Cat With a Raygun

Now that the golden bison were dead, it was time to start dealing with the bodies. He'd need the heads for the bounty collection. Still, Joe didn't want to deal with it here out in the plains where roaming scavengers are likely to be attracted to the bodies and blood before he has time to Harvest everything. After testing to make sure he could lift the bodies with Levitation, Joe opened a portal to Rust's Edge and started moving the bodies through.

Joe asked Ferric to message Trenos to let them know the golden bison herd had been taken care of, and that he'd be by to collect the bounty in the next day or two. Next Joe went to collect some wood from Gymmie at the mill and started making a new food storage box, this one much bigger than the one he made for Petrosia. There would be literally tons of meat from these bison, so it had to go somewhere.

He took his time harvesting the bison because they had so many useful parts. Not only as any normal bison would, but the fact that these were golden bison made most of their parts even more useful. The leather he could make from their hides would make better armor. Even their fur was really tough and strong. Their bones were practically unbreakable, even more so than steelwood.

Joe had to build a second food storage box before he was done with all the bison bodies. His Harvest spell went up 3 levels, as well, thanks to the sheer number of high quality bodies he was using it on. The newest enhancement would be pretty useful, too.

Harvest (Level 15). This spell allows the caster to target a fresh corpse of any non-CWEST species. The ambient magic in their body, directed by the spell from the caster, will collect potentially useful materials and package them in a convenient form. Processed items can also be created via an advanced CWEST interface. Additional mana can be fed into the spell to create items with magical properties. Additional materials can be taken from the caster or placed directly on the corpse being targeted to produce items not normally available and/or for cheaprer costs. The corpse itself will then dissolve.

Any enchantments or alchemical products created by this spell will be added to the caster's known recipes.

Mana Cost: 10 per casting (base), variable costs for magical item creation.

Joe took his time with the next Harvest to explore the extent of this new change. He had steel and empowered copper in one of his armor's Extra Storage compartments so he combined them with bone to create similar picks to the ones he had made for the miners in Petrosia, these ones for the miners here in Rust's Edge. Ferric bought them for the town from town funds, as he had decided a few weeks prior to stop operating the town as a collective and made sure everyone was appropriately compensated for the work they were doing.

He also had a new option for a special thread made from the golden bison fur and empowered copper. It would work just as well as empowered copper, but in a thread form for use in cloth or leather goods. He actually used up the rest of his empowered copper to make all the empowered rose gold thread he could.

Borrowing Jack's magic axe Joe cut off the heads of the last 3 golden bison and placed them into another large crate and cast Preservation on it. He'd save them for the future when he had more empowered copper, and maybe even a stronger Harvest. His Preservation went up a level from targeting the a box with the bison bodies in it.

All in all it took 3 days to properly Harvest and store all of the bison bodies and their resultant products. Jack, Lester, and Sally were very happy with their new picks, with a couple of spares created to keep with Ferric, as well. When Joe went to collect his bounty he found that there was an ongoing bounty of 1000 gold for each golden bison in general. This particular herd had an additional 50 perfect bonus due to the danger it presented all being together. That means Joe earned 87,000 gold for completing the bounty.

Lesfo wanted a detailed account of how Joe fought the bison and was especially pleased to learn about the weak spot in the brain. That meant those with good Ranged Weapon skills would be useful, if they could get the right angle. Joe got his angle right due to being able to levitate above the ground some.

After returning to Rust's Edge Joe checked with Deena to see if there was anything different that would need to be done to cure the hide from the golden bison. She said that other than the special tools needed to actually cut it the process of tanning was much the same. Joe sold Deena 10 of the hides, although she wouldn't actually be able to pay for them until after she made them into something and had them sold. That was fine with Joe, of course.

Deena did help Joe learn a thing or two about leatherworking that wasn't in his books. First of all, he could instantly cure leather by freezing it cold enough, which he could do by placing hides between blocks of ice created by Cold Snap. Although so long as he collected the hides via Harvest they were already cured. Secondly, she knew of a chemical process to tan the leather faster than using traditional tannins, this new chemical being something dwarves invented.

Even so, due to the size of the hides involved Joe wanted to expand his workshop to give him more room. Since the chemicals used for the tanning would be smelly, he wanted to put the new addition upstairs to ventilate it, using arcane methods, of course.

Kerras and Malcom were busy with other projects so Joe decided to take care of this one on his own. He bought the time in the quarry from Ferric and cut his own stone bricks for the project, gaining another level in Stone Cutting. Rather than deal with mortar, Joe just used Levitation to hold the stones in place while he cast Meld Stone to fuse the blocks together. He didn't even need wood supports for the new level doing it this way. He still gained another 2 levels in Masonry, though, as well as 2 levels in Meld Stone.

It only took 2 days to make the new level in his workshop, with a ventilation chimney with a stone fan courtesy of Shape Stone and powered by a power pack. The ventilation shaft leads to a box of activated charcoal to absorb the chemicals rather than stink up the area around his workshop. He extended the ventilation down to the primary level of his workshop to help with that area, too, and installed another stone ventilation fan.

He would practice the new tanning process on some of the fire toad hides before trying it on boar hides, then the golden bison hides, and finally the dragon hide he still had in storage from the previous year. Before any of that, however, he needed the ingredients, which weren't available here in Rust's Edge, so he went to Trenos for a quick shopping trip, also getting some for Deena, the price for which she added to what she owed him.

His Chemistry went up a level making the first batch of tanning agent after spending time watching Deena make and use it herself on one of her hides which she had to cut in two to work with easily. Joe wouldn't have to do that since he could use Levitation to move the hide during the tanning process. Joe had made a very large vat to handle the size of the hides he would be working with. When he designed the floor of this new level he added extra bracing to ensure it could handle the weight he knew he would be working with.

Joe was able to tan all of the remaining fire toad hides and boar hides in 2 days, raising his Leatherworking by 2 levels. In that time he also leveled up his Reading to 16 from his normal trips to Trenos and his Speed Plant Growth leveled up once from his morning farming routine. Another level in chemistry from more batches of the tanning agent and 2 more days allowed him to tan 10 of the golden bison hides, giving him another 2 levels of Leatherworking.

Joe spent time designing the patterns that would be needed for flying armor. Test Pattern confirmed that he had the right mix between Levitation and Speed Boost. It of course wouldn't be even remotely as fast as he was when he cast those spells himself, but it should provide decent maneuverability for a normal person so it wasn't the slow movements that Levitation provided, but more natural speeds.

Joe also figured out the pattern for Land on Your Feet, for emergencies and worked out a way for it to be automatic with a reserved amount of power. Of course, the biggest obstacle in making the armor was the fact that the golden bison hide could only be pierced with magic tools, but those didn't take long to make. A test set of flying leather armor was made using regular giant boar leather.

Joe made two sets of the new armor out of golden bison leather the following day, one for Slivka and one for Kleo. Eleanor bought the test armor he had made. Ferric bought the two sets for the eaglin women, using funds set aside for the town militia, with an allowance for them to buy the armor themselves through work and regular payment in any combination. The armor required a continuous stamina cost to fly, but it was as cheap as the Levitation spell was for Joe to maintain, being boosted by the patterns in the armor.

Joe gained 1 level in Take Measurements, Imbue Leather Object, and Illusory Rendering for the work he had done on the armors. The best part of these new armors is that it only required 1 bison's hide. The tanned leather was thick enough it could be cut in half and still be just as tough at half the thickness. The precision required to cut the leather in half was accomplished thanks to Levitation on both the blade as well as the hide to keep it steady.

Tyrik was impressed with the way his wife and daughter were able to take to the air now. He asked for a set of his own flying armor. Joe explained that it would be some months before he had the required material, as the newest batch of copper was not yet permanently empowered. Empowered copper was needed for any armor not made from leather or fabric. Barney also requested such a suit of armor as he was sure being able to fly would make it easier to guard the town.

Seeing the future of a demand from others for such armor, Joe decided to spend a few days mining more copper in Petrosia. Leta was happy for the sales. Joe's Mining skill went up by two levels to 12, and his Endurance went up 1 level to 20. Joe spent time smelting the ore into copper ingots while making more empowering crates to store them in. The crates used actual magisteel in their patterns, of course, so his current lack of empowered copper wasn't preventing him from being to make more. He spent the time to put in more manachlorian gathering patterns into the new crates, hoping they would speed up the process. He Smelting also went up by 2 levels and his Carpentry 1 level to 9 and 13, respectively.

Joe decided it was time to move the Thessal Leaf production out of the greenhouse and bought another plot of land next to his field of wheat and started clearing it. He let the Thessal Leaves in the greenhouse go to seed, which only took one extra day thanks to all the Speed Plant Growth spells he'd been applying to them. On that day he uprooted them all with Levitation and tossed them into the Harvest Box. To get out the seeds and plenty of fertilizer to start on the new field. He even had spare seeds just in case and popped them into a chest of Preservation.

The greenhouse took on new residents in the form of cotton, flax, and different herbs he had bought in Trenos. All his work on his new field gave him another level in Agriculture, and the variety inside the greenhouse unlocked Horticulture for him.

Horticulture (Level 1). This skill is for growing a variety of plants in the same area. Higher skill levels allow the plants to grow faster and results in hardier, healthier plants. To train this skill grow more than four different plants in nine square meters of land and take the time to care for them.

Key Attribute: Vitality