Chương 27: The Slum Pawn

The sensory immersion hit Ethan with the thick stench of burning goat fat and charred horn—the heavy, suffocating aftermath of the raid that had consumed the ravine while he was offline. He appeared in the shadow of the southern drainage culvert, his bare feet sinking into the cool, unpaved red silt. Inside his leather pouch, the 2. 1 kilograms of damaged copper weapon scrap clinked with a heavy, metallic weight.

I cannot enter the Upper City market square, Ethan calculated, his eyes scanning the mud-brick battlements. The palace brokers take an eighteen percent transaction tax, and Bochim's Pixel Rex trade wardens will be monitoring every public copper exchange to hunt me down. He turned away from the main thoroughfares and navigated the narrow, unpaved lanes of the lower city slums, where the independent NPC craftsmen operated far below the palace radar.

The air in the weavers' alley grew dense, thick with the choking yellow smoke of low-grade charcoal. Ethan stopped outside a small, crumbling mud-brick workshop covered in dark soot. A wooden sign hung crookedly over the threshold, scratched with a primitive tool icon: Workshop of Elon. Inside, a junior NPC blacksmith was beating a dull piece of salvaged bronze wire against a pitted limestone anvil.

His digital face was lined with algorithmic exhaustion, his stamina bar likely flashing amber from hours of manual hammering. Ethan stepped over the stone threshold, letting his heavy pouch drop onto the wooden workbench. The scrap metal hit the timber with a solid, echoing thud.

"Damaged copper weapon scrap," Ethan said, keeping his voice flat and clinical.

"Pulled directly from the Gaba'on Stalker debris. Two point one kilograms by raw scale weight." The smith stopped his hammer mid-swing. His grey eyes raked over Ethan's filthy burlap apron, his micro-expressions flashing a sudden, predictable look of high-tier disdain for an artisan-class player.

"I don't buy junk from mud-scratchers," the smith muttered, his voice carrying a raspy, programmed irritation.

"The palace has locked the copper imports this morning. Any metal traded outside the royal granary scales at a thirty percent impurity penalty. Take your dirt back to the riverbank, beggar." Ethan did not pull his pouch back. He reached down and drew his blunt bronze trowel, pressing the ancient metal tool flat against a jagged piece of a fractured copper javelin head beneath the tallow candle light.

"The palace locks the imports because the timber line is blocked," Ethan said, leaning his hands against the rough workbench to trigger his Unyielding Frame metric.

"You're trying to melt this down using low-grade charcoal that doesn't clear nine hundred degrees. That's why your bronze is brittle. It's full of sulfur slag." He closed his eyes, focusing his Level 5 perception onto the molecular structure of the copper piece. He didn't open a crafting menu. He isolated the tri-consonantal root א-ד-מ inside his mind, channeling his Grade 2 Radical Extraction syntax straight through his bronze trowel into the salvage.

A faint, deep crimson glow pulsed across the surface of the green-streaked copper. The black sulfur crust sticking to the weapon scrap suddenly flaked away, crumbling into a pile of harmless grey ash on the table. The remaining metal gleamed with a bright, pure pink oxidation—ninety-eight percent pure sponge copper, completely refined without a single spark of fire. The blacksmith's digital jaw went slack.

The advanced AI engine processed the sudden transformation, the character's structural shortage of pure material overriding his programmed disdain for a low-tier potter.

"No sulfur," the smith whispered, his fingers reaching out to touch the raw pink surface.

"This doesn't need a crucible shift. I can hammer this cold."

"I don't want your copper shekels," Ethan said, leaning closer, his voice dropping to a low whisper.

"The palace tracks the coin serial numbers. Give me the uncoined Hacksilber scrap weight from your lower chest. Four point three grams of silver weight, and the entire two kilograms of refined copper is yours." The smith hesitated, his calculations weight-balancing the time saved on refining against his private stash. He reached beneath the anvil, pulled out a small leather rag, and unfolded a collection of jagged, cut-up silver rings and broken earrings.

He dropped them onto a small bronze hand-scale until the weights levelled. Clink. [Trade Finalized] You have liquidated: [Refined Copper Weapon Scrap — 2. 1 kg] You have received: [Hacksilber Scrap — Weight: 4. 35 Grams] (3 Silver Shekels equivalent) Artisan Trade Experience Awarded: +850 XP Ethan scooped the cold, jagged pieces of silver scrap into his pouch, his level bar crawling smoothly toward twenty-eight percent toward Level 6. He now had thirteen silver shekels to his name.

He had bypassed the palace brokers, avoided the corporate trade wardens, and liquidated his battlefield scrap for pure, untaxable silver weight right inside the slums. He turned his back on the smoky forge, his bare feet stepping back out onto the dirt road. The Gaba'on Stalker battle and his quick real-world logoff had eaten a chunk of his day, leaving him with 90 hours left on Bochim's contract.