Corand was truly an enormous city. Its towers had been visible from long distance, but it still took a long way to even reach what could be called edges of the city. There was clearly several inner parts with their own walls. Then there was completely white external wall on which Kaden could see shimmering mana formations. Even outside the most external wall there was still people, but it was clearly very poor area. Basically a slum.

Kaden wondered why bother staying there. There would be no resources or any hope of progressing anywhere. Perhaps they were simply too weak. It looked like having lived in a backwater village was not that bad option. In a big city, he might have been part of that slum. Still, the area anywhere in vicinity of Corand should have been nearly devoid of anything but small beasts that even a child might be able to kill.

He decided to ignore the slum for now. There was unlikely to be too many, if any, relevant prey to devour. Such people would be able to move inside the walls.

Once the carriage reached the gate leading into the city, Sidon had to stop. His goods were checked by the guards. He talked to them for a moment and then they were let pass.

Kaden paid a lot of attention to this. In the slums there was no security, at least not any official, but the city itself seemed rather secure. The gate was filled with formations and Kaden could only have educated guesses about their use.

“Hmph, I half expected your setup to be in the slums”, Kaden said to Sidon.

“Ha!” Sidon laughed. “It did start there, less regulations, but once it got popular, I moved it into the city!”

Kaden ignored whatever Sidon boasted as the carriage continued along the road inside. He had never seen an actual city. Still, he did not want to seem like a country bumpkin so he tried to appear more familiar with the sight. It was difficult. Corand was enormous and everywhere he looked, he saw something new and strange.

Out in the open, it was all shiny and wondrous, but eventually the carriage turned to one of the side roads. It was going directly to seemingly seedier part of the city. Obviously Sidon’s place was somewhere there out of sight.

Then the carriage stopped at front of some warehouse. Sidon jumped off and went in. Soon the warehouse doors were opened and the carriage moved in. Some people appeared to carry out the cages with beasts. Sidon’s arena was built inside the warehouse!

Kaden watched everyone moving in and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. For a moment, he thought of going explore by himself, but then Sidon came back.

“Come here, kid”, Sidon waved his hand at Kaden. “We got a spot for you to sleep. Don’t know how it compares to whatever place you slept in the forest, but you just need to get used to it.”

“Whatever”, Kaden replied. He wasn’t really concerned of his sleeping place.

“Oh and I’ll be throwing you into the arena tonight”, Sidon continued and grinned at Kaden. “You will be going by the name ‘the beast’. Kaden the Beast.”

“What the f…?” Kaden started to complain. “Why did you choose something stupid like that?”

“Its good”, Sidon assured Kaden. “The name has to be a bit over the top like that to be easily remembered better.”

“What do I get out of this?” Kaden questioned. “I did agree to work for you and, as far as I know, if you do work, you get paid? Yes? Or am I a slave?”

“You get a cut, if there is good profit”, Sidon replied. “But to increase your cut or good profit, you need to show you are a good fighter that people come look at and bet for.”

“And I can’t kill anyone?” Kaden asked.

“Accidents do happen, but do not kill on purpose. We even give people ‘give up’ tokens that will shield them for a moment, but its their loss in that case”, Sidon said.

“I’m not going to hold back”, Kaden said and stared right in Sidon’s eyes with clear intent.

Sidon rolled his eyes. “I didn’t expect otherwise. Its not difficult to understand how you operate.”

When Kaden walked into the building along with Sidon, he got a few odd looks from rest of the workers that had not been on the trip. Caili and the rest were gossiping everything. Most of the people were weaklings so Kaden ignored them.

As for Kaden’s new ‘residence’. It was basically just a small corner. He wasn’t sure what it was supposed to have been before, but now there was just enough room for him to sleep.

Some distance away, just outside the area where Kaden’s sleeping spot was, there was a large arena. It was like a hole in the ground with grandstand surrounding it. There was protective formations surrounding it. While Kaden was not really that familiar about defensive formations, from the complexity, he expected it to be able to take huge amount of beating.

Kaden wanted to study the formation, but he didn’t want to blantantly reveal he knew anything about formations. He wasn’t sure, if anything he did understand, even meant that he ‘knew about formations’ on any relevat level. Still he didn’t wish for it to be revealed yet.

He decided he would take his chance to study the shielding around the arena later. There were lots of formations in use all around the city so he would have chance to look at them too. With luck, he might be able to observe from distance how an actual master crafted them.

Everyone seemed to be in a rush. It seemed Sidon wanted Kaden to help around too, but he could not think of anything that he would trust to him. Apparently now that Sidon came back with new beasts for the arena, there was supposed to start a new season soon. There would be some appethizer fights as show of strength so that proper bets could be made for the season beginning.

Sidon was surprised when Kaden made the actual first move to do something. Kaden had plans. There was no way he would slack. He had noticed a forge just next to the warehouse that was part of the arena. It supplied weapons and all sorts of metal work. Kaden had looked at it for a moment and frowned. The guy swinging the hammer was an amateur. The man made mistakes that would have netted Kaden knocks on his head by Aden back in Dashire. It was also a good chance, if he could have access to a forge.

“You are doing it wrong”, Kaden said with a condescending voice. “The metal will end up brittle and break.”

The fat man at the forge frowned as Kaden mocked him.

“Fuck off, kid”, he told Kaden. “I heard quite a bit about you. What do you know about smithing!”

“More than you”, Kaden continued. “Your swings are pathetic. You are wasting strength if you do it like you are now.”

Kaden didn’t really care what the fat man thought about him. Despite his relatively large body, he was only at initial Channel Opening stage and Kaden did not fear him.

“Did you even inspect the metal before you started working?” Kaden continued his list of complaints. “Do you even know how to? Pathetic. Added with rest of your problems, I don’t know why Sidon allows you to be here beating the hammer pointlessly. Your product is metal trash.”

Sidon happened to hear this and was listening just around the corner.

“A milk sucking kid dares to criticize me?” Replied the fat man in anger. “I was already working with metal when you were sucking your moms tits!”

“You call that working with metal?” Kaden continued. “All I see talentless trash hammering on the metal, wasting it and producing trash. Sidon must have just picked someone from the streets and you happened to be lucky? It would be easier to look for better product while digging trashpiles in the slums!”

At this point Sidon appeared. “Gurnig’s work is passable”, he said to Kaden.

Kaden spit on the ground. “Passable? Thats trash. I guess you let him do this ‘work’ because everything he makes, breaks and you need replacement. Then that replacement needs to be replaced and you keep piling trash. Do you perhaps also act as junk dealer?”

“Then show me better work?” Sidon said and motioned to Gurnig to stay silent as the man was about to object. “If you can do that, then Gurnig gets to watch and learn.”

“I agreed to fight for you, not teach some talentless loser”, Kaden replied.

“I don’t really care. If you can produce better work than he does, I’ll get you extra pay”, Sidon told Kaden his offer.

“I’ll agree to make better work than he does”, Kaden said confidently. “Thats not a problem at all. I could do it with my eyes closed. I want to have chance to use the forge for personal work!”

“I can agree to that”, Sidon agreed and still kept silencing Gurnig.

Kaden nodded and quietly went to pick metal. It was about time he did some smithing again. He had not had the chance since Dashire. Formations and smithing went well together. Kaden wanted to create weapons for himself and also try to make some things he had found in Trohin’s lab.

He inspected the metal and found out it was relatively good grade. Truly, Grunig had been wasting such metal. Aden would have been really happy to work with the materials and to see it be wasted was basically a sin. Kaden knew his father would have been fuming, if he had seen this.

He inspected the parts that Grunig had been making before. They were an easy shape. Not that the amateur would have been able to create anything complex.

Kaden started working. Despite everything that happened, the skills he had learned were still in his mind. He noticed he did have better control of the fire, as if it worked along his wishes. This was likely the case due to him being pretty well aligned with fire mana.

In truth, Kaden would have liked to make a weapon, but he only knew things Aden had taught him about actual magic smithing. Neither of them had ever done any and a proper weapon would require some skill in that. On top of that there would be formations supporting the weapon and its intended purpose. Magic smithing was yet another thing he wanted to truly learn.

It took shorted time for Kaden to produce the same parts that Grunig had made. The fat man was somewhat fuming as he watched Kaden show his skills that he had to agree exceeded his. There was nothing he could do than watch as Kaden’s words about him were coming true.

Kaden himself was not perfectly happy with his work, but it was passable. There had been too long time since he had last worked with metal.

“Here”, Kaden said. “I bet Grunig’s part will shatter, if you strike it hard. Inspecting its structure shows a several faults. As for mine, it should take quite a bit more beating before it breaks. Its not perfect, but better than that junk that this fatty produces.”

Sidon was not a smith, but when he looked the different parts, he could see the clear difference.

“I guess you learned these skills before you started living in the forest?” Sidon asked Kaden curiously.

“My father was a smith. I was supposed to follow him on the same path, but...”, Kaden replied and sighed. There was no need to hide that fact. “Then again, smith is a smith. I was never going to be a fighter in the village. How interesting that it is me who ended up here and everyone else dead. Being weakling is never the right path. Never.”

While Kaden had respect for his father’s ideals, those things only worked in Dashire. In the vast world, being a weak was asking for trouble. Strength was everything.

“I’ll let you use the forge”, Sidon told Kaden and put the part down. “Whatever Grunig’s quality is, I did indeed bring you here as fighter, but I might ask for some metal work done when there are no fights. For now, work here with him. I’ll add extra pay after your fights today are over.”

Grunig was somewhat annoyed, but Kaden ignored him.

“Well, that went right”, Kaden thought as he prepared to craft more those parts. “I’ll better start designing weapon for myself. I already got some materials, but I will likely need some more before I can even attempt anything. I’d prefer to hide my claws somehow. I’m probably a bit too noticeable when I fight.”

Kaden was planning for long term. On short term people might not pay attention too much to his pecularities, but over a long time someone was going to notice. Therefore Kaden wanted to mitigate some of that with use of weapons and clothing or armor.

There was no need to rush matters.