Roark

That little distraction done I went snooping about for any hints at any of the other plates being dug up in the town as unlike most parts of the region this place had been heavily excavated over a long period of time and thus more likely to have found a plate if one was buried here. My first stop as a result was naturally the museum that had a collection of things found while mining over the years. Fossils, large gems and even the occasional ancient tool or artifact.-

Walking along the rough stone road I saw much of what the city had to offer as I made my way to the museum at the far side of it. It came as little surprise that there was an abundance of places with digging or mining as their whole gimmick while to my surprise and pleasure I found both a master tailor and smith. The smith wasn't a surprise given the nature of the town but the tailor most certainly was. This place was a s rough as it got with the vast majority of folk here being down in the dirt work types.-

I temporarily put my trip to the museum on hold to enter the tailors shop that had a stylized mining outfit on a mannequin in the window. A bell rang on the top of the door as I entered but I ignored that to look around. The inside of the shop was filled with browns, grays, blacks and yellows as racks of earth toned clothes lined the otherwise empty place beyond the small counter with a cash register. There was a doorway leading to a separate room that a voice called out from. "I'll be with ye in a bit!" the voice called clearly heavily accented and male.-

I had no problem waiting and looked over the materials that lined the walls that weren't nearly as simple as they appeared. Some of them were synthetic fibers of high durability and the selection ranged all the way to Spinarak and Ariados silks. While not too surprising a find in a master tailors shop the true rarity of some of this fabric was quite high. Soon enough I felt the owner of the shop approaching with someone else from the back. I was stunned however when I saw who the other person was, Roark the gym leader of the city and Byron's son.-

Roark had very different looks from his father as he had red hair that was well taken care of and a gentler face with square rim glasses. He wore a pair of gray synthetic cloth pants and a black T-shirt covered by a gray jacket that had yellow cuffs at the end of the sleeves and bottom edge. He also had on white gloves and thick black boots. You could still see parts of Byron in Roark though such as the matching eyes and nose they shared.-

"Alexander Drake? No offense but you don't exactly strike one as the sort to visit a tailor." Roark joked with a good natured smile once he recovered from his surprise. "You'd be surprised. Still I assumed you'd be down in the mine or taking on challengers at the gym and not here of all places." I said casually with a small smirk of my own. "You'd be right normally but I recently revived a Shieldon and the little bugger has a bad habit of chewing on and subsequently ruining my pants legs. I needed to get them repaired hence the visit to the tailor. Why are you here though?" Roark asked after explaining himself.-

"Need a master tailor and master smith to make an item, came to make inquiries about it." I said honestly. "What the bloody ell would need a tailor en a smith for!?" the tailor exclaimed in confusion. I pulled out the chunk of life iron "A pair of gloves made of this." I said seriously. "uh that's metal so don't you mean gauntlets?" Roark said confused. "Nope, theres a whole process that I need to follow to turn this into a specific type of conduit weapon that needs a master smith to turn this into thread and a master tailor to weave it into a pair of gloves on my hands." I explained seriously.

"Ye serious ain't ya lad?" the tailor that was a tall heavyset man with a long braided brown beard and bald head asked with an incredulous look. "Quite serious, I've been planning to have this conduit weapon made for some time now but only recently reached the point I could do so due to the mastery of aura I needed to obtain first. Admittedly finding both a master tailor and smith in the same city also wasn't an easy feat as well." I said with a shrug.-

"Aye, don't suppose it would be with ow different the two are. Metal threads though? That's a new one even fer me and I make stuff fer miners and roughens." the tailor said intrigued at the idea if nothing else. "If you don't mind me asking what do you need another conduit weapon for?" Roark asked eyeing my spear confused. "Seems you've done a bit of digging on aura masters but you are having a misunderstanding here. While it is true most aura masters only ever have a single conduit weapon the fact is it is rarely out of choice."-

"Unless they were willing to settle for a third rate conduit weapon that'll decay in a decade or so made of bone or wood most aura masters were forced to only have a single conduit weapon due to how rare this stuff is. Even in my case my spear is an anomaly amongst conduit weapons due to only being the way it is due to a series of nigh unrepeatable circumstances." I explained tapping the life iron with my finger tip.-

"I see. I had wondered about that when I read the information but that makes sense given how rare life iron is. In fact if I'm not mistaken none of it was been found in nearly two hundred years and the little we have is kept secure unless it's being shipped. Which begs the question of where you found that chunk of the stuff?" Roark said questioningly.