Rise of the Living Forge-Chapter 440: Investigating

Arwin was halfway through turning on his heel to stride back into the Infernal Armory when he realized that, if the door opened, Ida could see inside. That normally wouldn’t have been a problem. The smithy had two rooms for a reason.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t work that Arwin was trying to hide from the dwarf. It was Wallace. And he’d left Wallace was standing right in the main room with Koyu. He couldn’t let Ida see them.

Damn it. Pain in the ass, this is. I could really use some backup from Rodrick or somebody. Has nobody noticed what’s going on yet?

Fortunately for him, Ida was still too stricken by the remains of her hammer to observe Arwin’s hesitation. The crowd had already all but forgotten about her. Their entertainment had ended, and they were all either trying to yell to get Arwin’s attention or squeezing their way back into line for the Devil’s Den.

Arwin ignored them all. He wasn’t about to start taking on more commissions without letting someone vet them, but he couldn’t just sit around and do nothing. His eyes alighted on Ida’s wagon of metals.

A grin pulled at his lips. At least something useful had come out of this. Despite his earlier claim, nothing about her equipment actually seemed particularly bad… and there was definitely nothing wrong with the materials that had gone into them.

This must have all cost a pretty penny. Don’t mind if I do.

Arwin strode right over to the cart. The wheels were barely holding the wooden structure upright under the weight of all the equipment piled into it. Arwin didn’t even blink. He just crouched down, getting as good of a grasp on the cart as he could.

Then, with a grunt, he activated [Scourge] and stood.

Murmurs rolled through the crowd as Arwin hoisted the cart into the air, items and all. He paid them no mind as he ambled back over to the Infernal Armory. Arwin dropped the cart off in front of the door with a heavy thud, blocking it off completely.

Fire hazard, yes. Also an effective way to make sure nobody comes out and gets spotted. Sorry, Wallace. Sit around for a little while. You’ll thank me for this later. Something tells me you don’t want the daughter of a dwarven councilmember spotting you in my smithy right after I told her off.

With his load deposited, Arwin strode through the crowd, pushing past the adventurers milling about the street as gently as he could, before arriving at the entrance of the Devil’s Den.

It quickly became apparent why he hadn’t gotten any backup. Madiv stood outside, engaged in a heated discussion with several adventurers over the quality of Lillia’s food. Not one of them actually seemed to be disparaging her cooking — they just couldn’t seem to decide which part of it was the best.

Arwin suppressed the urge to sigh. He supposed it was good that there wasn’t an actual problem going on, but Madiv was possibly just a little bit too focused on Lillia. The vampire didn’t seem like he’d even noticed what had gone down in the crowd just moments before.

In all fairness to Madiv, he probably would have overheard if an actual fight had started. Arwin didn’t bother bringing the topic up now. They could discuss it later. Really, his delay in reaction was the symptom of the problem they had rather than the cause.

We need more activities for people to do on the street. When they all just line up in a wall of flesh like this, it becomes borderline impossible to actually navigate things. Then again, it also provides me a very effective cover to abandon irate dwarves in the crowd.

Arwin slipped into the Devil’s Den. All too quickly, he realized his mistake. Every single one of the tables was taken. There was a reason Lillia had a massive line trailing through the street to get into her tavern in the middle of the evening.

Ah, crap.

He didn’t want to just stride into the kitchen and bother Lillia while she was working. But it wasn’t like Arwin could turn and head back to the Infernal Armory either — he’d just blocked the entrance off to make sure Ida didn’t go snooping and Wallace didn’t mistakenly give himself away.

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Going back out in general felt like it would be less than ideal. Ida could still be hovering around, and even though the dwarf had been thoroughly trounced, Arwin had absolutely no desire to deal with her any further today.

At least I’m pretty sure she’s going to leave by tomorrow. She was arrogant. People like that can’t handle getting humiliated… and I imagine she’s probably got to go whine to her mom that I broke her toy. Maybe they’ll bring me something better to confiscate.

That thought brought a small grin to Arwin’s lips. It, unfortunately, didn’t help him with his displacement issue. He was just about to think about squeezing through the kitchen to retire to bed early when he spotted a table near the corner of the room that didn’t look quite as busy as it should have.

A lone woman sat at it, hands crossed and a single plate of half-finished food sitting before her. There were two mugs of ale on the table. One sat before her, but the other had been positioned in wait for a companion.

Long black hair hung around the woman’s face. It was so thick that making out any details of her features was like trying to pool into the ocean during the darkest night. Fortunately for Arwin, he didn’t need a single feature to recognize who it was. There was only one person with hair like that.

Arwin wove through the tables, doing his best not to knock too many people’s cups over or trample over the shadow imps scurrying around the tavern and delivering food to people. The cacophony of rancorous adventurers rang in his ears as he drew up to the table to stand before Eleven.

It had been a short while since the Setting Sun had last paid the Menagerie a visit. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. He did know that Eleven wouldn’t show up here without any purpose. She wanted something.

“Hello, Ifrit,” Eleven said. “It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? Has your guild been faring well?”

“Well enough,” Arwin replied. He nodded to the mug across from Eleven. “Waiting on someone?”

“Yes,” Eleven replied. “You.”

Arwin grunted. He pulled a chair out and sat down across from the strange woman. Odd or not, she was dangerous. Eleven was probably the only one able of passing through the Devil’s Den without notifying Lillia, and he still wasn’t completely convinced that the Setting Sun were their allies.

“That’s not ominous in the slightest,” Arwin said. “Care to say why you were just sitting around waiting for me to show up? Do you think I frequently just wander the tavern aimlessly?”

“Sorry. I’m trying to save words today,” Eleven said with a sigh. She massaged the sides of her temples like she had a headache. “Spoke too much yesterday. Now I’m tired. And now I’m wasting even more words. Don’t tell Two about this. He always tells me this is how it’ll end up.”

Arwin stared at her for a few moments. Then he mustered up the sum of what he’d learned from their conversation thus far.

“What?”

“Forget it,” Eleven sighed again. “I’ll give up on my hopes of a restful day. I was waiting for anyone from the Menagerie. It didn’t have to be you. Worked out, though. So, you want to tell me what you did with Twelve’s body?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Eleven brushed her hair back, but the effort was futile. It fell back over her faces so quickly that her features barely even got a second to be exposed to the dim light of the Devil’s Den.

“Worth a try,” Eleven said. “What about the Dungeon Heart? Use it yet?”

“Still debating on the best use.”

“Smart. One will be glad to hear that. He hates rash people,” Eleven said. “Then let’s cut to business. You remember that offer we gave you a while back?”

“To give us missions in exchange for materials?” Arwin leaned forward slightly. Even though he’d had a bunch of commissions, they were never not going to need access to some more good stuff to work with. “Yes. Do you have one?”

“We do,” Eleven said. “And I think it should suit your team quite well. It’s an infiltration mission.”

Arwin paused. “Wait, what? I thought these were going to be dungeons and the like.”

Eleven leveled a flat stare at him. At least, Arwin suspected that was what she was doing. It was a bit hard to be certain with her hair completely blocking out her face.

“Do you really think we exclusively need help with just dungeons?” Eleven asked. “Fighting is amongst the least of our concerns. Nobody in our guild has any shortcoming there. This is the kind of job that needs a far subtler hand. It needs someone stealthy. Intelligent. Capable.”

Arwin tilted his head to the side. Then his eyes narrowed.

“Is… this a mission that One gave you? That you don’t want to do yourself?”

Eleven stiffened. Then she cleared her throat. “Let’s avoid semantics. Who cares who originally got assigned the mission? What matters is that I’ve brought it here. But, hypothetically, does your tavern have any spare rooms that I could use while I wait for you to handle this? Ones with heavy curtains. Dim windows. No windows would be even better, actually.”

She’s definitely pawning this off on us because she doesn’t want to do it herself. I think she sounds more excited about the idea of getting to sleep than she does about the job.

Arwin couldn’t tell if he was more amused or annoyed at that. At least it probably meant that the job was legitimate. He’d never met someone who had bemoaned their job quite as much as Eleven had. She definitely just wanted a break.

“We might be able to figure something out,” Arwin said with a small laugh. “It depends. What’s the pay and what exactly is it that you want us to do?”

“Well, that depends.” Eleven leaned forward. “There’s someone we’re investigating. Have you heard of House Blacktongue?”