D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

--- Lily ---

Kamiko kept Meg distracted while Kat made food. It was clearly something Meg allowed as whenever Lily started to relax too much Meg would shoot her a glance, or when Hunter got a bit closer to having her arms free Meg would throw another layer of blankets over Hunter just to ensure she stayed trapped.

Hunter summoned a bit of demonic flame at one point to burn through it and Meg whacked her on the back of the head. So once again, Meg was allowing herself to be distracted.

This all ended when they sat down for food and Meg directly asked Lily, "So you’ve had a bunch of time now. What new questions have you got for me?"

*WHY!* "Well how about hobbies, surely bothering Hunter isn’t all you do right?" asked Lily flippantly. Woops let me anger get ahead of me there. Meg seemed fine with the question though, and simply finished her mouthful of food before answering.

"My main hobby is actually knitting, and I have a secondary hobby of carving. See, I picked it up because it seemed like the kind of thing my parents would hate a bunch so I started just to spite them but I actually really enjoy it. As for carving, well I picked that up so that I could carve knitting needles out of the bones of interesting things I’ve killed," explained Meg.

That… ok that’s interesting and pretty cool but I think that’s the most ’Hunter Clan’ thing that I’ve ever heard. Like is it just me or what?

[No, I agree with you. Hunter’s eyes are practically sparkling after that admission. I feel as though Meg, despite her distaste for the clan, is one of the better examples of their policies. Which is weird.]

"Oh, would you get along with my sister Aslena? She does fashion stuff," asked Kamiko.

"Probably not. I don’t really DO fashion with my knitting. Remember I picked it up to annoy my parents so I trend more towards making fluffy blankets and little socks and stuff for the kids I see around the clan compound.

Plenty of parents don’t give them the care they deserve and if a nice blanket can help them on cold nights, then I’m honoured," said Meg easily as she held up the bowl of food so Hunter could get something to eat with her arms bound, not noticing that the shining eyes of Hunter had only increased.

"Right… and why the carving then?" asked Lily. "Surely, you can find good needles in shops?"

"Well at first it was because I wanted to make them my main weapon but the clan wasn’t willing to allow it. This was back before I was even Rank 1 you see. So to get started on knitting I needed to make my own needles and then, once I got better with them I needed to make better needles because well… they break. They’re knitting needles after all.

"So I took to making them by the hundreds. I don’t need to spend anywhere near as long now that I use bone carved needles from strong monsters and have a regenerating set from my demonic attire but yeah. I started making them because it was the only way I could get them, and now its sort of a pride thing.

I have the money… but I’ve been making them for over half a decade now and I enjoy that part of it as well," explained Meg. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓

"Why knitting needles?" asked Lily.

"Pisses off my parents, as I said," answered Meg.

"Right… but are they good for anything?" asked Lily.

"Not really," answered Meg. "They break pretty easily against equivalent materials and they aren’t that good for stabbing people or delivering poison. They’re pretty awful to throw as well… but I’m familiar enough with them that I can deal with all of these problems. Mostly it boils down to dodging, and finding weak points which I’m obviously fantastic at.

Not sure if I could’ve kept getting away with it had I not gotten that particularly skill at Rank 1 but I’d have made the attempt,"

"What are your main set made out of now?" asked Kat.

"Well, the set I use for knitting is NOT the same set I use for combat. I might like to taunt people but I enjoy knitting now, and while I used to mix and match because back then it didn’t matter now I firmly have a set of ’fighting’ needles and ’knitting’ needles. For fights I use these really sharp sea serpent bone needles I made after taking down a kraken.

Somehow it had killed a sea serpent, probably a young one, and when the carcass was butchered I found a bunch of bones in its stomach that refused to melt.

"I took those as my ’main’ combat set and enchanted them to self-repair and then added them to my demonic attire. Its technically more energy efficient to do it that way but I’m not sure it makes much of a difference. For knitting I use a lovely looking set of Roc bone needles. I managed to snag the bones from a kill Hunter made and turned them into a lovely set of needles. Actually…"

Meg paused for a moment and then summoned two thin needles to her hands. Kat was expecting them to be white, but in actuality they were a dark red, looking a lot like red ironbark wood after it had been treated with some nice carvings around the edges of little tiny snakes and flowers. They looked exceptionally carved and the vanish gave them a slight shine.

Meg then brought out another set of needles, these ones were much larger and thicker, clearly on the upper end of what could be accepted as a knitting needle instead of a wooden stake. These were an ocean blue with only a slight bit of detailing just above the end, presumably where Meg’s fingers would rest.

The slight indent had wave patterns on either side as well as a scaled texture that ran around each needle.

"I didn’t realise that bones could be that colour…" mumbled Lily.

Meg shrugged, "Yeah most bones are the same boring white. I’ve still got hundreds of white needles lying around and I keep making more to stay in practice. It’s the special ones like these two sets that I take extra care with and keep around. Even when they get retired from active use, I’ll be keeping these around in a nice display case,"

"Do you keep many around?" asked Hunter.

Meg blinked and looked over at Hunter surprised before nodding. "Yes, I’ve got a few. My first ’proper’ attempt at needles though they’re broken. I could repair them, or get someone else to… but I think it tells a better story keeping them broken. Um… there’s that one set I managed to use to kill a drake when I was still Rank 1.

"They weren’t anything fancy but the drake was Rank 3 and I really shouldn’t have been fighting it at the time, but I did and I won. They were just a normal pair of needles and not my main set but the blood had a weird iridescent sheen on it and it looks nice enough so I elevated them to ’interesting’ status.

"Hmmm… what else. There’s the few other ones that are fancy colours but aren’t necessarily that strong. I keep them all in the one case mostly to show off my artistic talents instead of my hunting ones. Hmm… there is that one I actually made out of plant matter. Had to take down an alraune and while it didn’t have many bones it had a spine… sort of?

Made that into a set of needles and I actually used them to knit for a good while. Very smooth even without varnish… what else…

"There was that one failed attempt at making a metal needle. Destroyed a golem, not one that can think of course, and wanted to make something out of its metal skeleton but it was a disaster. Kept the results around but never used it… hmm… there was that one time I tried to make a set of needles out of this criminal I hunted down.

He was executed after I caught him and they gave me his corpse as part of payment. Initially I wanted to turn them down… but I was like ’needles?’ and so I took it in the end.

"Made for a horrible set of needles though. The bones weren’t properly solid, or at least, not in the way that I’d want to make sewing needles out of because they had a bunch of little pockets. Carving them was a pain and while I managed it in the end… not particularly usable. Hhmm… hmm… a lot of my collection has the same story really. Went there, killed that, turned it into needles.

"Not all of them turned out great. I needed quite a lot of practice to get good at carving and because I’m carving bone there’s things that just aren’t taken into account by woodworkers. Obviously carving bone is a niche and I had to work out a bunch of specific tricks just for myself,"

"Have you ever considered putting that information into a book?" asked Lily.

"Not really… but perhaps it would be a good side project?" hummed Meg.