“The feeling of counting your money in your hands, the way the coins glittered by the candlelight as they rolled and fell through your fingers, the heft of bags full of coins, and the jingle they made when shaken… all those combined to create one of the best feelings in the world, I kid you not.” - Ebenezer Dagobert, treasurer for the Archibald’s Aces mercenary company, circa 75 FP.

“Greetings, gentlemen. We are here today for purposes that you’ve likely been waiting for all week,” announced Grad Angus Harscape to the room.

It was the sixthday of the second week, just a day before Reinhardt planned to depart to Zefirous with the Free Lances, and that day they had gathered for one purpose only, namely to distribute the valuables that they had captured along with the God-King

When the God-King had escaped, he had brought the majority of the most valuable items in Nu-Gu’od’s vaults and treasuries, and they had found well over a dozen large storage rings on his body back then.

Over the past week, several experts of appraisals had worked around the clock to appraise the mountain of treasure contained within. Representatives from the four detachments that had earned themselves a portion of the treasure were also present, a dwarven tradition to ensure that everyone agreed on how the items were to be valued.

Then came the day when all the items had been sorted and appraised, and the four detachments sent their respective leaders to make the decision on what to pick from their share of the loot. The three dwarven soldiers who came all looked positively giddy at their share of the wealth, and had chatted happily with each other about their plans.

Some of the most common plans were to treat their whole detachment to some of the most expensive restaurants in Knallgant, or to pool the wealth and start up a brewery of their own. On the other hand, the commander of the detachment that found the God-King first - who was entitled to a larger share of the loot like Reinhardt was - had more solemn plans, to split it evenly, with the shares of the fallen to be given to their families.

By monetary value alone, this one reward had almost doubled their income from this entire expedition, but that was not where the crux of the matter lay. Amongst the treasures were items that were very hard to purchase even if one had the money, now free for the taking, should they choose to use part of their share for them.

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He had already discussed with the others prior to the day, and they all agreed that choosing items that they would not be able to acquire normally would be the best route. They had more than enough spare money to give every one of their members a sizable bonus as their share of the rewards, so it was wiser to opt for some longer-term options.

To that end, one of the first things he chose as the Free Lances’ share were several ingots of pure mithril. The metal was only found in elven territory, and was exceedingly hard, if not impossible to come by outside of it. How the Holy Kingdom’s treasury even had a few ingots was beyond his reckoning.

The Lances happened to have an expert blacksmith, and a couple elven ones as well. Some had said that mithril was only workable by Elven metalworkers, but the truth was, all it required was the mana of an elf to help process it, and a blacksmith skilled enough to handle the finicky metal.

What started out as several ingots of mithril would eventually, under their skillful hands, be forged into a multitude of lethal weapons. The weapons themselves were slated for the elites of the Free Lances, as Reinhardt had keenly felt how useful it was to have a team of elites capable of fighting against enemies several times their numbers, especially when used with tactical precision.

They had also needed a larger amount of adamant and other metals, but those were purchasable relatively cheaply in Knallzog. Adamant itself was quite abundant, and the main reason for its exorbitant price was that very few blacksmiths outside the dwarven nations knew how to work with the metal at all, something exacerbated by the dwarfs’ decision to only export pre-made alloys to other nations.

Hogarth was a skilled enough blacksmith to know the ins and outs of handling the precious metals, his five centuries of experience being a priceless treasure in the field of metalworking, especially for small mercenary companies like theirs.

By cutting the middleman so and collecting the raw materials to work themselves, the blacksmiths basically allowed the Free Lances to upgrade their equipment quite drastically for a reasonable cost, rather than the exorbitant one it would have cost had they ordered the equipment from other smithies.

Those ingots of mithril took up most of the Free Lances’ allocation, and for the rest, Reinhardt chose some items that were not too valuable, but were regardless hard to come by. Relics from prehistory, weapons and armor from nations last contacted centuries ago, and the likes.

Hogarth had asked for them to study the design as well as the logic behind them, in the hopes of gaining new inspiration. None of the others had minded such a use of the reward, as they could always re-sell the antiques as curiosities later on after Hogarth was done with them.

Some of the designs looked positively awkward to Reinhardt, but he was no blacksmith and he figured that even if it didn’t help him gain some inspiration, at least it would make his foster father happy for a good while.

When everyone had used up their shares - the dwarves had mostly opted for coin to share amongst their units - they signed off papers that stated their names and the items they had chosen for their share of the loot, a copy of which was kept by Graf Harscape to be handed to the Crown Prince, while the other was given to them.

A token formality to signify that the distribution of earnings had been done as the regulations stated.