Elrick came down the mountain at dusk. His packhorse was full of copper ore, and he’d brought three of the turtle goblins with him. He’d ordered the other two–there were five in total this time–to stay behind and keep mining. He doubted they’d actually work independently, but it was worth a shot. He planned to go back up the mountain in the morning and mine more, if they had anything at all ready for him, it would mean he could probably squeeze in more loads per day.

His Mining skill had increased by 8.4 after leaving the mine. It was now 58.6. At this rate it would become his strongest skill by the time he’d mined enough ingots to sell to the coppersmith.

The guards didn’t just stop him this time. They held their spears out and nearly impaled his goblins. His goblins hissed, but he ordered them back.

“They’re obedient,” Elrick said.

“They can’t enter the camp.”

“I’ll give you their weapons.”

“No goblins may go near the Imperial mine!” a guard shouted, this time bringing his spear tip toward Elrick. “Lest it become the second goblin mine!”

He took the goblins back. Almost half a mile. He didn’t want to risk that they’d creep into the camp and get killed, which would likely get Elrick killed too since the guards now knew they were his.

“Wait here,” Elrick ordered the goblin pack.

Your skill in Monster Taming has increased by 0.4, it is now 29.2.

They waited long enough that he lost sight of them. It was dark now. He didn’t know if they’d actually stay there, or if they’d wander back to their mine. As long as they didn’t wander into the guards, he’d be happy.

He came back into the camp alone, handing his sword over to the guards. They reluctantly let him in.

His packhorse was exhausted, and as soon as he removed the packs from it, it plopped down to sleep even before he unloaded the ore. Even with torches around the camp and mine entrance, and with some miners and vendors gathering round to drink, it was too dark and Elrick was too tired to do anything more until morning.

He took off his armor and passed out beside his horse.

He woke up to the smell of molten metal and the pleasing sound of smiths’ hammers clinking away. His horse was standing up and looking at him with pleading eyes. He got her an apple and some water, then put the sacks back on her to lead her to one of the forges.

He watched another miner leisurely dropping tin ingots into molten copper. He stirred it all up with a big metal pole. There were five forges, all connected to a massive bellows system. The bellows were pumped by men with wirey frames. They weighed almost nothing, but what weight they did have was all lithe and coarse muscle coiled around their tiny arms and legs.

“Are those slaves?” Elrick asked a man gnawing on a piece of rabbit beside him.

“Yup,” he said, fat dripping down his stubble.

Elrick hadn’t considered that slavery might be accepted here. He eyed the slaves, some of them were light-skinned, others dark-skinned.

“How did they become slaves?” he asked.

The man shrugged and took a huge bite of rabbit. He only talked when his mouth was full. “Probably like most slaves. They died and wanted to get resed but couldn’t afford it. Figured it was better to be a slave than to be a ghost. Some people just can’t let go.”

“You can get resurrected?” Elrick asked. “Even if you die?”

The man turned to him. He looked Elrick up and down. The man spoke for the first time without stuffing his face first. “You can’t afford it. You’d end up on the bellows like them! Better to stay dead, if you ask me!”

He pointed at the slaves, then took a big bite and wandered off, throwing a bone over his shoulder.

So death wasn’t permanent, but getting resurrected was no trivial matter. He had even more reason to get as much money as he could as fast as he could. Yulfria had said her guild had “insurance,” and he now understood why she’d wanted him to kill her. Her resurrection was insured, and she’d have simply been brought back to life. He really hadn’t saved her at all.

Just as he brought his packhorse up to the forge, a man grabbed his wrist. Elrick pulled away and reached for his sword, but it wasn’t there. He’d given it to the guards.

“Relax,” the man said, flashing a near toothless smile. “Slick Willy has a deal for you.”

“Who is Slick Willy?” Elrick asked.

“Meee,” he said, pointing at his chest. “These fancy guild furnaces are going to take a big cut of your haul. Slick Willy’s furnace will only take 25%.”

“Sounds too good to be true.”

“I don’t have any slaves,” he said, pointing at the slaves pumping the bellows. “And like I said, these forges are fancy. Mine is barebones. Kind of like your armor, hee hee.” He poked Elrick’s bone armor. His laugh wheezed like an old, sick horse’s whinny.

Elrick sighed. “So I have to pump the bellows myself, but I get to keep 25% extra for my troubles?”

Slick Willy nodded enthusiastically. “Come on, I’ll show you!”

Elrick worried he was wasting his time, but he did follow. If he got to keep 25% more of his haul each trip, the savings would add up quickly. It would be more work, but as long as it didn’t cost him 25% more time, it would be more efficient. The extra work might make his Mining skill go up faster too.

Slick Willy led him down the path for what felt like just over thirty minutes, and they stopped at a big hole in the ground. There was another man squatting over the hole. He had long legs and a longer beard, but a huge gut that the beard hung over.

“That’s my ‘prentice Old Beardo,” Slick Willy said, “Even though he’s older than me, I’m the boss.”

Old Beardo grunted at Elrick, then poked a stick into the hole. It was full of white-hot, smoking charcoal. The hole was covered in ceramic walls, and there was ceramic piping which led into the dirt. The piping popped out the other end and connected to a bellows. It was a forge that was just dug into the ground and lined with sun-hardened mud. Like Slick Willy had said: It wasn’t anything fancy.

“Dump your ore in there,” Willy said, pointing.

Elrick led his packhorse to the hole, but his chest tightened. He was outnumbered now, even if neither of these two looked particularly strong or ready to fight. What if they just decided to keep everything? He knew it was too late to turn back now. He’d have to risk it. He didn’t see a weapon on either of them. Old Beardo was just wearing a loincloth, so the most he could conceal would be a small dagger. Unless he had a big sword hidden in his beard, or unless he knew magic.

Old Beardo helped him open the saddlebags and dump the ore into the flaming coals. Once it was all dumped out, Old Beardo grabbed a big rectangular wooden cover made from dozens of wood planks strapped together. He tossed it over the forge, then gestured toward the bellows.

Slick Willy was already snoozing against a tree stump.

Elrick got to work pumping the bellows. His arms were tired after only a few minutes. “How long should I pump?”

“The whole time,” Old Beardo grunted.

“And how long is that?” he asked.

Old Beardo squinted up into the sky. The sun was barely visible behind the grey clouds, but Old Beardo found it, then pointed toward it. “When the sun gets here,” he said, tracing his finger slowly along, until he was pointing straight up.

So Noon? That would be at least three hours. Shit.

Sweat dripped down Elrick’s face in sheets. His arms were on fire. But he kept pumping. He pumped and he pumped, and his Mining skill increased. He knew he needed to build muscle, but it was seeing his skill increase that kept him going. Each time he thought of giving up, he just thought of how much skill gain he’d miss out on if he stopped. Each time his arms begged him to quit, he thought of the skill–and money–that doing things the hard way would get him.

“I reckon you can stop,” Old Beardo finally said.

Elrick kept pumping. Had he really heard that?

“Unless you just like jacking the bellows, heh.” Old Beardo gave him a wink.

Elrick stopped. He collapsed. He was aware of every muscle and vein in his arms and back and chest. They all hurt.

“Drink this,” Old Beardo said, handing him a glass vial with a cork in it. It was filled with a deep red liquid that made Elrick think of blood. Though the consistency and thickness was wrong for blood.

“What is it?” Elrick asked.

Slick Willy answered without taking his hat off his face. “Old Beardo’s an alchemist, you can trust him.”

Elrick focused on Old Beardo and the vial. His Alchemy skill was almost 70. That wasn’t incredibly high, but it was a good chunk higher than any of Elrick’s skills.

He uncorked the bottle and took a sip. It tasted like grass soaked in gasoline. He gagged.

“You gotta drink it all down,” Old Beardo said. “Come on now.”

Elrick had the vial halfway handed back to Old Beardo when he felt the rush of relief pulse through his body. The pain melted away from his arms, and his head started to vibrate the exhaustion away.

He pulled the vial back and chugged the rest down, holding his nose.

“Refresh potion,” Old Beardo said. “Just don’t drink too many of those things.”

“What’s the downside?” Elrick asked, wishing he had another.

Old Beardo shrugged. “It catches up to you.”

Knowing he wouldn’t get a more exact answer, he just corked and handed the empty vial back. He’d have to see if he could buy some more of these potions. He was planning to work hard mining over the next few days, and these could come in handy.

Pumping the bellows for several hours had increased Elrick’s mining skill from 58.6 to 59.4. Even though it was using up a lot more time, the skill gains made the time worth it. And if he could take the edge off the exhaustion with refresh potions, then that was even better.

“Check the forge,” Slick Willy grunted from the tree.

Old Beardo and Elrick pulled the wooden cover off the forge. All of the ore was molten now. Slick Willy got up and fetched a big copper pot and spoon from his tent. It was covered in a thick green patina, so it must have been quite old. He walked lazily over, handing the big spoon to Elrick.

The pot was full of water.

“Spoon the copper into the water,” Willy said.

The spoon was huge. A spoonful would ladle enough soup to feed two men. He dumped spoonful after spoonful of molten copper into the water. It sizzled, sparked, and smoked each time.

“Hold,” Willy said.

“I’m not even a quarter of the way done,” Elrick said.

“Water ain’t cold no more,” Willy said. “We gotta sift what we got, then fetch more water from the stream.”

They did as Willy said. It took over an hour and multiple trips back and forth from the stream to work through all the ore, but when they were done they had picked out enough mostly pure copper ore to fill up the entire ladle. Well, almost fill it up.

Heating the raw ore at such a high temperature had burned off most of the impurities, and what had started off as two big saddlebags full of heavy rocks had become a much smaller quantity of refined copper.

“You just gonna carry it around like this?” Willy asked.

Elrick shook his head and fumbled through the saddlebags for his ingot mold. He got it out and grinned.

“Fancy,” Old Beardo said, probably sarcastically.

“Alright,” Willy said, “Get some more coal in the pit. Pump the bellows again.”

Elrick was worried he’d be charged for the coal, but he assumed that was part of why he’d have to give up 25% of his haul.

“You got enough copper for three ingots here,” Willy said. “Hard to give me 25% of that. So here’s the deal.”

Willy disappeared into his tent, and he came out with a leather bag. “I got tin here. It’s yours to use if you give me one of them ingots. So that’s 33% instead of 25%.”

“You’re jacking up the price at the last minute?” Elrick dug his nails into his calloused palms.

Slick Willy shrugged. “The tin mine is 40 stadia past the goblin mine. Would probably take you most of the day to get there and back. The price for my forge is still 25%, the tin just costs more on top of that. Got it?”

Elrick was tempted to turn him down, hold onto his chunks of copper, and just make the ingots later after getting the tin. The price seemed fair though, and as much as he hated giving up a half ingot, he knew it was ultimately more efficient than making runs to the tin mine or using the Guild Mine. If he were mining on a larger scale and needed more than 20 total ingots, then it would make sense to get his own supply of tin, but that would have to wait. He needed to get money in hand now, before he ran out of food.

His mining skill was high enough that he knew he should heat the refined copper first. It had a higher melting point, and once it was molten, he could simply dump in the small quantity of tin which would melt instantly into the hotter copper. Tin and copper together made bronze.

Old Beardo weighed out the copper and tin. Slick Willy brought out his crucible and filled it with the copper. They buried the crucible almost entirely in the hole in the ground that was the forge. Once Elrick had stoked the flames enough, Willy removed the cover, and they checked to make sure it had melted fully.

Elrick added the tin, which sparked and melted in at once.

He laid out his ingot mold, realizing he really needed more than one.

He used Willy’s tongs to lift the crucible, and carefully he started to pour. He missed at first, and a chunk of bronze dripped over the edge of the mold. He corrected, then began pouring to fill the mold. With the mold filled, he carefully placed the crucible back into the forge.

“Thought you knew what you were doing,” Old Beardo said. “You just got one ingot mold?”

“If I knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t be using your forge,” Elrick said.

Old Beardo laughed. “Good point.”

While waiting for the ingot to cool, Elrick kept the bellows going. His arms were hurting again already, though not nearly as bad as before. When the ingot cooled, he dumped it out and quenched it in the water pot. After the ingot was cool, he turned it upside down and bashed it with the tongs to knock it loose into the dirt.

Before the molten bronze could cool too much, he poured the next ingot into the mold, this time not spilling anything.

When all three ingots were done, Elrick spent several minutes reheating the first one and cutting off the spillage, then re-quenching it.

He eyed the ingots he’d made. All of that mining, and all of these hours pumping and slaving away for these three little ingots. It was frustrating that so much of the raw material seemingly went to waste, but it was satisfying to see all of his hard work packed into such a tiny little--and much more portable--package.

Elrick handed one of the finished bronze ingots to Willy. “Thank you, I’ll be back again tomorrow.”

“Ain’t you gonna polish ‘er up for me?”

Elrick glared at him, and Willy took it with a smile. “Well, I reckon I can sand ‘er down tonight meself.”