1.
I did say I would receive various pieces of advice about earth from Gaia, but….
"I usually prefer doing things alone."
I probably would not constantly pester her to teach me.
It felt like I would try things as far as I could on my own and only ask about the parts where I was truly stuck.
Looking into it, the communication room itself remained when I opened the Tower system, like a DM window.
"…Let’s begin right away."
Creak.
Now that I had decided to do something.
"There’s no time to hesitate!!!!"
I opened the storeroom door and headed toward the bag of ores Yeomhwa had given me as repayment.
"Let’s sort them~"
I opened the Sun Dwarves’ textbook… and sorted the minerals in the bag one by one.
There were various ways to classify ores, but this was the method I liked to use.
By melting point and hardness… in simple terms, by the temperature at which they melted and how hard they were.
The Sun Dwarves’ textbook did say to sort them using whichever method was most convenient for you.
There were plenty of methods for measuring hardness, but this was the only easy one I could use.
Tap… roll….
It was called rebound value: you dropped a small weight onto a mineral and measured how high it bounced back.
It was also called the rebound hardness test. The harder it was, the higher it bounced.
"You’re A."
That was how I divided the minerals that bounced best within each range into A, B, C, and D… but why was I suddenly sorting them this way?
『The energy of earth is hard. Therefore, it does not easily settle within minerals of high hardness.』
That was from the textbook for Heirs of Fire.
One of the few lessons about the energy of earth, even if you scoured the entire textbook.
The Sun Dwarves really fucking hated the energy of earth.
In other words, because earth mana was hard, the raw materials that accepted it needed to be softer and less rigid in turn.
"Hmm."
It made sense.
After sorting everything from A through D.
"This is great."
Perhaps because all the ores had been mined from the Tower, there were not many I had personally seen before….
Fortunately, quite a few were minerals that the textbook had covered at least once.
At least that saved me the trouble of heating and working through them one at a time to analyze them.
At this rate, I could start considering combinations right aw—.
Knock knock.
"Hm?"
Someone had knocked on the workshop door, but there was only one person who ever did that.
Mommy.
"Coming!"
Scurry.
I ran to the door and flung it open.
"What is it—"
I had no choice but to stop speaking.
Because the person who had knocked was not Dolores.
A woman wearing sunglasses that went perfectly with her vivid red hair.
"Yeomhwa…?"
"Yep, hi?"
Yeomhwa waved her hand lightly.
I knew her, but this was the first time someone other than Dolores had actually been standing in front of my workshop, so my body froze up.
They told me not to follow strangers.
"…Lionel."
"Yes."
Yeomhwa subtly hid something behind her back… then pointed into the workshop.
"Can I come in?"
Honestly, Yeomhwa was not a stranger to the extent that mattered.
"Yep."
I opened the door for her.
With my permission, Yeomhwa carefully scurried into the workshop.
I did not know whether the words "scurried" and "carefully" could coexist, but she really did creep in on tiptoe.
Then she looked around everywhere.
"Wow…"
Yeomhwa’s eyes sparkled as she watched the crucible furnace burning softly.
"So this is what it looks like. It’s nice and toasty…?"
"I think it’s probably because this is a place that uses fire."
As a daughter of fire herself, the place probably suited her well. Yeomhwa sat before the furnace watching the flames for a while, then crouched down and quietly muttered.
"But, Lionel."
"Yes."
"I heard you spoke with Ignia?"
Hmm, it looked like she had just been to the temple.
"Yes, until just a little while ago."
"I was planning to keep things about you secret, so I pretended not to know at first…? But she already knew. So I got scolded, sniff."
Yeomhwa’s shoulders drooped.
"Oh no. You got scolded?"
"Yeah… She scolded me, asking whether I had planned to hide it from her too…."
"Aww."
It seemed she had gotten it from Ignia for keeping faith with me.
I was a little grateful.
"Still… here."
"?"
Swish.
Yeomhwa turned her head and held a hand out toward me.
Her fist was tightly clenched.
"What is it?"
"It’s a gift Ignia gives to Heirs of Fire."
"……Haha."
So that had been found out too.
Yeomhwa now knew that I was an Heir of Fire.
Perhaps out of consideration, she did not mention it and only smiled softly.
She was so lively and mischievous, yet surprisingly thoughtful.
"I do like gifts."
I could never resist a gift.
"Ta-da."
When Yeomhwa opened her palm, a bright-red gemstone came into view.
It was a gemstone about the size of something I could grasp in my fist.
Yet something inside it was fluttering and moving.
"…Is that a gem?"
The moment I thought that, something appeared before my eyes.
─────────────────
[Flame That Will Never Go Out] [★★★★★]
[Mythical Material]
─────────────────
This is an ember the Goddess of Fire personally separated from her divine authority.
This flame will not naturally die out under any circumstances.
─────────────────
『Even on the day every fire in the world goes out, your furnace alone will continue to burn.』
- Ignia, Goddess of Fire -
─────────────────
……
I rubbed my eyes.
I looked again, then rubbed them again.
I felt like my eyes were going to pop out.
Was this for real?
Still, the five stars and the description calling it a mythical material did not disappear.
Maybe because it was a mythical material, even the description was polite.
At a glance, it looked like the kind of ignition stone I always used to start fires.
But I was truly sorry—comparing the two was disrespectful.
No, comparing them was making me excited. Fuck.
For a blacksmith, the most exhausting and difficult task was fundamentally maintaining a fire’s temperature and keeping it burning constantly.
It was why I could not leave the workshop for extended periods and had to keep the crucible furnace lit.
Because it would be a disaster if it went out.
Heating one back up after it had completely cooled was truly hellish.
And she was giving me something this precious….
Tremble.
My hands shook.
"Wow, it really is."
"What is…?"
"She said that when you saw it, your eyes would pop—no, that you would like it."
"I like it so much."
"Take it!"
Yeomhwa held out the Flame That Will Never Go Out.
Worried it might fall, I supported my hands beneath it and accepted the gemstone.
Brush.
Then Yeomhwa’s fingers lightly grazed the back of my hand. I thought it was an accident… but judging from how she smiled and stared directly at me, it apparently was not.
"…I don’t think Lionel is a baby."
"I hear that a lot."
"Especially from Dolores?"
"How did you know?"
It was something Mommy said often.
Yeomhwa stared at the calluses embedded in my hands….
Stroke, stroke.
"Have fun with everything, Lionel."
"…Yes."
She smiled as she stroked my head.
It was a strange thing for an adult to say.
‘Have fun.’
It did not sound bad.
"I’ll be going now."
"Thank you for delivering the gift…"
Yeomhwa was getting up when she snickered.
Swish….
At Yeomhwa’s gesture, a flower appeared in midair and drifted right in front of my eyes.
Tap.
She lightly touched the rose and smiled brightly.
"Thank me instead."
Kiss.
Warm lips touched my cheek before pulling away.
"Mon fiancé?"
"……What did you just say?"
"It’s a dialect from where I used to live."
That was a rather unusual dialect.
Creak.
After Yeomhwa left, only the furnace and I remained in the workshop again.
Since she was a ranker and might be able to hear me from far away, I asked quietly.
"What did she say just now?"
[Want me to explain it in detail?]
"Yeah."
[Mon fiancé.]
[It means ‘my fiancé.’]
[It’s French… but I guess it’s a dialect here?]
……
My secondary weapon was also called Fiancée, and besides… I was young.
It seemed she enjoyed teasing me.
For now… rather than that, I should think about the flame Yeomhwa had brought.
Swish.
I pulled down my goggles and placed Ignia’s flame into the crucible furnace.
When the red gemstone was buried among the charcoal… the flame fluttering within swallowed the gem whole.
"Wow…"
But my admiration only lasted a moment.
"Hwiri."
"Yes!"
"Could you blow a little wind into it, slowly?"
Whoooong…!
The flames consumed the wind Hwiri blew in and filled the inside of the crucible furnace.
Fwoooosh!
"…That’s enough. Hwiri, you can rest now."
"Yes!"
Hwiri moved away from the furnace and climbed onto my shoulder.
And so, five hours passed. Even after all the charcoal had burned white and turned to ash….
The flame Ignia had given me… did not go out.
2.
Wriggle, wriggle.
The seaweed Camilla had given her was squirming atop the table.
Mon fiancé?
Outside the window, in Lionel’s workshop with its windows wide open, Yeomhwa was whispering something to Lionel.
After all, the workshop’s window had been designed to be directly visible from the window of Dolores’s office.
Tap… tap….
Listening to every sound, Dolores lightly tapped her fingers against her desk.
This made Yeomhwa the second outsider to enter Lionel’s new workshop.
Both her procedure and her conduct had been careful, and she respected Lionel.
Moreover, she had given him a gift significant enough to change his expression at once, so it should be something to be grateful for.
Kiss.
"……Hmm."
Even that would not be much of a problem.
Yeomhwa was naturally someone with little sense of distance. Of course, Dolores had never seen her kiss anyone in XX years.
This was a process of change. It was also the process of Lionel’s world expanding.
Nothing would change just because she locked him in her arms.
There was a high chance that Ignia would receive the divine artifact, too. After giving him a gift like that… the child’s heart could not help but be moved.
Normally, she would have scurried right out to put Yeomhwa in her place… but picking at every single thing could also make him grow tired of her.
Had Mother not said so today? That her little one might not always think of her as his first priority.
Tap tap.
The fingers tapping on the desk stopped.
"Ah."
There had been no need to recall that again.
So she shook her head and began working through the piled-up affairs of the duchy.
As she dealt with them one by one, time passed until it was late at night—nearly dawn—but the furnace fire did not go out.
"…Again today."
Are you working through the night again, Lionel?
She wanted to tell him to go to bed.
But would he dislike her interrupting his work?
Suddenly, taking care of Lionel had become so difficult.
But then.
When she glanced through the window, Lionel was nowhere to be seen in the workshop beyond it.
Jolt!
The moment she sprang to her feet in alarm.
Knock knock….
Someone knocked on the office door.
"Dolores, are you asleep?"
"Haa…"
The tension drained from her shoulders.
"No, I’m not."
Dolores hurriedly glanced down at her disheveled nightgown, which had slipped halfway down… then, hmm… deliberately chose not to straighten it before opening the office door.
Creak.
Lionel was standing outside.
But….
Lionel’s gaze momentarily slipped to the exposed swell of her chest through the parted nightgown… then hurriedly returned to Dolores’s face.
The tips of his ears turned slightly red.
Dolores leisurely watched his reaction.
"What is it, Lionel?"
"It’s just…"
Staring desperately into Dolores’s eyes, Lionel slowly opened his mouth.
"I’m going to start crafting tomorrow."
"I see."
"I think I’ll be making a divine artifact."
"A divine artifact…"
It would probably be Ignia’s divine artifact.
It would be improper to receive a god’s gift and offer nothing in return.
"All right."
Dolores tried to respond as calmly as usual.
She felt a little dampened, perhaps, but still.
"So, Dolores, could I ask you for something?"
"Hm?"
"Could you give me your mantle?"
"…My mantle?"
It was completely unexpected.
Watching Dolores stand there with her mouth slightly open in a daze, Lionel snickered and spoke.
"I told you…!"
"……What did you tell me?"
Swish.
When Lionel raised a hand beside his mouth, Dolores automatically bowed her head and leaned in with her ear.
It was learned behavior.
"I said the next piece of equipment would be for you, Dolores!"
Dolores blinked, keeping her bent posture.
"More precisely, it’s a divine artifact to offer Gaia, but it’s your mantle too."
Lionel, Dolores’s child, smiled proudly.
"I’ve finished talking with Gaia too."
V.
He even cutely spread his fingers into a V-sign.
An insidious urge suddenly welled up inside her—to tightly hold that small body and fiddle between his index and middle fingers until he giggled.
What expression would he make? Would he feel betrayed by Dolores?
She sometimes had thoughts like that, impossible to understand. They had been getting worse and worse lately.
…Anyway, if that was the case, then it meant Lionel had chosen his mother again this time.
"…I see."
The dampened Dolores gradually came back to life.
Swish.
Dolores straightened up and, just like that, lifted Lionel….
Whoosh.
Into a princess carry.
"Whoa."
While Lionel turned his head with a bewildered expression, Dolores opened a subspace and took out the silver mantle she used… then carefully placed it in Lionel’s arms.
"Here, use it as much as you want."
"Yep."
"And."
Kiss.
Dolores’s lips lightly touched the tip of Lionel’s little nose before drawing away.
She was careful not to let it linger even a moment longer.
"Thank you for choosing me again."
Smile.
Dolores smiled brightly.
Thump… thump….
Through their touching bodies, she could hear Lionel’s heart beating.
Dolores clearly realized it.
She identified the emotion she had been harboring as ‘jealousy.’
And she intended to desperately hide this childish feeling from everyone in the world.
Well, at least for a few years.
3.
Meanwhile, in the Great Forest.
"High Chieftain, seriously…!"
Pasiel, First Arbor Keeper of the elves’ High Chieftain Erien, muttered in a sulky voice.
It had already been a year since she had set out for the deepest part of the Great Forest under Erien’s orders….
She was now nearing the sacred territory where the World Tree grew.
For the record, Arbor Keeper sounded pretty, but it basically meant the High Chieftain’s personal number-one slave.
‘Go, Pasiel!’
……
Even now, thinking of the day she received the order for this business trip made her brow throb.
You’re basically telling me to die, aren’t you?
"Of all places, here alone…"
At a certain time, the elves absolutely had to hold a rite for the World Tree.
The rite itself was not terribly difficult… the problem was that they did not have the ornaments they would use in it.
Only the elves’ greatest artisan, a Children of the Forest, could make ornaments that could receive the World Tree’s energy without shattering.
…And now, only two Children of the Forest remained.
Normally, even if they refused, the elves would have used external pressure to force them to work. But those who were no longer Children of the Forest, but already elderly Elders of the Forest, were trying to spend the rest of their days in peace no matter how they were threatened… so even threats did not work, and disaster was already looming.
At most, they had four years, right?
If they failed to find a Children of the Forest in that time attack, the rites would cease, and the elves would perish.
So why was Pasiel now heading into the deepest part of the forest?
The elves had been diligently marching toward total fucking ruin hand in hand with the Sun Dwarves….
Yet recently, Erien had seemed strangely relaxed.
‘There’s no need to worry! A new Children of the Forest has probably appeared.’
Pasiel had doubted her ears.
‘No, is that really true?’
‘Whether it’s true is what you need to find out from now on, isn’t it?’
When a new Children of the Forest appeared, a sapling belonging to that person would inevitably bloom somewhere in the deepest part of the Great Forest.
The elves also called it a life-bound tree, meaning a tree born on the same day as a Children of the Forest and growing alongside them.
That was why Pasiel had come here—to find it.
When she set out, she had assumed it would be no more than a tiny sprout… so simply confirming its existence would have been meaningful enough.
Rustle….
The enormous World Tree now stood before her.
Bow.
"First Arbor Keeper Pasiel greets the World Tree."
Having bowed and paid her respects to the World Tree, Pasiel carefully stepped inside.
Countless life-bound trees grew around the World Tree. They belonged to the Children of the Forest from previous generations.
Each tree was a different species.
Pasiel walked among them, searching for a young sapling.
A long time passed, but….
"I can’t see it…"
No newly sprouted sapling could be found anywhere.
……
Honestly, she had cursed all the way here, but as an Arbor Keeper who thought of her race’s future, she had desperately wanted the sprout to exist….
But no matter how hard she searched, she could not find it.
It was then, as Pasiel sank to the ground with a gloomy expression.
"……Hm?"
A branch of the World Tree that had drooped especially low, all the way to the ground, caught Pasiel’s attention.
Though it was an extremely thin branch, it was densely covered in leaves.
…………
Pasiel carefully stood and slowly walked toward it.
"World Tree…?"
Rustle….
As though answering her question, the World Tree slowly lifted its branch.
The overlapping mass of dense leaves parted to either side, revealing something hidden within.
Right beside one of the World Tree’s thick roots, in a protected spot.
……
A single sturdy, healthy-looking tree was growing there.
"A maple tree…"
The elves were close to nature and knew most plants, so she recognized it immediately.
A cute little tree reaching up to her knees, but compared to what she had expected….
"It’s already this big…?"
Only one year had passed?
Its outstretched trunk was far too full of vitality to call it a young sapling.
Its growth rate was astonishing, but more importantly….
It was true.
It was really true.
A new Children of the Forest had appeared.
Then, at that moment.
Thud.
The World Tree’s enormous arm pushed Pasiel’s shoulder.
"……Huh?"
It did not hurt.
But its intent seemed to be delivered directly into her mind.
As though.
‘This is far enough.’
It felt as if it were telling her not to come any closer.
"W-wait a moment, World Tree… I need to take a photo to make my report…"
Swish.
A branch wrapped around her waist.
"Just one picture!!"
Draaaag….
Pasiel was dragged by the World Tree’s branch and thrown out of the deepest part of the forest.
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