Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 505-506

Two had always considered himself something of a rather empathetic individual… but he preferred to keep a certain degree of professional boundary whenever possible with everyone he worked with.

Eleven had been a bit of an exception. There was something about the way that she literally didn’t care about anything that stood in the path between her and the promised lands of a good night — or day — of rest that had always resonated with him.

 It was endearing. At least, enough for him to get himself assigned as her personal handler. Eleven was probably one of Setting Sun’s most capable individuals. She was also the laziest. Actually getting her to do the jobs she’d been assigned was, in most cases, a losing battle. One had made practically zero headway with Eleven before Two had stepped in.

Providing her with incentives had eased things slightly. A fluffed bed here, a warmed pillow there, just little bits of motivation to keep her working. Small gestures. It really didn’t cost him much time or effort.

And, though he never would have admitted it, he’d grown to somewhat enjoy their game. He looked for new ways to motivate Eleven to do her work, and she found new ways to finish it faster so she could get back to sleep.

She was certainly an interesting individual.

But, at no point in Two’s life, could he have ever said that he understood Eleven. He was certainly in awe of her. At times, he questioned how a being such as herself could have been born as anything other than a tree or a sloth.

Two had simply never managed to truly comprehend what it was to be Eleven…

Until today.

Today, Two would have liked nothing more to bury his face in a heated pillow, turn the lights off, and vanish from the world until the sun demanded his attention once again. Everything finally made sense.

A snore cut through the room — and his thoughts.

Two’s eye twitched.

He looked down at the source of his newfound kinship with Eleven.

Lying before him upon on a bed of heated nails was Rodrick.

And the man was, as if to taunt him, was asleep.

“Wake up!” Two snapped, his exhaustion slipping out in anger as he grabbed Rodrick and gave the man a shake. “Would you stop doing that? This is meant to be training! Preparation! It does not work if you can’t be bothered to stay awake for it!”

Rodrick’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked up at Two. Then his eyes closed again.

“If you can’t be bothered to show me your real training, then you can’t blame me for relaxing. I have just as much respect for your time as you do for mine. What is this even meant to do? Tickle me?”

It took everything Two had not to grab at his hair. His eye still managed to twitch.

“What do you mean, what is it meant to do?” Two demanded. “Look where you are! How could you possibly not understand what is happening? You are lying on a bed of heated nails, spaced perfectly to ensure you can’t distribute your weight properly and avoid the discomfort! You should be—”

“Asleep,” Rodrick interjected. “Come on. Where did you get this from? The Basics of Torture? This is pathetic. I’m not a fool, Two. You’ve gone and wasted multiple days on what can only be called child’s play. I will not continue to indulge you for any longer. Stop trying to hide whatever your true preparation is. You told me to prepare myself. I am prepared. So show me.”

Two fought to draw slow, steady breaths. His eye was definitely twitching again. He gathered his emotions and forced himself to keep a flat expression on his features. The only one that controlled his emotions was him.

“Fine. Get up,” Two said. “We’ll go—”

“Finally,” Rodrick said with a bored sigh. He rolled off the bed of nails as if it were nothing more than goose feathers, rising right to his feet and sending a sharp look in Two’s direction. “Godspit, man. Took you long enough. I swear, if you take me to something pathetic like a sensory deprivation chamber, I’m throttling you. You’re not fooling anyone with these elementary strategies. Take me to the good stuff.”

Two ground to a halt. His molars ground together.

He had, in fact, been about to head for their sensory deprivation chamber.

Somebody, please, save me. Please. I want to sleep.

But no rescue was coming. The past few days had just gotten progressively worse. Things had started off solid enough. Rodrick had seemed enthusiastic to prepare himself to Sunset his class.

He’d removed his armor, setting it aside in his room and following Two to get started with things immediately. It should have been simple enough. But that was where everything went downhill. Not a single one of his training methods had worked.

Two had a specialized training plan. He’d used it many times before for new prospects. The focus was to build up resilience, both mental and physical. A series of increasingly difficult exercises that would systematically beat down upon someone’s mind and body to ensure they would be prepared to face the full might of a Leyline.

Two had started off with basic physical endurance tests. He’d pushed Rodrick to the limit, making the other man run laps around the room, forbidding him from utilizing any magic at all.

It was meant to go until Rodrick gave up.

Instead, Two got bored.

Rodrick had just. Kept. Going. He’d sprinted until he could do nothing but walk. He’d walked until he could do nothing but crawl.

Not once did he ask to stop.

It took nearly three hours before Two threw in the towel. Only then did Rodrick stand up as if nothing had happened, only to ask what the next task would be. The task hadn’t broken him at all. It looked more like Rodrick had just gone on a particularly difficult afternoon hike.

Two had moved on to the next test. There had been a few people that had come before Rodrick with extraordinary physical capabilities. He wouldn’t have been the first one to be particularly good at one method of resistance training.

But he was certainly the first to be good at all of them.

It hadn’t been long before Two had moved from every single technique he knew. They tried all the methods that had broken countless men before Rodrick. They all failed. None of them broke Rodrick.

If anything, Rodrick broke them.

But Two couldn’t allow himself to fail in his task. He had to find a way to ensure Rodrick was prepared. The Leyline was like no other power in this world. And Rodrick had yet to come under even the slightest amount of strain from any of the training methods Two knew.

So he’d had to come up with a few new ones. And then a few more. It hadn’t been long before he’d progressed to what could only be called straight up torture.

And at the end of every attempt, Rodrick had looked over to Two, a completely straight look on his face, and asked only a single question.

When are we going to start the real training?

Two’s eye twitched again as the memory drilled into his head like a rusty spike.

He hadn’t slept since the day Rodrick had shown up. The other man hadn’t let him. The idea of delaying his return to the Menagerie was the only thing that seemed to actually bother Rodrick. And, unfortunately, that meant it bothered Two as well.

I am so tired.

 It had been at least 5 days since Rodrick had arrived. Two was pretty sure he had started to hallucinate. Eleven had suspiciously failed to make an appearance. He got the feeling that she was in bed, but he didn’t dare go check on her.

If Two saw Eleven in that soft, gently warmed bed, he was liable to flop right into it alongside her.

He couldn’t allow for that. He had a duty. Rodrick had to be prepared. Two had promised Arwin. He’d promised One. No matter how hard this absolute madman was to break and reform, he would find a way.

A mantra echoed through Two’s head. It was one from an ancient script that One had given him, written by a sage of ages past as a guide to prepare oneself for the greatest of fights.

“Everyone has a loose brick,” Two whispered under his breath. “And when it’s pulled, the whole castle comes crumbling down. Find your brick. Pull it out. Rebuild.”

That was the only thing that kept him going. If he was lax in Rodrick’s training, that loose brick could spell the end for the man. The Leyline would use that weakness to completely crush his class, effectively destroying his future.

I will find that loose brick, and I will—

“And once your brick has been removed and your wall rebuilt… find the new brick,” Rodrick said from behind Two. “Then do it all again. And again. Until no brick that once stood still stands, and you are born anew. I remember that. Good book.”

 Two locked in place. Then, slowly, he turned toward Rodrick. “What?”

“The book you got that quote from,” Rodrick said. “I’ve read it. I do much prefer the sequel, though. The first book was more of a primer for the basics. The second was a little more hands on... wait. Please don’t tell me that’s what you’re using for our next training exercise. Those techniques are completely out of date. You’re definitely not going to trick me into thinking that those are these legendary preparations you’ve been talking about.”

“…there’s a sequel?” Two asked weakly.

“Six of them, actually,” Rodrick said. “But the last one is written by the guy that killed the original author. I don’t know if it counts. It was a decent enough read, though. I suppose a few of the techniques in that one might be worth trying out. I never got a chance to find enough Death Shadow venom to submerge my body into. The acids are supposed to go right through the flesh and target the mind directly. Perfect training for the psyche… but I’ve only gotten my hands on a vial or two to try out. Do you have a few vats of it somewhere?”

The manual that I’ve built my entire training program on… was just a primer?

Two’s back hit the wall with a thunk. Rodrick’s claim should have been impossible. He’d never heard anything about a sequel to the sage’s work, much less multiple. But there was no other explanation for this… monstrosity of a man.

The thoughts started to pour from Two’s brain like water from a draining tub. His mind just couldn’t handle anymore. He desperately needed sleep — and an escape from the madman he’d made the horrible mistake of trapping himself with.

He couldn’t think of any explanation for a level of physical and mental resilience like what Rodrick had.

No explanation but one.

There was something seriously, seriously wrong with every single member of the Menagerie.

Chapter 506

Rodrick was a very complicated man. But making armor for him was surprisingly straightforward. Arwin didn’t even have to think for more than a few minutes before he’d determined exactly what he wanted it to do.

A man like Rodrick valued utility more than anything else. He needed something multipurpose. Armor that provided good defense, intimidation when the time called for it, and a way to quickly remove or modify it.

Giving him a huge set of bulky armor that could tank nearly every blow wouldn’t be much use when the former paladin was dressed as someone else’s wife, kids, or assorted family member half the time.

That made planning it out surprisingly easy. It was to be a Soul Weapon with some pretty defined parameters. A small Core, powered by a connection to Rodrick, would be more than sufficient. That was a much easier task than creating a new body for the Devil’s Den — so he and Wallace got started right away.

“What do you think the best material for the base would be?” the dwarf asked, stroking his beard “We should avoid anything overly heavy. It won’t lend itself well to armor that can be easily removed.”

A hole opened in the wall of the Infernal Armory as a shelf bearing dozen different ingots slipped out into view. They were a mixture of payments that he’d received from various commissions in the relatively recent past and loot that Reya or Olive had found on their delivery trips.

“There’s been a lot of this stuff coming in recently,” Arwin replied. He went silent for a moment as his gaze passed over each of the metals.

He could hear their songs. All of them. It might have been overwhelming if each of them weren’t so different. He could make each one of them out perfectly. After his class had been Sunset, their song was so clear.

What would have taken him ten minutes — and probably a vision — per material now only took a few instants.

Arwin picked up a matte chunk of black metal. The material’s song rolled through his head the instant his fingers brushed across it, even louder than it had been a moment ago. Light and insistent, like a fluttering butterfly.

A fluttering metal butterfly.

 “This. It’ll work great. Its song fits.”

“Do you even know what that is?” Wallace asked, walking over to join Arwin.

“No,” Arwin said. He paused for a moment, then tilted his head to the side. “It’s light. Flexible. Eager to be made into something worthy, and it likes secrets. What could be better?”

“You can tell all of that?” Wallace asked in disbelief. “So quickly?”

Arwin nodded. Wallace held his hand out for the metal.

With a shrug, Arwin deposited it into the dwarf’s outstretched palm. Wallace held the metal up before the light coming from the black lava coursing through the lines in the Infernal Armory’s floor and squinted at it.

Then he raised it up to his mouth and gave it a quick bite.

“Nightiron,” Wallace said. He lowered the metal and looked back to Arwin. “You’re right. Just had to make sure. Lots of black metals seem similar from look alone. I’d have killed for your ability when I was a younger man. Took me years to learn the properties of metals.”

Arwin grinned sheepishly.

“Sorry?”

“Bah,” Wallace grumbled. He handed the Nightiron chunk back to Arwin. “This will work. You’re right. There should be a fair amount of it to work with as well. Nightiron’s been popping up around Milten a lot recently. Dungeons have been getting stronger as well.”

A small frown pulled at Arwin’s lips. The way dungeons worked was a bit of a mystery. It always had been, but they did know a few things about it. Dungeons were overlaps in the Mesh, layers of folded power that drew and created monsters within them.

In short… they were fancy magic croissants.

But when a bunch of new adventurers showed up somewhere, ripe with magical power and items, a few of them tended to die. And when enough of them died… that magic had to go somewhere.

After enough people died in the same area, that magic power would add into the mix. Dungeons got stronger. Too much of that could cause a Dungeon Break. Granted, with the number of people coming to Milten now, the chances of a dungeon filling up enough to burst free was incredibly unlikely.

But the dungeons were definitely getting stronger. And if they got stronger… more people would come. It was a constant cycle. One that normally meant the city near the dungeons was about to get a hell of a lot more money and patronage from traveling adventurers.

And one that means the Adventurer’s Guild is going to set up a proper presence here soon. Milten isn’t just some backwater town anymore.

Arwin shelved that thought. It wasn’t one he wanted to deal with at the moment. There were more pressing matters at hand — and ones that he could actually control.

“Do we have enough?” Arwin asked, looking up at the ceiling rather than at Wallace.

A coil of red mist twisted through the air above him.

“No,” the armory replied. “You’ll have to go get some more. We have enough for several pieces, but not an entire set.”

Arwin grunted. That was a bit of a pain, but a quick swing by a dungeon wouldn’t take him long. It would be faster than asking someone else to get it for him — and he’d been in the smithy for ages. “Fair enough. I’ll go grab that then. I’ll find Anna while I’m at it.”

“Why?” Wallace asked.

“I need something from Rodrick,” Arwin replied. “Can’t make Soul Weapons without something to connect it to him.”

“Ah,” Wallace said. “Right. Well… I’ll sit here. And do nothing. It’s fun, you know. You should try it sometime.”

Arwin snorted. “Sounds boring.”

Then he strode out of the smithy.

The midday sun bore down on him as he stepped out into the street. Arwin squinted, raising a hand over his head as he wove through the thick crowd that filled the Menagerie’s street.

It was hard to tell if there were more people here than normal or not because Arwin just couldn’t remember the last time the street hadn’t been packed while the Devil’s Den was open.

He moved quickly, making his way over to the entrance. Madiv stood watch over it. Anna’s healing table was set up outside with a sizable line of its own, but the woman wasn’t currently present.

She must have headed in for something.

Arwin nodded to Madiv as he slipped past the line and into the tavern.

The inside of the Devil’s Den was just as busy as the street. Even through the magical darkness, the clink of cutlery and conversation came from every direction. Shadow imps scurried across the ground bearing plates piled high with food and the smell of seared meat tickled Arwin’s nostrils tantalizingly.

He pushed his hunger down as he made his way toward the kitchen — only to spot Anna heading up the stairs to the second floor on his way.

Arwin’s eyes lit up and he quickly changed course, hurrying after Anna. He caught up to her right before she reached the door to her and Rodrick’s room.

“Anna!” Arwin called.

She glanced back at him, hand on the doorknob, and blinked. “Oh! You’re out of the smithy! How are things going?”

“Well enough,” Arwin said with a grin. “I’m actually making some armor for Rodrick right now. It’ll be a surprise when he gets back from Sunsetting his class. But it’s a Soul Weapon. I need—”

“Oh, a piece of him, right?” Anna asked. “Sure.”

Before Arwin could say anything else, she reached into the leather bag slung over her shoulder and pulled out a long, clear vial with several hairs inside it. She held the vial out to Arwin.

He stared at it.

“Is this…”

“Rodrick’s hair, yes.”

“Why do you—”

Anna arched an eyebrow.

“Right,” Arwin said, taking the vial from her gingerly. “Thanks.”

Anna just nodded. “Good luck. I’ve got to get some supplies and get back to work. There are a lot of people waiting on me.”

“Sure thing. Don’t let me hold you. Oh, wait. How long do we—”

“Two days, including today,” Anna said with a knowing grin. “Cutting the deadline close. Are you going to be done in time?”

Arwin thought for a moment. Then he nodded. “Yeah. I will. Good luck with the healing.”

“And you as well.”

He turned and headed back down the stairs as Anna slipped into her room. There was one more thing he had to do before heading out to collect the Nightiron. There was no way he was swinging by the Devil’s Den without at least saying hi to Lillia before he left.

Arwin found Lillia in the kitchen. That really wasn’t much of a surprise.

She was surrounded by a cloud of utensils, pans, and bowls that were ferrying a number of ingredients through the air like some strange parade — and she was already looking in his direction before the door had even closed behind him.

The flying utensils made a path through the kitchen for Arwin.

“I was wondering when you’d remember the rest of us existed,” Lillia said with a wry smile. Her nose scrunched. “And I’m sure you’ll remember a bath exists soon too.”

Arwin grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s been a long few days.”

She just rolled her eyes. “You’ve got a hug in the bank, but you’re not cashing it in until you’re less than 50% soot and dirt.”

“Good motivation,” Arwin said. “I’ll get on that tonight. I’ve just got to finish up some armor I’m making for Rodrick while the core bakes in your oven. Speaking of which…”

“It’s still there,” Lillia said. “I’m keeping an eye on it. Did you need me to do anything else with it?”

“Nope. Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Arwin said with a nod. “That’s all I needed, actually. I was just swinging by to check on you. I’ve got to go to a dungeon to find some Nightiron ore. It shouldn’t take long. I want to be done with all of this by tonight.”

“You better be.” Lillia gave him a glare that was probably only half-joking. “I haven’t seen you in days.”

“I will be,” Arwin promised.

“Good. Then — oh! Hold on.” Lillia flicked her hand. A bracelet slipped out of the clock on the kitchen wall and floated over to hover before Arwin. From the other side of the room, a tarp rose up to enclose a covered plate, tying itself into a knot before flying over to join the bracelet in floating before Arwin. It was Lillia’s turn to give him a sheepish grin. “Could you take this? Both Reya and Olive are out, and I don’t know if they’ll make it back in time to deliver it.”

Arwin blinked. Then he shrugged.

“Yeah. Sure, why not. Might be fun.”

“Thanks, Arwin,” Lillia smiled. She took a step toward him. Then her nose scrunched. “Two hugs. And remember — thirty minutes. There are around 25 left, so you’ll have to be fast.”

“Noted,” Arwin said, plucking the bracelet from the air and slipping it over his wrist. “I’ll be back tonight.”

And then he was off.

A delivery, huh? Haven’t done one of these myself yet. Olive and Reya have been handling all of them.

At this point, people probably expect one of them to show up. I kind of want to see the look on their faces when I pop up instead.

This should be interesting.