Chapter 38
1.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the now-familiar ceiling.
And a familiar face, too.
“Good morning.”
“You too, Lionel.”
Doloris was looking down at me with a bright smile.
“Come out slowly once you’re awake.”
She brushed my forehead once, then slowly walked out.
I watched Doloris’s back as I prepared to get up.
A lot had happened yesterday.
So much that it was difficult even to put into words.
I had received a commission from the Imperial Princess for new accessories.
And I had obtained a platinum Three-Lion Token from the Emperor.
Then I told Richard what I wanted and got every last mineral I asked for.
As expected of the Empire, there wasn’t a mineral they didn’t have.
Every mineral I asked for came right out, so I simply took them all.
Since Yuna and I had gone through the list and collected the minerals until dawn yesterday,
I should normally have slept all day.
“Lightning-fast awakening.”
When you have something exciting to look forward to, you naturally wake up quickly.
I leaped out of bed.
Then I immediately headed to the kitchen, grabbed a piece of ciabatta, stuffed it into my mouth, and chewed away.
House Doloris has excellent bread.
On my way across the garden to the workshop.
“…Huh?”
I rubbed my eyes again.
If you followed the garden toward the side opposite the main gate, you reached my workshop.
It wasn’t large, just a reasonable size.
But on the side of the garden, some large building was being hammered together.
“…What is that?”
I didn’t know what the building was for, but it was fairly large.
Well, that wasn’t important.
I tilted my head and headed to the workshop.
- Creak.
The moment I opened the workshop door, a satisfied smile slipped out.
The minerals I had brought back from the Imperial Palace yesterday were neatly stacked along the walls.
I had planned to toss them down roughly and go to sleep, but they had been tidied up as if some helpful house spirit had come by.
The most important thing was to show gratitude for work someone had done in my place while I slept.
“Thank you.”
I bowed my head, smiled, and headed toward the table in the middle of the workshop.
Lying there was one piece of jewelry: the Sun Rising Pendant.
For reference, I left the Essence of Moonlight at the mansion because it seemed to keep listening to everything I said. It’s a little uncomfortable. That thing.
From this point on, I….
Had to create an accessory that would keep the two apart.
“Yuna.”
[Mm-hm.]
“Shall we discuss this?”
Based on what I had looked into.
This world had apparently had folk beliefs from the beginning.
Just as the world I had lived in had various myths and religions, this world seemed to be the same.
Even before the Tower appeared,
there had apparently been saintesses who drew power from divine energy, so people must at least have known that something real existed.
Then the Tower appeared.
And when people actually went inside,
“It’s really here?”
The names people had prayed to and believed in for hundreds of years actually existed.
Faith normally meant believing in something because it could not be confirmed with certainty, but this world had confirmed it through the Tower.
So of course faith had grown.
That was the background of the gods in this world.
Setting that aside.
I looked down at the Sun Rising Pendant on the table.
The important matter was something else.
First, my hypothesis.
Who was the mother goddess of Solau and Celea?
Even Greek and Roman mythology had gods with entire genealogies.
Who gave birth to whom, who fought whom, who ate whom.
Who had an affair with whom.
I was certain this world would be no different.
“Who is the mother goddess of Celea and Solau?”
[Just a moment.]
While waiting for Yuna to crawl the information, I picked up the Sun Rising Pendant.
Although it was a little distance away at the mansion, it was still linked.
More than anything, I wanted to see what level an accessory containing divine energy reached.
To be honest.
I had very high standards.
Maybe it was because I had only seen the excellent craftsmanship of the Child of the Forest and the excellent smithing of the Descendant of Fire.
By now, even the sight of shoddy craftsmanship was enough to make me feel sick.
In that regard, the Sun Rising Pendant was….
“Doable.”
In fact, it looked quite manageable.
It was so unremarkable that I wondered whether craftsmanship was even the issue. It wasn’t particularly difficult.
Of course, four-star equipment was no slouch, so it had no glaring flaws.
Still, it didn’t feel completely beyond my reach, either.
[Crawling complete.]
“Oh.”
I set down the pendant and focused on Yuna’s words.
[Celea is the god of the moon, and Solau is the god who governs the sun.]
[The mother of those two gods is Gaia, goddess of the earth, and their father is Caelus, god of the sky.]
“Gaia…?”
The name was strangely familiar.
Well, perhaps the idea of a sky father and earth mother appeared similarly in every world.
[Gaia is apparently also called the goddess of harmony and abundance.]
Hey, this is it.
Please, stop the two siblings from fighting.
Though it did seem like one of them was bullying the other.
Now then.
The problem was how to do it.
I opened the Descendant of Fire’s manual for the first time in a while.
I hadn’t had much reason to open it since making the stockings.
To be honest, I had already read it more than ten times, so I had all the information in my head anyway—and it was only an apprentice blacksmith’s manual.
I’m a full-fledged blacksmith.
How dare it….
Still, since I was still a complete beginner at the metallurgy needed to melt iron before making accessories, I opened it to review the basics.
- Swipe.
What I had always been reading was the Apprentice Blacksmith’s Manual.
I had managed to get by with this one thing until now.
But.
As I scrolled down the document’s list, I found something I had never seen beneath it.
[🔑][Manual for the Descendant of Fire Who Has Become a Full-fledged Blacksmith]
“What?!”
I sprang up from my chair, eyes wide.
This existed?
Wait.
What if it was phishing from the Abyss or whatever again?
I may have fallen for it three times, but I wouldn’t fall for it a fourth.
But this time, something was different.
Unlike last time, when it had been locked with a padlock, it was already open, marked with a key icon.
“Yuna, did you unlock this separately?”
[No, not me.]
[And the document is linked from the Apprentice Blacksmith’s Manual.]
Then its source was definitely reliable, right?
“Heh heh heh.”
I rubbed my hands together wildly and smacked my lips.
I was already thirsty for new knowledge.
I opened the manual immediately,
and the words written on the first page caught my eye.
─────────────────
『Remember, Descendant. Bear this in mind, Descendant. Take pride.』
『Before your forge, even the gods shall wait in line.』
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“……”
My eyes widened from the very first line.
It was going straight for the heart from the start.
The Descendant of Fire, a blacksmith even the gods sought.
- Swipe.
The table of contents unfolded next.
─────────────────
[Prologue. To the One Who Carries on the Fire]
[Chapter 1. True Nameㅡ How to Name Iron]
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Just as titles packed with heart-pounding words continued one after another,
─────────────────
[Chapter 5. Divine Implements, Divine Thrones─ How to House Divine Energy]
─────────────────
I found it.
Fuck, this really exists.
“Yuna, I’m going to read this and come back.”
[Okay, take your time.]
With a send-off that made it sound as though I were going on a trip, I opened Chapter 5.
The Apprentice Blacksmith’s Manual had always spoken to me in a lecturing tone.
For example.
『Bear this in mind. Without effort, there will be no results; in other words, don’t act as though you’ve accomplished something merely because you passed a trial.』
『Do not grow conceited over your exceptional talent. Keep honing yourself, and spend more time in the forge than in bed….』
The Apprentice’s Manual was filled with passages like this in every chapter, words that constantly warned me and beat me into shape.
It felt as though I was being beaten every day for no reason.
Well, since I agreed with what it said, I did more or less take it to heart whenever I read it.
But.
When I moved on to the full-fledged manual,
─────────────────
『Before creating a divine implement, there is one thing you must bear in mind.』
『Having overcome trials and barriers over many years, you should now be capable of anything. Your body is the dwarves’ treasure─ their hope─ their future, so please, take care of your body and rest.』
『Even if a god were to deliver an oracle right to your doorstep, what good would it do if your body could not move? Make your physical well-being your highest priority.』
─────────────────
Huh.
Our professor’s tone had become remarkably sweet.
『If someone urges you to hurry, put iron in that person’s hands and tell them to forge it themselves. They will generally fall silent on the spot. The same will likely be true of the gods.』
It was already worrying about my well-being before even beginning the actual subject.
Wait a moment.
Had I become a skilled professional now?
Apprentices could be replaced, but experienced workers could not.
It was the same even in my world, where AI was everywhere.
Use up whoever can be used, and bring in whoever can’t be replaced.
That was the way of the world.
So from the Sun Dwarves’ perspective, I was.
A skilled professional whose health had to be protected.
A professional life I could only dream of.
I had never received this kind of treatment even once in my previous life,
so I smiled and read through those passages one by one,
- Rattle, clack.
- Rattle, clack.
After receiving more than enough head pats from the shaggy-bearded Dwarf professor of the Descendant of Fire,
I scrolled down, and at last, the main subject began.
First, it said that divine implements—in other words, accessories or equipment imbued with divine energy—could not be made just any old way.
『For a god to dwell within it, you must communicate with the object.』
In other words.
Gods of that caliber did not want you to make something carelessly and tell them to take it.
You had to research their needs and intentions to some extent and make something tailored to them.
『Therefore, Descendant, before you begin forging, there is something you must make first.』
『A bell.』
A bell?
Beside the text was a photograph.
It really was a bell—the kind that rang when struck.
『This is a means of communication between the Descendant of Fire and the gods,』
『a one-way means of communication informing them that you will accept commissions from them.』
Ah.
So it was a magic mailbox.
If I made a bell and rang it, the gods would understand
that the forge of the Descendant of Fire had been lit.
Then the gods would each submit commissions for the items they wanted, and the Descendant of Fire would choose one of them and accept it.
So it wasn’t a metaphor; even the gods were customers.
They submitted an order form and waited their turn.
But one thing bothered me.
“We’re outside the Tower.”
The place where the gods existed was inside the Tower.
I wasn’t sure whether the sound would reach them if I rang the bell here.
‘I’ve got nothing to lose.’
From the beginning, I had expected that making divine accessories would require quite a lot of research and investigation.
But if the manual was laying down such a well-paved road for me,
- Clack.
There was no reason not to do it, right?
If I’m doing it, I’m doing it.
I grinned and gripped the tongs in my hand.