Runebound Reverse Tower of The Dead-Chapter 90: Finished Product

Kael had the vague sense that it should almost be daytime.

Not because his body felt heavy, this place had robbed him of that familiar human honesty where exhaustion dragged your limbs down and forced your eyes shut, but because there was a rhythm to nights, even here. A quiet stretching of time that made you aware you’d been doing something for too long. And he had been doing a lot.

He didn’t feel the fatigue from working all night on this set of clothes, but the satisfaction was clear on his face after he finished his work. It was the same feeling when a farmer was done clearing rocks, turned the earth and carved the grooves. It was exhaustion but a satisfying one nonetheless.

It sat in his posture, in the way his shoulders finally loosened, in the way he stopped clenching his jaw like he was bracing for the next disaster. It was one of the rare moments since he’d entered this place where he could look at something and feel like he’d earned it, not because the Tower threw him a random advantage, but because he’d taken raw scraps and forced them into something usable.

The satisfaction from creating something far outweighed the small joy of finding anything. It was effort made into result, and result made into something tangible, helpful, and most of all, useful.

In the time it took to reach this moment right now, he made leather pants to match the jacket.

And when the system finally recognized them, the window felt almost insulting in how calmly it delivered the verdict, like it hadn’t just watched him stitch and hammer and gamble his own skin to get there.

***

[Journeyman’s Leather Pants]Item rarity: -Rare-Item Level. 20.Creator: Kael Ardent.+5% resistance to Cold.+5% resistance to pierce damage.+12 Resistance to Heat.

+5% Stamina regeneration.

Lore: Leather pants crafted from middling materials, intended to become [Light Basilisk Pants].Due to the inferiority of the components used, the result fell short of its goal, though it remains serviceable gear.The early steps of a young craftsman’s journey are evident in this work, rough, imperfect, yet promising. With more experience, their talent in creation is likely to flourish.

****

Kael clicked his tongue at the result.

It wasn’t the numbers that annoyed him, those were still ridiculous stats for a first-floor climber, especially one who’d started this whole nightmare with nothing but a bag full of holes, and a crowbar.

It was the wording, the gentle, patronizing tone of it. Middling materials. Fell short of its goal. As if Kael hadn’t been forced to scavenge in a monster’s nursery while its mother prowled the tunnels like death with scales.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have any of the superior materials left from the adult basilisk. He’d burned the best of what he had on the jacket, literally and figuratively, and the pants were made from the softer variant. Even heat treating it didn’t help much; the leather didn’t "upgrade" the way he wanted, and it still felt like it would give under the wrong kind of pressure.

The only saving grace was probably that he had way too many basilisk scales that he transformed with the heat that upgraded these pants from probably unusable to what they are now. Without the scales, he could already imagine how the fabric would tear in a sprint, how a goblin blade would slide in like it belonged there, how one bad tumble across rubble would rip out seams and leave him bleeding into the dust.

Still, "They fit nice," he said as he wore them.

And it was true. Once they were on, the pants sat snug around his hips and thighs without restricting movement. They didn’t pinch. They didn’t sag. They didn’t feel like a costume. They felt like armor, lighter and less impressive than the jacket, but armor all the same. He bent his knees, squatted, stood again, testing the seams like he’d test a harness strap before climbing scaffolding.

Then his gaze drifted to the tracksuit.

He looked at it the way you look at something that had failed you, not maliciously, just... disappointingly. The cheap fabric held on a bit and protected him from the cold nights of the tower. Even after it suffered burns and singes, and mud that no amount of washing could cleanse or clear. Even after the administrator Dragon had fixed it for him, it still felt like a sad piece of wear that only emphasis on his status as a climber. It felt like a prisoner’s clothes. A stigma for someone far too inexperienced, since only those who brave dangers have the right to change and upgrade from this material.

And yet leaving it behind felt wrong, like throwing away the last physical reminder of what he used to be.

And then he realized one important factor.

"If people see me wear this... I’ll be looked at like I’m a treasure trove."

He didn’t remove his own armor, but simply wore the tracksuit above it.

It was bulky, awkward in a way that made him look a little wider than he actually was, but that was the point. He didn’t want anyone noticing the sleek obsidian sheen of basilisk scales. He didn’t want eyes narrowing, greedy calculations starting behind smiles. The tracksuit made him look like a survivor, like one of the many others on the floor That was safer than looking like someone who had loot worth killing for.

Thankfully, the tracksuit seemed to be, although a bit bulky, not too attention drawing when worn atop his leather gear. From a distance, anyone would just see a guy in worn clothes moving fast, not an armored craftsman walking around with the kind of gear that made clans start wars.

Kael looked at what he had remaining from the materials.

He still had several hatchling tendons numbering in at least a couple dozen. More claws and fangs than what he could ever use, and about sixty more scales left. The pants took the majority of the scales he had to fully deck them out, and the remaining pile looked less like treasure and more like a problem he hadn’t solved yet.

Though these heat resistant scales were nice, they seemed to serve no visible purpose now. They weren’t soul cores. They weren’t currency. They were just... weight. Potential. Something that might matter later, if he lived long enough for "later" to exist.

Just as he was about to pack them and wait for daytime to fully go up to leave, he spotted the crowbar which he left laying on the ground.

It looked all too sad.

Deformed into what looked like half a stake and a split end that served no purpose now, it wasn’t even the same tool that had carried him through day one. It had been repaired, reshaped, abused, hammered, turned into a rune staff and then ripped apart again. It had survived more than it ever should have, and it showed. It was the physical embodiment of Kael’s life here: useful, but warped by necessity.

Looking at the scales then the crowbar, then doing it the other way around, Kael had an idea.