HC: Handyman | Ch. 208 - Cutting Corners

Jack forced himself to put away the black horn.

He didn’t just move it aside—he opened his inventory and stashed it away. 

Out of sight, out of mind. 

It was safer that way. The thing almost seemed to hum when left nearby, like a tuning fork only he could hear. It pulled at him like a black hole—dense, inescapable, whispering promises of brilliant designs and impossible gear.

A beautiful, dangerous distraction.

And right now, he couldn’t afford distractions. If he wanted to arm the soldiers before the next wave, he needed every shred of focus. He turned his attention to the task ahead.

First, the fibers.

A modest pile of grass cords and thick rope coils lay near Esther, who had been diligently weaving them. Rope-weaving fell exclusively under the Bushcraft umbrella, which meant he could delegate the task to her without worry.

Esther averaged C-grades, with the occasional B or D—nothing remarkable, but consistent enough. That alone saved Jack a mountain of menial work. And right now, time was worth more than precision.

She hadn’t said much since the deserters had reappeared. Even now, she threw the occasional sharp glance toward the soldiers still patrolling under Amari’s orders. But she kept working, her hands as disciplined as her silence.

Jack didn’t know if he could’ve done the same.

Esther caught him watching. She offered a courteous smile and a small nod before returning to her work.

I’ll miss having such a reliable underling, he thought.

When the time came to wax the ropes, he’d take over the bushcraft minor from her. He needed it for the synergistic skill: [Rope Waxing], which added durability to ropes. Waxing the ropes was one of the factors that could boost an item’s crafting grade. 

The only question on Jack’s mind was how it would affect the imbuement process with terracoat. The imbuement medium was a mixture of oil, clay, and wax. If the ropes already had wax in them… would that throw off the balance? Would he have to adjust the proportions when mixing terracoat? Or would it not matter at all?

He hadn’t had time to test it properly when making Horace’s rope armor. Back then, they’d been racing to save Rob. But now, with a bit more breathing room, he needed to find the answers.

I also have to remember to tell Esther not to weave all the grass Horace and Marie bring back, he reminded himself.

They were on their way to the valley to collect more. Once he’d gained some hands-on experience crafting armor for the others, he planned to make a set for himself using the good stuff.

And when the time came, he’d do it right.

Every rope and cord—A-grade only. He’d craft each one himself to maximize his chances of getting a superior grade on the final product. Esther wasn’t incompetent. But she couldn’t weave rope like he could.

The fiber department was under control. That left him with handling the bones.

Jack turned to the towering stack beside him—shagrat bones, dense and weighty. Despite being on the smaller side, the shagrats had been compact and muscular. Their bones reflected that.

Hopefully, the armor would do the same for the soldiers. Add bulk. Make them feel stronger.

He checked the draft he’d worked on between waves 30 and 31. He’d tossed aside several versions before settling on this one. It had a simple structure, but clean, elegant lines. He felt a flicker of pride just looking at it.

The core was a sleeveless rope vest—not too different from the rope overalls he’d made earlier, but cropped shorter to preserve mobility. What gave it strength were the bone reinforcements: rigid bars lined across the chest, back, shoulders, and sides. They were placed in steady rows, as if the armor itself had ribs.

He’d designed it so that each bar was about a hand’s length long and two fingers wide. Long enough to reduce the overall count, wide enough to drill through without risking a crack. 

Jack had run the numbers already. Five bars per shoulder. Thirty-two across the front. Thirty-two more for the back. Four per side. It totaled seventy-four bars per chestplate.

And he needed eleven sets: eight hundred fourteen bars in total.

Jack sighed and grabbed a shagrat bone, eyeing its length and natural curve. This was going to be different from what he’d done for greaves and leg guards. Now he had to turn curved bone into flat bars.

“Let’s see how this goes,” he muttered.

He started by sawing off the jointed ends, too dense and irregular for this design. He scored shallow lines with a knife, carving clear entry points for the saw. Once the grooves were deep enough, he switched tools and got to work.

Halfway through the cut, the blade jerked in his hand—and disintegrated into motes of light.

Your item has run out of durability and broke.

Jack clicked his tongue. “Should’ve seen that coming.”

Thankfully, he’d come prepared. The professor’s guide had warned about how bone carving damaged tools quickly, especially saws, so he’d brought over ten spares, all sharp and ready.

He swapped in a fresh one and continued. He cut the bone lengthwise—first in half, then again, then once more—until he had four long strips. He turned one over in his hands.

“The size looks right. Now for the annoying part.”

He set the strip on the stabilizing mat and grabbed the coarser sanding stone. Braced it. Then began.

Back and forth. Back and forth. White dust clung to his hands. Still, the curve held.

“This is taking even longer than I thought,” he muttered, wiping sweat from his brow.

He focused on the tallest points first, then raised the bar to eye level, checking for light gaps. Still uneven.

“Where’s a power sander when you need one?” he grumbled.

The bone didn’t answer.

After more passes and three position changes, the bar finally lay flat. He flipped it and repeated the whole process on the opposite face. Then, finally, he polished the edges with finer grit.

Done.

Jack leaned back and checked the clock.

“Fifteen minutes? Just for sanding?”

And he still had to drill three holes along the bars.

He opened the calculator app and punched in the numbers. Fifteen minutes per bar. Eight hundred fourteen bars total.

The answer blinked back at him. Over two hundred hours.

“That’s… too long. Just for sanding.” Even if he worked around the clock, he would need 9 days of sanding. How crazy was that?

He leaned back, rubbing his neck. “I have to figure out a way to hasten the process, somehow.”

He grabbed his sketch of the armor. For a few moments, he just stared at it. He took a deep breath and saved a copy of this design. The original would stay saved in his documents when he wanted to craft his own gear, but the manufacturing process of the other 10 had to be streamlined somehow.

“OK. First thing I can do is to cut down the number of bone bars,” he muttered.

Jack tapped the shoulder area on the sketch.

“If they’re holding shields, that side’s already protected. No point stacking extra bone there.”

He drew a bold X over the shield-side shoulder bars.

Next, he looked at the backplate. So far, every retreat while defending the Breach had been clean. It wasn’t as if the enemies were shooting arrows at them as they fell back. With the field littered with traps and Marie’s concussion bombs or Jack’s Sonic Valley, the soldiers were likely to fall back with little pressure. 

“No one’s hitting them in the back. Not yet, anyway.”

Most of the fighting happened face-to-face. He could do without all the bone bars on the back of the armor.

He scrubbed out the rows of bone on the backplate. A weight off the armor—and off his shoulders.

Then his eyes settled on the sides.

“Let’s be honest. If they’re keeping formation, nobody’s getting to their flanks.”

He circled the ribs near the obliques and crossed those bars out, too. That was eight fewer per armor. Not a huge cut, but it helped.

He scanned the sketch again, now looking at the lower abdomen. The bottom edge of the vest overlapped slightly with the rope pants—not much, but enough to provide some protection. That, plus how awkward it was to bend with heavy bars there...

“Alright. Let’s reduce density here, too.”

He spaced the bone bars a little wider, interlocking them with the rope pattern for structural integrity, but leaving some gaps. Better breathability, better mobility, and still solid protection where it counted.

He stepped back from the updated draft, hands on hips.

Jack glanced at the new sketch—streamlined, stripped down, efficient. A far cry from the original design, but it would have to do.

“I’ll call this the lite version,” he muttered. “Good enough to keep them on their feet without chaining them down.”

He opened his calculator app and keyed in the new numbers.

25 bars per chestplate. 10 chestplates total. 250 bars.

At 15 minutes per bar, that came out to 3,750 minutes or 62.5 hours.

Jack let out a long breath through his nose.

“That’s still two and a half full days of work. And that’s if I don’t sleep. Or eat. Or deal with the waves.”

He rubbed at his temple and leaned back, staring at the ceiling of the cave. They were on wave 31. Wave 40 would come after 18 hours of game time, and if he kept this pace, the soldiers would still be bare-chested when Wave 40 arrived.

“This isn’t fast enough.”

He looked at the bones again. Then at his tools. Then back at the sketch.

Something else has to give.

Jack began to pace, footsteps echoing faintly in the cave. His thoughts raced as fast as his feet. What do I do? What do I do?

Then he froze.

His eyes locked onto one of the fallen soldiers—the ones who had died long before Jack and the others had arrived. He hurried over and crouched beside the corpse. Their armor was made of short, overlapping metal plates mounted on cloth. Not rows. Not strips. Just slabs of defense over key areas.

“Maybe this is the solution to my problem!”

Jack sprinted back to the work area. He grabbed a new bone, sawed off the joint ends with quick motions, and began to cut. This time, instead of slicing the bone into long slats, he split it lengthwise into thirds. Then he divided those sections further into three blocks.

What he held in his hand now were squat, curved pieces—almost square. Primitive, but solid.

He placed one against his shoulder.

The curvature was tighter than the natural arc of his own body, but it would work. 

“Instead of twenty-plus bars,” Jack whispered, “I could get it down to seven plates per suit.”

One for the weapon-side shoulder. Two for the chest. Four for the abdomen.

That was it.

The only question now was whether the system would allow it.

He wasn’t adding linear reinforcements anymore—he was replacing the concept. Swapping bars for plates. Was that a loophole? Would the [Studded Grass Chestplate] recipe accept the change? Or would the system require him to own a different recipe to approve it?

There was only one way to find out. He had to build a prototype.

Ch. 207 - Wave 31

INDEX

Ch. 209 - When Is a Bar Not a Plate?