“Huh, interesting...” Anne said as she scrutinized the knife.
I went out onto the terrace and ignited a light source to inspect the newly received blade. When Anne twirled the knife around, it sparkled beautifully. She placed the knife back on the table and sighed.
“I know that it’s different from ours, but I can’t tell you how I know that,” she said. “But, Eizo, the ones you forge are much prettier.”
“The shape is the exact same, though,” I said.
I gazed up at the wooden ceiling we’d built. The knives we forged here weren’t solely made from my effort—my family made sheets of metal for me and provided support in small ways.
“How’s the quality?” Diana asked.
She was likely curious about whether this knife would prove to be a threat to our sales. If an exact dupe were to make its rounds on the market, our business would be finished. I glanced at the knife on the table—it shone.
“It’s not even close to our elite model in terms of quality,” I concluded. “It might put up a fight against our entry-level models, though. If this isn’t the best that they could do, they might serve as a bit of competition, but I think we’d win by a landslide.”
Diana sighed with relief. I was using my cheats to analyze this item, of course. I could tell that the hammered steel was uneven, and while the shape was the same, I easily spotted some remaining coarse edges.
“The letter from Camilo is about this knife,” Lidy said quietly. She was unable to mask the anger that filled her tone.
I peered into the unfurled letter as I stood beside her.
“Let’s see... ‘I’ve sent you something that’s been spotted in the capital. I’m currently tracking down the source,’” I read. “That’s what the letter says.”
When he sent me updates about the world, his words were always a lot clearer and more detailed. I wonder if his letter is short because he’s angry too...
Helen stood next to me. “The capital, huh? I hope it’s not what I think it is...”
“No, I don’t think so,” I replied.
“Yeah.”
Helen was likely implying that Karen was the one who’d forged this fake—she was in the capital, after all. She knew about our knives and even about the fat cat insignias I included on the pommels. (The fake also had the cat engraved—Samya had first spotted it.) Karen was currently training to become a blacksmith, so I couldn’t blame people for immediately making her suspect number one.
However, there were no advantages to her copying my work. Obviously, she’d be the prime suspect, and if she did something like this, she’d lose our cooperation completely. That would make her stay in the capital meaningless. If she was going to pull an act like this, she would’ve fared much better if she’d returned with her uncle. Admittedly, that’s just what I’d like to think.
“Seems like these knives have been spotted in several places,” Lidy said. “And we were sent one to confirm.”
“We could’ve sold our wares to others,” I replied.
While I’d promised Camilo I’d sell to him, we didn’t have an exclusivity contract. If other vendors offered me favorable conditions, I could easily sell my products to them. And the same went for Camilo’s side—he was free to buy whatever items he wished from any person he desired. As long as he bought our wares, we had no right to say a word of complaint.
“A fake, huh...?” I murmured.
Trademarks and patents didn’t exist in this world just yet. If one were to falsify and abuse the emblem of a noble, they would face capital punishment at worst, but that held a different meaning entirely.
“So what the hell is this knife anyway?” Samya asked. She sat on the handrail of the terrace and dangled her legs.
I gave a wry smile. “Honestly, I don’t know. I can’t say anything for certain.” Samya huffed quietly, and I continued, “But I think we can safely assume that this is a slight perpetuated by someone—or a group of someones—against Forge Eizo.”
When I glanced at my family, their eyes were flickering with resolve. If a fight was being pushed upon us, we’d fight until the bitter end, it seemed.
“But for now, there really isn’t much we can do,” I said. “My only plan is to write back to Camilo and confirm that this is indeed a fake.”
Everyone’s shoulders slumped with exaggerated disappointment—their reaction to my carefree words was pretty funny, honestly. Whoever made this fake was clearly picking a fight with us (or so I’d assumed), but I couldn’t understand their motive or their goal.
“If this is a fake—I mean, it is—we’re not the only victims here,” I said. “This affects Camilo’s business too, which was probably why he hastily sent us this knife instead of waiting for us to come to the city.”
If a fake was sold, that would be one less knife sold by Camilo. Knives in general weren’t very expensive—even shortswords didn’t cost a ton. But losing sale after sale added up over time, and he couldn’t ignore the fakes. On the other hand, we received our payment every time we sold our wares to Camilo, and though this logic could come off as cold, it didn’t matter to us what happened after that. Our transaction would conclude, and it wouldn’t affect us one bit—only he suffered a loss.
“But if this continues, it won’t be good,” Anne said.
I nodded. “If we can no longer sell our wares to Camilo, we’re finished. I doubt others would be willing to take on the risk of dealing with us either.”
In short, if the demand for Forge Eizo’s wares decreased, then Camilo—or anyone else—wouldn’t be able to sell our stuff. If that happened, we would eventually run out of clients.
“In any case, we don’t have enough information yet,” I said. “We have to leave that to Camilo for now and decide where to go with what knowledge we have.”
Should we be on the offensive or the defensive? I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do just yet. I took the fake knife and inspected it. The shape was exactly the same as ours, but my cheats told me that it wasn’t nearly as good as our entry-level models. This knife was the same as any normal one that could be purchased from anywhere. At the very least, it was nowhere near the quality we touted.