Once the group arrived at the city of wonders called Golden City, Emery and his friend was filled with a sense of awe seeing the crowd of people, flying boats, as well as the countless mighty buildings that stretched to the sky.
Emery had been in this place once, and it seemed like the Zaieueo acolytes as well based on their reaction or maybe they had something similar to their world.
The last time Emery had been here, it was with the company of Master Grom, hence, he still hadn't had the chance yet to fully explore this place. In fact, when he had been walking in this strange city, he got lost and with the help of a good samaritan acolyte, he was able to get back home.
This time, the three weird acolytes led the way, they didn't go to the place where the flying boats were, rather, the Zaiueo acolytes guided them to a place where there were other people waiting on a line.
Emery and his friends noticed a large yellow carriage stopped in front of them. The people climbed up the door that hissed open, the three acolytes followed them and although hesitant, Emery and his four friends went inside after.
The inside of the yellow carriage was filled with people, sitting on both sides in groups of three each. Once they had found empty seats and sat themselves, the yellow carriage groaned as it moved forward.
It was a surreal experience, except for the acolytes from Zaieuo, Emery, Chumo, Julian, Thrax and Klea were wondering how this carriage moved without horses or anything pulling it from the front.
Zuna, sitting in the aisle chair, leaned over and explained to them that this carriage was called a bus. It drove around the city in a specific route wherein one of its stops was the Blacksmith Institute. Their destination would take a couple of minutes, so, Zuna mentioned they better enjoy themselves as well as lower their guards since this carriage was safe.
The five youths understood and did what Zuna had asked. Sitting by the window, Klea, who was beside Emery and Chumo on the aisle seat, beamed as she enjoyed the wondrous locations of the Golden City. They passed numerous locations, one of which was like a plaza where lots of people were walking around an erect smaller version of the purple building, where the Supreme Magus had first greeted them, surrounded by groomed trees with its lawn filled with cut grass. They enjoyed the rest of the ride.
After 15 minutes or so, the yellow carriage went into a tunnel and they felt themselves descended. It continued further deep down and fortunately, the area was lit by lamps or torches providing lighting inside the tunnel. Eventually, they saw the end of the tunnel. It was getting brighter and brighter with orange lights from a distance, and when they came out, a whole other city greeted them!
The sun's light didn't reach this place but the whole place was illuminated by the orange fire-like lights from the distance inside the countless buildings as well as the shining white lights coming from the rock-ceiling. This place seemed to be as huge as the city above.
Finally, the carriage stopped in front of a building that had a great signage of a hammer and anvil. The group of eight got off and there were also lots of people moving about in this place, possibly equal to the number of people above.
As they all went inside, everyone from the group started sweating. The heat in this place seemed to pass through the black uniforms they had. The whole place seemed to be made out of metal, Emery couldn't find one spot where stone was used to create this place. Finding the reception desk, the receptionist gestured to the left where the person they were looking for was stationed.
It looked like they had arrived in the right place since the searing sensation seemed to permeate even stronger to their skin and the bashing of a hammer against the anvil reverberated to their bones. There they found a workshop full of humans, some dwarves, and when they asked for the person, they were guided to the Master Blacksmith named Tahoggum Oreheart.
"You lot from the hub, aren't you? Aye've been expecting you acolytes. Come 'ere, let me see it," gestured the small man at the desk, which was a bit lower than him. This dwarf was about the same height as Master Grom but with his beard was shorter. In fact, some parts of Master Tahoggum's beard seemed to have been burnt.
Emery stepped forward first and took out the silvery metal from, which still had some black rocks around it. The rest followed suit.
Master Tahoggum grunted. He took out a hammer and smashed the mineral Emery and his friends had presented! At first they thought he was ill-tempered, what kind of a person would smash something out of the blue, especially something that they had worked on for almost a full day. But then, they witnessed why the dwarf had done that. The remaining bits of the black rock still attached to the silvery substance of titanium all crumbled and became dust, the only thing left was the mineral titanium itself.
The dwarf scooped it with his rough and burnt-looking hand into a container and placed it on a scale that had numbers on it. "Let me see… Ahh… yes… One, two, eight tons of titanium as requested. And most of them are high quality too! Good, good!"
Not far from them was a flying cube. The dwarf raised his hand and pressed it. Suddenly, the symbol on everyone's hand issued a notification.
[200 contribution points have been received from the task "Gathering Minerals"]
[Task completed]
"Thank you," said Emery with a respectful bow. They were about to leave so that they could rest their weary bones and come back here tomorrow to build a relationship with the dwarf, however, the dwarf seemed not keen on letting them leave simply for he offered the same task.
This time, they would gather twice the amount of what they had gathered for a bit higher reward of contribution points. Master Tahoggum mentioned he was extremely pleased about the quality they had given him and didn't have a problem providing more contribution points as compensation.
[Gathering mineral]
[Contribution point 500]
All of them looked at each other, hesitant. Aside from wanting to rest and the reasoning of them taking this in the first place was to test their synergy within themselves for the upcoming Magus Games, they were about to reject the offer. However, the dwarf sweetened the deal by offering them a tier 2 weapon of their choice as a bonus and giving it in advance.
Now, it had become more favorable; it was an interesting offer into which they finally agreed to accept. The time limit would be for three days. Since they were confident with Emery's gathering speed and would be better prepared once they returned, they weren't worried too much if they rested and burned half a day or so.
The dwarf then led the eight acolytes into another room where there were thousands of weapons and armors placed on racks.
Emery grabbed the nearest sword from a rack that had a label of tier 2 and inspected it.
[Long sword - tier 2]
[Length 1.2 meter , weight 1.3 kilogram]
[Increase sharpness]
The description somewhat made Emery confused. Increased sharpness? To make sure he wasn't seeing things, he grabbed another and read it.
[Broad sword - tier 2]
[Length 1.1 meter, weight 2.4 kilogram]
[Increase strength]
From this, he inferred that all tier 2 weapons had some kind of spell that made the weapon or wielder receive a little increase in their abilities.
This made Emery remember the old knight for some reason. Shaking his thoughts away from that man, Emery then tried out the swords, which he felt would be suitable for him. He was looking for a sword that wasn't too long nor too heavy.
There seemed to be at least a hundred of these swords upon his estimate, and for him, these swords were like gems in his eyes, but apparently, after Master Tahoggum's explanation, these swords were still considered common weapons in the world of a magus.
Finally, after trying out the tenth sword, Emery figured this sword was the right for him. It was the right size, the right grip and most importantly, the description had the other thing he was looking for.
[Long sword - tier 2]
[Length 1 meter, weight 1.2 kilogram]
[Increase speed]
Based on Emery's experiences, speed was the most important factor in any battle. It didn't matter how strong you were because as long as you couldn't deliver a fatal blow to the enemy by out maneuvering them you wouldn't win. Hence, the speed trait was both useful for attack and defense. And in case of an unwinnable fight, running away was an option. Better to live the next day and fight again than die there.
Emery couldn't wait to test the buff it had as he put the sword inside his ring. The others seemed to have been finished with choosing as well: Julian chose a heavy short sword, Thrax wielded a spear, Chumo grabbed a bow and set of quiver and Klea held a staff. That wasn't surprising since there were probably not many women who would like to see blood being splattered beside them or their clothes or faces.
After taking the weapons, the group decided to take a half day break to rest before meeting up at stone platform again.
But when they were about to get on the yellow carriage, Emery mentioned he wished to drop by the Apotechary Institute. Klea asked if she could come with him, but Emery explained not anyone could just go inside the institute.
Once the yellow carriage had left, Emery actually decided to return to the blacksmith. He wished to ask about his tier 3 dagger. He had done this because he wanted the dagger to be his hidden weapon in case of an emergency. Emery felt a little bad to do it behind his friends' back.