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Chapter 130: Dropped a Mountain on Them
🕑 Added 2023-11-02 16:37:01 +0000 UTC“So the trick to the old man is, he’s going to hit you with a pipe. That’s just going to happen. You might think he’s not going to do it, or that you can block it, or… I dunno, anything, really. But he’s probably going to hit you with a pipe at some point. But besides that, he’s a really nice guy.”
Matt, who just wanted armor, didn’t exactly expect to hear a one-sided monologue about a blacksmith from Derek. It went on for a surprisingly long time. Derek first talked about the fact that the man had a mysterious past, which was interesting enough. But right when Matt thought that was it, he moved on to the various kinds of violence he had experienced at the smith’s hands and the apparently dozens of ways it was possible to piss the old man off. And while he talked, Derek was oddly enthusiastic about it all in a way Matt couldn’t quite decode.
“So say I fail at one of these… tasks. I either don’t get hit by a steel bar in a way that makes him laugh, or I sit in his work chair. Or I say something that makes it seem like crafting in general or blacksmithing specifically aren’t respectable. What happens then? He just refuses to make the armor for me?” Matt asked.
Derek looked at him like he was crazy. “What? No. He makes armor. That’s what he does. He’s not going to leave someone unprotected just because they’re a jackass. That’s completely not him. You’ll see. He’s great. He might hit you in the head with an entire bench if you dodge his pipe, but he’s great.”
—
Eventually, they arrived at the blacksmith’s place, which Derek called a compound. It looked, to Matt’s anime-trained eye, about how it should. It had a smoking chimney that sat over a tiled roof that in turn sat on top of a wood-and-brick structure of immense age, as if it had passed from blacksmith to blacksmith for generations. Despite that, a quick cycling of Matt’s Sapper’s-Tattoo-juiced Survivor’s Reflexes showed essentially no weak spots in the structure. The building wasn’t just shored up and maintained, it was strong.
Matt wasn’t sure whether VIT or PER did it, but his eyes adjusted more quickly than he expected to the change in light as they ducked into the shop. Even from a long-distance away, he had heard the clanging of the hammer. It gave a loud, solid metallic thunk as it struck orange-hot metal, the sound reverberating off walls and through streets a surprisingly far distance away considering how closed-in the shop was. But even Derek’s assurance that the man was a giant and the sheer volume of the hits he had heard didn’t prepare him for the man in front of him.
It’s like a dwarf said “screw you” to the whole being short thing, Matt thought. The man was all muscles, veins, and tendons, to the point where Matt felt bad about his poor skin having to contain it all. He was bursting with strength. But Survivor’s Reflexes immediately started nagging Matt that it was more than that. The first clue was that his arms were nearly the same size, which, given that he was only wielding the hammer in his right hand, shouldn’t be possible. His blows were also precise, as if they were driven by thousands of hours of practice. And his eyes were sharp and alert as he went through the task, and gazed at the metal as if it were an enemy to be defeated as much as it was a material to be shaped.
In short, Matt was pretty sure this guy could kick his ass. If he was wrong and his feeling was just Survivor’s Reflexes responding to the sheer unknown-ness of the guy, it would still be a weird, tricky fight.
The man suddenly stopped clanging on his metal, and instead picked it up with tongs. He held it close enough to his face that the heat would have burned Matt if he had done the same thing, and inspected it closely before giving a satisfied grunt. Finally, he plunged it into a large barrel filled with what appeared to be fireplace ashes. He gave no indication that he had seen Matt or Derek throughout, until he began to speak with his back still turned to them.
“I see ya brought me another idiot, boy. Ya know I have enough work without ya bringing more, don’t ya?”
“Oh, shut it, old man. You’re going to thank me for this before we leave today. Or at least know you should when you refuse to do it anyway, you old fart.”
There was a clanging noise as the old man hung his hammer on a heavy rack, then another as he hooked a metal bar with his hand and chucked it side-arm at Derek’s head. Derek got out of the way, but just barely.
“Ya PER go up, boy? There was a time ya wouldn’t of even seen that.”
“All my stats are up, old man. It’s been a busy week. Are you really going to leave him standing there? He’s a customer. He needs armor.” Derek pulled out a wood stool from the wall and chucked it overhand at the old man, who caught it out of the air.
“Fine, ya bastard. I’ll take a look.” The old man slammed the stool down on the ground and motioned Matt towards it. Matt, who had been taking in the show until now, came and sat down. What he didn’t expect was the old man to lay hands on him, grabbing his shoulders before shoving his arms up and feeling his back, then his ribs. His shock must have shown, since Derek immediately assured him the old man was just measuring him, in a unique way.
“I don’t know if it’s a skill, but the old bastard never forgets your size once he does this. I wish he had the same skill for taking baths.”
Matt expected the old man to fire back, but he was fully at work now, inspecting Matt’s hands, legs, and even making him take off his boots so he could look at his feet.
“What do ya specialize in?” the old man asked, breaking out of his measurement reverie suddenly to look Matt square in the eye.
“Melee, mostly? I hit things.”
“I mean skills. Combat skills. What do ya use to attack? How?”
“I just… I have a combat skill that makes me pretty good at weapons, I guess. I have another one that makes me throw sand, but that’s… that’s just sand. I can dig particularly well, but that’s not an attack. It’s mostly just… thwacking things, I guess?”
The old man turned and glared at Derek. “You bought me a melee generalist.”
Derek beamed at him, brightly, then turned to Matt, who was feeling more and more uncomfortable. “The old man doesn’t like melee generalists because they’re hard to make happy. On the other hand, if you have a guy who uses strength-enhancing skills that make him slower, the old man can build him something that either preserves his speed or makes him hit harder. They love that.”
The old man cut in.
“Archers appreciate it when I make them cloaks that steady their shots. Axemen appreciate clothes that cut stamina costs. Generalists? They’re never happy.”
“Why not?” Matt was genuinely confused. “Why not make them armor that does the same thing?”
“Synergies.” Derek said. “This is bespoke armor. It interacts with classes, usually with specific skills. When the old man makes armor for generalists, it interacts with their classes in general ways. Little buffs here and there, but nothing spectacular. Since people come to the old man looking for something spectacular, he doesn’t get the reaction he wants.”
“Buncha effort for nothing, is what it is,” he huffed. “And ya said I’d thank ya.”
“It gets better, old man. Ask him what his budget is.”
The old man eyed Derek suspiciously for a moment before turning back to Matt. “What is it? Unlimited?”
Matt shifted uncomfortably. “Uh, yeah. Kind of. Whatever it takes, I guess?”
The old man reached under the counter, grabbed another iron bar, and flung it at Derek. This time, when Derek dodged, the bar didn’t clatter around the shop after it missed. It embedded deep in the wall. In the stone wall, vibrating like a tuning fork for a few seconds before the stone sapped away the excess energy.
“Fresh off his first hunt, ya gonna tell me next.”
“Yes! His very first,” Dererk said before addressing Matt’s confusion. “The old man might hate generalists, but he hates first-timers even more. They come in, flush with cash by their standards, and ask for a bunch of stuff that costs real money.”
“Which is why ya can’t have what ya want, I’m sorry. The real stuff, the good materials, I have to buy off other adventurers who are older and better than ya are, or ya woulda brought it in for me when ya came.” He pointed his thumb at Derek, derisively. “And why this one is a horse’s ass for bringing ya. Best thing for ya, right now, is to go buy something pre-made. Better way to spend the money. Gets ya more.”
Derek, who had wandered far away after dodging the last bar, practically danced towards Matt and the old man. “But, old man, that’s wrong. There’s something you don’t know.”
“Ya think so? And what’s that, ya impossible idiot?”
Suddenly, the door burst open. Derek was beside himself with joy. “I thought he was about due.”
“Reincarnator Matt! I am here to announce…” As the courier began to speak in a loud voice, the old man was suddenly by his side, almost instantly getting a hand around the entrant’s neck and lifting him from the floor.
“I’ve told ya not to yell in my store before, haven’t I?” the old man asked. Choking, the courier nodded. “And ya know it bothers me. Is that right?” Another nod. “All right, as long as ya have been reminded.”
The old man gently set the man back down on the floor, where he stood slightly shocked for a second or two before making his way to Matt and handing him a small object.
“For you,” he whispered hoarsely, before retreating out of the door as fast as his messenger’s feet would take him, which was pretty quickly indeed.
“And what’s that?” the old man asked.
“It’s a credit card. Matt had them invented earlier today to fix up a little problem that the Church was having regarding having enough funds on hand to fulfill his combatant pay.”
The old man did some quick mental math on how much money it would take to put the Church authorities in such a financial bind. His eyes bulged a little with surprise and what Matt thought was probably a hint of greed before he gathered himself to look unimpressed once again.
“Still, having the money to buy and some material worth buyin’ are two different things,” he said calmly with his dignity back.
“M’aal opened up an armory to him.” Derek was struggling to keep from collapsing in laughter as he watched the old man’s mouth literally drop open at the delivery of that fact.
“Matt, I’m starting to like this kid. Tell him good job from me. But later. I don’t want to screw up his rhythm. He’s doing wonderfully.” Lucy said from near the door of the shop, where she had been watching the entire show.
“An entire armory? Ya sure you didn’t mishear?”
“I think M’aal’s exact words were ‘one of our armories.’”
The old man’s eyes darted downward as he got down to some serious thinking. “If there’s only one prismatic snake skin, then…” He wandered off towards a small table near the back of the shop, and started furiously scribbling down notes on a piece of paper.
“What’s he doing now?” Matt asked.
“Shopping list, I think. Part of why the old man is a good crafter is he likes it. It’s his whole life. But usually, he’s making due with the best he can on big orders with limited materials.”
“And now he gets to go all out, and it broke him?”
“Something like that. I wasn’t kidding when I said he’d thank me later. He probably actually will. Not today, though.”
The old man spent a few minutes at the table mumbling to himself until he finally appeared satisfied and returned, clutching a folded piece of paper in his offhand. He approached Derek first, glaring. “Derek, how’d ya say he came by that money?
“He took out a whole demon army by himself. Dropped a mountain on them. Literally.”
Comments
Jake Holland
Cmon Matt, you gotta give him more than that.
