1.
A lightning-fast wake-up.
I had a mountain of work to do.
A mountain of it, so my eyes opened automatically.
If it had been work I hated and thought was complete shit, I would have burrowed beneath the blankets with my whole body feeling like it weighed a ton.
But it was nothing like that.
On the contrary, my body felt light because it was work I wanted to get done as soon as possible.
As usual, while washing up, I flicked Ruby on the forehead as she brushed her teeth beside me.
"Ow."
Then I headed to the kitchen.
Dolores had apparently rushed off to take care of something in the Inner Tower from early that morning.
It was not strange, considering the Tower was Mama’s primary workplace to begin with.
Knowing I took ciabatta every morning, someone had put freshly baked bread on the table.
Beside it were sliced tomatoes, ham, and romaine lettuce, so I could eat it however I liked.
Seriously, food culture in this world was pretty bad, so even a sandwich ranked in the top 0.1 percent.
"By my standards, anyway."
I piled a generous amount into a basket-like dish and headed for the garden.
In front of the workshop, I opened the door, stepped inside, and shut it behind me.
A blacksmith gets straight to work, no pointless chatter.
At times like this, it was nice being a child who could not smoke.
The accessory I had to craft was... a pair of earrings.
The Heirs of Fire’s fundamental specialty lay, above all else, in metallurgy and crafting large pieces of equipment.
They were excellent at handling iron, and good at just about everything else too, but...
"Making small, delicate accessories, though..."
That was not really their specialty. That was the domain of the elves, with their small hands.
Even so, I was naturally confident in the metalwork that would form the earrings’ frame.
I had gotten the faintest taste of that sense last time.
The material processing and engraving techniques of the Children of the Forest that I had learned while making Frostless Spring.
If last time had merely been a collaboration sampled by the spoonful...
"This time, I’ll do it properly."
I intended to craft earrings that fused the elves’ passionate engraving techniques with the Heirs of Fire’s metallurgy into one.
A true collaboration between two races.
My goal was to make an accessory the likes of which could never have existed in history.
First, I had to choose the materials.
I carefully lifted the pouch of ore and spread its contents across the table.
Rumble...
Many kinds of ore came into view.
There were many important factors when making divine equipment, but the most important one was, in fact...
『Divine equipment must be forged from metals, minerals, and gemstones whose nature aligns with that of the god.』
Since it was divine equipment, it made sense to use minerals associated with the god.
Or things the god liked.
"Yuna."
As always, I asked Yuna, my cyber intelligence agent, to crawl for information.
"Organize all the information related to Gaia and give me a summary."
[Okay.]
...Of course, I was not just making Yuna work while I lounged around.
I had work to do too.
Namely, sorting the ores.
Only a month ago, rather than sorting ores, I had been comparing the price per gram of chicken breast on hot-deal message boards.
Now I was sorting ores.
Iron ore with iron ore, gemstones with gemstones.
Just as I was swiftly sorting them by category—
[I got a rough outline, big brother.]
"Oh, already?"
That was faster than I expected.
[But since she’s a god...]
[...Um, it wasn’t easy finding reliable information.]
[I mostly picked through oracles and stuff released in communities... and wikis.]
"Okay."
I had just finished sorting the ores, too.
I skimmed through the posts Yuna had selected.
The first thing I saw was a community post.
[Ever encountered a god while climbing?]
"This board..."
It was a climber message board.
Apparently, it was a place where people climbing the Tower shared information.
─────────────────
I cleared in second place and was supposed to receive the Administrator God’s blessing, but I got Gaia instead.
She bestowed the blessing of the earth, but honestly, that wasn’t the important part.
Seeing Mama Gaia in person... I haven’t been able to sleep well since...
─────────────────
Anonymous: Fucking jealous. I met some fucking fire goddess and my whole body got burned. She just roasted me with fire.
└ Original Poster: ?? Wasn’t she supposed to give you a blessing?
└ Anonymous: How the fuck should I know, it was fucking hooooot.
└ Anonymous: She said being burned by her was a blessing, or some shit.
└ Original Poster: Damn... scary.
└ Anonymous 1: Gaia normally doesn’t summon men. OP must be a woman.
What was with this extreme temperature difference?
They were both gods, yet one person lost sleep while another got burned.
Choosing Gaia might have been a divine move after all.
I clicked my tongue and moved on to the wiki.
[Gaia is the God of Earth.]
As I read on, I looked through the divine equipment that had been offered to her so far.
Divine equipment itself was rare, so apparently every offering was recorded on the wiki.
"...Huh?"
But then.
"This garbage is supposed to be divine equipment?"
Every last piece was shabby.
The craftsmanship was so pathetic it was embarrassing to even call them divine equipment.
Give me two hours and a hammer, and I could make something better than this.
To begin with, the number of races capable of forging divine equipment could be counted on one hand.
Aside from elven accessories, all that remained was this kind of shoddy junk.
It looked like people with no talent had offered them up while calling them divine equipment.
"...And if you offer even this kind of thing and it gets recognized as divine equipment, you receive a blessing."
It felt familiar.
Back in my previous life, during grad school.
The kind of people who wanted research funding... so they dashed off some idiotic proposal and skimmed every bit of grant money they could.
They offered things completely devoid of sincerity... then took only kind, gentle Gaia’s blessings.
She must have recognized even this as divine equipment and bestowed blessings on them.
The community and wiki were unanimous in their assessment of Gaia.
They said she was exceptionally kind and gentle.
That she did not even get angry at most acts of rudeness.
That was why everyone took her lightly.
I shook my head.
I hated this sort of person most of all—the kind who, instead of being grateful when someone treats them well, only schemes to take advantage of them.
I closed the wiki window.
I had made up my mind.
It had always been natural to put my heart into my work, but this time I would put even more into it.
"I’ll make it properly, and receive a proper blessing."
Shaking my head, I sat before the ores I had sorted.
"Yuna, take notes."
[Okay.]
"The frame will be white iron... The reason is—"
Since she was the Goddess of Earth, rather than something flashy, I wanted it to be solid and bright.
It also reflected her unblemished nature.
The second ore...
"Ocher crystal."
This was an absolute must. It was literally an ore made of condensed essence of the earth.
There could be no more fitting material.
And the last one.
Tap, tap.
I tapped the table with my fingers as I fell into thought.
"Green jade."
The symbolic color of all things sprouting.
I could not leave out green.
─────────────────
[Materials: White Iron / Ocher Crystal / Green Jade]
─────────────────
With the materials decided, the next step was the design.
As for the current constraints—
I could not melt the iron down completely into liquid, pour it into a mold, and let it solidify.
That was because the forge could not function as a blast furnace.
So the method I chose was filigree.
Twisting or coiling thin strands of metal.
Then making petal-like patterns and joining them inside an outer frame.
In other words, using nothing but metal wire to twist and coil an entire earring into shape.
And within that frame... I would set the green jade and ocher crystal.
Filigree was originally work done with relatively soft gold or silver.
But according to the dwarf encyclopedia, white iron had fairly low hardness.
So it should be suitable.
How many would I make?
"Two."
Earrings came as a pair, after all.
The structure was as follows.
The white iron frame would create a place for the green jade, and ocher crystal would bind with the white iron frame to reinforce that setting.
And... once I set the green jade inside it—
It would become an image of earth holding yellow-ochre essence, and that essence holding a green sprout.
"The concept is perfect, isn’t it?"
For the design, I had referred to Yuna’s big data.
Very famous, expensive jewelry brands.
In other words, future jewelry designs shaped by aesthetic sensibilities accumulated over thousands of years.
The era I had lived in was an era of full bellies and abundant food.
People were willing to stake their lives on looks and aesthetics.
I intended to show them an aesthetic sense this medieval age could never hope to match.
"If I need to draw out wire..."
I should do what I always did.
"Thermal shock delamination."
It was hard work, but I had no choice.
It would take at least two weeks.
Last time, I had only done flame ore...
But this time, I had to do both white iron and ocher crystal.
Clunk.
Smiling, I tossed an ignition stone into the forge.
Whoosh!
Fire flared to life in the forge.
It was time for some backbreaking labor.
2.
Thermal shock delamination was incredibly difficult, shitty work.
But seeing the results pile up in soft heaps did put my mind at ease.
And whenever I began thermal shock delamination, Dolores would embrace me as though she had been waiting for it.
You know that cool-mat sleeping method, right?
The employee benefits were perfect too... All I had to do was work.
I had not given the princess a separate deadline.
Basically, nobody in this world asked a blacksmith about a production timeline.
"...Aristocrats really are aristocrats."
There were no aristocrats quite like them.
They did not even ask questions because they were worried about offending Master Blacksmith.
Thanks to that, I could take all the time I wanted without having to worry about appearances.
"Well, she’s probably expecting around three months, right?"
I did not know for sure.
And so time passed.
Before I knew it, two weeks had gone by.
"Holy shit."
The last of the ocher crystal had been stripped away.
Beside me, heaps of metal sheets had piled up.
The difference from last time was this.
Now I had to roll those sheets up into thread-like strands and weave them together.
This was where the real catastrophe and hell began.
"When this job is over, I absolutely need a blast furnace..."
Even if I had to sell a +20 Old Wood to buy one.
Honestly, I felt bad about asking Dolores for it.
Of course, she always asked whether there was anything I needed.
But how could I keep taking things from her? I had some shame.
"Yuna, put up the blueprint."
[Yes, yes.]
Yuna and I had already finished discussing what the perfect-looking earrings should be like.
At first, our opinions had clashed, but after realizing I could not beat Yuna’s philosophy and knowledge...
I simply acknowledged all of it.
Swoosh.
A blueprint appeared in midair...
And I saw a design of lines entwined like flower petals.
"It is pretty."
It was pretty no matter how many times I saw it.
But the problem was that I had to make it now.
"All right, then."
I rolled up my sleeves and picked up a pile of white iron sheets.
From now on, I would roll these up and draw them into thread.
It would end eventually.
Grad school was the same, and this was the same.
Sliiide...
And so.
Slide...
Another goddamn two weeks passed.
If I had made one tactical mistake, it was overestimating myself.
The act of twisting metal wire into something had a fairly high degree of difficulty.
But I had been doing everything so well lately that I assumed I would naturally be good at this too.
The result itself was not bad, of course.
[Big brother, it matches the blueprint by 95.5%... Please, stop already...]
"What are you talking about?"
But.
"That won’t do."
Just kill me instead.
The problem was that something must have triggered one of my episodes during the work.
Who the hell are you to look down on me?
My first creation.
When the item I made had an 85 percent match rate with the blueprint, I had nearly fainted on the spot.
I thought it was telling me to die.
Like the feeling of playing a rhythm game for the first time.
Like blankly staring at 134 GOOD ratings.
Eventually I improved, but I could not break through that cursed 96 percent mark.
[The 96 percent was about machines in a factory, big brother!! Please!!! Can’t I take back what I said then?]
There was another reason things had turned out this way.
According to Yuna, even earring factories sold their products as long as the match rate exceeded around 96 percent.
So naturally, I had aimed for 96 percent.
Then I learned not long afterward that it was a number produced by machines.
Yuna might have said it to stop me, but hearing that only made me burn hotter.
I was really sorry, but I was confident about competing against machines.
I could not get beaten down by machines and lose my job again.
A Luddite movement where you smash all the machines.
If there was no machine to direct that at, then I only had to raise my own capabilities.
Competitiveness equal to machines—that was what humans had always lacked.
That was how I had thought.
Remember that spirit.
[Are you really trying to become a machine...?]
"No?"
A man’s dream: a mechanic.
The ultimate Luddite movement was for me to surpass machines myself.
"Higher than that."
I would put the machines out of work instead. Take their jobs away.
That was what I insisted, but...
I did feel that something needed to change.
All right, let’s consider the difference.
What was different from when I made Frostless Spring that resulted in nothing but outcomes I disliked?
"...Wait a minute."
In that instant.
A fundamental question came to mind.
Back then, when I made those stockings, what was I thinking as I moved my hands?
...Ah?
Only then did I realize it.
"I wasn’t thinking about the person who’ll wear these."
That was it.
All I had looked at until now was the match rate against the blueprint.
I had obsessed over a mere number...
But these were not mass-produced goods stamped out in a factory.
The person who would wear these earrings was Gaia in the divine realm.
And the princess in the human realm.
"Then naturally, I should make them while thinking of the princess."
When I stitched Dolores’s stockings, every moment I moved my hands while picturing only Mama’s face.
What texture should touch these feet for them to feel comfortable... Which spots must not chafe...
How smooth her legs were, how wide her thighs were, and how beautiful Dolores would look wearing them...
[........]
I had seated the person who would wear them right before me.
And tailored them stitch by stitch to that person.
But this time, I had forgotten the most important thing.
"Okay, Yuna."
[Yeah....]
Only now could I see the way forward.
"Put up a picture of the princess in front of me."
Choose a pretty one.
[ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ]
At last, I had opened my eyes.
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