Chương 18: Chapter 17: The Nail

Terry, not to be confused with Jerry, was an unremarkable goblin. He'd been assigned to the forge by Nicole because Linda needed hands and Terry was available. He was too slow for hauling or hunting. Worse, he was frightened of the dark, which, apart from the many difficulties cave life brought with it, made him a poor miner. Janet had tried him in the school for a few days and sent him back with the flat verdict of a frustrated teacher. He just wasn't a good fit. The forge suited him anyway.

Heating, hammering, and quenching iron was mechanical, repetitive work that the iron didn't care who performed it, and Terry did it without complaint. This is what he was good at. On the fourth day, he found some scrap. It was just some leftover slag iron, too small for an axe of either variant, pick or standard, and too irregular for anything else. Terry looked at it instead of discarding it, turning it in the forge light, and something in the space between thought and instinct produced a suggestion.

It was like he had an epiphany. Perhaps he was the first goblin ever to have done so as far as anyone could say. He reheated it, pulled it out with the tongs, and set it on the anvil. He picked up a hammer and struck it lighter than he would for normal forging, shaping the metal instead of flattening it. The scrap elongated. Each strike pushed the iron in a direction Terry seemed to know before the hammer landed, and a thin rod emerged, roughly three inches long, tapering to a point sharp enough to pierce wood.

He flattened the other end into a small broad head and quenched it. The hiss of steam was the only sound in the alcove. He held up the finished piece and turned it in the light. He had no word for it. It was a fastener, a thing that joined two pieces of wood permanently instead of rotting like fiber cord or loosening like a wedge. It wasn't built to cut or break. It was built to hold things together. It was a nail.

[SYSTEM NOTICE] [New Evolution Unlocked: CRAFTSMAN] Unlock Condition: Produce ten unique things inside the warren. Tool-makers and builders with enhanced fine motor control and an instinctive understanding of material properties, enabling complex crafted goods. They are poor combatants, as their value is economic rather than military. Cost: 50 Mana Matthew felt the mana spike and was in the forge alcove before Terry had finished staring at the nail, obsessed.

The goblin king slapped his own forehead, as if he had missed something obvious.

"Terry, you genius!" said Matthew. Terry shook his head. Matthew took the nail from his hand, studying it as if Terry had made the most important thing the world had produced since the first fire of civilization. EVOLUTION AUTHORIZED: GOBLIN (TERRY) → GOBLIN CRAFTSMAN Mana: 1, 567 / 2, 000 The transformation was subtle, none of the grinding bones or convulsions of a predator's evolution.

Terry's hands steadied, the fine tremor smoothing out, his fingers lengthening significantly to the point where they gained an additional joint that made him more capable of grabbing odd things. His eyes developed a faint sheen, enabling a keener eyesight. His posture was straightened by force, rather than by mannerism. He didn't grow larger or fiercer. He grew more controlled.

"Let's hear it for Terry, everyone!" called Matthew out loud to the warren. The goblins nearby all started clapping, as was their ritual, even if nobody really understood why. Not keen on being the center of attention, Terry went back to work, but not before receiving a congratulatory, company-mandated pat on the back. Matthew put a hold on the pickaxes. They didn't have enough mature goblins yet to dig in the mines. The current cohort needed to get through schooling first.

He considered sending the children into the depths to work but decided against it. Not for moral reasons, but because they were simply too weak and useless to work well in the iron shafts. They would just get in the way. — Maybe he would have the goblins invent a spindle. Now that would be somewhere the children could get their tiny little dextrous hands dirty. By the end of the day, Terry had made an entire sack of nails, the production speed climbing as his instincts calibrated the process.

He was feeling the work rather than thinking it, the metallurgical intuition guiding his hands toward the right temperature and angle. He began experimenting. Matthew gave him free rein to do so. Metalworking was a massive advancement for them. Matthew was overwhelmed, wanting to tell Terry to start making all sorts of things he remembered from his old world. Hell. Maybe if he leveled the little guy enough, he'd make him a box full of transistors. But he decided not to.

Terry was in the middle of finding himself in what was some sort of manic episode. The goblin neglected eating, drinking, and sleeping to work. He was, as it were, haunted by the spirit of at-will employment looming over him. This kind of driven energy needed to be allowed to flow freely. Terry lived in the flow state. Then, Terry did something miraculous. He put two pieces of flattened, tiny slag together and just stared at them, not moving. Slowly, he lifted one and flipped it with a finger.

The tiny clap of metal ignited a spark in his eyes as he saw something no goblin had ever seen before. Terry had just invented the hinge. The other goblins gathered in ones and twos, drawn by the hammer, and watched Terry work. He was a spectacle unto himself. Terry didn't teach them. He was a maker, and the making was its own instruction. Two of the newer goblins, Janice and Matilda, planted themselves at the edge of the alcove and watched, having decided this was what they wanted to do.

But most of the tribe didn't really understand what it was they were seeing. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. They found out the next morning. With real iron fasteners that didn't rot or loosen, the goblins began building in a way they never had before. The fiber cord they had always used would stretch and loosen. Wedges split and fell out. Nails held.

Matthew was dying to tell Terry about screws, but he wanted to let him figure it out on his own. It took massive amounts of self-restraint. The cots in the barracks became proper bunk beds, planks reinforced with brackets and mattress frames. Storage shelves in the warehouse became cabinets with hinged doors. The palisade sections, once held together with cord that rotted in the rain, got brackets at every joint, the wall going rigid where it had been flexible. Terry was overwhelmed with ideas.

It was as if he had been flooded with knowledge. Too much, in fact. It was like he had been given a thousand crafting recipes but only had two hands. He essentially drafted Janice and Barbara, showing them how to make planks out of logs exactly once, before running off in a frenzy. And so, Janice and Barbara made planks. It was good for Barbara, especially, to have a new task.

She finished making the map weeks ago on Matthew's request and had gone out of her way to find things to add to it just to keep herself busy. Linda led the construction of Warren's first freestanding structure: a camouflaged guard post at the palisade entrance at an angle, walls of vertical planks nailed to a timber frame, and a roof of packed clay over a lattice held in place by nailed planks. Six feet by six, one entrance, a window slit facing the cleared way out of the forest.

It would serve as an early alarm system if anyone came snooping around again. It was the first structure the goblins had ever made that hadn't been carved from existing stone. It was built instead, out of materials they'd cut and fastened with tools they'd forged, all by themselves. Matthew watched from inside the palisade, like a proud father watching his twenty-seven-year-old son finally graduate high school.

"Tandaradei. You… sad?" asked Nicole, looking at him as he wiped his eyes.

"I'm so proud of them, Nicole," he said, watching them thrive.

"Look how good they're doing. Look how many there are." The tribe was growing in number. They were abundant now. The magical food source from the last invasion was starting to taper off slowly, and the tree would produce fewer goblins soon. But they had swollen as is. The warren was exploding with movement. Without the staggered harvests from Sarais' farm, they would have lost most of them to hunger. But now, between the tubers, the smoked meats, and their foraging efforts, food was abundant.

A hand reached up, resting on his arm.

"Tandaradei provides for goblins," said Nicole.

"No you, no goblins. No Nicole." He felt her squeezing. Matthew looked at her.

"Nicole happy. Tandaradei bad goblin." He thought Nicole was trying to say she's happy about him being here even if she finds him annoying. Is there a higher compliment a person in management could receive? Matthew didn't think so. Matthew looked back at the work as the team pushed the tower's legs upright into the air. Matthew visited Sarais that night. He brought a few samples. Iron ingots, rough and unrefined. A handful of nails. A knife. A door hinge.

He laid them on her porch table like a sales rep presenting a catalog. It was close to midnight and Sarais, tired, rubbed her face.

"Matthew. What am I looking at?" she asked, annoyed, having only fallen asleep a few hours ago. She was standing there in her shawl covering over an ankle-length sleeping gown, which was always unusual for him. Matthew wasn't really ever prepared to see the hard, elven woman in such a casual way.

"A new line of products," said the goblin king, proudly, keeping his eyes on the merchandise.

"We're producing metal goods now. And I want you to sell them for us in town." She looked at him for a moment and then down at the items. Sarais tested the nail's point and the blade's edge and opened and closed the hinge.

"It's all pretty basic," she said, clearly not as impressed as he was. The fact that goblins had made these and the wonder behind that was lost on her, apparently.

"Nails? Knives?"

"Hey. The world is built on basic things," he replied.

"Every house from here to the end of the world needs nails, and everyone in them needs at least one knife." She set down the hinge and looked at him with the expression of a woman reading the terms before the pitch.

"Your offer?" she asked. Matthew clapped his hands together once.

"Ten percent commission for your pocket. You'll keep a second ten in a separate account to apply as future credit toward the warren's food purchases," he said.

"This costs you nothing but time. I'm offering you free money."

"Fifty," she retorted immediately, not a drop of hesitation in her eyes.

"Sarais."

"I'm the one walking into a guild town with heaps of stuff that I obviously didn't make by myself out here alone. It could bring questions. You have nothing to worry about, but I do. The risk is mine. So what I get should reflect that." Matthew studied her. She was testing him.

"The ore's free, mined by goblin labor, and the charcoal for smelting costs us nothing either. The only real cost in this chain is your time and risk, and, pound for pound, ten percent of it will earn you more per hour of market work than your farming."

"Fifty."

"You're a hard woman, Sarais. Twenty." They stared at each other.

"Twenty-five, and you build an extension to my house with your fancy magic nonsense," she said, nodding her head to the side wall.

"I want a kitchen and a cellar. And," she tapped the table.

"I get Rick and three others like him for the rest of the season, nightly," she added.

"Smart ones, Matthew. I need laborers." He thought about it for a moment and then found it workable.

"Agreed," said Matthew, holding out his hand. Sarais took it and they shook, her fingers vanishing in his palm. Matthew rose up.

"I'll have the rest on your doorstep before sunrise."

"Guild's out as a buyer, I reckon." She slid the knife to the side.

"I'll take these to someone I know from back in the day. He doesn't ask questions." His own question, however, was apparent in his expression. Sarais clarified.

"Dwarven merchant. Runs the only independent tool shop in town. The guild leaves him alone because his family is… infamous. Won't buy from anyone, but he sells to everyone." Matthew nodded and left. Sarais watched until he left the property line and then returned back inside. Brungard was a dwarf. A smidge taller than a goblin but as broad as two of them, with arms that suggested he'd been swinging a hammer since he was in the womb, much to the discomfort of his mother. Sarais set a bundle on the counter.

"Iron goods. Unmarked. Crude. What'll you give me?" Brungard tested the nail, worked the hinge, and ran his thumb along the blade with the assessment of someone who'd been judging metal for four decades.

"Who's your supplier? This is low-level work."

"Traveling tinker. Nobody you'd know," she replied. Brungard gave her the look, sizing her up.

"Dark elf, huh," he said, chewing on it for a moment. He grunted.

"Not interested."

"I burn incense," said Sarais, the phrase sounding rather out of place. He stopped, looking back up at her again.

"We don't use that anymore. Who did you know?" She lifted her hands.

"Doesn't matter. I'm not here to talk politics," said Sarais, plainly.

"If you want them, I'll be back with shipments regularly. It's good money. Let's keep it at that." He studied her for a moment and then looked back at the products.

"I'm going to give you half of what the guild would pay. Coin. And don't use the front door next time."

"Deal." Sarais counted the coins on her table, having separated her cut from the other portions, as agreed on. Between this and the hides, if this kept up, she would repay her loan and own this land much faster than in four years. Closing her ledger, she blew out the candle. [SYSTEM NOTICE] Economic Milestone: First External Trade Revenue New Resource Flow: Iron Goods → Currency → Supplies Matthew read the notification after waking in the morning.

In his hand was a bag of coins, delivered by Rick just after sunrise. The hobgoblin was unnaturally fast and limber and could sprint to the farm and back through the forest in minutes. The coins jangled as he threw the bag and caught it, making plans in his head. This was the first liquid money that might have ever entered goblin society through the act of commerce, ever. Of course, he could hardly go into town and spend it himself, but he could create a treasury here in the warren. They would stockpile money.

Winter would arrive sooner or later. They needed to prepare for that. Money would let them buy things from town, through Sarais, that they needed. More food, medicines. — Salt. God, he wanted some salt so bad. But the nearest ocean was apparently several days' riding past his territory's boundary. The only way he would get any was to buy it. Money suddenly made everything possible that hadn't been possible before. His people were changing. Their society was changing. They had no idea what they were in for.