insisted, feeling almost feverish. “Watch.”

He took the power crystal and placed it in the center of the table, then placed the cloth above it, the steel bar below, the leather to the right of the cloth, and the oil to the right of the steel. Next, he placed first the gears, then the wheels to the right of the crystal, and the iron bars to the right. 

The power crystal flared, small tendrils of light reaching into the other materials and pulling them in. There was a flash of light, and the materials vanished, a small silver cube settling gently down onto the repair table.

Upgrade Cube (Crafted)

Upgrade an Item to the next tier.

Chance of 2 tiers - 10%

Chance of additional features - 5%

“Now, I’m going to bed,” Wesley yawned hugely and passed it to Malia. “You can have that one; I’ll make another when I wake up.”

Malia’s excited squeals were deafening, but nothing could have woken him at that point, and Wesley was asleep before his head hit the pillow. 

////////////////////

Wesley had no idea how long he had been asleep for, but he sure as hell knew when he woke up with chalky writing scrawling itself across the roof of his alcove the second his eyes opened. 

New recipe discovered!

Upgrade Cube (Crafted) - A new creation has been made in the game!

What other recipes are waiting to be discovered?

NOTE: Repair material crafting is NPC only and not available to Player Characters. 

NOTE: Items crafted from repair materials are not useable by Player Characters.

Award Obtained!

Award: Pioneer

Pioneer:

As the creator of a new recipe, you now have an increased chance of success, as well as a 25% chance of gaining a second item when crafting.

“Huh, that does not suck,” Wesley grinned. 

“Can we talk?” Malia asked, and he rolled over to see her sitting in a chair, where she seemed to have been waiting for him to wake up.

“Sure,” Wesley slid out of the bed and stretched. “Mind if I wash up and that first?”

“Oh, right,” Malia flushed. “Sure. I’ll just, uh, wait over there.”

Ten minutes later, Wesley slid into a chair across the table from Malia and nodded.

“Do you have any idea what you did last night?” She practically exploded. “You just changed the damn world, is what!”

“Did you try it yet?” Wesley asked. 

“I didn’t remember the recipe!” Malia snapped. “I thought you had cracked up or something, so I didn’t pay attention. Can you imagine if you had died or something? The secret would just go poof!”

“Yeah, I’ll write it down for you,” Wesley said. “In fact, I want to try some other things as well once we make as many cubes as we can.”

“I need to make notes,” Malia said, her eyes wide. “I don’t know if I have any paper.”

“It’s fine,” Wesley said soothingly. “I have a notebook and pencil in my bag.”

“You do?” Malia stopped.

“Yeah, we can record everything we find that works in there.” Wesley grinned. “This should be fun.”

“Fun?” Malia laughed somewhat manically. “Wes, you strange little man, you have just given NPCs a way to compete with the bloody Player Characters.”

“So,” Wesley said, deciding to push his luck as she seemed to be in an excited state, “Any chance of getting some breakfast?”

“Are you done yet?” Malia asked, hovering over him as Wesley hungrily wolfed down his second helping of breakfast. “Can we try now?”

“Give a guy a chance to swallow,” Wesley coughed. “Damn, I’m excited too, you know.”

“Fine. Sorry,” Malia threw herself into a chair and visibly forced herself to calm down.

“Thank you,” Wesley said, finishing his second helping, “Now I am done.”

“Great!” Malia grinned. “So, notebook?”

Wesley handed it to her and explained the whole thing over again, with her filling two pages with notes. Finally, he gave her the recipe for the upgrade cube and explained that he had been given an award and what it did.

“I’ve never even heard of an award,” Malia muttered. “Do you think it is some crafter thing?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy,” Wesley muttered. “Let’s see if it works, shall we?”

Malia nodded, and Wesley carefully arranged the materials again.

With a pop and a flash, they had another upgrade cube.

“Again!” Malia cheered.

So, he did it again, and this time, the pop and flash left behind a pair of cubes.

“Again!” Malia insisted.

“Don’t you want to try this time?” Wesley asked.

“What if I mess it up?” Malia protested as he pushed her over the materials. 

“You can’t,” Wesley promised her. “Just place the materials down, and it will happen. There is nothing to do wrong.”

Malia copied his attempts and screamed in shock when the pop and flash happened, and she was looking at a brand new cube.

“Uh,” Malia picked it up. “I honestly thought it would only work for you,” She had tears in her eyes as she looked up. “What’s next?”

Next was, naturally, a lot of experimentation. Learning how to combine the materials had been a long process, but it paid off in more ways than just giving them the cubes. For a start, Wesley was able to tell which items conflicted with earth other. That conflict seemed to be the catalyst needed to create the change in the first place, so that was his starting point.

The power crystal in the center seemed to be the power supply for the change, so he kept it there, trying various combinations of opposites until, finally, one worked. Three steel bars below, a stack of leather above, and a set of gears on the left, with wheels on the right. The gears and wheels weren’t opposites, but it just seemed balanced to have something on either side.

It was the first pop and flash in hours, and Wes jumped in shock. 

Weapon Mod (Crafted) - 

Provides one of three modifications dependent on weapon type.

“We have a winner!” Malia cheered, “Okay, what did you do, and why?”

Wesley laughed and explained.

Malia took notes, then thrust the notebook at him and hurriedly started shifting things around.

“What?” Wesley asked, drawn in by her excitement. 

“I was just thinking….” Malia cheered as there was another flash and pop. “I was thinking that if we reversed the formula and changed things for armor materials, well, this!”

Armor Reinforcement (Crafted) - 

Modifies an existing armor set to increase resistance, add a modification, or (rarely) infuse a power function.

“You try it!” She explained the formula as she made notes in the book. 

Wes arranged cloth on either side of a set of leather and added the power crystal with wheels on the left and gears on the right before finally adding a single bar of steel above.

A pop and a flash later, Wes was looking at two more of the reinforcements.

“Ooh, I hope I get that award as well,” Malia nudged him. “We could become quite the crafting team.”

////////////////////

At the end of their crafting session, having run out of materials to combine, or at least some of them, Malia and Wes sat back at the main table with their new creations laid out in front of them.

“Five upgrade cubes, two weapon mods, and three armor reinforcements,” Malia’s eyes sparkled. “This is more than most NPCs will see in a lifetime.”

“And we can make more once we get the materials,” Wesley reminded her.

“Fuck,” Malia sat back. “My mind just can’t keep up.”

“There is something else,” Wesley said, “We can teach other people to do this.”

“Well, sure,” Malia said with a shrug. “But if we tell the wrong person, they will just kill us to keep the secret for themselves.”

“So we need to choose carefully.” Wesley nodded. “But we still need to make sure others know, right?”

“Right.” Malia nodded seriously. “But first, well, I don’t want to sound paranoid, but…”

“Go on,” Wesley prompted.

“I think we need to gather as many repair mats as we can and make our own supply. We should only go to a city once we have an actual plan.” Malia said. “For now, we stick to Outposts, move on every time we use a lot of upgrades, and stay strangers to the Keepers.” 

“What about contracts, that kind of thing?” Wesley asked. “Not to mention food and supplies. All the things that towns provide.”

“Contacts we can pick up at Outposts, the meat we can hunt for, and other stuff we can trade for,” Malia was getting into her stride now. “I know it is asking a lot, but I really think it will pay off in the long run.”

Wesley thought it over and decided Malia was right. Any attention they drew towards them now could end in disaster. If these mods really made such a big difference, or rather a way to make them did, then lots of Player Characters would be more than happy to kill them to prevent it from happening.

Weirdly enough, they were safer out here in the wilds.

“Fine, we stay out of the way for a while,” Wesley agreed. “Now, shall we get onto the good part?”

“The good part?” Malia smiled.

“Dividing up the loot!” Wesley laughed.

“I get some then?” Malia asked.

“We are partners, right?” Wesley replied. “Half each?”

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. They had ten in total, but with five of one and three of another, it was more complicated than an even split. 

In the end, Wesley ended up with two upgrade cubes, a weapon mod, and two reinforcements. They agreed to reverse the split on the next haul; just as soon as they could get the materials, the plan to gather them was the next job.

But first….