The old man’s house smelled like fire and sounded like mayhem, even from the outside. The hammer blows they had heard yesterday had been loud, but they had also been at a sedate, controlled rhythm. Things had changed. The hammer blows came harder, louder, more frequently, and at a pace so disordered it sounded almost random. The chimney, which had been gently smoking yesterday, was now pouring smoke out at a pace that would have made Matt think the house was on fire if the black clouds were coming from anywhere else but the smokestack itself.

All the noise was dwarfed by the smith himself, though. Above every other sound layered a louder, more constant barrage of cursing, cries of dismay, and roars of apparent triumph. Whatever was going on in that house, it was like a one-man battle, and it was hard to say if he was winning or losing.

“Do you think we should go in?” Matt said. “It sounds crazy in there right now.”

“Honestly? It’s probably fine. He probably wouldn’t even notice us. But I still somehow get the feeling that if anything goes wrong…”

“The whole workshop will explode?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Matt and Derek decided not to tempt fate, taking a seat on a nearby bench to wait out the storm. Eventually, the banging started to die down, as did the cursing. The hammer pings became much more regular, sounding out at regular intervals before dying out completely. Whatever the smith had been up to, it looked like it was now over.

Derek stood up from the bench, straightening his workout clothes and stretching his sore muscles. “Looks like it’s done. The old man never quits in the middle of a project. I’m guessing he was up all night working on your stuff. We should go in as soon as we can now. If we don’t catch him in the next couple of minutes, he’ll fall asleep. And there’s no waking him up once he’s asleep, believe me.”

Matt stood up as well. “Is there any etiquette I should follow about accepting the items? I’m assuming the old man doesn’t deal well with complaining.”

“You’d be surprised. Whining for a bad reason? He’ll chuck his hammer at you. But if you really don’t like something about the armor, and it’s for a good reason? The old man is a professional, Matt. He’ll fix it, no questions asked,” Derek grinned. “But that’s not gonna happen here.”

“Why not?”

“Matt, the person that just crafted your armor has been using the same hammer for about as long as I’ve been here. Doesn’t let anybody touch it. I’m pretty sure he has a secret name he calls it when nobody is around. He gets little scraps of all sorts of stuff all the time, so the fact that he never replaced it with something better means there probably just wasn’t anything better to replace it with. Whatever that metal was that you bought for him, it’s something special. Combining that with an all-nighter and the ingredients you gave him? There’s probably no better armor on the planet. I’m serious.”

—

Matt and Derek opened the door to the workshop and entered cautiously. The noise had died down, but given the row they had heard from the street only a few minutes before, there was no harm in being careful. It turned out to be unnecessary. The inside of the shop was as almost silent as a tomb, if it weren’t for the crackle of slowly dying embers in the forge. It was dark and still enough in the shop that it took Matt a moment to actually spot the old smith standing with his back to them near the rear of the shop. He wasn’t moving. And it was too dark to see what was happening, but whatever he was gazing at seemed to have his full attention.

“Should we go back there?” Matt whispered. “He seems pretty into whatever he’s doing.”

“I don’t know, Matt. I’ve never seen him quiet like this.”

Suddenly, the old man seemed to become aware of their presence, wheeling around on his heels and tensing up before he realized who it was.

“Matt! Derek!” he roared. “I was just finishing up.”

“We know, old man,” Derek said, grinning. “It sounded like a battle in here.”

“I tell ya, it almost was. Some of those materials fought back. I spent the whole night keeping demon bones from exploding on the anvil, banging them into shape before they could warp into something different. Stretching tendons into strings that were never meant to be stretched. Had to keep on my toes, or ya would have found a crater instead of my shop when ya showed.”

He moved slightly to the side, turning up a dial on what turned out to be a magic lamp. As he did, Matt saw several pieces of jet-black armor, highlighted with dark-blue stripes, laid out on the table like a body at rest. Jet-black almost wasn’t the right word for the color that comprised the bulk of the color of the armor. The pieces seemed darker than that, somehow, like the black color he knew before was a less solid, more vibrant imitation.

“Oh, that’s beautiful. That looks incredible.”

“Thank ya. That’s boots, pants, leg-guards, arm guards, chest-piece, and a helmet. If ya call it a helmet. It’s mostly leather, not that it lost anything in the deal.” He ran his finger over one of the shin-guards, possessively. “It’s my best work. That hammer ya helped me make is… special. Makes choices for itself sometimes, I think.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Matt blinked. “Is that… normal? For a hammer?”

“Every hammer is different, but there’s nothing I’d call normal about this one.” He waved Matt and Derek closer, moving out of the way. “Come look, boy.”

Matt didn’t have to be asked twice. He almost rushed the countertop to grab at the boots, only to be stopped at the last second by the smith’s big arm. As Matt watched, the smith grabbed another handful of the surveillance-prevention dust and chucked it into the furnace.

“One last thing before ya look, boy. At high levels, the smith class gets funny. Besides materials, design, workshop and skill, the class starts to look at who the gear is for, not just what it’s intended to do. Some of the descriptions come out… funny, I guess. Simple. Almost like the armor is hiding what it’s for. It could be the hammer, could be coincidence, or could be something about ya. And whatever was in that hammer, it put something into this armor with every strike. It’s still better than what I had, much better. But I don’t think it will ever do what it was last night. Like it was making something special. Just wanted ya to know, so it didn’t catch you surprised. It might not be the kind of thing you want to talk about.”

Matt nodded. He walked over to the armor, placing his hand on the chest plate. An information screen popped up instantly. He quickly went from piece to piece, reading every description available.

Chest Plate of The Invader

Made of various supremely rare materials and refined by a master smith, the Chest Plate of the Invader exceeds the standards of normal in favor of protection far beyond what the average adventurer requires.

The chest plate offers supreme protection against cutting damage, excellent protection against stabbing, abrasive, and blunt force damage, and moderate protection against most elemental attacks. The chest plate projects these qualities to all other pieces of armor worn, but only in proportion to their quality relative to its own.

Since every piece in the set came from the same quality of ingredients made by the same smith, Matt suspected that meant that each armor piece would carry nearly all the protection of the chest piece.

Boots of The Survivor

The Boots of The Survivor speak a tale of overcoming a history of hardship and sorrow. Except in extreme conditions, they will not show signs of wear. They are in every aspect designed to outlive their owner, even considering the exceptional survivability that the owner has proved to possess.

The boots offer a 20% movement speed buff outside of combat and a 10% increase in footwork speed inside of it. They also provide a small chance of negating the balance-ruining aspects of attacks meant to compromise the wearer’s footing.

Bunker Arm Guards

The Bunker Arm Guards are designed to conform to the forearms of the wearer. However, they act like a small shield, projecting their physical presences outwards at all times and creating a field with a high percentage of the stopping power of the guards themselves. Damage absorbed by the field will, if applicable, damage the guards as if they themselves had been hit.

Once a day, the arm guards can be activated to create a field of defense around the user. This field lasts only one second, but can endure an amount of damage equal to that necessary to destroy the arm guards themselves, were they directly attacked. After using this ability, a full day must pass before using it again, during which the extended blocking range of the arm guards is disabled.

Keeping his footing was huge, the speed buff was mammoth at this point, and keeping his footwork intact during enemy attacks would have been useful as recently as the day before. The arm guards were even more astounding, amounting to small, improved versions of his expandable shield that he was constantly forgetting to expand. Now he didn’t have that problem anymore. And the fact that it came with an ace-in-the-hole emergency block was icing on the cake.

The leg guards turned out to be called “Bunker Shin Guards”, and as the name implied, the provided a similar defensive situation as the arm guards. They didn’t come with the emergency shield feature or projection, but made up for that with sheer defensive capacity. Matt suspected that in terms of resisting direct attack, his shins were now the best-protected part of his body.

Wanderer’s Leggings

The Wanderer’s Leggings were built for flexibility in combat, in more than one way. While providing excellent protection, they will flex with the user well past most plausible levels of contortion. They also provide the user flexibility with the capability of instantly delivering any non-weapon object stored in the user’s pockets to their hands.

At this point, the set was beginning to be almost suspiciously suited to Matt’s needs. He’d ask the old man about it in a moment, but for now, he had one last item to check.

Dust Mask of the Barren Lands

The Dusk Mask of the Barren Lands serves several purposes besides that described by its title. Designed to fit under a hood, it provides excellent protection from physical damage, filters potentially harmful inhalants, and is woven closely enough to block most forms of light and some forms of radiation.

When the user wills it, the mask will retract into a collar form to allow for conversation, and will return to its normal, full-coverage form when needed.

The mask was nothing special, but that was judging by Matt’s usual needs. Those tended to change pretty quickly. It would allow him to go harder in battle while better protected, and even make some skills like Pocket Sand work better in more situations.

Overall, the entire set was like a defensive stance in and of itself, covering many contingencies without Matt actually having to do anything to get the benefit.

It was more than he had hoped, and much better than anything he could have got through the Gaian system, given the mana starvation the planet was still experiencing. The only shame was that he’d probably have to leave it behind when he left, but he tried not to be too down about that. While he was here, it was more likely than not that the set of armor would end up a lifesaver.