“What sort of weapon are you interested in?” the smith asked after they had hashed out an agreement that would allow Kent to get a blade made by one of the shop’s apprentices at cost. “Given what I’ve seen thus far, I’d assume daggers. What’s your fighting style like?”
“I don’t quite know yet,” Kent said, contorting his face to fit his indecision. “My focus is a bit, unlike the usual fighting style with daggers.” He paused to consider how much he wanted to reveal. “Certainly not on the agile side of things, I’m mostly built on endurance. So that a dagger can sustain a lot of strain would be important. High durability and maybe a secondary focus on sharpness if possible. They should also fly well, for when I throw them.”
He had considered hardness as a focus as well but given that he had three skills available for boosting the hardness of a dagger it felt like a waste, especially since he didn’t really understand how the improved characteristics of items came to be. The thought of an extra hard dagger was fairly amusing to him though.
Sharpness might similarly be covered by one of his available skills in the Daggers tree, but he was hesitant to commit to the related skill, preferring to have it as a property of his dagger. Picking the metal-related hardness skill would boost all metal items he interacted with, whereas picking a sharpness skill would only work on a singular type of weapon.
“Hmm, what do you think about this? I’ll get my apprentice out here and you can talk to him about what you want. He’ll do it at cost as agreed upon,” the smith finished, the last few words louder, no doubt for the person in question to hear. “He should be able to facilitate your desires.”
The smith had claimed that the apprentice by the name of Alexus was able to reliably create simple uncommon goods if the required materials were supplied. Furthermore, he had a chance of creating rare ones, though he was still working on doing so consistently. In all honesty, it was a good deal for both, Kent would get a little extra and the smith had someone that would take her students’ work off of her.
Kent just had to spend three mancus plus the material cost to get it. Which he could.
She left to get Alexus.
After a few moments and some barely audible words the soft sounds of cleaning stopped and an excited teen of roughly Kent’s age came from the doorway to the smithy. With a grin on his face, Alexus approached Kent over the counter, cleaning his hands on his apron.
“Salutations, I’m Alexus, what can I do for you?” The other reached over the counter the grasp Kent’s arm. Kent returned the gesture smiling.
“I’m Kent. Good to meet you. I’ve been told you’ll make a dagger for me. And I need some help figuring out what I need. You’ve made the sai back there, the uncommon one, correct? I think something of the sort could be interesting.”
“What’s wrong with the one we have over there? It’s got a great price and good quality. One of my better works if I’m being honest.”
“Well, I’ve mostly been fighting monsters but some of my upcoming skills seem to be focused on defense against bladed weapons.” That was an intentional lie Kent already regretted, but his sparring with Agatha and her input had shown him that at least Mosquito focused on that sort of combat. His real interest was the capabilities of Death by ten thousand punctures.
“At least that’s what my kata seems to indicate. Thus, I figure something with sturdier handguards could be interesting. Maybe even that they work for stabbing as well.”
“Stabbing, so you really fight? Are you a conqueror?” Alexus asked excitedly. “Do you have spell cores? I have a skill I can take in just another level that allows me to work them into metal. If you get me some, I’ll incorporate them.”
The boy hesitated briefly before he continued.
“But you need to get me a few extra cores so I can level the skill up and make a product that can sell well so I can afford them on my own. I would even be able to use multiple spell cores in the finished product.”
“Ok, wait.” Alexus stopped himself from rambling. Probably realizing that he made little sense to Kent right now. “Let’s talk design first. Is your style weapon specific, and your other skills? Or can you use other weapons with it? To me, it almost sounds as though you want a trident or something akin to it.”
“Firstly, regarding spell cores. I don’t know if I can manage that just yet,” Kent stated. Maybe he could actually fight a level thirty monster in a controlled environment, but he wasn’t confident in attempting that in the wilderness. “I’ve not really come across many spell cores, so I can’t just hand you a bunch. Though for the rest of your question…”
Kent was rudely interrupted halfway through his explanation. It was obvious that the other boy was already excited about having a source for spell cores, poor as it might be.
“What about your friend here? He’s level forty at least; I can’t identify him. That should be plenty right? You could also just take me out of town with you on a hunt the next time you go,” the apprentice shared his pitch. “I’m free every couple of days. That way I’d also get to my next skill faster. In three days, is the next time I’m off.”
It wouldn’t be a terrible move Kent figured, at least if Alexus was able to take care of himself. At level nineteen the kid would be able to gain the next skill maybe within a day and might even be able to help cull the monster population a bit. The issue was that Kent didn’t really go on hunts. His only encounters with monsters he was foreseeing were in defense of the woodcutters.
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But, and that was his main consideration if he could get someone to owe him a favor… That would certainly be helpful. Not that he would be able to stay in the city for long if his new quest was anything to go by.
Sadly, he wouldn’t really be able to help Alexus hunt on his own. Encountering monsters during the day wasn’t a given unless you had skills that helped you with that. Furthermore, taking Alexus with him might require him to split off from the woodcutters. They had the potential to be a source of stability. Splitting off from them would also irritate Estes – who was the only way to get into the second district.
Coming to a decision on that was difficult. Kent wanted more agency, wanted to act on his own, but a safety net was nice. Yet from all he had been told, growth was the greatest under adversity.
“We’ll see about that tomorrow,” Kent said after contemplating for a bit. “I’ll first have to consult my current place of employment about this. But we might well be able to come to some agreement. I’ll come back tomorrow at roughly the same time to tell you my final answer. Does that work for you?”
“Sure, that’s fine. Earlier would be better though. Meanwhile, do you have any ideas what you would be interested in?”
“Yes. I liked the sai you mentioned. Especially since it has three points of impact. I feel like it might work well with some of my skills, especially if the side prongs could be elongated to at least half the blade length.
“Oh, that’s not what they were being used for,” Alexus explained. “Side prongs are used as a defensive measure, not necessarily for stabbing. So, you would be interested in something akin to a pitchfork maybe. Or if your skills require daggers, hmm. I could probably design a three-bladed weapon. It would be unwieldy for most scenarios. Its durability would certainly suffer from that. It will most likely have significant downsides in person-to-person combat. And it will require a good deal of strength in addition to agility, to wield it effectively.”
So, I won’t really be able to use it much in combat. Only for a singular ranged attack probably. Maybe I should look for something else. Something hooked? No, I’d need sufficient strength to pull it back out again.
“What would you recommend for someone who is able to build up large amounts of speed but is lacking in the agility and strength department.” Kent wondered about that.
With how his skills were growing, Daggers might have been a poor choice in hindsight, but they were what he had access to. Maybe he should take some physics lessons at the institute, his voucher could potentially accomplish something of the sort and that would help him figure out an ideal combat style. He could still switch his builds should he realize that daggers weren’t optimal for his metal skills.
“A stiletto comes to mind, but I’m honestly not a huge fan of those,” Alexus considered. “But if you are lacking strength you might want to consider another avenue of interest. If you are not working with blunt damage – which might be something to look into – you are working with piercing or slashing right? A hollow-point dagger might work for you if you can get a steady supply of strong poison and work with piercing. Turrl saliva is common in the region and might work fairly well till level fifty. With the correct spell core in the weapon potentially even longer. Something like an Injection type core comes to mind.
“Then there’s slashing damage, which honestly, is as far as I can tell, terrible for daggers unless you have the required sneaking and approach skills. I’d just look at regular daggers in that case.”
After both stood there silent for a bit he continued.
“What you mentioned sounds like a skill,” the apprentice stated. “If it doesn’t care about weight, you could consider something heavier, like a sawblade, or just a large spike. Working with impulse to facilitate both blunt and piercing damage. Nevermind, that would probably make the skill stop working. A heavy dagger huh? With certain alloys that should be doable. But costly.”
Kent had only halfheartedly followed the conversation after Alexus had dropped a vital piece of information about spell cores.
Could spell core weapons amplify turrls saliva? Apparently. I might get them back though… Or at least try to. I do have the quest anyway.
The quest gained a whole other meaning. If he could get those back, it might even be worth it to go into the poisoner skill tree.
“Otherwise, I’d definitely take something two-edged. We could also try a thrice-edged dagger akin to some of the arrow tips we make, but durability would likely suffer a good bit unless Master helps us. A Kris might work as well or just a normal skean. I’ll show you a few and then you can come back tomorrow with your mind made up.”
***
After more than an hour spent looking at daggers, Kent had decided on acquiring simpler weaponry for the beginning. He needed stuff that worked well enough and was affordable. The really good stuff could come later.
Also, Estes had grown bored and asked him to hurry up. Then he had grown visibly annoyed and started juggling with a trio of similar axes.
Nobody liked that, so they decided to continue this talk at a later point.
Kent left the store with a pair of sacks that had in total ninety daggers, each small with a finger long and two fingers wide blade. Those had set him back a mancus on their own, but Kent felt like they were a good investment. Retrieving daggers thus far hadn’t gone well during combat so it would be important to have a lot of them for extended fights. Obviously, he wouldn’t carry them all, but with a holster, he could maybe have ten to twenty. Once he found a corresponding holster that is.
Furthermore, he had also given in to temptation and bought two more daggers, for half a mancus each. The near identical blades were common skeans and had roughly the dimensions of the cheap knives, though instead of from iron, they were made from acsium.
Acsium Skean (Uncommon) – A dagger completely made from a single piece of acsium. The sharpness of the blade will hold especially well due to the attention paid to the weapon during crafting. Due to the construction process and material a higher amount of energy can be efficiently applied to the weapon.
Kent wasn’t quite sure how the energy property of acsium would work but was looking forward to trying it out. Maybe it would make binding easier, or maybe it would have little effect, he would find out soon. Maybe it would only allow better facilitation of future core skills. Skill which he was rapidly approaching.
The last and in Kent’s opinion the most valuable item he had gained was a token. A token for a one-time entry into the second district. This was to communicate the further design of his dagger and to pick up another person to escort.
Currently, Estes was walking down the street, making sure that Kent would leave the second district again. Apparently, there was a lot of paperwork involved if Kent were to stay here over the night.
Thus, they left the district the way they had come in and said their goodbyes to each other at the gate – the guard writing something down as he left through the gates.