Chapter 13: The Rat Ranger of Sunnymeat

Smacks returned with an armful of forest detritus, dumping it in front of Rhett with a broad grin.

"I got lots of cool stuff here, we got some of the rocks that grow out of the dirt from Bigpig's spit and stomping, we got round leaves, star-shaped leaves, sticks… Oh, and mud!"

Rhett began to pick through them, sorting them into discrete little piles with Smacks’s help.

“Okay, so, the book says I need to set up a Familiar Baseline. A series of actions and values that I can reference later,” he explains, mostly for his own benefit, as the teens shared a look of bemusement at how conservatively he was approaching it.

“Don’t forget to guess. Dad always says your gut’s the smartest brain in you,” Smacks remarks, receiving a whap from Grabby for his trouble.

Taking some of the round leaves, he made two little mittens, by folding them and pinning them with little bits of sticks.

One, he slipped onto his hand, and the other, he left on the floor. He also put a little cut in both of them, remembering that he was told at one point that cloth could apparently regrow itself.

Using his marker, and a watch he had bought with some of his pay, he started a timer on it to see how long it took to wilt.

He did the same with the star shaped leaves as well, and the herbs and grasses that he had been brought.

Exploiting the gang’s curiosity, he also made little finger-rings and forced them in on it too.

“Science is about repeatability,” he explained, shoving the leaves into their hands for testing.

Under the hot sun, it didn’t take long to see some oddities.

The ones left on the ground began to dry out by the campfire, while the ones that were being worn did not. In fact, the plants that had been worn had a variety of differences to them.

The round leaves seemed to heal over where they had been plucked and punctured, while the star leaves simply grew sharper.

The grass made their wearers smell somehow more like a cut lawn than the actual grass laying on the ground, and while they were worn, the other plants that they had been wearing seemed to outright grow.

Most curious among the plants, however, was the herbs, the long thin stalks wrapped around his arm had a similar effect to the grass, prompting not just stability of the other plant-garments, but outright growth.

The stew that they had boiling on the fire, the herb-wearers noted, actually tasted better than usual.

“Oh!. T-These are Miso Herbs!” Blue proclaimed. “We use them in curing, because of how savory they taste. Their Essencia Maxim must be similar!” he remarked, to Rhett’s benefit.

“Well, I’m keeping mine. Sorry, Rhett. You can only have mashed-barktatos so many times before you start stealing rings of tastiness,” Murdoom said, admiring the hoop of twisted herbs on his finger.

Their words were mostly lost on the ratling, who used his marker to scribble down notes like the others.

The others ended up needing to help, mostly because the teens were actually better at shorthand than him, and he didn’t have unlimited paper.

“See, just keep the list of inputs in order, from left to right. True goes first, since this is True Mana you’re starting with, instead of Thaumic from the air, or Aura from your body,” Murdoom explained, helping him shrink down the results he was finding into something more readable and concise.

“...Thanks, Murdoom,” he nodded after a moment. “...Why is that your name anyway? I thought elves named their kids really long stuff?” he asked.

Everyone looked at him like he sprouted a second head. “Huh? My parents didn’t name me. Did yours?” the Drow asked, looking more than a little weirded out.

Looking around, Rhett realized they all looked weirded out.

“Well, yeah? What else were they going to call me, ‘Hey You’?”

“Kid” Grabby answered.

“Brat,” Smacks said, pumping out his chest for emphasis.

“Youngling,” Murdoom said with a scowl.

“Eldest,” Blue finished, hands clasped awkwardly.

“When you’re old enough to talk, you’re old enough to start deciding that sort of thing for yourself, after all,” Grabby nodded sagely. “Though, people don’t always get it right on the first try. Eventually we settle on something that sounds good.“

“Most people finish their Naming after they decide what they want to do for a living. Until then, we go by nicknames, or simply stick with whatever we picked when we were younger,” Blue said, carefully not looking at Murdoom.

“I told you, it’s a good name for a Master Occultist. I’m not adding a bunch of crap to it,” Murdoom answered.

“My father said ‘that’s what they all say, then someone asks for clarification one too many times’,” The-Endless-Blue-Water-Of-Skin answered wisely, hiding a faint smile at the statement.

Smacks waved his hand, “Can we get back to the fact that new guy here is running around with a name from his parents? I wouldn’t want socks my parents picked out, much less a name,” he said in horror.

Rhett just blinked away the crazy as best as he could.

“To be fair, humans do that, with their last names,” Grabby interjected, sipping from his own cup of stew.

“Yeah, but that’s different. It’s like your hometown, or your favorite Tackleball team. You add it on the end so people know what you’re about, that’s fair enough. I wouldn’t be too embarrassed to call myself Pawson,” Smacks retorted.

“But having them pick out your whole name, kit and kaboodle? Weird.”

He shook his head, then eyed Rhett up and down. “You’re not from a cult, right? One of the obscure ones that sacrifice elk hearts instead of running bake sales?” he asked seriously, prompting frantic headshakes from the nervous rat.

“No? My parents were pretty normal all things considered!” he exclaimed defensively.

“Hey, leave Dadname alone,” Murdoom answered, his lips twitching upwards.

“Do not call me that,” Rhett said, giving the elf the stinkeye.

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“He-Who-Was-Named-By-His-Father does have a nice ring to it, Rhett,” Blue assayed, hands up defensively at the bristling rodent.

“Can we just get back to testing all this stuff?” Rhett exclaimed, hopping up from his log.

“Sure thing, Dadname,” Murdoom smirked.

Furious rat noises echoed through the woods.

–

Rhett managed to learn quite a few more little things, with everyone’s help speeding things along.

He felt a bit like someone in an MMO, getting carried past the boring early levels by several friends who had higher level accounts.

This feeling was particularly noted, when Blue straight up told him that Leather had the True Attunement of [Armor of the Beast], and magically melted down some in a bucket, letting Rhett dip his paws in to create a pair of skintight boots on the spot.

As it turned out, what [Armor of the Beast] meant was that a thin, invisible layer coated him while he wore the boots.

Tests indicated that wind and hot stew would bounce off of it, while something like a smack from Smacks’s magic stick would break it, exposing him to the subtle air of the campsite.

Additionally, with the remainder of the liquid leather, Blue had one last trick to show him, one that he had noted was functionally the mainstay of all Rangers he knew of.

By making a leather pouch, studding it with bits of the Pigrock, and filling it with little bits of the same, Rhett got a satchel that didn’t produce a barrier of any kind.

“Okay, now, reach into the pouch, and just try to grab something that will help with knocking over this stick,” Blue said, jamming a branch into the soil. “And don’t look,” he warned.

He didn’t quite get it, but obeyed, shoving a paw into the satchel, rummaging around until he felt something that definitely hadn’t been put in there.

Pulling it out, he found himself the proud owner of a large stone frisbee, complete with the lip he was familiar with on the throwing disks.

“Stone usually has some kind of [Creation], and with harder materials, it’s usually easier to just stud leather with it. There’s a ranger named Bah that I saw using a quiver like that,” Blue explained.

“I asked him about it once,” he continued, revealing how he knew this. “He said he didn’t use metal arrows because those were harder to get quivers to make.”

Rhett threw the disk at the stick, in his best impression of Country-Colonel’s own disk-hucking superhero prowess.

It landed in the dirt.

“Yeah… I think Rangers use something to help with that part too?” he trailed off, trying not to laugh like the others.

Rhett flushed. “...We’ll circle back to this. Let’s move on.”

He learned a lot, and what he couldn’t figure out through testing, Blue’s parents were able to offer advice on, the group slowly migrating to the elven campsite, which bordered the ruined sections of the village.

Mud facepaints could help him find more mud, apparently letting him just dig it up from wherever, even if it wasn’t there before.

A Pigrock hat could let him pull little curly stone hair pins out from under it, which definitely hadn’t been there before, and padding the hat with a Roundleaf made strange walnuts appear instead.

These nuts, while inedible due to being made of stone, proved his gaming mastery right, when upon throwing one at a tree (from much closer than the last time), the stone cracked open with a squeal loud enough to make the others clap their hands over their ears.

His Black Lens mask was special, too. Apparently, the blacklight he saw while wearing it wasn’t even its Essencia Maxim. Instead, he had to be told that while he wore it, his body had darkened, and a shadowy unknown blurred his silhouette, a [Dark Light Barrier], owing to the leather straps holding it to him.

He also discovered a few subtler things about the art he was learning and being taught. Different articles of clothing had ever so slightly different effects. A leaf mitten made all his other plants a bit more grippy. A leaf hat made everything a bit prettier.

He also tried a tail-sock made out of a leaf, which was actually surprisingly comfortable.

Apparently, this was more a power of Knights. A Knight’s suit was powerful enough that the style, and design of their armor massively warped the actual properties of its magic.

In his case, the material was more of a factor, though he didn’t dismiss the idea of pushing it further. The fact that a leather pouch could conjure matter ex nihilo, with just a few bits of stone embedded in it, and that what it conjured was almost entirely different from a hat said more than enough for that.

He also discovered that the materials used didn’t really need to be ‘traditionally’ wearable. Chewing his way through a loaf of Sawbread, Rhett carved a full suit of armor from the edible material, much to everyone’s amusement and laughter.

Wearing it, however, made something smell really good.

Everyone got out of his way as he almost involuntarily began sniffing around, trying to figure out what his wooden-bread fullplate was guiding him towards.

His nose thunked into a small tree.

He looked at the others. “Say… Nothing,” he grit out, before testing his theory.

Chomp.

Chewing the piece of bark and wood, that he had somehow taken a clean bite out of, Rhett’s eyes widened.

It was… a lot better than he remembered from when he was gnawing his house-hole. Rather than tasting like sawdust and sadness, the wood instead tasted more like raw mushrooms and celery.

“Hell yeah, tasty trees. Tastrees,” he proclaimed.

He tried a different species of tree. This one tasted almost exactly like peanuts.

A third tree tasted like rosewater, making him spit it out in disgust.

‘Well, they all can’t be winners.’

With a full stomach, he waited to inevitably feel ill, but… He didn’t.

“It must be because I’m wearing so much of this sawbread… It’s making the wood edible?” he wondered.

The teens stifled laughter paused, as they all considered his words. When he explained to them that the wood actually had flavors to it, several of them swallowed, suddenly very interested.

Taking it all off, save for his helmet, Rhett tried again. The wood still tasted better, but not nearly as much. Worse, he had a nasty pit in his gut when he tried swallowing some, immediately getting the feeling that he wouldn’t be nourished by it.

“The ability to actually digest wood was separate from the ability to make it taste good,” he hummed. “So wearing more pieces can… I guess ‘unlock’ more effects? They get stronger, too,” he answered their unspoken question.

But those were general subtleties. A lot of details he might have been able to get just by reading more books at the library. There was something he discovered that would definitely not be in a book, yet.

More specifically, he discovered that he…

He was actually kind of good at this! Not for talent, but just for simple biology. He was tiny, but he had a sapient soul. Apparently, in this world, that meant he had ten gallons of mana in a twelve-ounce mouse.

He didn’t have more than the others, but what he did have was much denser, and that seemed to apply to his equipment as well. A grass ring would be barely noticeable on the others, making the ring itself stay green a bit longer.

The same grass ring, worn on his head, actually began blossoming after an hour, little fluffy blooms popping up on it over time.

Likewise, his pouch didn’t really run out. A pouch that fit comfortably on his hip was practically the size of a tallfolk’s thumb, and no matter how much he scooped out of the pouch, he didn’t encounter throughput issues.

He could just keep yanking out tiny stone pignuts from his hat, and little coin-sized stone discus from his pouch.

The trick, which took a while for him to figure out, was that the pouch wasn’t letting him spawn them from nothing. It was more that he was allowed to… Not require a supply of them to do something.

If he just shoveled his hands in to try and make a giant pile, nothing would happen. He needed a target, a goal in mind.

It felt less like he had an infinite supply of exploding tree-nuts, and more like… He had packed enough for everything he would need to do today. Even though, of course, he hadn’t.

He never would have thought the Legolas strat would be for him, he was more of a ‘Create self-replicating golems that cast spells and become omnipotent’ kind of magic fan, but this was… Visceral.

People were impressed with his dense little Passives. He was actually able to do cool things, that others would find hard to do.

The best part is, he didn’t have to do a thing. Rangers relied on the innate properties of True Mana to function.

More powerful ones could apparently bend and control this power, twisting and combining effects together, but even they mostly trusted in the power of doing nothing, and letting their clothes do the strutting.

Playing with more of the stone nuts he had conjured near the edge of the Elf camp, he saw something emerge from the splintered wood of one of the ruined sections of Sunnymeat.

A glassy mass, shimmering in the sun, one that dribbled out from the wooden shards with a hiss of acid. Acrid smoke wafted into the air, and his nose twitched involuntarily.

He was savvy enough to prepare for the blobby shape of a slime monster, backing away so he didn’t get skeletonized by it, but he did have a moment of cognitive dissonance when, instead of the traditional teardrop slime, he encountered a…

A Gelly shaped like a juicebox?