"Hey, Devon, I have your letter as well," the postman said even as he walked through the workshop floor, passing around parcels and collecting coins as payment. "You have the payment, right?"
"Five silver. Right, Sam?" I asked, but his expression showed that it was not the case.
"No, the rates went up, now it's six," he said.
"Again?" I asked even as I dropped my hammer, a frown on my face. "It's getting too much. How the hell are we supposed to communicate with the other enclaves if it goes ?"
He sighed even as he looked at me. "It can't be helped, boy. Another outpost has fallen, so the letters from the coast have to be moved through another distant post. We're not the only courier service that increased the cost."
I reached into my pouch and checked, but I knew what I would find. Five silver, and several coppers. I blushed even as I begged. I hated it, but the letter was too important. "How about you let me pay the old price? Say that you promised or something? I'll pay you extra once —"
"Maybe you should stop, Devon," Sam said with a sigh, his pitying tone hurting me worse than the time I smashed my hand with a hammer. "How many times has it been?"
"It's different this time. I can feel it," I answered. "I promised that I would work for free. With my education, they are getting a bargain. You know that…" But my confidence didn't help as Sam passed me a letter, one that was too thin to be good news.
I checked the letter, only to throw it into the fires of my forge immediately. "Another rejection," Sam asked.
I didn't answer. I couldn't. Not when he spoke in that kind tone, like I was a stupid child. I said nothing as I pulled my pouch and passed five silvers to him, all the money I had been able to save after a month of working overtime. "I'll find you next month. I have another admission prepared. I heard they were setting up a new think-tank in the ruins of Cleveland."
"Maybe you should stop working on the workshop and start going into dungeons. It has been three years, and you're still not even level 10, and you know the walls of the town are hardly —"
"That's enough Sam. I'm sure you have a lot of garbage to carry," I cut him off sharply. I hated myself even as I said that. Sam was just trying to look out for me, one of the few people that even bothered to do so. He didn't deserve my anger.
He wasn't the one who had refused to acknowledge my abilities because of a stupid fluke.
I hated his kind, understanding gaze even more. "See you around, Devon. Try not to kill yourself with your stubbornness."
I sighed even as I grabbed my hammer once again, and pulled the red-hot sword from the flames. I smashed it again and again, the way the sword trembled under my hands providing a good distraction. I used to hate repairing stuff when I had first started, but after three years, it had turned into a hobby. A good way to keep my hands occupied while I focused on reworking the formulas.
But, today, I found it difficult to lose myself in the comforting world of math, not when I had to deal with another rejection. It hurt … though, it was the stupid reasoning of it that hurt. I would have accepted it if it was just about my capabilities, rather than my Class.
I had been rejected because I was a Blacksmith. A common class, one that didn't even give a full range of Stats. Just Strength, Vitality, and Dexterity.
It was why I didn't even bother reading the latest rejection letter more than a sentence, where they told me that my Class disqualified me from any kind of position in a think-tank.
Nothing else mattered. Not the fact that I had graduated college when I was sixteen, with double degrees in Math and Sociology. My doctorate in mathematical sociology didn't matter, or the fact that I had been the leading name of my field before I even hit twenty-two.
Not when the Cataclysm hit, bringing the System along. Suddenly, no one cared about my groundbreaking papers that had the potential to reshape the socio-economic structure of the next century.
Just because I didn't have Intelligence as a stat. Another sign of how our society degraded since the Cataclysm hit. Everyone chased bigger numbers to fight against the Cataclysm. A group of golden heroes, each identified by a mystic source of power and empowered through a convenient, easy-to-use interface, fighting heroically to stem the tide.
It was a wet dream for objectivist individualism that even Ayn Rand couldn't comprehend.
I slammed the hammer again, watching the sparks fill the room. Truthfully, I might have accepted my defeat with grace had Intelligence actually made people Intelligent. But, no, it did not, not any more than Charisma actually making people charismatic.
For the last three years, starting merely a week after the Cataclysm, I had interviewed almost a thousand people with Intelligence — sometimes openly, but mostly disguising it as a conversation at the bar while plying them with drinks — until I had developed a solid understanding of how it worked.
It functioned more like a computer had shown in someone's mind. Perfect for finding the square root of six different ten-digit numbers before multiplying them in less than a second, or calculating the Pi to the ten-thousand digit immediately … but not helpful for actually working on the science behind it.
It was like hiring someone as a researcher just because they had their own expensive computer. Most of what they could do, I could easily replicate as long as I had a decent computer… Too bad the electronics didn't work properly anymore, anything more fragile than a calculator had long fried during the initial days of Cataclysm, taking most of the infrastructure along with it.
"I just need an assistant with Intelligence, and I can still be useful," I growled in frustration as I continued slamming, the usual lack of calm as I worked not helping. Still, even as my focus wavered, my Repair was doing most of the work.
I paused when most of the surface work had been completed, touched the hilt, letting my sole perk Analyze do its work.
The inner structure of the sword flashed in a moment, showing me that there was still a subtle crack in its surface, one that would weaken the efficiency of its enchantment. How it would weaken, or why, I didn't know.
There was no impression that was fed back by Repair, which didn't include any magical repair knowledge, even if it was proficiency level 24, almost about to get a second perk.
No, I learned that through repeated practice, even though I ended up ruining several weapons in the process. Sharpness Enchantment was a simple one, just several lines of condensed mana, and it worked properly as long as I resolved the blockage.
I finished repairing it before I quenched the sword in mana water, another use of my [Analyze] confirming that it had been properly solved.
It was rare for someone to have a skill with such a high level, one benefit of the endless overtime I had pulled, trying to afford the ever-rising courier fees.
I sighed as I left my private forge room, and started walking toward the desk, carrying only one weapon. I frowned when I realized which supervisor was currently manning the desk. Mark. Not exactly my favorite person. "Only one weapon, again?" he asked with a nasty smirk.
"As usual, special order," I said even as I put the weapon down. "The structural damage is repaired completely, and the enchantment should be working as usual."
"Perfect. Let's see how much money our resident genius deserves for it," he replied with glee as he flipped open a book, and made a show of checking the numbers. "Wow, a whole sixty copper. You're rich! I'm sure, this time you can buy that perk reset stone. I heard that the last one went for three gold."
"Thank you for keeping an eye on me, Mark, I appreciate it," I answered, trying to keep my voice cool. His nasty laugh showed that I wasn't exactly successful. The fact that he was right only rankled me more.
As I walked back to my forge, I could see the others visiting the desk, and none of them carried less than five pieces of gear with them, despite the fact that none of them had their [Repair] as high as mine. All because, when Repair reached Level 10, I chose Analyze over [Efficient Repair], arrogant enough to plan forward how it would help me after I got a proper research job once the society started to recover.
Even if it didn't, I assumed that the ability to repair enchanted weapons would allow me to make much more money. It looked like it would … until a dungeon nearby started dropping repair spells for mages. Just like that, the high-end repair market was gone. And, as the number of mages that could cast it continued to increase, even that was at risk.
I needed to reassign my perk. Something I could have achieved easily a year ago. That time, Perk Reset stones — the cheapest way of achieving it — went for about sixty silvers, while I was able to save almost ten silver a week, which I wasted by hiring people to collect some data, arrogant enough to think that I was getting a head start for my job as a researcher.
Now, my [Repair] was almost Level 25, and once it reached there, the Perk Reset stone would turn useless, since it only worked on the last Perk received.
Improving skills got harder and harder, especially without renewed challenges, but even my most optimistic calculation — as a function of quality, work time, and a sudden exponential spike for the practice required to reach the next stage — suggested I had less than a month before I needed to purchase it.
Or I would get stuck with [Analyze] forever.
When I arrived at my private forge, instead of picking another weapon, I extinguished the fire, grabbed my hammer — the only thing I owned in the entire forge — and walked out of the workshop.
For once, I decided to cut the day short.
I had an important decision to make.