The Dwarf and the Sword (1)
The sight that greeted me at the imperial capital of Granfurt, at the end of a week-long journey, had changed so completely that my memories from three hundred years ago felt like a joke.
It was a view that deserved the word magnificent in every sense — and not simply because magic towers of every hue, blue and red and green, soared into the sky. The roads were paved wall to wall with expensive marble, broad enough that dozens of carriages could pass through at once without a hitch.
The times really have changed.
The carriage I'd ridden in, for one, hadn't been drawn by horses at all — it ran on mana stones. If you asked a passerby, they'd tell you, only half in jest, that darkness didn't exist in this city. Fair enough. Even now, in broad daylight, the glass orbs set into the buildings' outer walls were giving off a soft red glow, like the sky at dusk...
I stood there a while, staring blankly at how far civilization had come. Then I gathered myself, dropped my luggage at a reasonably decent inn, and headed back out.
My destination was the grand market at the heart of the capital. The reason was simple.
'Even so, walking in without a single weapon to my name wouldn't do.'
I still had no idea what exactly I'd be doing at the academy, but summoned I had been — as someone the headmaster himself was looking for, in name at least. And fending for myself with nothing but a tree branch whittled down to dagger length would be asking quite a lot.
"Cheap! Dirt cheap! Prices you won't find anywhere else in the Empire!!"
"Hey, buddy, quit window-shopping and come on in! I'll make it worth your while!!"
The moment I set foot in the market, the merchants' raucous hawking came battering at my ears. But even drifting from stall to stall in the wake of all that noise, nothing on display managed to catch my eye.
'Even in the capital, is a proper sword too much to ask for?'
Everything sold as a "sword" was decorative, through and through. Uselessly enormous gems studded into the hilts threw the balance completely off, and the blades themselves were thin and shoddy — every last one of them built to shatter the first time it met anything in a real fight.
"Looking for a weapon that can actually be used?"
A clear, bell-like voice sounded from behind me. I turned to find a girl who looked about seventeen standing there.
Neatly groomed, violet hair. Her pale green eyes lent her a mysterious air — but for all that, it was the generous curve of her figure, impossible to hide even beneath a loose robe, that seized my attention.
"That I am."
"Everything here is overpriced and useless in a real fight. Shall I guide you to a place I know?"
The girl kept breaking into eye-crinkling smiles, her words coming in a soft, honeyed tone.
'Her manner is friendly and all, nothing wrong with any of it...'
And yet something about it didn't sit right. On the surface she approached me all sweetness, but there was a subtle distance to her — a girl whose depths you couldn't quite read. Above all, in this world there is no such thing as kindness without a reason.
I turned the matter over for a moment...
"Then lead the way."
I decided to trust her, writing off any loss in advance. It was simple arithmetic: following one suspicious guide beat combing every corner of the capital with no end in sight.
"We're here. This is the place."
The destination she'd led me to was a shabby little shop tucked into a corner of the bustling district.
— Torso's Kitchen —
'What the— I thought we were headed to a smithy, and it's just a cookware shop?'
And when I pushed the door open and stepped inside, I was greeted by someone even more unexpected.
"Well now, look who's here, runt."
A small, sturdy man with a red beard hanging down to his chest. The violet-haired girl was hardly tall herself, but seeing that she barely came up to his chest really drove home what I was looking at.
'A dwarf?'
A famously insular race, notorious for despising the company of others. And one of them was running a smithy — no, a cookware shop — in the capital of the Empire, of all places. What was with that?
"Yes, uncle. This gentleman seemed to be in a bind with no weapon on him, so I brought him here."
At her gesture, the old dwarf's expression flipped in an instant, as though he'd finally taken proper notice of me.
He studied my shoulders, my grip, the way I stood — then screwed his face into a fierce scowl, as if he'd seen enough.
"I'm not selling to that one."
"..."
Turned away at the door, just like that? Since when did cookware shops get to pick and choose their customers?
"Plain tableware I'd sell to those elf bastards and all. But to you? Can't do it."
"Uncle, please, don't be like this..."
Startled by the turn of events, the girl tried to talk him around, but there wasn't the slightest crack in the old man's stubbornness.
Well — when a craftsman says he won't sell, I had no intention of begging. Besides, dwarf or no, whether he could even produce gear to my liking was a separate question. More than anything, the longer I locked horns with the old dwarf, the only one who'd end up squirming was the girl who'd brought me here...
"If that's how it is, then I'll take my leave."
With that, I turned away without a second thought. No — I tried to.
"...Huh?"
On my way to the door, a sword had caught my eye. It looked like nothing special — a plain longsword stuck carelessly into a corner of the display rack.
'Unbelievable. The old dwarf's craft is THIS good?'
To eyes that had spent a lifetime beside swords, it was plain as day: the state of the forge in that meticulously wrought blade, down to the harmony between hilt and steel. A piece that could rightly be called a masterwork without a flicker of embarrassment.
'I have to buy a sword from this old man. No matter what.'
Ordinary persuasion would never move him. Which meant I'd have to behave a little unreasonably.
With that thought, I turned on my heel and strode back toward the corner of the display. Then, before the old man had any chance to stop me, I wrapped my hand around the carelessly planted sword and pulled it free.
"Put that back this instant before I throw you ou—!"
"You blended orichalcum into the blade — the ore that scatters mana. And the balance point sits a hair's breadth toward the tip, too."
Whoosh! Whoosh!
At my flat assessment, delivered after a few idle swings, the mouth of the old man mid-shout fell gaping open.
"Judging by its shape, it wasn't made with swordsmen fighting each other in mind..."
I ran a hand along the finely honed edge and added:
"This sword was forged to fight mages. Am I right?"
"You— how in the world did you..."
The dwarf elder's pupils blew wide.
A natural reaction. This was the age of great magic — an age when even the dwarves had stopped forging weapons. The only ones who came looking to buy a sword were third-rate adventurers and two-bit mercenaries, at absolute best. And into his shop had walked a green youth of barely twenty-three who, from nothing more than a few practice swings, had seen straight through to the blade's true purpose. Small wonder the old man was stunned.
"Honestly, I couldn't pay a price that would satisfy a craftsman of your caliber. Not that that seems to be what you want anyway."
Smirking at the old man — struck dumb and frozen stiff — I held the sword back out to him.
"But I'll guarantee you this much: on this whole vast continent, I'd wager I'm the only one who could put this blade to a hundred percent of its potential. If you'd rather it sit masterless in a corner for the rest of your days, then by all means, take it back."
Confronted with my brazen provocation, the old man seemed to lose his command of words entirely and merely stroked his shaggy beard.
After a long silence spent wrestling with himself, a gravelly voice finally rasped out of him.
"...Fine. I'll admit that your eye for a blade, at least, is something remarkable."
Resigned, the old man turned the sword over in his hands, rubbing it again and again.
Reading that reaction, I figured the only thing left was for him to hand it over without fuss...
But what actually came out of the dwarf's mouth was something out of left field.
"That said, this piece here already has an owner set aside for it."
Then, flashing an unreadable smile, he went on.
"Grant one favor of mine, and I might just reconsider..."
A favor, huh. Well, unless it was something absurd like fetching him a dragon's claw, there was no reason I couldn't oblige.
Without waiting for my answer, the old man headed for the back of the shop, and a moment later something hit the floor with a heavy thud.
A black mass that brought a massive boulder to mind.
I hadn't the faintest idea what it was for, so I rapped it with my knuckles — all that came back was a brutally dense hardness. And yet calling it merely hard didn't quite cover it either; a faint blue glow, something like mana, drifted oddly unmoored across its surface...
'Hold on. I've definitely seen this thing in my past life.'
Its exact name escaped me, but of one thing there was no doubt: it was a rare mineral used in the forging of equipment.
The old dwarf, watching me examine the mineral with keen interest, handed back the sword I'd been holding and tossed out flatly:
"Looks like you've seen enough of the goods. And my favor is no big deal."
But with something impish lurking in his smile, it felt like quite a big deal indeed.
And sure enough...
"If you're truly a swordsman of skill, then cut this thing in half. Do that, and the sword is yours."
Prove your skill by cleaving the mineral. The demand to split it precisely in half, above all, was a craftsman's test — a challenge of technique, not raw strength.
When I said nothing and simply kept staring, the old man snorted, apparently concluding I'd lost my nerve.
"What's the matter? Now that you've seen it up close, not so confident?"
At his flimsy goading, I let a small smile cross my face and lightly firmed my grip on the sword.
"No take-backs, old man."
And a moment later...
"Whoaaa..."
"Impossible..."
On the floor of the shabby old cookware shop, its earlier hardness rendered utterly meaningless, lay the lump of mineral — split cleanly, precisely in two — rolling to a stop beside me.