Chapter 375: Recognize
Eleven leaned forward in her chair and pushed her hair out of the way of her face as she stared down at the winners of the latest fight. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so invested in a fight.
Not that I’ll ever let One know. He’d never let me hear the end of it. I’d be on duty for the rest of my life. I don’t care how exciting a fight is. It still isn’t any better than sleep.
“That team…” Eleven’s lips twitched. She recognized the armor that all three of them wore. It bore Ifrit’s mark. The smith was making a statement, and it couldn’t have been louder if he’d tried.
For that matter, it seemed he’d made two messages. The first was that Ifrit’s teams executed anyone who had personal issues with them — and, from the sound of the conversations Eleven had overheard, the dead were the aggressors in the altercations.
Ifrit’s first message was that his mark bore justice with it. At least, it bore his form of justice. Whether that justice was true or not wasn’t something she could make the call on. Eleven didn’t have enough information to decide that. It was something that One could worry about.
But his second message was considerably more interesting than the first. Everyone wanted people to believe that their actions were true and just. But Ifrit’s second message carried something far more unique. He had outfitted two teams, not one. That wasn’t an uncommon strategy for a crafting guild or a smith that was trying to make a name for themselves.
The more people that bore equipment bearing a smith’s mark, the more chances that one of them would do well and make a name for the smith. The drawback to that was if enough people had the smith’s work, then it became cheapened. Outfitting multiple teams also meant worsening that smith’s relationship with all those groups because they weren’t working exclusively with them.
And that isn’t even to mention that spreading the smith’s attention between too many people means that, in general, the armor he’s making isn’t going to be absolutely top notch. Certain corners have to get cut to outfit more people. That’s just how things go.
That was the reason smiths and crafting guilds generally stuck to one team. They made that team as strong as possible to show off how capable they were in comparison with the rest of the competition.