Chapter 169: Overgeared

The words came out dry, the kind of casual tone you used when you didn’t want to acknowledge how close you’d been to dying. He lifted the finished piece with both hands and turned it under the light leaking through the cracked window. The leather was dark and thick, edges clean where they should’ve been rough, the seams tightened into something that looked manufactured rather than stitched by a half-mad climber in a ruined room.

It was made entirely out of leather, a head cover mostly. Made of basilisk leather and reinforced with heat-resistant scales.

The scales sat flush instead of layered like cheap armor plates. Each one had been hammered in until it felt like part of the leather’s skin, not an add-on. The surface wasn’t smooth, but it wasn’t jagged either, more like the subtle texture of a predator’s hide, designed to deflect rather than catch.

[Journeyman’s Leather Helmet]

Item rarity: -Epic-

Item Level. 20.

Creator: Kael Ardent.

+10% resistance to Cold.

+10% resistance to pierce damage.

+33% Resistance to Heat.

5% Stamina regeneration.

A leather Helmet made from superior materials, which were meant to create [Basilisk Leather Helmet]. Though the original work was crude, it was very innovative and a different approach to the normal methods of creating items in the tower. It has now been completed. And to a far better degree than a normal Basilisk Leather Helmet.

[As the creator of this item, the Level Restriction to wear and use it has been omitted]

“No stat upgrades this time,” Kael said with a rueful smile.

It wasn’t disappointment so much as… expectation. The Tower didn’t hand out rewards just because you tried hard. It rewarded results when it felt like it, and sometimes it punished you for thinking you deserved anything at all. Still, he’d been riding a wave of titles and stat bumps lately, so the lack of one made the silence feel louder.

Still, it wasn’t all bad.

The helmet looked surprisingly decent, at least by Kael’s standards.

It was made from dark, thick leather, molded into a simple Spartan-style design.

Kael had spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to decide what kind of helmet to craft before finally giving up and thinking, ’Why not make something a little funny while I’m at it?’

It hadn’t been vanity. Not fully. A helmet was protection, but it was also identity. If he was going to be forced into the Tower’s stupid little “systems” and “sets,” then he at least wanted to choose the shape of the mask he wore. Something with enough intimidation to make people hesitate, and enough ridiculousness to remind him that he was still a person under the gear.

The result sat in his hands now.

The helmet’s shape was rounded and close-fitting, the leather reinforced along the brow and sides with tight stitching.

A T-shaped visor had been cut into the front, the vertical slit running down the center of the face, while a horizontal opening allowed for vision.

The design gave the helmet a stern, almost intimidating look, like a faceless warrior staring out from a dark mask.

Along the crown ran a narrow ridge where a crest had been fixed.

Instead of horsehair, Kael had threaded several strands of Atrax steel silk through the leather spine.

The fibers weren’t as smooth or flowing as horsehair, but they shimmered faintly in the light, each strand thin as thread yet carrying the subtle metallic sheen of forged wire.

When the helmet moved, the crest shifted with a soft, stiff sway…less like hair in the wind and more like a banner made from living steel.

It was an unusual choice, but it gave the helmet a strange elegance.

’Not bad… for something that had started as an experiment.’

He smiled as he put the helmet on.

The leather settled over his head with a snug pressure, not tight enough to pinch, not loose enough to wobble. The visor framed his view cleanly, and the smell of treated hide, earthy and sharp, filled his nose for a second before his brain filed it away as “normal.”

He turned his head left and right, and it didn’t feel like it stuck or slowed him in any way.

That part mattered more than looks. Anything that restricted movement would get you killed. Anything that narrowed your field of view too much would get you killed faster. Kael tested it the way he tested everything: with suspicion first, approval second.

Thanks to Brokk’s hammer, all the fine details and the rough patchwork were fixed in place, giving it a cool look that Kael felt pride to wear, and slightly embarrassed to be seen in public wearing.

He could already hear someone calling it ridiculous if they saw him up close. He could also hear someone screaming when their face got burned because they didn’t protect it. The Tower had a way of making you appreciate “ridiculous” as long as it worked.

Function Over Form.

’Still, better embarrassed and alive, than dignified but cooked.’

He thought as how this piece can now allow him to survive the flames of the Ifrit if it ever came to a direct confrontation.

The memory of that heat wave still lived in his skin. The brief second where everything became fire, where his body argued with the world and almost lost. The helmet didn’t make him immortal, but it made the margin of survival wider, and Kael had learned to worship margins.

The leather pants were also upgraded to match the ’set.’ And now he had all the needed pieces to complete the enhanced Journeyman’s leather set.

He didn’t linger on the pants the way he lingered on the helmet; legs were important, but a face was irreplaceable. Still, he’d reinforced the weak spots, layered scales where it mattered most, replaced youngling leather with the mother’s, and hammered seams until they felt like they belonged to the same “language” as the jacket. It wasn’t perfect craftsmanship. It was Kael’s craftsmanship, fast, inventive, made under pressure.

[You have completed the Journeyman’s Leather Set!]

Total stats gained by wearing the set.

[Helmet]

+10% resistance to Cold.

+10% resistance to pierce damage.

+23 Resistance to Heat.

5% Stamina regeneration.

[Chest]

+20% resistance to Cold.

+20% resistance to pierce damage.

+33 Resistance to Heat.10% Stamina regeneration.

+10% Stamina regeneration.

[Pants]

+10% resistance to Cold.

+10% resistance to pierce damage.

+33 Resistance to Heat.5% Stamina regeneration

+5% Stamina regeneration.

[Total]

+40% Resistance to Cold.

+40% resistance to Pierce Damage

+99% resistance to fire damage.

+20% Stamina regeneration.

[Set Effect obtained]

***

[Journeyman’s Endurance]

When Stamina drops below 20%, all resource regeneration (Stamina, Mana, and similar resources) increases by 50% for 30 seconds.

“The work of a true journeyman is tested when exhaustion sets in.”

***

You have obtained the title [Overgeared]

+1 to all stats.

***

Kael stared at the set window longer than he meant to.

Ninety-nine percent resistance to fire damage. The number was obscene, the kind of thing that made you immediately look for the hidden knife behind it. Because the Tower always had a knife. That one percent could still stab you in the back if you’re not careful enough.

Still… it meant something.

It meant the Ifrit’s zone didn’t automatically equal death anymore. And fighting the Ifrit didn’t immediately mean cooked flesh and smoldering bones.

It meant Kael had bought himself time. A wider margin. A few more seconds to make a mistake and correct it before the Tower cashed him out.

And the title at the bottom, [Overgeared], felt like the Tower spitting in his direction while handing him a medal.

Kael couldn’t help the thin, exhausted smile that tugged at his mouth under the new helmet.

Overgeared.

Fine.

Better that than under-buried.

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