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"You're all so damn late! Where were you?! And who's that new brat over there?"
Ambil reprimanded us as we finally were able to log-in back to Arcadia. We took longer than we imagined, but today was a surprisingly busy day.
"Hey, we have our own lives you know?" Rita asked angrily. "You can't just treat us like that when we saved your life yesterday."
"The new brat's name is Jenny! Yeah screw in-game names, just call me Jenny." The slime girl that was now accompanying us said. Jenny had finally gotten time to log-in again, and immediately rushed to the city.
It wasn't that far away because she was already in the Forest of Beginnings, and just rushed over here as fast as she could using her slimy powers.
Meanwhile, my daughter who has a friend that can literally summon a huge bird, has yet to arrive…
"Sorry for being late, Ambil, we were busy." I explained.
"W-Well, I guess I'll have to let this one slide for now… Your friends that stayed here helped a lot in making ingots and some basic molds and pieces of armor and weapons." Ambil said, crossing his arms.
"We did what we could, but learning the techniques from sir Ambil was an enlightening process." Acorn said with a smile.
"I didn't knew I had so much talent on this, I made a bunch of ingots and knives! Oh, some armor too, but it needs to be polished…" Brisingra sighed.
"I only made molds and cooled down things…" Nieve thought she had helped quite little.
"Well, I'm glad you guys worked hard while we weren't here." I said. "I'll finish off the things you made and enchant them afterwards."
"First of all, a lot happened yesterday… Let's talk for a bit." Ambil said, as he sat down.
"Y-Yeah, I guess we should adress everything that happened, it's not something easy to digest." I nodded.
We spent a couple of minutes addressing what had happened yesterday, about the cult that came for Ambil, the chimera that appeared, the monsters, and their true purpose. Ambil had taken the entire situation surprisingly well.
"I might not seem like it, especially coming from an old man living in a luxurious city like this, but I am already quite familiar with situations like these." He explained. "My family has always been protecting a very precious legacy from a god, there have been many cases when others have tried to find this Divine Forge, sometimes attempting to kidnap us, kill us, and threaten us to reveal where it is… Well, my family was really strong, in fact I'm the weakest of my entire family. My father used to beat thugs like these for breakfast."
"I see, so you know about the Cult then?" I wondered.
"I've heard rumors." Ambil said. "But I didn't knew they were still around after the Demon King of Miasma was slain… So you guys are here to find them too? It wasn't just for Hephaestus Inheritance?"
"Yeah, we're for a lot of motives actually." Mark said. "Sorry for not having told you beforehand, we didn't thought you would take it as easy."
"It's fine, based in your strength and what you can do, I was already guessing you were not normal. You might even be related with the events of the world and everything else…" Ambil said. "I've heard that the new Demon King is on the move too… This world, despite looking so peaceful sometimes, its really full of dangerous things."
"For now, we'll protect you while helping you, all while we investigate the Cult." I said. "Rest assured, nobody is going to harm you while we are around, or well, our friends are around too."
"Hah… I guess at the very least, I gotta repay you by working hard myself." Ambil laughed. "Alright, let's get to work. I'm not getting out of this bankruptcy by letting you guys do all the job!"
I could probably help him get out of it if I gave him some of my Gold, after all, I have two billion right now. But I'm sure he won't accept such a generous donation from the people that already saved his life once, he seems to be someone very prideful.
"Alright, so here's my plan." I said. "We'll not only craft high quality equipment and weapons, but we'll also work hard to improve the reputation of Ambil's forge. How much money do you need to pay?" I asked.
"It's mostly a bunch of accumulated taxes." He confessed. "I need around… a hundred million gold."
We could certainly pay that much with our money, but as I said before, he will probably not even accept it, so we need to do this the hard way anyways.
"A hundred million?!" Asked Acorn. "That's much more than I imagined… Ahh, how will we make so much by selling stuff? Nearby monsters barely drop a bit of money too…"
"Yeah, hunting monsters to earn some coins won't do, the amount is something that would take me decades to make by hunting creatures." Sighed Ambil. "The crafting part doesn't seem hard, but how are you planning to improve my forge's reputation?"
"Well, we first need to offer your products around, there are many adventurers I've seen with shabby equipment. How about we offer them new equipment, or even repairing their already existing one and improving it for cut prices?" I asked. "It would be a limited time event; a lot of people will learn about the quality of our products and your amazing abilities like this."
"Hmmm… That sounds risky, but you seem awfully confident about it…" Ambil said, rubbing his beard. "Fine… Where do we do this?"
"Right here, right now!" I smiled. "I'll bring some announcement papers and spread the word to the adventurer guild and other nearby guilds first, this'll also give us time to register in the Class Guilds we wanted to register into."
"Oh, good idea!" Ambil said. "I guess I'll prepare things while I stay here waiting then! Off you go!"
"Hey, wait, we are not leaving anybody to protect him?" Asked Acorn.
"Don't worry, my Familiars will be watching over inside his shadows." I smiled.
"Eh?! My shadows- AAAGH! W-What the…?!" Ambil noticed quite late that within his shadows, dozens of eyes were glaring at him… He was really spooked.
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