What Is Passed Down (8)

The tamahagane delivered from the dwarven country was exactly what I had ordered—as one would expect from dwarves.

Even so, the first step still began with sorting the tamahagane.

I heated the reddish tamahagane without making it too hot, then hammered it out thin.

Once it was thin enough, I plunged it into the water I had prepared to cool it rapidly.

As a result, the hard steel naturally cracked and shattered, while the soft steel neither cracked nor broke apart.

Ah, though that alone wasn't enough, so I used a small hammer to break apart any pieces that could be broken further.

This was how the tamahagane was sorted.

The cracked hard steel became the jacket steel used for the blade.

The uncracked soft steel became the core steel used for the sword's center.

The Yosogi School smiths watching me already looked utterly baffled about what I was doing, so I inserted explanations as needed.

Watching me work now were Souha, the head of the smithing department, and several of his senior disciples.

There was also Kairi, the only one among Souha's children deemed qualified to stand here.

I stacked the cracked steel and began forging it.

The sparks produced during this forging carried impurities away, greatly reducing the amount of steel in the stack.

As I explained several tricks for preventing good steel from being lost among the sparks, I continued my work.

Of course, this wasn't something that could be finished in a day or two.

The smiths around me helped wherever they could, but I couldn't expect too much from them.

There were many stages to the process, and... this time, I had to handle everything myself, right through the polishing.

This was a prototype, and I had promised to send the completed sword to the dwarven country.

The scabbard and hilt would come later; for now, only the blade would be sent.

That meant the dwarven smiths would probably come to this forge to observe next... Ah, I was going to be busy for a while.

What awaited beyond that was a competition between the Yosogi School smiths and the dwarven smiths.

The two sides would compete over sword-making, a new field in this land.

In smithing, dwarves yielded to no other race.

Naturally, they intended to be the foremost experts in sword-making as well.

But the Yosogi School smiths couldn't easily give way, either, when they considered how I had come to pass this craft on to them—or the fact that their ancestors had drifted to this land.

Rather, I thought that if they were intimidated simply because their opponents were dwarves and gave way too easily, the Yosogi School's newly established smithing tradition would eventually die out.

I had left production of the tamahagane, their raw material, to the dwarven nation, so the dwarves had a one-step lead in that regard.

However, the Yosogi School smiths would learn the techniques from me before the dwarves did, and at much closer quarters.

As conditions for a competition, they weren't bad at all.

In truth, even if only the Yosogi School smiths learned how to make swords, they would probably keep the knowledge secret and merely pass it down.

Even if only the dwarves learned how to make swords, they would probably use the knowledge only very rarely and then lock it away.

That's because there was hardly any demand for swords in this land.

But if the Yosogi School smiths and the dwarves competed with their pride at stake, their techniques would be honed, perhaps applied elsewhere, and might even lead to something new.

And that would be very enjoyable for me.

Of course, when it came to fundamental smithing techniques, the dwarves were clearly superior.

Souha was highly skilled even among the Yosogi School smiths, but he still hadn't reached my level—and even I had fallen short of my master, Azvaldo.

That's why, for the Yosogi School smiths to hold their own against the dwarves, they needed the passion to never be outdone when it came to swords, along with a deep attachment to the sword itself.

I would do everything I could to help foster that passion.

The most important task, in particular, would be training the next generation, with Kairi at its head.

Dwarves lived longer than humans, so they also had more time to hone their skills individually.

Souha was still active, but sooner or later age would take its toll.

If the techniques and aspirations couldn't be properly passed from Souha to Kairi and from the older disciples to the newer ones, humans would fall behind the dwarves for that reason alone.

The next generation set to take over after Souha and the older disciples retired wasn't bad, exactly, but as things stood, they were a little lacking.

Until now, the Yosogi School smiths had been compared with the other smiths in the royal capital.

Yes, when matched against the capital's smiths, they could hold their own well enough, even as they were.

But from now on, the people they would be compared with were dwarves.

Naturally, the resolve and hard work required of them would be on an entirely different level from before.

At a natural stopping point, I set aside my work and looked around. The tense atmosphere among the Yosogi School smiths, who had been watching with bated breath, began to ease.

Kairi, one of them, had an utterly serious expression on his face, looking desperate to learn something from me.

His expression reminded me of Souha's when Souha had been learning smithing from me, perhaps thirty years ago.

Along with the nostalgia, I found myself thinking that Kairi would be all right if he could wear an expression like that.

He was earnest and deeply responsible, and everyone else trusted him.

He also had more than enough passion for smithing.

Kairi had been wary of me when we had first met, but by now, he seemed to have come to acknowledge me, at least to some extent.

His attitude had changed dramatically after his spar with Shizuki.

Apparently, until then, no swordsman had ever managed to block Shizuki's strike on their first encounter with it, and that had changed the way Kairi viewed me.

Kairi wasn't aiming to become a swordsman, but having grown up in a dojo, he held a deep respect for those with true ability.

Of course, that was only the trigger; he must have truly acknowledged me later, after seeing me at work in the forge.

After all, the pieces I've forged never lie.

At least where teaching him was concerned, there shouldn't be any problem with the trust between us.