Southeastward Bound
Southeastward Bound
Unlike her blunt-seeming appearance, Luwiming was extremely talkative. Her tone wasn't particularly excited, but she chattered nonstop while prepping her work with Cellevian and me seated beside her.
That didn't mean she rambled disjointedly or spouted nonsense, though. She simply laid out her personal impressions—seeing me had apparently dredged up some dusty old memories, I was impressive for my age, and so on—in a strikingly natural, composed fashion.
What followed after that was the reason she'd specifically chosen to make a helmet.
"A helmet is essential. No matter how great a hero is, they can't exactly fill their skull with muscle. You already know the most vulnerable part of you right now is everything above the neck, don't you?"
At first listen it could've felt like a trite bit of wordplay—'if your head gets separated from your body, you die!'—but the reality was entirely different. She was saying that, against opponents of comparable skill, my swordsmanship alone could cover nearly any attack, so I rarely got wounded.
In truth, against someone a couple of tiers stronger where coverage failed, my level was still enough to choose the second-best option of taking a blade on a non-vital spot and surviving. Just like I had done back at Envelde.
It was a reckless move that relied on the techniques I'd drilled into my body and the physique I'd honed, but it was better than dying, wasn't it?
However, the parts where that method couldn't be attempted were the neck and the head. As Luwiming put it, that wasn't an area you could cover with training—it was a vital point itself. The fact that her attacks mimicking Demonfolk swordsmanship had started concentrating more and more on my head toward the end was, she said, meant to make me experience that vulnerability firsthand.
"Your temperament doesn't suit a defense-heavy approach, so even the helmet needs to be made to aid your offense."
Well-made armor could, depending on the situation, deflect an opponent's attack and create an opening. Sure, blindly trusting that and running your mouth would get you killed in an instant, but it was an undeniable fact that it provided an advantage that could never be dismissed in the moments when you absolutely had to choose the second-best option.
But unlike armor for other body parts, which could fulfill that role just by being reasonably sturdy, a helmet couldn't simply tank a hit by relying on sturdiness alone. Because in the face of a concussion, aura and all that other shit were fuckin' equal-opportunity. By claiming she'd make me a helmet capable of that, Luwiming had seriously inflated my expectations.
In the comics and visual media of my past life, they constantly went without helmets because you had to show the protagonist's pretty face. But what I'd gone through so far and would continue to go through was goddamn real combat and reality, so I had absolutely no reason to refuse.
Even though I felt the need for a helmet this acutely myself, the reason I'd gone without one until now wasn't much. The biggest reason was that I'd rarely faced enemies so strong that I absolutely needed to cling to armor. The second was that most of my clashes with truly powerful foes had happened when I was ill-prepared. And by this point, what with the sword, the needles, the axe, and the gauntlet's protective barrier, I was simply getting by on the principle that 'offense is the best defense.'
"Among the really skilled ones, there were some who didn't wear them because they hated having their vision narrowed and their hearing blocked. Well, those were guys who actually had the skill to make such claims... but my Human Race friend here isn't quite at that level yet, is he?"
It was a statement so brutally and cowardly factual that I had no urge to bristle. I just nodded obediently.
Even while talking, Luwiming's hands never stopped moving. The entire process—hammering metal, stoking the fire, shaping the form—was effortlessly natural. Her movements were far more skilled than those of the smiths I'd seen whenever I visited Balkun's forge; about the only difference was that she didn't draw up blueprints.
"Your head shape is decent. This... should be about this size, I think..."
She was blind, so that was only natural. As if in lieu of blueprints, Luwiming steadily touched various parts of my head in between working.
My personal tastes and opinions had no place in the process. I didn't bother asking, and Luwiming didn't bother inquiring.
What the hell could I possibly add to the direct work of someone who'd been swinging a hammer for more than 1,300 years? Even adding a cosmetic preference would've been an insult. Of course, it didn't seem like she would've taken it as an insult, but I didn't dare even attempt it.
Just watching the work flow like water was so fascinating and interesting that I'd zoned out, but Luwiming's words continued.
"For army soldiers, a helmet's a given. But for adventurers or travelers, it's also a piece of gear with a number of drawbacks. You can't wear it all the time because it restricts your sight and hearing—you could end up unable to see or hear what you need to."
In fact, plenty of adventurers loathed helmets for those very reasons but still knew they were necessary. So they'd just loop a ring onto theirs, dangle it from their belt, and only put it on when needed. You frequently saw gear deliberately designed for that kind of convenience.
She didn't seem to know that such items were gradually spreading across the world, but she clearly laid out the flaws. As Luwiming moved her hands, the metal that had been sitting on the anvil in a shape close to raw ore just moments ago began to slowly melt.
"Taking it off and putting it on only when needed is practically the only solution, but that only half-fulfills the 'protection' purpose—it's no different from a compromise. That didn't sit right with me, so I put my mind to it. I created armor that exists in a more portable form, then reacts to attacks aimed at the head and autonomously assumes its original shape."
...Had she just skipped over an absolutely staggering number of steps in that story? Created? Not 'was going to create,' but created?
I'd recently been reading magic books at the academy and receiving crash-course education from my Teacher and Seneran, so I knew this much: for what Luwiming had just described to be possible, the armor would need to possess an ego or have an embedded magic formula capable of reacting to its master's thoughts.
And that came with a whole host of problems.
First, the former case required an artificial soul with an ego sophisticated enough to accurately distinguish threat levels against its living owner and decide on transformations—that was the primary problem. The secondary problem was that no matter how much you miniaturized it, containing an artificial soul of that caliber required something the size of full plate mail. And obviously, at that point, simply putting on and taking off a helmet was no longer the issue.
The latter approach of embedding a magic formula? That had its own mountain of problems as well, but the most critical and fatal one was that once it changed shape, the inscribed formula would warp along with it, rendering it unrecyclable.
Luwiming had just said she'd improved and supplemented all of those problems and achieved a finished result.
"Are you saying you've completed an artifact?"
"Of course magic was involved."
The meaning had somehow gotten skewed, but Luwiming's hands didn't stop. And each time, the metal that had just moments ago been roughly the size of three of my fists combined grew smaller.
"I explored methods while even factoring in the use of makeshift approaches, but it wasn't easy. When I asked the dwarves, they're so set in their philosophy that they wouldn't tolerate such shortcuts, so it wasn't very fruitful. Well, setting all the trivial details aside and just giving you the simple conclusion—the answer lay in the earring and the tattoo."
"That's such an excessive leap I can't make any sense of it."
"Is there really a need to understand? As long as the performance is solid, that's all that matters. Right?"
Luwiming looked at me with an expression that clearly demanded an answer—'Isn't that right?'—so after stewing in a flummoxed mood and mulling it over for a second, I answered.
"Well... sure, that's true."
I mean, could I possibly understand it just because a master with 1,350 years of experience explained it? That was the mindset behind my reply, but...
"Good. You've agreed. Pardon me for a moment."
Out of nowhere, Luwiming's right hand moved in a dazzling blur, activating some unidentifiable magic before she abruptly clamped it around my throat.
"Ughk?!"
It wasn't that her grip was so strong it hurt.
Literally, all she did was place her hand on my neck... but whether it felt like my skin was lightly roasting or like I was being jabbed with needles—whatever it was, an unidentifiable pain coiled around my throat and a short yelp burst out of me on its own.
"Stung a little, didn't it? Still, with these things, doing it in an instant means less pain, so forgive the intrusion. Same with pulling teeth, right?"
Fuck. As expected of someone who'd lived for thousands of years, it was clear she wasn't normal in at least one or two areas. That was 'stinging a little'? I reached up to touch my neck, avoiding her hand which was already pulling away without needing to be pushed off, but nothing felt different.
"Goddammit, you could've at least warned me. What the hell is it?"
"I just told you. The answer lay in the earring and the tattoo."
In Luwiming's left hand, which was still moving as if it existed in its own separate world, lay the metal that had shrunk and shrunk until it was the size of a grain of rice. At first it had definitely looked black, but now it gleamed a dark ultramarine, almost resembling a gemstone at a glance.
"The tattoo, created by modifying imprint magic and sorcery, was made to establish the form and boundaries. Into the earring, I infused contractual blood magic and a magic formula so that simply by piercing the ear, it can link with the wearer. And finally, when the tattoo and earring are linked? Without needing an embedded magic formula, the metal attached to the earring like a jewel can freely assume its shape in response to the master's reactions."
"Earr—agh?!"
Luwiming had set the dark blue grain into the end of a small, ring-shaped silver earring. She strode right back over and, this time, abruptly stabbed the new earring into my right ear—the one that already held Asilie's.
It was a perfect ambush, giving me not even a split second to react or resist. The sheer absurdity of it just pissed me off—I'd stupidly opened my mouth to express doubt and ended up just giving her an exact target.
As the conversation barreled forward at breakneck speed, I was forcibly, desperately choking down the words that tried to bubble up from deep in my heart—'The fuck is that, you fucking nerd?'—when Luwiming picked up a hand mirror that had been lying around on the table, tossed it to me, and wrapped up her explanation with a satisfied smile.
"Go ahead and boast about it anywhere you like. You now possess the one and only helmet of its kind in the world."
Given her skill, her explanation, and the circumstances, it was clear I'd received genuinely incredible preferential treatment. But I couldn't just be purely happy.
"...Fucking insane."
How could I be happy when, in exchange for the helmet, an unplanned perforation line had been drawn on my neck?
The reality was that it was some kind of tattoo resembling Celtic knotwork wrapped around my neck, but the only thing popping into my head was 'perforation line.' But perhaps because she couldn't see, or perhaps because it was just her nature, Luwiming didn't give a single shit about my reaction. She picked up the small hammer lying on the table and hurled it squarely at my head. Maybe she had some talent in throwing techniques, because the hammer came flying at a remarkably fast clip.
I'd caught on, at least, that this was a test to prove the helmet's performance rather than some random assault, so with no real choice, I simply stayed still.
-CLANG!
Fortunately, a hammer hitting my forehead and drawing blood wasn't what happened. Before I could even blink, metal spread out from the earring, enveloping my head and deflecting the hammer. Luwiming beamed, her smile shifting from satisfaction to outright smugness.
The performance really was goddamn insane, but that perforation line on my neck kept nagging at me, so I still couldn't just be purely happy this time either.