Accept the New Recruit (5)
Whoosh—
A cool wind came racing from the far edge of the vast grassland and swept past Adam. The air was crisp and clean. He quickened his pace.
Even now, in this very moment, the time allotted to him was slipping away.
"Hmm?"
As the temple at the grassland's edge drew nearer, he could make out something gathered around it. The distance was still too great to discern their shapes clearly, but the figures looked small—like a cluster of children.
"...Baby angels, maybe?"
Adam figured the cherubs had been summoned by the god to come greet him. The Holy Land's scenery was nothing like the clouds and celestial music he had imagined—just open plains—but he had still expected angels to be part of the package.
His steps quickened. The little shapes were milling about in a busy huddle.
But the closer he got, the more unsettling their forms became.
Those small figures were extraordinarily hairy. No—not hair. Beards. Beards so long and bushy that their entire upper bodies vanished beneath the thickets of whiskers.
And then there were the arms—thick, corded muscle. Bulging triceps and biceps that announced their presence with pride, steel-hard at a glance. Muscle forged by grueling training, or hard labor, no doubt.
"Uh..."
Adam let out a low groan. Whatever those fellows were, they were definitely not baby angels. If they were baby angels...
Baby angels soaring through the sky with iron forearms and wild, cascading beards? Adam shuddered involuntarily.
"What's that human saying?"
"I heard he's the new guy."
"So that human's the youngest now?"
Adam and the dwarves were close enough now to see each other's faces. The dwarves were whispering among themselves, though Adam couldn't quite catch the words.
A stretch of silence settled over them. The dwarves eyed Adam and murmured about their first-ever human junior, while Adam studied the dwarves and fretted.
Those thick, iron-hard arms... calluses so thick they're practically gloves... Are these the ones the god spoke of?
The god had told Adam to learn from His servants. That meant these servants of the god were the ones who crafted weapons...
No matter what you do, first impressions matter most!
Even if he was wrong about who they were, it never hurt to make a good impression. Adam carefully folded away the craftsman's pride and stubbornness he carried in his chest.
What he needed now was not the pride of Master Adam the renowned smith, but the open heart of a greenhorn Adam ready to learn everything from scratch.
"The name's Adam! This old body of mine may not look like much, but the god has taken me in, and I've come to learn the ways of the forge!"
Adam bowed deeply to the dwarves—a perfect right angle.
The dwarves stared at him without blinking. Adam felt a flicker of anxiety. Craftsmen as a breed tended to be eccentric or foul-tempered, and he was no exception.
Blacksmiths especially—standing before roaring fires, grinding through hard labor—tended to run particularly rough around the edges.
...Did I wait too long to introduce myself?
The dwarves approached the still-bowed Adam.
Then they surrounded him—and welcomed him with explosive enthusiasm.
"The god told you to learn our craft? Then we'd better teach you! Bwahahaha!!"
"A human junior—that's a first! Looks like we've got ourselves an interesting little brother!"
"Hey, kid, if there's anything you don't know, just ask! This big brother here will teach you with all his heart! The forge work's rough at first, sure, but if you stick with it and keep learning—"
One dwarf who had been staring hard at Adam's hands suddenly shouted.
"Look at this! Check out the kid's hands—he's handled some iron before!"
"What? Let me see."
"What, so you worked a forge on the outside before coming here? Aww, then there's no fun in teaching you from the ground up!"
The dwarves swarmed in, bellowing in voices like furnace blasts. Adam felt his eardrums protest under the thunderous chorus of dwarf throats.
If this kept up, his ears would start bleeding.
"Our human junior's finally here! Don't we need to see what he can do?"
"Just watching's no fun! Let's make it a drinking bet—former youngest versus the human junior!"
"We've still got a mountain of work left and you want to drink? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
"So you're saying no?"
"No—let's do it right now!! Bwahahaha!!"
"Alright!! Human junior... what's your name again?"
Adam felt like he'd been caught in a typhoon.
"Adam... It's Adam."
"Adam the junior versus the former youngest!! Everybody to the forge!! Drinking bet!!"
At the words "drinking bet," every dwarf who had been chattering among themselves turned to stare at Adam at once. He had a sinking feeling that something had gone terribly wrong, but there was nothing he could do about it.
"A drinking bet? Count me in!"
"Hey!! Everybody gather up!!"
"Drinking bet? I'm in too!"
Before he knew it, the dwarves had closed ranks around Adam and started running somewhere. In a flurry of pulling and shoving, Adam found himself being hauled along at a full sprint.
In the distance, their destination came into view—the forge. For a forge in the Holy Land, it looked rather small and ordinary.
Clang—! Clang—! Clang—!
Even from a good distance away, a ferocious heat slammed into his face. The furnace must have been boiling with something like lava; the heat felt as if it would cook his lungs right through, and Adam recoiled in shock.
"Ah— damn! We rushed this, didn't we? Still a bit too hot for the kid, huh?"
The dwarf beside him spoke kindly, then pulled a small dagger from his pocket and snipped off a thick swath of his own beard with a few quick strokes.
He held out the beard-clipping, roughly the size of a handkerchief.
"Here, kid—cover your nose and mouth with this. That should help."
"Th-thank you."
"It's nothing! We're family now, aren't we?"
The moment Adam covered his nose and mouth with the faintly beer-scented beard, the searing heat vanished as if by magic. He couldn't hide his astonishment.
Truly, these are the workers the god Himself shaped!
It looked like nothing more than a rough, abundant beard, yet it blocked the heat while letting fresh air through. Adam looked at the dwarves with new eyes.
—Clang! —Clang! —Clang!
The hammer blows that had been coming slow and measured picked up their pace. Adam stepped carefully into the forge and took in his surroundings.
It was an ordinary-looking forge, no different from any other. Hammers hung along one wall—dwarf-sized tools, by the look of them.
And up ahead—
One dwarf stood with his back to them, hammering away without pause. Before him, with no ordinary furnace in sight, a fierce flame roared free.
A vast, scorching fire that flicked its red tongue as if it meant to swallow the dwarf whole. But the dwarf paid it no mind, wholly absorbed in his hammering.
"Hey, kid—!!"
The dwarf beside Adam bellowed. The shout cut through the hammering and shook the entire forge. But the dwarf at the anvil didn't turn.
Had he not heard?
The dwarf next to Adam tilted his head, then his face lit with realization, and he called out again.
"Bran—!!"
"Hmm? Big brother? Wait—all the other brothers too?"
Only then did the youngest dwarf turn around... Bran, now the former youngest, spoke with cheeky nonchalance.
"Sorry, I couldn't hear a thing. I'm not the youngest anymore, but somebody keeps calling for the youngest, you know?"
"You little smart-mouth!"
"So, is that fellow the new junior?"
"That's right! The god told him to learn from us. Looking at his hands, seems like he worked some iron on the outside—am I right?"
"Th... that's right."
"So we figured we'd check out our junior's skills! You and him—drinking bet!"
Opus Fallac—the dwarf Bran had called his eldest brother—boomed the announcement. Bran kept hammering the glowing red billet without missing a beat as he talked with Opus Fallac.
"A bet? Sounds good. What are we betting on?"
"Hmm..."
Opus Fallac stroked his chin-beard and fell into thought. He couldn't gauge the human junior's level precisely, but the calluses hadn't fully covered the man's palms yet—hardly the hands of a seasoned smith.
Anyone who claimed to have eaten iron for a living ought to have calluses blanketing the entire palm, shouldn't they? Calluses that thin couldn't even grip a red-hot billet.
Opus Fallac's brow furrowed deeper. Then his eye caught the glowing metal—drawn out long and thin like pulled taffy, mid-flattening.
He slapped his knee.
"Since we don't know the junior's level, let's keep it simple! The bet's subject is forging technique!!"
Forging technique. The art of heating metal and hammering it into the desired shape.
It was the work Adam had done his entire life. Confidence surged through him.
Even if his opponent was a servant of the god, when it came to forging, Adam had never had reason to bow his head to anyone.
"Take that billet and hammer it as thin and flat as you can! Judging will be done by me, Opus Fallac, and Sedus Fallac!"
"Kid, you up for it?"
"I've eaten enough iron in my time that I can hold my own anywhere!"
"Bwahahaha!! I like that confidence!! Still, since it's your first time, I'll stand by and assist!!"
The dwarves roared with laughter at Adam's bold reply. The look in their eyes was... well, rather like the look one gives a chirping little chick.
"Alright—let's get started!"
At Opus Fallac's shout, Bran and Adam each took their places.
Bran, with practiced ease, pulled a glowing billet from the flames and began to hammer.
And Adam...
"Wh-whoa!! Hey, hey!!"
"Who hammers metal like that?!"
"That's not how you do it."
...found himself surrounded by dwarves delivering the most extreme unsolicited coaching of his life.