Vivi switched from her dress back to her work clothes, her comfy raincoat, and spent the next few days refurbishing her smithy into something slightly more livable.

Nearly everything required attention from the splintering wooden facades, the old furniture and decorations, to the awful roof—not to mention another half a dozen more issues Vivi probably wasn't aware of yet. The only light source she had was a crack in the roof that let a thin line of daylight inside.

She started by purchasing a small ether-powered lamp from a thrift store she came across a few blocks away. The lamp's light revealed more problems previously hidden in the dark. Mainly, Dust and stubborn grime was stuck to just about every surface in the house.

Vivi headed back to the thrift store to buy cleaning equipment, which led to a deep cleaning session spanning multiple hours.

A cleaning helped, but only slightly. The smithy still clearly looked like a lone old grandpa's shack—frugally furnished with sweat and grime, the only decoration being the tools on the walls and a few barrels to fill empty space. A new styling was definitely necessary.

Then there were the exterior walls with splintering wood and cracking paint. At first, Vivi considered buying a bucket of paint for a quick fix. But upon closer inspection, Vivi came up with a better and faster solution.

She could simply rip the wooden planks off. The planks didn't actually serve any purpose in keeping the house together. They'd been installed for looks some decades ago. Behind the planks, the house had sturdy sandstone walls.

Vivi ripped off wooden planks by hand, with gloves and ether-enhanced grip. Tavern-goers next-door watched her with amusement, while passersby sent her curious glares. She'd been warned of the Lowmoor district, and the people were certainly odd, but the streets were nothing compared to Zand's hub.

With the planks removed, the house turned to a stale windowless sandstone block. The house didn't look abandoned and broken anymore. It just looked stale and ugly with a roof that could have been pushed off.

The roof will definitely let rain through, Vivi thought, to which Lucius rolled his eyes, but he agreed that the roof had to be improved. Vivi asked passersby if the city had a store that sold anything roof related, preferably for cheap. Eventually, she was directed to a place called Andy's Handymans.

Andy himself was a grumpy old man with less than half of his teeth remaining, working in a shabby store filled with unfinished projects. He greeted Vivi without looking in her direction, eyes focused on fixing a broken carriage wheel. When Vivi mentioned she needed a new roof, he said, "For three hundred ether, I'll build you a roof that will last for the rest of your life."

Vivi hesitated hiring him. But looking at his outfit—overalls with large suspenders and nothing else—Vivi guessed that he was probably more competent at building roofs than she was. As long as the roof was better than what she had now, she'd be happy. She gave the man three hundred ether and prayed he wouldn't destroy the house.

The project of fixing her smithy continued for another four days. A lot of that time was spent wandering the city, familiarizing herself with streets, looking for interesting shops, and of course, searching for good runesmithing equipment, ether roots, metals, as well as decorative items to make the shop look more appealing.

Finally, after another two thousand ether invested, The Lost Raindrop was starting to look like an actual shop.

***

"It… actually looks pretty good," Lucius said. He floated beside Vivi, examining the new storefront. "But did we really have to spend five hundred ether on all this damn artwork?"

Vivi smiled. The Lost Raindrop looked nothing like it did a week ago. The new rolled roof was slightly slanted, making the building look less like a cube. The exterior walls were still sandstone, but Vivi had hired an artist to draw blue shapes and raindrops on the walls, giving the shop color. Above the door was a blue banner that read, "The Lost Raindrop Inside-carving Runesmithing Store."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The door chime clinked as Vivi opened the front door. She stepped inside into the freshly decorated commercial section. A pretty blue carpet covered the floor. The walls had paintings and weapon racks. Everything followed a cozy blue theme from her new bed sheets to a cute lamp covering. Underneath the lamp's shade sat a cute blue bunny plushie.

The most expensive purchase was a painting that Vivi found in an art store in the higher levels of the city. It depicted a light rainfall descending on a small mountain village. The art store had a surprising amount of rain themed art. Down in the underground, rain was almost like a mythical phenomenon that only existed in stories, kind of like what lava and monsters were to surface dwellers.

Out of all the paintings, however, this one was special. The artist actually depicted rainfall accurately. Rain came in small droplets, not in waterfall-like streams, and definitely not from underground like in some of the wilder depictions.

"I wanted it," Vivi said. "It's a good painting. It's worth more than we paid."

"We paid three hundred ether," Lucius said. Then he sighed. "Whatever. It is a decent painting. We'll gain the ether back anyway."

"Yes," Vivi said. "We can finally get to work."

She had decided to keep the idea of separating the smithy from the store with a curtain, though she had switched the old curtain for a newer dark blue one. She opened it, revealing her workstation.

The smithy wasn't decorated nearly as thoroughly, but Vivi was more than happy with her workstation. She had everything she needed—ether roots, mostly cheap ones, crucibles, metals, emberstones, a vise. Vivi had also bought an ice box to store food, and she found a water barrel and mugs from the thrift store.

"The only thing we lack now are the actual swords to display," Vivi said.

She stared into her sack of ether roots. After over a month in the blight and another week without a smithy, it was finally time to get back to work. Back to perfecting her craft, working endlessly in the smithy…

"Lucius, do you still remember how to do this?" Vivi asked.

"Of course," Lucius said. "I pour ether into the root at a stable pace to make it easy for you to work with."

Vivi bit her lip. She picked up an iron root from her collection and tightened it around the vise. She picked up her tools.

Then she sat there, preparing herself.

"Vivi?" Lucius asked. "Are you nervous?"

"I'm scared," Vivi said. "I know I'm rusty. But I've never been this rusty. It feels like I've forgotten how to walk."

"Mmm," Lucius said curiously. He floated still, waiting for Vivi to do something.

Suddenly, Lucius pushed ether into the root, cracking it open. He took a comfortable position atop Vivi's anvil and said, "Well, it's initiated now. Good luck."

"Lucius! I wasn't ready!"

Lucius yawned. "Just shape something simple. We'll need to sell simpler swords before the big names hear of us anyway. You know what to do."

Vivi gritted her teeth. But the root was growing, and she had to deal with it. Her hands guided the stalk straight. She knew what to do, but the crochet hook felt awkward in her hands, and she had no vision of what she wanted to craft.

"I'd say we need at least four swords before the store can open," Lucius said. "Each one has to be better than the last. Today will be a derusting day. Then we can start working on three and four-runed swords."

"Since when did you become my master?" Vivi asked.

"If you have better ideas, you're free to take the lead," Lucius said. "But if we want to achieve our goal of becoming rich, we can't have you staring into nothingness, afraid of getting back to work. Four simple and easy swords today, and we'll sell them to customers tomorrow. Let's make some weapons."

Vivi bit her lip, but Lucius was right. They had no choice but to work.

She spent the whole day and more runesmithing, until the four swords were done.

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