Chapter 82: Creation Requires Sacrifice

“Finally!” Kael muttered as he finished, the word coming out in a breath that sounded more like he’d been holding his lungs shut for an hour than actually working at a desk.

His shoulders ached in that dull, unfamiliar way that came from repetitive precision rather than heavy labor. Construction work was simple in its cruelty: lift, carry, swing, repeat. This was different. This was the kind of effort that demanded focus. One wrong cut, one wrong seam, and he’d waste material that had taken blood and risk to earn.

In front of him, he had three decent-sized pieces of Black Basilisk Leather instead of the damaged ones. The transformation still felt a little unreal. A few taps with Brokk’s hammer and something that had been half-ruined, chewed and torn and rotted at the edges, turned into clean, usable sheets like the Tower itself was reluctantly admitting he’d earned the right to make something decent.

Thankfully, each piece was large enough to be used for a jacket’s back, front, and the remaining one could be cut in half to make sleeves. It wasn’t perfect armor. It wasn’t some legendary set that would let him walk into fire like it was rain. But it was something, and in this place, something was the difference between bleeding out and living long enough to hate tomorrow.

But he had an issue.

He was unable to get a proper measurement for his own body to make anything remotely usable. He didn’t have a tailor’s tape. He didn’t have a mirror. Hell, he didn’t even have the calm environment to stop and measure himself without feeling like the darkness outside was gathering teeth.

He stared at the leather, then at his own body, and felt the faint frustration rise. If he made it too tight, he’d rip it the moment he moved. If he made it too loose, it would snag, flap, and get him killed the first time he needed speed.

Then he did something that was rather smart, smart enough that even he felt a flicker of satisfaction at the idea.

He removed his own tracksuit.

It used to be burnt, cut, and barely worth the heat it could even provide anymore. But thanks to Dragon fixing it, it was now of service and back to its original form, minus the mud that stank of goblin piss, which was also a bonus that he was thankful for. The fabric no longer smelled of smoke and sweat, but was like it had been pressed and dry cleaned in an expensive drycleaner. And most importantly, it gave him something he desperately needed.

It was a perfect fit for his body. And that meant it was all the measurement he needed.

Kael laid the leather on the table, flattening it with his palms until the curls at the edges stopped trying to lift. Then he spread the tracksuit on top of it, smoothing it out like a pattern. He realized immediately he could still have spare material once he made the back side, since the leather piece was a bit larger than the tracksuit.

Enough spare for patching. Enough spare for reinforcement, a reinforced collar and sleeves, pockets, and some straps if needed, not to mention enough spare to correct the inevitable mistakes.

So, he needed to start cutting.

“Ah, shit… I forgot about scissors…”

The sentence came out automatically, like a reflex from a normal life where forgetting scissors was a minor inconvenience instead of a problem you had to solve with monster parts and improvisation.

Stumped by the realization, he sighed and looked around the room as if the universe might suddenly remember it owed him a toolbox. The underground facility gave him nothing but humming boxes, broken monitors, and cables sprawled like dead vines.

“There isn’t anything remotely close to scissors here…” he muttered, eyes scanning the debris anyway, “not that it’ll matter.”

And even if he did find scissors… they wouldn’t be normal scissors. He could already feel it. Basilisk leather wasn’t cotton. It wasn’t denim. It was thick, dense, stubborn material that had spent its entire existence resisting teeth and claws. If he wanted to cut something like this cleanly, it would need to be a system item, or something close enough to mana to ignore reality’s usual rules.

Scissors needed to be mana ones. One from the system to be able to cut something this thick. And no matter how hard he looked, the world wasn’t going to provide it for him if he simply wished for it; this isn’t that kind of fantasy.

His gaze drifted back to the pile of loot, and he paused.

“Oh wait…”

He glanced at the claws on the table, especially the Black Basilisk claw.

They were old. Damaged, too. Some edges were chipped, some had faint cracks, like they’d been through fights before he ever touched them. But the tips were still wicked, curved like hooked knives. The kind of sharp that didn’t look sharp until you made the mistake of touching it.

He pulled one of them and slid it across the table.

It didn’t meet any resistance.

It left a large groove in the desk, wood or cheap composite flaking aside like paper, a testament to its sharpness. Kael’s eyebrows rose slightly. If it could carve the table that easily, it could carve leather.

Kael then used the hammer to try to “change” the structure of the claw.

He didn’t even swing hard. Just a controlled tap, the way you’d test a nail before you drove it in.

[You have destroyed 1 Black Basilisk Claw]

“Shit,” Kael whispered, staring at the snapped, useless piece. The claw had cracked like glass under pressure, falling apart into brittle segments. No reshaping. No miracle.

For a second, he felt the familiar annoyance bloom, the Tower giving with one hand, slapping with the other.

’Okay. I guess not everything can be altered. Something as basic as a claw would simply break…’ He exhaled slowly, forcing himself not to spiral into frustration. ’The leather, I guess, and metal are a bit more malleable… the claw was just too rigid.’

He believed his own analysis, but he didn’t despair. There was no time for despair. Despair was expensive.

He still had more claws to use. So, he didn’t need scissors if he had a knife.

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