Rise of the Living Forge

“Nine Underlands, that’s the most beautiful piece of armor I’ve ever seen,” Reya breathed. “What god do you pray to, Arwin? I’m swapping.”

“It’s just scale mail,” Arwin said, his eyes locked with the Demon Queen’s. “Nothing special.”

“Nothing special my ass,” Lillia said. “How’d you make that? That’s impossible. You–”

She cut herself off before she could continue, but Arwin knew what she’d been about to say.

I’ve only been at this for a short while. I don’t have any formal training as a smith, and even though this item probably wouldn’t be anything special to someone far above our Tier, it shouldn’t have been possible for an amateur. But here I am. Maybe all the time I spent watching my equipment getting made transferred over.

It was a weak excuse and Arwin was all too aware of it, but he genuinely had no proper explanation for it other than that the materials seemed to beckon to him, begging him to form them into their proper forms. Even in the final stages of the scale mail, he’d felt the call of the scales directing his movements.

Making Average magical items was absolutely nothing to scoff at. The Mesh didn’t even recognize non-magical items in most circumstances. The only exception was when they managed to earn Titles and Achievements of their own, but that was rare.

The actual ranking of magical items scaled with the smith that made them and the materials that went into them. An Average item from Arwin, at Apprentice Tier, would be nothing compared to a Garbage item made by someone two tiers higher at Adept Tier.

But, even despite that, being able to make Average magical items with the amount of practice Arwin had… it was unfair, to say the least.

“Why are you here?” Arwin finally asked, snapping himself out of his reverie.

“To help!” Reya answered for Lillia. She picked a plate up off the floor and pulled the covering off, holding it out to Arwin so he could see the meat pie on it. “Also, we brought you food!”

It was cold, but Arwin grabbed it without hesitation. He still had some time before he’d need to eat another magical item, so his body didn’t necessarily need food, but the pie looked delicious.

“Thank you,” Arwin said, swallowing before he spoke. “But… Reya, you were meant to keep people out of the smithy, not invite them in. Besides, doesn’t the D – ah, doesn’t Lillia have a tavern she needs to run?”

“Unfortunately, I found out that two of my only customers were about to get themselves killed,” Lillia said, the irritation clear in her expression. “I had no choice but to come.”

“To hand deliver the food?”

“No, you oaf. Well, yes. But also to help you with your thieves’ guild problem.”

Arwin nearly choked on his own saliva. He waited for Lillia to burst into laughter at his expression, but her features were dead serious. She wasn’t joking.

The Demon Queen is offering to help us? She’s suggesting that not only do we call a truce, but we actually fight side by side?

“Isn’t it great?” Reya asked. “We actually have a chance of surviving!”

If anyone heard of this, they’d faint in terror. When I was still the Hero, I can remember people theorizing about ending the war by finding an enemy so great that neither the Kingdom of Lien or the Monster Horde could handle it on their own, so they’d have to work together.

I suppose now we know what that threat is. A second-rate thieves’ guild that’s after the key to a Journeyman dungeon that I never would have given a second glance at.

A laugh slipped out of Arwin’s lips. It was so ludicrous that he couldn’t even try to hold it in.

“What?” Lillia demanded.

“Nothing,” Arwin said, wiping the mirth from his eyes. “I just never thought that you and I would be working together to fight off a bunch of worthless thugs.”

The exact meaning of his words passed over Reya’s head, but Lillia understood them immediately. She scrunched her nose and let out a laugh of her own.

“Yeah. I had a similar thought. I guess life finds it funny to play jokes on us.”

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“You can say that again,” Arwin muttered. He glanced around the floor in search of his shirt, then located it near the anvil and pulled it on. Then, after a moment of hesitation, Arwin pulled the scale mail over his head.

As soon as it settled on his shoulders, he felt the material shift. It tightened against him until it sat perfectly on top of his shirt, not too snug but not so loose that it would flop around while he walked. The faint tingle of the Mesh prickled against his skin as he felt himself connect with the armor.

“Looks good,” Reya said, giving him a thumbs up.

Lillia reluctantly nodded in agreement, but she still added, “for an amateur.”

“I’ve got more material.” Arwin looked back to the still-lit forge. “How long was I working? Do I have time to make another piece?”

“The note said two days, and today is day two,” Reya said. “If they’re going to be really strict on their timing, then I’d assume they’ll show up tonight.”

“It might be better to bring the fight to them. They won’t suspect it,” Lillia said.

“They probably also won’t send their entire guild just for Reya,” Arwin said with a thoughtful frown. “We might be better off waiting for them to show up here, killing the ones that do, and then taking out the rest of them afterward.”

“Which would work if they didn’t have any sort of information network, but they clearly respect that you’re a threat.” Lillia shook her head. “And that means that they’ll be watching to see how things go. If people start dying, the rest of the guild will either show up prepared or will be lying in wait. It’s much more efficient if we cut the problem out with one fell swoop.”

She had a fair point, but taking them out in one fell swoop

was considerably easier to say than actually do. Sure, getting the jump on the thieves would probably give them a few free kills, but there were still thirty of them. If ten were off watching the dungeon, that still left twenty people to handle between the three of them – two, if Arwin didn’t count Reya due to her lack of experience.

The idea of trusting Lillia… I don’t know. A truce is one thing, but fighting side by side is entirely different. I can barely even remember a time when I wasn’t trying to kill her and she wasn’t aiming to do the same to me.

Arwin had no way to know for certain, but he got the strong suspicion that the exact same thoughts were passing through Lillia’s head. There was little choice, though. Unless they abandoned Reya to her fate, they had to work together.

There wasn’t any way to prove anything or ensure Lillia wouldn’t turn against him, she had no way to know if Arwin would hold to his word either. It was like a snake eating its own tail. No matter how hard it tried to consume itself, it would never be able to finish.

The only option was just to stop biting.

“Just this once, then,” Arwin said, holding Lillia’s gaze. “Until the thieves’ guild has been dealt with.”

“Just once.” Lillia nodded. “I don’t plan to make a habit out of killing people. I’m trying to run an upstanding business, so this is going to have to be a cheat day.”

“So what are we going to do?” Reya asked, wringing her hands together. “Are we just charging in and killing people?”

“That’s going to depend on where their base is,” Arwin said. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, holding a hand toward the forge. The [Soul Flame] he still had sitting in it sputtered and flew into his hand, returning to his body as his fist closed around it. “I trust you know?”

“Yeah. I can show you, but they’ve definitely got lookouts.”

“We’ve already established that it’s likely they’ll be watching us,” Arwin said. “There’s even a chance they know what I’ve been up to. And, speaking of which, hold on.”

Arwin directed his attention to his armor, willing it to hide itself from anyone else’s eyes. The metal rippled in response, but that was it. Arwin glanced at the others, then tapped his chest. “Well? Can you still tell what it is?”

“Not anymore,” Lillia said with a shake of her head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d just think it was normal scale mail. You still might stand out a bit, though. I don’t see a lot of people walking around wearing Forest Lizard armor.”

“Not yet,” Arwin said with a low chuckle. He nodded over his shoulder at the pile of pieces left over from the Forest Lizard. “I’ve still got a good bit of material left, not to mention the claws and fangs. I’m going to need some better tools if I’m going to get around to using them anytime soon, though.”

“We should probably focus on surviving this fight first,” Lillia suggested. She went to continue, then paused as she took a closer look at the pile that Arwin had indicated. “Do… you think you might be able to make me some utensils? I don’t have a knife. Or a fork. Or anything, really. I’ve just got a bent piece of metal that I’ve been using as a makeshift pan.”

“What have you been using to cook if you didn’t have utensils?” Reya asked. Lillia looked down at her hands, then back up to her. Reya grimaced and held a hand up. “Never mind. I’d rather be ignorant. Can we go back to the part where we try to figure out how to kill thirty people?”

“That’s simple,” Arwin said.

Lillia looked to him in confusion and Reya’s eyes narrowed as she figured out what he was about to say before he could say it.

“Simple? How?” Lillia asked.

“All we have to do is hit them harder than they hit us.”

Lillia and Reya rolled their eyes in unison. Arwin chuckled at their expressions, then looked around the forge. There wasn’t much he needed other than a sword and his armor. It would have been nice to have more equipment, but time just didn’t permit it. On a whim, Arwin grabbed his explosive sword and slid it into one of the Brothers Six’ sheaths before hanging it on his waist.

“Right,” Arwin said, giving Reya a sharp nod. “Lead on, then. It doesn’t matter if they see us coming. It’s time we check out this thieves’ guild. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to come up with a plan once I see what we’re dealing with.”

“And if we don’t have time?” Reya asked.

Arwin’s features darkened and his hand tightened around the hilt of his sword. “Then we’ll just kill them the old-fashioned way.”