Chapter 25 – Metal Claws for Lafu

After fighting for a while, Su Mo continuously felt a dizziness, even if he was not using Sweep.

Could it be that he was still not used to Lafu's body?

That wasn't right, even if it was due to not being used to it, this should have happened at the start?

Was he poisoned?

But none of these monsters had poison attacks.

Was he… hungry?

Su Mo rubbed his stomach and could feel the tight flesh underneath, and he marveled at how well-built this body was. Even wolves could have abs.

Normally, it would indeed be time to feed his pet.

This raised the question—now that he had come out with nothing, what would he do about food?

He had killed so many monsters and most of the things they had dropped had already disappeared. Su Mo was easily able to find some crab meat and crab cream. In real life, it would cost at least a few hundred dollars for good seafood like this.

However, when Su Mo was about to bring the food to his mouth, he found that he could not eat it.

It was incredibly fishy, and the smell was unbearable.

In the end, Su Mo could only switch back to his character. After opening his eyes, he was lying on the bed, and after stretching a bit, he called back his pet, and Lafu entered the pet slot.

When Lafu was summoned, he was holding a piece of crab meat in his mouth. He definitely hadn't done this!

After switching back to his character, Lafu had turned back into the real Lafu. For a starving wolf, who wouldn't eat the food right in front of it, right?

Following this, Su Mo gave Lafu some of his normal food and left him to his own devices.

After leaving the inn, Su Mo came to Kerni Fishing Port's smithy. The Fishing Port was not very big, but there were seven or eight smithies, and most of them made their living from making weapons or fixing boats.

The weapons were sold to pirates, and most of the boats were for pirates too.

In return, very few pirates came to Kerni Fishing Port to pillage and steal.

"We're closed right now, you can go to Soni Smithy at the very east; they specialize in these strange things."

After asking a few blacksmiths, he received the same answer each time, so he could only go to the smithy in the east.

Only after arriving did he realize he had been tricked.

It was a tattered small courtyard. Half of the walls on the outside had collapsed, and there was a young blacksmith beating something with his hammer.

In a short amount of time, Su Mo drew a few conclusions about this blacksmith.

The first was that he was lazy. It would take half a day for a young man like him to fix the outer walls, but he did not do so. Why wouldn't he, if he wasn't lazy?

The second was that he was absent-minded. At other smithies, the sound of clanging was incredibly consistent, but those sounds could only be heard occasionally here, making Su Mo want to hurry him up.

The third was that he was unpopular. The other people did not help Su Mo not because they could not make it but because it was not worth their time. Su Mo did not have a blueprint either, and they would not be able to earn much money from it. Moreover, they already had a lot of work to do.

Soni did not have much work to do, and the blacksmith was continuously hammering at an iron ball.

"Err…" Su Mo did not know what to say, and he could not just leave either. The other blacksmiths had already clearly rejected his business.

"Wait, can't you see I'm busy?"

Whatever, Su Mo decided to wait for a bit. It was said that the NPCs with unique personalities were ones who were truly capable.

Fortunately, the blacksmith did not make Su Mo wait too long.

"You came to find my father right? He's already dead; he refused to help pirate leader Jack repair his saber because that saber killed too many women and children. If it was me, I would not have repaired it either…"

"I came to find you," Su Mo cut him off. He was not very interested in chatting with NPCs, unless there was a quest.

Su Mo definitely would not be able to beat a pirate leader who could kill an old blacksmith. In New World, Blacksmiths were battle professions, but not many players played as them.

"You came for me? Do you want to repair equipment or forge something?" Soni Junior asked.

"I want to make some metal claws for my pet wolf; would you be able to make it so that it can increase Attack?" Su Mo pushed Lafu in front of the blacksmith.

"This… what a great idea!"

Su Mo was finally able to look at the blacksmith appreciatively. When the previous blacksmiths had heard of Su Mo's idea, they had immediately rejected him and then sent him to find the 'best' blacksmith in the fishing port.

Only this blacksmith did not look down on Su Mo's idea.

"Look, we can put a metal claw around its paws, which will help both the strength and angle of attacks. After all, metal will be more sturdy than its claws."

"Exactly, that was just what I was thinking." Su Mo immediately took back his previous evaluations of the blacksmith. He took out two gold coins and put them on the table. He had never been so generous since entering the game before.

"At least 20 gold coins!" Soni Junior glanced between Su Mo's face and the gold coins a few times before spitting out an infuriating figure.

"You're scamming me; how can you scam people like that?!"

"I'm not scamming you. Normally it would cost 50 gold coins, but because of your appreciation of me, I'm going to use this iron ball that I've refined for ten years to help you create these metal claws. I promise that you'll endlessly praise my skills."

20 gold coins… Su Mo did some maths in his head and calculated a number that made his heart bleed.

$1,200!

A Level 25 Silver grade equipment (without Special Effects) would be $800.

"I promise that it'll be amazing. Trust me, friend. This is my first job of the month; I wouldn't use the glorious Soni household's name to gamble," the blacksmith said sincerely.

"Alright, 20 gold coins then. Wait a bit, I'm going to borrow some money from a friend. I'll leave those 2 gold coins as a deposit."

Su Mo decided to take this gamble!

Su Mo directly contacted I Love Luo.

"Old Luo, I want to buy some gold coins; I'll send you the money."

"Hoh, you're buying gold now? I remember that you were determined to earn money from the game," I Love Luo said teasingly.

"Don't waste time, hurry up and send me 20 gold coins. I just spent some money, but all of it was used on teleporting." 

Su Mo paused before saying, "Also, I want to buy a spatial bag, the very small kind, the smaller the better—do you have any?"

"Are you sure? Everyone else wants big ones." I Love Luo could not understand.

"When I say small, I don't mean the storage space, I mean the size of the outside," Su Mo said.

"If the outside is small, how can the inside be big? I have a small bag which is very small, but it can only store eight slots worth. It's hard to sell, and if you want it, I'll just gift it to you."

"Alright, I've already sent over the money."

Eight slots would be enough. One slot for potions and one slot for roasted meat. Potions could be stacked up to 20, and roasted meat could be stacked up to five. He could use the remaining six slots for the spoils that he got.

Perfect!