Canon Side-Story: Crafting Tutorial

Another Week at $70, another Side Story.
This one was a tie vote between my $10 patrons, had to flip a coin. Came up tails, so, we're doing the Crafting Tutorial.

Enjoy

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[Caution: Before you can learn how to use crafting skills, you must complete the Crafting Tutorial. Would you like to begin now?]

Back in the dungeon, she had to deny this prompt, but here at home she has no reason not to partake and unlock an entire tree of potential power gain. Up to this point, all her training has been focused on getting more Chakra. All of her gains have been a direct result of trying to improve her Constitution so that her Chakra Pool could rise. She’s so much stronger than she used to be, and yet, despite her strength, she finds she could be so much more.

Crafting systems, gathering professions, making use of rare loot to achieve greater advantages and eke out a win on the balls of her feet. It’s one of the things she loves the most about games; just how much can be done with an indirect route to power. Applying creativity to her tasks and forming a strategy, item, or solving problems with alternative solutions is just awesome!

It’s time to put the physical workouts aside for a bit and do something for her soul.

She presses yes on the prompt, and finds she’s immediately given a progress bar.

[Scanning area to create Crafting Tutorial in Player Setting]

That’s an odd wording, but it passes by her like the wind does. Standing at their normal training grounds, she expected it to try and teach her about potions or something from the herbs and leaves around, so she’s a bit surprised when what pops up is nothing of the sort.

[It has been determined based on your Relationships and proximities, that the best Crafting Tutorial for you is Basic Smithing, please report to Tenten]

“Uh… Okay.” She was really expecting herbalism or something, but, sure, whatever. She wants to say hello to Tenten anyways.

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“Welcome to Higurash-oh it’s you.” Tenten cuts herself off immediately with a grimace.

“Ow, just me?” Sakura asks, walking into the shop with a confident stride, “I thought we’d really bonded.”

“We did just, you know, I’d like it if I didn’t have to see you for a while is all,” Tenten manages to fake a smile, “but I won’t turn away a friend. What do you need?”

“Crafting tutorial.” Sakura says, and just like that, the room flashes purple, a radar line flowing through everything in sight.

[Step One: Take a Hammer and a bar of steel, and craft a single Kunai]

“It uh, wants me to-”

“I saw it,” Tenten interrupts her, “come on, I want to see what stupid nonsense your system thinks blacksmithing is.” Tenten leads her right into the back, into their home proper and past it to the forge. She takes it in, finding it somewhat relieving to see Tenten’s home looks normal and isn’t some dirty, garbage filled mess like Naruto’s was. She didn’t think so, but it’s good to confirm her friends are doing well.

“Let me find a- um, okay, that wasn’t there before.” Tenten leads her through the forge, deep into the dark depths of the actually pretty well lit room and to an anvil. She had expected the forge to be some dark place, the only light coming from a roaring fire with molten metal and a giant of a man smashing a hammer down.

She gets a fairly modern storage shed with lots of tools hanging around and plenty of conveniences. Yes, the stations are here, but they’re clean and well cared for and there’s no giant of a man smashing things together carelessly and creating mythical weaponry like it’s just a thing to do.

The anvil has a big ingot of steel on it, and a comically large one-handed hammer that Sakura is sure isn’t normally what Tenten uses. “Here, take em, your system created these, they’re yours.”

Sakura finds the hammer feels natural in her hands, and picking up the wide ingot, it feels almost weightless.

[You’ll find that crafting is less about the how, and more about the what. Your world works off the Rule of Can, not the Rule of Should, which means that using the system you can streamline most of the nitty gritty and skip right to the ‘Did It’ part. Place the Ingot on the Anvil, and smack it a few dozen times, after selecting the Kunai Template]

“Uh, that was a lot of words.” Sakura gulps.

“It was insulting is what it was,” Tenten grumbles, “I guess I have to deal with that since I’m a part of the tutorial, wish I couldn’t read it, genuinely.”

Sakura flickers through the sudden menu prompt, and selects the Kunai Template, placing the bar on the anvil, she grips the one-handed hammer in both hands for confidence, and doesn’t hesitate.

She just starts smacking as hard as she can. Tenten stands there shaking her head, wincing at the way she’s manhandling the metal, but she says nothing. Not even when sparks start flying from each hit, dissipating into the air never to be seen again.

Tenten stays silent until the thirteenth smack, when the metal suddenly glows. “Wow.” Sakura gasps.

“Ridiculous.” Tenten shakes her head harder, a sour grimace permanently painted on her features..

When the light fades, they’re staring at a very high quality looking steel kunai on the table, much better than any Sakura owns if she’s to admit it.

“I can’t believe that used an entire Ingot of steel… I can’t believe you had an Ingot of steel in the first place.”

“Is that weird?” Sakura asks.

“Steel is a mixture of iron and carbon, it even being in that form like that implies your system thinks Steel just comes that way prepackaged.” Tenten throws her hands up in the air, clearly on the verge of screaming.

“So it couldn’t come like that?” Sakura asks, “like if someone made it specifically?”

“It could, just, graaah!” Sakura’s not planning to learn normal blacksmithing, so she largely tones her out as Tenten begins to rant by her side.

She reads instead.

[Step One complete.

Step Two: Take the Hardened Steel Kunai and apply a Modifier to it. You’ll have a chance to succeed or fail based on the item you’re trying to Modify and the Modifier you’re trying to apply. In this case, you will succeed, so don’t worry about it.]

Flipping through that menu, she only has one Modifier currently, so she decides to apply it even if she’s not exactly a fan of it. She does have to complete the tutorial…

Pressing the button to apply it, her hammer glows, and she smacks the Kunai. She takes great care in watching as the glow transfers from her hammer into the kunai in front of her. It flows over it, inscribing flaming words into it that soon disappear into the metal and leave a glistening Kunai that looks exactly like it did before.

She quickly activates her Item Appraisal Skill on the newly minted item. She has a suspicion it’s not normal at all.

[Hardened Steel Kunai (Friendly Fire)

Rare

Some say this especially high quality Kunai thirsts for blood, and it totally does! It does 200% more damage to those that think the user is friendly, including themselves. Is just a regular Kunai after the first strike unless the target is truly stupid and still thinks the person stabbing them is friendly. Does normal damage if the target is neutral or hostile to the user.]

“Wow,” Sakura takes that in, “can you read that?”

“Nope,” Tenten shakes her head, “do I want to?”

“Nope.”

[Congratulations, you officially understand how crafting works. You simply find the tools necessary, apply the template, create the thing, then apply a modifier to the finished product. That’s the entire process.]

[You have now gained the trait: Crafting Novice: You have completed the Crafting Tutorial and may now learn Crafting Skills, you’ve unlocked Crafting Menus and the Crafting Interface]

[You have now gained the Skill: Blacksmithing Lvl 1: You may now make Basic Blacksmithing crafts should you have the tools, materials, and time on your hands. Basic Blacksmithing crafts include Kunai, Shuriken, and anything simple to metalwork.]

“...” Tenten sighs, she clearly saw all that.

“Five minutes.”

“What?” Sakura looks up at her irate friend.

“You can do competent blacksmithing after five minutes of training!” The shouting doesn’t die down for a while.