1.
Harngar stood in front of me, pressing me to hurry.
He was our great ancestor, and someone I could only be grateful to for coming all this way to help me, but...
"......"
I put on a distant expression and slowly turned my body.
My gaze toward the window.
Only half my face showing.
"...... The truth is."
I paused for a beat.
"I was an orphan with no parents."
"...... I see. So you had a past like that."
Even though I had suddenly launched into something personal,
as if it were normal to start telling life stories before making equipment,
he naturally settled in and listened to what I had to say.
"There is someone who took me in, and spared no support so that I could stand before a forge at this age."
"......"
The details of Dolores's chronic illness were originally top secret.
But since he was already dead, it probably wouldn't be a major problem if I said it.
"But she was born with an illness, and I was in the middle of making equipment for her, since she's vulnerable to the cold."
Well, more precisely, it was because she was way too cold, but still.
I pointed at the gloves and oversocks as I spoke.
"These are part of that process, and she is my motivation."
"Hoh...."
Harngar stroked his beard and nodded.
"If you've received such kindness, then repaying it is only right."
"Yes, exactly."
"Then is the next piece of equipment also for that benefactor?"
"For now, yes."
However.
"I want to make clothing for her."
"I see."
"But that item, at least..."
"......"
"I want to make it myself from start to finish, with my own hands, without anyone's help."
I called it clothing, but really,
what I had to make, what I was trying to make, was Dolores's underwear.
This.
Seriously.
Who the hell was I supposed to entrust that to?
Unless I was insane, at least until Lionel Eugene was buried in the ground and dirt filled his eyes,
I was going to personally manage and supervise the entire process from start to finish.
Like a semiconductor factory, not a single speck of dust, stain, or contamination could be allowed.
And no one could be allowed to see it, either.
Other than Kim Yuna, whose understanding of the aesthetics of women's clothing ran deep, absolutely no one could be allowed into this process.
That was rule number one of this project.
It was so thank you that my ancestor had come to help me, but this was my business.
For one thing, you were a man.
More than dwarven craftsmanship, I wanted to capture elven aesthetics in it.
Though I had no idea whether there were any elves with a figure like Dolores's.
Of course, I couldn't actually say any of that, so...
"So... would you leave this chance to me?"
"...... That feeling is only natural, I suppose."
Sliiide.
Harngar slowly nodded.
"If it's something for your benefactor, of course you'd want to complete it alone."
"Thank you for understanding."
"Then while we're here, let us speak of other matters. There is more than enough to discuss."
"Sounds good."
Then, as he said, the next matter.
What exactly should I ask him for?
"What I want to request, and ask about, is..."
There were several options floating through my head, but
I didn't know which was the most urgent or important.
To begin with, I had to know what I lacked before I could ask about it.
Until now, I hadn't had anything to compare myself against.
It was reassuring all over again that the man before me was a true master craftsman.
Then he opened his mouth.
"Descendant, though we have not spoken much... you seem to have firm thoughts of your own. Perhaps I should call it conviction."
"...I hear that a lot."
"Then there must surely be things that have dissatisfied you, or things you have been considering."
He looked around the workshop once.
"A temperament like yours repeats the same pattern over and over—thinking, and searching for solutions."
He was exactly right.
That's just how I am. Maybe you could say I complain a lot.
Anyway, if I don't like the current situation, I remember every little thing about it—what exactly is wrong.
"Then I shall solve them. Tell me what you have been thinking, and why you want each thing."
I answered without hesitation.
"First, a hammer."
I wanted to make a hammer for my own use.
There had to be a reason he'd frowned when he saw my Earthborn Hammer.
As a master craftsman, he must have seen countless good hammers.
"It isn't lacking yet when it comes to striking equipment within the level I can currently make, but..."
It wasn't as if I had tried making truly high-difficulty equipment yet.
"Because someday, I'm going to need a better hammer..."
In the middle of my sentence, Harngar abruptly frowned and raised a hand.
"...Wait. I can't let that pass by."
Between my words, he cut in.
"...You mean to say you've never felt your hammer was lacking until now?"
"Yes, that's right."
He stared at me for a long while.
What?
What had I said wrong?
He walked over to my hammer,
picked up the Earthborn Hammer, and came back.
"...Go on for now."
Harngar nodded at me.
"Second, an anvil."
An anvil. For starters, I didn't like the human one.
"I only brought in a new one recently. I had it set lower to match my height, and I picked one made of good material, but..."
"......"
"I just don't like it very much."
"Good. Next?"
The third thing I was curious about was...
"...Third, a method."
"A method."
"Yes."
I raised my arm and showed it to him.
"As you can see, I'm kind of small."
My muscles and my height, all of it was small.
"Up to now, gloves and oversocks and things like that have been small, so it wasn't a problem, but..."
"......"
"If I start making something large in the future, I think it'll be a different story."
The reason I'd only made small equipment so far, and Dolores's clothing...
was partly because I wanted to make those things, but also because that was at least within the range I could handle.
"To be honest, even now it's pretty hard."
Every swing, every time I stepped on equipment, I had to use my whole body, so if I repeated it enough, my body stopped moving well.
I got very tired.
"I'm wondering whether you have any know-how for making up for the physical strain."
According to the records, there were even dwarves with only one arm.
I was curious how people like that managed it.
Harngar looked at me with a strange expression and asked,
"...You. How much do you work in a day?"
"At least nineteen hours."
"...... What?"
Harngar's brow furrowed.
"H-how long does it usually take you to make one piece of equipment?"
"At the longest, two months. At the shortest, about two weeks."
I answered honestly.
"...Is that really true?"
"Yes."
"Every part of it? Entirely by your own hands?"
Harngar placed both hands on the table.
He rested his chin on them and stared at me for a long time.
"......"
What was with that expression?
He looked extremely serious.
Not long after, he opened his mouth.
"...First, I will answer all three of your questions."
"Yes."
"Let us start with the second. The anvil."
He turned his head and looked at my anvil.
"It is certainly a "considerably" bad piece of equipment. Your eye is correct."
"......"
"However, it is also true that making a new one now would be difficult."
Thunk thunk.
Harngar stood and tapped the anvil a couple of times with the back of his hand.
"This is something that must be fitted to your body."
"......"
"If you were a dwarf like us, small in stature, that would be one thing. But you are still growing, are you not? If we lower it to fit your body now, we'd have to make it again in less than two years."
Ah?
Right.
I had been thinking too much like a dwarf.
I'm still in my growth period, and whether I'll get taller or not is uncertain, but my growth plates are still open.
It made sense.
"So endure this for now. Once your body is fully grown, we can make a proper one then."
"Understood."
Next.
"Now for the answer to your first question."
He raised the Earthborn Hammer he'd been holding this whole time and frowned.
"Among the Sun Dwarves, the Heirs of Fire, there is a saying passed down from our ancestors. A master craftsman does not blame his tools."
So they had that saying there too.
People really were the same wherever you went...
"However."
He continued.
"The hammer is an exception."
Harngar lifted the Earthborn Hammer and set it on the table.
"...It is a common misunderstanding among young dwarves who have only just begun metallurgy. This is not merely a matter of a hammer's performance."
"Then what kind of...?"
"For a blacksmith, the end of the body is not the hand. There is one final joint extending from the arm. That is the hammer."
That line was written in the records of the Heirs of Fire too.
The hammer is part of your body.
"Do you know what the first condition of a good hammer is?"
"...That it strikes well, and that it's durable?"
"No. That is not it."
He shook his head.
"It is that it does not injure its owner."
"......"
"You said you spend nineteen hours a day in the workshop?"
"Yes."
"Then that means you strike at least five thousand times a day, and at most ten thousand."
That was about right.
One day I'd asked Yuna to count how many times I swung the hammer,
and there had been a time I'd struck around 9,815 times. If I was enchanting, it'd be even more.
"But."
Sliiide.
He picked up the Earthborn Hammer again.
"Thunk..."
He lightly struck the top of the anvil.
It wasn't even a hard hit.
Bzzzzzz...
As always after a strike, the hammerhead trembled.
"The handle isn't eating any of it."
Vmmmm...
Only then did the hammer's vibration stop.
"That means not even half the force of the blow goes into the metal. It comes back into your wrist, your elbow, and your shoulder instead."
"...The Earthborn Hammer does?"
"Yes, this damned hammer does... exactly that!"
THUNK!
Vmmmmmmmm...
When Harngar brought it down harder on the anvil,
the hammer shook for even longer.
"Once might be nothing. But if that happens ten thousand times, then your arms are taking all of that force."
With a worried expression, he asked me,
"Descendant, let me ask you now. Have your hands never gone numb?"
"They have."
[??]
When I answered, Yuna suddenly sounded startled.
"...Descendant, let me ask you again. Have your shoulders ever ached so badly you couldn't sleep?"
"I almost couldn't sleep, but I have passed out from exhaustion."
[What are you talking about, seriously?]
[You've been hurting this whole time??]
"...... Descendant. Have your eyes ever ached from staring at your work so long that your vision flickered for a moment?"
"It never flickered, but there were times during sewing when everything went blank for a bit."
[Really? Really? Seriously??]
[Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you say anything??]
I had no idea what she meant by why I hadn't said anything.
Back in my previous life, having my eyes go hollow while writing papers was common,
and I'd passed out into sleep from exhaustion countless times too.
Fatigue had always been like an old friend to me.
"Then you've surely also experienced dizziness from the workshop being so hot that the strength drains from your body."
"I have."
[Why... why didn't I know? How did I not know you were hurting...?]
[I'm sorry. I really didn't know. I'm disqualified as a little sister....]
Yuna had nothing to apologize to me for.
Because I had already, long ago in my previous life, turned off every warning about overwork and fatigue
so she wouldn't be able to point out risks to my health.
She was the type who would scream at me to please get some sleep whenever she got the chance.
So I had deleted every health-related alert guideline.
I only left the rhythm game nagging in place as a kind of WWE bit.
But when it came to this, she really tried with all her strength to stop me.
Still, if I had only listened to Yuna's guidelines...
I never would have earned my doctorate,
and I never would have narrowed the gap with the advanced AI and the pioneers ahead of me.
To me, being in a little pain was just everyday life.
Where was I supposed to find time to rest? For me, there had never been such a thing as spare time.
I wasn't in a position blessed enough for that.
Then—
"...... All of this."
Step.
Harngar walked toward me.
"The answer to your third question lies in all of this."
Step.
"You asked for wisdom on how not to grow fatigued."
"I did."
Standing in front of me, he spoke.
"Nineteen hours of labor a day."
"A miserable hammer that injures its owner."
"A workshop so absurdly hot that breathing itself becomes difficult."
He listed my working conditions one by one.
"And your age—only thirteen."
The Earthborn Hammer in Harngar's hand—
THUD!
—fell to the floor.
"Let me ask you this, descendant."
"...Yes."
"Do you want to die young?"
A shocking thing to say.
Before I could even answer,
he turned his head toward the forge.
"A blacksmith is a being who lives in heat for his entire life."
"......"
"Several times a day, we stand before the fire, step back, and stand before it again. That is our work."
Harngar looked back at me.
"So our rule is simple. To stand long... we rest long. It usually takes half a year to forge a single piece of equipment."
He nudged the hammer on the floor with the tip of his foot.
"But you've cut half a year down to two months, and then down to two weeks."
"......"
"What do you think you cut away to do that?"
He stepped closer.
"Your lifespan. You were burning your lifespan to make things."
He slowly opened his mouth again.
"There are people like you. The moment they focus on one thing, everything else disappears from their sight."
That was exactly me.
"They cannot take care of their own bodies, and they do not even notice hunger or the passing of night. Superhuman concentration. The world you see is probably vastly different from mine. That is unmistakably talent."
With shining eyes, Harngar grabbed both my arms.
"But, descendant. Whatever it is you wish to make—"
Grip...
"You have to be alive to make it."
The hand gripping my arms tightened.
"I was wondering how you could have grown this quickly in such a short time."
And then—
"So you were born with a demon's talent."
He looked above my head.
"Only now do I understand the nature of that strange magic hanging behind your head."
"Magic?"
There was magic cast on the back of my head?
"You didn't know?"
He pointed behind my head with a finger.
I reflexively turned my head.
Of course I couldn't see it.
It was the back of my head. How was I supposed to see that?
As I kept twisting my neck around, Harngar sighed and took down the mirror hanging on the wall.
Sliiide.
Then he set it behind me at an angle.
The back of my head reflected in the mirror.
There were...
a few tiny blue particles floating there.
When I moved my head,
Shrrk.
they followed a beat later.
What the hell was this?
Cute—... no, that wasn't the point.
"W-what is this?"
"After a certain amount of time passes, or when you reach a state of exhaustion, or if certain conditions are met, it forcibly relaxes your body and puts you to sleep. Have you never felt anything like that?"
"......"
"It's a kind of protective magic. It seems to have been cast only very recently."
I thought carefully.
Lately, I'd been pulling some overtime to build the new workshop and crucible.
Hard enough that even when Dolores quietly came by in the evening, I didn't fall asleep.
In the end, she'd made a few wasted trips and gone back.
Normally, just seeing Dolores's face made sleep creep over me and all the strength drain from my body.
You could say I'd overcome that learned helplessness.
But then.
From a certain day onward...
just seeing her face started making my body go slack and drowsy, and the sleep became overwhelmingly impossible to resist...
Huh?
My eyes widened, and Harngar spoke.
"You understand now."
"......"
"Since you didn't know, it must have been cast by that "benefactor" of yours."
He put the mirror back in place.
"Which means your benefactor knew as well. That you were grinding yourself down."
"......"
"You probably wouldn't have listened if she'd told you, would you? You look stubborn as hell, so in the end she had no other choice but to put in at least a minimum safeguard."
When I was tired, I slept, and when I woke up, I worked again.
I thought things had simply been running on their own like that.
"What you need most isn't anything else."
"......"
"Eat well, and rest well."
Tap.
He lightly tapped my forehead with his finger.
"Get proper rest."
Harngar looked into my eyes and added,
The advice the master craftsman dwarf I had met for the first time gave me was—
"That is the first wisdom Harngar passes on to his descendant."
Rest.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register