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“It worked, did it?” Wallace asked.

“How?” Arwin asked, struggling not to look like a fish out of water. “That’s impossible. You can’t control the Mesh.”

The other smith doubled over in a fit of uproarious laughter. He slapped his knee and shook his head as he tried and failed to contain his mirth. Arwin couldn’t even muster the ability to be annoyed. All he could do was stare in shock as Wallace gathered himself.

“Of course I can’t control the Mesh. That doesn’t mean I can’t influence it. The world is all about push and pull. Give and take. The Mesh responds to the environment and seeks to create capable, motivated people. If all the circumstances are right and the stakes are there… why wouldn’t it activate? Granted, it’s right rare. Really rare. I didn’t know for sure it would work this time around, but I had a ‘feelin.”

Arwin couldn’t argue with that logic, but it somehow only served to confuse him even further. He shook his head and crossed his arms in front of his chest. He’d only first heard of Challenges a short while ago, and not once as a Hero. The rest of the Menagerie hadn’t had much more information on them.

I’m not going to buy that it was this easy to make a Challenge. Someone else would have stumbled upon it before. The only way you can keep something of this scale secret is if it’s incredibly rare.

“No. There’s no way I’m just buying that. You’re skipping something.”

“Would you look at that? I knew you were learning,” Wallace said with a wry smile. “You’re right. I skipped a part. Two of them, actually. Other Challenges and the Mesh itself. The first is the answer, and the second is the reason. Care to take a guess?”

Arwin stared at Wallace, trying to figure out just how much the dwarf truly knew. It took him a few seconds to fully process everything he’d just said. Other Challenges — that part was simple enough to deduce. Wallace had a Challenge that somehow let him influence the Mesh enough to pose Challenges to other people.

It was the latter half of the claim that gave Arwin difficulty. After thinking for a few more seconds, the impatience won over and he just shook his head helplessly.

“I don’t know. You somehow got a Challenge that lets you give other people Challenges… but I can’t even begin to guess how or why the Mesh would allow for something like that.”

“Don’t blame you. I couldn’t figure it out either,” Wallace said with a snort. “You’re going to feel like a right idiot for not figuring it out, though. It’s the same reason that the Mesh does everything else. Challenge. Lowercase c.”

Arwin squinted at Wallace. Then he shook his head. “Still not following.”

“And that would be the smooth rock you call a brain rolling around in your skull. Get some wrinkles in there, boy. Squish it up a bit. The Mesh wants challenge. Little c. That’s the only thing it cares about. It only gives Challenges — the ones with the big c — to people who are trying hard enough to deserve them.”

“I think I can tell the difference between the little and big c words,” Arwin interrupted dryly.

“Right. Sure. So the Mesh wants people to challenge themselves. It gives out special tasks with some really nice rewards. But it couldn’t just stop there, could it? That would be too nice. And the older you get, the more you learn that the Mesh ain’t nice. So how do you make a Challenge in itself a challenge? Big c and little c, respectively.”

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“Yes, I got that bit,” Arwin muttered, but his mind was more focused on decoding Wallace’s words than he was on his snark. He thought through everything he knew about Challenges. And then — finally — it clicked into place. Not from his own experiences, but from Olive.

The realization must have been as clear as day on his features, because Wallace smirked. “Figured it out, did you?”

“You can lose the Challenges. Not fail them, but lose them,” Arwin breathed. That was what happened to Olive. She hadn’t failed her Challenge. The Mesh would have told her if she had, even if she’d been unconscious. It had been stolen from her. He didn’t know if it had been taken by the monster in the dungeon or Olive’s old team. Arwin wasn’t even sure if monsters could get Challenges, but he didn’t see why they couldn’t. It just made too much sense for it all to be a coincidence. “I have no clue how, but there’s a way to take someone else’s Challenge, isn’t there?”

“Struck the ore vein.” Wallace gave Arwin an approving nod. “Well done. As to how, it depends. Every Challenge is different. There’s no universal answer, but I think you can see why people that get Challenges don’t go speaking about them. You get yourself killed.”

“What about the people that already finish their challenge, though?” Arwin asked. “They’d have no reason not to—”

“Other Challenge holders. I don’t know what kind of things you’ve seen, but these Challenges get big, lad. Real big. I’m talking kingdom level things. They’re one of the best and worst kept secrets in the world. You don’t talk about Challenges in the open. Either a friend tells you or you get one. That’s it.”

Arwin blew out a sigh and rocked back on his heels. This explained so much — and at the same time, it explained nothing at all.

If this is all true, then why did I never get so much as a tiny Challenge as the Hero? Did the Mesh hate me or something? It feels like I got another piece of a puzzle, but it doesn’t fit in the bloody hole I’m trying to stick it into.

“That,” Arwin said, finally mustering his thoughts, “is quite annoying.”

“So it is. Don’t go telling anyone you don’t trust with your life, yeah? It might depend on it. The good news is you aren’t leaving this smithy with that Challenge. Either it’ll be done or you’ll be dead.” Wallace flashed Arwin a wide, toothy grin. “And I’m speaking honestly when I say I hope it’s the former. Just don’t harp on it too much or make any more of those damnable metal balls or I’m going to change to hoping for the latter.”

Arwin let out a snort of laughter. It wasn’t like there was much else he could do. There were so many things that Challenges could have been connected to that he couldn’t even begin to list them all off yet. For now, Arwin supposed that all he could do was focus on passing the one before him.

“I don’t suppose you can give me at least a little advice as to what it is that makes dwarven smithing different from normal smithing when it comes to the actual forging bit?” Arwin asked.

“A man smiths by hand. A dwarf smiths by heart,” Wallace replied without missing a beat. “Don’t get caught up in the semantics. You’re finding your own way. Search for what comes naturally to you and embrace it.”

“Huh. That’s… surprisingly useful advice, actually,” Arwin said slowly. “At least, I think it is. I’m not sure yet.”

“Are you implying I don’t normally give good advice?”

“Yes.”

The dwarf chuckled and headed back over to his corner of the smithy without another word. Arwin’s attention returned to the small piece of Mithril that Wallace had left him. The only things he had to work with for this item were it and a bunch of rough steel bars, the exact name of which Arwin didn’t even know.

Wallace hadn’t provided him with any monster parts or gemstones that he could use to try and focus and direct the magic that went into the item he was meant to craft. Arwin’s brow creased and he chewed on his lower lip.

The last thing he wanted to do was rush ahead and start forging something, only to waste the Mithril. Wallace seemed convinced that he’d be able to make something with it when he tried, but Arwin wasn’t content with just anything.

Finding his own way was easier said than done. Arwin had gone through several completely different styles of smithing at this point, ranging from just copying the Mesh all the way up to making whatever monstrosity he’d turned the Infernal Armory into.

Dwarven smithing was different, at least in part. Not because it was special or objectively better than the others, many of which were just flat out the wrong path forward, but because it didn’t seem to have rules for the actual forging part.

If he wanted to make something worthwhile, he’d have to do more than just follow the rules the Mesh had established or hope to stumble into something that worked. He’d have to make a style of smithing completely unique to himself.