I startle awake as I feel extremely cold and wet. I look around to find Vegter with a bucket in his hand. My mind puts the pieces together in a matter of moments, leaving me with the realization that Vegter is an actual asshole. Seriously who dumps freezing water onto someone to wake them up, this isn’t boot camp. “WHY’D YA DO THAT” I shout at Vegter. The big lug just smiles. “rise and shine sweet heart, we ain’t got all day” Vegter yells, before leaving. I’m really starting to hate this man. I get up and see a loincloth that seems to be around my size. Guess this is counts as a change of cloths, in this village. I quickly change out of my moist loincloth. I then hurry outside of my room into the room we ate in yesterday and find Clara and Vegter eating something that looks like purple eggs, with some green juice on the side. Clara motions for me to sit down, so I do. I start digging in, because the food looks kind of appetising, and I’m feeling really hungry right now. As I dig in, the adrenaline from Vegter’s wake up call starts to wear off and I start feeling wet and dreary.

“Vegter, why’d you have to throw a bucket of water at me” I say, my voice dropping into a whine slightly. “to wake you up of course” Vegter says, sounding kind of smug. Well hopefully the heat from the forge can dry me off some. Once me and Vegter are done our food, Clara sends us off to work. As I step outside, I realize something very important. The sun isn’t up. “Vegter” I say calmly. “what” Vegter says. “WHY THE HELL DID YOU WAKE ME BEFORE SUNRISE” I yell. “smithing is early work” Vegter says. Vegter then starts just walking along as if nothing ever happened. At this point I’m fuming, but I know enough to not be an idiot, and just follow Vegter along. It takes a while to get to Vegter’s smithy, all the while I’m feeling fine, even though I’m outside in a loincloth, wet. Guess orks are tougher than humans, make’s sense with what they’re wearing. I watch Vegter unlock the smithy’s door after we finally got there. We go inside past the stands, full of blacksmithing wares, and into the forge room. I ready myself for another round of torture as Vegter motions for me to man the bellows. This time I’m going to try to pay attention to what Vegter’s doing as I pump the bellows. Vegter takes an ingot of metal and, using a pair of tongs, positions the ingot in the fire, yelling at me to pump quickly. I try to pump as fast as I can while staying in rhythm. Vegter waits a couple of minutes for the ingot to start melting slightly before grabbing it out with a set a of tongs, putting it onto the anvil and hammering it a little bit, before putting it back into the forge, yelling at me to pump faster. This process repeats a couple time as the piece of metal starts to take shape. Vegter then starts telling me to slow down, waiting for a long time as the metal melts slowly, before pulling it out and hammering some more. This repeats until eventually, miraculously Vegter is holing a metal cup in his hand. Even with me seeing all that happened the change from chunk of metal, to cup is still somewhat astonishing. I observe Vegter as he smiths a couple more things, until all of a sudden Vegter tells me to stop. “time for break boy” Vegter says. I simply nod.

“after this you’re going to start manning the desk outside” Vegter says, shewing through some food. “usually would’ve had my apprentice do it but, as I’m sure you’ve noticed you’re all that’s available” Vegter says. “I don’t know if I can do that, Vegter” I say nervously. “don’t you worry, there’s nothing to it. Just look the person over, what their buying and see what their maximum pay range is” Vegter says. “I don’t know the currency of this village though” I say. “oh well, I’ll have to tell you then” Vegter says, pulling something out of his loincloth. Yes loincloth, Vegter pulled stuff out of his loincloth. I think I might barf. “this is the lowest tier of currency called small Crys” Vegter says motioning to a tiny marble the colour of grass, I can sort of feel some energy coming from it. “ten of these can buy you some street food, and ten of them can also be converted into this called medium Crys” he says motioning to a medium sized marble of the same colour, I can definitely feel some energy getting emitted from this thing. “there’s also another bigger one but I don’t have one on me since that would be dumb, but know that it’s around yay big, and it’s called big Crys” he says, circling his hands to look like golf balls. “where are these things found and gotten” I say really curious as to why these things are emitting what feels to be magical energy. “well they’re either found in the corpses of beasts, or mined form place of great magical energy” Vegter says. Huh, guess that kind of makes sense.

“’kay now, break over, get your butt over to the desk upfront, the shops going to open soon” Vegter says. “wait, how are you going to be able to forge stuff on your own” I say hurriedly moving to the front. “don’t worry about” Vegter says. Guess he’s trying to be mysterious. I nervously set myself up on the desk, checking around the shop to see what’s in here. Something I notice quickly is that there are no labels, or price tags on anything here, so I’m really going to have to eyeball the prices. Plus, I don’t know how to read the language (unless it’s somehow English, which I highly doubt) or the numbers, so I would’ve had to eyeball the prices either way. I look outside the shop real quick, and sure enough I start seeing the light of dawn break through the buildings all around. As I have nothing to do but wait around, I start examining the stock, so that I may better perform my duties as desk-boy. I see a lot of kitchen tools all around, like pots, pans, and various utensils that look like their made for mixing. In another section I see a bunch of weapons, some of them are familiar, others not so much. One looks like a giant hammer, except it has a hammer head mounted on the top, and on the bottom. Another looks like a giant pair of drum sticks. And another on top of that looks like a turtle’s shell. All in all, things that can either bludgeon, hammer, block seem to be in great supply. Makes sense considering how strongly built all the orks are.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Ding, Ding, I hear a bell ring from the front of the store, and look over to see a relatively big male ork step in. He surveys the shop for a while before finally picking various cooking utensils and carrying them over to my desk. “hello, I want to buy these items” he says, motioning to the items as he pulls out 5 small Crys. I try to think as quickly as possible, wondering if this is enough or not. If I was in his position I would try to pay as little as possible, but I wouldn’t suggest a crazy low number because that might get me kicked out of the shop. So, in this situation I should try to haggle a little. “sorry sir, but this would cost at least one medium Crys” I say, hoping I didn’t just say something ludicrous. “well, that seems absolutely mad, this is worth at most 8 small Crys” He says, his outrage sounding a little theatrical. “hmmm, well sir that seems fair” I say, as I give the ork his items. The ork looks a little stunned but hands me the money. Well hopefully I didn’t under sell that but judging off the look on the ork’s face it seems that I may have sold that stuff for a little below market value. I consider whether I should talk to Vegter about it before hearing, the bell ring again. This time it seems to be an ork female. As she walks around, I start noticing how shapely she is. I try to get my mind out of the gutter as she moves around to get a closer look at various items. After walking around for what felt like an eternity, she finally settles on a huge amount of various cooking utensils. As she walks closer, I try to stay focused. “hello. I would like to buy all the items you see here” she says, her voice sounding extremely smooth. Trying to come up with a good price for all the items she brought over, I use all of my intellect to say “se-seventeen small Crys, Ma’am”. “that seems like a little much couldn’t you drop it down to fourteen small Crys” she says, her voice getting somewhat throaty. I don’t know if that is an honest price for all the crap she has on the table or if she’s trying to short-change me, so I trust my gut and say, “of co-course Ma’am”. In a daze I receive the money while handing her the items. Well, that seems like it went well, I think trying to forget what had just happened.

And so, person after person after person walked into the shop, with me having to muddle through every single interaction. The only big occurrence was when a couple guys came in wanting to buy some weaponry. Of course, I didn’t actually know anything at all about weaponry, so I just kind of froze, completely out of my comfort zone. Eventually the guys said that they would come in another day, so all in all that interaction was a royal screw-up. Now looking back at it, with the sun officially coming down, I can say that this entire day was a series of dumb, uncomfortable events. When Vegter came out of the forge room, looking around at all the items missing, and then at the amount of money in my desk all he said was that I did good for a first time, but that he was going to have to teach me a lot of things before he would ever let me man the desk again. I assume he’s going to pay for someone to be the desk clerk, maybe that mysterious apprentice that got into an accident.

Me and Vegter then went on home, him telling me about each item, it’s uses and about how much I could charge for it on our way home. When we got there Clara didn’t say anything, and just motioned for us to get inside. Dinner was warm this time which was nice. What wasn’t nice though was Clara asking how our day went, and Vegter answering with “this fool boy got short-changed when I placed him on clerk duty” Vegter said pointing at me. “no hard feelings boy but do know that whatever amount of money you got tricked out of is coming out of your salary, so your probably going to spend a little bit more time with us than you might have expected” Vegter says, sounding disturbingly calm. Ah crap.