The route Estes took him along was able to hold up to some of the older man’s claims. They walked through rows of buildings, each for beautiful, impressive, and enchanting than the previous. The decorations varied from flowers, bushes, and trees grown in specific forms to everything else that was only remotely related to elemental magics and traits. In one part the artists had even gone as far as creating sculptures out of shifting rock formations, moving dirt from that rearranged itself and the moss on it into paragraphs from a poem, and one especially pretentious household even had tamed – or so Kent assumed – monsters that paraded in the villas garden. Then there were others that had no moving parts but intricate displays of color that were sparkling in curious patterns, refracting rainbows from the evenings sun’s rays.

Foregoing moving parts seemed sensible to Kent. They were bound to cost some sort of energy, either mana or stamina, or money – which would just be a waste of resources when something static was just as beautiful.

There was the impressiveness factor though. And Kent couldn’t disagree with that. He was impressed.

“You maybe be able to guess this if you’ve observed the city’s segregation, but the impressive part about this district isn’t the fancy statues or moving dirt. No, instead it is that only people with a trait stat of over five hundred may reside here. And the number of houses here speaks for the strength of Farburg,” Estes spoke without ever leaving just a breath where Kent might have given his own thoughts.

Kent thought he had a decent understanding himself – not that he needed it given his lack of the Trait-Stat –, but there was no use to telling Estes that. The man would keep talking about meaningless things regardless. If he thought Kent didn’t care, he would only find another topic.

Kent’s uncle had told all of them plenty about the system that wasn’t common knowledge for the average person of his age, such as that the higher one’s trait stat was, the less instinctual reactions to contradictory elements became. With how Estes had emphasized the number Kent figured that five hundred was just such threshold.

“You see, roughly at five hundred your trait starts changing – adapting if you wish. It moves away from the pattern of the previous holders and a representation of who you are is imbued into your trait. In a way it truly becomes a part of you, where it was previously an extension of an external concept. Thus, if you don’t have a personal dislike to say fire as a nature aligned person,” he pointed at a burning tree. “You won’t have the intrinsic dislike of a lower leveled nature aligned anymore. Interactions tend to be less volatile at such a high level – which is good because clashes of that level would result in some issues.”

Kent suppressed a sigh. While having someone around him that liked talking was fine for the most part, he just didn’t really care for the repetitive teachings of Estes. Maybe they wouldn’t bother him as much, if the man wasn’t so condescending half the time.

Having that explained he knew already was just tiresome and pointless. He could have tried telling Estes that he was aware. But that would have helped with absolutely nothing. The man was either obsessed with his own voice or had a trait that only allowed him to exhale in words not air.

He owed the man though, so he kept quiet. It was just an annoyance, not something that was uncomfortable.

Letting the man’s continuous talking roll over him they moved further along the scenic pathway through the second district. It was nice enough. Soon though they left the nice-looking buildings to climb a half-standing city wall. Estes explained that it had been the original construction which had later been deemed to cover too small of an area.

Walking along the still battlements was quite an experience. The view was entirely unexpected and rather impressive. Off in the distance Kent could spot the outer walls and even further behind that was the forest. They weren’t high enough for Kent to see some of the other villages. Though maybe that would be different from the grey castle towers – which were now in good view. While the first district was only partially visible, the visible part stood out all the more. The castle and towers extending far into the sky. The rest was occluded by the inner walls, separating the first and second district, that were taller than what the hill on which Farburg’s central district was build could compensate for.

The next district they entered, after climbing down the wall on the other side, looked distinctly more industrial. A stark contrast to what he had seen thus far in the second district. It seemed like the northern part of town, both inside and outside of the walls, was more fabrication orientated than the rest of town.

Fabrication might be a stretch as the craft shops looked a lot more like precision and luxury orientated places from the outside.

Eventually they ended up following the sound of metal striking metal and the smell of burned wood and Kent could taste an acrid, metallic aroma on his tongue. That got them to the smithies way faster than Estes memory of where the metal workers were located would have. It was odd. Kent almost felt like he was out in the third district with most of the more mundane fabrication halls, but there had to be a factor deciding on the more prestigious location. Maybe it was just a matter of monetary ability.

They felt out of place though. Compared to the rest of the second district, the crafting area almost felt like a stain upon the pristine image of the second district. Had he been in charge he would have considered placing them outside the gates, leaving the prettier parts free of rancid air and ash covered roads.

That was when they entered the iron-works district in all earnest.

There were figuratively countless smithies lining the paved road after they rounded another corner. More shops of the same type than he had ever seen before. Each side of the wider than average road was plastered with buildings of different sizes and materials, though they were unified in having plumes of black smoke with sparks of all colors coming from their roofs. Some buildings were standing on their own, others had fused with their neighbors and neighbor’s neighbors – visible by unnatural connections and inserts. Given the previous parts of town they had come through Kent didn’t feel quite so comfortable anymore.

There were no plants, nothing green. Only hues of white and ash. He should have felt at home as a metal traited. Instead, years of living around nature traited made him feel slightly uneasy.

Kent alone wouldn’t have been able to figure out which shops offered what services, but Estes guided him past construction and building focused smithies, others specialized in tools, kitchenware, and a variable count of others. Sometimes pointing out stores that could offer services Kent might be interested in at a later point. While mentioning other times how uninteresting certain shops would be for Kent.

But that was where Estes was wrong. Kent was interested in each of the smithies. They were working with metal – his chosen specialty. Eventually, after accumulating a few more levels and depending on what Metallic Insight offered in the future, he would have to see about taking an apprenticeship with one of the places to further expand on his normal capabilities. Combatant just said it hindered crafting trees form forming, but not that he would never be able to craft. Maybe he would end up with some metal skills that could be used for crafting. Analyze Metal at least spoke of crafting adjacency. If he went that route, he might never have to be alone again. Crafters, especially good ones, were as rare a titled among the traited.

Which, unsurprisingly, was a scenario he could very well imagine himself getting into again. Though most likely not in two weeks and hopefully more pleasant.

They ended up in front of a larger and mostly clean building. Compared to many others it had a plate denoting the name of the store. “Hyamdal’s” stood out due to those factors alone. But probably the most noteworthy factor was that there were people standing outside, for what purpose Kent couldn’t tell and Estes didn’t say.

What mattered though, was that they didn’t hinder them from entering.

The inside of the shop looked better than what Kent had expected. The floor was tiled in black stone and anthracite – tiling something he’d rarely seen before. Shelves lined the wall from one end of the room to the next, only interrupted by the occasional weapons rack that held spears, axes, and hammers. Most of them identical to each other, some standing out due to odd coloration or shapes.

The most outlandish aspect of the room was the metal cage in which they stood upon entering.

The door was held by heavy hinges and a large bolt. Hadn’t Kent activated Metallic Presence he would have presumed the wires to be the weak point of the whole construction. The skill though told him something he couldn’t quite put into words. The cage was more than just the metal visible. It was denser than anything he had felt through the skill before. While the resolution of the skill had grown with each rank, most objects still felt hazy though the additional sense. Here the outline of the cage was solid, where wires should be the skill told him literal beams thick as his arms stood, just finger width apart from each other. That wasn’t all. It detected metal even in the parts of the wire construction that Kent could see through, where there was clearly nothing according to his eyes.

That was odd, and certainly something he wanted to explore further. For that he would probably have to get to know the owner though. And he hadn’t been the best at making friends recently.

At the end of the room and next to the door to the cage were counters. The one by the entrance was manned by a person that greeted the two newcomers with a lazy wave and opened the door smiling.

“Evening Sirs, how may we help you today?” the presumed shopkeeper asked.

Estes had told Kent that he would have to talk to the shop personnel on his own, as ‘I have no patients for your puny pointy things. Talk to me if you want a real weapon’.

“Evening Sir, I’m looking to get my dagger repaired and was wondering about pricing and such. I’m also keeping an eye out for a replacement weapon,” Kent responded, spending no more than necessary – a cursory glance – on the man, his eyes being drawn to the myriad of weapons all around the room.

“If you show me what you want repaired, I can bring it to one of our resident smiths and they will inform you about pricing,” he explained. “If you’ve bought the weapon here, you’ll of course not have to pay for the repair, unless the damage is a result of mistreatment or prolonged use.”

Kent handed off his thaumic dagger but couldn’t contain himself. After inquiring about browsing the wares he was off to see what he could potentially get his hands on.

Estes remained behind to join the shopkeeper – and presumably talk his ears off – but at that point Kent had stormed off to where he had seen a few daggers.

There were a lot of interesting curiosities that drew his attention on the way. Even spears and axes were remotely interesting to him, but none were what he really was looking for. He did throw a few glances their way. What fascinated Kent the most was how rarity was seemingly not discernable by looks. He had heard that was the case, yet he could never really believe it. For something rare to look almost identical to a common or even inferior product felt odd. Wrong somehow.

Estes had also told him that weapon tiers usually indicate how much power they are able to tolerate. Not solely that, but it was the most important metric for many fighters. Especially when attacks started to cost hundreds of stamina and mana. Something that Kent didn’t see happening anytime soon for himself.

The most significant indicator of tier was the metal used. Especially when it came to determining how skills and weapons would interact. Agatha had broken his ‘canteen-knives’ with the usage of her core skills. That was because they would have been of a ‘inferior’ make, barely able to contain and transport small energy packets and utterly overwhelmed by double digit energy counts.

‘Common’ tools and weapons meanwhile were able to not immediately break upon a throughput of roughly ten to one-hundred mana or stamina. At least that was what common wisdom said. In reality a product, regardless of craftsmanship, could not be classified as common once it reached the one-hundred mark. That meant, that one could have a common sword that broke upon channeling twenty stamina at once, and a similar one, that handled ninety-nine without breaking a sweat.

Kent had never much cared for tool ratings, as he had expected to go the mage route all along, so it came as a surprise to him, that everything not quantified by the system was given the rating of inferior.

This had been the only thing Estes had helped him understand on their previous walk through the city. He didn’t spend much time going over the details as they were still fresh in his mind, and he just needed a common weapon anyways. Accelerate Metal was a far way off from using more than two mana per second, which all common tools should handle.

He stopped next to the first really impressive looking axe. The handle was almost as dark as the night, and the axehead was thickened at the middle of the blade. The spear tip on the opposite side of the blade gave the weapon a menacing look.

Iron Horseman’s Axe (Common) – An axe with an elongated and darkroot-reinforced handle. During its creation process extra attention was paid to the iron-axehead’s durability.

The long handle of the axe was roughly three quarters of Kents height. It might even be interesting for Kent, had he learned Rotate Metal in addition to his other metal skills. Or axe skills. As it was, he moved on.

He couldn’t quite stop admiring the weapons on his path. Another axe seemingly made of a single piece of metal stood out to him as well.

Tabar Battle Axe (Uncommon) – An axe completely made from a single piece of acsium. Its crescent blade shape is related to the name of the weapon. Due to the construction process a higher amount of mana can be efficiently applied to the weapon.

Was an already way more interesting weapon. Not only because of its full metal construction, but also due to the mention mana conductivity. Kent wasn’t entirely sure if that was what qualified it as ‘uncommon’ or if that placed it a notch above other uncommon weapons, but it was interesting to see that even mana tolerance could be influenced during crafting.

It wasn’t a dagger though and the asking price of four mancus was a little rich for Kent.

Moving further he passed a few more interesting weapons. He ignored the hammers flat out since both his strength and effectiveness of his skill would suffer from more weight.

Hooked Spear (Common) – A spear with a hook attached. Due to attention during the forging process the hook and fixture thereof have especially high hardness and durability.

The hooked spear was a bit more interesting. Besides the few combat applications that crossed his thoughts it could potentially help Kent transport stuff with the hook and Accelerate Metal. The downsides were that it had a had a wooden handle and just didn’t really appeal as a weapon. And of course he could by any other metal contraption such as a ring and gain similar utility. Its price though was at least approachable. Twelve sceat were a decent price from Kent’s understanding.

During his observations Kent noticed a few things. Most of the materials used were rather common. Most were a variation of iron or an alloy thereof – which he should probably learn more about at some point – with some weapons of bronze mixed in. Some of the items, but those were a rarer occurrence, were made from a different material like acsium – a mana conducting material – or resics – which was known for keeping an edge especially well at the detriment of shattering easily under some circumstances he wasn’t quite clear on.

He had seen both of the less mundane materials in the foreign goods market as well. Back then, Kent hadn’t paid much attention to them back then given the relative large asking price. What bothered him the most was, that thaumium wasn’t to be seen anywhere, either.

Maybe they don’t have any here at all?

Slowly, still observing other weapons around him, he approached the knives and daggers. He wasn’t scared of getting to them, he told himself. But it felt odd. A sort of anticipation. He had high hopes for versatile tools. If he equipped himself properly, he'd no longer be a stranded pup in a wild and dangerous world. More than just shoddy knives at his belt he would be able to manage monsters more effectively and not have to worry so much about keeping his dagger close by.

Most certainly the biggest downside of his current built was that he required metal on his person to cause damage.

Finding a few solid daggers wasn’t an all-out salvation but a good step towards one. Each footfall didn’t feel as significant as they should. They were just regular steps in a store, like the ones he had made a thousand times before.

He had gone through hours of sharpening and cutting knives from a broken canteen.

He had worked with dull pointy bits of metal, laying in the damp cool grass of the tranquil pond in the hopes of hitting one of the turrls with his improvised weapons. Sometimes the turrls wouldn’t even get hurt.

And now, there we dozens, maybe hundreds of daggers, knives, and short swords in front of him.

It felt too easy. He looked at the ones just laying on a shelf without proper care. They looked similar to each other, some edges a bit uneven, most dull without the tell-tale sign of sharpening. Handles that looked too small or uneven.

Simple Dagger (Lesser) – A dagger made from low quality iron.

And for a moment his heart sunk. He had built up so much hope that finding only low-grade daggers almost felt a stab in his heart. Then he saw the price and the seemingly endless count of the daggers in the drawers. A pair of three at the price of one sceat, the sign said. Sold at production cost. And for a styca they would resharpen them all as well.

Some not so quick mental arithmetic told Kent that he would have to pay a mancus for ninety daggers. He gasped audibly.

Even if they did nothing else than keep an edge slightly better than what he had thus far. If they were a bit more durable and harder, they would be a huge gain. But he would come back here later after he had inspected the rest of the ware.

There weren’t exclusively daggers here. With time he picked out the more interesting weapons, usually short and pointy ones. Leaving longer blades with a focus for slashing to the side.

Bloodletting Sai (Uncommon) – A failed attempt at producing a rare product. It has vestiges of the power the creator had planned to imbue into the final product. Wounds inflicted with this acsium three-pronged dagger will bleed more than usual if at least two prongs leave wounds and energy is used to cause the impact.

Kent stared. This was the sort of weapon he wanted; the price was fairly decent as well. Two mancus and eighteen styca were a price he would be willing to pay for such a weapon. Yet, he could imagine what the fully realized version might be capable of.

If it only required energy to be used it was the weapon for him. He wanted it, he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t used a skill ever since getting them.

But maybe that wasn’t feasible. If the failed product cost a bit more than two and a half manci, there was little hope that he could afford the good version.

He was just about to move on to the next dagger when a hand softly landed on Kent’s shoulder completely breaking him out of his trance.

“You might want to go to the back counter, kiddo,” Estes voice said. “You said you wanted to get something repaired first, right? They offer that back here, and you’ll need to know how much money you can spend first. I’ll see if I can find some interesting daggers here for you. Spending all your money on the fanciest might not even be a good idea if you can get something custom made, or if that means you have to go without any armor.”

Kent walked as though in a trance to the counter in the back of the room. The woman, inspecting a dagger that looked exactly like the one in he had handed off minutes ago, smiled at him as he approached.

“Not often that someone as young as you carries one of the forerunner alloys. This is a variance of thaumium. Though a poor one admittedly. It’s decent work for someone below level one hundred, I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse. I assume you didn’t make it?”

She smiled at him. As though she knew what he was about to do. It was a bit rude, especially since he hadn’t even properly greeted her yet.

Her statement practically begged him to do it.

Human - ??? - ???

What’s up with the people here? I’ve never seen as many over level one-hundred people anywhere. I always thought they were rare. Though, maybe Farburg was a bit different. It being a frontier town maybe made it a bit more likely, but he would have to check out other towns. He doubted that Blueleaf really was that much behind when it came to level. His uncle had never mentioned that it was.

She lifted her finger and waved it left to right. She grinned as she spoke.

“Before you ask something silly. Nope, I wasn’t carried. I’ve only ever participated in two monster kills. I’ve gotten this high through skill alone. So, what can I help you with. Are you looking for a repair or have some of my exhibits caught your eye.”

“Good Evening,” Kent said, gathering his thoughts. “I’ve primarily come to see whether the dagger can be repaired.”

“You are in luck,” she responded, the smile growing even wider on her face. “I can even offer you something better. For two mancus, I’ll reforge the dagger completely for you. I’ll add some acsium to increase it mana carrying properties while keeping the sharpness and hardness the same. If you want, I’ll even keep the shape, though I’d recommend shortening the handle a bit so you have a better grip.”

“I’m also in the market for a few throwing knives, or maybe just regular ones, depending on pricing and such,” Kent rambled on. “And depending on what sort of regular knives you have I’d also be interested in looking at those.”

“You know what. I have a better idea. We have a lot of daggers laying around that one of my two apprentices crafted in the past few months. They are decent enough for the most part. If you want a few of them, say, if you buy… let’s say a mancus worth and buy stuff for another… hmm… two manci I’ll get the dagger repaired for you at cost, with the addition of the acsium – though I’ll let my apprentice try his hand first at the repairing process.”

She must have seen Kent’s worried expression and quickly followed up with an explanation.

“Don’t worry I have a skill that allows me to revert any repair attempts that metal has undergone in the last hour. And even if I hadn’t, I could forge an uncommon dagger every fifteen minutes. And that’s being conservative.”

Kent was hesitant, it wasn’t a terrible deal, as he was already planning on spending roughly as much. First, he would ask about other daggers they had in store or maybe the woman could help him find something interesting or well-fitting for him.

“I’m interested, though since there is a certain risk involved with using untested weaponry in combat, I’d like to add a custom dagger at cost to that deal,” Kent now began smiling as well. “Which should be fair, since you’ll be using my dagger as a practice weapon for your apprentice. Maybe that would even be enough for a small discount.”

Haggling was fun.