"Hello!"

Walking towards the front of the building, I shouted in a relatively calm voice. Loud enough to be heard, silent enough to not disturb the others. In just a few moments, one of the burly men who were busying themselves with pointlessly hitting the hammers against the long pieces of red-hot iron put his tools away before approaching the long table that separated the street from the open front of the building.

"How can I help you, sir? A sword? A dagger? Or maybe you need to repair some items of yours?"

Cleaning his hands with a random rag that hanged on the wall, the smith asked with a monotone voice. While my guess could be wrong here, I had a feeling that the words he used belonged to the category of sentences that all the retail workers had to be able to recite when woken at three in the morning.

"Nothing of that sort. I used to dabble in smithing for a bit back in the days and wanted to ask if it would be possible to rent a small working area from you. Obviously, that would mean I would need to buy some basic materials, so I would opt for the cheaper ones, just to check whether my abilities are still up to par."

Smiling at the man with genuine sympathy, I could see how mentioning how I used to play around with smithing changed the man's attitude towards me. While it was still way too early to speak about any trust or even friendship, I at least managed to break this man free from his daily routine.

"Test your skills you say? Well, that's an unorthodox request so I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to put a price on it…"

Ignoring how his hand was still covered in thick soot, the smith scrapped the side of his head with his fingers. Or maybe the fact that his hair was in the exact same colour as the soot on his hands made him lose all his care for dirtying his own head?

"Ah, I don't want to impose on you here. How about just selling me the materials and sparing me a small piece of the floor? While I get why some people like to use the tools, I don't really need any help to work around the ore."

In fact, I could just buy the ores that this man could provide me with, stand in the middle of the road and let everyone gawk at how I would turn those basic materials into some kind of legendary grade weapon. Obviously, there was a chance that given how I neglected my crafting ability for quite a while already, I wouldn't be even able to process the ore into a fine metal, given how I was only willing to buy the cheapest ore that this workshop had to offer, I stood to gain way more than I could potentially lose.

"Oh, so you are one of those frickly new smiths? Coming here, buying out the materials and then setting up a shop to compete with ours?"

Contrary to the overall feel of those words, the tone in which the man said them didn't indicate that he had anything against this kind of actions. Rather than that, he seemed to be simply curious and it would be this curiosity pushing him to attempt tackling the problem of what my intentions could be.

"Nah, don't worry about it. I'm in this city only for a few days now, since I still have a lot of stuff to deal with back home. I just…"

"You just want to test how far your skills deteriorated after focusing all your efforts on getting here in the first place, right?"

With his face lighting up as he interrupted me, the burly smith seemed to finally nail the point of the matter. Confirming his guess with an uneasy smile on my part, I suddenly felt Eve's hand tightening around my fingers.

"Well, the basic materials are dirt cheap here, so I will let you have some as a form of craftsmen solidarity."

Sending a meaningful wink to me, the smith looked around himself before locking his eyes on one of the doors hidden in the relatively darker spot of the building's insides.

"As for the place to work, how about the backyard? We are using it as the trash dump for all the wasted materials, so if by chance you find something of use there, you could get it for free. Ah, and don't look at me that way, it would mean less work in cleaning that place up for us."

Noticing how my expression had to change when I heard something about free stuff, the smith quickly clarified. After all, in this world, an offer of giving out something for free could only be a trap for the naive idiots who still had some lingering ideas of the society at large carrying about them. Unless someone actually had an interest in freeing himself from the thing he was giving away. Just colonisers giving out entire boxes of worthless but colourful beans to the native tribes of the land they were invading. Not worth a spit for them, those worthless pieces of painted wood and stones could buy them friendship with the tribe, solving the problem of lack of guides or food or something entirely else that said the tribe had in abundance.

"If that's the case, then I will have to impose on you for a while. Also, I will do my absolute best in the first attempt. Once I'm done, I will bring the item I will craft to you so that you could judge how much my skills are worth in this city. In exchange, no matter the quality of that item, it will be my gift and repayment to you for your help. Does that sounds like a deal to you, sir?"

Even though I could tell that the stuff that would be in the backyard of the smithy would be of absolutely no value to the smith in front of me and the entire workshop he was working in at large, I just couldn't allow to accept a stranger's kindness like that. Unless there was a genuine deal with both sides standing to profit from it, I could only imagine what kind of convoluted and devious laws would be later used on me to force some kind of unjustified remuneration for what appeared to be just a kindness right now.

"I see that you are well-versed in the ways the world turns around. Come, before the boss will notice that I'm not actually selling anything."

Raising the wooden plank that made up the top of the counter, the burly man allowed the two of us to enter the workshop, before guiding us towards the door I noticed him looking at before.

"Since you claim you don't need any tools, you should have everything you could desire in this place. In case you will decide to follow the natural, true path of smithing, I will be back in the workshop."

Sending me off with yet another smile, the man closed the doors behind him, leaving the two of us in a relatively private area of a small backyard, filled with piles of broken and unrefined tools and ores. While it was as far from being calm and silent with all the scraps constantly flying out of the windows and landing on the evergrowing piles as it could be, I could tell that no one inside the workshop had the time to bother with such uncommon guests like the two of us.

"Hey, dear…"

Pulling on the hand that she relentlessly held through our small trip, Eve brought my attention away from the treasure trove that seemed to glister in my eyes. Forced to move my sight away from the priceless amounts of raw materials I could easily refine and reforge into something useful towards her deep eyes, I finally managed to notice that something was going on through Eve's mind.

Now that I focused on it, I realised that I failed to notice it from the feeling our connected souls only because I was simply too taken by the prospects of returning to the craft that I grew up to greatly enjoy.

But that didn't mean that my beloved one actually had some dire news to communicate to me. All I could feel was that she had something important that she wanted to share with me.

"Yes?"

Using the fact that my hands were still clean, I caressed Eve's cheek while waiting for her to explain what was on her mind.

"You see, I was quite puzzled how long it would take you to once again pick up crafting."