Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 170: Ch168. Mara’s Forge - Crafts and Gear

Chapter 170: Ch168. Mara’s Forge - Crafts and Gear

The sun barely pierced the soot-colored clouds hanging over the newly renovated capital. The streets buzzed with the noise of merchants shouting, machines clanging, and the thick scent of burnt metal wafting through the air.

Cass led the group through the narrow alleyways behind the eastern district, her movements sure and steady. The others followed behind her, their footsteps echoing against the cracked concrete.

Mara’s Forge – Crafts and Gear sat between a laundromat and a café that no one remembered ever opening. The sign above the door was carved metal, hammered into shape rather than printed, with the name etched in a lettering that shimmered faintly under the streetlights. The glass front was dark, a "CLOSED" sign dangling crookedly, but the faint thrum of energy buzzed just under the surface, as if the building itself was holding its breath.

"You’re kidding..." Jake muttered, struggling to keep up. His was still sore from the combat, since their potions, even though they healed their wounds, were not of such good quality as to relieve them from all pain. "You actually know Mara?"

"No way!" Riven added, his voice high with surprise. "This can’t be the same Mara from the stories."

"Yeah. I trained under her for a bit. She used to say my hammer swings looked like I was trying to swat a fly." Cass didn’t glance back.

"She... Mara?" Alric said, his voice hitching in disbelief. "That Mara? You’re funny Cass, seriously."

"I’m telling the truth, guys." She reached the door and rang the bell. There was a slight crackle of energy, but Cass didn’t look like she felt pain or anything.

"The one who fought in the [Mouth of the Abyss]?" Elise added, her eyes beginning to widen. "The First Dungeon?" She paused, and then added. "I thought she was a myth."

"Come on, guys!" Cass glared at Riven and Alric. "She’s real." She smirked. "Grumpy, but real."

The door opened before them, heat spilling out through it.

There was a beat of silence, and they crossed the threshold, and the outer facade did nothing to prepare them for the interior.

It was bigger, first of all. Impossibly so.

What should’ve been a narrow shopfront unfolded into an expansive, multi-level workshop. Stairs curled up into lofts stacked with crates and hanging weaponry. Catwalks hung from the ceiling like industrial spiderwebs, loaded with suspended tools and coils of chain. The floor gleamed in places with embedded runes, worn smooth by months and months of foot traffic and flickering softly with dormant magic.

Workbenches stood in rows, each a blend of arcane precision and brutal craftsmanship. Some were stacked with broken gear, modern polymer plating cracked open like shellfish, blades drained and dulled. Others held items that defied categorization. A crowbar humming with enchantments, a ceramic helmet that seemed to watch you back, a messenger bag stitched with thread that refused to fray.

The smell was metal and ozone, peppered with something almost earthy, like wet stone or moss. Arcane vents along the walls hissed now and then, maintaining temperature or pressure or something more esoteric.

A golem, squat and round and vaguely bear-shaped, padded silently between the aisles, adjusting tools or hauling scrap. It wore a small baseball cap with the shop’s logo.

Lighting was inconsistent in a deliberate way, with spots of warm, ambient glow where customers would linger, but shadows pooling in corners where unfinished relics lay dormant under cloth. Every once in a while, one of them pulsed, as if dreaming.

Behind a thick counter reinforced with runes and steel plating, there was the station. Tools hung within reach, and a display hovered just to the left, showing diagnostics in both code and glyphs. Beneath her workstation, half-disassembled gear hummed with potential, waiting for her touch to bring it back from the brink.

Despite the controlled chaos, everything had its place. And somehow, even with magic in the air and the laws of physics taking a polite backseat, the whole place felt grounded, real.

Alive.

Then a voice, gruff and flat, cut through the air.

"If you’re selling something, I’m not interested."

"It’s me." Cass said. "I brought friends, they need repairs."

Mara appeared from underneath her station, arms crossed, her apron stained with soot and oil. Her hair was tied back in a silvery braid, small metal clasps woven into it. Scars lined her arms like battle marks, and her sharp eyes, gleaming with an otherworldly tone of golden brown, missed nothing.

The air around her shimmered with residual heat and power.

"Cass..." Mara said with a nod. "You brought your fellow brats."

"I brought customers." Cass replied, unphased. "We just survived a dungeon run. Forest-type, barely made it out alive."

Mara’s gaze swept over the group. Elise straightened up. Alric tried not to stare. Riven froze, as if caught under a predator’s gaze, and Jake kept there, frozen in place, his lips bobbing up and down.

"You look half-dead." Mara observed.

"We are." Cass said flatly. "But we’re alive."

"Fine. Summon your gear, let’s see the damage." Mara sighed.

No one argued.

Mara inspected each item, her fingers tracing the damage as if reading a story in the scars. When she finally spoke, it wasn’t just a price, it was a verdict.

"Three days. Two hundred each."

"Two hundred?" Jake balked.

"You want me to patch this up with cheap resin and duct tape? Go somewhere else." Mara raised an eyebrow.

"Pay up or shut up." Cass nudged him with a sigh.

As the group dug out their coins, Elise couldn’t stop herself from asking.

"Can I ask something?"

"No." Mara replied without looking up.

"Please?" Her eyes gleamed like those of a lost puppy

Mara didn’t answer.

"Were you really in the [Mouth of the Abyss]?" Elise hesitated.

Mara paused, her hand lingering on a rack of chisels before slowly turning to face them. Her expression didn’t soften, but her eyes... Their gleam changed ever so slightly to something like... Longing? Even the heat in the room seemed to retreat.

"Yeah." Mara said quietly. "I was."

"That dungeon was said to be impossible. They say only three people made it out." Alric whistled.

"You’re looking at one of them." Cass nodded.

"What was it like?" Riven asked, her eyes wide.

"Was it really alive?" Elise added. "Like people say?"

Mara leaned against the table, her arms crossing over her chest. For a moment, the forge felt a million miles away.

"It was a place that didn’t want to be understood." She said softly. "The deeper we went, the more it changed. Floors weren’t just physical, they were memories, regrets, pieces of something bigger. Like we weren’t exploring a dungeon, but being swallowed by it."

The room went quiet, save for the faint clink of the golem’s work.

"And the others? Sarissa Andreadis and Miles Thorn?" Alric shifted uneasily.

Mara’s gaze drifted, her hands lowering. Her mask cracked, just for a heartbeat.

"They were... Something else." She said, her voice low. "We weren’t just fighters. We were survivors, and we weren’t supposed to win. But we did, at a price..."

"What happened to them?" Elise asked gently.

Mara didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes focused on something far beyond them.

Something distant.