Chương 7: Chapter 8: The Appraisal

I woke slowly and painfully, every stitched movement along my shoulder reminding me that the reed-cat had cost more than it had paid. For several long moments I stared at the ceiling of The Cataract and tried to convince myself the hunt had been worthwhile. Desperate Counter had advanced, I had survived, and I had dragged an Iron carcass back alone through half a marsh and earned more coin in one day than most labourers saw in a week.

Yet after the room, the salves, the stitching, and the endless little costs that followed blood through the world like flies after rot, I had somehow returned to almost the exact same amount of coin I had started with. The system had rewarded me, and reality had collected the payment. That thought soured my mood before I even sat up.

My shoulder tugged at the stitches when I reached for my coat, and the pain arrived with enough clarity to make the previous day feel less like an achievement than a debt still being collected. The pouch held its answer with no kindness at all. FUNDS CONFIRMED Your current funds are 1 copper and 64 iron pieces. Even the included breakfast downstairs tasted like damp cloth.

The Cataract remained swollen with stranded travellers, and more easterners had arrived overnight, crowding the tables and hallways until the tavern seemed permanently on the edge of spilling apart. Ferrymen argued near the hearth while a pair of caravan guards compared scars loudly enough for half the room to hear. Somewhere near the stairs, an elf boy no older than twelve sat sharpening hooks beside a basket of river fish with practised movements that made my own skinning work suddenly feel clumsy.

I kept noticing equipment. Not expensive equipment, and not noble weapons polished for ceremony, but practical things that belonged to people who understood their work before the work tried to kill them. A properly balanced wood axe hung from a ferryman's belt, a skinning knife narrow enough for precision work rested beside a trapper's bowl, and reinforced boot stitching showed beneath the mud on half the men standing near the door.

There were waterproofed leather wraps, hooks designed for dragging weight through mud, and cord that had not been tied desperately around branches as I had done with the reed-cat. Everyone else seemed to understand something I had only just begun learning. The kill was not the business. The harvest was. That thought followed me all the way to Merris's stall, where he glanced up as I approached and immediately snorted through his nose.

"You've got the look," he said. I stopped beside the stall and tried not to lean too heavily on my good side.

"What look?" Merris pointed the knife in his hand toward my shoulder.

"The one hunters get after they discover surviving a fight and profiting from it are not the same thing."

"How much did Lysa rob you for?" he asked. I watched him clean a reed-cat claw with irritating calm.

"Twelve." Merris nodded without sympathy.

"Cheap. Means she thought you'd live." I leaned against the stall carefully, trying not to pull the stitches.

"I nearly ended where I started." Merris held up the claw and inspected the curve of it beneath the market light.

"You did end where you started, except now you're sore enough to appreciate it." I frowned, and he seemed pleased by the expression.

"Low-rank hunters stay poor because they think killing matters most. It doesn't. Preservation matters, timing matters, and equipment matters. Any fool can ruin a hide and call himself dangerous." That irritated me because it sounded true. Merris watched the expression cross my face and grunted approvingly.

"Good. Pride's cheaper to fix before noon." He nodded toward the market's lower end, where the smiths worked near the river quarter.

"Go speak to Harren before you get yourself mauled again using labour tools as hunting gear."

"I can't afford a smith," I said. Merris returned to the claw.

"Then perhaps he'll enjoy laughing at you for free." That was as close to generosity as Merris ever came without charging for it. I left before he found a way to make the advice cost interest. The smith district smelled of coal smoke, wet iron, and scorched oil. Unlike the market above, it carried little of Dunmere's frantic crowding despite the damaged crossing, because smithies belonged to noise too constant for travellers to linger near comfortably.

Hammers rang against metal in uneven rhythms while apprentices hauled water buckets through drifting steam. Heat from the open forges made the rain hiss faintly wherever it struck stone too close to the awnings. Harren's forge sat near the edge of the district where the river wind carried heat sideways beneath the roof. The smith himself looked carved from the same iron he worked, broad-backed and dark-bearded, with burn scars webbing both forearms.

He glanced up once as I approached, taking in the patched clothes, the axe, the bandages, and the exhaustion beneath my eyes.

"Hunting?"

"Yes," I said. Harren returned his attention to the blade he was sharpening.

"Poorly, by the look of you." I thought of the reed-cat, the stitches, and the money already gone.

"Recently."

"Mm," he said, and returned to sharpening without further interest. I almost left. Then I noticed the tools hanging behind him, not decorative pieces, but useful things with clean edge lines, reinforced haft bindings, and proper skinning knives thin enough for delicate cuts instead of the thick wedge-blades common labourers used for everything from rope to roots. I pulled Orven's axe free and set it carefully on the counter. Harren picked it up with one hand, tested the weight, then snorted quietly.

"Old timber axe." I kept my voice level.

"It's held up." Harren turned the head toward the forge light.

"It's held together. Not the same thing." He tapped one thick finger near the head.

"Balance drifts left. Edge retention's poor. Iron quality's uneven." His eyes shifted briefly toward the knife at my belt before returning to the axe.

"And that skinning blade's too broad. You're tearing hides every time you turn the wrist." I stared at him. He noticed.

"You thought damage came from bad technique alone?" I looked toward the racks behind him, then back at Orven's worn axe.

"Mostly."

"That's because you're poor," Harren said, handing the axe back.

"Poor men think effort solves what quality prevents." The words lodged somewhere unpleasantly deep. They sounded too much like Merris to ignore, and too much like the last few days to dismiss as insult. He showed me newer axes first. Proper hunting tools. Reinforced grips, cleaner balance, finer iron. They felt different immediately in my hands, not lighter exactly, but truer, with weight that travelled differently through the wrist and settled more cleanly into the forearm. Then I saw the prices. Three copper.

Four. One beautifully worked grey-iron axe cost nearly six, and the numbers made my stomach tighten before I even touched the haft. I set it down carefully and tried not to look disappointed. Harren watched me in silence before turning toward a lower rack near the wall.

"Used trade-ins," he said.

"Most are rubbish." He tossed one across the counter toward me, and I caught it awkwardly. At first glance it looked plain, with a worn grip, old scratches along the head, and leather wrap near the base that had been replaced at least twice. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Yet when I shifted it in my hand, something settled instinctively into place. The balance sat naturally through the forearm. The edge line remained clean despite age.

Even the sound when I tested the haft lightly against the floor felt tighter somehow. I reached for another axe beside it, more polished and heavier, and the wrongness came immediately. Not weaker. Not ugly. Wrong. I frowned and tested a third, and this time the impression surfaced as recognition rather than thought. Cheap iron. The phrase arrived strangely, not like something I had reasoned through, but like an answer my hands had reached before my mind. Harren's eyes narrowed slightly.

I returned to the first axe.

"This one."

"Interesting choice," he said. I kept the axe in my hand because setting it down suddenly felt like losing an argument.

"Why?" Harren took it back and turned it once beneath the forge light.

"Old river hunter traded it after taking a spear through the knee. Good steel folded beneath the surface." His gaze flicked toward the polished axe I had rejected.

"Better than it looks. Most men your age would've picked the prettier one." I swallowed around the question before asking it.

"How much?"

"One copper, ninety iron," Harren said. My chest tightened, because that was nearly everything and somehow still cheaper than the newer gear by half. I forced myself to release the haft, and the movement hurt more than expected.

"Too much."

"It's underpriced already," Harren said. I knew that made it worse rather than better. The axe had already begun to feel like the sort of thing that would make my old tools seem dishonest. I stepped back from the counter because poor men survived temptation by adding distance. Harren watched me for several seconds, then sighed through his nose with visible irritation.

"You brought down the reed-cat from the marsh alone yesterday." I stared at him.

"Merris talks too much." The smith held out the axe again.

"One copper, sixty-four iron. Axe and skinning knife together."

"That's all I have," I said. Harren's expression did not change.

"Yes. Which is why you'll either learn to use them properly or die resenting the expense." For one dangerous heartbeat I nearly refused out of fear alone. The pouch at my belt suddenly felt impossibly fragile. One copper and sixty-four iron represented every hunt, every risk, every sleepless night since the Crimson Elf. Spending all of it at once felt less like a purchase and more like stepping willingly off a cliff.

Then I remembered the reed-cat hide tearing beneath my shaking hands, dragging carcasses with labour rope, and Merris saying any fool could kill something and still stay poor. Slowly, I untied the pouch. The copper coin landed on the counter beside the iron stack with a sound that seemed final somehow. Harren gathered the money without ceremony. I stared at the empty pouch while the smith wrapped the knife and pushed both tools toward me.

EQUIPMENT PURCHASED You purchased a used hunter's axe and an iron skinning knife. You spent 1 copper and 64 iron pieces. Your current funds have decreased from 1 copper and 64 iron pieces to 0 iron pieces. The sight produced a strange calm after the initial panic. There was nothing left to protect now. No arithmetic to obsess over. No illusion of safety. Only the certainty that if I failed to hunt successfully before nightfall, I would not afford another room at The Cataract.

The new skinning knife rode lighter at my hip than Orven's old blade. Narrower. Cleaner. The axe fit my hand disturbingly well despite the worn grip. As I walked back through the market, I found myself noticing things differently. Poor stitching. Cheap iron rings beneath wagon wheels. Rot beginning beneath fish scales. Cracked leather. Balanced weight. The observations arrived naturally and vanished just as quickly, subtle impressions rather than thoughts fully formed.

I stopped walking in the middle of the market without meaning to. The world had not sharpened the way it did before a fight. It had deepened, as though every object possessed a hidden statement about what it was worth, how it would fail, and whether I had once been too poor to see either. ABILITY LEARNED You have learned a new ability: Appraisal. You can now better recognise quality, wear, hidden value, poor construction, material flaws, and practical usefulness in tools, goods, materials, and harvested parts.

Current ability grade: Common. No surge of strength followed. No sharpening of reflexes. Only a strange awareness that the world possessed layers of quality I had previously moved through blindly. Harren's phrase returned to me as I stood there among the shouting market stalls and rain-dark carts: good steel folded beneath the surface. I wondered, suddenly and uncomfortably, what else in the world had been better or worse than it looked while I passed by too poor to know the difference.

When I reached the forest that afternoon, I hunted differently. Not deeper. Not harder. Carefully. I avoided Iron trails entirely and followed the lower creek runs where Common game moved through dense fern lines toward the river. The new axe cut cleaner through saplings when clearing paths. The skinning knife separated hide from flesh with less tearing, less force, and less wasted motion. Small differences. Quiet differences.

Yet by dusk I realised I had spent less energy preserving value than I once spent repairing mistakes. This time I kept the meat properly. That alone changed the work more than I expected. Instead of hacking through carcasses to reach the hide, I found myself slowing down, separating joints carefully, and preserving clean cuts where I could. Rabbit meat remained cheap in Dunmere, but cheap did not mean worthless when taverns were crowded with stranded travellers willing to eat almost anything hot.

I brought down only two Common marsh hares and a bark-squirrel before turning back toward Dunmere. Three days earlier I would have considered the hunt disappointing. Now I looked at the clean hides and bundled meat and felt something closer to relief. Merris inspected the work beneath his lantern and grunted softly.

"There. Finally. You're starting to kill like a man who intends to sell the corpse afterward." I watched him turn one hide over, searching for the insult he clearly wanted and not quite finding it. That almost pleased me more than the coin. PAYMENT RECEIVED You received 55 iron pieces for two Common marsh hares and one Common bark-squirrel, including clean hides and usable meat. Your current funds have increased from 0 iron pieces to 55 iron pieces.

"That little?" I asked before I could stop myself. Merris barked a laugh.

"And there's the real hunter's lesson. Good equipment preserves value. It doesn't magically make rabbits worth silver." He separated the wrapped meat bundle from the hides with the point of his knife.

"You'll get something if The Cataract's cook takes the meat off your hands. Place is feeding half the eastern road by now." The thought steadied me slightly. Not profit. Survival. By the time I returned to The Cataract, exhaustion had settled deep beneath the stitches in my shoulder. The common room remained loud with travellers and stranded merchants, but for the first time since leaving the timber yard, the noise no longer made me feel entirely outside the world around me. Hunters sat here too. Ferrymen. Guards.

Working people survived through skill, trade, and uncertain mornings. The innkeeper eyed the wrapped hare meat before looking at me.

"Selling?" I shifted the bundle on the counter.

"Trading if possible." He weighed the bundle briefly in his hands, then jerked his head toward the stairs.

"Covers half the room." I nodded. The answer disappointed me less than it should have. Half a room was still shelter, and shelter was beginning to feel like prey that had to be hunted from a different part of town. TRADE ACCEPTED You traded usable hare meat for a room discount at The Cataract. Your room cost has decreased from 48 iron pieces to 24 iron pieces. PAYMENT SPENT You spent 24 iron pieces to renew your room at The Cataract for one night.

Your current funds have decreased from 55 iron pieces to 31 iron pieces. I climbed the stairs slowly and entered the room before the innkeeper could ask for coin I no longer possessed enough to waste. The new axe rested across my knees while I sat on the edge of the bed turning it beneath the lanternlight. Worn. Scarred. Plain. Good steel folded beneath the surface. The thought lingered strangely in my mind.

Outside, Dunmere groaned beneath rain, river traffic, and the pressure of too many strangers trapped at the crossing. Somewhere below, men argued over ferry schedules while mugs struck wood hard enough to shake the floorboards. I ran an oil cloth carefully along the axe edge and realised, with equal parts fear and satisfaction, that I finally understood something important. Surviving the forest was only half the work. Learning the value of what survived it was the other half.

That lesson felt smaller than killing an Iron beast, but it was the first one that seemed capable of keeping me alive.