I was awoken by the sound of a deep-voiced, rugged-sounding middle-aged man loudly cursing early in the morning. In fact, the sun hadn’t even risen yet when it happened. It was a pretty unpleasant-sounding voice, the sort of voice that would be funny for a comedian or minstrel to have, but only for a couple of minutes before it started hurting your ears and making you wish to cut the guy’s throat open and tear out his vocal cords in the hopes that he would never be permitted to ever make another sound.

  Really? To top it off, this man had a very thick accent, which I believe is to be associated with some sort of beastfolk language, judging by the weird noises that he made when angry. It was like he was accompanied by a dog, but a dog that had the same tone of voice as him…

  In any case, it was sort of my fault that he was so upset… Since he was getting mad over the door I had forced open last night. Though there really was no reason to get so viscerally fired up about it, it was just a door. And how else did he want me to get in? You should have just kept your door open, buddy.

  It's not like I killed anyone. At least not yet.

  But despite this, the man whom I strongly presumed to be the blacksmith and owner of those loud snores from last night… Well, he stayed fuming for quite a long time, only beginning to calm down after a woman–Who I assume is his wife–Decided that it was enough yelling and decided to do something about it.

  And as loud and big as he sounded, the blacksmith settled down impressively quickly once she said something.

  Bleh, I hate submissive men. No spine, basically a servile pet that could be counted as an extra limb to his wife. Just pathetic.

  That’s exactly why I never had a boyfriend, or whatever they were calling those nowadays… Why would I date someone who can’t even match me in a fistfight? How come the majority of the men who were interested in me were worms who wouldn’t be able to lift a sack of grain even if their life depended on it?

  Absolutely hogwash.

  What the hell was I doing again? Ah yes…

  I resumed listening to what was going on below, not budging in the slightest as I focused on the sounds and voices in the shop.

  At first, it was just the blacksmith, his wife, and what sounded like their five kids. From the sound of it, the front of the smithing shop was not lying, despite the thick accent that inspired images of some peasant who worked himself to the bone in fields for some bread crumbs and the right to drink from a well.

  Despite this, he was actually rather well-off for a commoner, and he might just qualify as a little bourgeois, considering that he could afford to send his children to a school.

  Which was undeniably expensive, the schools that accepted commoners–All schools actually–Were run by the crown, whatever years ago. Some presumably very cute and soft-looking princess decided that getting an education was very important and opened schools even for those with intellectual disadvantages, namely, the poor.

  She’s dead and probably bone dust by now, and these schools, whilst still active, have high fees now, and basically serve more as a selection process than schools, as it allows both whatever leader the school is in, and the crown itself by extension, to know where and when a commoner was getting too big for their britches.

  This allowed them to keep an eye out and potentially recruit said commoners to work for them… Nobody would want to lose out on the potential diamonds hiding in the ocean of liquid faeces, after all.

  In any case, this was all fine and dandy, but I was more interested in what the customers were going to be talking about. As clearly, there were lots of them, as the blacksmith had begun hammering very early in the morning, forging at an impressively fast pace.

  The swing of the hammer was so quick that I was unable to contain my curiosity and moved a bit, shoving my face against the ground to peer between a small gap in the floorboards. Which was harder than normal because my jaw was just too big and getting in the way.

  But indeed, I was able to see that this guy definitely had some skills, and probably some sort of ability that boosted his smithing capabilities in some way. Said ability could be lots of things, but what mattered was not its nature, but its presence.

  To a regular smith, what this man was doing would be deemed supernatural or sorcery. He always seemed to perfectly heat the materials he worked with. He never messed up on the handles. The shapes he went for would always manifest exactly as he wanted, allowing him to smith weapons, armour pieces, shields, arrowheads and the like without stop.

  Ah, yes, he also seemed to have abnormal stamina, and this definitely did not have to do with him being a beastfolk of some sort. Firstly, because I don’t believe canine beastfolks are reputed for particularly high stamina, and also because he almost seems invigorated by the end of it all.

  Only taking a short break before continuing, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

  Huh… It’s a wonder why this guy hasn’t been scooped up already. He clearly had abnormal capabilities. You could surely trust him with high-quality materials in the long run and have a competent blacksmith at your command. It probably wouldn’t even cost a lot to make him take a pledge…

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  It wasn’t unlikely that the nobles were just being lazy and not paying attention. They were prone to resting on the laurels that were their status and heritage, and forgetting to use their head to think.

  Most of the younger generations of nobility tended to be too confident and too spoiled to seek business ventures and opportunities at all.

  I could only assume that the problem had stayed the same or gotten worse in the last twenty years.

  Staying hidden above all of the activity, I eventually got to see business being made… To begin with, another man showed up early. Just as the sun was rising, as a matter of fact.

  It was a fletcher, and he was here to fetch the many arrowheads that had been forged earlier. The smith did his own handles for weapons, but it seemed like he did not do arrows fully, only producing them and selling them to those whose entire profession relied on that sort of thing.

  The bulk of the first few hours of the day was more of the same thing, selling to other business owners parts and pieces that they were trusting the smith to produce for them on their behalf, at a price, of course.

  But considering how friendly they seemed, the smith seemed to have affordable prices.

  Overall, these interactions were devoid of anything interesting. They only told me that there were other places I could break into to consume some sweet, sweet metals and irons, but I wasn’t planning on moving for a while… What interested me came later, after the smith brought out some stock he had kept in the back and some of the new stuff he had just forged a few hours prior, the real client showed up.

  When there was no war going on, the market for selling weapons and the like would dry up a bit, but still, tools of murder were always useful, because there were always things to murder, regardless of whether there was peace or not.

  Guards would usually receive their equipment as part of their job, and so, the main buyers of weapons, above the regular person simply desiring something to protect themselves or their home with, were the ill-named adventurers.

  Indeed, I don’t think I have ever heard–Outside of stories whose credibility was highly questionable–Of adventurers actually going on an adventure, they were glorified unemployed people who throw themselves headfirst into any ruin or take jobs to kill some things.

  They were cheap, they were replaceable, and for some reason that I could not grasp, the profession seemed highly attractive, but the only good things about it came when you left it and were actually hired to do an actual job that had stable pay and did not depend on countless factors.

  Now, I am certain that they were very useful in certain regards, but the so-called famous adventurers were never adventurers by the time they actually accomplished noteworthy stuff.

  But despite my bias against them, I was aware that they went around a lot and tended to be well-informed. So I was hoping that I could learn about the news and maybe snippets of what happened in the last twenty years from the small talk some of them would have with the smith.

  And thankfully, since adventurers messed up their equipment all the time, they were very good customers for a blacksmith, and were thus greeted with open arms.

  “You fellows looked like you were dragged through a swamp. I thought you were just clearing a wild dog infestation?”

  The smith laughed heartily, as though the anger of the broken door was already completely forgotten.

  “We thought that too! But guess what… Turns out the reason all of those wild dogs were gathering in one place was because they were compelled to by some canine-like… Huh… What did they call it again? A devil beast?”

  “It was a demonic creature”

  “Ah, yes! A demonic creature, that’s the term”

  The smith seemed confused for a moment, but soon raised an eyebrow.

  “That doesn’t make sense. How could one of those end up anywhere near here?”

  “Hell if I know! But some guy from another party that was with us got his entire arm bitten off! I honestly have no clue how he didn’t die”

  The blacksmith shook his head with a sigh.

  “That, and the other day there was an obsession-fiend, wasn’t there? It’s getting more and more unsafe outside these walls…”

  I hear quite a few stories like this one within just a day. Apparently, all sorts of rare types of beings were suddenly popping up across the country and even near supposedly safe cities and havens, minstrels and bards were using these events to their advantage, and so, even places where nothing had happened were learning of the news surprisingly fast, or so one adventurer had claimed.

  Although the smith had expressed some worries, from the sound of it, the common people weren’t too worried about these sightings and encounters, trusting in the safety of their city walls, and awfully trusting of the competence of their rulers to deal with any problem that might arise.

  What happened in less than a quarter of a century? Back in my time, everyone was openly critical of the king and the royal court in general… In fact, I distinctly remember that there would be a game whenever there was a festival, which was about stringing up the most insults into a coherent sentence about a designated member of the court.

  The winner would be decided when everyone else either failed to make a sentence, or after a certain number of turns, their series of insults would be compared and the most ‘accurate’ one would be the winner.

  I remember since I won one time when it was about insulting the queen… I cursed her with so much bile that everyone was convinced that I had a personal vendetta against her or something, but no, I just really wanted the prize that they offered… What was it again?

  Anyway, to me, that sounds rather concerning. Demonic creatures were beings that ate too many demons, causing them to mutate into another form.

  They were naturally most common in regions and nations where demonkind made up the majority of the population, and they could often be found to naturally mate and reproduce in such places as well…

  So, one demonic creature wasn’t that big of a deal. It could just be a coincidence, especially if it was just a regular animal to begin with. It wouldn’t have needed much to trigger a transformation, but an obsession-fiend? Had that guy seriously mentioned one of those if it was on the same level as a paltry demonic creature?

  That’s not a good sign at all. I don’t care what its particular obsession was, those things literally originated from another realm that some people considered to be a part, or similar to hell itself.

  Did they not understand that this could mean that a rift had begun opening and was allowing them to invade us?

  Am I surrounded by idiots?