Weaponsmith - Volume 3: Chapter 103 (Patreon)

Times come and go as the work on the house continues. Days pass. Then weeks.

Hineni stands downstairs in the restaurant, admiring the fully renovated and rebuilt structure. There isn’t a single indication left that there had ever been an attack and, in fact, the house looks better than ever. He thinks it looks great now.

— But not everyone agrees.

Hineni lifts his gaze, looking at the owl that is perched in the rafters, hissing and clicking with her beak as she looks around the room.

Ever since the frog’s attack, she has been far more alert and aware of every little thing. Perhaps too much so.

But she had once explained her dislike of the idea of returning to a nest that had been attacked.

‘One must never return to an old nest, those are the places where the bad things come to look for us again’.

He recalls those words and, despite the fact that she hasn’t said anything, he knows that this is what’s bothering her. The severity of this recent attack was more than any frog escapades and now, she does not trust in the security of their home. He can’t say for sure if she now views it as an ‘old nest’ but there is certainly some trouble that must be smoothed over here.

It’s not like they can just move somewhere else.

They’ll just have to figure something out.

________________________________________________

Months pass.

The spring comes to an end, bringing on the haze of a heavy, lazy summer. However, the pleasant sleepiness offered by the season is considered unwelcome by everyone in this year, as the war-effort rages on, intenser than ever before. Craftsmen work days and nights to fulfill the ever-larger growing orders from the military, hiring extra hands wherever they can get them.

A season of adventurers comes to prosper here, as the need for raw material drives prices of resources up. The number of new adventurers and people delving into the dungeon to gather materials to sell at a high price rises starkly.

The business of both their crafting, as well as the guild-work itself, booms.

“We’re legit now,” says Sockel, holding out a placard for him to look at.

Hineni narrows his eyes, staring at the wooden sign that she is holding with a golden plate fastened to its front. “The hell?” he asks, reading it. ‘Licensed adventurers’ guild’. “Sockel. Did you pay the signmakers for this?” he asks. “I don’t want those thieves to get a single more coin of ours.”

“Please,” says Sockel, tapping the metal with her finger. “This here is legit, boss-man,” explains the elf. She has a bruise on the side of her neck from when some adventurer took her by surprise while she was going to the kitchen and hit her with a staff from behind, because she’s an elf.

He had dealt with that one himself before the doorman, Irit, even got the chance to leave his post.

Sockel too has been much more guarded since then.

“- Before we were just some weirdos saying we’re an adventurers’ guild. But now we’re a really-real one, state-licensed and everything.”

“Huh…” says Hineni, leaning in. The metal plate really is made out of real gold. “Well I’ll be.”

Sockel nods. “I did some paperwork on the side. We have the numbers to back ourselves up. It was an easy sell.”

“Great work, Sockel. I have no idea what this means, but I’m glad you did it.”

“It means we can participate in the guilds’ programs. There are all sorts of financial packages and deals we can work out now,” she says. “But there’s a catch.” Her ears twitch.

Hineni sighs. “There always is, isn’t there?”

Sockel nods. “We need more rooms. The ones we have aren’t enough for the increased demand this will bring.”

Hineni rubs his head, looking around the area. “More rooms?” he asks. “Sockel, the house is packed. Where the hell are we going to put more rooms?”

Sockel smiles, tapping the sign. “That’s where this comes in,” she says. “A caster from the association of adventuring guilds will be here to turn on instancing for us in a few weeks.”

Hineni blinks. “Instant-what?”

“You know how the dungeon is like… a big glowy-portal?” asks Sockel. “- How a hundred people can walk into it, but when we go with them inside, we’re alone on the other side of the fog?” Hineni nods. “It’s like that.”

Hineni stares at her. “Wait… what the hell? Why have I never heard of this?”

“Uh, every adventurer’s guild of note in the world has it?” she asks. “So, probably because you’re not an adventurer,” explains Sockel. “We’ll set up a room upstairs. In the house, it’ll be one room. But every party can enter it and have their own.”

“Damn…” says Hineni. “Why doesn’t everyone just do this?” he asks. “Hell, why didn’t we just do this before?”

“Again,” replies Sockel. “Because you’re broke.”

“I think we’re doing well these days.”

“Not well enough,” says Sockel. “This is some old-world, artifact-level magic. This is Avarice or frog-level money to get set-up,” explains Sockel. “But once it’s done, we’ll be rolling in cash.”

Hineni sighs, rubbing the back of his head. This sounds like a very big responsibility and debt to take on. But Sockel seems like she’s sure about this.

“Okay. Do what you need to do,” he says.

_________________________________________________

Weeks come to pass and the guild booms in business, even before the instancing system is set up.

After it does and after they stop sending people away because of their lack of free beds, it’s easily three to four times as busy as it used to be. So much so that they had to hire more wait staff. Kleidet was promoted to their head and given a management level raise in pay. The cooks got an extra hand, which meant the kitchen had to be fully renovated with new stations to fit the third person in the same space as before.

With the increased foot-traffic, dirt becomes a real problem. Hineni can’t sacrifice himself or Rhine to clean and sweep so often, so an additional person is needed to clean the rooms regularly. To save himself the hassle, Hineni delegated her tasks to Kleidet to manage as well.

The owl-god does nothing all day except to sit on her roost to listen to questions or pleas for help and to give advice and to receive tribute. Tribute is starting to make up a very significant chunk of their income, so much so that Sockel needed to start a new ledger just for it. In the few hours of night she finds free time, she hunts and then falls asleep next to Hineni in a deep exhaustion.

He has made an effort to stop working so much into the night, so that he can be here to fall asleep with her every night.

Eilig unfortunately makes less and less use of the insulated houses, scattered across the rooms, as during the day, it is just too full. There is too much ambient magic in the house. The owl-god is getting too strong. The war is raging and the magical leylines are going haywire. There were even reports of wild-monsters spawning inside of the city walls. Although those are unverified. Her illness is constant and present and while she isn’t wailing in agony, she does certainly seem to have lost a little of her visible energy and spark.

Hineni pays good money to send teams of casters out into exotic dungeons to find items and things that could alleviate the magical pressure on her. But so far, nobody has brought anything back of substantial help.

The skull that he had first made, the one that drains soul-points; Hineni ends up making another one on a smaller scale and using it on himself, every time he goes down into the ice-cellar, so that he is able to stay there without making her feel worse.

Honestly, he doesn’t really know what to do.

Of course his goal is to help the guild and Obscura flourish. But by doing so, he’s making Eilig sicker and sicker. The worst part is that she isn’t even complaining about it. So he just feels bad, because he doesn’t quite know how to find a compromise between these two desires.

Does he help Obscura at the cost of Eilig, or does he help Eilig at the cost of Obscura?

He doesn’t know, so he thinks he’s been trying to do both things at the same time. But it might not be possible.

______________________________________________________

Weeks pass again and then a few odd months more.

Summer is at its crown and Rhine and himself work the forge day in and day out. The noise outside in the guild from all of the foot-traffic had gotten so bad, that they actually added a second door and wall to the stone-corridor that leads up towards the forge, to muffle the sound.

They couldn’t hear each other clearly during their work and it was causing problems.

The thieves’ guild had to be paid a little more, because they needed more security too. They’re becoming very high-profile in a lot of ways.

The other gods haven’t contacted him since the whole ‘Death’ thing, ignoring the big-frog, who he hasn’t heard a whisper from either. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel their eyes on them.

As for Avarice, there has been little contact. Sockel has been quietly managing the books as always, depositing the larger sum of their money into their account, which is under Avarice’s control and watch, as if nothing was wrong. A smaller, unsuspicious portion of that, she has been setting to the side in their vault in secret.

It’s so busy.

Life has gotten crazy. Crazier than he had ever imagined it becoming. Honestly, he misses the quiet, simple days of their obscurity. Back when it was just them, living in a quiet, cozy, forgotten house. They weren’t rich, they weren’t famous, but it was nice.

He misses having their house for themselves.

But it is what it is now. There’s not really a good way to turn back from here.

…Right?

Hineni’s eyes wander towards the very high roof of the forge. It’s not like they can just move somewhere else, somewhere quieter. Somewhere with less work and stress and tension.

…Right?

He narrows his eyes, looking around the room for inspiration.

— His eyes fall on the golden amulet of a tree that Rhine has been painstakingly hand-making for months on end now, as his tribute to the owl-god.

…Right?