The Shitty Elf and the Shitty Dwarf (5)

"Anybody home!"

Two days after I reached my first human settlement, the town of Vistcoat, I opened the door of the smithy I had come to visit and called out loudly.

Since there was a very good chance my request to be taught how to work materials would be turned down, I had come today primarily to see a dwarf.

Which meant the important thing was to keep up the momentum.

To be honest, I had been too worn out from yesterday's long journey to have much energy, so being kept there all day while the elven woman Airena taught me all sorts of things had actually been a blessing.

So I now had the value of money down pat.

One hundred copper coins made one silver coin. Ten silver coins made one small gold coin. Ten small gold coins made one large gold coin.

And the amount Airena had given me for the apua fruit was, astonishingly, fifty large gold coins.

For reference, a few copper coins bought one meal, and although the inn I stayed at last night had a luxurious room with a bathtub and served wonderful food, it charged five silver coins for a night's stay.

Going by an extremely rough estimate, one copper coin was worth about a hundred yen, and one silver coin about ten thousand yen.

Airena had probably paid for my lodging the day before yesterday, yesterday, and today as well, and converting the prices into Japanese yen made me feel terribly guilty.

But she was the one who had insisted that a cheap inn was out of the question and forcibly chosen our current lodgings, so for the moment I decided to let her treat me.

Besides, the inn we're staying at serves meals like stews packed with meat, bread that is a little hard but releases a rich wheat aroma in your mouth when you chew it, and steaks seasoned without skimping on salt, so I didn't want to go to a cheap inn anymore.

But putting that aside, the dwarf was what mattered right now.

The front of this smithy was apparently a shop filled with various wares such as weapons and armor, while the forge lay in the back.

Though my voice must have reached him, the sound of metal being hammered in the back did not stop, so I assumed he was busy and looked around the shop.

If he was in the middle of something, I had no desire to get in the way of his work.

The wares crammed into the shop ranged from rugged swords built purely for practicality to armor covered in gaudy ornamentation, and even bizarre things whose purpose I couldn't quite figure out. I could have looked at them forever.

The item that caught my eye most, though, was a large kukri knife, its inward-curving blade sharpened along the inner edge.

Even calling it large only meant that it was big for a knife or dagger; compared with large weapons such as axes and greatswords, it was by no means huge.

Even so, the kukri quietly exuded a forcefulness that rivaled those massive weapons.

Of course, I didn't touch it without permission.

No matter how strongly it attracted me, it was a weapon.

If I touched it without the owner's permission and injured myself, I'd cause trouble for the shop.

Though perhaps simply having an elf like me enter the shop was already a nuisance to its dwarf owner. Still, that was one thing, and this was another.

"Oh, sorry to keep you waiting. You've got a good eye. That isn't ordinary iron, you know, it's... Hey, looking closely, you're an elf! What are you doing in my shop? I don't have anything to sell to shitty elves!!!"

As I gazed at the kukri without tiring of it, the gentle voice that called out from behind me transformed into vicious abuse within seconds.

When I turned around, I found a short, heavily muscled man glaring at me.

His abundant beard was braided to keep it out of the way, making him look so unmistakably like a dwarf that I couldn't help smiling with delight.

"Hello! That's a really nice kukri knife. Yeah, I want it, but I'm not here to shop. You shitty dwarf. I do want it! I do! But I've already settled on the material for the knife I'll use! Ah, pardon me for intruding. This is a little gift to mark our acquaintance."

But this was a battle.

I shouted back at the dwarf so as not to be outdone by his insults.

Oh, but I didn't forget the liquor I'd bought as a gift, and carefully handed him the bottle without breaking it.

Greetings, gifts, and good manners were important, after all.

"How thoughtful of you. Much obliged. Wait, who are you calling a shitty dwarf?! You shitty elf! For a shitty elf, you've got good taste in liquor!!! ...Damn, you really did bring good liquor. So if you're not here to shop, what do you want? Even though you've given me booze, if it's some pointless errand, I'll really throw you out."

Perhaps my polite behavior had touched the dwarf, because he softened his tone and asked what I wanted.

Ah, yes, this man was actually a pretty good person too.

Once again, I was reminded that you couldn't know whether you liked or disliked someone until you met them in person.

But if he was willing to hear me out, I couldn't have asked for anything more.

Though, admittedly, that was entirely thanks to the high-end liquor that had cost one large gold coin at a liquor store in town.

I took the Forest Wolf's fangs from my pack and placed them on the shop counter.

"These are the fangs of a Forest Wolf I defeated while leaving the forest. I want to have them made into a knife, so I came to ask you to teach me how."

At that, the dwarf's heavy brows twitched upward. After saying that he wanted to see them, he took the fangs in his hands and examined them closely.

His handling of the fangs was careful, and his gaze was utterly serious.

The dwarf spent several minutes examining the fangs thoroughly before placing them back on the desk.

"I thought you were a strange elf, but you're truly an idiot. These aren't Forest Wolf fangs; they're the fangs of a much larger Gran Wolf. No amateur could work with a material like this, no matter how much of the process I taught you."

Then the dwarf revealed a shocking fact.

Well, imagine that.

I had assumed that every wolf monster found in the forest was a Forest Wolf.

But apparently, things were different in the outside world.

"Yeah, that's why I came to learn from the dwarf said to be the best smith in town—I don't want to fail. I couldn't bring the hide or meat with me, so I have to make use of at least the claws and fangs instead of letting them go to waste."

I carefully put the fangs of what I now knew was a Gran Wolf, not a Forest Wolf, back into my pack.

Then the dwarf said,

"If you don't want to fail, why don't I turn those fangs into a knife for you? If you're strong enough to hunt a Gran Wolf, you could earn plenty as an adventurer without learning any techniques at all."

That was his suggestion.

What a genuinely kind dwarf.

Apparently, he was offering to forge a weapon for me if I wanted.

But I...

"No, I'll pass on becoming an adventurer for now. I want to turn the other fangs and claws into crafts, not just make a knife, and I'm interested in smithing too. Dwarves are as interesting as I'd imagined, and I want to see the furnace. If anything, I'd rather spend the next ten or twenty years smithing than adventuring."

I shook my head and smiled.

The dwarf looked at me as though I were some creature with something wrong in the head.

Well, I supposed that was a natural reaction.

As an elf, I knew I was saying something crazy.

But as a human, I lived on a vastly different timescale.

In the end, I had no choice but to live as the being I was.

When I cast aside what it meant to be a High Elf, I set myself on this path.

Even if no one else understood me.

"Haaah... So you weren't an idiot, but a mad elf, were you? Well, that's fine. A mad elf is much better than an arrogant one. If you're willing to do the grunt work, I'll teach you some smithing until your madness is cured. It'd be a pity if the Gran Wolf went to waste, after all!"

And no matter what path one took, even if others did not understand it, it was bound to cross with someone else's path eventually.

Overjoyed, I held out my right hand, but the dwarf stared at it for even longer than he had while examining the material. ...Perhaps he realized that I wasn't going to give up, because eventually he took my hand and shook it.