As soon as Tom uttered his words, the entire place turned silent. The people surrounding him froze in place as if his invasion suddenly made sense. Even the people that didn't pay the situation any mind, too busy with their work to bother, stopped working the tal and turned their attention towards the commotion.
"You ca here to challenge us, huh?" One of the smiths said, stepping ahead of the rest. Even if it was just a random guess, Tom decided to treat him as the temporary leader of the group.
"That's right," the young man said with a confident smile. "One on one, arm-wrestle match. I found this solution to my wishes more... acceptable than just killing you all," he said before spreading his arms. "I don't like waste," Tom added.
"So a challenge you will have," the man said before clasping his hands together.
It all happened in an instant.
Everyone in the smithy got to work, but on sothing else than their usual duties. In just a single mont, soone started spinning huge fans, clearing the fog from the room. Soone else poured coals into the slters so that the fire wouldn't die while everyone was busy with the match.
'They surely work fast,' Tom thought when a weird table suddenly appeared right before his eyes. In the next mont, soone else brought chairs while yet another person started fiddling around that weird contraption of a desk.
'Oh, so that's what it is,' Tom thought, not sure whether he should cry or laugh.
The strange table turned to be a collapsible version of what he saw in the videos of the prewar past. A simple table with two cushions for one arm and two simple handles that contestants could stabilize themselves with.
Even though everyone was rushing around, Tom could feel the massive change in the atmosphere.
From the hostile one caused by his invasion, it changed to a joyful one, only comparable to what he felt during the Christmas period as a kid.
"On it, boss," soone said before making his way towards the table.
As the crowd parted to give way to the man, Tom could finally see just who he was going to wrestle arms with.
'Huh?' the young man thought, unsure how he should take the situation.
The man that approached the table didn't look special at all. His head was bald, although it wasn't anything out of the ordinary in the place where fire risk was prevalent. But what drew Tom's attention was the fact that despite working in the smithy, he couldn't see the man's muscles at all.
'It's not like he doesn't have them,' Tom realized as he started to take deep breaths to saturate his body with oxygen. 'They are simply covered with a thin layer of fat, making them look all floppy,' he thought, tightening his hands into fists.
"I'm Sutra, and I will be your opponent," the man announced in a calm voice before taking a seat on the opposite end of the matching table.
'Still, isn't he too old?' Tom thought, mirroring the man's actions as he observed the many wrinkles on his face. Yet, no matter what that man's age was, there was no denying one fact.
His body had wrong proportions all over.
Despite being short, roughly a head smaller than Tom himself, the man was actually huge. His arms didn't look human at all, but more like if he hunted so orcs back in the dungeon, replaced his arms with theirs, and then painted them so they wouldn't attract others' attention.
'I wonder if my thing is bigger than his arm,' Tom thought, grabbing the handle with his left hand before setting his right one straight up. "I'm set," he said.
Sutra wasn't as hasty as Tom. He slowly wiggled around his chair as if to find the best possible position before finally placing his hands on the table.
"Now then, shall we begin?" he asked, looking up to Tom's eyes with a small smirk on his face.
"Before we begin," the sa man that accepted Tom's request earlier suddenly placed his hands on the table. "You wish for our cooperation if you win. But let ask this, what do we stand to gain if you lose?"
'That's actually a valid question,' Tom thought, realizing that he committed the blunder that he often found himself ridiculing when done by others. How could there be a bet if only one side stood to gain sothing?
"What do you want from ?" he asked politely, raising his eyes at the leader of the smiths. Given how he didn't know the situation in the city, Tom was unable to even guess just what those people might be after.
"I think I might surprise you here..." the man took a short pause to let the tension increase. Yet, from the amused smiles of the other smiths, Tom could tell that the stakes were already decided the mont he issued the challenge. "Actually, if you lose, we will still support you. But in exchange, you will abandon all the taxes related to the smithy," he said, spreading his arms wide and putting on a huge smile.
"Deal," Tom said without even a mont of hesitation.
'Sure, this place should be generating profits like crazy to employ so many people at once in such a small city,' he thought before his small smirk turned into a vicious smile. 'But how could I care about taxing it if my uncles will introduce a whole new kind of smithing to this place soon?' he thought, barely able to believe his own luck.
"Then it's decided!" The leader of the smiths exclaid joyfully before suddenly smashing his fist into the matching table. As if it was a built-in feature, a square piece of it suddenly fell out from the very middle point of the table, only for the leader to pull out and insert a piece of tal directly into the hole.
A piece of tal that Tom could recognize even with his eyes closed. A piece of tal that turned into chains was responsible for the sorry state Claudia was in.
"So that's how you ensure that one won't use magic during the duel," Tom said, not bothered by the sudden change in the situation.
"I hope you will forgive us our precaution," the smithy's leader replied.
"Cut the small talk," Sutra suddenly interjected as a grimace of displeasure appeared on his lips. "I have work to do. Let's do it," he said, hurrying everyone up.
Tom smiled.
As much as he hated what happened back at the adventurer's guild, those events allowed him to understand how did this talwork. And while it was true that he could no longer use any magic when near it, that didn't apply to the skills that were active... in the passive form!
'To think that it would beco my ace,' he thought, grabbing Sutra's hand with a huge smile appearing on his face.
From just how their hands looked against each other, Tom would never bet for himself. Within the confines of the aty hand of his opponent, his entire arm looked like nothing but a stick.
'Well, let's see how well does my casino works,' he thought, watching how the leader of the smiths placed his palm on their entangled hands and shook them.
"All ready?" he asked.
Both Sutra and Tom nodded their heads. Both were extrely confident that they knew the outco of the battle even before it began.
"GO!"
With the shout of the smiths' leader, both n pulled. Their hands wrapped in a test of strength.
But to everyone's surprise, they remained locked in what appeared to be a stalemate.
'How strong,' Tom thought, pulling with all his casino-reinforced strength. While he didn't kill any monsters recently to power up the passive, its constant addition to his base stats was still pretty strong. Yet, even with this ace in his sleeve employed from the very get to, he just couldn't gain an advantage.
'Just holding him in place takes all I have,' he noticed grimly as thoughts of just throwing the match appeared in his mind.
The two continued to push their strength to the limit, unwilling to give away even a single degree of the angle.
The entire building turned silent. At first, from the shock that Tom actually managed to withstand the strength of their champion. But as drops of sweat started to appear on both n's foreheads, their surprise turned into the excitent that no one dared to voice out in fear of distracting their friend.
"JUST YIELD!" Sutra shouted, leaning his entire body to the side, adding a bit more strength to his pull.
For a mont, Tom's hand wavered. But he wasn't going to give up that easily. He mirrored the man's movent, bringing the contest back to a relatively stable equilibrium.
'I think that should be enough,' Tom thought. He could go on for a lot longer, but there simply wasn't any point in doing so. Yet, just as he was about to relax his muscles and slowly start to give his opponent more and more ground, he realized one thing.
'Isn't his arm... thinning out?'
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