Atop a Tree That Reaches the Clouds (11)

The day after hearing that story, I begged Old Man Gon to introduce me to a smith—specifically, a swordsmith.

There was only one reason: I wanted to put swords into the hands of everyone in the Yosogi Style of the Kingdom of Ludria, which had inherited the tradition of that woman from the story, Yuzuriha Yosogi.

In truth, the children and grandchildren of Kaeha whom I knew in the present-day Yosogi Style were not actually descendants of Yuzuriha Yosogi.

More precisely, they were probably descendants of the younger brother whom Yuzuriha Yosogi had protected and helped escape.

And the present-day Yosogi Style already used differently shaped straight swords and had developed its own techniques.

If I handed them swords now, it might only confuse them, coming so late in the day.

That was what I used to think.

But given the difference between the swords of Fusang and the straight swords in use today, there had to be techniques that had been lost.

Which one they used would be up to them.

Even if their ancestors, after putting down roots in the Kingdom of Ludria, had given up on swords because they could no longer obtain them and chosen straight swords available in the central regions, things were different now.

If I learned the techniques of swordsmithing and passed them on to the smiths raised at Yosogi Style dojos, then... the Yosogi Style would once again have the option of taking up swords.

They could choose whichever they preferred.

Moreover, knowing the difference between the two might even lead to new techniques.

No, surely it would.

Because that's the Yosogi Style.

Old Man Gon seemed a little hesitant, but he introduced me to an old swordsmith named Sakuji.

He was younger than Old Man Gon, but old enough that it would have been perfectly reasonable for him to have retired long ago. Apparently, he was still working at the forge, primarily training apprentices.

Sakuji—or rather, Old Man Saku—seemed bewildered when an elf from a foreign country, a species never seen in this one, suddenly asked to become his apprentice. But when I told him I had worked as a smith on the continent for many years, his attitude changed completely.

Yes, although it had been while traveling, I had spent no fewer years engaged in smithing than Old Man Saku.

Of course, I also had more than enough confidence that my skill matched the experience those years represented.

Thus, Old Man Saku said that rather than treat me as an apprentice, he would welcome me into the forge as a guest.

His proposal was that if I showed him smithing techniques he did not know—in other words, what I had learned on the continent—he would teach me the smithing techniques of this country in return.

In other words, it was an exchange of techniques.

It was a little unexpected, but it was an interesting and convenient proposal for me.

Normally, swordsmithing techniques were the sort of thing that could reasonably be kept secret.

Yet rather than turn me away at the door, we settled on an exchange of techniques. Just as with martial arts, that was probably because the people of Fusang had an ingrained habit of sharing techniques useful in the fight against the oni.

It may sound like a strange way to put it, but Fusang and its people had a broad-mindedness born of necessity.

Had I become an apprentice, it would have taken at least five years to learn swordsmithing, and I would have started with menial labor.

But in my case, this was not an apprenticeship but an exchange of techniques. Since my smithing skill was excellent despite the difference in our traditions, I was allowed to begin practical work immediately.

...I imagine that, to the other apprentices who were trying to learn properly through a formal apprenticeship, this might have been an extremely infuriating arrangement.

Yet Old Man Saku's apprentices were sincere and eager to learn from me, despite his decision to treat me as a guest.

Whenever Old Man Saku taught me smithing or I showed them the continent's techniques, they all edged closer, careful not to get in the way, trying to absorb every bit they could.

Humans were creatures that sometimes drowned in greed, lost their way, forgot harmony, and harmed others.

But at the same time, that desire was precisely what drove them to improve themselves and move forward.

Of course, that was not unique to humans, but I thought it was a particularly pronounced trait in them.

That was why I liked humans like that.

The material used to make swords was a high-quality steel called tamahagane.

I was taught how it was produced, as well as how to judge the hardness of steel.

Hard and soft steel each had different uses.

Hard steel formed the outer layer that became the blade.

The soft steel formed the core.

They forged stacked layers of steel, then forge-welded them.

They even used ash from burned straw and muddy water in their smithing.

There were many similarities to the smithing I knew, but also quite a few differences.

Then came the forging process of folding the steel back over itself.

There was also the construction process of wrapping the core steel in outer steel and heating it.

As I learned about these processes, I reached a certain conclusion.

I came to think that the method of forging the sword-like object Azvardo had taught me was probably a manufacturing method the dwarves had devised after seeing a finished sword and trying to reproduce it.

The more I learned about the differences between the two, the more convinced I became.

This was only my own conjecture, but perhaps the ancestors of the Yosogi Style who left this country and reached the Kingdom of Ludria had put down roots there with the help of dwarves they met in that land.

And perhaps they had handed their swords over to the dwarves as payment for that help.

The ancestors of the Yosogi Style had been swordsmen, not swordsmiths, so even though they possessed swords, there was no way they could have known how to make them.

So the dwarves studied how to reproduce them from the originals, but... perhaps they never achieved a perfect reproduction.

Thinking about that was immensely satisfying.

After all, even though it was a story from long ago, I was now learning smithing techniques passed down from a land far to the east—techniques the dwarves had once sought but failed to obtain.

If I told Azvardo about this, I wondered what sort of frustrated expression my smithing master would make.

For that reason, too, I had to master these techniques completely, without missing a single detail.

Not merely by memorizing them, but by chewing them over, digesting them, and making them my own craft.