Chapter 3 - The Workschop

Having sufficiently rested she thanked the doll one last time and made her way inside the workshop. From the outside it looked more like a chapel or a small church, but the interior was anything other than what the common mind would perceive as "holy".

Weapons, tools, elixirs and strange artefacts lined the walls from top to bottom. The rest of the cramped space was taken up by piles of books, workbenches and dusty cabinets. In the middle of it all sat Gehrman, her advisor, in front of the crackling fireplace. He was an old man, bound to a wheelchair and seemed barely present most of the time. His overall usefulness was low, but he had given her a few very helpful tips from time to time so she could tolerate his presence.

"Greetings Mr. Gehrman. My expedition to the Pthumerian dungeons has been successful."

She couldn't get her dislike for the senile man get in the way of politeness. You never knew when one wrong word could come to bite you in the ass at a later time. For example when he could easily withhold vital information out of sheer pettiness. Tanya had had enough bosses like that in her first life.

"Ay..." he mumbled with nod. That was all the response she would get out of him at this point so she respectfully nodded back and went to work.

First she thoroughly cleaned her primary weapon and oiled the trick mechanism that led the Sawspear transform into its longer or shorter form. She had chosen this blade, because it was comparatively light and gave her great reach which was important if you wanted to put as much distance between the nasty inhabitants of Yharnam and yourself. Furthermore its serrated edge was great against the thick hide of some beast and could easily saw through bones in a timely fashion.

Her secondary weapon of choice was the Threaded Cane. At first glance she hadn´t thought much of it when the messengers had offered it to her, but after some experimentations she had quickly understood its true potential.

While in its normal form a simple cane didn´t seem too imposing, the sharp edge and pointed tip could take care of many foes caught unaware. It was especially useful for quick and rapid strikes that did not require much strength. Again, that played to her natural agility and swiftness. As soon as it was transformed into its whip form though... things would get very bloody. Hundreds of razor sharp blades would wrap around their target and rip skin and muscle to shreds. Its reach was enormous and was enough to loop around the limbs and necks of even the greatest beasts.

Then usually a strong tuck at the spiky whip would be enough to partially flay her prey and shower her in blood. The more human opponents couldn´t just shrug the loss of multiple major arteries off and continue the fight, so with the right techniques it was a one hit kill for them. Despite this, handling the lash was a complicated and dangerous endeavour which made the weapon slightly less desirable than the straight forward Sawspear. Simplicity made often the difference between life and death in a hunt.
In her first week of training with it, Tanya had regularly lost fingers to its many blades and even now she sometimes cut herself when using it.

Her trusty sidearm was a normal Hunter Pistol for range and to distract enemies in a pinch like she had done to the fat undead watcher in the dungeons. Initially she had not been able to understand why the Yharnamites used quicksilver in their bullets instead of led or steel, but when she had arduously made a few led projectiles to test that, she had quickly discovered that they had next to no effect. Ordinary bullets caused the towering monsters in the streets barely to flinch or where entirely stopped by their leathery hides.

Quicksilver on the other hand was only successful in injuring them, because it had to be infused with the blood of its user beforehand. Once again Tanya had no clue of the scientific reasoning behind such a phenomenon, but Gehrman had explained it that way. Everything in this damned city had somehow to do with blood after all.

The messengers had also offered her a blunderbuss; Tanya however had rejected such a cumbersome and unwieldy firearm. Its spread was also horrible which made it only viable in close quarters and she had her melee weapons for that. What she needed was precision over a reasonable distance and that was where the Hunter Pistol delivered.

As an alternative, because having second plans was always good, she carried a Flamesprayer. Huge volumes of fire would spew from the small device that an incredibly friendly townsman had gifted her. These flames would instantly ignite anything flammable in a wide radius around her which made it an excellent weapon of choice against large hordes. She could give off short burst from it with one hand while throwing daggers or shooting with the other.

Unfortunately the Flamesprayer had multiple downsides. For one, it used burning quicksilver mist as fuel, although she had managed to supplement it with regular oil to extend its burn time. That meant it actively ate through her pistol ammunition.

The other negative was that even if her enemies were on fire that rarely stopped them from attacking her anyway. If she had the choice between facing a rabid, nearly two meter long dog and a rabid, nearly two metre long dog on fire she certainly wouldn´t choose the latter. Often Tanya´s adversaries would become more dangerous for a short time due to them being fuelled by rage and pain no doubt. Only after a few moments would the fire finally shut them down for good or go out.

Burning the bodies probably even did the community a service, but nobody would thank her for that.

After she had taken care of her weapons she did her best to smooth out the chipped edges and sharpen the steel until it was as sharp as it could get. Then came the part she had waited for all this time: Inserting the blood gems.

They were ugly little stones that held the mysterious power to grant certain effects to the weapon they were fitted into or the user that was wearing them. One of the first she had found was slowly healing her if she fed it blood which was rather simple considering she got frequently showered in it. Another one made the touch of her sawspear faintly poisonous.

Not all blood gems produced positive result however. There were those that made her weapons degrade faster or harmed her so she had to be careful in applying them. Three of the seven gems she had found in the dungeon were such "cursed" items. Regardless if they had also positive aspects to them she was not willing to deal with such an obvious hazard so they went straight to her "examine later" chest in the corner.

Two other joined them, because as far as could tell they were too weak to waste time on. Only the last two were worth putting up with so she carefully inserted them into the hilt of her Sawspear and Threaded Cane. The first made her Sawspear easier to swing which would preserve her stamina in fights nicely and the other gave her cane an enhanced poison effect. Very good.

Tanya pulled out her notebook and marked her experience for future reference before she set out for the final task of today: Checking on the messengers.

The messengers, or as the doll called them "Little Ones", were small, pale, deformed creatures that were able to travel between dreams and the waking world. Their existence caused a similar wriggling sensation inside her head like when she looked at her employer, but she got used to it over time.

They preferred to appear in strange places like the fountain near the front door where they showed her interesting and useful things they found who knows where. Although the doll had never directly stated it, Tanya suspected that they sustained themselves on her memories and experiences that she collected over the hunt. Or at the very least they immensely enjoyed her struggle and gave her certain items as payment for the show.

She had first developed that suspicion when she noticed that they were offering her thematically fitting weapons or equipment based on areas she had newly discovered. Then there was the fact that Tanya could see them from the corner of her eye watching her when she was out on a hunt even when she hadn´t called for them to hand her new gear. The nail in the coffin of her theory was that they outright refused her sometimes if she hadn´t learned anything new on her travels or hadn´t slain a few hideous monstrosities. The little creeps reminded her uncomfortably of Being X, but she guessed that some sort of payment for their services was only fair.

Today they presented her with the usual assortment of Molotov Cocktails, knifes, bullets and blood vials among more exotic articles like Bolt paper and Red Jelly infants and Pearl Slugs. Honestly if she hadn´t been desensitized by what she had seen in Yharnam already she would have never touched what they showed her.

Now, she couldn´t just grab everything that their tiny skeleton hands offered her. There was a limit to what those moaning and howling dwarfs would allow her to take. How exactly they determined what amount was acceptable was beyond her, but it had something to do with how much of a spectacle she had given them on the hunt prior.

In the end she picked a couple sheets of bolt paper and three Molotovs. The paper could be applied to her weapons to shroud them for a short time in lightning and the Molotovs created large burning puddles of alcohol. Without those tools her life would be a lot harder.

Satisfied with her efforts she nodded goodbye to the doll and knelt down before her gravestone. Her thoughts wandered to the place she wanted to go to and she began to vividly imagine it she touched the cool stone. A tingling feeling overtook her as Tanya von Degurechaff dissolved into mist.

The Good Hunter had returned to the waking world once again.