Nael stopped at the edge of the east street.
"Lodge is down there," he said, nodding toward a building maybe forty meters off — two storeys, timber-framed, a sign above the door that Luc's comprehension rendered as The Holdfast.
"Should have rooms open."
"Thanks," Luc said.
Nael looked at him for a moment — that same quiet, sideways evaluation he'd been doing since the road.
Then he said, "Monsters have been pushing closer to town for weeks. Don't wander past the walls after dark," and turned and walked away.
Luc watched him go, then turned toward the lodge.
The innkeeper was a broad woman in her fifties with the expression of someone who had seen everything and been impressed by none of it. She looked at Luc the way you looked at something tracked in from outside — taking in the hoodie, the one bare foot, the general state of him — and her face settled into the particular blankness of someone deciding how much trouble this was going to be.
"Room?" Luc said.
"One silver a night for a stable room — meals included, private basin. Two silver, premium. Top floor, south-facing."
Luc reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out what the goddess had left him.
He'd been expecting coins. What he got was a weighted handful of silver and gold — more than he'd anticipated, and heavier. He counted quickly without making a show of it.
"Thirty days," he said, and counted thirty silver coins onto the counter.
The innkeeper's expression didn't change. But something in her posture did — a fractional shift, the recalibration of someone updating a first impression without acknowledging she'd made one. She swept the coins off the counter with practiced efficiency and produced a key.
"Room seven. Top of the stairs, left. Meals at dawn and dusk. Basin's filled each morning."
"Thank you."
She was already looking past him.
Room seven was small and exact — a bed, a table, a chair, a window that looked out over the rooftops toward the eastern wall. The basin was empty but clean. The floorboards didn't move when he walked across them.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
The noise of the town came through the window at a remove — voices, cart wheels, something metallic being worked somewhere nearby. Ordinary sounds. The sounds of a place that was simply continuing to exist, indifferent to him, which was somehow the most reassuring thing he'd encountered since arriving.
It wasn't comfort. But it was a place that didn't want to kill him.
He sat there for a moment and let that be enough.
Then he thought about the snake.
He thought about the Veld-hound on the road, and the way his leg hadn't responded when he'd needed it to, and the spear that had arrived because someone else had been close enough to throw it. He thought about baseline human confirmed, and three allocated stat points, and the fact that somewhere in this world there was a Demon King he'd agreed — cheerfully, immediately, with a chip in his hand — to kill.
He needed a weapon.
***
The blacksmith wasn't hard to find — the sound led him there before the sign did, a rhythmic striking that rang out over the street noise with the confidence of something load-bearing. The forge was open-fronted, hot even from the doorway, and the smith himself was a square, unhurried man who looked at Luc's lack of everything with the professional neutrality of someone who'd equipped worse.
"First weapon?" he said.
"That obvious?"
"You're not carrying anything and you're not dead yet. Either first weapon or very lucky." He considered. "Probably both."
He set Luc up with a short sword — nothing ornate, nothing heavy, good balance for someone without established technique. Scabbard included. Luc handled it, tested the weight, and thought about the Veld-hound adjusting mid-lunge while he'd been standing there with his hands up.
"Anything for protection?" he asked.
"Leather vest. Won't stop much, but it'll stop more than that." The smith nodded at the hoodie.
The total came to ten silver. Luc paid it without hesitation, which earned him a single approving nod from the smith — the acknowledgment of a man who respected people who didn't haggle when they didn't know enough to haggle well.
He stepped back out onto the street with a sword on his hip and a leather vest over his hoodie and felt, marginally, less like an unarmed civilian in a world that ate those.
He stood there for a moment.
The street moved around him. Afternoon light came down between the buildings at a low angle, catching the dust in the air. Someone laughed somewhere nearby. The forge rang out behind him, steady and indifferent, already on to the next thing.
He put his hand on the pommel of the sword. Not drawing it — just resting his palm against it, feeling the weight of it on his hip, the reality of it.
He'd survived twice. Barely, both times, and once only because of someone else's spear. Speed and perception had bought him margins, not victories. And margins, in a world calibrated to kill baseline humans, were not a long-term strategy.
He needed more than stats.
He needed —
Condition met, the System said.
Luc went still.
The tone was different. Not the flat disdain of its usual delivery, not the bored precision of someone managing expectations downward. This was measured. Like something being announced rather than observed.
Mastery pathway unlocked.
He stood in the middle of the street and didn't move.
Swordsman Path.