Chapter 195: Over reliance
"First things first, lad, get them bits o’ gear off and that scrap off yer arm. Don’t want ’em covered in grime, gods know what’s in it."
Kael didn’t argue. The command wasn’t cruel, just practical, like Andre’s mouth only knew two settings: bark and bark harder.
He set the gear down where the lantern’s weak light could still reach it, far from the filth and the rust piles, then started peeling off the outer layers until he was down to the basilisk leather and the parts that actually mattered.
The smithy smelled like old smoke and older regret. The grime wasn’t normal dust either, more like a gritty paste that stuck to the broom, to his boots, to his palms. The longer he stood there, the more he noticed how the place fought him. Cobwebs didn’t just hang; they clung. Rust didn’t just sit; it flaked into the air like ash.
Kael began cleaning up the place as asked.
He’d spent enough of his life around scaffolds and rebar and concrete dust to know that cleaning wasn’t "servant work." It was maintenance. It was keeping your workspace from turning into a death trap.
And after the last few days, after the fire circle, the zombies, the basilisk, the Ifrit, this felt almost unreal. No screaming. No chase. No blade at his back. Just a broom, his breath, and the scrape of debris being shoved into corners.
For someone who spent a good amount of his time amidst steel, concrete, and massive beams and scaffolds. Doing some cleaning felt like a good pastime. Especially after the nightmare he lived through.
The motion steadied his mind. Push. Sweep. Lift. Stack. Like building a rhythm out of nothing. Every time the broom snagged on some crusted filth, he adjusted his grip and kept going. He didn’t need [Presence]. He didn’t need runes. He didn’t need a plan. He just needed the floor in front of him to be cleaner than it was a minute ago.
He found what felt like peace in this small place.
Not the kind of peace you got when things were "safe." More like the kind you get when your hands are busy enough that your brain couldn’t spiral.
Even the tower couldn’t steal that from him.
Despite the smell still.
That was one thing he couldn’t shake off.
It wasn’t just stale booze. Not just metal. There was something sour in the air, old bodily fluids and wet rot, like the place had been lived in badly for a long time. Every time he inhaled too deep, it sat at the back of his throat.
After several hours of moving rusted steel to where Andre ’kindly’ asked. Stocking up the broken but still usable materials in one place. And the majority of the time, cleaning and pushing away dirt with a broom that only had the name, and barely the function.
He finally managed to clear enough space for the workshop of the smith to deserve its name.
He built order out of junk: rusted pieces in one pile, "maybe usable" pieces in another, sharp trash set aside so he wouldn’t slice his hand open mid-sweep. He even cleared around the anvil, scraping away the crust at its base until the floor was visible again, stone, not filth.
Andre thankfully picked up his own shame and removed the bottles without having to ask Kael to do so.
Kael noticed it without commenting. The dwarf didn’t look proud doing it. He just did it fast, like he didn’t want Kael staring too long. A few bottles clinked as they were gathered; a couple sloshed with that suspicious yellow liquid. Andre didn’t explain it, and Kael didn’t ask. He’d learned not to pull on threads that didn’t need pulling.
"Good enough, I think," Kael said as he wiped away the sweat from his brow.
The sweat was real. Not panic sweat. Work sweat. It felt almost nostalgic in a way that pissed him off a little, like his body remembered being human in a normal world.
"Aye... forge ain’t been this clean in a long while. Good enough for some hammerin’," he said.
Andre’s tone didn’t soften, but the approval was there. It was the kind of "good job" a grumpy bastard gave when it physically hurt him to say "good job."
Kael got closer to Andre and asked, "So, what am I gonna do?"
Andre didn’t even pretend to think long. He’d clearly decided the moment Kael stepped inside.
"First thing, ye gotta understand iron." He handed Kael a piece of metal, "Take this and hammer it into a billet. Dagger, sword, don’t matter. Just do it."
The ingot was heavier than it looked, cold and dull, edges slightly irregular like it had been cut badly. Kael rolled it in his palm, feeling the weight, the grain, the dead silence of it. No system glow. No convenient tooltip. Just iron.
Kael nodded and held up Brokk’s hammer to start working the iron ingot.
"Not with that, lad. Get yer hands dirty. Start the fire first, you’re learnin’ the craft the proper way."
Kael paused, the hammer hovering in his grip. For a moment, he considered arguing, then remembered who he was dealing with. Andre wasn’t teaching him "how to get results." He was teaching him "how to not be helpless."
Kael looked at the forge and the bellows, which had holes in them. "Can the bellows even work?"
The bellows looked like they had been stabbed and left to rot. The leather was split in multiple places. If Kael squeezed it as-is, it would just exhale air uselessly into the room.
"Don’t know. That’s yer problem to fix. Start thinkin’ with yer head."
Kael’s mouth twitched. The dwarf said it like Kael had never used his head once in his life. Like he hadn’t survived the first floor by brute problem-solving and spite.
"Can I at least use the hammer to fix them?"
Andre thought for a second and shrugged, "Ain’t me takin’ shortcuts. Do what ye want, just get that fire goin’."
Kael nodded and moved toward the bellows.
Up close, the leather looked worse. Dry, cracked, brittle at the edges. The stitching had come undone in multiple lines. It wasn’t "broken," it was "abandoned."
It was almost unfair how easily it responded. A couple of taps and the torn seams knitted together as they’d never been damaged. The leather regained its shape, regained tension. Even the wooden frame straightened slightly as if the object itself was relieved to be useful again.
He looked satisfied with his work.
Not proud, satisfied. Like checking a box. The hammer made "impossible" feel annoyingly normal.
"Only this once, lad. Think on this, what happens if ye lose that hammer? How d’ye fix the bellows then?"
Kael’s satisfaction dulled. The question wasn’t hypothetical. In the tower, "lose" didn’t always mean "drop." It meant "stolen," "broken," "taken off your corpse."
"I think I understand what you want to say..." Kael said.
"And what might that be, eh lad?"
"That I shouldn’t rely on the hammer too much."
"Good thinkin’. Don’t get attached to things. That hammer’s good, by the gods, it’s real good. Too good, even... Rely on it too much, and one day ye’ll find yerself useless without it."