Armor

Gendral was breathing hard, his knuckles white as they gripped his sword in his hand, his eyes glued to the wyvern in front of him dropping to the ground. He had been hunting the beast for well over an hour, constantly on, fighting tooth and nail to bring the beast down. It had been threatening a nearby village, who had hired him to take down the beast, which he had gladly agreed to. He had been living as a hunter for three years. He had come a long way from his first hunt, though he was always just a little uncomfortable fighting wyverns in general. They were intimidating opponents, especially with his small sword and shield, compared to the massive weapons of some of his brethren. But it was what he was comfortable with, and he had become more than capable of fighting with them.

His grip didn't loosen on the sword until he was certain that the wyvern was slain, motionless and breathless on the ground. He had made that mistake once before, and nearly been crushed because of it. Since then, he had become a very conscious and conservative hunter, and it had paid off. In his short career as a hunter, though he had some of the slowest hunts, he also had some of the most successful. There were very few casualties in his hunts, and his perseverance often lead to him getting some of the best parts. By not utterly destroying monsters, and instead taking out their vital points and wearing them down, he was less likely to break them as he hunted them, and thus gathered much more useable parts from them.

That was another thing that he had gotten good at. Once the monster he was hunting had fallen, he had learned the best ways to remove scales, tails, shells, wings, and most precious of all, the gems that formed from the compression in their organs. All of these he carried back home to the forge, where he had an expert smith create new armors and weapons and shields for him. He knew of hunters who would repeatedly take requests for the same monster in order to get enough parts to make armor based on them. Gendral could get those pieces in a single hunt.

He worked diligently as the sun set to carve away the pieces he needed from the wyvern. He could already envision the armor in particular that he would be able to make with these pieces, and he felt it would suit him well. And with the protection that this wyvern possessed, it would enable him to drag the fights out even longer in a much safer way. That would allow him to begin taking hunts with multiple monsters at the same time. That would allow for more parts, and more money, both of which would be incredibly useful to him moving forward. And then he could begin considering mixed armor sets. He had seen a few hunters using them. They looked incredible, and the things that those hunters could do...