Ilis Stoutpeak, engineer extraordinaire. At your service.

With Hemet gone, John’s attention turned to the two other dwarves still left. Old Fred was leisurely sipping his tea while Ilis was looking at John. Her eyes sparkling slightly.

“So, ehm, that happened. He is different than I imagined him to be. In the game he was, well, he was deadly; he looks a lot more dadly in the real world,” John spoke with a sigh.

Ilis shrugged, taking the scroll from the table, cracking open the seal as she started to inspect the contents. When she was done, she put the scroll down and looked at John.

“Well,, ehm, you got ordered to do things for me?” John asked, rubbing his hand over the small holes Jack had created. “What exactly is it you do, Ilis?”

“Well, I am an engineer, I create machines, guns, the like,” Ilis answered him with a smile, her hands wringing slightly, clearly itching to try and build whatever it was in the scroll.

“In basic terms, you are a gadgeteer?”

“Lad, she’s the best at what she does! Take it from Old Fred,” the older dwarf cut in. “My little niece here might not be as old as me, but by Artemis, is she good at her work. For her 8th birthday, her father gave her an old, rusted blunderbuss; she had it disassembled, cleaned and back in working condition before the cake was even served!” Old Fred spoke with no small hint of pride.

Ilis blushed heavily at Old Fred’s praise. “He is exaggerating, though I do make quality stuff. Wanna have a look? I am sure that Lord Hemet would not order me to help you if he thought I could not be of use to you in any way.”

John gave a nod, smiling as Ilis got up and led him to a nearby shelf.

“Over here are a few items I have been creating over the past weeks. Most of them come from schematics Lord Hemet gave me.”

On the shelf there were a few items laid out: a gun of some kind, a few metal balls, a small crossbow and some rather large bear traps.

“You made all these?” John asked as he took up the metal balls, looking over the smooth edges.

“Yes, and if I were you, I would not touch that,” Ilis stated with a grin, picking up one of the balls and tossing it at a steel plate nearby. The moment the ball hit the plate, it began to glow, melting it’s way through the finger thick steel like it was butter.

John quickly put the ball he had been playing with down.
“Armor piercing rounds. Useful if you use a gun. Do you use a gun?” she asked with interest.

“Oh, no, I use a bow and, well, a shortsword?” John answered truthfully.

Ilis took the items from the shelve, walking back to the table and depositing them on there, pushing a few other items onto the floor to make room. “Put your gear down and lets see what you can use then, John. If I am to help you with gear, I will need to have a bit of a grasp on what you can do after all.”

John dutifully pulled out his weapons, placing them on the other side of the table. When he pulled out his new quiver, Old Fred gave a startled cry. “What is that? And why does it seem so… magical?” he asked as he ran to the table, picking up the quiver and inspecting it through his small, round glasses. “Remarkable…”

“Ehm, I got it through my powers; according to the description, it should increase the damage of the arrows I pull from it, and the less arrows in it, the more powerful they get.”

“Lad, you have some crazy powers, I love it!” Old Fred laughed, slapping John on the shoulder, then holding his hand up. “Your other quiver. You have not yet paid me for it, so return it please.”

John shrugged, giving the quiver he had been using before back to Old Fred who put it into his beard for safe keeping.

“So, with that out of the way, you are an archer, correct? Then why are you using a short sword as a melee weapon? Swords require equal parts strength as they do dexterity to wield,” Ilis gave her assessment. “I would advise you to find a different weapon, something more in line with… Maybe I have something for that, but first, these items.”

John nodded when she asked if he was an archer, not knowing what to answer to her question. When he had not gotten a sword mastery skill after using the sword, he had wondered why. The explanation Ilis gave him did make sense. Maybe Gaia was pushing him into a certain direction, or maybe he just did not have any affinity with the weapon he was using.

“Let me explain the items I can spare for now.” The female dwarf started to point out the functions of the items, starting with the gun, “Grappling hook with an attached launcher. I built it so that if you infuse mana into the motor the hook will rewind itself; it can hold quite a bit, but I would not recommend going bungee jumping with it, or using it as a weapon. The hook inside will deploy when you either press this button here or when the chain gets fully extended. There are about forty meters of chain in there, it has a minor space compression module inside; however, the chain is not very durable against attacks.”

John nodded, running his fingers over the grappling hook launching gun. It fit nicely into his hands albeit a bit unnatural. Nevertheless, he thought it might be quite the boon to have this in his toolkit.

“This crossbow has been designed after a videogame, so I bet it will fit your powers quite well. It has been build to auto reload itself with a total of two shots. If you reload it you will then of course need to reload both shots. Uncle Fred has made these vials that are perfect for it, they contain a strong sedative; though you can also load small darts into it, they will not be as effective as your normal arrows.”

John ran his hand over the crossbow; it did indeed seem slightly familiar. It was small, about 1.5 times the size of his hand. He squeezed the trigger, the metal promptly turning over to show another, already drawn bowstring. The vials Ilis handed him were small metal vials with a needle attached to the front. They could click into hollow arrows that Ilis had designed specially for this crossbow.

“With the **** of collision, the head of the arrow will pierce into your enemy or prey’s skin, and due to the momentum, the back of the arrow will work like a plunger and deposit the potion into their bloodstream. Depending on a few factors, you know, the quality of the sedative, size of the animal, type of animal, the works, it can take up to a minute or so to work, at most.”

John gave a small nod, amazed by the ingenuity that this girl was showing; the way that her eyes sparkled when she explained the details made him chuckle. She was cute, very cute.

“Finally, we have a set of self deploying traps. For now, they are mainly prototypes; toss them down like this and they will set themselves.” Ilis casually tossed one of the traps onto the floor behind her. The teeth of the trap slowly opened until half a minute later a small click could be heard. “Takes a while to set up, as I said, prototypes.” Ilis then took an iron pipe, tapping on the trap, and the teeth clamped shut around the pipe, tightly holding it in place, the metal deformed at the points of impact.

“I can improve upon them if you give me more time; though for now, you can take a few of them,” Ilis smiled at him, her crazed look slowly being exchanged with a bashful one, noticing the way John was staring at her.

“These are great! You are… Great! I am sounding like a fool!” John chuckled awkwardly, putting the items into his inventory again, pocketing his weapons as well.

“Now, John, Uncle Fred, I think you should get back to the camp. I have a new schematic to try out, and I might have an idea for a weapon better suited to your skillset, John, but I need to talk to you some more about that later. I might also need your help with it, Uncle Fred. For now though, it was a pleasure meeting you, and John, thank you, for helping out. We will see eachother soon enough.”

John and Old Fred said their goodbyes, heading back to the bus stop just outside of the bar.