Swift waited a full week before returning to Lee’s shop.
Part of him wanted to give her time to work, but mostly, he didn’t want to look overeager. He’d been thinking about the prototypes every day since their meeting. Imagining what it would be like to finally move, fight, and shoot in familiar gear.
The bell chimed as he stepped inside.
“About time,” Lee called from behind a hanging curtain. “Was starting to think you got eaten by a boar.”
“Is that what I had last night,” Swift replied. “Tavern meat is questionable.”
She emerged a moment later, wiping soot off her hands with a stained rag. Her apron looked like it had been through a war, but her eyes were sharp and alert.
“You’re lucky. I just finished the first pass on a few things this morning. Come on.”
She led him to the workshop bench and swept a few tools aside with a clatter. Three items lay waiting: a pair of gloves, a crude but recognizable backpack, and a dark, layered vest.
Swift picked up the gloves first. Reinforced leather with metal bands woven into the knuckles and back of the hand. They looked solid. Brutal, even.
He slipped them on. Immediately, the fit felt wrong. The metal shifted as he flexed, sliding against his knuckles. He made a fist, and the reinforcement tugged uncomfortably at the leather.
“They're too heavy,” he said, frowning. “And the metal shifts.”
“I noticed,” Lee said, arms crossed. “But I don’t have whatever ‘Kev-lar’ is. You wrote it like it was important.”
She gestured at the notebook she’d borrowed. It lay open beside her tools, bookmarked on a page describing ballistic fiber reinforcement.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Kevlar’s a synthetic material,” Swift explained. “Tough as hell. Flexible. We used it for body armor, gloves, helmets—hell, even tires in some places.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And how do you make it?”
He hesitated, trying to recall the steps. “Well, it involves poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide... you know, spinning it from a liquid crystalline solution—”
“Stop.” She waved a hand. “Lost me at poly. That’s not happening. Not in my lifetime.”
Swift chuckled. “Didn’t think so.”
“But,” Lee continued, turning toward a nearby shelf, “there is something close.”
She pulled out a rolled parchment, untying it to reveal a rough map of Crescent City’s northern border. Jagged mountains lined the edge, one marked with a faded red X.
“Some miners broke into a volcanic cave system a few years ago,” she said. “And found spiders. Big ones. Size of a dog, black and twitchy.”
Swift’s expression tightened. “Spiders.”
“Yeah. I hate them too. But their silk?” She tapped the map. “Strong. Not sticky. Doesn’t burn easy. Exactly what we need…”
Swift nodded slowly, studying the marked path. The terrain looked rough—no roads, just trails and rock passes.
“I’ll go get it,” he said.
Lee looked at him like he was mad. “No, you won’t.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re not even Marksman yet. That place is dangerous. The miners sealed it for a reason.”
“All the more reason no one else will go. I need this stuff, Lee. You want the material. I want the gear. It’s worth the risk.”
She narrowed her eyes, then sighed. “Fine. But I’m not fixing your legs if you come back with spider bites the size of apples.”
“I’ll walk it off.”
She rolled her eyes and reached under the bench, pulling out the backpack prototype. It looked rough—canvas body with stitched leather corners and crude loops for attachments.
“No waist strap. Shoulder padding’s thin. The modular loops aren’t reinforced yet, so don’t hang anything too heavy. But it’ll hold.”
Swift slipped it on. It was light and moved well enough, even if it dug into his collarbones. “Better than anything I’ve had so far.”
“Don’t get cocky. Bring me back three full skeins of that silk. Not just loose threads. Oh, and don’t kill the spiders if you don’t have to. They might be territorial but not suicidal.”
“Sounds like a party.”
Lee crossed her arms again. “Seriously, Swift. Don’t die. I’m invested now.”
He gave her a small, earnest smile. “So am I.”
With the pack secured and the map in his hand, Swift headed out of the shop and down the cobbled street toward the northern gate. This wasn’t a guild job. No coin reward, no fame. Just him and a backpack full of potential.
But it was his first real mission—the first step toward building gear that could keep him safe in this world.
Even if it meant crawling into a spider’s nest to do it.
What kind of spiders are we dealing with?
