Chapter 40

As much as it pained him to spend the AP on it, Luke couldn’t help but feel that utility skills would serve him better in a human city than combat skills would. He wanted to upgrade [Mace Mastery], but seeing as he no longer had a mace, that was probably not the best route to take. The loss of his weapon was enough to convince him not to even try going after the other two ogres. Or giants. Whatever.

With 30 AP to spend, upgrading [Thalian] to rank 2 seemed like the best use. That ran him 15 AP, and another 10 would go into either [Deception] or [Disguise]. He was leaning towards [Disguise]just for the increased XP sense reduction. That last 5 AP would either go into a brand new skill, directly into his stats, or be spent on an upgrade to [Unarmed Martialist].

In the end, he decided that with 25 AP going into utility and his main weapon broken beyond any real usefulness, he could justify putting a few points into the skill that was probably going to be most helpful to him if he got attacked before he was able to find a new weapon.

Luke was somewhat disappointed to learn that the amount of XP [Disguise] hid only went from ten percent to fifteen with the increased rank, but every little bit helped. Still, if he’d known, he might have put the points elsewhere.

It was a more somber jog back to the road and into Valtira. The city itself wasn’t as big as Luke had thought it would be. He spied it from the road, just a wide, sprawling collection of one and two story houses and streets that stretched out as far as he could see. The whole region was heavily forested, but around the city it had been cleared out for miles and miles. Most of the open land was being used for farming, but the farther east he went, the more clumps of houses started popping up until finally the farms died out completely.

There were maybe two or three miles of dense urban sprawl before the city hit the water, though Luke wasn’t sure if dense or urban were appropriate words to use. It looked more like a busy little town than a true city to him, but compared to the sizes of the other places he’d been through, he could see why people thought it was a city. If it had a population of more than a hundred thousand, he’d be surprised.

He could see eight different roads leading into the western half of the city, and an impressive number of ships docked on the east side. Hopefully he’d be able to score a ride on one of them without attracting any undue attention, but before that, he needed to see if he could find someone to repair his weapon.

Luke followed the road into Valtira, not stopping until there were buildings all around him and dozens upon dozens of people walking the streets. He kept his cloak pulled tight to hide his armor even though he’d splattered mud across the rainbow circle insignia to cover it. There were a few people wearing armor, their version of police he figured, with clubs on some sort of leather loop tied to their belts, but they were the only ones.

They were also, one and all, no higher than level 15. Even that was being generous. Some of them were as low as level 10 or 11. Despite Luke’s [Disguise] skill helping to suppress his own XP, he still stood out far more than he wanted. The last thing he needed was anyone noticing that the armor he wore looked different than the police standard issue.

At least as it got more crowded, it was harder for people to pick out that it was him. He didn’t realize it at first, having never had a problem differentiating what he was feeling from each individual member of a group, but that obviously was not the case now. He constantly saw people’s heads moving around, scanning the crowd, and passing over him without any sort of realization. Some of them still guessed correctly, but with so many bodies on the streets, he was able to maintain some anonymity. The police still unerringly picked him out, a feat he suspected was due to a higher perception than average.

None of them hassled him though, which was good enough for Luke’s purposes. He only had two objectives: repair his weapon and get on a ship. If he could do that without getting into trouble, he’d call it a successful day. Unfortunately, that meant he needed to do something he’d been avoiding so far: actually talk to someone.

He found what appeared to be some kind of a business district, or at least it was a clump of streets that had a lot of different storefronts on it, and snagged a person at random. “Excuse me,” he said, “Can you tell me where I can buy weapons?”

The man’s eyes widened slightly when Luke started talking to him, but otherwise didn’t betray any emotion. “Two blocks that way, then right for another three blocks. The place is called Donaley’s. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” Luke told him. He could see the man staring at him thanks to [Peripheral Awareness] as he walked away. Probably the guy just had enough perception to notice Luke’s level. Or maybe even a rank 2 language skill wasn’t strong enough to convince anyone he was a native.

He found Donaley’s easily enough, and the random stranger was right, it was impossible to miss. The outside was painted neon blue, literally. It actually glowed, and the words ‘Donaley’s Alchemical Blacksmithing” was inscribed in what appeared to be glittering golden letters above the door. Luke didn’t know what that meant, but he was already there, so he went inside.

There was a… thing… in there. It looked human, kind of, except that it was at most two feet tall, proportioned like a bobblehead, and it zipped around the interior of the store through no discernable means that Luke could see. There wasn’t a bit of hair on its head, and it had overly large ears with a nose to match.

“Who-o-oh! What’s this, a customer?” the thing said, its voice buzzing in Luke’s ears as it flew a few circles around him. “We do love customers. Hey, Donaley! You got someone out here on the show floor!”

“Um.” Luke didn’t want to be rude, but this thing was way too far into his personal space and despite how fast it was, he was pretty sure he could tag it with a solid swat if he needed to. His fingers twitched, which was all it took for the buzzing thing to shoot off across the room, where it veered away from a wall mere fractions of a second before splattering itself across the wood paneling.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” a voice grumped out from a back room. A regular-sized, human-proportioned person kicked open the door and marched into the room. He scowled at the buzzing thing before turning to face Luke. “What can I help you with?”

“I need to replace- gah!” Luke was interrupted by the buzzing thing zooming back around him to do a few more laps, one of which probably would have tweaked his nose if he hadn’t leaned back out of the way. “I need to repl- do you mind!”

The buzzing thing landed on Luke’s head, prompting him to drop into a low crouch and snap one arm up to swat it away. It scooted through the air, ricocheted off a shield mounted on the far wall, and landed in a heap next to a display rack full of swords of all shapes and sizes.

“I, er, sorry,” Luke said. Rank 2 [Unarmed Martialist]was going to take a bit of getting used to. “I didn’t mean to just… you know… do that.”

“Hahahaha! Pips deserved it,” the human said. “Annoying little bastard. Don’t worry about him, he’s practically indestructible anyway. What were you saying?”

Luke shrugged off his pack and pulled it out from under his cloak. He flipped the top open and pulled out the two broken pieces of his mace. “Snapped this in half earlier today. I was hoping you might be able to fix it, or replace it.”

“Hmm, let me get a look at it. Bring it on over to the counter here, please.”

Luke joined the human at the counter and waited patiently while he looked it over. “Rough work, but good quality. Never seen steel quite like this. Old too. I’d rate it for about 25 strength, maybe 30 if you’re gentle. To do this to it though, I’m guessing you’re probably closer to 40 normally, maybe 60 with an active skill. There’s some stress cracks going through here that don’t line up with the big break in the middle.”

“That’s… surprisingly accurate,” Luke said. “I guess I’ve just outgrown it then.”

“A little bit, yeah. Not to worry though, I’ve got a few pieces that’ll handle a 40 strength all day long and take upwards of 75 in a pinch. That should last you a good long while, assuming you got the coin to pay for it. Something like that’s not cheap.”

“How expensive is ‘not cheap?’” Luke asked. “I do have kind of a budget here.”

Specifically, he’d counted them up and he had twenty gold coins left exactly, but he had no idea how much that was actually worth. He could only hope that was enough to replace his broken weapon and get a ride across the ocean. If he could only afford one, Luke wasn’t sure which he’d choose. He could double-down on [Unarmed Martialist], he supposed, but he wasn’t keen on losing his range or on splitting his knuckles every day.

“Depends on how you want it, but cheapest one I’ve got that’s rated for 40 strength is nine gold, and I want to be clear up front when I say that’s good Kingdom gold, not whatever they’ve minted where you’re from. If you got foreign money, I’ll have to bring out the scales and make sure it’s not alloyed.”

Luke produced a gold coin out of his money pouch and held it up. The shopkeeper glanced at it, nodded once, and said, “Good. That’ll make it easier. If you’ll follow me then.”

The show room, as Pips had called it, wasn’t all that big. It had a few racks with various types of weapons, all of which were what the shopkeeper described as display pieces. “You’re looking for another mace?” he asked. “I’ve got two that’ll work for you, but I’ve got four different kinds of swords, an axe or three, and a halberd that’d do some damage for someone with your strength.”

“Just maces, I think. I’ve got skills tied to the type.”

“Figured,” the shopkeeper said. “But it doesn’t hurt to ask. Okay, this wall here has the different kinds I make. On the left here are your choices, flanged, spiked, what have you. On the right is material. Everything from basic steel to living steel, stone wood, blood silver, even dead steel.”

The living steel looked the most like Luke’s own broken weapon, though there were some differences even he could see. It had a different texture and wasn’t colored quite the same, though he didn’t know what that meant. Stone wood looked exactly like he’d expect: a petrified log carved into the shape of a weapon. Blood silver, on the other hand, creeped him out. It was shiny, but with veins of color running through it that pulsed slightly.

At the far end, they had one single example of dead steel. It was a matte black piece, devoid of ornamentation. Wavy ridges ran up and down the haft, interspersed with small, thorny spikes. The head was a wider fluted bar with its own curving thorns, bigger than the ones on the bottom. The very air around the mace was chill, though the weapon itself was unnaturally warm. Just looking at it made Luke uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t quite put words to.

“Downright creepy, isn’t it?” Pips said, popping up next to Luke’s face.