“I pass what?”

Henry asked as the Shopkeeper's smile shone

“You have passed the requirements to shop at my store.”

“Then…” Henry almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“You can buy the sword.”

“Then the conversation we just had…”

“Was a test, yes. You see I can’t give my weapons to anyone. If I did that people would complain about the price, and about how many weapons are in this shop, and why I’m not interested in them,or why I have the urge to kill every kid I see, or why I avoid the guards. Too much of a hassle.” She spread her arms, indicating the shop

“Could you imagine the havoc I could create by selling all of these. Each one is individually crafted, sharpened, polished, and enchanted to the fullest extent. Each one can slay foes that are far stronger than their weilder. There are no second or third rate products here. in fact, here is the cheapest swords I have.”

She pointed to a barrel filled with iron swords.

“Each one in that barrel is enchanted with a frost enchant. Each one is basically identical in mass and shape. Each one costs double your training.”

“Wait I thought you said I can buy the sword.”

“I said you can shop at my shop, but I’m not giving you a weapon for free. You planning on heading to the cave up ahead?”

The Dungeon that Henry was going to was an old mining cavern. The backstory was the mining crew accidentally mined too deep, hitting an ancient cavern filled with the undead. The mine was abandoned, leaving the undead to roam the mining area. It was a fairly simple instance. Clear the undead, enter the ancient cavern, pull a lever, defeat the boss, loot the treasure room, and the dungeons over. There were times however, when an npc would ask for mining materials from the mine. Though those normally were fairly easy, though infuriating due to them sometimes getting stuck on the walls for no reason.

“I am, why do you ask?” Henry asked

“I was wondering if you would let me tag along, I have a pickaxe, and I want to restock my ores. However considering I’m helping you train, I’ll allow you to accompany me.”

“Do you have equipment ready?”

The Shopkeeper smiled

“Do I have equipment, boy you're talking to a smith, enchanter, and alchemist. What do you think?

“So that’s a yes”

“Of course it’s a yes, I just have to….” Her voice slowly faded into thought.

“Excuse me for a minute.” saying that she went to the forge.

Normally she would use her war goddess armor, however she didn’t know whether Henry would recognise it as “the invader’s” armor. She had just designed her armor, and hadn’t the chance to build it. She had armor, but she couldn’t use it.

Opening the chest in the back of the forge area, a set of Ebony armor. It was a customised set based on what she took off of the Ebony Warrior. Although She smiled at that thought of the battle.

The battle between her and him was epic. The two were both skilled in the same areas, both evenly matched. It had been her toughest challenge up to that point. His armor covered up all weaknesses to magic, and his weapons dealt major damage. The two warriors fought for an over an hour. It ended quite simply really. While the Ebony warrior was powerful, he lacked in the the area of his pitiful amount of shouts. He stood no chance once he was affected by Drain Vitality.

Taking the set out and equipping it, she donned the helm and opened the door to the shop.

Henry looked up from where he was inspecting one of the mannequins, who wore a skimpy pair of armor. He looked startled, not expecting her to be able to wear armor that looked so heavy.

“Come on, let's go.” She said, walking to the door.

“FIrst names.” Henry demanded.

“What? Names?” She turned her head to face him

“It’s not a good idea to go inside of a dungeon without knowing your partner’s name.”

“I gave mine up.”

“So you don’t have one.”

“I do, but I won’t use it.”

“The can I call you a nickname, anything would be better than ‘Hey Shopkeeper’.”

The shopkeeper sighed, her shoulders lowering

“...rald” her voice was barely audible

“What?” Henry asked

“You can call me Emerald. Now go and wait for me, I have to close the shop.”

Picking Henry up by the back of his shirt, She tossed him out the store, closing the door.

“Her eyes…she was named after her eyes.”

Scars can be many things, badges of honor, proof of victory, a reminder of mortality. They are easily obtained, and they only fade. While Henry doubted that Emerald was her actual name, he wouldn’t doubt that she had been called that before.

Her good eye was a brilliant green, a deep emerald reflecting its wisdom, worth thousands. Even if she had no depth perception, she was an excellent fighter, from what Henry could tell. She wasn’t afraid if people knew it, just by looking at her other eye, anyone could tell she lost it in a fight, and judging by the scar, it was a long time ago.

She took the helm off and sat on the nearby chair, running her gauntleted hand through her hair. Although she did prevent the war, and asked to be taken out of the game, the screen told her that it would take awhile to make it, as they had to infer what genomes and enzymes and ribosomes to use. She understood most of it, and concluded that she might as well rest until then.

The boy had potential, and although he wasn’t the youngest, he mostly knew what he was doing. She could tell he lied about his age. 23 was a bit old for someone who walks and smell like that. He was probably around 17 or 18.

The chair creaked as she leaned back, not used to the weight of a full plated body. It would hold though, She didn’t make it to break this easily.

She stared at the ceiling. “What to do…”

She stood up, and walked to the forge, grabbing the prepared handle from the counter.

The Blade was almost done.

Grabbing the blade, she fitted the pieces together. The guard, handle, and pin. The Ebony Blade was recreated in this world. A screen popped up in front of her

*You have created - Ebony Blade (Rarity: Mythical)

Description: a blade forged by a master smith, the blade is harder and sharper than a regular blade. While not the original artifact, the blade is a perfect replica, granting it some of the original’s power. The Mistress knows

Attack: 11-13 (after sharpening around 250-300)

Attack speed: 2 attacks per second

Durability: NA/NA

Weight: 10

Enchant: No Charge Required

Absorb Life: absorbs 30-40 health per hit

Silent Strike: attacking will not be viewed as an assault.

The Weight of Betrayal: Killing those who trust you increases the Absorb Life enchant and the Weight by 10

After sharpening and polishing the blade, she sheathed it on her back. After this little adventure she would move her shop. Due to the issue of two factions wanting to find the master smith, and the fact that she was the invader. She decided that after a few groups visit her shop, she moves. One of the reasons why she was going to explore the dungeon with Henry was because of his skill, or lack thereof. While he would have no problem against monsters or animals. Humanoid targets that could think were the problem. The main reason to take him along was to have him spread the news of a smith who can squash a person with her bare hands… but also sells amazing products.

According to what she heard about the dungeon, it was filled with humanoid targets. Of course it not only was for him, in fact she was running low on Iron products. It takes far more nails than one would think to build a house, and this wasn’t the last one she was building. She had also heard that the monsters occasionally drop material that can be harder than some metals.

Getting that chance to work with unknown materials burned in her craftswoman’s heart.

“Time to have a little fun.” she said as she opened the door.

Still sitting down, dazed, was Henry, his fair hair a mess.

“Get up you little tyke, it’s time to go kill some corpses.”

Henry snapped out of his daze, and checked his stream.

He spluttered seeing over 100,000 people viewing his content. He normally had around 1,000 to 3,500 viewers, this blew him away. He could literally see the viewership count rising. The chat was talking about how beautiful Emerald was, or how cool her armor looked. Since Henry didn’t reveal what village he was in at the beginning, nobody knew where to find him. However that never stopped them before.

Henry knew that it was all because of Emerald. The regulars must have gone onto the forums and talked about it.

Emerald started to walk in the direction of the dungeon, grabbing Henry by his collar and dragging him along.

“I can walk by myself.”

“Can you? I was under the impression that you suddenly contracted an illness that caused you to become paralyzed.” her voice held a teasing naivety to it.

“I’m not that weak.” Henry grumbled

“Says the person who can get poisoned or sick” She dropped Henry onto his feet, then continued to walk

“Are you saying you're resistant to poisons and disease.”

Henry could swear that she was smiling under the her helmet as she turned back to look at him

“I’m immune to far worse things than poisons and diseases.”

“Like what?”

“Fire, I’m immune to fire, however enough of my secrets, it’s time to go hunting.”

Getting into a ready sprinting position, she continued.

“First thing we want to work on is your stamina, for this we are going to sprint all the way to the mine. Ready? 3...2...1...GO!”

With the countdown gone, Henry sprinted as fast as he could. Yet he still couldn’t catch up to Emerald, who in full plate armor, was sprinting as fast as any scout with light armor could, if not a bit faster. Fairly quickly the distance between the two was getting bigger and bigger. Until Henry lost sight of her.

---------------

10 minutes later

---------------

Henry was out of breath. He had lost sight of Emerald in the first minute, and had to follow her non existent trail. When he finally arrived at the mine, she was standing there patiently, waiting for him with her helm off and her smile on.

“I won the race, I get the loot. Sound fair?”

“Not really, as…” henry tried to comment, when Emerald’s arm was suddenly flung around his shoulder

“I won the race, I get the loot, Sound fair?” the top half of her face was covered in a shadow, and her eye gleamed an evil light. Henry shrunk back

“Sounds fair, sounds fair.”

Emerald took her hand off his shoulder, which he swore was bruised by the impact, in his peripheral vision he could see the chat, commenting on how lucky he was to be side hugged by her.

He couldn’t even feel anything, as she was covered by hard cold metal armor.

“Ready to go crush corpses?” she asked as she replaced the helm on her head

“I...I think so”

He wasn't ready