Fortress of Flames (3)
The dwarves, who revered fire and the hammer, were a race famous for never letting the embers of their forges die out.
For such a people, the place where Karak-Zar stood was nothing short of ideal.
The towering mountains themselves formed a natural fortress, while the geothermal heat and lava drawn up from deep beneath the peaks allowed the dwarves to heat their iron and swing their hammers whenever they pleased.
Of these, lava was an especially precious resource.
Ordinary ores could be worked by raising the temperature with coal, but this fantasy world held countless materials that did not exist in the modern age—mithril, adamantium, and more. Coal alone simply lacked the firepower to reach the melting points of such ores.
The lava dwelling in the earth solved that problem.
If the elves were children of the forest, the dwarves could be called children of the earth. Where the elves had undines and sylphs, the dwarves had gnomes and salamanders. Salamander, in particular, made their homes in lava and imbued it with a special power so that it might lend the dwarves their strength.
And what was forged with that special lava was none other than the Dragon's Breath.
Capable of melting and working any metal, the Dragon's Breath was the dwarves' exclusive specialty. Louis herself had returned to Karak-Zar precisely to process black dragon scales—a material so rare and exceptional that ordinary facilities could not leave so much as a scratch on it. One could safely declare that nowhere else on the continent could black dragon scales be worked without the Dragon's Breath.
And that very Dragon's Breath—
"Why the hell not?!"
Bang—
Louis slammed her trembling fist down on the desk and shouted.
Having received temporary passes from Caval, Rosaria's party had entered Labella, one of the cities of Karak-Zar. They were in the middle of formally obtaining entry permits at Labella's guild—an institution that, they were told, served a role similar to a city hall—when the commotion broke out.
"Listen here, kid! You think yelling in here is gonna make everything go your way?"
"No—I'm yelling because the Dragon's Breath was working just fine half a year ago and now you're suddenly telling me I can't use it! ...Ow... my hand..."
The three of them, who had been filling out paperwork, looked up at the sudden noise and spotted Louis arguing with someone at the counter.
"I don't know the full details myself... but they say there's a problem with the lava."
"The lava? What's wrong with the lava?!"
"The salamanders' power has weakened. It's unusable. Nothing we can do about it. We'll just have to wait until Lord Odin's mood improves."
The essential ingredient for the Dragon's Breath was lava imbued with the power of a fire spirit. Ordinary lava would not do; only when a spirit's power dwelled within it could it radiate heat fierce enough to earn the name Dragon's Breath. The absence of that spirit power—something that should always have been present—was the reason the Dragon's Breath had been shut down.
"Anyway, that's why I can't issue a permit to use it. And after the absolute scene you made when you left this city, waltzing back in not long after and demanding to borrow the Dragon's Breath is pretty damn galling—but this really is out of my hands."
Rosaria was curious what exactly Louis had done on her way out of the city that made every dwarf she met claim she had thrown a spectacular fit, but the dwarf manning the counter remained coldly unmoved.
"So I'm just supposed to sit here sucking my thumb? No way! I'm going to check it with my own eyes!"
"You clueless little brat! Spirit mages have already gone to assess the situation—we don't need you!"
"That's—! I—! Damn it!"
Even as she ground her teeth and insisted on going herself, Louis could not immediately fire back a proper retort. The dwarf was right: she could neither sense mana nor see spirits. Going would do no good, and she had no argument that would convince the man in front of her.
"If you understand, then get lost."
Apparently deciding the matter was settled, the dwarf snorted and waved her away with a dismissive flick of his hand.
"...Wait!"
"What now, kid? My heart's big and deep enough to hold a few gallons of ale, but if I keep indulging your nonsense it's going to burst—so cut it out!"
"You're right. I don't have mana, and I can't see spirits."
"But... these people can do both!"
"Huh?"
"Us?"
As if something had just occurred to her, Louis strode right up to the dwarf who had been waving her off in irritation, glared at him, then spun and pointed toward Rosaria's party, who had been watching from a short distance, wondering what on earth was going on.
"What, those humans you dragged along?"
"Just hear me out. First of all, that man is a magic professor at the human empire's academy, and the girl next to him is a spirit mage who commands spirits!"
"Even if they're humans, wouldn't a mage and a spirit mage be of some help?"
"Hah. Kid, you think we dwarves don't have mages and spirit mages of our own?"
Louis had named Felix, skilled in magic, and Rosaria, contracted to Ariel, as potential help, but the dwarf merely snorted as if she were talking nonsense. Dwarves might be known primarily as blacksmiths and magical-tool specialists, yet there was no way a fortress this vast would lack dwarf mages or spirit mages.
"Wait—that's not all! Think you can still say that after seeing this?"
As if she had anticipated exactly that reaction, Louis grinned and spoke again.
"Hold on—let me borrow this for a second."
"Uh... sure, go ahead."
"Thanks. Now! Open your eyes wide and take a good look at what this is!"
"For heaven's sake, what kind of nonsense have you been—wait... this is... it can't be—?!"
Louis dashed over to Rosaria, borrowed something, and held it up with triumphant flair. The dwarf, who had been looking on with bored indifference, suddenly found his eyes going wide.
"A branch of the World Tree! H-how in the world...?!"
It was Rosaria's rifle, crafted from a branch of the World Tree.
Dwarves, with their superb craftsmanship, had an equally keen eye for materials. Ore was their primary stock, of course, but exceptional works did not always rely on ore alone; they paid close attention to any material of importance or quality. To such dwarves, a branch of the World Tree was an outstanding resource—its magical conductivity made it extraordinarily efficient for crafting magical tools, and despite being wood it possessed durability and toughness that belied its nature. Properly channeled with mana, it neither rotted nor crumbled. It was the stuff of dreams.
Yet the dwarves buried underground and the elves buried in their forests both pursued isolationist policies, making the material all the rarer.
"Well, these three went to the Great Forest where the elves live and received it. Directly."
"Those stuck-up knife-ears gave this to humans? That's ridiculous...!"
The dwarf was left speechless at the idea that frail-looking humans possessed such a material—and that the proud elves had given it to them.
"Hmph. You're looking at the real thing right in front of your face and you still say that?"
"True enough... this is definitely the genuine article... and this shape—what is it even for? Why craft it like this? And these magic circles..."
"Ah-ah! That's far enough!"
"Ah...!"
Now thoroughly emboldened, Louis pulled the rifle back. The dwarf gazed after it with the forlorn eyes of a child whose toy had been snatched away.
"People like this? They might actually be able to help, right? Just let them take a look! If it doesn't work out, we'll leave right away!!"
"...I'll report it upstairs, at least."
"Yes!!!"
Under Louis's relentless persuasion, the dwarf finally nodded.
"So that's... the Dragon's Breath?"
Swept along by Louis's declaration and still feeling rather dazed, Rosaria's party arrived at their destination—and their jaws dropped at the sight before them.
Steam engines hissed and clanked. Pipes that never stopped trembling wound through the entire chamber like a spider's web. At the center of the room, where every pipe converged, stood the Dragon's Breath—so enormous it seemed less a machine for processing materials and more some kind of monumental structure.
Its overall form was crude and simple, as if someone had taken a kitchen hearth from a mansion and scaled it up to absurd proportions.
"So you're the humans that Hopkins's daughter—that little brat—dragged in. The ones who tore a branch of the World Tree from those knife-ears?"
While the three of them stood gaping, overwhelmed by the magnificent sight, dwarves who had appeared at some point approached and extended their hands.
"Ah—yes. Hello...? I'm Rosaria Evergarden of the Obina Empire."
"Hmm... well then, pleased to meet you. Name's Orson. I handle maintenance on this Dragon's Breath."
Crrrack—
"...Oh-ho?"
The moment they shook hands, Rosaria felt the crushing pressure on her own and, drawing on her spirit's power, met his grip without flinching, still looking him straight in the eye.
"Well now. You look scrawny enough, but you've got some real grit, don't you?"
"...You're quite the tough one yourself."
When the handshake ended, Orson laughed heartily, clearly surprised.
"Don't take it too hard. The Dragon's Breath is something like a state secret, in a manner of speaking. Showing it to just anyone isn't easy, so think of it as a rite of passage."
"And we're all right, then?"
"Well... honestly, even if we showed it to another race, there's no way they'd understand the technology. It's confidential in form only. As long as no one steals the internal blueprints, just looking at the original doesn't matter much."
"Besides, I was curious what kind of human managed to shake down those high-and-mighty knife-ears. Hahaha!! And I like what I see!"
".....Ahaha, is that... so?"
This atmosphere is hard to keep up with.
At first she had thought the crushing handshake was meant to express hostility, yet now he was saying he liked her. On top of that he was casually showing a national secret to foreigners and acting as if it were nothing. Orson's manner left Rosaria thoroughly confused.
She had followed Louis in, but they were still citizens of another nation; one wrong move could turn into an international incident. She had been tense for a while now—though the cold sweat was probably just the sweltering heat of the chamber—and the sudden shift left her feeling oddly deflated.
"...This is incredible! What treatment have all these pipes undergone? They seem to be carrying the fuel used when the Dragon's Breath melts any metal... but lava at those temperatures could damage the pipes themselves, couldn't it?"
"Oho? You're the mage, I hear? And yet you're this interested in this sort of thing?"
"The layout feels similar to a magic circle. If the pipes are the strokes of the circle, then the lava flowing inside them is like mana. That's what makes it so fascinating."
Quite apart from Rosaria's complicated feelings, Felix was far more absorbed in the Dragon's Breath before him, freely voicing every question that came to mind and feeding his hunger for knowledge.
"Now here's a human who can actually hold a conversation. I'd love to share a mug of ale and talk properly, but... given the situation, that will have to wait. Follow me."
Felix's questions seemed to have pleased him; Orson's expression softened a little from earlier. Still, he moved straight to the main business, leading Rosaria and the others closer to the Dragon's Breath.