Reincarnated to the Past 9: Kettin Lull

It’s been six days since we came back, and we all went our separate ways. After a single day of rest which I spent lounging around eating and sleeping, I have been focusing on making the crossbows that Ghigari wanted. So far, I made twenty-four crossbows with the help of three of the tribe’s carpenters. All of them were basic crossbows with only a wooden hook to help people pull the bowstring back. 

Technically speaking, the only master carpenter and I were making the crossbows while the other two, who were the carpenter’s apprentices, were working on the crossbow bolts. Even so, I had severely overestimated the timeframe I would need to make even the most basic crossbow. Perhaps it was because of my personal crossbow’s ridiculous three week long creation that put that kind of miscalculation in my head. 

Yes, that’s why. It wasn’t because I was bad at math. I was accurate with my math. There was, of course, no way I miscalculated. No, I really didn’t - or more like couldn’t - apply Enhanced Accuracy apply to my math. Apparently, while almost all physical aspects of my body could use that power, there were select mental aspects that I couldn’t use it with. Like logic and its derivative math. 

“You are not a carpenter,” Master Carpenter Isnan hummed as he entered my workshop. “Yet the way you apply yourself in carpenting makes me look like a failure for having achieved so little in so long.”

I laughed politely. “Don’t say that. The others in the tribe might actually take your words seriously.” 

The white bearded man harrumphed. “You say that even as you tap on your bronze chisel so meticulously. Have you looked at the smoothness of those crossbows? None of them are rough like what my apprentice might make. You even made that thing you call ‘sandpaper’ for that.”

I shrugged helplessly at the self-depreciating compliments he kept pushing my way. “I only copied what my homeland’s carpenters used, though nothing I made are as fine as theirs,” I replied. “I just didn’t want any of the women who’ll be fighting to get their hands hurt unnecessarily.”

“You make it sound like we’re pitiless or heartless. It’s not like we didn’t want to smoothen our things out.”

“You just put leather over them.”

“And leather’s rare and expensive,” he replied with a scoff. “You’re cutting down the cost of this weapon, and you don’t even realize it.”

I scratched my cheek with my left index finger.

I honestly didn’t think I was doing much … but then again, most people who knew something special mostly believed they didn’t think they were special; the ones who thought they were special were always the idiots naive to the facts of reality.

What was the saying again? ‘Whatever idea you’ve had, someone else already thought of it?’ The real special aspect of someone came from putting those ideas and making them into a fact of reality. One can think however much they liked, but everyone could think. It was thinking critically enough and then applying that into action and words that made someone special. Perhaps saying ‘special’ was erroneous in that sense; would proactive fit better for the situation?

All I did, as I saw it, was apply what I already knew, not invent something new. Oh, alliteration. Oh, random stray thought.

Anyway, my mindset made sure that I didn’t feel too proud about copying something like sandpaper. It wasn’t special. It wasn’t new. It was simply a product of my proactiveness. 

“Just get to work, old man,” I chuckled without putting heart into calling him that. It was just a way to rile him up a little to move. Otherwise, he would stand there all day and stare at what I did. 

-VB-

Interlude:
Master Carpenter Isnan

It was remarkable that the youngster didn’t recognize his own skills. 

With only a chisel and hammer, he carved roughly smooth curves into wood in the three hours when it would take his own apprentices half a day to do so. It was marvelous how he could be a carpenter when he clearly didn’t know how to be one. 

When they worked together the first time, Isnan knew that he hadn’t been as respectful as he could have been to the warrior. It was because he didn’t know what to make of Wiseman Alan. The man knew much about the art of healing and construction. He knew the art of war like a tribe’s leader. He also fought like a seasoned warrior, and from what his old friend Hoktim spoke of, Wiseman Alan was the best shot in the entire tribe.

Wiseman Alan confused the hell out of Isnan, so he may have been rude because he was too busy trying to figure out what in the heaven the wiseman was.

A man like him did not just walk around and join a tribe, not as a travelling merchant of all things. 

No, Isnan was sure that something forced Wiseman Alan from his home, and from the way he talked about its government and displayed proficiency in the art of war, he wasn’t someone lowly like a slave or a regular person. 

No, Isnan was sure of it. 

Wiseman Alan had to have been a close relative of or a member of a royalty’s inner circle. Maybe even the son of his former tribe’s warmaster. 

Yes, he was sure of it. 

And that conclusion begged the question.

What drove a man so learned and powerful from his home? The way he settled down in the tribe spoke of no wanderlust. The way he was eager to help the tribe spoke of wanting to be accepted or at least of a good nature. 

War? Genocide? Plague?

Gods, he hoped it wasn’t a plague. That would be terrible. An illness was an enemy that even healers could not fight properly. 

With these thoughts in his head, Isnan put his still spry muscles of fifty summers to work making the “base” of the wiseman’s weird bow. 

Speaking of which, talking about the weird bow without a name was hard, and Alan’s suggestion for the weird bow’s name from his country - who named something like that beauty of a weapon as “kerossbo”? - was hard for most warriors to recognize. Perhaps when he talked about it next time, he should suggest a new name for it.

Something like … hmmm… A combination of the word bow and Wiseman Alan’s own name? Alanbow?

Yes, that sounded much better.