We eventually arrive at the mountain range where the Dwarven Meritocracy is. The Meritocracy is essentially a nation where every dwarf competes to forge the greatest metalwork be it weapons, armor, furniture, or even statue. Most dwarfs usually just forge weapons or armor since it's easier to sell. They often ship massive amounts of swords and armor to the Empire or Kingdom whenever they need to update their armories, they also have local branches in both the human nations and beastmen territories. 

-Now that i think about it, they remind me of the U.S arms industry. 

-Huh? 

-Nothing just reminiscing. 

We reach the capital Mettalguard and enter through its massive steel walls, the gate flanked by 100M tall statues of the ancient dwarven warriors who claimed the mountain from the dragons. Well, except for one. A dragon the dwarfs don't even name out of fear. They only defeated it with the help of the ancient heroes by sealing it in the pile of treasure it hoarded greedily. 

Cherié and i go into a tavern to listen to rumors. Cherié orders her usual order while i listen to the drunken customers chatter. 

-Hey have you heard about the cause of the tremors. 

-no, what was it? 

-Apparently the elder dwarfs are preparing an army to go into the mines. 

-Why an army? 

-No clue man im just a luggage carrier. 

So it seems that there's another interesting event going on. 

We leave the tavern and check in an inn. The next the day we look for respectable blacksmith cause i want to forge a karambit from my dragon fang. I might as well use some of my cash and collect some unique weapons. We finally found a good blacksmith, the smithy was small but if you look closely the equipment inside is high quality. Though Cherié hasn't look close enough. 

-Master why are we going here? 

-Cause it's a good smithy. 

-Huh? 

-look closely, you'll notice the the hammers are well maintain and are made with high durability metal and quality wooden shafts. 

-You have a good eye there son. 

-are you the blacksmith here? 

-Aye, the names Dhromir Hammersmith. 

-Hammersmith? 

-Yup THE hammersmith, though you'll probably know my ancestor than me. 

-The one who help the heroes seal the dragon?

-Yeah, though most people don't care about me since while we're good blacksmiths we aren't good politicians . So we never joined the Steel Council. 

The Steel Council is the group of the best dwarfs who managed to climb to the top and manage the Meritocracy. They also hold elections for replacements by voting who made the best metalwork. 

-So what it is you want?

-You think you can make a knife from this. 

I showed him the dragon fang and his eyes open wide. 

-Is that a dragon fang?

-Yup.

-Did you kill it? 

-Yup. 

-Then i do it for free. 

-What do want? 

-There's a bit of an issue with the mines. 

-You mean the tremors? 

-Yup, i can tell you but you got a keep it a secret. 

-Confidentiality is our speciality. 

-Good, the tremors are caused by the seal on Smaug beginning to falter. 

-Wait Smaug?

-yeah why? The name came from what the heroes called the dragon. Apparently it was named after a legendary dragon from their world. 

-I... See. So what do you want to me to do? 

-I want you to join the army the council are setting up to face Smaug. Don't worry I'll introduce you to council so you can have free reign on how to deal with it. 

-Why don't they reseal Smaug?

-The council don't have the magic to do it, not even the current Magos republic can pull it off. Besides some of the council want to fix to the problem permanently. 

-Still that's a lot for a knife. 

-I'll do any forging request you ask for free as many times you want. 

-Hmmm.... Deal. But can you forge the dragon fang first. 

-Very well then. You'll have it by tomorrow. 

We leave Dhromir to his work and head to the mines. I want to see how big they are and what we'll be facing on the way to the dragon. 

We enter the mines to see that they're quite large. Its 10 by 10 meters in width and height. The mines are a winding maze with large caverns that split into multiple tunnels. Still its a tunnel system so we wield integrally suppressed ICR-2 carbines in 5.7mm. The tunnels are empty at first but the deeper we go the more monsters we encounter ranging from large bats to 5 meter long armored worms. We pick up some shiny gemstones and minerals partially to sell and partially so I can test for gun mods. 

We continue to explore the mines, so far we travelled 700 meters from where we started, though we're measuring based on the route and my hud tells me that we're currently 350 meters above sea level. That should put us around 400 meters below the dragon seal chamber. The mountain itself is 1.2 kilometers tall with the rest of its mountain range around 700-900 meters in height. 

We make our way back and stop by the adventurer guild and drop off the spoils. The bat leather makes good jackets and the worm carapace can be used as lightweight armor, though i don't like the idea of wearing worms as armor. We also encountered armored moles whos drill-like claws make good digging equipment. 

After we finish selling off our hunt Cherié and i rest in our room with her sleeping on the bed i decide to do some maintenance on our ICR's.