Dark Souls: Acquiring a ring and Crafting skill level ↑

The Crystal Lizard was dead.

Drake collapsed panting, he inspected his wounded leg and gaped at his flesh knitting itself back together. Shredded muscle conjoined, milky white skin grew over, and new blood flushed into his previously horrific wound.

"Holy shit, this stuffs bloody amazing!" Drake exclaimed, garishly fascinated by the miraculous healing of his leg, brought about by the Estus he took during the fight.

Looking up, he watched the crystals on the Lizard's body converge, forming into a single diamond-like plate. The thing's corpse looked more hideous than ever now, without the crystalline shell coating its body.

After the plate was fully formed, a humongous cloud of streaking white luster rose out of the corpse, rather than one big soul it looked more like an amalgamation of hundreds of smaller souls, revolving and dancing through the air for a moment as if joyful.

After having their quick dance, the souls hurled themselves at Drake, submerging into his ring.

Tremendous strength surged through Drake, he felt three, no... five times more powerful than before, it was a great rush, but somewhere there was conflict in Drake's psyche.

As his newfound power coursed through him, he identified in himself an unusual and unnerving feeling, he felt... Inhuman.

He was now faster, stronger, and more durable than an average person could ever possibly hope to be, but it was unsettling like he was no longer truly human.

With a sigh, Drake consoled himself. "This was always the outcome. From the second Morpheus picked me up, my destiny was set. My humanity may gradually fade away, but I can't let such things stop me, there is so much more at stake."

With a confident grin, he declared to himself a goal.

"To be able to fight among the gods, I will just have to become one."

Drake let his attachments go, life had thrown him on a different path, no longer was he the army medic of Earth, he would have to fight against terrible things no mortal could, so he would cast off his mortal coil, become something more.

Once again, he went down the submerged path, there were a few things that side he wanted to retrieve, now that the Lizard was dead.

After crossing, the first thing he found was a soul shining atop a grave, which Drake quickly nabbed before looking around for the second piece of loot.

In this section of the cemetery, there should be a ring, Drake remembered finding it here in the game, and with some luck, it would exist in this reality too. Searching around the tombstones, he found what he was looking for, sitting on the brittle rotting finger of a corpse there was a ring.

The Speckled Stoneplate Ring.

The ring was formed from a copper band and inlaid with a gem, that shined with a rainbow hue similar to spilled oil.

Being one of the few item descriptions Drake could roughly remember, he found it fitting.

'Stoneplates are symbols of true knights, and Speckled Stoneplate Rings are granted to those who face an endless journey ahead.'

"Well, I've definitely got a long journey ahead," Drake remarked.

He pulled off the ring, giving it a quick wipe, he equipped it onto his left index finger, mirroring Quella's ring on his right.

The ring gave him resistances against various elements and would be extremely useful if he ever ended up fighting against a spell caster who wielded elemental magic.

There were a few things left that Drake wanted to do before leaving the Dark Souls world.

On the list of things he wanted to wrap up before leaving, was the Bonfire that needed cleansing and Iudex that needed killing, and among other things, he wanted to get himself some decent clothes from the handmaiden at firelink shrine, his tattered rags were not exactly befitting of a Hero.

There was also one other major enemy he wanted to try and defeat, titled only as the swordmaster, and in the game, he was probably the fiercest of the non-boss enemies.

Drake wanted the master's Uchigatana, it was an excellent weapon and would be a massive improvement over his self-crafted bone spear, his current go-to melee weapon.

Having got what he needed, Drake went back to collect his equipment. He had quite a lot of stuff now, between his crossbow, dagger, bone spear, Estus, shield, white branch, titanite slab, and ring.

Feeling a little burdened by the excessive amount of items he had, he tried to think of a solution.

After thinking for a moment, his eyes were naturally drawn to the Lizard corpse in the pit, remembering the documentary he watched that inspired him in the first place to create the bone pit.

In the documentary, the bones were used for leatherworking first and foremost, not as weapons, Drake thought he could give the craft a try.

He wouldn't be able to make anything fancy, but he should be able to at least make a simple drawstring bag. Drake climbed down into the pit and was overwhelmed by the smell of the dead Crystal Lizard, unlike what you would expect, it was a surprisingly pleasant, almost minty scent.

"Weird," Drake said to himself as the scent burrowed up his nose, making it numb.

Stepping around the bone shrapnel, created by the Lizards death throws, he made his way to its corpse.

The creature was truly large. Even lying flat, it was still taller than Drake.

"It would be a waste, leaving all this extra material to rot once I'm finished with the bag. It's hide is thick, tough and flexible and would make for some great leather armor, a real shame," Drake said to himself as he stroked the Lizards carapace, judging its quality.

Drake didn't have the skill to make armor but wanting to use as much of the material as he could, he decided to make himself a cloak.

A cloak would at least give him a little protection, it wouldn't be that hard to make, and best of all, if later on, he found a competent armor smith he could have it repurposed.

"waste not, want not," Drake muttered as he got to work.

Deciding to make the bag first, he cut around one of the lizards four muscle-bound arms severing the skin, it was tough work.

Drakes knife initially already rusting at the hilt was now also nearly as blunt as a butter knife, having been used to cut out multiple bone barbs for the trap.

After a good half an hour, the skinned hide was cut at the elbow and peeled back up to, and including the hand, it came off in the form of a single glove-like sleeve.

Drake pulled the skin sleeve inside-out, and ripping off a piece of his rag to use as a cloth, he wiped off the cyan acrylic gunk, that was probably the creature's version of blood.

The insides now being relatively clean, he pulled the sleeve back, so that the scales were on the outside again and grabbed a nearby rib-bone fragment.

Piercing through with his new repurposed bone tool, he punctured holes into what would later be the bag's opening, there were twenty holes in total, two groupings of eight, and two groups of two, each on the opposite side of their grouped pair.

Drake then threaded in some cordage, the stuff he made for tying together the traps canopy,

it was a lousy substitute for proper lace or string, but it would have to do for now.

Two lengthy pieces of cordage were laced through each grouping of eight, crisscrossing in and out, before prodding out of the two holes at each end, one end was knotted together tight, and the other left loose.

When the makeshift lace was pulled, it would create tension folding up the leather and closing the bag.

Drake's little D.I.Y project still looked like a massive deflated arm that had been chopped off.

Wanting to give it some added utility, and uncomfortable with the idea of lugging around something that looked like a hollowed-out monster hand, he added some finishing touches.

Folding the hand to the bags back, he poked holes in the top of each finger and two corresponding holes into the bag's side, he pushed in a loop of cordage and tied it off, the claw was now held in place and the bag folded at the bottom.

He sliced a small gap in each gnarly finger and wrapped them off tight at the knuckle, creating small additional pockets, Drake was planning to use the finger pockets to hold his crossbow bolts, and other small items he might need to grab on the fly.

After adding to the front a cord strap that went from the top left of the bag to its bottom right, his first Crystal Lizard craft was finally done, and all that was left now was the cloak.

Far fewer intricacies went into the cloak, Drake simply cut a full rectangular cone out of the Lizards leathery back, dried it off, and sowed in some cordage at the narrow part of the material, creating a collar, and walla he now had a basic cloak.