“Ya did well, but ya still shouldn’t have been able to knock me out, ya know.” The old man had now calmed down, and after reviewing the actual chain of events with Matt, he was both appropriately impressed and, it seemed, not accepting of the defeat at all. “Ya couldn’t of hit me hard enough.”
“I mean, I must have. You were pretty out.” Matt was taking it all in stride. After all, he was pretty sure the old man wouldn’t have actually killed him. He had no problem with the guy trying to save some face.
“Listen, ya idiot. I’m not whining about it. Ya won. I’m saying, I have body skills. Defense skills. Dammit, take a look at this.” The old man did something to an iron ring he was wearing on one of his hands, then handed it to Matt. A window almost immediately popped up describing the item.
Golem-dust Ring
Cast from the ground-up remains of a demonic Iron Siege Golem, this ring grants stat bonuses related to resisting physical attacks.
Effects: Sharp reduction in damage to blunt force impacts, lesser reduction to other types of physical damage
“Did you just… share an item description with me?”
The smith looked confused. “Yes? Any shopkeep can do that, boy, Where’d they dig ya up, to not know that? Anyway, the point I’m making is I’m a smith, and I have a bit of a history besides that. I have more than a few items like that on me right now, bolstering my defense. Ya shouldn’t be able to knock me out. Kill me? Maybe. Knock me out? No chance.”
“Oh, I see.” Matt understood now. “That probably has something to do with… Derek, do you vouch for this guy?”
“With my life. If nothing else, I think he thinks betraying people is bullshit.”
Matt was okay with that. It was good enough for him, or at least the best he was going to get. “You have an appraisal skill?”
The old man nodded. “I do, but first, come inside. I have something to do.”
Inside the house, the man scrounged through some drawers before finding what he was looking for, a jar filled with a multicolored powder.
“If it’s a secret ya got, it’s only right I help you keep it. This powder is ground up everything. Basically, just anything that’s been left on the floor over the years. I burn this, it makes local mana a mess. Screws up surveillance something fierce.” He chucked a handful of it into his forge, where it went up with a flash. The room suddenly felt indefinably dizzy to Matt, but it was tolerable. “There ya go. Let me see that shovel. We have a few minutes now.”
Matt handed it over, and the smith ran his hands over it. “Odd. My appraisal skill won’t read it.”
“It’s a pretty special shovel.”
“Special my ass. My appraisal skill doesn’t always tell me what something is, but it always at least tells me what it’s made of. This shovel is impossible.” He crossed over to the wall, retrieving his hammer. “May I? I promise I won’t hurt it.”
“It’s fine. You couldn’t anyway.”
The old man cocked an eyebrow, but didn’t argue. Lifting the hammer, he gave the shovel a whack, then jumped out of the way as the hammer bounced off and almost hit him in the face. “That’s damn near full reflection. You know how thick of an anvil I’d have to use to get full reflection, especially with how hard I can swing?”
“How thick?” Matt played along.
“Too thick. The metal would start melting if I dug deep enough to hold it.”
“You could build up.”
“Could, but I don’t like stairs.” He gave a couple more experimental swings with the hammer, then put the shovel itself into the forge, working a foot pump until the coals were glowing as bright as the sun. Taking it out, he hit it again, then put his hand down gently on the shovel.
“It’s cool. Didn’t even heat up. Do ya know how impossible that is? In my forge? With my hammer?”
“I don’t, but that’s not a normal shovel. It’s special.”
“Ya tell anyone about this?”
Derek was looking on, confused. He was clearly out of his depth.
“No. Not Brennan, not Artemis.”
“They’d be okay, if it was in that horrible tent of his. But no one else, and never in the open. Ya know what a cursed object is, boy?” The blacksmith looked serious. Matt shrugged. “It’s what they call objects that the system hates, and it punishes you for having them. I’m guessing if the system here knew what this was, it would be the most cursed object Ra’Zor has ever seen. Don’t let it know what ya have. Ever.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Matt glanced around, hoping the dust would cover what had already been said up. “And we’re okay talking about it?”
“Don’t worry about that, boy. I know what I’m about. That wasn’t normal communications block dust. That was my special dust. And I don’t have much of it. Now, take this.” He handed the shovel back. “And sit down. Ya gotta get ready for what’s coming.”
“What?”
“Get down on the floor, boy. Ya beat me in a fair fight, and the dust in this room is almost clear. It should be about time.”
Matt did as he was told, then sat for a solid twenty seconds wondering what he was supposed to be doing before every muscle in his body went haywire.
Ding!
Ra’Zorian Title Acquired: Titan of Strength
The previous titan of strength earned his title with both feats of legendary strength and by defeating the title-holder that came before him. You’ve duplicated the latter, and fulfilled the requirement of the former by moving several tons of rock onto an enemy army.
Effects: All weapons that you could otherwise lift and use with a reasonable level of proficiency handle and feel as if they weigh no more than five pounds.
Every muscle in Matt’s body was twitching, as if rewiring itself in some unsubtle way. When it finally calmed down, he stood up slowly and hefted his shovel. It was never incredibly heavy, but it was now noticeably lighter. Given how the shovel seemed to resist system influence, that meant the difference was probably in him, rather than the weapon itself. It wasn’t exactly weightless. Five pounds was about how much the heaviest Earth swords had weighed. But it was noticeably better and faster. He’d gladly take it. And it seemed he had.
“Did I just strip the title from you? I didn’t want to. I can give it back, if you know how to do that.”
“No, it’s okay. Ya earned it. And I’ve held on to it long enough. I had meant to give it to this one, eventually,” the old man nodded towards Derek. “But the way his class works, he will hardly need it in another year or so.” He picked up his hammer and hefted it again, grimacing. “Although I’ll probably have to do something about this hammer. It’s a wee bit heavier, now”.
Derek was still awfully quiet, apparently not having quite got over the old man getting beaten up. “I can’t believe this. You mean Brennan never beat you? Not once?”
“Not once. Sorry about that. We thought it would help motivate you if you thought there was a chance.”
Matt considered what it might mean that he beat the blacksmith if others couldn’t, then decided it probably wasn’t as significant as he wanted it to be. After all, Brennan countered most of the tricks he had used in the short fight they had. He suspected he’d know all of his tricks once Derek had more than half a minute to relay the whole story.
The old man hung his hammer up and slapped his hands together. “Well, enough of that. Shall we?”
Matt looked at him, a bit confused. “Shall we what?”
“The armory, boy! The armory!” He rubbed his massive palms together, looking like a kid on Christmas morning. “There’s no time to waste! Let’s be on our way!”
—
Matt had no idea what made any of the armories distinct from each other. Derek didn’t either, for that matter. Even his knowledge of cool stuff he wanted only stretched as far as knowing the armories were packed with cool gear that he could probably make use of. But the old man assured them that there were good ones and then there were better ones. He was going to see to it that they got to one of the better ones, regardless of what kind of trip they had to go on to get there.
It turned out the really good armory, the one the old man insisted they needed to go to, couldn’t be reached any other way than by sewer. Not that it was in a sewer itself. It was, technically, just buried very deep for defense purposes. Deep enough that the accumulated war potential of the greatest human stronghold on Ra’Zor wouldn’t be compromised by anything but the most vicious demon armies. It was cheaper to dig that deep if you had a pretty deep starting point to work from, and the sewers were that.
“Eat it, Matt. You know you want to. You could get weird sewer powers. You might get septic slice!” Lucy was unable to smell, and thus a bit more chipper in these circumstances than Matt was. But no amount of chipper would be able to convince him to eat giant, clearly mutated sewer rats. They had all sorts of bumps that burst as they fought, to the point where Matt had sneakily taken to letting Derek get to them first. Whatever hard feelings he still held for the kid about the Gaian invasion evaporated as he watched Derek kill rat after gross rat, oblivious to the fact Matt was leaving all the heavy lifting to him.
Eventually, they arrived at the entrance to the armory, which amounted to another staircase heading down, flanked by row after row of Gaian soldiers.
“All right, boys, I’ve come raiding,” the smith cackled, beside himself with joy.
“Sir, we are under very strict orders to try and kill you if you so much as step down this corridor. Please don’t make us do that.”
“Kill me? Sure. But him? He has permission. Check.”
The guard captain who had spoken before looked suspiciously at the old man, then ducked into a small alcove a few stairs down, apparently to activate a communications device of some sort. A few moments later, he came back up, looking worried.
“They say they said he could have access to an armory sir, not this armory specifically. They say to choose one of the others.”
“And I say,” the old man said, getting loud, “that he probably meant this one, given that this boy is a war hero who saved the entire world, almost. And that if they didn’t mean that, I’ll get loud about it. And that Mitre they are ordering for the Church’s head? It’s gonna be less ornate. A lot less ornate. I’ll be spending too much time yelling about this, all over town.”
The guard gulped, imagining an intentionally loud blacksmith rather than a merely incidentally loud one, and ducked back to his communications relay. A few more moments passed, and he returned.
“They said it’s approved, he can go into this one. But they told me to ask if you could please just be reasonable.” A certain desperation shone in the guard's eyes. “Please?”
The old man was already pushing past the guards as he squeezed his way down the staircase, cackling like a maniac as he went.
“We’ll keep him in check. This guy here? He’ll beat the old man up if he tries to take too much.” Derek said, moving down the staircase while wiping rat goo off his clothing.
“That’s a good joke, but it really is our asses if he cleans us out.”
“Not a joke, I’m afraid. Although I probably wouldn’t be able to actually beat him up again. He knows all my tricks now,” Matt grinned, and moved down the stairs.
The guard looked perplexed for a moment, but noticed the old man hadn’t said anything to contradict either of them. And he would have, normally, even if just to participate in the joke. The fact that he didn’t was suspicious. So with a bit more respect in his eyes than he had before, the guard watched as Matt disappeared into the armory.