Heading once more towards the gate. I decided to take a detour to some of the merchants. As I was potentially leaving this town for a while. I decided I would blow my savings on anything I didn't think I could make out in the wild, or any comforts that I couldn't get. Browsing the merchant's wares I found a long cloak that reached just above the ground. It was made of fine cloth that was made in a factory. 

Precious few factories still made clothes. We hadn't regressed per se, we still had all the technology and knowledge. It was just that space was at a premium are governments couldn't afford to protect everything at once.

This led to many factories and materials being abandoned due to the echoes relentless attacks. Unfortunately, this made the cloak expensive. I could either spend all my value in the form of leftover steel and copper on this cloak or I could spend it on food.

I took a second to think about it. While food would be useful, I wasn't in dire need of it, and I was eager to test some of the growing runes that the book had. In fact, most of the runes were used in growing in one form or another. I believe this is because of the time period most of it was written in.

On the other hand, a new cloak that had proper rune engravings could bump up the amount of damage I could take, maybe even help with the heat issue. Actually, now that I thought about it I could probably dampen or even silence the noise I make when walking.

The answer was obvious. I walked into the store expecting to find a grumpy fat middle-aged man but instead, I found a lovely young woman. I would put her age at about 18-19 years of age. I was kind of hesitant to talk to her but I really wanted that cloak.

I shuffled out of the corner I was in and made my way toward her. I kept my head down and after waiting in line for a minute or two I had made it up to her. “Hello what can I do for you,” she said. Her voice was smooth and had no hint of ever being a smoker, something that was all too common. 

I sat the cloak on the counter. “Hm this is quite a nice cloak you want to buy here,” She said looking me up and down. She was probably wondering if I was going to try and rob her. I didn't blame her I was dressed in a cloak and I hadn't had a chance to clean myself up. My body was completely dirty and I imagined I didn't smell too good.

I just grabbed a 1-inch piece of steel and placed it down on the counter. She raised an eyebrow, “I'm not going to get in trouble for having stolen steel, am I?” she said while looking at me. “No, I got this legitimately” she looked like she thought I was lying but instead of telling me to leave. She started to bargain. 

“You Know this cloak is made in a factory, not too many like it.” I looked at her and said. “That may be true but I'm offering a solid Inch of steel, you won't even have to preserve it” she taped the table a few times in thought. “You got any copper?” I was a little confused but she continued before I could answer “Throw in a little copper wire and you have a deal.” I pulled some wire out and set it on the table before grabbing my cloak and preparing to leave. “Pleasure doing business with you mister,” She asked “It’s Alex, and the same to you miss” she smiled a little, “it's beth”.

We said our fair wells before I ducked into an alley and put my cloak in storage. I felt Scrap send me a feeling of Ulala, or something similar. I patted my chest in rejection, I was blushing a little though. I continued my walk to the gate. It took a few minutes but eventually, I made it. I popped on my light bend formation and made my way out of the gate this time with no trouble.

I decided that I would head to the clearing where I had fought the leopard first before I set out to build a base. The reason for this was simple. I lacked attack spells other than Flamethrower which worked this time but what about next time? No, I was going to make a formation that I had come up with, I called it pee shooter.

Getting to the clearing I breathed in a sigh of relief. I had found that I was a little traumatized by the leopard's attack. But now that I was in the clearing I should be safe. All the beasts had their own territory and it should be too soon for another to have already moved in.

I pulled out a steel tube the length of a small pistol barrel. The plan was to engrave the runes for Shape, Harden, Air, enhance, and a new one called speed. Speed was a simple rune that boosted the speed of whatever object it was attached to, It was my first delayed rune. It would only activate when the object it was attached to started to move. 

I wanted to make a little gun. It would hopefully work by shaping a bullet out of the air inside the tube with a little gap in between the back and the bullet. The bullet of air would have the rune for Speed on it. Making it so that when the space in the back was filled with air it would blast the bullet out at massive speeds. Two added benefits were that the air that was used to blast the bullet could then be shaped into the next bullet. It also would be easy to clean up as the bullet of air would dissipate once out of mana. Considering the rune would be on the material of air I doubted it would last more than a couple of seconds.

Me and Scrap worked for an hour or two. Making sure the runes were set up properly before we decided it would do. I aimed the Pee shooter at a tree nearby before pouring a little bit of mana into the runes. The bullet of air shot out of the tree at incredible speed, so much in fact that it pierced the tree before borrowing itself into the ground on the other side.

Me and Scrap looked at each other. Before we both started to dance a little jig. After the excitement calmed down we decided to test just how many bullets we could shoot. It took about a minute and a few split trees before we found that we could pump about 60 shots a minute or one shot a second.

It was perfect for a spell designed to support a battle. With this, I felt confident enough to go and explore the area around me. As long as the beasts around me were as strong as the leopard I could easily take them down. I was ready once again to go find a base this time armed with the necessary items to defend myself.

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