So, while I was busy tortur- playing with Gobta (who I'd needed to gag, because he'd started screaming after he'd woken up), Big Bro made up some stupid story about magical girls, working on it alongside the dwarven guard captain. I'd have interrupted the stupid story quite a while ago, but apparently, if you slowly upped the temperature of the string cocoon around a person until they started writhing around, then healed them as you cooled it down, before upping the temperature once more, even a goblin could learn Resist Heat. And by doing the opposite for roughly an hour or so was enough to turn Resist Heat into Resist Temperatures.
But just as I was thinking about giving Gobta the Resist Paralysis skill, having learned the Heat and Cool skills for myself, a few dwarves burst into the room and started talking about an Armorsaurus attack in some mines. Apparently, there weren't any casualties yet, but a few people were on the verge.
Naturally, Big Bro gave them some of his own stores of healing potion to heal the injured. It didn't take the guard captain long to give the potions out and come back (Though Gobta had managed to learn Resist Paralysis by then).
…
After three dwarves walked in to thank Big Bro for saving their lives with his potions (including one guy who just went "mm-mmm"), the guard captain explained everything to us.
Apparently, the idiots who'd tried to attack us were members of this nation's 'Free Guild,' which Big Bro explained to me was a sort of odd-job employment agency. Since they already had a prior reputation as idiots, we weren't being pressed for any charges. The only reason we'd even been in jail as long as we had was out of respect for all the people who'd been hit by Big Bro's coercion.
Since it was their fault for not being strong enough to see how cool it was, I didn't see the problem, but Big Bro's reasoning for not being worried about that had something to do with dignity.
In the end, we got a place to stay for the night, both Gobta and I got a bunch of skills, and we even got a place to stay for the night. The guard captain promised to show us to a smith that he knew in the morning, who might be able to help us find people.
In the morning, Big Bro and I watched the dwarves train for a little while (They were all really weak. I could literally smash the entire garrison into the ground without any effort at all), before the dwarven captain, a guy named Kaido, came back to show us around town.
He asked for us to sell him a few potions in exchange, but honestly, that was a pretty good deal for us too. We got a lot of money, apparently, and a guide through town.
…
"Yo, bro! You in there?!" So, that's how we found ourselves right outside a shop, deep in the back alleys of Dwargon.
Apparently, the guy behind the counter was Kaido's brother, but I couldn't really see the resemblance at all. If Kaido was your average guard captain, not perfectly groomed, but enough that you know that he trained and kept up his appearance, this guy was a grizzled old dude who clearly hadn't bathed in days, too busy swinging a hammer and such. Essentially, if Kaido was a sword, then this guy was an old hammer.
The three guys who'd thanked Big Bro after being injured in the mines were there, too. Apparently, they were working with Kaido's brother, Kaijin, after their own various businesses had crashed and burnt for various reasons.
…
As far as I understood it, Kaijin was not having a good day. The Sage part of my Processor skill backed that up by analyzing his facial pattern. If he didn't owe Big Bro a debt of thanks for the potions, he would likely have simply turned us away at the door, his own problems stacking up by the hour.
We asked Kaijin to help us, but my skill wasn't wrong. As far as he described it, a bunch of countries were gearing up for a possible war, spooked by the fact that Big Bro Veldora was now gone. Kaijin himself had been asked to provide two hundred steel spears and twenty swords. He'd gotten the spears done and out of the way already, but he didn't have any material for the swords.
"Then why didn't you just say you can't fill the order?!" Kaido asked his brother. An obvious question.
But Kaijin struggled to answer it. Actually, he struggled to answer it without cursing. Since I was transformed into my goblina form, which happened to look like a young girl, he apparently didn't like the idea of cursing around me.
Eventually, the answer came clear. He needed magic ore, specifically, for the core of the swords. Even if he had the ore, a whole sword would still take him an entire day. Naturally, the one who'd asked this of him knew of a shortage of magic ore in the kingdom, but that didn't really matter in the end. He couldn't deny a request in front of the king, after all.
He had until the end of the week to create twenty high-quality magic swords with no ore, or he'd likely lose his artisan's license, apparently.
"Ha! Hahaha!" I started laughing.
"Riiisa?" Big Bro asked me, apprehensive. He'd sensed that I had an idea of some sort. Meanwhile, for some reason, Gobta had begun trembling every time I got close to him or spoke… I wondered why.
"I can fix that! One sword, made entirely out of Magisteel, coming right up!" I said, turning back into my slime form. I had everything I needed bumping around in my stomach. Take a bit of wood from those stupid bows, hollow it out… Put a bit of leather from the direwolf skin, manipulate the shape of the magisteel… and finally put it all together, aand… "Taa-daa! One sword, pure magisteel!" Proud of my work, I held it high above my head.
"Whoa! Pure magisteel! And so much of it, too!" Kaijin exclaimed, mentioning nothing about the sword's quality itself.
"Terrible quality sword, though… But it's pure magisteel! That's incredible!" Dwarven Brother 1 said. I wilted a bit.
"Yeah, that's an impressively bad quality sword… Sharp, maybe… still… But we can use that magisteel to make a dozen or more high quality swords!" Dwarven Brother 2 agreed with the other two. I wilted even further.
"Mm-mmm!"
So, I ended up drawing shapes on the floor in the corner of Kajin's shop while he and the dwarven brothers reforged my sword. Once he had a high-quality original to copy, a few hours later, Big Bro gobbled it up and perfectly replicated the sword nineteen times.
"Well, bro. I'd better get going. I can't exactly afford to skip work all day." Kaido decided to take his leave just after Big Bro had finished the swords and we'd had dinner.
"Wait, Kaido!" Big Bro stopped him as he reached for the door.