“Bone armor!” a booming voice shouted as Elrick limped to his feet. “Everything must go! Full sets of bone armor! Rock-bottom prices!”

Elrick limped toward the vendor. “I’ll sell you mine.”

He was a big man with a big gut. His bushy red beard had breadcrumbs stuck in it. He laughed at Elrick, his rolls jiggling. “I can barely give these away! Why would I want more? There are more skeletons in the world than there are living people.”

He leaned forward and inspected Elrick. “Hmm, mind if I–”

“Do not hit me,” Elrick hissed. He wasn’t going to repeat the same mistake he’d just made with the chidlren

“Those look like turtle goblin shells,” the vendor said. “I can give you a few coppers for those. And those aren’t regular bones, eh?”

“Animated by a powerful lich, which we slew,” Elrick said, leaving out the fact that “we” was a full army that he’d stumbled onto, and that the “slaying” happened while Elrick was passed out on the ground.

“Hmm,” he grunted. “I might be able to give you a silver for everything then.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to sell now. When he thought it was worthless he would have, but now that it was “maybe” worth a silver, he realized it was probably worth more than that. His knee was still tingling with pain, but if the hammer had struck his bare knee, he likely would have lost the knee entirely.

“I’ll shop around,” he said, “See if I can find someone willing to pay mo–”

“Two silvers,” he said. “No higher. That’s more than fair.”

Your Skill in Bartering has increased by 0.2, from 50.0 to 50.2.

Right. That price was probably still not close to fair. He turned around and tried his best to walk off without limping. He looked over his shoulder and said “I’ll keep your deal in mind.”

Your Skill in Bartering has increased by 0.2, from 50.0 to 50.3.

Elrick took off his bone helmet and put it into his satchel. It rattled against his turtle goblin helmet as he walked. He would take the rest of the armor off later too. Looking around, it seemed most people didn’t wear armor around in town, probably because you didn’t really fight in the middle of a city. The only armored people he saw held long spears and stood shoulder to shoulder in pairs, their eyes moving side to side, watching the bustle of the agora. They all wore the same polished bronze cuirasses with bronze bracers and pauldrons. Elrick assumed that any fighting that happened in town would quickly be stopped by them.

He looked at his dumb armor and his stupid cape and laughed. He was a noob, he realized. The only other people dressed like this were little kids. He’d thought he looked cool, but he was wearing what amounted to vendor trash. If this were an MMO, he’d end up just throwing this into the bin after he leveled up a few more times. Two silvers was, in the grand scheme of things, probably little to nothing.

Still, if Elrick was a noob, then he needed to make every copper count. He knew he needed a spellbook and some spells, and he’d need to figure out how to start mining and smithing as well.

While looking for the Red Mages’ Guild, he walked past a building and heard the sound of metal striking metal. Even from outside he could smell the acrid scent of burning metal.

He popped inside, and an older woman behind a counter smiled at him. The wall was lined with racks of weapons, and several full sets of armor were on display. There was chainmail, polished breastplates, ringmail, and suits in various combinations of the three. Some suits looked lighter, with just a cuirass and an armored skirt hanging from them, while others had pauldrons on each shoulder and came complete with bronze bracers and leg armor. Most of the armor sets were polished bronze, but some of the sets were silver, others were gold, dark green, vibrant blue, or even jet black.

The woman laughed. “You can’t afford anything here, boy.”

“How do you know?” he snapped.

She looked him up and down, and he covered his crappy sword with his noob cape.

“You’re wearing a potato bag,” she said, “Which you’ve tried to cover with a dirty blanket, and your armor makes you look like a grave robber. You think I didn’t see that thing you call a sword, but I saw it alright! No one with two gold coins to rub together would ever rely on a sword like that.”

“How much for a better one?” he asked.

He knew she was right. He couldn’t afford anything here. But he wanted to know how much good equipment would cost. More importantly, he wanted to see the Coppersmith’s skill in relation to the price of the equipment. This could give Elrick a good idea of how much money he’d eventually be able to earn once he increased his Coppersmithing and Mining skills.

She sighed, and started digging under the counter. “How much have you got?”

“More than you think,” he lied.

She popped back up and rolled her eyes at him. She held a well polished bronze sword with a basic leather-wrapped grip. Nothing about it was ornamented or fancy, but it was far and away better than his sword. It was similar to the one he’d had in the tutorial.

“This one is fifteen silver,” she said. “Which I assume you don’t actually have.”

“How much is that?” Elrick said, pointing at the full suit of jet-black armor.

She laughed and put the sword away. “Three hundred gold, boy. One of my husband’s finest pieces of work. Now get out of here!”

He got out, but then he snuck around the back and found the smith in the back. He was hammering away at something while his apprentice pumped the bellows. The smith shouted at the apprentice. The apprentice tucked his head down and pumped faster.

Elrick watched for a time, and soon he could see that the Coppersmith had 96.7 skill in Coppersmithing. It was higher even than the cook’s skill.

Elrick fumbled for his pickaxe and approached the bellow and anvil.

The apprentice gawked at him and stopped pumping. The Coppersmith looked up and shouted a string of obscenities at his apprentice, but when he realized Elrick was the reason he’d stopped, he turned his anger toward him.

“What do you want?” He barked at Elrick. He looked over his shoulder and scowled at his apprentice. “Pump harder!”

The apprentice pumped, and the Coppersmith swung his hammer. Elrick had to shout over the noise.

“I’m a miner, sir,” he said. “I’d like to sell materials to you.”

“How much have you got?” he asked. “Where’s your packhorse?”

“In the stable,” he lied. “I have…”

He didn’t even know what to lie about.

“If you’ve got 20 bronze ingots I’ll give you two gold,” the Coppersmith said. “Any less and it’s not worth my time. I’ll buy more valuable ore if you’ve got five or more ingots, price to be decided based on quality and purity of the ingots.”

Elrick nodded, “I’ll be back.”

The smith waved his hand, not seeming to care either way.

Two gold. He’d seen stalls in the agora which were exchanging coins. It seemed to vary slightly, but the best he’d seen was a vendor giving 17 silver coins for a single gold coin. It took somewhere between 15 and 25 copper coins to get a single silver. If he knew what caused the markets to fluctuate, he could possibly get money by investing in silver or gold, buying low and selling high, but that could also lose him a lot of money if he guessed wrong. He’d rather learn a valuable trade instead.

Elrick went back to the agora, asked around, and found the Miners’ Guild. There was a vendor there who sold everything he might need to mine. Once Elrick realized how little money he had, he quickly came to realize he could in no way afford “everything he might need” and would have to settle for the bare essentials.

His two silver coins got him two ingot molds, one for copper and one for tin. The copper mold could hold “five mina” of copper, the tin mold made a “half mina”. He had no idea how much that was, but picking up some of the ingots for sale, a mina felt like roughly a pound. He also had just enough to buy two spare pickaxes, a good chunk of fruit and jerky, and a dozen or so torches. He also got a “mining map” which showed where he could mine in the areas immediately surrounding Antia.

He couldn’t come close to affording a packhorse, nor could he afford to even rent one.

“Fifty percent,” the guildsman said to Elrick, “If you use our packhorse, you give us 50% of whatever ore you mine from it. And if you lose the horse, you are our slave until you work off your debt.”

“Half?” he said. “That’s outrageous!”

The guildsman shrugged. “Get your own packhorse then? Or you could always join the guild and earn a steady salary without having to worry about providing your own equipment or paying us our cuts.”

Elrick remembered what the little gnome had told him. If he just became some full-time guildsman earning a steady salary, they might pull the plug on him. He wasn’t going to be able to jumpstart this world as a salaried miner.

He’d use their horse, pay them their extortionist cut, and he’d make damn sure that the horse didn’t die.

* * *

The horse was well trained, and it followed Elrick without complaint. It came with a pack saddle, which had two huge packs hanging off either side. He loaded his pickaxes into one of the pockets, but kept his sword, money, and armor in his personal satchel.

He studied the mining map as he headed toward the bridge out of the north end of the city. He’d entered via the southern bridge. The north was more mountainous, and there was a lot more to mine than there had been in the forests of the south.

The map also showed areas with more valuable ores such as tin, obsidian, and an ore he had never heard of called “therite.” The tin, obsidian, and therite was further out than the copper, and there were drawings of squat, fat monsters wielding axes drawn around the obsidian and therite mines.

Elrick set out for the nearest copper mine.

It took him from sunup to just before dusk to reach the mine. He’d gone at a slow pace, mostly to protect the horse from dropping dead.

When he reached the mine, he was surprised to see dozens of armored guards holding spears standing around the entrance. The guards were very similar to the ones he’d seen in the Agora. The mine was huge, and there was even a makeshift type of mini-agora all around the mine’s entrance. Vendors sold equipment and food, and miners and smiths worked forges. He saw the sign of the Miners’ Guild, and realized that the guild furnaces were right here. He’d be able to smelt just as he exited the mine. It made sense for the furnaces to be just outside of the mine. It would be incredibly inefficient to haul all the raw ore into the city. Better to smelt off all the extra weight, then haul the refined ingots back into Antia.

The guards standing guard near the entrance stopped him as he tried to pass.

“Turn over your weapons,” one said, slamming the butt of his spear down.

“Why?” he asked, which earned him a scowl.

“This mine is property of the Miners’ Guild! No weapons, no fighting, and half of what you bring out goes straight to the guild.”

“I already am giving them half for the horse,” he said.

The guard narrowed his eyes at the horse. There was a small brand on its side indicating it belonged to the Miners’ Guild. “You’ll give us our half cut when you walk out of the mine, there will be a guard checking right as you exit. You’ll enter another checkpoint on the way back to Antia, they’ll weigh your ingots there, and you’ll have to pay half again then.”

So he’d lose half his ore before he even smelted it, and then he’d lose half of the ingots from half of the ore he’d smelted? How much would he have to give up before he got to keep anything? If he mined enough for ten ingots here, he’d have to immediately give five ingots’ worth of ore over to the guild for using their mine, and then he’d have to give 2.5 more to the guild, again, since he’d used their packhorse—assuming they wouldn’t make him round up. He’d be lucky if he had any more than two ingots leftover.

He looked down at his map and saw a little pickaxe symbol with a flag had been drawn on the mine. He’d ignored it, not having realized it was the Miners’ Guild’s symbol.

“Is there…” he said, trying to think of how to not insult the guard or the guild. “Is there a mine I can go to which isn’t so well protected by the prestigious Miners’ Guild?”

That earned him an even deeper scowl. Had he sounded too sarcastic?

“The goblin mine,” one of the guards said, thrusting his finger toward a mountain with a winding road leading up to it.

“What kind of goblins?” Elrick asked.

“Turtle goblins,” a guard grunted. “The beasts breed faster than we can kill them. They get deeper into the mine than any man can go. It’s not cost-effective to try flushing them out. We just let the bastards have the thing.”

Elrick grinned.