The old man turned back to his work, though the rhythm had changed—slower now, measured, like he was listening more than forging.
Daruis didn't seem to mind the lack of reaction. If anything, he settled in further, resting a hand lightly against the edge of the workbench as if the conversation had already been accepted.
"I'm Daruis by the way, I represent a house," he began, tone easy, almost conversational. "Not one you'd know. They keep their dealings… quiet. Mining contracts, mostly. Extraction, refinement, distribution."
The hammer struck again twice, with no response from the old man.
Daruis glanced at the glowing metal, then back at the old man. "They've been expanding recently. New ore veins discovery, better yields. The kind of supply that doesn't run dry after a season."
Still nothing.
A faint smile tugged at his mouth, like he'd expected that.
"Access to materials like that changes things," he continued, brushing his fingers idly along the grain of the table. "Consistency. Quality. You stop worrying about what you don't have and start focusing on what you can actually make."
The old man finally dipped the blade into water. Steam hissed upward, thick and brief.
He didn't look at Daruis. "Lot of words," he said flatly. "None of them mean anything yet."
Daruis let out a quiet breath, something between a chuckle and an acknowledgment. "Fair," he said.
A pause stretched between them—not awkward, just… waiting. Then Daruis reached into his coat. The movement was slow. Deliberate, with not caution—just unhurried, like he had no reason to be.
He set something down on the bench. A dull, solid weight against wood. "Then let's skip the words."
The old man's eyes flicked to it despite himself. A small ingot with no impurities along the edge, not even cooling marks. The surface held a faint, uniform sheen that didn't belong to anything made in a roadside refinery.
Daruis tapped it lightly with a finger. "Refined, and the best yet" he said.
The old man didn't touch it yet because he didn't need to. He'd seen enough metal in his life to recognize when something wasn't ordinary.
"Its a sample, free of charge of course" Daruis added, almost as an afterthought.
That made the old man look at him again. Really look this time. "You just hand those out to anyone?" he asked, voice quieter now. Daruis shrugged than spoke
"Not anyone, just the ones willing to work with me."
The forge crackled softly behind them. Then the old man reached out and picked up the ingot. His thumb pressed along the edge a faint pulse of energy spread from his hand, radiating through the ingot. It was a standard technique, something every real blacksmith learned early on whenever inspecting a material
The reading came back almost instantly. He frowned, then checked again, but the results stayed the same. For a moment, he just looked at it.
Not because he didn't understand what it meant, but because it didn't make sense. That level of refinement wasn't something you stumbled into. It required control, process, consistency—things most operations struggled to maintain even at scale.
'Nexus, you got any idea what he just did?' Daruis thought he tried his best to look unintrigued. "A skill of sorts used to check purity and maybe even elements of a material. Every blacksmith worth anything has some version of it."
'Danm, so scaming or selling a fake in this world wont slide, they use magic to authenticate things too'
"Forty percent purity is the minimum I work with. Anything below that isn't worth the time, but this is…" he paused briefly, choosing the word carefully, "…a clean fuckin 90% kid."
That was as much as he was willing to say out loud. But the implication was there.
If this wasn't a lie—Then whoever controlled this supply wasn't small-time.
"I'll make it worth your time. I'm-my house is willing to trade one silver per ingot. I can supply you a hundred to kick start things."
He didn't answer right away, because there was no reason to rush into something that didn't make sense. Even low-grade iron moved for three silver at best, and that was material that still needed work. What sat on his anvil now was far cleaner than anything he'd handled in weeks, maybe months.
At this level, it could sell for far more. So either the boy didn't understand the value of what he had—Or he understood it perfectly.
"You're undercutting yourself, you do know that right boy?" the old man said, watching him carefully.
"First deals aren't about profit," Daruis replied. "They're about building trust, and patience my friend, and I'm convinced we could go a long way."
That answer sat better than the offer.
The old man exhaled quietly, turning the ingot once more in his hand. There were no signs of rushed refinement or uneven processing.Whatever operation this came from, it wasn't amateur.
"How much can you actually move?" he asked.
"Enough to supply demand," Daruis said without overcommitting, a calculated answer that permitted control without backing down.
The old man gave a short nod. Pressing further wouldn't get him anything useful, and the sample already told him what mattered.
"One-fifty," he said. "If the rest matches this...quality."
Darrius agreed without hesitation.
That settled it. "Bring it in batches," the old man added. "I won't take all of it blind."
Darrius only smirked, he wouldn't bother with pushback or a attempt to renegotiate. The old man set the ingot down on the anvil and picked up his hammer again, though his attention stayed split.
"Where are you based?" he asked, more out of habit than expectation.
"We are distributed, there's no singular production hub" Daruis replied, and that was all he offered. Fortunately the blacksmith didn't pursue it.
"Then don't take too long, I need to fulfil many orders and requests, and you just might be my life line" he said.
Daruis stepped away from the forge, as but the blacksmith watched long enough to see the pattern repeat.
The boy approached other smiths the same way—quietly, without trying to draw a crowd. A few words, then a sample passed across, followed by the same shift in posture once the metal was examined properly.
One of the younger smiths called out after him, holding up an ingot of his own.
"Old man, what'd he give you?"
"Something worth looking at," he replied, not elaborating. That was enough to keep the question alive. Further down the row, another smith pressed harder.
"What house are you with?" he asked. "No one moves metal like this without backing."
Darrius didn't avoid the question outright, but he never gave a name either. He redirected just enough to keep the conversation moving while leaving nothing solid behind.
By the time Darrius had spoken to a handful of smiths, the atmosphere had shifted. Conversations slowed, glances followed him, and a few more people than usual were paying attention to transactions that had nothing to do with them.
Word wasn't spreading loudly, but it was spreading. The guards began to take notice not long after. Nothing direct, just a subtle change in how they watched the market, their attention lingering on the boy a second longer than before as he moved between stalls.
Daruis saw it and understood what it meant.
He didn't rush, and he didn't linger either. He simply let the flow of the market carry him away, stepping out of the smithing row and disappearing into the movement of people before anyone had reason to stop him.
By the time a guard shifted position with intent, there was no one left to question. The old man looked down at the ingot resting on his anvil, running his thumb across its surface again as if the result might change.
But it simply didn't.
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Currency System of the Krijdex Empire
The empire uses a three-tier coin system:
1. Copper Coins (Lowest)
Used for daily small purchases.
2. Silver Coins (Standard Currency)
Most common for trade, wages, and services.
3. Gold Coins (High Value)
Used for:
large transactions military funding contracts (like Heroes)
Conversion Rates
1 Gold = 100 Silver1 Silver = 100 Copper
So:
1 Gold = 10,000 Copper
Purchasing Power
Copper Level (Common Life)
1 Copper → loaf of bread
3–5 Copper → simple meal
10 Copper → cheap ale + food
Silver Level (Working Class)
1 Silver → good meal at a tavern
5 Silver → night at a decent inn
20–30 Silver → basic clothing
50 Silver → simple tools
Gold Level (Wealth / Power)
1 Gold → a month's living expenses (modest)
5–10 Gold → Estate
20–50 Gold → high-quality weapon
100+ Gold → land, contracts, bribes