Chapter 13
Thanks to another crossbow I'd assembled and a couple of wooden trinkets, I'd earned 50 OP the previous evening.
Despite what would likely be a very busy few days ahead, dealing with the hassle of cashing in the ore, finding a place to live, and moving, I had set myself a goal: earn at least 50 OP a day without fail.
My main strength was the System, and even with money, a home, and some stability in my life, the worst thing I could do was relax and stop developing.
"Hello, good afternoon. Am I speaking with Manhattan Gold and Silver, correct?"
Before heading out into the city, I dialed the number of what I had decided was the best option for smelting.
The voice on the other end, a woman's, sounded professional and pleasant.
"Yes, this is us. How can I help you?"
I paused briefly, calibrating my tone.
Not too confident, so as not to raise flags, but not too timid either.
"You see, I have a slightly unusual situation. I recently inherited from my grandfather several pieces of gold ore. I was wondering if you could help me smelt them down into small ingots."
The moment I said "inheritance" and "gold ore," the woman's intonation shifted subtly, becoming more interested and businesslike.
"Of course, we handle that. Can you give me approximate dimensions and weight? Do you happen to know the purity of the ore?"
"Two pieces in total, combined weight of one point eight kilograms. My grandfather said the purity was high, somewhere around eighty-five to eighty-eight percent, but that's not exact. I imagine you'll be able to confirm it precisely."
"Absolutely. We have high-precision laboratory spectrometers on hand, so determining purity won't be a problem at all. We can advise you on everything. When do you expect to arrive?"
"I plan to be there within a couple of hours, but I'd like to clarify a few things first. I've read excellent reviews about your workshop and looked through your website, but still..."
I let the pause hang deliberately, projecting caution.
"Can you accept part of the recovered metal as payment for your services?"
"Yes, that's standard practice," the woman answered warmly, and a small knot of tension loosened in my chest.
"We simply deduct the cost of the work from the final weight of pure metal."
"That's perfect. Second question, and this one matters to me personally: can I be present during the process? We're talking about serious money, and it's also... a memory of my grandfather. I'd like to see it through."
"I understand completely," she said, and I could hear genuine sympathy in her voice.
"And yes, of course, that's a fairly common request. The process doesn't take long, and our master can walk you through everything as he works, if you're interested."
That's exactly what I'm interested in, I thought.
And making sure nobody skims anything in the process, naturally.
"Wonderful. One last question, probably. Is it possible to sell some of the gold directly to you? I'll need cash, and I'd really rather not deal with banks and declarations. We're talking about an amount under ten thousand dollars, to keep things simple."
I was fairly confident they'd say yes.
For a workshop like this, buying a little gold from a client who'd already brought in a large smelting order was a profitable arrangement.
They'd take it at a discount, like a pawnshop would, and I'd already accepted that going in.
The woman answered almost immediately, without hesitation.
"Of course. We do purchase gold, though the price will be twenty-five percent below current market rate. At the moment, that works out to approximately $24,562 per kilogram of pure gold."
"Good. That works for me. And what about documentation?"
"Not to worry. On completion of the work we'll provide all the necessary certificates and receipts. They'll show the exact weight before and after smelting, the purity assay, the cost of our services, and the sale amount if applicable. Everything fully official."
"Then I've learned everything I needed. Thank you very much for the thorough consultation. Expect me within an hour or two."
"Thank you for choosing our workshop. We look forward to your visit!"
I ended the call and exhaled.
Manhattan Gold and Silver was one of the oldest jewelry workshops in New York and, apparently, one of the most straightforward.
The plan was solid.
I wrapped the heavy ore in cloth, tucked it to the bottom of my backpack, and felt the weight shift with every step.
The absurdity of it was quietly amusing: carrying a fortune capable of changing my entire life around in an ordinary backpack.
I walked toward 47th Street in Manhattan, where the famous Diamond District ran between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
The streets changed in front of my eyes.
The grim brick facades of Hell's Kitchen gave way to glittering storefronts and glass skyscrapers of Midtown.
The air grew denser, filled with the hum of expensive cars and fragments of conversation in dozens of languages.
Here, in this pressure cooker of ambition, my wealth was just one drop in a very deep ocean.
I watched Orthodox Jewish merchants with briefcases chained to their wrists, Arab businessmen stepping out of armored limousines, and Asian investors negotiating million-dollar deals right on the sidewalk.
Against that backdrop I was just another customer.
My cover story about a grandfather's inheritance felt surprisingly plausible in a place like this.
People inherited Pokemon card collections worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and nobody batted an eye.
Just business.
Forty minutes later I was standing in front of a five-story building with a distinguished sandstone facade.
The workshop occupied the first two floors.
Behind a heavy door of dark wood and glass, the cool hum of an air conditioner and a deep quiet greeted me, broken only by the distant whir of an exhaust fan somewhere out of sight.
A young man in a perfectly fitted suit, one of the managers, asked politely about the nature of my visit.
When I explained I was the one who'd called earlier about the large smelting order, he led me immediately through into the working area.
The master was already waiting.
A solid-looking man in his forties, with a perfectly waxed mustache and a leather apron, his hands told you everything you needed to know: strong, work-worn, with metal dust ground into the skin.
His gaze was sharp and appraising.
I slipped off my backpack and carefully set two dull, heavy pieces of ore down on the specially prepared heat-resistant table.
The master, not wasting a single word on pleasantries, simply nodded and began his examination.
I respected that immediately.
First came the assessment.
I watched in silence as the master, Enrique, wielded the spectrometer with a surgeon's confidence.
He turned the nuggets over, pressed the sensor against different surfaces, and the numbers on the device's small screen shifted constantly.
He was writing steadily in a worn notebook, thick eyebrows drawn together in concentration.
Those fifteen minutes felt like an eternity.
Thoughts swirled through my head: what if he reads the values low? What do I do then? Argue? Walk out?
Finally Enrique set down the device and delivered his verdict, tapping his pencil against the notebook.
"So, kid. First piece: 87.6% gold content. Second one's worse, but still solid: 83.1%."
I exhaled silently.
In my inventory, the nuggets had been marked at 88% and 83%.
The System had clearly rounded the numbers, but the master's reading was frighteningly close.
If he'd quoted 85 and 80, I would have turned around and left without a word.
But this was fair.
I nodded my consent.
Then everything moved fast.
A deafening screech, and the steel jaws of the crusher reduced my nuggets to a pile of fingernail-sized fragments in seconds.
Ten more minutes, and those fragments were being poured neatly into a graphite crucible.
"It's about to get hot," Enrique warned, pulling on safety glasses and thick gloves.
A wave of dry, searing heat rolled out of the furnace and pushed me back a step.
The master slid the crucible inside, and the room filled with a rising hum.
Through a small window of heat-resistant glass I watched the ore fragments lose their shape, soften, and merge into a single glowing mass.
Inside the crucible, in a dazzling radiance, a small sun churned: hypnotic and dangerous.
Twenty minutes later, my 1.8 kilograms of ore had become liquid fire.
With a smooth, practiced movement, Enrique lifted the crucible and began pouring the melt into small molds.
Gold flowed in a thick, luminous stream.
Another fifteen minutes of cooling, and there it was: sixteen perfect hundred-gram bars and one small frozen drop weighing 37 grams, laid out on the table in front of me.
The master immediately separated 12 grams from the small drop as payment for his services.
What remained was mine: 1,625 grams of pure 999-fineness gold.
Each bar came with a small certificate confirming its authenticity.
"Good ore," Enrique said unexpectedly, wiping his hands on a rag.
"Your grandfather had a keen eye. You mentioned to the manager you wanted to sell some?"
"Yes, I was told I could do that here," I said, carefully loading the warm, heavy bars into plastic containers and stowing them in my backpack.
"You can, of course," he agreed easily.
"But if you want to sell more, and at only a twenty percent discount instead of twenty-five like we charge, I can point you to a friend's pawnshop. Tell them Enrique sent you and they won't ask unnecessary questions. If you just walk the street blind with that much gold, they'll skin you alive."
"That sounds pretty attractive. Give me the address."
Enrique's recommendation turned out to be on the same street, which didn't particularly surprise me.
In the Diamond District, reputation was everything.
I went back to the manager who had greeted me at the entrance, settled the paperwork, and stepped back out onto the bustling street half an hour later into what felt like a different world.
In my backpack, alongside the 1,225 grams of gold bars, sat a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills: $9,825 in cash.
I was rich.
By New York standards I was barely scraping the edge of the middle class, but that wasn't the point.
What mattered was the feeling.
It was as if an invisible weight had been lifted off my chest.
Breathing was easier, and my thoughts, no longer dragging the anchor of tomorrow's survival, ran clean and free.
Pure euphoria.
Something close to what I imagined a person felt the day they made their final mortgage payment.
In that mood I headed to the pawnshop Enrique had recommended.
I told the heavyset man behind the armored glass that Enrique had sent me, presented the certificates, and sold another 325 grams of gold without a single unnecessary question, walking out with another $8,380 in cash.
Then the euphoria drained away, replaced by a cold sting of fear.
I was now carrying $18,205 in cash and 900 grams of gold.
Suddenly the busy Manhattan streets felt hostile.
Every passerby who glanced at my backpack became a potential mugger in my head.
Without overthinking it I ducked into the nearest shop, bought the cheapest, most unremarkable plastic bag I could find, transferred all the cash and the remaining bars into it, and put the whole bundle into my inventory.
The relief was immediate and physical.
I could walk down the street again without flinching at every shadow.
I'd sell the remaining gold over the next couple of days, spread across different pawnshops so as not to flash a large sum in any one place.
But that was for later.
A financial safety net had been created.
Next item on the agenda: finding a new home.
Back in my cramped studio, I felt a sharp sense of dissonance.
The air was stale, and the walls seemed to press in even harder than before.
The contrast between this wretched little box and the tens of thousands of dollars sitting in my inventory was almost physically uncomfortable.
It was time to end this arrangement.
I sat down at the laptop immediately.
Craigslist and StreetEasy pages flashed by on the screen, filters set precisely: Brooklyn or Queens, garage or outbuilding, backyard mandatory.
The first results made me wince.
Broker-inflated prices stared back at me like open mockery.
These digital vultures were ready to charge thousands of dollars for two emails and a single showing.
After ten minutes of fruitless browsing I clicked my tongue and unchecked the "brokers" filter.
The effect was immediate.
Prices that had seemed unreasonable suddenly became reasonable.
Private landlords were listing places twenty, sometimes thirty percent cheaper.
Deposits were manageable and there was no commission to pay.
Even with my newly filled pockets, this didn't give me license to be careless.
Easy money went just as easily when spent without discipline.
Another half hour of careful sifting left me with three options that won me over with their straightforward descriptions and credible, non-fake owner accounts.
First, and most appealing: a one-story house in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood.
A garage annex, a backyard thick with greenery, ideal cover from nosy neighbors.
Price: $3,000 a month plus utilities.
Second: a two-story house in Marine Park, also Brooklyn.
$4,500 with utilities included.
A bit steep, and more square footage than I needed.
Third: a two-story house in Queens for $3,500.
This one was the most suspicious.
Too sweet a price for the listed square footage.
There was obviously a catch somewhere.
I'd call them last, if at all.
My thoughts kept circling back to the first option.
It was perfect.
Compact, no rooms I'd be overpaying for without using.
Bay Ridge was strategically well positioned: close to the bridge to Staten Island, not far from the port, so if I ever needed to rent a shipping container or warehouse space, the infrastructure would be within reach.
The listing itself read as genuine: notarized contract, minimum one-year lease, a deposit of only $3,000, and, importantly, willingness to accept cash payment.
It appeared to be a family renting out the house while relocating to another state.
That meant they most likely weren't going to subject me to excessive scrutiny; they just needed a reliable tenant who would pay on time and not cause problems.
Decision made.
I dialed the number.
"Hello, good afternoon. I'm calling about the house rental listing in Bay Ridge. Is it still available?"
I kept my voice calm and steady.
"Good afternoon. Yes, it's available," replied a woman's voice carrying the particular tiredness of someone deep in the middle of a move and fielding endless calls.
"Great. I'd like to come see it, if that's convenient for you in the near future."
"All right... And who would be living there? A family?"
"No, just me. I'm a student, relocating for school. I just need a quiet place where I can focus."
"Oh, a student..."
A note of hesitation crept into her voice.
"The thing is, we're looking for someone long-term. No parties, no loud music..."
"I completely understand," I said quickly.
"I'm not the party type at all. If anything I'm the most introverted person you're likely to meet. Crowds and noise aren't my world. And a year-long contract suits me perfectly, which is actually what drew me to your listing."
A short pause on the other end.
She was weighing that.
"All right," she said finally.
"Are you, um... local?"
It was a veiled question.
I answered it directly.
"I'm Caucasian. Can I come by within the next hour or two?"
"Yes, that's fine. Do you have the address?"
"I do. I'll be there soon."
I ended the call and let out a slow breath.
I'd cleared the first hurdle.
Now I had to live up to the impression I'd created.
The plan was simple: look reliable.
First, scrub off any trace of Hell's Kitchen.
After a shower I went to the nearest clothing store and spent a hundred dollars on simple but presentable clothes: clean jeans, a polo shirt, decent sneakers.
Ideally I'd have squeezed in a haircut, but there wasn't time.
I changed in the fitting room and called a taxi.
In the yellow cab carrying me from Manhattan to Brooklyn, I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time.
Not just surviving, but actually living.
I wasn't running to hide.
I was going to start something new.
And my future home was somewhere up ahead, waiting.
I hoped.
//==============//