Chapter 77: Heavy Heart

Team Competitions, Collaborative Efforts, and You

Team competitions and collaborative-effort missions award competitors based on multiple variables. The largest, most heavily weighted variable is simply whether or not your team wins or if you and your collaborators are successful in your goal. The dangers of failure aside, losing teams and unsuccessful collaborators gain no rewards at all.

Once you and your friendly co-competitors are victorious, however, things get more complex. Rewards for team efforts are awarded according to a complex formula that attempts to weigh the amount of the victory that is directly attributable to an individual’s efforts.

Each individual’s rewards are drawn from a “success pool”, one that varies in size depending on how dominating a victory or satisfying a success their team of collaborators achieved. Each competitor’s prizes vary in quality and quantity based on the proportion of that pool allocated to them, determined by their contribution.

Of course, this means that the best possible results come from a massive success attained by a single survivor. Competitors are well advised to keep the implications of their potential deaths on other competitors’ potential awards in mind as they navigate challenges.

Villager’s Manual, Village Challenges, Page 5

—

Judging just by sheer mass. Brett’s take was much, much more substantial than Sean’s. He had somehow even negotiated portage to the mouth of the alley and, despite with the sheer enormity of the goods he had bought, had finished with his portion of the shopping trip not that long after Sean.

“Good haul?”

“Very good. Lots of things I need, stuff that will come in handy. Better tools, high-quality fabric scraps, that kind of stuff. Given enough time, I can probably improve your armor a little now.”

“You spent all the credits, though?”

“Every penny. Don’t worry, it will pay out eventually.” Brett got the last bag sorted away into the room then sniffed the air. “Are you cooking… metal?”

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that.” Sean explained the qualities of the alien lead he was working with and why he was using the stove to melt it down and skim off impurities with a spoon before letting it solidify and melting it down again.

“I assume you have a plan for this. How far along into the project are you?”

“Not far. I wanted to talk to you about it a bit first.”

Brett had proposed that the next project they work on be mostly Sean’s idea and Sean now had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to proceed with the materials they had accumulated. But working with Brett on the exact plan was a whole different thing. Brett looked over what Sean had planned then suggested a half-dozen improvements that Sean would have never thought of that would improve the project even before system shenanigans kicked in.

And once those same shenanigans were taken into account, there was no telling what they’d get.

Brett went and worked on material prep while Sean further purified the meta-lead until the amount of material in the pot finally stopped diminishing and sat at a maximum weight-per-mass. Even still, there was the better part of two gallons of the stuff bubbling away on the wood stove.

Brett’s foresight in buying vinegar turned out to be an immediate advantage as he soaked the chain for an hour or so and brushed it relatively clean, producing a badly worn and rust-pitted but relatively clean object.

Once that was done, Sean took the fighter’s heart, wrapped it around several times with the chain, and dropped it on a small block of wax inside a rectangular wooden box about an inch or so bigger in every dimension than a half-gallon paper milk carton. Brett had told him not to panic when the wood smoked as he poured the alien-lead since it didn’t melt at a high enough temperature to actually catch the wood box on fire.

Once the lead solidified, they broke away the sides of the container to reveal a dully shining rectangular block of lead, one that was somehow much heavier than Sean expected it to be.

“And I should dip the chain in this stuff, too? You are sure?” Sean asked.

“Yes. You don’t know this but lead is a lubricant of sorts. Dip it in, pull it out. Just glaze it.”

Sean did. Dipping sections of the chain into the pot and immediately withdrawing them, the cold of the chain instantly solidifying small amounts of lead as it passed through the liquid metal. With that, the easy parts were done.

Sean had decided against adding spikes to this weapon. It was going to turn out, he hoped, to be a blunt-force terror, something that wouldn’t work without enhanced stats. But with his STR and SAV working overtime, it could replace the bunker-busting role that the Trash Compactor had been playing thus far.

And if there was one thing about the Trash Compactor that hadn’t ended up working as well as he had hoped, it was the spikes. Did they add a little bit of damage to the formula when it hit just right? Probably. But in several situations, it had also resulted in the weapon getting caught where he didn’t want it caught and ripping out of his hands or immobilizing him.

Moving on to the hard part, Sean poured what remained of the lead into a large plastic medicine bottle sitting in a bowl filled with cold water from the shower. As the plastic melted away and the lead reached a semi-solid state, he dropped the end of the chain opposite the heart-lump in, then pulled the whole assembly out of the water.

Rolling the new handle on the top of the stove to slightly soften it, Sean took a long ribbon segment of Brett’s purchased fabric scraps and began to wrap it tennis-racquet-style into the semi-molten lead. There was no good way to do that without burning his hands and it hurt like hell as he did it, especially at the end when he gripped the wrapped handle to mold it slightly to his hand shape. But it was damage that Stitch Up would quickly heal. It was worth it if it made the weapon even slightly better.

“Well?” Brett was on the edge of his seat. This was a new kind of collaboration, one with a lot of variables they couldn’t completely predict. There was no telling which way it would go.

“Nothing yet. I think we have to wait for the lead to set completely.”

Sean resisted the impulse to douse the whole thing in water while they waited. Cradling the head of the flail in his lap, he lifted it up and looked for any glows or magical glitters that might indicate the process was working. In the process, he busted open the still-healing burns on his hand and smeared the head of the weapon with a small amount of blood.

Blood that instantly absorbed into the flail, as if it was thirsty for it.

Heavy Heart

You took the lowest-quality metal that’s used as a catchall in the universe, something so soft and malleable that it’s useless in weapon-making and melted it down. If you had just put it on the end of a chain, no end of system enhancements could have saved you. It would have hit something hard and malformed enough to shake loose from the chain, and that would be it. Failed experiment. They can’t all be winners. Try again.

But instead, you chained up the heart-shaped representation of the determination, grit, and toughness of a demon boxer and encased it in this metal. Unsatisfied with the weight of this prison, you coated the entirety of the chain with the stuff, then attached a handle of salvaged fabric and charred human skin.

That might have been enough. The Apocalypse System was on the fence. And then you fed it human blood.

This heart was supposed to be an ingredient, Sean. What you are doing is the Shankmaster equivalent of weaponizing a turnip. And while I’d like to pretend I don’t approve, we both know that would be a lie.

Pumping with the vital liquid that once flowed through your veins, the Heavy Heart is imprisoned toughness, fighting to get out. With every blow you deal to your enemies with this weapon, you also damage the heart itself, blurring the borders between the heart and the lead. Making them one. Blessing their union with the blood of your enemies, which the whole assembly also eats.

That does two things you’ll like. First, it keeps the lead from breaking. Whatever damage you do to it is counter-balanced by an influx of toughness proportional to the beating it’s taking. This metal is not tough stuff usually but infusing a demon heart into it one strike at a time makes a bigger difference than you might think.

Second, that toughness doesn’t leave, and the mixed weight of the lead and the heart are going to end up far, far greater than the sum of their parts.

This thing is pretty brutal now, don’t get me wrong. But it’s gonna be something else entirely eventually. Enjoy.

Effects: Limited growth weapon

Creation Rewards: Shankmaster advances by one level.

“I can only assume the amount of time you’ve been reading that means something good happened.”

“I… think so? I mean, for sure in some ways. I got a full level to my Shankmaster skill from that.”

“Shit. So a win either way.”

“Yeah. But what the hell is a limited growth weapon?”

“No idea. But it sounds cool. I’m guessing it’s a weapon that grows, but doesn’t grow forever. The fact that I haven’t heard of it means you’ve probably done something funky again though.”

—

Rebuilding the jellyfish shield was next on the list and with some fabric infusions they ended up making something very similar. The system didn’t give them bonuses for the rolled-up-t-shirt handles or the better materials so they ended up with something very similar to what they had before, if a little smaller and easier to handle.

He wouldn’t be using it with the Heavy Heart, in any case. Where Trash Compactor had been a one handed affair, the Heavy Heart was in a whole different class of thing, one where he’d keep one hand at the handle, manipulate the length of the chain with the other hand before flinging and retrieving it with both. But if he caught someone with the full force of it, he had no doubt it would put his previous damage output to shame.

Apparently, the system’s “once every day or so” wording about challenges didn’t mean it was springing a near-death experience on them right away. He and Brett were able to enjoy a nice enough dinner, take turns hitting the showers, and go to bed before the system so much as hinted at a mission.

Sean kind of wanted to sleep cuddled up with the Heavy Heart, like the world’s most lethal security blanket. The sheer weight of it and the risk of breaking his bed kept him from following through on the idea. It was fine, he decided. Soon enough, he’d have plenty of time to try it out, to put the fear of it into anyone who came at him or the few other Earthlings who had made it through to this level of the competition, and to build it into something even more special with the broken bones of anyone who got in his way.

With visions of crushed enemies dancing like sugarplum fairies in his head, he went to sleep.