Chapter 152 – Shady business.

A loud sound of a door getting slammed could be heard. This loud thud was followed by the rumbling of footsteps that were coming down the stairs.

“Mr. Wayland is everything okay?”

Elodia that was about to head over to the guild master’s office was the first to notice to whom these loud footsteps belonged to. She could see a rather mad-looking young man rushing down the stairs.

“Ms. Elodia?”

He stopped for a moment to look at her but then just as quickly decided to move past. It was clear to her that he was in no mood to talk.

“Everything is fine, you don’t need to concern yourself with me.”

Before she could figure out what this was all about, Wayland stormed out of the guild. She was left to wonder about the look on his face. The young Runesmith had a somewhat grumpy expression devoid of a smile by default but this one was a bit more serious.

She moved up the stairs to the guild master’s office as she was tasked to bring over some papers. It seemed that Aurdhan wanted her to write up a contract and bring it over to one of the scribes for magical imprinting. While she could write up the proper papers in a legally binding way, she didn’t have the proper class to create a magical contract.

“Guild master?”

“Elodia? Just come in and lock the door behind you.”

She entered the office and the first thing that she noticed was a lot of torn-up papers on the floor. Out of habit, she started picking up these papers to only notice that they concerned a certain runesmith.

“These are…”

“Oh, that? You can burn them, we won’t be needing those anymore. But that’s not why I asked you to come here, I need you to do your bureaucratic magic.”

She wanted to ask the reason why these torn-up papers were there. It didn’t really take much for her to figure out why she saw Wayland being so mad. The guild master had clearly broken his ties with him for some reason and this reason was soon revealed to her.

“What would you like me to do, guild master?”

Elodia posed her question and she quickly got a response. The theme would be the dwarven union and the contract would forbid their involvement with a certain runesmith. It appeared that Aurdhan had bent the knee to the union and decided to cut his ties with Wayland, at least when crafting was concerned.

What it all came down to was an agreement between both the union and the guild. The dwarves would stop using their connection to force the prices down and allow their guild-run stores to operate normally. They would even be tasked to supply them with some magical weapons and armor.

“Sir… Do you really want me to fashion a contract like this… I think Mr. Wayland has been working fine with the guild…”

“Elodia, you are a good worker but this does not concern you, just do your job and stop asking questions, were you always this chatty?”

She was quickly shut down by the burly man in front of her and had to move her head down. Ever since the Armand debacle, she felt like the work environment had become tenser.

Why she even asked about the reason was a bit odd. This was not something she would have done before, at least not if it didn’t concern someone from her own foster family. With all the information in her notebook, she returned to the floor below.

There she needed to find the guild’s mana scribe that would fashion the contract. The sun had gone down already which meant that she would be stuck explaining the final details of the contract for quite some time.

The guild master wanted to have it by the next day, which meant that she would probably need to come in earlier than usual to continue the work. These sorts of papers weren’t done in an hour and she also needed to run it through another advisor to see if she didn’t make any mistakes.

‘Why do I put up with this…’

She gave out a long sigh before wandering into one of the side rooms. Inside she found her co-worker buried in some papers which soon would increase.

While Elodia was stuck with more overtime Roland was on his way back home. He had a lot to think about as the guild master brought up some concerning things.

He was sure that he would be able to sustain his home by his own volition. He had convinced himself that his runic items were just too good to not be bought up by the adventurers. Even if the dwarven union came for him, he could match their prices as he was the one building everything.

Then his worldview was shattered as Aurdhan had mentioned that he would not be able to use the auction house. This was his main strategy if things went wrong, using the establishment that had previously brought him money.

But apparently, the dwarves were already working on banning him from participating in the auctions. The only realistic way to go about this would be to hire someone to buy and sell for him. The biggest problem with that was trust.

He would need to find a trustworthy merchant that would work with him. If he was on the dwarven hit list, almost all of the good merchants would ignore his plea of help. They were still out there to make profits and angering the union would only make things troublesome. This only left inexperienced merchants or ones with shady backgrounds.

Due to Roland’s networking skills, he had gained no real business partners. The only thing that he ever did was to give his wares over to the auction house or hand Bernir them to do it for him. There were no good deals or people in high places that were looking out for him.

The guild was supposed to do it but they buckled under the pressure at the first sight of the problem. This just showed him that if he ever wanted to get something done, he would need to do it himself. While the guild master offered him a way out, he was not sure if he was willing to go through with it yet.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

‘Not like I won’t have anything to eat but I’ve already started to build the store…’

While he could still earn his keep as a silver grade adventurer, he had already put other things in motion. The contract with the construction firm was signed and the construction of his new store building was not going to be cheap.

Without money, he would need to halt his golem construction. Golems required an astonishing amount of resources and time. The little magical robot that he made wouldn’t really be of use for anything. It could only move around and be a mild annoyance and without figuring out golem software he wouldn’t be able to program in more actions.