The next few days were the hardest for me, not because the work was difficult, not even because finding ore was especially dangerous, and certainly not because I was worried about starving.
It was because I was still trying to figure out how to balance my new life with the reason I had come to Town YY in the first place. My siblings.
Cade the hero, and Cole the knight.
I had originally come here intending to make sure the three of my siblings, whom I uplifted to become a heroes party to save the world, didn't completely lose themselves in the darkness that they had already started to progress toward.
After seeing what Cole was already doing so soon after having arrived in the town, concern had only grown for the others.
Cade was harder to judge.
Alison had left the town for the capital almost immediately after arriving, meaning there wasn't much I could do about her even if I wanted to.
The next seven days of my life were pretty simple, actually not all that much different from my life back in the village, just with a few key differences. Wake up, eat, and wander for a bit in the morning, checking up on Cole and Cade.
Head out around midmorning, heading south of the town into the forest, hunting animals and monsters when I came across them.
Eating the Animal meat if it was acquired for a midday meal, while using a fire to dry the bits I couldn't eat right away.
For the rest of the morning and the entire afternoon, I would then mine as much as I could.
Occasionally, due to the smell of the meat being cooked out in the open, mining was postponed to deal with an encroaching monster who came in to see if they could get a taste of whatever had such a delicious smell.
It was surprisingly peaceful, actually even more peaceful than the similar life I lived in the village, since I no longer had to put up with the three's nonsense or try to get them to cooperate with my plans.
It just sort of reinforced my belief that I didn't need to be a hero myself. Such a simple life was fulfilling enough for me right now; getting to watch a hero rise felt far more entertaining than thinking about being that hero running around doing this and that.
~
My little mine expanded every day as more and more rock and earth were excavated.
At first, I had been worried that I had simply gotten lucky with the first few small veins of copper and iron.
That concern, however, disappeared after the third day; the further I dug, the more ore I eventually found.
Copper became common enough that I stopped getting excited whenever I spotted it; iron was less frequent, but still plentiful enough to appear every other day.
Every now and then, I even found tiny traces of silver, which was the greatest source of pay possible.
Those went directly into a separate pouch.
I wasn't stupid enough to sell everything immediately; if I did, it wouldn't take long before someone decided to follow me to find the source, and the next thing I'd know, my personal mine would become claimed and the private property of a noble, worse yet, my rights to continue mining might be denied or heavily taxed just like at the other mine site.
The blacksmith's guild,d on the other hand, had been surprisingly welcoming toward me.
The guild members had apparently never expected me to produce anything of note, simply letting me join as a means to send me on my way.
But then,n on the very same day I enlisted in the guild, I came in with a small piece of copper, then days later, more copper and even some iron.
Not large quantities, but still the amount I brought in after a single week would be enough to make a couple of knives or a single sword, which was good enough for the staff to refer to me as a proper lil digger now.
But even so, my own rank within the guild wasn't likely to increase anytime soon.
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Diggers were the lowest rung of the blacksmiths guild,d and even if I did get promoted, it would still be capped unless I decided to become a true blacksmith and begin to forge, striving to become a master blacksmith, which was not a goal I had set for myself.
My reputation was growing, but only as the simple person I was currently, not as a rising star or future divine hope of the kingdom.
Which was fine by me; I was what I was. I didn't need a spotlight, and the memories of the dreams about that man, they all reinforced my decision; the nail that sticks out gets hammered down after all.
Every few days, I also made sure to bring in monster material. I didn't need the bones or fangs myself, so picking up a few more coppers was better than nothing, and also let the staff know I was capable of handling myself at least against the weakest of monsters.
The forest around my mine had a decent population of creatures.
Nothing particularly dangerous.
Mostly Goolets, Gruntlings, small wolves, horned rabbits, and various other creatures that were just strong enough to be dangerous to ordinary travelers, but far from being a threat to someone with enhanced status like myself.
Even if I went all out, they would not be wiped out, but they were a great source of experience to raise my level and gain insurance in the form of additional status points.
The strangest part was that I had begun enjoying mining almost as much as fighting; there was something satisfying about watching a solid wall slowly give way beneath a pickaxe.
Watching as nature itself gave way to my strikes, being remade in the manner of my will.
Swing.
Impact.
Crack.
Another chunk of stone fell away, the stone itself fallen just as easily as the Horned Rabbit I slew for my lunch today.
Just a result of my stats giving me an assist.
And with the increase in monsters I could fight, not to mention not needing to share or be held back by others, my level was increasing as well.
Each earned stat point was another I could use to enhance myself, and the thought of becoming a master miner was hard to resist.
This was my current way of life, but was it the way I wanted to live the rest of my life?
Levelling up was taking longer and longer, and there might even be a limit to how high your level could become.
If that was the case, would putting an extra two points into pickaxe just to be able to dig a bit better?
Or, like with what I had seen on a couple of other people's statboards, would there be another layer and even more advanced strategy beyond pickaxe?
Having invested as much as I already had, I unlocked new jobs under my own board, mainly miner, but since I had only just become a hunter again, I still needed to wait until I could switch and try out the new job and what perks came with it.
And while my own little business was thriving, my siblings were becoming increasingly well known throughout Town YY.
Unfortunately, not for good reasons, Cole was the biggest problem.
Every time I returned to town, there seemed to be another rumor.
Cole had gotten into an argument with yet another merchant, started demanding tolls just to walk down certain streets he was patrolling, challenged a man to a duel because he was dating a girl Cole seemed to fancy, stealing a horse that was brought into town by a fairly well-off farmer who could bring their own crops to market.
Time and time again, he threatened people with his title and newfound power.
At one point, I heard he had demanded that an innkeeper give him his daughter, but not as a wife, no... he demanded the girl to become his slave.
The innkeeper had apparently refused, as any father would in that instance, and the next minute the innkeeper was arrested; rumors were swirling about his and his daughter's fate.
But some good news at least exists: it seems Cole was going a little too far off the deep end, and it was becoming a problem for the Baron. Cole had been pulled back from his patrol today by order of the Baron, which was overheard by plenty of people.
It seemed discipline was finally going to be handed out to fix the attitude of this wayward child.
~
Cade, meanwhile, was becoming a strange sort of celebrity.
He was actually doing things, things he was supposed to do. He took quests, fought monsters, and saved merchants traveling through the area who had become victims of bandits or monsters.
On the surface, he looked exactly like what everyone expected from a newborn Hero.
And yet... people still talked badly about him.
The problem was his sudden advancement: Cade had somehow reached C Rank in record time.
That wasn't something an ordinary adventurer could accomplish in a few days, not without saving the whole town from a rampage horde of orcs or the invasion by a neighboring nation.
Even with a Hero's job, it was an absurd amount of progress. The official explanation was that he had completed numerous quests every single day, earning the required contribution points to be allowed promotion.
The unofficial explanations were far more entertaining; some claimed he had blackmailed the guild, others said he had threatened the guildmaster.
After all, it was already well circulated that Cade didn't meet the GM's requirements as far as temperament and attitude to be allowed into Rank C, and now, only a few days later, he was being approved?
Was Cade even capable of such a mood swing? I mean, I know he had done pretty much just that with me when he flipped from being the good boy to abandoning me and saying all that he had.
I knew the truth.
Or at least, I thought I did. Cade was talented.
Adding to that, the job of a hero, he could easily come into contact with unsavory sorts who would want to have him on their side, using that borrowed power coupled with the power of his own job, and even a town guildmaster could be forced to bow his head and obey the orders from above.
~
Cole acted however he wanted, while Cade was more careful, unwilling to tarnish his reputation as a hero openly, but even so, it was becoming clear that my choice in making my brother a hero was actually the wrong one.
But while Cade at least was still controlled, Cole was quickly becoming a problem... one I would have to deal with sooner rather than later.
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