Making Money Selling Otherworld Goods. Third Candidate Item: A Properly Made, Well-Crafted Weapon
"Let go! I said let go of it!"
"You're the one who needs to calm down!"
BANG!
That was the first thing I saw when I arrived at the weapons shop: a customer, face flushed scarlet, kicking the door open as he stormed out.
A filthy, torn cloak. Boots caked with dirt and worn down to the threads. Armor smeared with dried monster blood and sticky slime.
Adventurers, by the look of them.
The one holding him back was an adventurer too. Judging by the weapons slung across their backs, one was an archer and the other a warrior.
"What in the hell is your reason for not selling?!"
"I'm every bit as dumbfounded as you are. All those weapons piled up in there, and he won't sell! Let's move on to another village tomorrow. This place clearly isn't a town for adventurers anyway."
"What a strange man! I asked him to sharpen a sword, and even that was too much. Honestly. Did I walk into a dead shop?"
"The old man's gone senile, that's all. Let's spend the silver we earned with blood and sweat clearing that commission somewhere worth it. No reason to waste coin at a shop this second-rate."
Much as it pained me to admit, what the adventurer said was true.
This was a peaceful region with no monster nests or lairs anywhere nearby. That was why there wasn't even an adventurer's guild, the kind any decent-sized city would have. When a problem came up that needed muscle, the male villagers and the town guards usually banded together to handle it.
Most adventurers who found their way here treated Greenhill as a place with no work to offer — somewhere to pass through, or at best a rest stop to hole up in when night fell.
And yet even in that Greenhill, there was exactly one weapons shop. A thoroughly unremarkable place called simply the 'Greenhill Weapons Shop.' Still, the fact that the town's name was in the shop's name suggested the business had been around a long while.
However charitably I tried to look at it, a weapons shop that refused to sell weapons was more than a little shocking.
"Who are you? Don't tell me you're here to buy a weapon too?!"
When I, approaching from the opposite direction, crossed paths with the pair storming out of the shop, the enraged adventurer looked me up and down and snapped:
"I wouldn't recommend the place. The prices aren't cheap, and the owner picks and chooses his customers. As for the quality of the weapons... he wouldn't say, so I can't tell you."
"Be glad the senile old madman didn't come at us swinging an axe. Tch."
With that, the two adventurers spat at the shop's doorstep and were gone.
Not the best start.
If the customers were in this state, there was no way the owner inside was in a good mood either.
Maybe I should wait a bit before going in...
Hoping the shopkeeper's temper might cool, I hovered by the roadside for ten minutes or so before cautiously stepping into the weapons shop.
Creeeak.
"Anyo—ne there? GYAAH!"
THUNK!
The instant I opened the door and poked my face in, a throwing knife came flying straight at my eyes!
It buried itself in the rotten wooden door! If I'd opened it even a little wider—!
"To hell with those F-rank human adventurer bastards who don't know the first thing about weapons! The likes of you don't deserve an axe edge sharp enough to take your heads!"
"Whoa, hold on, hold on!"
There, right in front of me, stood a squat old man with grey hair and a roughly braided grey beard.
As if he'd been waiting at the counter for someone to come back, he had already thrown one knife and held another ready in his opposite hand.
And right now, he was winding up to hurl that one at me too.
"It's not me! I'm not the same as the ones who just left!"
I shouted desperately through the crack in the door.
"Huh? A different person?"
"Yes, a different person! A different customer!"
"A different customer, then. Hmph!"
"What happened here?"
"Those bastards insulted my work. Called it scrap, called it rusty lumps of iron, tried to grind the price down. Not that they were wrong, mind you — but I don't have to hear that from the likes of them!"
Only then did the old man set the knife in his hand down on the counter.
Behind him, waiting on the counter, was even a double-bladed axe with a razor-bright edge. Once he ran out of knives, he had probably meant to grab that axe and charge.
Still, hearing words like that would have made anyone angry. The adventurers had put it badly.
But still — throwing knives at customers is going a bit far...
No, hold on. Why are all the old shopkeepers in this town such colossal bastards?
I stretched my neck into the shop like a turtle and stole a look at the throwing knife buried in the door.
Simple and small though the weapon was, the handle bore a distinctive pattern all its own.
Approved.
Yes — this was exactly it. Things like this: small, and likely to fetch a handsome price.
I crammed myself into the shop. Crammed was the right word, because the place was cramped yet stuffed to bursting with every kind of weapon imaginable.
Even at a single glance, the sheer quantity was staggering. Countless varieties of weapons lay heaped in shapeless piles, like the sight of a military quartermaster's armory mid-relocation.
Ugh...
I picked my way forward carefully. The weapons were furred with dust, but their edges hadn't dulled — every blade stood sharp and ready, and one careless step felt like it could scratch or slice me.
I'd never seen an armory like this. No — a weapons shop.
Who piles swords crosswise on tables, all jumbled together, without a single scabbard?
No, really — this felt nothing like the weapons shop I'd imagined. I'd never actually set foot in one, but I at least knew the general vibe.
This was less a weapons shop than a smithy — no, more like the storeroom inside a smithy. It was like seeing a sign that read "Restaurant," walking in, and finding not a restaurant but a delivery-only takeout joint with nothing behind the counter but a kitchen.
Actually, no. Even a real smithy wouldn't stack its finished work this haphazardly. A smithy treasures what it makes.
Naturally — those pieces are bound for customers. Swords above all demand a scabbard to keep the edge from being ruined, and even a cheap blade without one should at least be wrapped snug in fine cloth. That's the bare minimum.
In any case, weapons in this otherworld weren't the kind of thing you picked up for a pittance, like bread or soup or a mug of ale. Even the cheapest sword, unlike a farm implement, started at two or three silver coins, no exceptions. Rare or common, they had to be stored and maintained like treasures.
Leave your merchandise lying about like this, and of course customers would talk.
But then why had he just let those adventurers walk away? With this much stock on hand.
"Anyway — what brings you here?"
What did he mean, what brings me? To a weapons shop? To buy weapons — did he think I'd come for pants?
Never mind the rude speech — his very first words had a barb in them. He didn't seem to have any intention of doing business at all.
"Hmm... I'm looking to get some weapons..."
"What kind?"
"The type doesn't matter. As long as they're not too big or heavy. Small things that look expensive would suit me best, I'd say."
"...You're not planning to use them yourself, are you?"
As the conversation wore on, I noticed the old man's speech was a touch clumsy. Not quite like a foreigner, though — a different flavor altogether.
Come to think of it, he didn't look human either. His height was freakishly short, and the sheen of that beard, the creases of that face — none of it human. Having just come from meeting the old shopkeeper at the furniture store, the comparison only sharpened my certainty.
Listening closely, his voice itself was younger than I'd expected. Wait — maybe this old man... wasn't actually old?
Could this fellow be some race other than human?
I pulled the knife out of the door and handed it back to him.
While I was busy wondering what other races this otherworld held besides humans, he ran his eyes over my clothes and hands, wiped the knife he'd nearly thrown at me, and said:
"Judging by those hands, you're not in a trade that uses weapons."
"That's right. I'm a merchant. At the moment I sell snacks from a street stall in this town, but I plan to open a proper shop soon and sell all sorts of things—"
Zing.
The instant the word merchant left my mouth, he fixed me with a ferocious glare.
No — not human. Then what? What was it again? I could have sworn I'd seen a race that looked exactly like him in movies and anime, but now that I tried to grab the memory, it slipped away.
"So you mean to buy my weapons and peddle them elsewhere. Is that it?"
"...That's not wrong. But I'd be selling them far from here — not in Greenhill."
"To whom, exactly? Don't tell me — the army of Abela (the enemy nation of Helion, where I live)?"
"Why on earth would I? I'm going to sell them to my own people back home."
"Your home? And where exactly would that be?"
His words kept their edge. Only then did the gaze that had been cataloguing my hands and clothes climb to my face.
The moment our eyes met and he bored into me head-on, I finally remembered what race he was.
Right — a dwarf! He was a dwarf.
Stocky and short, with a powerfully built frame. An aged face. That long, iron-wire beard growing every which way.
Far more deft with their hands than humans, masters of axe and hammer, hardened by the brutal cold of the northern wastes — generally blunt and cold in temperament? Didn't they hate elves, or something?
That was the extent of what I knew, and even that might not hold. There was no guarantee the lore here matched the media I'd consumed, a hundred percent. I'd have to hunt down a book at the Greenhill library and check.
"You're not from this country either, are you. Like me."
I had no wish to poke at his race outright and needlessly stoke his temper. Despite the snappish tone, I did my best to keep my answers as mild as I could.
"Your people back home. Do they need weapons? Are they a warrior race?"
The questions kept coming. A warrior race... Hmm. Well, Koreans are decent fighters, I suppose. Not wrong — but the question meant something rather different here.
"There was a time like that. Even though our people longed for peace, we had no choice but to keep fighting. With great powers pressing in from above and at our side, we lived under constant threat of having our country taken. In fact, there was even a time we lost the nation to the island country next door and endured a colonial era."
The dwarf shopkeeper's eyes began to change, little by little.
Where there had been suspicion at first, he now looked less like a stranger and more like a kinsman brimming with fury on my behalf.
At last his anger boiled clean over: he snatched the axe from the counter, hoisted it high, and thrust it out in front of me.
"An axe like this is just the thing for shameless invaders like those! You could behead thirty goblins with it and the edge would still live!"
Ooh... nice axe. Like the knife, it had that distinctive design worked in?
Though that gleaming edge was the whole point — if I asked him to do away with it and blunt the blade, would he actually go along...?
"Ah... not at the moment. We're a divided nation, so the threat of war still crouches at our door — but our people aren't in a state of permanent combat readiness."
"Divided nation? What in the world is that?"
Ah. Had I said something I shouldn't have?
Well, it was out now; I supposed I owed him an explanation. Still, unlike the customers before me, he wasn't trying to chase me off — I could feel a genuine willingness to hear me out.
I gave him a brief account of how my country came to be divided. Thank goodness I'd never dozed off in Korean history class. Whether I'd explained it well, though, I couldn't say — there were bound to be parts an otherworlder couldn't wrap his head around.
"Would you look at that useless king! In the end, a country without strength gets dragged this way and that by the great powers. And it's your people who suffer for it, your homeland split clean in two. For one and the same folk to point sword, axe, and bow at one another..."
Clicking his tongue, the dwarf shook his head. The talk ran on for a long while after that — into Kim Il-sung and the three-generation hereditary succession of the Paektu bloodline — and somewhere in the middle he launched into a full-throated cursing of the people's exploitation and abuse, garnished with what sounded like dwarven proverbs, before turning to look at me again.
"So. Do you think your people back home would like my weapons?"
The dwarf's eyes had definitely changed from before. Now he seemed willing to look on the deal with something like favor.
Let me set the record straight here. I did not lie.
I said our country was divided, that war could break out at any time, that every man became a soldier because of it, and that even afterward they periodically trained with the army...
.......
...In any case, my people back home need weapons!
That was how the mood turned. I didn't lie — I only stated facts...
"To tell you the truth, I was never much of a success back home. Closer to a failure, really. My hands were hopeless compared to my fellows."
"You're a dwarf... right, sir?"
"So it does show, does it? Aye. My homeland lies across the sea, on another continent — in the north, at that. You wouldn't know it if I told you."
"You've come a very long way. Like me."
Perhaps because he'd heard my story of home, the dwarf shopkeeper carried on with his own for a while. The dwarf craftsman's name was Humson. He'd dreamed of becoming an engineer in his homeland, but with no talent to back the dream, he'd failed the dwarves' own trials time and again.
"Don't tell me... you were exiled for failing the trials?"
"Nothing of the sort. I left because I wanted to leave."
What's that supposed to mean...
He'd just left home out of pride, hadn't he...
And here I'd assumed dwarves had some brutal rule where you got cast out if your skills fell below a certain bar.
That said, for all Humson kept repeating that he had no talent, no skill, no craft in his hands, one look at the mountains of weapons piled up in this place told a very different story.
I'd been dropped into this otherworld and never traveled beyond this region, but I'd seen plenty of the weapons carried by the guards and by adventurers passing through. Even a layman like me could tell at a glance that what was stacked here was several times finer than anything those men held.
"If it's all right with you, then — may I buy these? I'll pay a fair price, one that satisfies you."
"No."
"I'm sorry — what?"
"These are practice pieces, truth be told. Failures, in other words. So a sale to a customer was never on the table."
"But... they're far too fine to call failures?!"
"Coax me all you like, it's no use. I don't sell trash like this."
This is trash?
If you're going to throw it out, give it to me...
Now I finally understood. The real reason Humson hadn't sold those adventurers a single weapon.
Translated, what the dwarf was saying came down to that cursed artisan's pride. The same as a master potter who, the moment a single line wavers, declares the piece ruined and smashes it with a hammer.
For Humson, who had failed the dwarven trials again and again, that pride had festered into a complex that kept snagging at his heels. He already possessed more than enough skill — but years of failure had left his self-esteem in the dirt, and perfectionism piled on top meant he could never shake his doubts about his own work.
"Then... could I buy only finished pieces — ones you yourself are satisfied with?"
"...What is it you want?"
Oh! He'd make it? He was opening a deal with me?
Afraid the dwarf's mood might flip back, I put in my order at once.
"Well... how about a light dagger with a sheath for my first order?"
"Hmm... a dagger, is it. An ordinary light dagger... sheath included. Very well. Come back around this autumn."
"Autumn?! A single dagger takes four months to deliver?!"
"It takes that long to make a thing perfect. If I don't like how it turns out, it may take until winter."
Haah...
Now I understood why business didn't thrive here. As far as I could tell, this dwarf was a superb weaponsmith and absolutely not a man built for commerce.
If a relentless perfectionist and tireless worker like this counted as substandard, what on earth were the dwarves of this otherworld? Did they just spend their whole lives fondling iron?
Should I give up on this place?
No — the merchandise was too good to walk away from. There was this much stock here, just waiting to be sold.
I had to close this deal, whatever it took.
I don't know where the confidence came from, but I had it in spades. Confidence that I could sell every last weapon piled up in this shop to the modern world, until the place stood empty. And I was certain I'd find no other shop, anywhere, with inventory this generous.
Fine, let me admit it. A salesman has to stretch the truth now and then.
In the end, I had no choice but to lie to the dwarf.
"We never know when our people back home might be attacked by the invaders from the north. For their sake, I must supply them with weapons."
"What? Didn't you say just now there was no need for them to be armed at all times?"
Oops. Had I said that?
Well... words are just words. You stick them where they fit and they stick.
"What I'm speaking of is the day of crisis. The day of crisis. Every one of them should keep a sword and an axe ready against the northern invaders — on a shelf, or under the bed. And shouldn't they train with those weapons in preparation for that day? As things stand, they'd be facing the enemy barehanded!"
"Hmmm...."
"What they need isn't some flawless, faultless weapon. Anything they can grip and swing will do."
"Hmmm..."
"Help us! Only you, Master Craftsman Humson, can save my people!"
"HmmmMMM...!"
Of course, I remember that much later, when Humson finally learned the truth about my homeland, I caught a truly monumental scolding. (He wrung it out of me while we were drinking together — seriously, why did I do that.)
But back when I first met him, he later confessed — long after his anger had cooled — that those words had shaken his heart to its core.
"Very well, I'll do it! But the preparation will take time. Getting these useless pieces of junk into shape to serve even as proper scrap — that'll take a while yet."
"Thank you, truly!"
As things took a positive turn, the dwarf seemed to age ten years in an instant.
He heaved a deep sigh and set to pondering how these things might be mended into usable condition.
"First I'll need to start regrinding the dulled edges, one by one. Replace the cracked hafts as well..."
"Ah... sorry to cut in, but every weapon you deliver to me will need the edges removed."
"What?! Why?!!"
Humson gaped at me, utterly unable to comprehend.
It felt as though the conversation had been flung right back to square one.
Haah... and how was I supposed to explain this one?
