Business

Having my magic awakened was not quite the process I had thought it was. I thought it would be some kind of fancy starting ritual for players in which their first magical experience might change their lives. Nope, the actual process was half as dramatic but somehow very painful.

He spent about ten minutes making a pair of swords out of two clubs without really even moving his body as he simply willed the material to shift and shape. Both swords came out with interesting descriptions about the alchemy used to design them and then the magic used to enhance them. There were only two simple magics, a strengthening enchantment and a sharpening enchantment, but they were so strong that a wooden sword was actually capable of cutting my palm when tested.

Next, Ferithar simply had me walk over and hold out my hand before taking it in his. After making sure that I was ready to begin, the old alchemist slightly tightened his grip and then my hand started to feel warm. Then it felt cold, then it felt airy, then it felt alive with electricity, then it felt rough and gravelly, and the sensations just kept changing.

Then, they started moving. At first it was just small feelings spreading up my wrist and arm but then it suddenly expanded and contracted like a heating heart in my body. Then again, and again, growing faster and stronger with every pulse until it finally felt like it was just one steady stream of multiple painful senses filling my entire body.

Sounding as if they were coming from a mile away, the old alchemist says, "Don't pass out, you'll ruin everything! Right now I'm straining your mana pool. Normally a magician qualified for teaching would simply put mana in your body and see what reactions your own mana has to it to awaken it and check for your affinities. I'm blowing it up like a bladder and letting it relax to stretch it. This will make you stronger without needing to put forth effort. Stay awake!"

After a few more minutes in which I slowly collapsed onto the table while paralyzed from the magically agonized nerves in my body, the old man continued speaking, "If you haven't realized it yet, you're a very rare and unique case! Your affinities are not that great, but you have all of them! What's more, you can raise them which will only make your magic stronger as you progress. I'm quite jealous, really! I only have affinities with the mystic arts, some fire and earth element, and healing!"

Even if I wanted to respond there was no way I could have spoken at the time. I could only lie there with my head on the table and drool while staring at my hand between both of Ferithar's as torment continued coursing into me. He was probably doing this on purpose to get back at me for making his work for cheap.

Finally, though, the man let go of my hand and the pain slowly faded. Then, some notifications appeared.

[Congratulations, Life Hack, your magic has finally been awakened and you can start working on developing your mana sense and mana operation skills. As well, your mana pool was forcefully enlarged, granting you more MP than before]

The AI was right, with an Intelligence of twenty-two my MP should have been about one-forty-four but instead my MP was currently one-ninety-four. My mana pool had been enlarged by fifty freaking points, that was as good as raising my Intelligence by twenty-five points! I might as well have just gotten a class!

Once I finally started picking myself drowsily up off the table, the laughing alchemist says, "Some people get all the luck, don't they? Now, it'll be a while before you can actually use magic on a proper level but little things might start happening if you don't pay attention. So, I'm going to write some simple meditation exercises down as well as some basic practices for you to work on by yourself."

I could not even nod my head to acknowledge, especially after actually trying and only succeeding in upsetting my balance on the table. I started sliding down to one side as the clerk finally returned again with the next set of papers. When she saw me slumping to the floor, though, she started yelling at the alchemist and demanding to know what happened.

To his credit, Ferithar remained mostly calm and explained the situation about what he did and how he did it. However, after several seconds of listening the clerk only exploded all over again about how dangerous doing that was to someone as young as I was. Ferithar simply argued that doing it to someone older or who already had magic would be pointless.

As the feeling was slowly returning to my body while they continued arguing, I simply did my best to tune them out while slowly working my fingers and then hands and then arms before basically crawling back to my seat. "Stop…" I say quietly and irritably, silencing both people on the other side of the table who had not even noticed me moving. "This… I wanted. Calm. Need think… for minute."

It was hard to coordinate my thoughts with a combination of freezing cold electricity or molten rock residual echoes in my sensory relays. However, after finally forcing out those few words, the room went quiet for a few minutes and I soon felt much better.

Shaking my head and sitting up a little straighter, I point to the paperwork and wave the clerk lady over before saying, "I need materials and resources quickly, I am gathering a party that should be all together in just a couple of days and I'm the guy who makes the goods. How long before the trade and direct sale can be taken care of?"

"I have someone gathering fifteen-hundred gold for you at this time," she assures me quickly while watching me sign the paperwork she had handed over. "As for the trade, we have a steady stock and supply of most alloy agents but vanium itself is a very valuable material. Our own sourcing price for it is one hundred and twelve gold per pound, which I can assure you is almost as cheap as it gets unless you're nobility or government making the acquisition."

"The public smithy sells vanium for one hundred a pound, I'll continue sourcing it from there," I say while returning to the first page and crossing out the handwritten vanium terms before marking it with an asterisk with the short quill and well on the table. "Grand Alchemist Ferithar, my good man, what is a cheaper alloying agent that increases the strength-to-weight ratio of steel without increasing conductivity but also without making a poor quality cutting steel."

"Where vanium would usually be one or two parts out of one hundred in a good sword steel without overwhelming other qualities in the steel, you would need three or four parts of something else expensive like cobalt or tungsten. Cobalt is good to some extent in cutting steel but it's a better shield steel for making anti-magic equipment. Your sword looks about ten pounds, feels magical too, but if it was a plain steel you would want to add a quarter pound to it. Since it has vanium, a fifth of a pound. You used ridium in your sword? Whatever for?"

Surprised that I was even surprised the 'grand alchemist' could assess the metallurgy of the sword sheathed at my waist, I say, "I was experimenting. The damage is probably lower than it should be but I wanted to see if adding a fire related material would affect its magic. I did not enchant this sword but instead made it originally from two scrapped weapons. They came from a dead adventurer who died to goblins I killed, they were a Once Reliable Rapier and a Dead Man's Dirk. Then I remade the original Fuller Haunting into what you see, and it bears the prefix 'blackened' as if burnt even though the color is from arcanite and my weak level of magic."

"I see… it does happen from time to time," he remarks while being questioned with a look by the clerk. "Some materials that are not magic can gather ambient magic from their surroundings. A normal piece of quartz or obsidian will become a fire stone in volcanic areas from exposure to that element. This dead man's belongings were haunted by the time he spent using them, especially if one of them was called 'once reliable'. That name represents the mana and story of the weapon. In putting two death artifacts together into a sword, you made a haunted sword."

"If I crushed something like a fire stone while scrapping my-" I start to ask as an idea occurs to me while choosing tungsten to replace vanium until being cut off.

"You'll die," Ferithar says flatly, cutting me off with a perfect poker face. "No if's, and's, or maybes in hell about it. Once you stress fracture that elemental crystal outside of a controlled environment, boom. You and the entire municipal."

Grimacing while awkwardly glancing at the clerk who was looking at me like I was a bug, I say, "That's why I wanted a grand alchemist for a teacher."

"Grand alchemist my ass, pick up a book before you kill somebody," Ferithar says in the same flat-line kind of voice. "You just wanted to do things the easy way while you had the chance. Why else would you come here and not the Guild?"

Smiling brightly, I simply shrug and say, "Because I don't have a class, of course. No class, strict requirements and more money. I am, however, working on founding a clan through people who do have classes to get around this issue."

"It's only five thousand, how many more clubs have you got?" The clerk lady asks with a light laugh.

"Right now, MAYBE just enough?" I reply uncertainly. "That's why I need to hold onto what I have. This man basically shrugging made two wooden swords of comparable quality to the magic alloy sword I made last night. My clan could also benefit from elder root goods, you know," I add with a teasing smirk before climbing to my feet with the papers.

After a few more minutes spent going over minor details, waiting on my money, and receiving some reading recommendations from Ferithar I finally left the building and went to the municipal smithy to meet up with everyone.

Even though half of the current group already had all of the equipment they should need for a little while they still needed to raise their stats while their characters were young. Without it, other players would end up getting ahead in the future. No matter how much they wanted to level to catch up, I knew better as a classless player.

PapiChurro was the name of the tall Hispanic human paladin in a strange black steel armor that was somehow enameled or gilded with a red metal trim. That did NOT look like a paladin's armor, in fact it looked more like the opposite. However, for a weapon he carried a long handled pick-hammer with a rounded front face and a pickax spike on the back with some short spiking along the top of the head for utilitarian purposes.

Beside him stood a 'tall', pale, and petite elven loli of little more than five feet in height wearing a bearskin suit and headdress pinned with dozens of different long animal claws and fangs and talons for armor augments. I could tell just by the thickness of the bear's skin and clean tailoring design that this armor was at least twice as effective as my own. For a weapon she carried a short glaive with four feet of handle and a blade that extended a few inches higher than her head.

Her name was LilChurro.

"How much money does everybody have?" I ask curiously, knowing I had made Ivana and Go spend a lot of what they had yesterday.

"I can carry you guys for about a grand's worth but that's it," Papi says with a slightly prideful smirk. He was basically saying we were worth ten dollars by current standards.

"Same," I say flippantly. "But that's why I'm asking, not what I'm asking for. Go buy two pounds of arcanite apiece and whatever iron you need to make four or five swords to raise your stats with. Keep 'em or give 'em to me if you don't want them somebody will eventually. The arcanite is for me, though, our first clan weapons will be made with a lot of it."

Taking out the cloth purse of one hundred and twenty coins that Skooma had paid for two sets of goblin armor with, I toss the gold to Ivana and say, "Buy the same amount of iron apiece, if you need more come get it and if you don't then keep the rest. I'll go rent us a forge."

When the others were done making their purchases and Papi handed me a sack of many arcanite plates while walking by, I finally approach Agar while putting the plates away and say, "Look's like a full forge tonight. How much will it cost me?"

"Normally, sixty an hour, but…" he says while trailing off and looking around the building slowly. "I like all these new faces you keep bringing me to spend money. Since it's five of you, I'll go ahead and say fifty an hour."

"We'll take three hours and I'll need four ten-pound carbon-steel ingots if you've got them."

"Four out of a hundred blackened, coming up," he replies, telling me they were a high-carbon ingot that would need to burn down while crafting to be a better blade steel. "That'll be… two hundred even, for you," he says after bringing me a small burlap sack of four ten-pound ingots of almost coal black steel.

Fifty coins for forty pounds of basic steel? That is not bad at all! I need to see where our affinity is at.

[Sierra Public Smithy Foreman, Agar, Affinity: 61%]

Walking to the forge the others had chosen since we had arrived early in the night shift, I choose a nearby scrapper and start grinding up my iron plates. Moments later, a familiar voice suddenly asks from nearly, "Were you looking for some assistance, Hack, sir?" From the confused but honorific use of my name and sir together I could already tell who it was.

"I'll only need you for about two hours tonight, Canley, but I'd love the help since you're offering," I reply, looking over to see the young apprentice blacksmith who was now wearing a steel fuller sword across the back of his uniform. "Looking good there, little bro, you've got a good build but don't start thinking you're ready to fight a camp of goblins by yourself."

Laughing while watching me grind the ingots in an antsy kind of way that spoke of how he was used to being the one working the scrapper, Canley say, "No, not quite yet. I might get lucky with one goblin, though."

"They're not that tough, I might catch one for you if we run into any in the morning," I reply with a smirk, enjoying having twenty-five Strength while working the scrapper containing basic steel with relative ease. The others, though, were already at the furnace because of Go's and Papi's higher Strength stats.

When we finally joined the four of them the furnace was already blasting and we were left alone a moment later. However, between Canley and I working a bellows on either side of the furnace we kept the heat at its current intensity so that we only had to spend a few minutes pumping. Then Canley took over the side work of pouring the bars while I used First-Aid on myself in secret.

Canley worked like he had been here for a while and was comfortable with it, which meant his Strength and Endurance stats were probably in the lower thirties from working here. If he worked with me long enough, I could probably start having him put out fuller swords himself with a better Blacksmithing stat to sell for both of us to profit from. I would have to trust him a little more, though, to share other designs with him.

Walking to the forge with Canley to start heating the bars, I ask, "Do you have any leather-working skills, Canley? I can't imagine you wouldn't with how many different people come here with different purposes."

"In all honesty I have only been here for a few months, but I do have the Leather Work skill," he assures me while pumping a bellows with his foot at the next bellows over from me. "In a few more months, I will be joining the Imperial Foreign Legion as a smith, though. Why do you ask, sir?"

"I was just curious," I answer noncommittally. "Since you worked here and like making money I thought I might have some side work I could ask for your help with, but you probably have training and stuff during the day."

"Only every other day because of my age," he assures me quickly, giving me his full attention and even some interest at the mention of money. "Here, I also only work for six hours a night. If you have work for me, sir, I can find the time to do it."

Now that I had brought it up and gotten him so hopeful I kind of felt bad and could not help but wonder what his situation was that would make him work night shifts while training and be willing to take my side work for the sake of money.

Taking out a suit of the goblin armor I had made, I hand it to him and ask, "Can you make those, but nicer? I still need to work on my skill, but its almost twenty just from making about a dozen of them. Even if you can only make them at the same quality, who am I to complain?"

"I was taught these weaving patterns until level twenty," he replies distractedly while thoroughly examining each piece of equipment. "It's very simple but effective. I like how you braided twisted binding for the lacing and fastening, it'll swell when cut and keep from coming out of the holes so the layers and seams stay together longer."

"Perfect, I sell them at my quality for sixty gold a set," I reply while taking out my current stockpile of goblin skins and scraps. "The first suit you make is yours, make as many suits of this as you can and I'll pay you twenty per suit afterward. Deal?"

"This is better than my trainers, so yes, sir," he says, stacking the tall piles of folded skins I hand him on a nearby table. "Out of all this, I can make a dozen suits for you and have some scraps to spare."

"Eh… depending on how long it takes to make that dozen after yours, you can keep the first scraps to put into your suit. Or, you know, just make me a dozen suits and collect all the extra to just design your own armor. I don't really care, it takes three and some scraps to make one suit and crap so just take four skins aside and wait for scraps."

Stopping even in his pumping of the bellows, which he had somehow maintained while transporting, Canley looks at me and asks, "Are you serious, sir? A full hide like these can go for as much as twelve gold."

I only made my money back on materials and no labor last night? Sighing inwardly, I simply tell myself the hides were free and in surplus before saying, "Absolutely. Their value will be changing soon so I need it done as quickly as possible." Pretty soon, a low level goblin's skin will probably be worth 'coppers', sixty gold would be blackmail or extortion prices.

Paying two hundred and forty gold for twelve suits made from three one-silver hides, though… that was hard to swallow even after telling myself I would make roughly eight hundred in profit selling them at eighty-five gold while I still could.

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