Lloyd accepted the three-gold price for tamed slaves, showing no further reaction for now.

Nearly ten months after leaving home, Derek finally broke through a major limit.

Derek von Ferreira

Class: Elite Knight, Level 1 (0/100)

Experience Pool: 0/100

Past Level 10 as a knight, the next tier up was Elite Knight.

His body grew stronger, his swordsmanship sharper, and even his mind quicker.

Every part of him had been reinforced—matched against any soldier or squire in the camp, he felt no strain at all.

But at this tier, natural talent had nearly reached its ceiling; training alone produced barely any progress.

Only the Experience Pool, filling drop by drop, could push him further.

For a blacksmith like Little Tru, leveling up was harder still.

He'd hit his talent ceiling long ago; only the Panel had carried him up to Blacksmith, Level 8.

At that level, he could finally start forging fine steel.

In this world, "fine steel" was an umbrella term.

Steel itself counted as one variety of it.

Blacksmiths generally followed one of two paths toward it. One relied purely on hammer and fire, forging ten-forged, hundred-forged, and thousand-forged fine steel through repeated folding.

The other relied on alloying: blending various metals and using quenching, annealing, and smelting techniques to produce compound steel.

Little Tru, an Army Blacksmith at Level 8, worked the first road.

A sudden insight had revealed the method for ten-forged fine steel, giving him far better material to work with.

Derek's rule stood firm on this front, so Little Tru held nothing back; he walked the other smiths through the technique, and they picked it up fast.

Ten-forged fine steel wasn't just more plentiful now—Derek noticed the other smiths' experience jump by a visible margin too.

Superior technique, plainly, accelerated growth.

Given equal talent, what got passed down decided the future.

Little Tru's flash of insight, of course, was probably the Panel's own quiet handiwork.

Better material meant better weapons—and it let them start experimenting with iron armor besides.

Their first target: half-plate armor.

A carefully wrought suit of half-plate was worth about as much as a warhorse.

But output stayed painfully low for now—the technique still had gaps that only raw manpower could paper over.

Still, the first task was to make the armor at all. Cost could be addressed later.

For Derek, it already beat buying in from outside, if nothing else—and it meant answering to no one.

The moment he strapped on a homemade set, his sense of security increased enormously.

An Elite Knight's stamina made him feel he could wear it all day and still fight several times afterward.

Only a full suit of heavy plate, he suspected, could make him feel any real weight at all now.

Just as Derek's operation kept steadily building, the Goat Trading Company's caravan came back into the mountains.

This time they'd hired on the soldiers Derek had stationed in Sentinel City.

And they'd brought the goods Derek had ordered.

Seeing Derek again, Steward Vincent was plainly startled.

"Knight Derek, what could you possibly want with this much grain and iron ingots?"

Derek had already put down half in advance, so of course Vincent wasn't about to turn the deal down.

If anything, the extra cargo the caravan hauled had padded their margin by a good thirty percent.

"Steward Vincent, my old friend—since when do you turn away business?

"Don't ask too much. None of it's sensitive goods."

Vincent took the answer at face value.

In truth, moving grain and iron in such quantities required the right connections.

But the Goat Trading Company had backers of its own; for them, it was no obstacle.

And with this layer of cover, outsiders had little chance of ever sensing Derek was even there.

As for being exposed to the Goat Trading Company itself—don't forget where they were.

Theirs was a trade that carried a little danger built in, and out here in the mountains... it was the mountain folk who actually held the resources.

So Vincent wisely kept his mouth shut. They'd missed each other last time in Sentinel City; meeting now, the two had plenty to catch up on.

With no competition between them anymore, what little distance remained vanished at once.

Derek's needs, if anything, kept growing—he was well on his way to becoming the Goat Trading Company's biggest client.

As for what Derek actually did with it all, let him.

At a margin of fifty percent or better, the people behind Vincent would gladly accept the risk.

Face to face, Derek pitched his fine southern weapons and half-plate while placing new orders of his own—draft horses, grain, iron ingots, people.

Vincent inspected the weapons and found the quality solid and the price well below market. A quick resale alone promised a substantial margin.

"Get me twenty sets of half-plate, a hundred iron swords, three hundred spearheads."

Vincent placed the order without a moment's hesitation—enough gear here to arm a baron's own house guard.

Half-plate was the greatest problem: output remained extremely low, nowhere near enough to fill such an order soon.

But output would only keep climbing, and this single deal alone promised two or three hundred gold in profit.

Derek agreed without hesitation. "I'll have it ready by your next trip. Can you actually move this much, though?"

"No problem at all. You're underestimating what our company can shift."

Vincent said it with real confidence—word had already reached him that weapon and armor prices were set to rise steadily in the times ahead.

With the deal settled, Vincent decided to step up how often the caravan came into the mountains.

The mountain folk's usual orders now made up a shrinking slice of the trade; Derek's share kept climbing.

He even started weighing a dedicated trip into the mountains, just to save time.

The market itself was now the only thing holding the caravan back. Vincent would gladly have made the trip daily if he could.

Vincent had barely left when Knight Croya's messenger arrived.

The man moved ten warhorses for him without any trouble, along with a scattered lot of weapons.

That produced another few hundred gold in business.

With his strategy shifted, Derek's business had exploded almost overnight.

Now the only thing holding him back was output.

Filling these two orders alone would eat up every spare bit of capacity for the next three months.

"People. I need people."

Derek was becoming obsessed with the word. He needed land that could support more people.

The trouble was, he had no way in.

This world had land in plenty—but not one inch of it went unclaimed.

As Derek balanced satisfaction against worry, the new year drew near.

A year gone from home—by any count, it was time to go back.

He briefly considered contesting his elder brother for a share of the family estate, then dismissed the idea.

The old man would never agree to it anyway.

Besides... he was confident that sooner or later, he'd build something greater than House Ferreira outright.

No sense burning what little family warmth he had left over that.

...

Compared with everything else, family was by far the scarcer resource.

He packed his bags—mostly gifts—and set out for home with a squad of foot soldiers and a squad of cavalry in tow.

Cousin Adrian volunteered to stay behind and oversee the camp.

He understood this was Derek's foundation—not something to leave unwatched for long.

Derek tried to talk him out of it, gave up once he saw the man's mind was made up.

This trip home was for more than reunion—it was a chance to pay some debts back in kind.

Everyone had lent a hand when he was just starting out; that deserved a return now.

He hadn't forgotten, either, the string of cousins scattered across his uncles' and aunts' households, all with at least a basic education. If he could talk a few into joining—better yet, if each came trailing a crew of young men the way Adrian had—so much the better.

They were family, after all. If he did not bring those young men under his own banner, someone else would profit from them instead.

Better the family's young men throw in with him than go serve some great noble house elsewhere.

Hauling several cartloads of gifts slowed him down; the trip home took the better part of ten days.

By the time he arrived, the new year was only half a month off.

Lady Ferreira had already started fretting over Derek out loud—every other child in the family was home by now.

Second brother Sergei Ferreira, serving with the Iron Lion Legion; eldest brother Marco Ferreira, who'd stayed home helping run the family's affairs; fourth brother Sherif Ferreira, a squire under some viscount's banner—all present.

Their eldest sister, married off to some knight, wouldn't be making it back this year.

Nor would the youngest sister, who'd taken vows at the monastery.

House Ferreira's business had done well this year, and both manors had brought in a fine harvest.

Taxes had come in steady, with hardly a hitch.

With the family's fortunes climbing steadily, Baron Ferreira had been in good spirits all season.

The one thing that still nagged at him was his third son, Derek.

The boy had simply run off to seek his fortune, and Lady Ferreira's daily complaints had nearly worn a groove in the baron's ears.

Last time he'd sent men home, he'd made off with a whole crowd of farmhands besides—earning second brother Andrew a proper dressing-down from the baron.

Harsh as his words ran, Baron Ferreira still worried over the boy plenty underneath.

A child out wandering always seemed to draw more of a parent's care, somehow.

However hard he cursed, what he actually wanted was for Derek to come home safe.

Then—

"Master Derek is back."

The moment the old steward brought him the news, the baron half rose from his seat—then forced himself back down.

"Hmph! Gone a whole year and sends back one letter. I half thought he'd died somewhere. So he remembers the way home, does he."

"My lord, Master Derek has brought you some gifts. Perhaps you'd care to take a look," the old steward offered, right on cue, giving him a graceful way to relent.

"If he can feed himself, that's already more than I expected—gifts for me on top of it? I'd sooner he not come home broke, hand out, looking for a handout instead."

Only then did Baron Ferreira rise, unhurried, and go see what his disobedient son had dragged home.

Truth was, he'd already asked around after Derek—including through his letters back and forth with Knight Croya—and knew the boy was doing well enough for himself.

Of course, smuggling for a living meant risking your neck, one way or another.

Did anyone truly imagine there were no checkpoints, no bandits, along roads like that?

One look at the men Lloyd had cut down made it plain that money like that never came easily.

By the time Baron Ferreira ambled his way out to the castle's training yard, he found he was the last one to arrive.

His sons and Lady Ferreira were already there.

Fourth brother Sherif was circling a black warhorse and shouting with excitement.

"Third brother, you're the best! I finally have a warhorse of my own!"

As a squire, Sherif had it just as rough as Derek once had—stuck riding some common mount his knight-instructor assigned him, one that wasn't even his to keep.

House Ferreira ran a surplus most years, but not so extravagant a one that it could outfit every son with his own warhorse—especially not when the things were hard to buy at any price.

In fact, only if Derek had chosen to stay home would the baron have bothered fitting him out with a warhorse and gear of his own.

Second son Sergei served with the Iron Lion Legion, a low-ranking officer of the crown; his equipment came issued by the kingdom.

Fourth brother, still partway through his squire's training, obviously wasn't getting outfitted like this either.

Owning a full set of gear and a warhorse before your time was a habit found only among great noble sons, or down south.

The rough, impoverished nobility of the North tended to pinch every copper.

Even with years of peace behind them and a bit of gold saved up all around.

Ferreira Castle itself told the story: built through and through in a martial style left over from the days the North was first carved out, it read far more like a fortress than a home.

That was simply the Northern nobility's character—Central nobles looked down on it, Southern nobles sneered at it, and none of it changed a thing.

Where Sherif whooped and hollered, second brother Sergei and eldest brother Marco had their eyes fixed instead on the soldiers and squires Derek had brought home.

These swordsmen, better suited to close-quarters brawls and useful for just about anything, carried themselves with an unmistakable air of the elite—tougher-looking, every one, than House Ferreira's own soldiers.

As for the squires—squires in name only, they looked more like knights than most actual knights did.

Iron-plated leather armor, fine-steel longswords, gauntlets, warhorses, helmets.

Armed to the teeth from head to toe—Simon even had half-plate on, his own warhorse draped in leather barding, his eyes sharp enough that people flinched from meeting them.

Riding at Derek's back had meant a good deal more than just drilling.

Now and then they'd ridden along with Lloyd, playing bandit for a day, putting down some small-time thief who didn't know better.

After a year of it, whose hands hadn't been stained with blood by now?

This was no ordinary wandering knight's retinue. A poorer baron could not afford such a display.

"What exactly has our third brother been doing out there?"

Sergei ran back through his memory, trying to place which new band of horse-bandits might have sprung up somewhere in the Northern Province.

Short of outright robbery, how else could anyone build a fortune like this?

Baron Ferreira had noticed as well. Surprise crossed his face, but not enough to break his composure.

"What are you shouting about? Even if you had a warhorse, could you afford to keep it?"

Baron Ferreira cracked a hand across Sherif's head, neatly pulling everyone's attention his way.

"Where are the gifts?"

This, aimed at Derek.

Derek knew his father's temperament well enough not to take it to heart.

He waved Simon forward, and the man came up with others hauling a crate between them.

Open it!

A complete suit of knight's gear.

Helmet, vambraces, gauntlets, half-plate, tassets, knee guards, iron boots.

Then a ten-forged knight's sword, a lance head, a hand shield.

And last, an iron chanfron and chainmail barding for the warhorse.

Not true heavy plate, perhaps, but a knight's kit all the same—a lighter edition of one.

The very thing most knights alive could only dream of owning, the kind of treasure a family passed down for generations.

At a hundred gold, the whole set would still count as a bargain.

About what a micro manor turned out in a full year.

Cared for properly, it would easily outlast several generations.

Nearly the whole body covered, every piece defense above standard.

And that was the real point: money alone couldn't buy it.

Material and craft both demanded a threshold of skill that wasn't for sale.

Derek himself didn't even own a full set like it—this one had cost Little Tru and his crew a solid month of overtime, made purely as an offering for Baron Ferreira.

Derek had already made plans to recover far more than he had spent.