Burning Rot.

 "Iron, impure, not very well made… Hm… You've kept up this weapon for years? It's kind of impressive with how low quality it is. That shows me you cared for the metal, and if your goal is to use it for crafting I can teach you my ancestor's magic."

I felt my eyes widen as my whole body shuddered with goosebumps. "Really? I-I haven't had enough money in the past to learn, but I just got a big payout from the last quest, so I should be able to pay whatever you're asking."

He raised an eyebrow, still just as calm as before as he took another swig of ale. "The cost will be up to you. Normally, the way the dwarves do it is simple. In this case, it would mean that I pay for your room and board, and in turn, you do any work I ask for free, then I would teach you in our free time."

'That doesn't sound like a bad deal.' "So basically I would be paying you with my services harvesting the spiders. You would save 100 talons a day, and pay 30 or so room and board.'

"Well, I wouldn't pay anything extra for room and board. We cook most of our meals from what we hunt, and you would sleep with the party in our room, we would just add a bed. Or I suppose we could just make Taggart sleep on the floor."

I felt a chill go down my spine. "Uhm… The arrangement sounds fine… But, I think I'll just pay for my own room…"

"Yeah, that's fair. Ours doesn't smell very nice. So, would you like your first lesson after you finish your work?"

I was so excited I almost forgot how to speak, nodding at first and waiting a moment to find the words. "Right, I'll go take care of it now then."

'Finally. Metal magic, so of the 11 base elements, now I'll have Fire, water, earth, air, metal, plant, light, gold, silver, arcane, and now… Now I just need to find someone with shadow magic and I'll finally have all 11!'

It was a long-standing dream of mine to learn all 11 base schools of magic, but with metal magic under my belt, I would only be missing one. Sure, I might have sucked at all of them relatively speaking, but no one had been able to learn all 11 magics in over 100 years, so even just casting a tier 1 spell would still be a pretty amazing feat.

'Adventurers are people who can do anything…' I felt like I was one step closer to finally embodying that ideal. At first, I progressed like wild picking up every spell my body could handle, but eventually, I hit a brick wall and almost gave up entirely, that was over 2 years ago. Shadow magic was so rare I had never seen it in person, and metal was more or less locked behind a paywall…

Metal magic had such a high barrier to entry that you needed to get it to tier 3 before you could effectively use it in combat, which meant it was hard to get good chances to observe people using tier 1 or even tier 2 spells. That meant the only way to learn was via a teacher, which tended to all be blacksmiths or highly adept sorcerers… Either way, it wasn't cheap, and most times the techniques were considered secrets that masters would only teach to their disciples.

I was beaming with joy, and a little giddy, humming to myself as I walked out back to butcher the giant spiders. Even while I was carving into them I couldn't help but smile, no matter how much of a pain it was because of how badly damaged the carcasses were.

I had been wanting to learn metal magic for years, and I finally had a teacher. I didn't even have to blow a fortune on it. It didn't feel real, not in the slightest. 'I even have a dwarf teaching me… I mean that's like… Like learning how to garden from a halfling, or how to cook from a goblin, or like… Like learning wind magic from a harpy. I wonder if I could get some tips for using a great sword too?'

Before I knew it I was already harvesting the last gland, only afterward did I realize people were starting to give me strange looks. 'Maybe… I'm a bit too happy about this. I can't stop smiling… Nah, they can all screw off. So what if I'm happy? I'll smile if I want to.' I looked down at the spider blood scattered all over the place with guts acid and entrails piled around me. 'Nope… I look creepy for sure.' All I could do was sigh as I took off the thick leather apron I wore in case acid splashed on me. 'Guess there'll be some rumors about me for a while again.

I put everything important back in the ring and threw the rest in my storage so I could discard it in the forest or use it as bait later. After that I buried them back inside, catching them before they even finished their meal. To be fair, judging by the extended number of plates and mugs, they had been there for a while.

Roaran dropped his fork upon seeing me. "Are you done already?"

"Oh, yeah, so I'm ready to learn." 'Is it that surprising?'

He brushed his nose with his hand, making it twitch. "That's an impressive speed…"

Ted stood up. "You smell like puke and look worse… Let's get out of here before they ask us to leave. We can train outside."

I was still giddy… But after that, My shoulders did slumped forward, if only for a moment. "O-oh… Right ok…" 'I guess it just doesn't bother me because I live in the slums but… Yeah… When you torch a giant spider and then open it up it smells rotten… So now I smell rotten too… And I just took a bath…'

Either way, we made it outside and walked around back. It may not have been how I hoped to start the lesson, but it was still pretty exciting that we were doing it.