Had I known that Commander Karato suspected I held a skill ability I might have behaved differently. Perhaps it was fortunate that I was totally oblivious to that because my life would change for the better in the future, just how much, I was soon to discover.

That afternoon a steady stream of soldiers queued at our blacksmith’s marquee tent waiting for me to finish sharpening their swords. The old man busied himself with shoeing the horses which he later explained was slightly different because military horses used in battle were unlike the cart horses and moved differently. The material, shape and thickness of the horseshoe determined the horses’ function. Military horses tended to use more comfortable, softer-metal shoes, while cart horses needed harder shoes because of the constant wear and tear of the road.

Although honing a blade edge took time and patience, both of those were lacking in my life at the time. According to military dictates, a swordsman could never abandon his sword, nor was he to leave it in the hands of anyone else without being near it. As a result, there was constantly one or two soldiers sitting outside the tent. Each soldier handed me a military token used as retail in military camps. It was a simple, thin iron metal coin stamped with the Royal Knight’s seal. My first impression when I held a token in my hand was that someone was trying to fool with me. I quietly asked Grenfell of his opinion and when he started laughing, I knew everything was all right. He apologised for not explaining the situation better and told me how we could transfer the tokens for coins when we left the military camp. It was far safer working with tokens than walking around with bags of money and besides, where could we keep all that money safe? Grenfell also explained that there were tokens for each cash denomination except for copper coins, and only because nothing in the camp was worth only a few coppers.

Whenever I saw the old man throughout the day, he either had horseshoes in the blazing furnace or a horse hoof between his knees, replacing them. Sharpening the swords kept me occupied. Most of the swords I received were the common military issued type. Somehow, I expected the knights to have something a little more…je ne sais quoi, but they were all just disappointingly ordinary metal swords. More functional than ornamental I guessed. Although I didn’t know it at the time, many of those swords originated in Grenfell’s workshop over the years. He didn't make common military swords anymore, instead choosing to focus his energy on speciality types for specific clientele. The military looked after their weapons and that's why many of them remained for me to sharpen.

All I was doing was simply honing their already sharp blades and only a few had notches worth worrying about. Regular upkeep of their swords was part of a soldier’s expected basic duty, no different from the armed forces on earth. Besides the usual polish, which they did, we only needed to focus on sharpening. Because they viewed it as only regular upkeep, we only earned a silver for each sword, with minor cost variations depending on the amount of work required. I could practice my transmutation skill under the guise of honing the blade, and by regulating the temperature of the metal in the blade, I could stop any red glow and limit my transmutation to just a few millimetres of metal at a time. With my skill I was able to quickly roll through the troops until Grenfell warned me to slow down or otherwise, I might attract unwanted attention.

That evening as Grenfell and I sat listening to the night sounds of the forest, he handed me a thick heavy book call The Roots of Botany. I already learned from Tomu that books were exceedingly rare and sometimes, depending on the topic, could cost more than their weight in gold. There wasn't anything like a printing press, and all books were valuable because they were hand copied. Books on vocational topics were almost impossible to get hold of because each specialist passed down their books onto their apprentices. Professional books were the predominantly written media, few books ever made it into the common market and when they did, they were out of range of the common man, not that most people could read. Grenfell had a look of resignation when he told me how he received the book.

“My father handed this book to me before I started my trade. He always wanted me to become a herbalist and since I never intend becoming one, I’m handing this to you. Who knows, perhaps you could use that more than I ever could.”

To be perfectly frank with you, I had no intention of becoming a herbalist either. Even though I felt the book was palmed off to me as a convenient hand-me-down, like receiving your mother-in-law’s old hereditary crockery. I felt it might still be worth something on the second-hand market, wherever that might be. As a result of pure boredom, I opened to the introductory page under the lamplight to see Marbelade was the book's author. The boy in me couldn't help chuckle at the similarity to the word marmalade. Imagine if it had been a book on preserves. My chuckling was getting suspicious looks from the old man, so I tried my best to stifle my laughter and continued my reading and turned the page. The book turned out to be morbidly fascinating. It was less about scientific fact, although it had measurements, but there were a lot of symptomatic post print notes scribbled over the pages by one of the books previous owners. Heaven only knew how old the book was, but those notes seemed well thought out and in many cases the results of much experimentation. Some of the plants I could already identify through my everyday interaction with nature and the rest of the book seemed reasonably comprehensive.

That was the first time I heard Ara being excited by something. I would take note of that.

I realised too late what I’d just committed to, my memory let me down, and before I could tell her to stop, pain shot through my eyeballs.

Came a word of concern from Grenfell who noticed tears streaming from my eyes as I held my hands over them, trying not to scream.

He sat back in relief; he was concerned at my sudden condition but was glad to hear it was something as minor as a bug in my eye.

Once I recovered enough to pay attention to Ara, I spent the rest of the evening listening and watching a review of the plants commonly found around the area. Ara displayed amazing three-dimensional graphics which she said she could even use to highlight over plants of interest as I observed them in the field. It was weird watching a heads-up display of superfast graphics a games developer’s mouth would salivate ate. Slowly understanding the capacity of my new upgrade, I asked Ara to keep an eye out for any plants that may be of interest for apothecary or trading. Botany as a subject started to look useful to me.

Fresh and early the next morning, at a time when even roosters considered crowing as just plain rude, I sweated inside the sparring ring. For some inexplicable reason Karato decided to be my only sparring partner that day and he didn’t go easy on me either. After his earlier attempt to recruit me by offering to personally train me, I thanked myself over and over for not taking him up on that offer. I swear none of his knights endured what I did, I seemed to be getting some unwanted preferential treatment from him. Although he was more proficient with sword fighting than me, my youth and flexibility became my greatest asset. Attacking him through non-standard attacks, like attacking him from below seemed to surprise him. It seemed knights had an archaic form of chivalry stamped into their brains, making them terribly predictable. At one stage Karato took advantage of my tiredness and tried a sneak attack from my blindside. He was too close for me to evade and was surprised when I instead of trying to retreat, I stepped into his attack zone, grabbing his wrist with my left hand putting one leg on his stomach then in one move using his momentum to flick him over me like a sack of wheat. I give it to him; his touchdown was less of Swan Lake and more like the Nutcracker, yet he stood up smiling, a rough and tough man that never knew the meaning of enough. He must have been a handful for his mom to handle when he was a boy. I think he thoroughly enjoyed that session simply because he got a workout that challenged both his mind and body. With his obvious experience, few knights could teach him new moves, especially like those I was pulling. I bet you those falls dusted the cobwebs of predictability that cluttered his mind over the years.

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I lay exhausted on the ground in the tent, the only dry place I could find from the morning dew on the grass. Grenfell’s chortling at my broken body didn’t enamour me to him. While I lay there, I couldn’t help but admire the commander and his ability to adapt. Before I left the sparring ring, he surprised me by pulling two of the judo moves I used on him. My knowledge of judo could obviously be attributed to my father who when I was still quite young, enrolled me into a local Judo club. When I eventually confronted him about it, he simply waved his hand with a smile and told me that swordfighters lacked that skill. Try and use that excuse to your friends as to why you couldn’t go out with them and see how long it would take them to stop contacting you. As you probably surmised, I didn’t have many friends. That caused me unwelcome attention from the school bullies that liked to pick on those who they deemed easy prey. They quickly discovered I didn’t lie down and follow their sadistic whims. Not when I regularly trained in martial arts and swordplay.

By the second sparring round all the knights realised I was sparring against their commander and a festive spirit appeared as more people gathered to watch. Even non-military people gathered, drawn by the accumulation of so many knights. I managed to defeat the commander once. All the other times he was able to stop my attacks by the briefest of margins, but he had to work hard to beat me and keep ahead of the game. My ability to attack from close in seemed initially to rattle his cage, but he quickly recovered and eventually countered my moves while throwing some good return attacks at me. After that ‘training’ session I bemoaned the thought that I needed to go back there again the next morning. As a matter of interest, I decided to do a self-appraisal which surprised me.

“Appraisal.”

Name: Shane Karosaki

Race: Human

Occupation: Blacksmith

Class: Apprentice

HP: 45/50

SP: 15/35

EE: 2300/3500

Skills: Translation (Native), Transmutation, Appraisal, Healing, Solid, Liquid, Gas, Light

My HP and SP finally increased, albeit only by a little and it seemed my HP still recovered from the commander’s training. Did the EE increase because I tended to be naturally inclined to improving ethereal skills, like a natural ability perhaps? When I considered it more in detail, it wasn’t logical because my skills would help increase my EE. More so than if I tried without them. It seemed that I automatically increased my EE even when I wasn’t consciously using it, or was it mainly related to my training with the spheres and my sword transmutations? There was a lot to things to consider and test still. I wondered what the commander’s stats would be.

“Shane.”

Grenfell’s voice brought me back to my present. I opened my eyes and looked at him.

“When you’re done sleeping, can you go to the kitchen and give the head chef this bag?”

Sleeping, and whose fault was that I wonder? I stood up and took the bag from Grenfell.

“What’s in the bag?”

“I bought a Mink Rabbit from a hunter who trapped it in the forest last night.”

“You want the chef to prepare it? It would make a delicious meal.”

“Yep, but not for you unfortunately.”

I doubted the old man was going to eat alone, perhaps he had something planned. Bugger, I would have enjoyed that rabbit, must have cost a bit though. Few meals compared to one that had Silk Rabbit meat in it. Something about the rabbit meat gave it a flavour that put it out of the league of similar foods, perhaps what it ate, apparently its favourite food was a mystery. My guess was what it ate, made it taste that good.

“Heh? Just how much did you pay for that rabbit?”

“Forty silver coins.”

“You paid thirteen night’s accommodation for a single rabbit?”

“I can understand the way you think if you stay at the Screaming Banshee.”

Sheesh, it made a difference for me, that was at least eight day’s pay.

“Oh, by the way, a couple of the cadets were around earlier looking for you.”

“Why was that?”

“Not sure, they didn’t say.”

He shrugged his shoulders then carried on with his work. Grenfell looked at Shane’s figure disappearing down the hill. Last night Karato and he caught up until the late hours of the night. Things were not going well between the nobles and the royals, and that military camp was evidence of it. Even his concern for that information was secondary to the news the Hunter who sold him the silk Rabbit mentioned that morning. Apparently, the Hunter noticed monster sign for the first time on his morning trap rounds. That on its own wouldn't be abnormal if it weren’t for the sheer number of goblin tracks including direwolves and ogres.

Oblivious to Grenfell's concerns I headed to the military camp’s mess at the at the bottom of the hill to see the head chef. As I walked into the kitchen preparations area, it was obvious that the preparations for lunch had already started because breakfast, like at the inn, was nothing but reheated dinner and that lot were starting to prepare new food. Various vegetables including windroot were being prepared with what I could recognise as rabbit meat amongst others. Twenty people stood around two rows of tables chopping and cutting various things while five young cadets helped them by clearing tables of food scraps. I couldn’t help but notice that most of the cadets were spending a lot of time sharpening knives. It might have been the military, but their attitudes towards kitchen staff were no different from the those in the woodcutter’s camp. I found the head chef by asking around and tracked him down in the main mess all issuing instructions to busy assistants that seem to be cleaning up after breakfast. Come to think of it, I hadn't had breakfast yet, so I was still quite hungry. The head chef became aware of me loitering in the mess hall and asked me in a gruff tone,

“What you doing here? Don't you know this area is restricted to military staff only?”

I got the impression things like that happened on a regular occasion, especially since there was so much interaction with the normal public.

“Grenfell the blacksmith asked me to give you this to prepare for him.”

The head chef looked into the bag I gave him.

“Ah, so this is what he was talking about. We’re going to have a nice meal tonight, I see.”

The plot thickened, it seemed the meal Grenfell excluded me from, included the head chef. The condescending attitude from the chef softened a little and I sensed an opportunity to gain an advantage. Napoleon once said that an army marched on its stomach. Who said that a commoner like me couldn’t share in that? The problem it seemed, was to have something worth trading and to make the person you were bargaining with, think they had the upper hand. With my business done I turned to leave, but not before saying something.

“If you like, I’m offering to sharpen the knives for your kitchen staff for free, they only need to bring it to me, and I’ll sort it out for them.”

From the surprised look of the head chef, I'd say I hit my mark. I knew the kitchen staff could utilise the military blacksmiths to sharpen their knives, but I doubted the blacksmiths had much time for trivial items like kitchen knives. Ironically, the food they ate three times a day was dependent on those very knives. In that way, I could not only network but make some friends along the way. When I returned to the marquee tent and told, Grenfell about my offer, he simply shrugged his shoulders.

“I don't mind, but you can do that on your time when you're done with work.”

I couldn't complain, after all, I'd offered to do the work for free and we weren't a charity organisation. Soon enough I would discover what a tsunami of work I created for myself as a queue of people stood in front of the tent that evening waiting to have the kitchen knives sharpened. You may be wondering why they didn't just drop off the knives for me to sharpen and then return later to pick them up? The issue lay in just how valuable those knives were to their owners. No person who relied on a tool like a kitchen knife for a regular wage would be stupid enough to just leave it with someone else. They didn’t consider it a matter of trust, more like common sense.

By the time I finished with the last knife, the stars in the night sky were shining in their full glory. My EE was dangerously low, and I was on the edge of the blackout If I wasn't careful. I used a lot of energy making sure I wouldn’t need to sharpen knives again, but I would find out later that I was in the unfortunate habit of making too many assumptions. I might have been hungry helping all those people, yet I felt oddly satisfied that I made a few good contacts.

Grenfell returned from his dinner date with that lovely, cooked silk Rabbit looking incredibly pleased with himself.

“Here Shane, this is for you. Compliments from the Head Chef.”

He threw me a parcel the size of my hand, wrapped in waxed cloth. After I caught it, I immediately realised it was leftover rabbit. Even though it wasn't warm anymore, it still tasted great and I devoured it on the spot. He must have realised there was no way I would still have time to eat while sharpening all those knives. I felt my heart warm a little after it was still recovering from his betrayal, allowing my massacre every morning by the muscle maniac they called a commander. Oh crap, I would have to do that again tomorrow morning, why did I have to go and remind myself of that again?

“Shane.”

I felt embarrassed to see Grenfell was still looking at me.

“What?”

“Please don’t go into the forest for any reason.”