“Was that an earthquake?” Kurushimi asked. The most reasonable assumption she could come to was seismic activity. Originating from Japan, she had experienced a good few earthquakes before, both big and small. Even though she wasn’t on Earth any more, unless this planet was drastically different in make, it wouldn’t be a surprise if natural hazards such as earthquakes and volcanoes were a thing here too.

“We’re not on Earth, so it wouldn’t be an earthquake.” Kurono said.

That… was an unexpected answer.

“Th-That’s not what I meant…” Kurushimi replied. Although, Kurono was smart and probably knew that. She was just messing with her. Latching onto that topic, Kurushimi asked: “What would it be called then?”

“Seismic activity or… Whatever the name of this planet is plus ‘quake’ probably.” Kurono gave a quick and somewhat sensible answer.

“What is the name of this planet, anyway?” Kurushimi had been here for over a week already. Minus the death and pain, it wasn’t too bad. Although, she wished to find some kind of way to go home eventually. But in her time spent here, she hadn’t learnt much about names. Not even the name of the planet. It couldn’t be helped; there weren’t exactly any maps placed for local tourists.

“Kraltigrr.” Atelier suddenly interjected.

“What?” Kurushimi thought she misheard the first time. Kral… what?

“The name of this planet is Kraltigrr.” Atelier stated again.

“T-That’s an interesting name…” Kurushimi stumbled upon her words before attempting to pronounce it herself. “Kraltigrr. I feel like I have to do an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression just to say that.”

“Who?” Kurono asked.

“Oh, the rumbling stopped.” With the rumbling coming to an abrupt end, Kurono’s question fell on deaf ears. With the ‘kraltigrrquake’ no longer incessantly making noise, a previously snuffed out sound from below Kurushimi could now be heard.

‘GRR-! Kreeagrr-! Grah-!’ It was the sound of something struggling along with a tree branch being tugged on. To be specific, that something was a canisfang Kurushimi had tied up with shadow magic and hung from the branch below her.

With the appearance of the rumbling, the canisfangs in the area had all gone into disarray. Their senses had been confused and messed up as the ground shook beneath their feet. Kurushimi took this opportunity to kidnap one of them.

She stared at the canisfang as it struggled. It was making a lot of noise and at this rate would attract nearby canisfangs or other monsters.

“Well… I don’t need you alive.” Kurushimi muttered as she pulled out her katana and stuck it into the canisfangs neck. Its struggle was quickly put to a halt. She only needed its blood in the end, the canisfang didn’t really hold much more value to her alive than dead.

“Ruthless as always. Don’t you know life is sacred?” Kurono said.

“I’ll learn to value life as sacred when they do!“ What Kurushimi was saying in other words was… When pigs fly!

Kurushimi looked at the ground below her as she hoisted the dead canisfang up. The other canisfangs had started to regain their senses and were walking around again. They didn’t seem to notice the slight subtraction from their pack. From the looks of it, they would be alerted to her presence. It wouldn't matter much if they were to be but she wasn’t here to fight. She wanted to get back and get to work on her bow.

It was going to be a hard task. It was already troublesome enough to craft her weapons normally. However, this time she was going to use foreign blood to do so. She had gotten progressively better at controlling and manipulating blood but it was always harder for her to control something elses blood than her own.

Although she agreed with challenging herself, she wasn’t exactly happy she had to do it this way. She much preferred to just draw her own blood and use that. However, the idea of perhaps getting a perk from using monster blood was alluring. She wasn’t too confident anything would come out of canisfang blood though. But what if she were to use dragon blood?! …If dragons are in this world to begin with.

Kurushimi used the trees to discreetly travel back to base with the canisfang. It had been a fairly easy carry. Not because the canisfang was light or anything, but most likely because of her heightened strength stat. Her strength was at a healthy 618 now, her HP at 613, END at 578, SP at 547, AGI at 579 and MP at 512.

“Well, let’s get right to it!” Kurushimi said, throwing the corpse to the ground with a thud.

From there, she went through the standard steps of weapon creation. The shadow base was no different than normal and the bow’s shape was relatively easy to make. As she thought, she struggled considerably as she tried to build the bow with the canisfang blood. With some pointers from Atelier, Kurushimi was able to craft the bow in the end. Additionally, ‘craftsman’ gained a level plus a 2.5% bonus to the buff.

“And the finishing touch…” Kurushimi paused. Even though she couldn’t see her, she could feel the intense glare of Kurono. She also understood why she was being glared at like so.

“Kurushimi, this time come up with a proper name for it.” Kurono said adamantly.

“It wasn’t that bad-!” Kurushimi exclaimed.

“They were so bad even the description was affected by it.” Kurono retorted.

In case you forgot, the end of the description for ‘sword 1’ went as follows: Being the craftsman’s first ever creation, the craftsman chose to give it the awful name ‘Sword 1’. If the sword were alive, it would surely feel resentment for its creator.

“What are the names of her current equipment?” Atelier asked, curious. Even when she held the katana she hadn’t actually appraised it. That was because she preferred to see such things with her own eyes without using the system in any way. However, this method didn’t allow her to see such things as the name of it.

“Sword 1 and Polearm 1.” Without hesitating, Kurono stated their names for the whole world to listen to.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Kurushimi shouted. The way Atelier looked at her was as if she had insulted her very being. “Fine, I’ll think of a better name for this one.”

She paused and tried to come up with an apt name. The bow was made of shadow and blood. However, all her items were crafted that way so she felt it wouldn’t be right to base a name entirely off that. Focusing on other specifics, she went to the one unique aspect. The blood. More specifically, the canisfang. From there, one word came to her mind.

“Contempt.” She stated. It had a nice ring to it.

“Is that all? Are you sure it shouldn’t be longer?” Atelier asked. She didn’t think the name was bad but it was rather short. A lot of craftsmen preferred to give their weaponry a longer and more descriptive name.

“Well, the thing with a long name is…” Kurushimi paused as she figured out how to explain it. “Sword of Death.’ Not a good example but let’s go with that. Sure it sounds scary, but you’re likely to know what's gonna happen. That’s why a shorter name is better. It gives you a vague idea but not the whole picture. The rest is left up to you.”

Sometimes, the thought of something can be infinitely more frightening than the actual thing.

“...” Atelier was left speechless.

“How did you come up with that?” Even Kurono looked mildly concerned.

“From a funny video I saw online.” Kurushimi said.

That answer made a lot more sense. For a second, they felt like they had lost their usual Kurushimi. With the name decided on, the last step had been fulfilled. Similarly to her previous weapons, the production of her bow resulted in a window of information around it.

Name: Contempt

Type: Bow

Rarity: Rare

Durability: 150/150

Special effect: Mark of the hunt

Desc: A bow made from the mixture of shadows and canisfang blood. Made by an amateur craftsman, it is based on the standard issue bow. It harnesses the power and spirit of the canisfang to relentlessly pursue those unfortunate enough to be hit by it.

“Oh-!” Kurushimi was elated to see the rarity a higher grade than her previous weaponry. Even more so when she saw the ‘special effect’ category wasn’t empty as per usual. ‘Mark of the hunt’ was the effect she had been granted. An appraisal of it resulted in the description: Targets shot by an arrow from this bow are marked. When marked, the user gains bonus movement speed towards the target and deal increased damage.

Upon acquiring it, she stowed it away with storage magic. Her storage magic had now reached a level high enough so that she could store more than a single weapon. This allowed her to have the glaive and bow in at the same time. Although, she still couldn’t throw the katana in there along with them. She just hoped she could store a good few arrows at least.

“I need to make arrows now…” Kurushimi had almost forgotten that crucial fact. It was good she had managed to attain her bow but it was completely useless without anything to shoot from it. She made approximately 20 until she ran out of space in her storage magic. The thought of crafting a quiver crossed her mind however she was way too burnt out to craft anything else. Besides, she would be leveling her skills including storage magic from now on.

She went on to spend 400 skill points to finally buy ‘magic pistol’ before climbing up a tree and going to sleep.

“The day isn’t over yet, isn’t it too early to sleep?” Kurono asked Atelier.

“She crafted a lot, with foreign blood at that. It’s not strange that she is feeling tired.” Atelier said.

It was actually beneficial that Kurushimi slept now. She had a lot of hard work ahead of her. It was likely to be mana-intensive and more. It would be night by the time she woke up which was optimal for her because of her skill ‘nightwalker’.

Time passed, day became night and Kurushimi became active again. She was a lot more energetic after waking up from a good nap and was highly motivated. Unable to actually try it out before going to sleep, she had immediately activated ‘magic pistol’ like a kid on christmas eve.

“Quick draw and shoot-!” She exclaimed, summoning the magic pistol and readying it before firing it off. A mana bullet propelled out of the barrel. With the sound of wood breaking, a dent formed on the tree bark. Preparing to shoot again, she stepped forward and hovered her free hand above the pistol.

“Fan the hammer! Ba-!Ba-!Ba-!Ba-!Ba-!Ba-!” As she placed her hand on the back of the gun, she mimicked a cowboy fanning the hammer; even going the extra mile to imitate the gun shots with her mouth. To her pleasant surprise, it actually worked and consecutively fired off six shots. Although it momentarily made her feel cool, she noticed a big problem with performing said move, “Ah, I should be careful with that. That took a lot of mana…”

Even with all the shots she had fired, it only dented the tree slightly. At the low level it currently was, it was pretty inefficient to use. The only good usage at the moment would be to stagger the enemy. But as all skills were, it would be better in the future.

Kurushimi looked over at her mana bar once again. A large dent had been put in it, already having been drained heavily. With this and the mana-hungry sword aura, running out of mana was really becoming an issue. “I suppose I should buy a mana conservation skill or something.”

She still had some points left over she had yet to spend. With those, the most sensible choice was to buy a mana conservation skill. Kurushimi also realized it was an incredibly opportune time as well. Considering she was constantly using her mana on repetitive usage of skills, she could also train the new mana conservation skill simultaneously.