2/18/1302

Day 10

The cores sold well. Right now I’m totaling about three hundred and ten gold. Before I buy any alchemy sets I think I’ll go to the blacksmith and ask him about these shards.

That was a unexpected. At first he looked at me like I was some kind of thief. I keep telling him to just have a quick look and if it wasn't worth anything I would just pay him and leave. He didn’t really budge until I handed him five gold. He banged on it a few times with a hammer before turning to me with a dumbfounded look on his face. Soon after he began to spiel on about the goal of all blacksmiths to craft a legendary weapon from all metals in the world and bla bla bla. I didn’t really start paying attention until he told me he’s never seen this type of metal before. This is basically impossible.

If you didn’t know blacksmiths of this world must all pass a test to have a title of a blacksmith. The humans used to have close relations with the dwarfs. Nobody knows exactly how long ago but apparently the dwarfs passed on the art of metalworking to the humans. Each human who came back after training with them required their own disciples to take the test. After a while this tradition stuck. Some kingdoms even decided to name the blacksmith art an holy profession. These type of things spread and became almost religiously followed. Anyway the point I’m trying to make is that in the test blacksmith trainees must be able to identify each type of metal and at least fifty types common alloys. That's just for a basic level blacksmith. This is a gold standard shop making it just below noble standards. This means this guy would have to know all the types of alloys as well.

I thought he was just joking when he offered his whole shop to buy that shard from me. I didn’t start to believe him until he explained that any blacksmith who found a new metal would be given personal training by the dwarfs master blacksmiths in the dwarf capital. This is an honor not given to humans for the last fifty years since the discovery of Rhodium. If he sold his shop I wouldn’t be able to buy any equipment needed for future experiments. I tried to talk him down from selling me his shop but he wouldn’t budge. After I told him I’m not a smith so I couldn’t even own a smithy he came to his senses. I explained to him that my lane of work requires certain metalwork to keep going. This is the point where the smith offered me a proposition that I couldn’t deny. He said that after his training is done he would become my personal smith. Asking him what level of smith he would be after coming back he responded with a big surprise. At least it would be of a royal standard and at highest something close to a god standard. These titles are something that even kings would drool over. I quickly agreed and asked him how long it would take him. He says it should only be about one year. At least that's how long it took other smiths to come back after training.

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The time was a bit long to wait for my equipment so I asked him when someone would take over his shop. He told me it should only take a week or so for another smith to show up. I decided to take a risk and handed over half the shards in my possession. After that I’ve been waiting on him to get back. He said something about needing to get his equipment before he left and took off towards the residential district. I’ve been waiting here for awhile. I wonder if I’ve made a mistake.

Looks like not. I think this counts as anything but a mistake. He gave me a rarity in this part of the world. Even the most uncommon smith would only have one or two bars of this stuff, however for him to have five whole bars of pure mithril… I think I’ve just hit the jackpot. He just handed them to me before running back into his workshop. There seems to be a lot of noise coming from inside.  

I’m not sure what to do any more. He just ran out carrying what looked like a whole bunch of hammers and chisels before asking me my name. As soon as I told him he ran off before I could ask him any questions. Should I wait for him, or should I just finish my shopping? I think the more important question here is why am I questioning an inanimate log book?

I should just go. He left his shop open but I doubt anyone would steal from it for the fear of the consequences of being found guilty of a holy crime. This is one of  the holy blacksmith countries after all.

So far I’ve sold off all of my cores. Now I’m on my way to the crafting district for some more alchemy sets. Right now I’m totaling three hundred twenty one Gold and twenty five Silver. Oh fun fact, silver is going to be a dead currency in just a matter of years. Apparently with the large influx of gold over the now regained peace treaty with the dwarfs, it’s basically ruined the original economy of almost all kingdoms. A few lesser kingdoms even fell before some of the larger ones banded together to help even out the economy again. Silver is needed for products like food and furniture, however the same could be said for copper not just ten years ago. Right now the human world is running on the 1=100 system where the lesser coin, let's say silver if gather up to one hundred in its value it would be equivalent to one gold. However this is soon to be replaced by the group of kingdoms I wrote about earlier. They already abolished the bits and copper's value as currency. I was born around the time they god rid of bits so I’ve never seen what they look like, but I heard it was some crappy iron coin. Who would have thought that about twenty scraps of iron equivalent to a small dagger in weight could buy you a full loaf of bread. Bread now runs you about three silver so the price in just the course of thirty years has increased over five thousand times. It’s a mystery how those kings found a way to control the economy so it didn’t burn. Eh, who knows I'm not a noble so I'm not good with money anyway.

Okay, looks like business is booming here. time to start looking around.