The Bloodforged Kin

"Okay, so as I see it the issue with your luck is that you're not giving it enough opportunities to express itself." Madison and Luna were standing in one of her workshops staring at an array of objects spread across a table.

"But I've tried everything you've suggested!"

"I know, but everything we've tried up until this point has been giving you a choice and letting you try to pick your favorite one. I think my previous experiments weren't really aligned with how the stat works."

"What does that even mean?" Luna kept trying to snuggle her arms around Madison but the girl was too animated to notice.

"It means that your skill activates most often when you're in dangerous, life-threatening situations, and you just haven't been in those. I'm afraid that what I've made for you so far has been too powerful. You haven't really, truly been at risk of losing any of the fights you've been in, so there's been no need for your skill to activate. I think I've fixed that."

"Fixed it? How?"

"By making every opportunity one that could lead to total failure. No half measures - you either succeed fully or fail completely."

Luna stepped back, a wary look on her face. "I don't think I like where this is going."

Madison laughed. "It'll be fine! Or it won't, which is pretty much the point. Here, look at this," She picked up the Lunar Lightning Rod. "Previously this worked every time, provided it had enough energy. I've added a switch to it that lets you change it to 'Luck Mode.' It will continue to store energy like normal, but when the switch is thrown it has a 50% chance of firing the lightning toward your opponent and a 50% chance of firing it back into your hand."

"What?" Luna yelped. "That's insane! Why would I want that?"

"You don't, that's the point."

"But that's so unsafe!"

"You need to be a little unsafe - but there are ways to mitigate it. I recommend only flipping the switch when you are facing low-level creatures and when the wand is at low power. It'll still hurt and maybe cause damage, but nothing a healing pill won't take care of. Oh! Speaking of healing pills,"

She picked up the next object, a small cylinder with a hole on the end. "This has 20 healing pills inside, each capable of healing about 90% of your health, depending on where you're at now. You push this button here and it will either eject a pill or it won't. Think of it like a faulty Pez dispenser."

"So it's a 50/50 chance too?"

"No, you need something that is even lower odds to stress your skill a little more. I won't tell you the exact number so you can't plan for it, but it's much worse than 50%. I figured this one was a safer bet because you can also carry healing pills with you for emergencies. Although that kinda negates the dispenser I guess."

"Here's the next thing," she hefted a contraption with shoulder straps and two boxy containers at the side. "Have you ever seen Attack on Titan?"

The blank look in Luna's eyes was all the answer she needed.

"Ugh, can't believe I'm dating a normy. Anyway, they have swords that are designed to break. It makes sense in the anime, but not so much in real life. There's really no suitable use for a sword designed to intentionally break - unless you're trying to improve your luck." She moved around Luna, strapping the contraption around her shoulders and adjusting the boxes to sit at her hips.

"It's lighter than I expected!" Luna shrugged her shoulders experimentally.

"Jason helped with that. It's super lightweight and completely silent, but as strong as any steel. You will have to get used to fighting without them interfering with your style, but that shouldn't be a problem these days. Here's your hilt."

Luna eyed the handle skeptically. "It's just a handle. There's no blade."

"The blades are in here," she took the handle and pressed it into one of the slats in the box with a click. When she pulled it out there was a thin, double-edged blade attached to the handle.

Luna's eyes went wide. "That's so cool!"

"Yep!" Madison beamed. "You have eight blades - four in each box. They are strong enough to hold up to almost anything you'd fight against, but repeated hits weakens the connections points. It's especially vulnerable if you hit bone or metal, or if you connect poorly and hit at an odd angle or on the wide edge of the sword."

Madison swung the sword into the table a few times, carving big chunks out of the wood. She tilted the blade and smacked its flat side onto the table sending the blade flying into the air. Luna squeaked and the girls jumped back from the flying blade.

Madison pressed a button on the handle of the hilt, ejecting the remaining piece before handing it back to Luna. She pulled another blade from a pile on the table and slid it into the box. "This will not only help you improve your sword fighting skills, it'll create very dangerous situations in the middle of a fight. In the heat of battle you're more likely to react, causing you to act sub-optimally. I'm hoping that this will provide more opportunities for luck to come into play."

"Yeah," Luna didn't sound enthusiastic. "I can see how that would work."

As Madison handed the next item to Luna the girl's heart did a merry skip in her chest. The Cogslinger Gauntlet was the first thing Madison had made for her and it had helped her survive a lot of dangerous situations. She ran her hands over it lovingly, tracing the network of small tubes and pathways covering it.

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"Identify it first and I'll explain what you see."

Luna slipped it on and felt something click in her mind. "What was that? I felt like it just attached itself to me, but inside."

"Oh that - it's now attuned to you, and only you. What you're feeling is it aligning itself with you on a System level. Identify it and you'll understand more."

Luna looked at it, calling up the item's information.

Item Description: Advanced Cogslinger Gauntlet (Tuned to Luna Torres)
Type (crafted): Combat Gadget
Origin: Crafted by Madison Bouchard, Gadgeteer
Description: An enhanced version of the original Cogslinger Gauntlet, this upgraded model has been meticulously tuned to fit Luna Torres, ensuring that its advanced functionalities can only be harnessed by her. Once attuned to Luna it is unable to be removed by anyone except Luna Torres, even if she falls unconscious. Item can be removed after death.

Special Abilities:

Elemental Infusion Mode:

The gauntlet adapts its projectiles to mimic the abilities of the creature it last absorbed energy from. Luna can now choose whether or not to accept the energy of the creatures slain near the gauntlet.

Note:

User cannot choose how the effects manifest. Effects may change even after absorbing energy from the same creatures but will always take on elements from the creature's ability set.

Empowered Crystals:

Crystals lining the gauntlets are tuned to accept energy directly from Luna Torres and can not accept any other type of energy. The gauntlet has been designed to make use of energy infused by Luna Torres.

Note:

Effects of absorbing energy from Luna have not been determined and will be dependent on the type and amount of energy absorbed. Results may be unpredictable.

Healing Injectors:

The Gauntlet has been retrofitted with vials capable of injecting fluid directly into Luna's bloodstream.

"Woah!"

"Woah is right." Madison's pride was clear. "So first thing, I improved the absorption ability. It will still absorb energy from creatures that die around it but you can turn that off with a mental command. That is so you can either keep the power set it currently has or can allow a creature to turn into an object."

"What about the crystals? I understand the words but not what it's telling me."

"That's a little weird, I know, but it's something I learned making my drones. These are essentially power crystals that can absorb energy, but only the energy of who it's attuned to - you. You feed energy into them and it stores it to use."

"So I can store lightning energy, or…" Luna drifted off, the explanation sounding wrong even to her.

"No, lightning energy - any other type of energy, really - doesn't come from you, so the crystals won't absorb them. It needs to be from you, and only you. What I'm hoping is that you'll reach a point where you can control your luck energy enough to be able to funnel it into the crystals."

"How do I even do that? And what will it do if I learn?"

"I don't know, and I don't know. You'll need to get good at energy control, whatever that means. As for what it does - I don't know that either. I can speculate that if they absorb strength you'll be able to hit harder and the projectiles will pack more of a punch, or agility will let the gauntlet fire faster. I don't even have a way of conceptualizing what charisma would do, but it'd be cool to see. As for luck - again, I'm not sure. I'm hoping you'll be able to find out, though."

"Oookaaayy… Well then what about these? I'm guessing you just want to keep me alive a little longer with a healing potion IV?"

Madison laughed and ran her fingers over Luna's. "Yes, that's definitely true. You can have four vials attached at any one time and can choose which to inject with a mental command. I created it for healing, so by default it will auto-inject whatever is in the vials if you fall unconscious or drop below 10% health. It will inject them in series," she saw the question on Luna's face and answered it before the girl could ask. "It will inject one if your health drops below 10%. If your health doesn't go above 10% after 30 seconds it will inject the next, then the next until all are empty. I wasn't sure the appropriate amount of time to wait, but I am assuming that if the healing potions don't work within 30 seconds you're in a really bad state and need constant healing. Too fast and you'll risk a backlash, too slow and you could die waiting for the next injection."

"That kind of negates the pillbox you gave me, though."

"That's true, it does, but as much as I want you to get stronger I also can't stand the thought of losing you." Madison's clinical demeanor softened. "I know you have to put yourself in dangerous situations, but the risks scare me. You have to be lucky every time - the monsters only have to be lucky once."

The girls hugged, the moment heavy between them. Madison pulled back with a sniffle.

"That being said, I realized there are other uses that may help with your journey." She handed Luna a small pouch with a velcro top. "In here you have four healing vials and four vials of liquid concentration. I managed to get mom to make some concentrated strength and agility as well, but you only have one of each of those since they're so ingredient-hungry. I also put in a general poison cure, but have no idea if that'll be effective on anything we aren't growing here, so be cautious of it. The poison cure is the same thing dad puts in his beer to cure hangovers, so it can also help clarify your mind if it's cloudy."

Madison fished out a vial of shimmering gold liquid. "This is a concentration vial. I've used it to focus on my projects and it works extremely well for about an hour or so and has the side effect of energizing you for 24 hours. You will be able to concentrate more fully and focused than ever in your life for the first hour, and you won't need sleep for a full day. The crash can be hard after but it's fine with about 12 hours of sleep."

Her tone became serious. "Whatever you do, do NOT inject more than one of these vials within the 24 hour period. I did that once and thought my brain was going to burn up inside of my skull. It's roughly mitigated by intelligence, but overall it just generally speeds up your cerebral activity to its maximum. When I say maximum, I mean it. Anything more forces it beyond what you're physically capable of withstanding and can have severely detrimental side effects. We may not be able to get strokes anymore but our brains can certainly malfunction."

"What happened to you when you took the second one?"

"Like I said, I felt like my brain was boiling. My thoughts went clear, then beyond clear and I realized I could understand more than I ever had in my life - for the first few seconds. Then I was beyond what my brain could do and everything turned to pain. The workshops in my head evaporated, every thought dissolved, and then there was nothing but white hot pain until I woke up three days later in one of my mom's healing harnesses. Between that and my mom getting a backlash from taking two intelligence tonics in one level we've learned not to play fast and loose with System limitations. Every benefit has a cost - the better the benefit, the harsher the cost."

"Not to mention the fact that these are expensive as hell to make. It's only because of what you guys have brought us that my mom was even willing to part with these ones here - they're a good portion of our stash."

The girls' conversation was interrupted by a sharp whistle from the porch.