A loud sound of a door getting slammed could be heard. This loud thud was followed by the rumbling of footsteps that were coming down the stairs.

“Mr. Wayland is everything okay?”

Elodia that was about to head over to the guild master’s office was the first to notice to whom these loud footsteps belonged to. She could see a rather mad-looking young man rushing down the stairs.

“Ms. Elodia?”

He stopped for a moment to look at her but then just as quickly decided to move past. It was clear to her that he was in no mood to talk.

“Everything is fine, you don’t need to concern yourself with me.”

Before she could figure out what this was all about, Wayland stormed out of the guild. She was left to wonder about the look on his face. The young Runesmith had a somewhat grumpy expression devoid of a smile by default but this one was a bit more serious.

She moved up the stairs to the guild master's office as she was tasked to bring over some papers. It seemed that Aurdhan wanted her to write up a contract and bring it over to one of the scribes for magical imprinting. While she could write up the proper papers in a legally binding way, she didn’t have the proper class to create a magical contract.

“Guild master?”

“Elodia? Just come in and lock the door behind you.”

She entered the office and the first thing that she noticed was a lot of torn-up papers on the floor. Out of habit, she started picking up these papers to only notice that they concerned a certain runesmith.

“These are…”

“Oh, that? You can burn them, we won’t be needing those anymore. But that’s not why I asked you to come here, I need you to do your bureaucratic magic.”

She wanted to ask the reason why these torn-up papers were there. It didn’t really take much for her to figure out why she saw Wayland being so mad. The guild master had clearly broken his ties with him for some reason and this reason was soon revealed to her.

“What would you like me to do, guild master?”

Elodia posed her question and she quickly got a response. The theme would be the dwarven union and the contract would forbid their involvement with a certain runesmith. It appeared that Aurdhan had bent the knee to the union and decided to cut his ties with Wayland, at least when crafting was concerned.

What it all came down to was an agreement between both the union and the guild. The dwarves would stop using their connection to force the prices down and allow their guild-run stores to operate normally. They would even be tasked to supply them with some magical weapons and armor.

“Sir… Do you really want me to fashion a contract like this… I think Mr. Wayland has been working fine with the guild…”

“Elodia, you are a good worker but this does not concern you, just do your job and stop asking questions, were you always this chatty?”

She was quickly shut down by the burly man in front of her and had to move her head down. Ever since the Armand debacle, she felt like the work environment had become tenser.

Why she even asked about the reason was a bit odd. This was not something she would have done before, at least not if it didn’t concern someone from her own foster family. With all the information in her notebook, she returned to the floor below.

There she needed to find the guild’s mana scribe that would fashion the contract. The sun had gone down already which meant that she would be stuck explaining the final details of the contract for quite some time.

The guild master wanted to have it by the next day, which meant that she would probably need to come in earlier than usual to continue the work. These sorts of papers weren’t done in an hour and she also needed to run it through another advisor to see if she didn’t make any mistakes.

‘Why do I put up with this…’

She gave out a long sigh before wandering into one of the side rooms. Inside she found her co-worker buried in some papers which soon would increase.

While Elodia was stuck with more overtime Roland was on his way back home. He had a lot to think about as the guild master brought up some concerning things.

He was sure that he would be able to sustain his home by his own volition. He had convinced himself that his runic items were just too good to not be bought up by the adventurers. Even if the dwarven union came for him, he could match their prices as he was the one building everything.

Then his worldview was shattered as Aurdhan had mentioned that he would not be able to use the auction house. This was his main strategy if things went wrong, using the establishment that had previously brought him money.

But apparently, the dwarves were already working on banning him from participating in the auctions. The only realistic way to go about this would be to hire someone to buy and sell for him. The biggest problem with that was trust.

He would need to find a trustworthy merchant that would work with him. If he was on the dwarven hit list, almost all of the good merchants would ignore his plea of help. They were still out there to make profits and angering the union would only make things troublesome. This only left inexperienced merchants or ones with shady backgrounds.

Due to Roland’s networking skills, he had gained no real business partners. The only thing that he ever did was to give his wares over to the auction house or hand Bernir them to do it for him. There were no good deals or people in high places that were looking out for him.

The guild was supposed to do it but they buckled under the pressure at the first sight of the problem. This just showed him that if he ever wanted to get something done, he would need to do it himself. While the guild master offered him a way out, he was not sure if he was willing to go through with it yet.

‘Not like I won’t have anything to eat but I’ve already started to build the store…’

While he could still earn his keep as a silver grade adventurer, he had already put other things in motion. The contract with the construction firm was signed and the construction of his new store building was not going to be cheap.

Without money, he would need to halt his golem construction. Golems required an astonishing amount of resources and time. The little magical robot that he made wouldn’t really be of use for anything. It could only move around and be a mild annoyance and without figuring out golem software he wouldn’t be able to program in more actions.

If he relied only on his adventurer income it would force him to spend most of his days in the dungeon. This would force him to lower his time as a runesmith. It would be hard to compete with the other craftsmen if he wasn’t able to produce enough stock.

‘Should I really trust that baldy?’

He looked down onto a piece of paper. It was another one of those letters, he was given it by the guild master along with instructions. Roland was given a way of getting in contact with some ‘friends’ that would help him out with his material problem.

For now, he decided to place this letter in his spatial bag for safekeeping. Soon he would need to make a decision as he was already running low on funds. On the next day, he was to go back to the guild and take his earnings from this month. This would be the end of his relationship with the guild stores, at least the open one.

If he took the guild master’s advice and if it worked out well, he would be somewhat indebted to him. Before he gave him any more credit he would need to find out if his claims were correct. Bernir would also give him some advice, he was the person that always went to the market, maybe he could point out someone that could work with them.

Finally, he returned home to give his only worker the bad news. Bernir didn’t react in kind to the way the union was treating them and this was magnified by his history of being ostracised from his own community for being only half-dwarf.

“Damn bastards, who do they think they are? Let’s go over to them and blast a couple of grenades through their windows boss! I know a good spot, they won’t know what hit them!”

“Calm down Bernir, if we do that we’ll just end up in prison…”

While he wished to do nothing more than lob a few runic bombs into the dwarven shops, this would clearly cause him to go under in a day. If he wasn’t caught by the guards at the shops he would probably be quickly given a wanted poster. There were too many ways to apprehend people in this world and he was not the stealthy type.

“But what will we do? If we can’t buy any crafting materials will we go out of business? Are you going to move to another city?”

The easiest way to get around this would be to move elsewhere. The biggest problem with that option was that he would need to build himself up from scratch again. Even then it could not pan out without signing off with a bigger company for support. The union could easily ban them from the next auction house they move to and he could go back to square one.

“First calm down, it’s getting late, we will go to town tomorrow and see how bad it really is. You have some people that you know, I need you to ask around if there would be any merchants willing to supply us with materials like deep steel.”

Roland decided to try working out an agreement with some merchants. On the dawn of the other day, he and Bernir parted ways as they began their search for a business partner. Just as he had suspected though, no one was willing to hear them out.

He quickly realized the power of networking and how he should have been actively participating in it. Roland went out of his way to avoid interaction with other people due to his trust issues. If he actually showed himself to be someone trustworthy he might have not been in this predicament.

“How was it on your end?”

Roland asked Bernir, who just shook his head.

“Those bastards work fast, every merchant that saw me averted their eyes. It’s clear that they have all been paid off or are too afraid to offend the union.”

While Roland could probably do business with the merchants if there was anything else than metals and smithing involved, the union held a chokehold on the entire kingdom when his craft was involved. With most of the mines and smithies occupied by them, no one else was willing to go out of their way to go against them.

They didn’t just give up on the first day. Roland and Bernir continued going through the city, though the half-dwarf did most of the work as his boss quickly found out that he didn’t really know anyone in the city. The only people that he really talked to were the adventurers and the guild already showed that they wouldn’t be working with him.

Just like the guild master had told him, when he went over to the auction house he was given a long-winded explanation of why he was not allowed to sell anything there. He was considering trying to hide his face and sneaking in to sell some wares.

But there weren’t that many runic items going around. The people from the auction house could force him to reveal his face or use some identification. He was sure that the dwarves made sure to increase the examination requirements on any runic wares coming from unidentified people.

Roland even tried visiting the stores that he used to work with. One of them was where Dyana worked. Even though the woman showed interest in him before she was now looking out for herself.

“I’m sorry Wayland, this isn’t anything personal but unless you can give me a better deal I’m stuck here.”

Not like he didn’t understand where she was coming from. It was either to work with the dwarves that had all the money in the world or try helping him out with no real incentive to be had.

“But if you ever need some help with other things, don’t be a stranger. They only told us not to sell your wares, they never said we can’t trade in other services. If it’s anything besides a runic item, I could probably sneak it in.”

She gave him a little wink before sending him on his way. While he wouldn’t be able to sell anything in their stores that gave his involvement away. He could still hand in other items, which would actually give Bernir an outlet to place his armors in.

This wouldn’t fix the issue that he was battling now. Regular armors and weapons didn’t sell for that much. They were mostly used by low-level adventurers, the real money was always in magical items and gear.

After a few days of not really making any progress, Roland was stuck with a backlog of runic swords and daggers. They had already been delivered for runecrafting and due to him already finishing the order he was unable to return it. The guild informed him that due to the deal with the dwarves they would not be able to sell them.

With that, his only real revenue stream that he could gain good money from was repairing runic equipment. He was still the only runesmith in town and could handle the orders at his home. The word was slowly spreading and neither the guild nor the union could stop the adventurers from coming over for his services.

Even though he could take a lot of money for the repairs this wouldn’t fix the problem. The items that he was fixing were already rare and not like they broke down every month and needed constant repairs.

Roland stayed up late the night and while going through some of the golem research the guild master’s letter caught his eye. If he did nothing about this predicament he worried that he would be run out of town. He invested far too much time into his home and now store to just roll over and take it from the union like this.

While he might have been able to survive in the short term. There could come a time when the union brings over their own runesmith. Then they could easily price him out of his repairing services, maybe even run some kind of smearing campaign to undermine his future runic creations.

This was a critical moment in his life. The city was about to go through another gold rush. More and more adventurers were arriving and everyone was expanding. If he didn’t follow the trend he would remain stagnant. Now was the time to act and to seize his future, if he did not he might as well sign a contract with the dwarven union and be done with it.

‘The black market, huh?’

He glanced at the letter and knew what it entailed. While he was apprehensive to work with the people that would be the first ones to rob him blind, he knew that they would not hold the union in many regards. They were profiters first that didn’t really align themselves with anyone or anything.

On the other hand, it was a good chance to see how the criminal underbelly in this world looked like. He already knew that most successful people somewhat rubbed shoulders with the thieves guild and ignoring them could come biting him in the behind later on in his life...