Runebound Reverse Tower of The Dead-Chapter 81: A Hammer And Man’s Imagination

"Good," Kael said, and the word carried more relief than he wanted it to.

"Now then..."

Once again, the space around him shifted.

Not a flash, not a pull, just that sickening sensation of reality deciding you’re elsewhere now. The council room vanished like it had never existed, and he found himself back in the same room he was in before.

Looking at the room now, the zombie was the least important feature.

That thought almost made him laugh, because a few minutes ago the zombie had felt like a looming future, a warning sign of the floor’s apocalypse. Now it was just a body in the corner, a problem temporarily postponed.

The room itself was uglier in detail than his memory had bothered to process: several giant boxes all around it, each of them humming with energy, except a couple that seemed stale, dead, like they’d been unplugged from purpose. Servers to manage the electricity that was miraculously still functional in this god-forsaken place.

There were broken monitors that surveyed the place, but they seemed to be out of service. Some screens were cracked. Some were dark. Some showed faint burned-in ghosts of images that would never update.

Spare power cables sprawled over the floor like dead snakes, and broken desks were shoved at odd angles, as if people had fled in a hurry and never came back to clean up.

The place felt like a world that had lost, then been kept as a museum exhibit for monsters.

Kael sat down on one of the chairs. The metal groaned under him, weak, tired, like it resented still being asked to function. The monitor desk in front of him was pretty much the only functional thing here. Its surface was dusty, but intact. The chair’s wheels scratched faintly as he pushed it closer.

He pushed the chair next to the desk and sat down, forcing himself to breathe slower. He needed to calm down, because panic would make him do something stupid, and stupid was expensive here.

He began by sorting the items he had on him.

Leather, scales, fangs and claws, and tendons.

He didn’t bring out everything as it would be more than the table could handle. Even just laying the materials out made it feel like the desk was turning into a butcher’s counter. So he placed each type separately, stacking them by size and quality, trying to pretend he knew what he was doing. The smell was still there, mud, blood, burnt cloth, clinging to him like a second skin. Thankfully he didn’t stink as much since the help he recieved from Dragon earlier.

"If I needed armor..." Kael muttered, and the words came out heavier than they should. "Then I’ll have to make it myself..."

Saying it out loud made it real. It wasn’t a fantasy anymore. He was a Straight A engineer student-turned-construction-worker-turned-climber, sitting in an underground ruin, planning to craft armor out of basilisk remains because a rabbit administrator wanted him dead and a dragon wanted him careful, and a mother wanted him safe.

He couldn’t do anything too fancy, but a simple jacket and pants were possible. He had enough leather to create them, the only problem was, how was he going to attach them together? He didn’t have a thread. He didn’t have tools. He didn’t even have the skill, just a legendary hammer that promised proficiency like a cruel joke. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The thought came like inspiration, sharp and sudden.

He had tendons.

He had fangs.

A needle and a line, that’s all he needed.

Not pretty. Not professional. But functional. Tendon could be thread if you treated it right. Fangs could pierce if you shaped them, sharpened them, turned them into something that acted like a needle. The idea was brutal, primitive, and exactly the kind of solution the Tower forced out of you.

So he began by first trying to use the more "expensive leather."

But just as he touched it, he realized that won’t be possible to use it in this state. The piece felt stiff and uneven under his fingers. It wasn’t supple like good hide should be. It was scarred, torn, and half-rotted at the edges.

The male basilisk had a superior material, but it was damaged by time and fangs. The female did a number on him. The holes weren’t small either; some tears were large enough to fit two fingers through. Some sections looked like they’d been chewed, not cut.

He only had enough for barely a jacket with sleeves, but it would have too many holes in it. He could already picture himself wearing it: protective in theory, ridiculous in practice. Armor that looked like it had lost a fight before he even put it on.

Just then, he remembered something.

Brokk’s hammer had the ability to repair material and morph it based on the desire of the user.

Kael stared at the leather for a beat, then slowly reached into his inventory and pulled out the hammer. It looked ordinary enough to mock him for expecting miracles, but he’d seen it peel rust off a crowbar like it was shedding skin and change its structure to a stake following his will. He’d felt the weight it carried in his palm, the quiet insistence of craftsmanship.

He placed the leather on the table and pulled Brokk’s hammer closer.

He lightly tapped the leather.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

The taps weren’t loud, but in the small, humming room they sounded sharper than they should. Each impact sent a faint vibration through the desk, up his arm, into his shoulder. For a second nothing happened, and then the leather... changed. Not dramatically. Subtly. Like the material remembered what it used to be.

The rot on the edges disappeared, dark decay receding as if someone had scraped it clean. The tears inside it seemed to weld together, fibers knitting, seams sealing. The holes didn’t vanish in an instant flash; they closed with a slow, uncanny certainty, like the leather was choosing to become whole again.

Kael’s breath caught.

’All that’s limiting me is my imagination...’

He smiled, the first genuine one in a while. It wasn’t joy, exactly. It was that sharp relief of finding out you weren’t completely powerless. It was the feeling of stumbling onto a tool that actually obeyed you for once.

Truly worth the legendary rating.

He began working.