Chapter 79: Invincible

AN: Enjoy! One chapter today, two chapters tomorrow! And this chapter... well, I'll let the words speak for themselves.

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“What? Spiky? Mother-in-law?” Milo exclaimed.

“I’ll explain later. How’s your dad doing?” Arthur asked.

Milo moved his head back and forth a bit, noncommittal.

“He’s fine, I think. He’s definitely not in his best shape ever. He can hardly stand up right now. But apparently he got a lot of mapping done, so he doesn’t care about how bad his shape is at all.”

Milo waved down the cook and ordered some food as he filled Arthur in on the details. His dad wasn’t in any danger at all, which was more-or-less expected. Counterintuitively, that also meant his physical condition was comically poor. Milo’s dad had a really high explorer level. When he coupled that with a weird overdraft-at-the-energy-bank skill, he could build up a massive health debt far beyond what made sense.

“If he looked like that for any other reason,” Milo continued, “he’d absolutely be in trouble. But since it comes from a skill that isn’t supposed to kill him, he was safe as soon as he got back to civilization. So long as he doesn’t hit the limits of the skill, he’s safe. And once he’s out, he needs to be in a safe place to recover.”

“It’s that bad?”

“He’s been recovering for a week and still looks like a piece of dried fruit with goat hair glued on. It would be funny if it wasn’t so weird. I’ve never been with him when he was recovering like this. When he left, he was taller than me, for the sake of the gods. Now he looks tiny.”

“Yeah.” Arthur’s dad on Earth had a heart attack when in his early teens. It wasn’t a big one, so his dad lived and recovered pretty well. But he remembered the same kinds of feelings when he visited the man in the hospital. His father looked small, like something had sapped away his invincible strength. “I’ve been through similar stuff. What can I do to help?”

“That’s the thing. You can listen, which is great right now. Probably you can make him some minor-effect tea-of-fattening with a stick of butter in it or something. But besides that? I think I just sort of have to deal with it and wait till he gets better.”

“Sorry,” Arthur said. “You know, on Earth, I had a friend whose dad fell sick. He was a big, loud guy. Larger than life. who looked a bit like Karbo, was loud like him too. Always joking around and being friendly. He got sick, for a while. It was weird for my friend and the dad, from what I could gather. Like the friend had to deal with the fact that his dad wasn’t invincible, like he had always thought. And the dad had to deal with his son knowing that, at the same time.”

“This does feel a little bit like that.” Milo said. “I could tell he didn’t want to say that he wished I didn’t come out, but… you know. You could tell he would have liked to hide this side from me. And then it was a little awkward. We talked about how he had done in the field, how long it would take him to recover. and not a lot else.”

“Dads aren’t supposed to be sick, or really be hurt.”

Milo snapped his fingers. “That’s it. It’s like if water began pouring upwards. Dads aren’t supposed to be vulnerable like that.”

Arthur nodded and sat with Milo in silence for a few moments.

“Is that why you are back so soon?” Arthur asked.

“That and he has a sleep schedule he has to keep to. Doctor’s orders,” Milo said.

Arthur worked on his beverage as Milo took his food from the cook and got down to eating.

“I can see one upside, at least,” Arthur said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Remember when you were telling me you wanted to come out here to talk to him? It was about your work and your class, right? Before, you would have been telling that to your invincible myth of a father. And he would have been proud no matter what. He probably still will be, but now when you tell him, it seems like… I dunno. You’ve seen him hurt. Maybe after the dust clears on the whole my-dad-isn’t-invincible feelings, you can relate to him in a different way.”

“Meaning?”

“Still your dad, but also sort of a peer. Just two dudes with jobs, shooting the breeze about work and being professionals. I’m guessing you were trying to get to that point anyway, whether you knew it or not. This just makes it faster.”

“Huh,” Milo said. “So a different kind of relationship.”

“Yeah, it happens whether you like it or not. I think it happens to everyone, eventually,” Arthur said. “You grow up and at some point, your parents notice you’ve grown up. And then you’re an adult, just like them. Or something like that.”

Milo speared some of his vegetables with his fork and held them up. “You know, I wouldn’t have guessed that this would bother me before.”

Arthur nodded. He leaned back in his chair and watched people milling in and out of the space. It was afternoon, and only a few of them actually stayed to eat. Everyone else took their lunch with them on simple square plates cut out of a thin plank of wood and probably went back to work.

“Anyway.” Milo finally broke the silence. “Besides meals, he’s at least supposed to sleep until dawn tomorrow. So that leaves me with a lot of time.”

“Well, there’s still some town to walk around. We could check it out. And there’s music here, tonight,” Arthur offered.

Milo scraped a little bit of food together on his plate, took one last bite, and stood.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s do that.”

—

Arthur decided to re-do the parts of the town that he had previously gone through with Spiky, which let Milo get up-to-date on the whole there’s-really-nothing-here experience. They walked through the town again, seeing the stores that didn’t appeal to them, the general lack of restaurants, and the dearth of places to go or things to do.

“How do people even survive here? There’s nowhere to go,” Milo said.

“I’m guessing the tavern handles a lot of that pressure. It’s actually nice, in a way. The one place they go to is also the same place that everyone else does. Has to be good for community. And outside of that, I’m guessing people go to each other's houses, or hang out in other ways. It might just look really different, without being all that different from home.”

Milo suddenly pointed at a small, square brick building with a smoking chimney. “That’s the smith.”

“Are you sure? It’s not labeled. And there’s no clanging,” Arthur asked.

“I can smell the burning oil from here. He’s probably just doing hardening and tempering today. Want to go take a look, or would that be boring?”

“No more boring than walking around. Let’s do it.”

Milo was right about the building. As they drew close enough to see through the door, they saw an absolutely massive tree demon plunge a pickaxe head into a large vat of oil. A flame flared up a few feet high as the oil wicked the heat away from the piece.

“That makes them tougher?” Arthur asked.

“Not this part. This is the quench. With steel tools, it just makes them much harder. But hard and tough aren’t the same thing. That sucker is so rigid right now, you could probably shatter pieces of it off with a hammer. Later, he’ll heat it again, at a much lower temperature. Depending on the temperature he uses and how long he soaks the pickaxe in the flame, it’ll lose some of the hardness in favor of springiness. And with something like a pickaxe, you want it to be very springy. Keeps it breaking, and there’s no reason for it to be all that sharp.”

The tree looked up from his work. “Most of the time, that’s true. This particular piece is going to end up harder and sharper than you’d think.”

“Really?” Milo looked surprised. “Why?”

“The ore. Major export, but it’s hard as hell in its native form and doesn’t shatter well when given blunt force. So you need the pickaxe to cut better, whether it lasts or not,” the tree said.

“Huh. Must get expensive,” Arthur said.

“These pickaxe heads are half my business. All for that one mine. But there’s no better solution. My time costs less than enchanting the pickaxes. Improving the tools anymore would be too expensive.”

“What about worse?” Milo asked. “Could you just mass-cast iron pickaxes? No forging needed?”

“I thought about it. Tried it, even. But then they can’t mine the ore at all. The only thing that would help without costing much more is my own leveling, and I’ve been bottlenecked for some time now.”

“Huh.” Milo looked around the shop. Arthur followed his eyes across the smith’s setup. The tree hadn’t been lying about the pickaxes being a major part of his business. There was a big heap of them in the back, just waiting for the finish work to be done. “Actually, I might be able to help with that.”

“Oh?” The smith used his tongs to toss the pickaxe head he had quenched into the pile, and let the tool drop to his side, being careful to keep it from actually touching his clothes. “No offense, but aren’t you a fairly low level? I got most of what I could get out of teaching younger smiths a long time ago. Not that I mind giving pointers, but it’s not gonna help me a whole lot.”

“And I’d take the pointers, but that’s not what I’m talking about. This one is an offworlder.” Milo jerked a thumb at Arthur. “And the other day, he tossed me the concept for a piece of offworlder tech.”

The smith instantly changed demeanor. He dropped his tongs on his anvil and hustled over.

“What is it? Have you already prototyped it? Oh, of course you have. Or you wouldn’t be telling me.”

Milo caught Arthur’s not-following-it look and explained. “Prototyping is the first big phase. For the prototyping, the smith with the highest level tends to get the lion’s share of the credit as far as the system is concerned. But now that I’ve made the prototype, and tested it, there’s plenty of credit to go around. I can’t refine it away from my shop. Which means I need a full shop, and also help, lots of it. Win-win.”

The tree-demon and Milo were both immediately sucked up by the vortex of smithing. To his credit, the new smith got the potential of the shocks right away. He pulled out paper and a pen as Milo ran to get the last remaining intact shock and the salvage of the others. As soon as he got back, they forgot Arthur was there as they dove deep into discussing what liquids to best fill the little canisters with, what metals would hold up the best against the punishment, and dozens of little possible points of refinements they could test on the design.

It was the second time that day Arthur had lost a friend to love. But since this love was mostly for the art of bending metal into shapes, he could watch without feeling awkward. He spent the better part of thirty minutes enjoying the sight of his friend captivated by his craft before the shine had worn off and he decided to leave.

“I’m going, Milo.”

Milo raised a hand and waved. They were good enough friends that the interaction didn’t need much more than that, which was lucky because Arthur didn’t think Milo could do any more than that at the moment. In fact, the tree smith didn’t seem to pick up on the fact that Arthur was leaving at all.