Chapter 19: How Pops Does It
The five spies for the Noble Families weren't the only ones who were interested in the Royal Carriage dropping off a young man at the smithy, and the front of the shop was much busier than usual, with customers steadily arriving right until the moment that Pops came out and flipped the sign from open to closed.
With the last customer of the night gone, they settled down into the comfortable chairs along the wall of the smithy, by a small table that was used mostly for planning the next project that Pops wanted to design.
The comfortable silence enveloped them, and Dominic took out the dagger that had dropped for him today, carefully placing it on the table so he didn't accidentally poison himself.
"The Princess told me something strange at dinner. These Common Grade magical weapons are supposedly as good as what most of the shops are turning out here in town. Are magical weapons that difficult to make? Or does nobody care about them when there is a chance to get weapons free from the monsters?" He asked.
The old Dwarf smiled and picked up the crude weapon. "Mostly the second, but the knowledge of making advanced magical weapons is a well-guarded art. You can fumble through trying to create one on your own, but you'll fail dozens or hundreds of times before you get it right, and the Master Smiths control access to almost all the magical weapon and plate armour recipes.
So, you see, even if they wanted to, and could turn out a decently made blade, the majority of the city's apprentices couldn't reliably make it a halfway decent magical one.
Most don't even know what the materials are to make a proper magical weapon.
Unless they've got an appropriately knowledgeable master and a well levelled Blacksmith Core, that is.
The apprentices of real Master Blacksmiths get access to some recipes straight from their Trade Skill Core as they level it, and at higher levels they can make magical items with a random effect, but those are Uncommon Grade and better, so they're beyond the budget of most low-level workers and commoner guards.