The rhythm of the forge was a heavy, intoxicating melody that had begun to drown out the misery of Winston.
For Arthur, the repetitive strikes of the hammer were more than just labor; they were a meditative dance of heat and pressure.
But in a village where hope was a taxed commodity, the sound of a roaring furnace was as loud as a herald's trumpet.
The intrusion came not with a knock, but with the splintering of wood. The heavy oak door of the smithy kicked open, bouncing off the stone wall with a violent crash.
A group of men sauntered in, their leather armor stained with dried mud and the grease of cheap tavern meals.
These weren't soldiers; they were the "Winston Outlaws"—hired thugs on the Mero Merchant Company's payroll, used to handle the dirty work that Baron Lowe's official guards couldn't be bothered with.
At their lead stood a man who looked entirely out of place among the muscle-bound brutes. He was lean, dressed in a sharp, slate-grey doublet with a monocle perched over a cold, calculating eye.
This was Rabbit, the Chief Advisor of the Mero Company and a man whose mind functioned like a ledger made of ice.
"Stop," Rabbit said. The word wasn't loud, but it carried the weight of a death sentence.
Arthur's hammer hovered inches above a white-hot gauntlet plate. His muscles were coiled, his grip tightening on the handle until his knuckles turned white.
His Persistence stat flared, a dark, suffocating pressure beginning to leak from his frame. One swing—just one—and he could cave in the chest of the nearest outlaw.
Before Arthur could move, a shaking hand gripped his wrist. It was Khan. The old man's face was pale, his eyes wide with a frantic, pleading desperation. He gave Arthur a sharp, infinitesimal shake of the head.
"Please!" Khan cried out, dropping to his knees before Rabbit. The transition was so sudden it made Arthur's stomach churn. "Sir Rabbit, please! We meant no harm! No business is being conducted here!"
Rabbit adjusted his glasses, looking around the restored smithy with a sneer. "The smoke from your chimney can be seen from the square, Khan. Why is the anvil ringing?"
"I am dying, Excellency!" Khan begged, his voice cracking with a feigned, drunken frailty. "This smithy... it will be yours in four months. The deed is as good as signed. But please, let me pass on the last of my family's secrets. This boy... he is my distant nephew. Let me teach him the basics of the craft so he might find work as a common laborer when I am gone. Have mercy on a man who has nothing left but his legacy."
Arthur stood in the shadows, his head bowed, forced to endure the mockery of the outlaws.
"Look at the 'Nephew'!" one of the thugs laughed, poking Arthur's shoulder with the butt of a spear. "He's shaking! Probably never seen a real man before."
"He looks like a girl," another jeered, spitting on the floor near Arthur's boots. "Hey, pretty boy, can you even lift that hammer, or do you just use it to crack nuts?"
Arthur's blood was boiling. His vision pulsed red as the system interface flickered with a warning:
[Warning: Extreme emotional stress detected.]
He could end them. In his inventory sat the Ideal Longsword, a Unique-grade weapon that would slice through their Level 30 leather armor like a hot wire through snow. He could slaughter everyone in the room before Rabbit could even blink.
But he didn't.
'Not yet,' Arthur thought, his teeth gritted so hard they ached. 'If I kill them now, Baron Lowe will declare a state of emergency. Winston will be locked down. Huroi...'
He thought of Huroi, the Great Orator. In the original timeline, Huroi would be imprisoned in the Baron's dungeon for his betrayal to the Mero Company.
It was Huroi's rescue that would eventually unite the village and trigger the quest that would solidify Grid's reputation.
RIf Arthur changed the script now—the butterfly would flapped his wings too soon—Huroi's quest might never trigger.
Arthur needed Huroi. He needed the world's number one orator to be the voice of his future empire.
For that, he would swallow his pride. He would let these "trash" level NPCs mock him.
Rabbit walked around the forge, his gloved hand trailing over the anvil. He paused by the cooling vat, his eyes lingering on the quality of the charcoal.
"Teaching, you say?" Rabbit turned back to Khan, his expression unreadable. "Fine. The Mero Company is not without a heart. You may continue to 'instruct' your nephew. But listen well, old man."
Rabbit leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper that carried through the silent shop.
"No repair work for the villagers. No selling of nails, let alone blades. If we find a single item from this forge in the hands of a Winston citizen, I will burn this shop to the ground with you and the boy locked inside. You are a teacher now, Khan. Nothing more."
"Yes, Excellency! Thank you!" Khan sobbed, pressing his face toward the floor.
"Let's go," Rabbit signaled the outlaws. "We have more land to seize. Leave the ghosts to their play."
As the thugs walked out, the last one deliberately kicked over a bucket of quenching oil, watching it spill across the floor with a malicious grin. "Clean that up, nephew. It's good practice for a servant."
The moment the door shut and the sound of their laughter faded down the alley, the atmosphere in the smithy changed. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees.
Arthur looked at the spilled oil. He looked at Khan, who was still trembling on the floor, not from fear, but from the sheer exertion of the act.
"Arthur... I'm sorry," Khan whispered, his voice returning to its normal, steady tone. "To see you insulted by those... those curs..."
"It's fine, Khan," Arthur said. His voice was terrifyingly calm. He picked up the hammer, his grip cracking the wooden handle. "They think they've bought time. They think they've asserted control."
Arthur walked to the furnace and threw a handful of high-grade coal into the flames. The fire roared, casting long, demonic shadows against the walls.
"They told me not to sell," Arthur said, looking at the tarpaulin-covered crate of Epic and Rare swords. "They told me not to repair. They didn't say anything about creating."
Arthur turned to Khan, his eyes burning with a light that made the old master take a step back.
"We won't sell to the villagers, Khan. We won't sell to the merchants. We're going to build something they can't tax. Something they can't even touch."
"Khan, show me the blueprints for the Full Plate Armor," Arthur commanded. "I want to know every joint, every rivet, every weakness."
Arthur picked up a fresh bar of Black Iron. He didn't care about his level anymore. He didn't care about the mockery. He would channel every ounce of his rage into the steel.
The hammer fell.
Ttang!
It was the loudest strike yet. It wasn't a sound of labor; it was the first beat of a war drum.
'Laugh while you can, Rabbit,' Arthur thought, the sparks flying like tiny stars around his face. 'When the time comes and the steel bites, you'll realize that the 'ghost' you left in this smithy was actually the god of your destruction.'
Arthur has endured the humiliation to preserve the timeline for Huroi and he had made the right choice as later Huroi would become Arthur's sharpest sword who won battles with sheer trash talking.