Chapter 8: Jack of Knives

Weapons were pretty heavily regulated in England, at least, those acquired from official sources. That meant any firearms and most professionally crafted tools for melee, made mostly on demand for ceremonial reasons or movie sets. A licence was required, at minimum, sometimes even a background check complete with national ID. Most people didn’t bother with any of this, unless they needed to order in bulk, show their pieces conspicuously, or go hunting among their fellows. It was pointless, slow, and expensive, and could draw the wrong kinds of attention if used in the commission of crime, which was of course the entire point of the scheme.

Stepping into the small, family owned smithy was thus a breath of fresh air, an entire world away from the onerous regulations that had been the bane of my workday in London, across three industries and four continents. Monsters existed in abundance, after all, and while Frontier didn’t typically house many, there were always some on the periphery of human society. Scavengers and opportunistic ambushers, wary of grown men but willing to try their luck on the small, sick and frail. Carrying a weapon for self defence was the norm, not the exception, something I planned to take full advantage of.

There was nobody in the ground floor of the two storey house, the door left unlocked and only a handful of townsfolk out in the nearby streets. I was tempted to just grab something and run, really, but caution tempered my hand. Whilst the larger weapons, such as the polearms, battleaxes and greatswords in display were likely too heavy for such a gambit, the knives could easily fit in my belt, without hindering my movements in the least. Even so, I demurred; it would be an inauspicious start of my career, if I were to be caught here; I didn’t know if reaching my birthday - Class day, I mentally corrected - in prison would influence what I got, but it seemed a likely enough possibility that I didn’t want to risk it.

For all that I used to run an employment programme aimed at rehabilitating released prisoners, preaching the value of turning lives around while pocketing the hefty investment from the Ministry of Justice for my own use, being branded with a literal Convict class would likely be a death knell to my ambitions. Instead, I waited patiently at the threshold for the man of the house; he was definitely in, or at least, someone was beating his anvil upstairs with great enthusiasm. No, that wasn’t a euphemism; most small businesses like this are both production and sales under a single roof.

I reached inside my pocket, and froze, irritated with myself. I’d been looking for my phone, and of course found nothing, not even the time of day. Sadly, the System that existed here didn’t come with any built-in functionality for telling time, nor any games or books to amuse my modern attention span. Instead, as the minutes ground on, I was forced to indulge in the lowest of London amusements: people watching.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

This early in the morning, it was slim pickings: a handful of guards chattering away as they hefted heavy halberds, en route to their shift on the town wall. A clergyman trailed by a gaggle of young novitiates, whose enthusiasm for the cloth didn’t quite extend to forming a neat and orderly line: the Brit in me was appalled, truly. The Matron, out for her morning walk, followed by a rather rotund man who vacillated in her wake; the rumour around the orphanage claimed he was smitten with her, but personally, I thought he had the look of someone who owed her a great deal of money. I couldn’t say exactly what tipped me off, save for a general look of gormless nerves and his generally hunched posture, the kind I often saw when a subordinate came to my desk, having made an utter mess of his assignment.

Thankfully, the sound of steps pulled me away from that pitiful sight, and brought me back on schedule for the day. The blacksmith had the appearance of, well, a smith: a brown leather apron, most of his body covered in to ward off the heat, and a hammer in hand, still glowing with embers of red from the forge. He looked me over, instantly dismissing me as a threat, and began to fuss over his hammer, whispering to it in a language I couldn’t understand. With every syllable spoken, the heat around the hammer’s head dissipated a little bit more; I watched intently, eager to witness every scrap of magic, but sadly got nothing more from the whole process than a show.

[Blacksmith]

As far as the man himself, I was rather surprised at the relative dearth of information: while the System had hardly been verbose so far, this was the least I’d ever gotten when inspecting someone.

“Don’t mind it,” he advised me. “I’ve got an item on me that hides my status. I could even get rid of Blacksmith if I wanted, but well, that much is obvious when you look at me, so no point hiding what I am. Besides, showing up as absolutely nothing looks suspicious as hell, so that’s a quick way to end up sitting in a dark room with half a dozen guards pointing their swords at your neck.”

I got the distinct feeling he was speaking from personal experience here, and filed that little tidbit away for the future. Even if I went away without spending a penny, this excursion had already proved productive: every conversation with a local, who grew up living and breathing the System, taught me just a little bit more. For the first time in a long time, I began to yearn for my Class day; it was nothing to celebrate as an old man, more a curse that reminded me of my impending mortality, but now? I was in the prime of my life again, and intended to enjoy it.

“So, my name aside, what are you looking for at my shop?”