WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 94

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Unexpected Guest (1)

To say it again, Vulcanus's masterpieces, the so-called "Numbering Swords," carried tremendous value.

The blade's performance mattered, sure, but the symbolic weight of being reserved exclusively for Sword Masters piled an enormous premium on top of that.

Plenty of swordsmen, nobles, and wealthy men had offered fortunes to get their hands on a Numbering Sword.

Not sums an ordinary person could picture, either. Amounts that would make even people who threw their weight around with money faint dead away.

But neither Vulcanus nor any of the nine Sword Masters who owned one had ever resold their blade.

Which meant a Numbering Sword from Vulcanus was a treasure on the level of an ancient relic, the kind no amount of money could buy.

Except that didn't apply to Airen Farreira.

"To think I, the continent's greatest blacksmith, would be handing over a sword for free..."

Vulcanus let out a heavy sigh once the negotiations with Kubharu wrapped up.

He couldn't help it.

He'd never given a sword away free to anyone, not once in his life.

Giving a sword only ever meant granting someone the right to buy one, so even the nine masters who'd walked away with his blades had paid no small sum for the privilege.

Some had taken out loans to manage it.

But this time, that wasn't going to fly.

That orc with the dull-looking face and the slippery tongue had pinned down his exact weak spot.

"This talk about collaboration between blacksmith and swordsman, about how you help each other make a better blade... isn't that a little too convenient for you?"

"What?"

"Let's be a bit more honest. Aren't you using our Airen here to break past your own stalled skill?"

"That's..."

"Pablo, Dwanson. Same goes for you two, I'd wager."

"..."

A direct hit.

Hitting a wall after training and honing your craft to its limit wasn't something unique to swordsmen.

Blacksmiths wanted to keep growing too, and when they ran into a wall of their own, the urge to break through it drove them half mad.

That was exactly the state the three blacksmiths found themselves in.

For nearly ten years, they'd tried everything.

They'd done things that would've gotten them called crazy by anyone else, and they'd also stuck stubbornly to the most textbook, orthodox methods.

None of it had worked.

No progress at all, and eventually the three of them arrived at the same conclusion: only some new stimulus could carry them to a higher level.

That was exactly why they'd broken their isolation and thrown open a tournament to the outside world.

'And then, like a miracle, he showed up. That young man.'

It was true.

There was no way to describe meeting this blond young man except as a miracle.

A mysterious raw ore of unknowable potential, smelted, forged, and polished until it reached the utmost limit of hardness.

And then transformed into human shape.

That was Airen Farreira.

A meeting that, to a swordsman, would be the equivalent of a life-changing encounter, the kind that made inspiration well up endlessly just from looking at him!

The three of them, having handled metal their whole lives, understood immediately.

If they let this young man slip away, a chance like this would never come to them again.

That was the full story behind why Vulcanus and the other blacksmiths agreed to Kubharu's four demands.

Clang!

"Hm. Not bad."

"How's that? Light enough that even you, weak as you are, can swing it just fine. Good balance too, and we didn't skimp on the aesthetics either."

"Nice! This passes!"

"...Sure."

The first demand had been waiving the price of the Numbering Sword.

The second demand that followed was providing Lulu's sword and Airen's armor, along with the rest of their smaller gear, free of charge.

Airen's group, and Airen Farreira especially, had been using equipment that fell far short of his actual swordsmanship.

Part of it was that heavy armor felt uncomfortable to wear, and part of it was that the workshops in the cities they'd passed through hadn't been able to satisfy Kubharu's exacting eye.

Vulcanus's smithy, of course, was unquestionably the finest around.

The man with god's own hands was just as skilled with leather as he was with metal, and thanks to that, they walked away with a full set of leather gear, mobile yet tough and durable.

Lulu, too, swung her faintly blue-glowing sword with a satisfied smile.

"Well? I think I've more than earned my keep as your guide with this, don't you?"

"Ah, right. Kubharu was our guide."

Airen said with a smile, now wearing his new leather gear.

Thinking back on it, his connection to Kubharu had started out as an employer and an employee.

Of course, he didn't think of it that way anymore.

In a sense, Kubharu had become a third master to him, after Hall Master Ian and the Sorcerer Lulu.

He'd never said it outright, but Kubharu probably thought of himself as more than just a hired guide by now too.

Kubharu's third demand proved as much.

"Greetings, Master Airen Farreira. It's an honor to meet an official trainee of Krono Fencing Hall! I'm Halifa, an apprentice at Vulcanus's smithy."

"Ah, yes."

"While you're staying here, I'll do everything I can to walk you through every step of sword-making in detail. Please, feel free to ask anything!"

The young dwarf spoke with a friendly enthusiasm, though clearly under strict orders too.

Not the attitude of someone treating this as a throwaway task.

It seemed Vulcanus and the other blacksmiths had given him a very stern talking-to.

Watching him, Airen smiled.

Right. The reason he'd stopped in the artisan city of Derinku before visiting the Western Five Kingdoms was to observe the smithy's work firsthand and use it as reference for beginning his mental cultivation.

An attempt to shape, through image training, the heavy iron stake lodged squarely in the center of his chest.

And this was the very thing Kubharu had pushed hardest for.

He'd only found out later, but it seemed Kubharu had worked tirelessly to persuade the blacksmiths, who guarded their techniques fiercely against leaking out.

'What am I, that so many people keep going out of their way for me?'

He was grateful.

There wasn't much else to say about it.

Airen had never been especially good with words, not skilled enough to lay his feelings out smoothly.

So the only thing he could do was give his mental cultivation everything he had, so Kubharu's efforts wouldn't go to waste.

"Whew."

Recalling apprentice Halifa's general explanation, along with the days he'd spent watching and listening to the smithy's process, Airen closed his eyes.

Sourcing quality ore, smelting it down into a mass, heating it and forging it into the desired shape.

Then polishing it.

There were plenty of finer steps beyond that, but this was the basic process of making a sword.

Not all of it was necessary here.

The lump of iron in his heart was already unspeakably pure.

Solid and unshakable, as if it had been formed from a single unbroken will.

Smelting, refining, purifying, none of that was needed.

Fine details like polishing didn't matter right now either.

No blacksmith anywhere ground down a huge gold ingot just to make a needle.

Which meant what Airen needed right now was to heat that iron stake in his heart until it burned.

And then hammer it, and hammer it, and hammer it again, until it took the shape of a sword.

Nodding, Airen called up a series of images.

The lump of iron sitting squarely in his chest.

A hot flame to soften that iron.

And a solid hammer to shape it.

He immediately set his inner flame moving and began heating the iron.

'This isn't easy.'

Ten minutes in, Airen's expression twisted, just slightly.

It was strange.

This wasn't reality. Just an image in his mind.

Which should have meant a place of infinite possibility, where he could achieve anything he imagined.

But the hardness of the iron he'd conjured was tougher than he could have imagined, and the flame he'd built was more pathetic than he could have imagined.

Every effort to soften the iron, every effort to grow the flame, came to nothing.

He strained at it for what felt like forever without a single result to show for it.

He hadn't moved a muscle, and yet sweat kept beading on his skin.

His breath caught in his throat. The kind of pressure an ordinary person couldn't withstand for even a full minute.

Of course, Airen Farreira was no ordinary person.

Once, maybe, this would have broken him. But now he'd built up enough patience to rightfully call himself a man of Effort, no help needed from the Man in the Dream.

He kept heating the lump of iron while straining with everything he had to grow the flame inside him.

He didn't try to soften the iron itself.

He knew, instinctively, that wasn't something within his own control.

An hour passed. Then two. Then three.

"Whew..."

Airen Farreira finally emerged from his meditation, exhausted, with nothing to show for it.

"Argh... this is seriously rough."

He wasn't exaggerating.

He was someone who didn't so much as flinch through most hard training, but now a groan escaped him without meaning to.

The lack of results made it that much harder.

It felt more hopeless than pouring water into a bottomless jar.

Of course, he had no intention of giving up.

'I never expected this to get better in a day or two anyway.'

It had taken a full year to become an official trainee at Krono Fencing Hall.

It had taken five years to forge a sword for his family inside the Otherworldly Realm.

This was just the beginning. Setting his jaw, Airen left his lodging and headed for Vulcanus's smithy.

There, the three blacksmiths, who'd been waiting on him with visibly anxious faces, exploded the moment they saw him.

"Why'd it take you so long!"

"Exactly!"

"Never mind that, just summon the sword already. Quick, quick!"

"I can't breathe! Bring it out already!"

"..."

Faced with Vulcanus's expression, which looked one moment away from fainting, Airen quickly summoned his greatsword and set it down on the table.

Attention shifted instantly, away from him and onto the blade.

The blacksmiths threw out every wild theory imaginable, launching straight into a debate over how to refine it.

Repairing the old, crude Sorcery greatsword until it shone like new.

That had been Kubharu's fourth demand.

"Good grief. What metal is this exactly? I know it's forged through Sorcery, but how could it possibly be this hard..."

"Not even a scratch takes. Aside from the marks already on it, I genuinely can't work any change into it at all."

"If only I could handle even this much of it, just a little... I'd be that much closer to the god of blacksmiths..."

But despite calling it a demand, the blacksmiths were clearly thrilled by it.

Which made sense, in hindsight.

From the start, what they wanted from Airen wasn't Airen himself. It was the will of the Man in the Dream, carried inside him.

And that greatsword was practically an extension of that man.

To the blacksmiths, it was a treasure beyond price, beyond anything they could trade for, so it was no wonder their eyes had gone wild over it.

Still, from where Airen Farreira stood, he couldn't quite shake off a bitter feeling.

Watching the continent's greatest blacksmiths pour every effort into the blade and still fail to refine it, he couldn't help wondering if shaping the iron stake buried in his own chest into a sword might be just as close to impossible.

'...It's fine.'

Airen closed his eyes again. He took a slow, deep breath.

It really was fine.

Making the impossible possible, pulling off things beyond common sense.

He'd already done it once before.

'I'll manage it somehow. Even if it means building that flame in my heart bigger than ever.'

At the hot sensation tickling his chest, Airen's breathing grew hotter too.

* * *

A month into Airen's group staying in Derinku.

Unfortunately, Vulcanus still hadn't managed to make the Numbering Sword.

The endless surge of inspiration tangled together with the self-loathing of failing to work the greatsword, and it left his mind in chaos.

"Sorry. Making it right now just isn't going to happen."

"Then..."

"A year! Give me one year! I'll gather up everything I've learned in that time and forge you the finest sword there is! Better than the greatsword you showed me, the crowning achievement of Vulcanus's whole life!"

"Same for me! This time, I'm taking the title of continent's greatest blacksmith for myself!"

"Says who! I'm the one who's..."

"Quiet, all of you! The continent's greatest was me before, is me now, and will be me forever!"

"...Then, I'll come back next year."

"I'll be counting on it, so give it everything you've got! You bunch of hotheads!"

With Lulu's cheerful goodbye, Airen's group left Derinku.

They hadn't gotten a Numbering Sword, but there was little disappointment in it.

They'd walked away with gear good enough to be called the finest anywhere on the continent, and they'd forged a connection with the continent's greatest blacksmiths.

More important than any of that, though, was that his drive toward his goal had only grown stronger.

In a month and a half or so, Airen had gained a hunger for improvement, and awakened a fighting spirit inside him.

He'd learned the method of mental cultivation, and his longing to master the will of the Man in the Dream had grown that much larger too.

Two hours after leaving the city, he looked up.

The clear early autumn sky gave off a crisp, refreshing feeling. Kubharu and Lulu, tilting their heads back alongside him, wore the same calm looks.

...It wasn't long after that he sensed something off.

"..."

Airen Farreira lowered his gaze and stared into the distance.

A shape, barely more than a speck at first. But it grew closer with every passing moment.

Kubharu and Lulu's eyes turned that way too.

Lulu spoke.

"Danger. I smell blood."

Airen nodded.

He would have known even without her saying it.

The stench pouring off that greedy heart resembled a monster's.

His eyes turned cold, naturally.

A chilly anger waited beneath the surface, like a beast lurking below the waterline.

Before long, two men reached the group.

Charlot and Victor, wearing pleasant, friendly smiles.

"Let's have a little talk, shall we."

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