Chapter 51
1.
Master Craftsman Harnagar, urging me on right in front of me.
He might be our great ancestor and a benefactor kind enough to come help me, but….
“……”
I slowly turned my body with a wistful expression.
My gaze went toward the window.
I showed only half my face.
“……Actually, I.”
I paused for a beat.
“I was an orphan with no parents.”
“……I see. So you had such a past.”
Despite this being a personal story that had suddenly begun.
Was it common to spin a tale like this before making equipment?
He settled in naturally and listened to me.
“There was someone who took me in and spared no support so that, at my age, I could stand before a forge.”
“……”
Details about Doloris’s chronic illness were all top secret, originally.
But he was already dead, so telling him shouldn’t cause much trouble.
“However, she suffers from a congenital illness, and I was in the middle of making equipment for her, since she is vulnerable to the cold.”
Well, technically, it was because she was excessively susceptible to cold.
I pointed to the gloves and overshoes as I spoke.
“These are part of that process, and she is my motivation.”
“Ohhh….”
Harnagar stroked his beard and nodded.
“If you have received such kindness, it is only right to repay it.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Then is your next piece of equipment also for that benefactor?”
“For the time being, yes.”
However.
“I want to make clothing for her.”
“I see.”
“However, that particular item….”
“……”
“I want to make it myself, with only my own hands, from beginning to end, without any help.”
I said clothing, but.
What I needed to make—and was trying to make—was Doloris’s underwear.
This.
How.
Could I entrust it to.
Anyone else?
Unless I’m insane, at least not until Lionel Eugene is buried and dirt fills his eyes.
I would personally manage and supervise it from beginning to end.
I would keep it free of even a single speck of dust, stain, or contaminant, like a semiconductor factory.
And so that no one else could see it.
No one but Kim Yuna, who was well versed in the aesthetics of women’s clothing, would be allowed anywhere near this process.
That was Principle One of this project.
An ancestor coming to help me is so very appreciated, but this is my business.
For one thing, you’re a man.
I wanted to imbue it more with elven aesthetics than dwarven craftsmanship.
Though I didn’t know whether the elves had anyone with a figure like Doloris’s.
Of course, I couldn’t say that.
“So…would you entrust this opportunity to me?”
“……It is only natural that you should feel that way.”
- Swish.
Harnagar slowly nodded.
“If it is something for your benefactor, of course you would want to complete it alone.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
“Then let us discuss the other matters here. We have more than enough to talk about.”
“Sounds good.”
Then, as he said, on to the next matter.
What exactly should I ask him for?
“What I would like to request and ask about is….”
I did have several options in mind.
But I didn’t know what was most urgent and important to me.
I had to know what I was lacking before I could ask about it in the first place.
Until now, I had had no basis for comparison.
It was a relief, in retrospect, that the person before me was a Master Craftsman.
Just then, he opened his mouth.
“Descendant, we have not spoken much, but…you seem to have firm convictions. Perhaps I should call it a creed.”
“…I hear that sort of thing a lot.”
“You must have things you have usually been dissatisfied with, or matters you have already thought about.”
He looked around the workshop.
“Someone with a personality like yours is always repeating the cycle of thinking and seeking solutions.”
He was exactly right.
My personality was like that. Should I say I complained a lot?
Anyway, whenever I disliked the current situation, I remembered each detail—what exactly was wrong with it.
“I shall solve those problems for you. Tell me what you have thought of, and the reason for each request.”
I answered immediately, without hesitation.
“First is the hammer.”
I wanted to make the hammer I would use.
There must have been a reason he had frowned and walked past after seeing my Earthborn Hammer.
He was a Master Craftsman, after all; he must have seen countless good hammers.
“It is not insufficient for hammering the equipment I can make at my current level, but.”
I haven’t exactly made high-difficulty equipment yet.
“Because someday, I will need a better hammer….”
In the middle of my sentence, Harnagar’s brow furrowed sharply and he raised a hand.
“…Wait. I can’t just let that slide.”
In the middle of my words.
“…You mean you have not felt any lack in your hammer until now?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
He stared at me for a long while, and.
What?
Had I said something wrong?
He moved toward my hammer.
He returned holding the Earthborn Hammer.
“…I suppose you can continue.”
Harnagar nodded at me.
“Second is the anvil.”
The anvil—I didn’t like the human one, for starters.
“I brought in a new one not long ago, had it set low to match my height, and even chose good material, but….”
“……”
“I don’t really like it.”
“Good. What’s next?”
The third thing I was curious about was.
“…The third is technique.”
“Technique.”
“Yes.”
I held up my arm.
“As you can see, I’m rather small.”
My muscles, my height—everything about me was small.
“So far, the gloves and overshoes were small, so there was no problem, but….”
“……”
“I think things will be different once I start making something large.”
The reason I had made only small equipment and Doloris’s clothing until now was….
I wanted to make them, of course, but they were also the only things within a range I could manage.
“To be honest, it’s already a little difficult.”
Swinging even once, or stepping on equipment, used my whole body, so if I repeated it, my body stopped moving properly.
My body got very tired.
“I was wondering whether you had any know-how for making up for the physical demands.”
The records even mentioned dwarves who had only one arm.
I wonder how people like that managed to do it.
Harnagar asked me with a strange expression.
“…Descendant, how many hours do you work a day?”
“At least nineteen hours.”
“……What?”
Harnagar’s brow furrowed.
“H-how long does it usually take to make a single piece of equipment?”
“As long as two months, or as little as two weeks.”
I answered honestly.
“…Is that really true?”
“Yes.”
“Every last part? All of it by your own hands?”
Harnagar placed both hands on the desk.
He rested his chin on them and stared at me for a long time.
“……”
What was with that expression?
It was extremely serious and grave.
Before long, he opened his mouth.
“…I will answer all three questions.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll start with the second one. The anvil.”
He turned his head and looked at my anvil.
“It is certainly a ‘quite’ bad object. Your eyes are sound.”
“……”
“However, it is also true that making a new one right now would be difficult.”
- Thump, thump.
Harnagar rose and tapped the anvil twice with the back of his hand.
“This is something that must be fitted to your body.”
“……”
“That would be fine for short dwarves like us, but you are still growing, are you not? If we lower it to fit your body now, you would have to make another one in less than two years.”
Ah?
He was right?
I had been thinking too much like a dwarf.
I was still growing, after all. Whether I would get taller was unknown, but my growth plates were still open.
It made sense.
“So bear with this one. Once your body has finished growing, you can make a proper one.”
“Understood.”
Next.
“Now, my answer to the first question.”
He raised the Earthborn Hammer he had been holding all this time and frowned.
“Among Sun Dwarves, there is a saying passed down from our ancestor, the Sun Dwarf and Heir of Fire: A craftsman does not blame his tools.”
They had that saying there, too.
Wherever people lived, they were much the same….
“Except.”
He continued.
“Hammers are the exception.”
Harnagar picked up the Earthborn Hammer and set it on the desk.
“…It is a common misconception among young dwarves who have just begun metallurgy. It is not merely a matter of the hammer’s performance.”
“Then what is it…?”
“A blacksmith’s extremity is not the hand. There is a final joint that extends from the arm. That is the hammer.”
It was a saying written in the Heir of Fire’s records, too.
The hammer was part of your body.
“Then do you know what the first requirement of a good hammer is?”
“…That it strikes well and is strong?”
“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 you strike between five thousand times at the low end and ten thousand at the high end every day.”
That was roughly accurate.
I had once asked Yuna to count how many times I struck the hammer in a day.
There had been a day when I struck it around 9,815 times. I’d strike it even more when enchanting.
“However.”
- Swish.
He picked up the Earthborn Hammer again.
“ Thud….”
He lightly tapped the anvil.
It wasn’t even a hard strike.
- Brrrring….
As always, the hammerhead shuddered after the blow.
“The handle doesn’t absorb a damn thing.”
- Vmmm….
Only then did the hammer’s trembling stop.
“That means less than half the force of the blow reaches the metal; the rest comes back through your wrist, elbow, and shoulder.”
“…The Earthborn Hammer?”
“Yes, this goddamn hammer…!”
- Boom!
- Vroooooom….
When Harnagar struck the anvil harder.
The hammer trembled for even longer.
“Once may amount to nothing. But if that happens ten thousand times, your arm has to absorb all that force.”
He asked me with a worried expression.
“Descendant, let me ask you now: Have your hands ever gone numb?”
“Yes.”
[??]
When I answered, Yuna was suddenly startled.
“…Descendant, let me ask you again. Have you ever been unable to sleep because your shoulders ached?”
“I almost couldn’t sleep, but I was so tired that I passed out.”
[What are you talking about, Oppa? What is this?]
[You’ve been in pain this whole time, Oppa??]
“……Descendant. Have your eyes ever ached from glaring at equipment until your vision briefly flickered?”
“It never flickered, but my eyes have gone hollow for a while during sewing.”
[Are you serious, Oppa? Really, seriously, you really did th—]
[Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me??]
I didn’t know what she meant by saying I hadn’t told her.
In my previous life, having my eyes go hollow in front of me while writing a dissertation was common.
I had also passed out from exhaustion and slept countless times.
Fatigue had always been like a friend who stayed by my side.
“Then you must also have experienced dizziness from the workshop being so hot that you lost strength.”
“That’s right.”
[Why—why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I know Oppa was hurting….]
[I’m sorry, Oppa. I really didn’t know. I’m a failure…as your little sister….]
Yuna had nothing to apologize to me for.
Because I.
So that Yuna couldn’t point out the dangers to my health.
Had already disabled every warning about overwork and fatigue long ago, back in my previous life.
Since she had been the one shouting at the top of her lungs, “Please, just sleep already!” whenever she got the chance.
I had erased all her health-related caution guidelines.
I had left the rhythm-game warnings as nothing more than WWE.
She really fought that one with everything she had to stop me, though.
But if I had followed only Yuna’s guidelines….
I would never have earned my doctorate.
Nor would I have closed the gap between the leading AI and the front-runners.
Being a little sick was simply part of everyday life for me.
Where was I supposed to find time to rest? I had no time to rest.
I was in no position to enjoy such luxury.
Then.
“……All of this.”
- Clomp.
Harnagar walked toward me.
“The answer to your third question.”
- Clomp.
“You asked about the wisdom of how not to become fatigued.”
“I did.”
He stood before me and opened his mouth.
“Nineteen hours of labor a day.”
“A hammer so wretched it harms its owner.”
“A workshop that heats up to a temperature so extreme it is difficult even to breathe.”
He recited my working conditions one by one.
“You are only thirteen years old.”
The Earthborn Hammer Harnagar had been holding.
- Boom!
Fell to the floor.
“Let me ask you this, Descendant.”
“…Yes.”
“Do you want to die young?”
A shocking question.
Before I could answer anything.
He turned his head toward the forge.
“A blacksmith is someone who lives in hot places for their entire life.”
“……”
“Several times a day, we stand before the fire, step away, then stand before it again. That is our work.”
Harnagar looked at me again.
“That is why our rule is simple. To stand for a long time…we rest for a long time. It normally takes half a year to forge a single piece of equipment.”
He nudged the hammer lying on the floor with his toe.
“You reduced half a year to two months, then reduced that to two weeks.”
“……”
“What do you think you reduced to do that?”
He took another step toward me.
“Your lifespan. You were burning through your life to make things.”
He slowly opened his mouth.
“There are people like you. The moment they focus on one thing, everything else disappears from their sight.”
That was exactly me.
“You cannot care for your own condition, nor do you know when you are hungry or when night has passed. That superhuman concentration—your perspective must be worlds apart from mine. It is an undeniable talent.”
Harnagar grasped both my arms with his shining, piercing eyes.
“But, Descendant. Whatever it is you wish to make.”
- Squeeze….
“You have to be alive to make it.”
His grip on my arms tightened.
“I wondered how you could grow so quickly in such a short time.”
And then.
“You were born with the talent of a demon.”
He looked above my head.
“Now I finally understand what this strange magic hanging from the back of your head is.”
“Magic?”
There was magic cast on the back of my head?
“You didn’t know?”
He pointed at the back of my head with one finger.
I reflexively turned my head.
Of course, I couldn’t see it.
It was the back of my head. How could I see it?
I kept twisting my neck this way and that, so Harnagar sighed and took down the mirror hanging on the wall.
- Swish.
Then he positioned it behind me at the right angle.
The back of my head reflected in the mirror.
There….
Several tiny blue particles were floating there.
When I moved my head.
- Shrrk.
They followed a beat late.
What was this?
Cute… No, that wasn’t the point.
“W-what is this?”
“After a certain amount of time passes, when you become exhausted, or when certain conditions are met, it forcibly relaxes your body and puts you to sleep. Have you never felt it?”
“……”
“It is a type of protective magic. It seems to have been cast very recently.”
I thought hard.
These days, I had been working late to finish the new workshop and crucible.
I had been working so intensely that I wouldn’t fall asleep even when Doloris quietly stopped by in the evening.
In the end, she had made several wasted trips.
Normally, simply looking at Doloris’s face made sleep creep over me and drained all the strength from my body.
You could say I had overcome this learned helplessness.
But.
Then, starting one day….
Just looking at her face made my body grow languid, and sleep became irresistibly intense….
Huh?
When I opened my eyes wide.
Harnagar opened his mouth.
“Have you realized it now?”
“……”
“Since you didn’t know about it, that ‘benefactor’ must have cast it.”
He turned the mirror back around.
“So that benefactor knew, too. They knew you were grinding yourself down.”
“……”
“You wouldn’t have listened even if she told you, would you? You look incredibly stubborn, so in the end, she had no choice but to install at least a minimal safeguard.”
Get tired, sleep, then get up again after sleeping.
I had thought I was simply running on my own like that.
“What you need most urgently is something simple.”
“……”
“Eat well, and rest well.”
- Tap.
He tapped my forehead lightly with one finger.
“Get plenty of rest.”
Harnagar looked into my eyes and added.
The advice the first Master Craftsman I had ever met gave me was.
“That is the first wisdom Harnagar passes on to his descendant.” “Rest.”