Chapter 26 - 26: I'm Learning My Very First Profession!!

"So what do you know about leatherworking?" Sheppard asked me.

"Uh. . . Honestly, not a damn thing." I said honestly.

"Hmm. . . This will take a little while then. Alright, then lets try this. Take that piece of Wolf Skin Leather right there, and bring it over to me." He told me.

I then walked over to where he told me the Wolf Skin Leather was, and I brought it back over to him.

"Alright now that we have leather for you to work with. I need your wrist. We are going to make a simple pair of bracers for you. Now question, do you use melee or ranged weapons?" He then asked me.

"Ranged, I use a shortbow." I said, then I took my shortbow out of my inventory, and show it to him.

"Oh wow, not a bad bow at all, and it also levels up too! Nice!" He said excitedly.

I then took the bow back from him, and put it back in my inventory.

"Now since we know what you have for a weapon. I know how to make your bracers. Now when you make these, you will gain some experience with items that level up, but you have to be wearing them in order to gain experience. You won't get a lot, but you will get some." He explained to me.

"Now bring your left arm over here, and let me measure your arm. I'll do the same to the right arm as well." He told me.

I then brought my left arm over to him, and he quickly measured it. He then took my right arm and measured it also. He then took a piece of paper, well it looked like paper, and then he started drawing pieces on it, he labeled them left and right side. The left side was different. The left side only has 3 triangular tips on it, to where the right side had 4.

"Why does one side only have 3 triangular tips on it?" I then asked Sheppard.

"Well, when you are holding your bow, you want to make sure you have a tight grip on it don't you?" He then asked me.

"I see what you mean. It prevents the bracers from interfering with the bow." I said after it dawned on me.

"Correct. Now take these traces, and cut them out, then put them on the Wolf Skin Leather." He then instructed me.

So, I took the paper, and started cutting out the traces. I then put them on the Wolf Skin Leather, there was bȧrėly enough room for all of them.

"Now grab the needles beside the leather and pen them onto the leather, and then trace around them with this charcoal." He then told me.

I did what he told me too, I penned the traces to the leather. Then I traced around them with the charcoal. After that, I took the pens out, and took the traces off.

"Now here comes one of the hard parts. Take this knife, and start cutting one of the left pieces off the leather. Be slow and careful when you do it." He told me.

I nodded at him, and then started doing what he told me to do. It took me a little bit, because I had never done this before. After I had it done, I took the piece of leather and handed it to him.

"Very nice work, you have a steady hand. There is bȧrėly any errors in this cut. Now do the rest of them." He told me.

That made me happy that I didn;t do a bad job. I took the knife, and started working on the rest of them. It took me about an hour to cut them all out.

"Hmm. . . Not bad, not bad. Alright, now it is time to put them together. Take this hole puncher, and punch holes into the sides of the leather pieces. Not the triangular parts. Make sure you put the holes about a half inch apart, and a half centimeter from the edge itself." He then instructed me how to use the hole puncher.

It took me about an hour to get all the holes put into the leather. I've already been at this for over 2 hours already.

"Now comes the last step. Go over to that corner, and grab some black leather strips out of the bucket." He told me.

I looked over to where he was pointing, and saw the bucket he was talking about. I walked over, and looked inside to see different colored strips of leather. It took me about 5 minutes, but I found a few stips of black leather. Then I brought it back over to him.

"Now that you have the strips, I want you to take and make half centimeter wide strips out of them. Make sure there are about as long as your full arm." He then instructed me.

I did what he told me to do, it was a little bit harder in my opinion, but it didn't take me too long to finish this task.

"Good! Nice job. Oh, I almost forgot. Take the hole puncher, and pick up them smaller pieces. Then place them on the bigger pieces in the middle, and then punch holes on the bigger pieces around the edges of the smaller ones." He told me.

". . ." I just looked at him.

"Yeah I know. I forgot. . ." He looked downwards after saying that.

I took the pieces he told me too, and put them in the middle of the bigger pieces. I then punched holes into the bigger pieces around the edges like he told me to.

"Now take one of the smaller pieces, and put it in the middle. Then take a strip, and put it through the bottom going up through the little piece. Once you have done that, tie the end of the stip to the bottom that way you don't pull it all the way through. Now, take the strip and keep going through all the holes in a criss cross pattern. Then take it back the other way. After that then tie the end at the bottom of the bigger piece once again, and there you go. One part done.

I did what he instructed me to do, and it took me about 10 minutes to pull the strip through the holes. It actually started to look like a pair of bracers.

"Ok good, now take one of the strips again, and start on the side without the triangular tip on it. Make knot on one end of the string, then place it into the leather, and then criss cross it. Once you make it to the end, put it on the exact opposite side, and do the same thing. After you have reached the top part, I want you to make a loop, then tie the loop end, into a knot around the strip of leather. Then put it on, and put the loop around the other end, and there you go, you've got one side made.

I grabbed another strip, and I started working it through the leather a second time. It took me a shorter amount of time to do this then last time, because I had done it before. I was really excited once I had completed one of the bracers. I put it on, and took a look at it. It looked really good on my arm.

"Now just do that all over again to the other bracer." Sheppard told me.

I did what he told me, and put the other bracer together the same way as the left bracer. It took me about 20 minutes to do it without instructions this time. I officially have a set of bracers now! I then looked at both of them on me to see what it gave me.

[Wolf Skin Leather Bracers

Maker -- Arthrall Pendragon

Rank -- Common

Level -- 5

Strength -- 2

Dexterity -- 2

Constitution -- 2]