Prytaneum
Shining Steel
Wayland struck me as a nice guy. Granted, I didn't know him that well, having basically walked into his shop twice and asked for guidance, but he'd helped me both times and I appreciated that. I liked people who were kind enough to help the lost and confused, largely because I seemed to be perpetually lost and confused. I knew that Wayland, who had to be a pretty busy guy, was going out of his way to help me when he didn't need to and probably didn't stand much to gain.
So on the whole, I liked Wayland.
And Wayland liked blacksmithing. Wayland liked talking about blacksmithing. Wayland liked waxing poetically about blacksmithing.
And truth be told…it was actually kind of fun to listen to him. On the whole, I didn't have any more attached to my armor than I did to my clothes, because neither tended to last me very long. In the same way, I viewed shopping for new armor the same way I did normal shopping—as a necessity and nothing more. I didn't have much in the way of opinion on styles or sets or what, as long as it kept me from dying.
But listening to Wayland, I was actually starting to get a little excited.
"It's an art," He told me as we walked through on of the arches of battle. The sun was already starting to tint the sky red, edging closer and closer towards dusk, but there were still plenty of adventurers around Babel and Central Park. None of them gave us more than a glance, but then, we were hardly the oddest sight to be found. "And the Hephaestus Familia are its masters. Would you believe I was younger than you when I first came to Orario?"
"Really?" I asked. "How old were you?"
"Just a boy of fourteen," He said. "My brothers and I all left home when we were young, chasing adventure and romance. I'm man enough to admit I might have been a bit of a fool back then, but I don't regret a bit of it. Sought an apprenticeship in Zolingham and trained for years until I met Hephaestus? You ever heard of Zolingham, boy?"
"Nope," I admitted.
"It's a Sword-Smithing City. Hephaestus has a contract with a smith there and is on good terms with most of the forges—it's where we get a lot of our members, see?" He continued, smiling slightly at what I assumed were good memories. "It's full of goddamn assholes."
Or maybe not.
Wayland laughed when he saw the look on my face, pointing towards a staircase in the lobby.
"Everyone in Zolingham loves the art," He said. "So much so that they fight for it every day—for their turn at the forge, for their chance to make a sword. Trust me boy, you've never really forged a sword until you've done it with a broken nose from the fight you had to get your turn at it."
"Sounds like fun," I said with a half-smile, remember my time at camp. "I've had some rowdy friends of my own."
"Yeah," Wayland said fondly. "I never would have believed it at the time, but a part of me actually misses that damn place. But I don't remember leaving when Hephaestus offered me the chance. It was an opportunity no smith could ever pass up—the chance to make wonders. One day, you'll see what we can do, boy. You'll get it then."
"I already get it," I said, remembering what Tyson and some of my other siblings had made. "My brothers were some of the best smiths I've ever known. You'd have liked them, I think."
"Ah, maybe so," Wayland allowed. "Were they part of the Poseidon Familia?"
"One and all."
"Ah, now that's a shame, then," Wayland said, seeming honestly sad. "What about you, then? Why didn't you become a smith?"
"Different talents, I guess," I said with a shrug. "I didn't really find out about that side of my family until I was already practicing with a sword. But I don't think I'd have been very good at it, not like my brothers were."
I couldn't quite hide the sadness in my voice and I was pretty sure Wayland picked up on it. The last time I'd seen Tyson or any of the other Cyclopes, they'd rode in to save Olympus, taking down Typhon at my father's command. They'd done their part and stopped the biggest monster in all of Greek Mythology, but I hadn't managed to do mine and stop Luke and Kronos.
Wayland knocked me out of my thoughts with a smack on the back.
"Chin up, son," He said. "As long as you're alive, you've still got time to make 'em proud."
I tried to smile a bit at that.
"Here we are," He said as we reached the third floor. I looked around, noting the location of the Exchange—and the line stretching out its door. Yeah, maybe I'd just keep going to visit Eina, then.
What I didn't see, however, were any more stairs. Instead, Wayland lead me to a raised pedestal surrounded by a glass tube. We entered one and Wayland operated a control panel—and then the entire platform began to rise.
"Cool," I said, looking around as we began floating upwards. "It's like an elevator."
"It is an elevator," Wayland asked, giving me an odd look. "You been on one of these before? Didn't know we had any of them outside Orario."
"Well, something like it," I replied. "Wasn't quite like this, though."
"Huh," Wayland mused before shrugging. As rose higher, Wayland pointed out the fourth floor. "That's where we keep the best of our equipment. There's stuff in there that costs ten, fifty, a hundred million valis. Magic swords, things that'll never break, stuff that can cut through dragon hide like air—you name it, you can find it there. It's where our best display their best. But what do you notice about it?"
I pondered it for a moment as we rose past it, pursing my lips.
"There aren't a lot of people there," I said.
"Mhm," Wayland confirmed. "The stuff we keep on the fourth floor is all made by Level 4 and 5 smiths; like I said, the best of the best. For the same reason, though, only the best can buy it. Even if you work hard and save up, it's hard for most adventurers to even think of buy things from the fourth floor—most of our traffic there comes from Level 3s and up and even then it can be a struggle to afford. Here on the fifth floor is where our Level 3s put their work and that's a bit more affordable—I'm talking hundreds of thousands at the low end. We see Level 3s and some ambitious Level 2s here, mostly. The sixth and seventh floors are where most of our smiths put their work and it's also where most adventurers come to buy stuff, once they've gotten enough experience and saved up for a few months. You'll probably be here yourself, soon enough—but we're going to the top today."
"Why does level make so much of a difference?" I asked. "For the smiths, I mean—I get why higher level Adventurers would be after and able to afford better stuff."
"You know anything about Developmental Abilities, boy?" Wayland asked, making me think of Hero and Mystery. Truth be told, I still didn't really get what either of those things did, to say nothing of Hope. Really, the only thing in my status that I really understood where the basics and Despair.
"I've heard of them before," I said. "But I don't really know that much about them."
"They're things you can get upon leveling up," He said. "Know that much? You don't really need to worry about it too much this early on, but they're decided by your actions, so it's worth putting some thought into. Think of it as deciding your career in life. You spend your time making potions, you might get Mixing, for instance. But if you spend it forging armor and weapons and such? Then you're likely to gain Blacksmith. There are all sorts of Developmental Abilities, but you're better off asking your goddess about that. All you really need to know here is that there's a world of difference between having one and not having one."
"How so?"
"Let's use Mixing as an example," He replied. "Anyone can make a potion with proper training, right? You learn the techniques, the ingredients, the recipe—you're making medicine and it can make someone who drinks it feel better, yeah? But someone with Mixing can take those exact same ingredients, go through the exact same process, and get a completely different result. They can make something that'll close wounds with a touch, something normal medicine isn't going to do no matter how good you are. And if it's a choice between that and painkillers, well, what do you think everyone going into the Dungeon is gonna buy?"
"Ah," I said, nodding. "Yeah, I think I get it."
"It's the same with Blacksmithing," Wayland continued. "Someone with the Developmental Ability can forge a sword that's just outright strong, using the same materials—and more besides. With enough skill, a Blacksmith can make swords that carry and cast magic spells, things that cut through steel like butter, things that can absorb magic, and more. After a certain point, you just need it to compete in this city."
"So you have to level up," I said. "Because you have to be Level 2 to get something like that, right?"
"That's right," He confirmed. "But there's more to it than that. Like Basic Abilities, Developmental Abilities start at I and can be improved as high as S."
"How?" I asked. "By leveling up further?"
"Mm," Wayland hummed as we reached the eighth floor. "Not quite…and yet sort of. Level, in and of itself, has no effect on your Developmental Abilities and, theoretically, you don't need to raise your level to improve them. In reality, however, the two tend to be very closely tied. You see, Developmental Abilities are extremely hard to improve; Basic Abilities are a breeze in comparison. You can spend years training without improving one in the slightest. But if you do? Well, odds are you did something special. Generally, improvements go either hand in hand with level ups or are followed shortly after by them. As a general rule—and there are some pretty damn big exceptions so don't go making assumptions—Developmental Abilities follow a step like progression. Level 2s have their first ability at I, Level 3s have their first at H and second at I, and so on."
I followed him out of the elevator and looked around the eighth floor. There were significantly more people on it than had been on the fourth and the prices were a lot more reasonable. Well, relatively speaking—ten thousand valis for a short sword was probably still a lot of money from most people's perspective, given the normal price of things at shops. I could get a decent meal for fifty to a hundred valis, after all. But then, this was stuff people's lives were going to depend on.
"What about the stuff on this floor?" I asked.
"These are made by the younger members of our Familia," Wayland said. "The ones who haven't yet leveled up. Most of the Hepheastus Familia possesses the Blacksmith Ability, but everyone has to start somewhere."
I turned my head to look at him, raising an eyebrow.
"I thought you said stuff like this couldn't be competitive?" I replied.
Wayland laughed at that, smacking me on the back again.
"Maybe it's not," He said. "But like I said, everyone has to start somewhere. Don't get me wrong; every smith in the Hephaestus Familia is a master at their craft, handpicked by the Goddess of the Forge herself—"
Gah. That was still weird to hear.
"—And everything they make has to pass through rigorous inspection," He continued. "But it's not magic. It's just the work of something with years of experience and access to high quality materials. It's not going to be completely weightless or halve the force of a blow or be harder than steel while being made of cloth. But if you're a young adventurer, just getting started and saving up? It'll do. But there's more to it than that."
"Like what?"
"It's not just adventurers that need to get experience, son," He said. "Whether you're fighting or forging, you can't stop learning until it's time to die. And sometimes the best way to learn is the hard way. By letting our new smiths sell their items up here, we give them a chance to learn—and to get feedback, good or bad. The hardest lesson for every new adventurer is that the Dungeon does not give a shit where you learned the trade or how long you've been practicing, and that's true of smiths as well. Sure, your shield may have sold like hotcakes in another country, but can they take a mauling from a real monster? Can people bet their lives on it? It better because they are. This is their chance to learn that before someone gets hurt and figure out how to do better. Even if it's just steel, it can stand up to a lot if you do it right—so fucking do it right."
"I for one would appreciate that," I said. "Not dying, I mean."
"Then follow me." Wayland said as he started walking in a new direction. "I've been meaning to come up her and take another look around—make sure none of these whippersnappers are gonna give me a bad name. If you find a problem with anything we sell here, you come and tell me, alright? I'll make sure it reaches the right ears if I have to shout straight into them."
"Don't be too hard on them," I said. "I'm really hard on armor. I've wrecked more of the stuff then you'd believe."
Wayland grunted in disagreement—whether at the excuse or because he'd seen a lot of wrecked armor, I don't know.
"Another thing," He said as we stopped before a headless mannequin wearing a full set of armor. I wondered if the heedlessness was a subtle attempt to advertise for the nearby battle helms, but I wasn't sure. "Keep an eye out for anything you do like. That's the other reason we give them a chance up here—because it gives young smiths a chance to find young adventurers. Sometimes, there are things about armor that only someone who's worn it into battle can see, a quality that other people might not have recognized. It's a chance for smiths to find customers early in their careers. You can tell a smith to make anything, sure—but sometimes it's when they're making something specific for someone in particular that they make marvels."
"And it's probably good for business," I noted.
"And it's definitely good for business," Wayland said, flashing a quick grin. "Now let's find you something to spend money on, boy."
I nodded, already looking around, eyes skimming the price tags. As I was now, I could afford pretty much anything on the eighth floor—but I had to keep my funds in mind. Whatever Hestia said, the question was 'was it worth it?' I was still providing for a Familia, after all, and frankly…I'd never had a set of armor had hadn't ended up trashing eventually. Fifteen thousand, three thousand; it was going to get wrecked sooner or later, it was just a question of how long. If not on the seventh floor, then on the ones below it, because I still had a long way to go.
Besides, I had to think long term. Like Wayland had said, this wasn't the best stuff they had to offer, just the stuff most people could afford. With the money I hand now, I could buy an expensive set or several weaker sets—as long as they lasted a few days, that'd give me the chance to save up for something better. A helmet, a shield, the works; I just needed something the Killer Ants couldn't shred outright. Odds were I'd be talking to Wayland soon, telling him why these piece or that one broke in a day.
And yet, after everything he'd said…a part of me couldn't help but wonder what I might find. I didn't consider myself an expert or anything, but I'd worked with the children of Hephaestus before, if in a different sense. I thought I probably had some eye for quality, then.
I just had to find something like it.