This Is All Thanks to the Guild Leader
Two days had passed since Elenoa’s blood-curdling scream had torn through the guild master’s office. Barundal arrived at the guild carrying something large wrapped in coarse white cloth.
“Oh… it’s finally ready?”
“Aye, the prototype is complete,” he rumbled.
“Let’s have a look!”
I took the object from Barundal and peeled away the fabric. The blade that emerged was so brilliantly polished it nearly hurt to look at. Its overall form combined luxurious ornamentation with sleek, elegant curves. At a glance it possessed the refined dignity one might expect from a knight commander of a haughty noble house. At its center, the Caldia family crest had been engraved with exquisite, graceful detail, even stretched slightly longer for artistic flair. My appraisal ran long, but in short, its appearance alone made it a flawless first-rate product.
“So you’re telling me you can churn out over two hundred of these in two or three weeks?” I asked, unable to hide my disbelief.
Barundal avoided my eyes, looking faintly embarrassed, and answered with deliberate nonchalance.
“Hrmph. If I poured my soul and heart into each one as usual, three or four blades a day would be my limit. But since we’ve compromised on a mass-produced frame with the core hollowed out, I can easily manage ten per day.”
“Well, now…”
The quality far exceeded my expectations. I lifted the sword with genuine admiration.
“What was the production cost?”
“Following the blacksmith guild’s mass-production standards, I stripped out all the expensive ores and mixed common iron ore with cheap scrap metals. The cost should be about thirty percent lower than a standard military-issue iron sword. Even so, its durability is roughly equal to—or slightly below—that of an ordinary iron blade.”
“I see.”
Damn it. The whole point was to make the durability collapse completely.
A twinge of disappointment hit me. Ideally I had wanted something that would snap like a toy the moment it was swung. But if I had ordered him to make outright garbage that couldn’t even be called a weapon, Barundal’s mind would have shattered all over again. Besides, any visible trace of intentional sabotage might have led others to suspect I was deliberately trying to ruin the guild.
Well, this is more than enough to fleece those Iregos bastards. I’ll have to be satisfied here.
I smiled brightly and asked Barundal, “Would you mind if I test it myself?”
“It is a weapon the guild leader commissioned. Do with it as you please.”
“How refreshing.”
I grabbed the sword and headed for the small outdoor sparring ground behind the guild building. Barundal followed close at my heels.
Standing at the center of the wide training yard, I took a light breath and settled into stance. Though I currently wore the mask of a mad merchant guild leader who lived only to waste money, the truth was that I had spent a full ten years in secret, brutal training from the moment I possessed this body—all to reach the game’s true ending. My body had already reached the realm of the supreme, capable of casually devouring most so-called powerhouses. Even before I finished preparing, it was unconsciously tracing the perfect trajectory of a sword path.
Swish—! A surprisingly loud cutting sound rang across the entire yard. I swung the blade in every direction, carefully checking the weight distribution and sharpness I felt through my fingertips. It looked impressive, but the balance was practically garbage. Anyone with real sword experience would notice it immediately. It was the perfect level of supply-grade junk to hand out for academy freshmen’s training.
Which makes it even better.
Having confirmed a perfectly bad result in exactly the way I wanted, I smiled with satisfaction and moved to sheathe the sword. That was the exact instant it happened.
Almost unconsciously, I tested its aura conductivity by channeling a light stream of aura into the blade—and immediately felt something strange. No, something outright alien.
Huh?
A profoundly unnatural sensation came from the lower right edge. It felt as if the aura, which should have flowed smoothly, was hitting a clogged drain and surging backward.
Don’t tell me this is why the Crown Prince’s sword shattered?
Curiosity piqued, I instinctively focused and drove even more aura into that exact spot. The next moment—
Crack—!BOOM!
With a shattering roar, the silver sword in my hand literally exploded into countless fragments that scattered through the air. It was a perfect reenactment of that ominous accident from years ago that had nearly cost the Crown Prince his life.
“G-Guild Leader!!”
Barundal, who had been watching from a distance, turned deathly pale. His face drained of all color as he pumped his short legs wildly and came sprinting toward me. I could hear his ragged breathing as he frantically checked whether any shards had struck my body.
But I simply stared down in a daze at the broken hilt still clutched in my hand.
What was that discomfort just now?
I carefully ran my finger along the jagged fracture of the shattered blade and muttered without thinking, “The metal bonding… was severed at an extremely fine level? I remember learning that such a peculiar phenomenon usually stems from imbalance in the hammering or tempering process…”
“F-Forgive me! It’s me again… I’ve done something unforgivable again!”
Barundal ignored my muttering entirely. He dropped to his knees with a heavy thud, ready to smash his forehead against the ground. His entire body trembled as the old trauma threatened to overwhelm him once more.
I hurriedly bent down and grabbed his shoulders. “Calm yourself, Master Barundal! This isn’t your fault!”
“But the sword… my sword broke again! It nearly injured you!”
“No, you’ve misunderstood. This was my mistake, not yours.”
“I-Is that the truth?”
I looked straight into the terrified old craftsman’s eyes and continued in the calmest voice I could manage. “In that instant I lost control and stupidly forced aura into a single point of the blade. The thin metal couldn’t withstand the pressure and ruptured. Unless someone of my ridiculous strength deliberately shoves power into it like that, this is a sturdy sword that ordinary knights could swing for a hundred years without ever breaking it. So please, ease your mind.”
“……”
After my repeated explanations and sincere reassurance, Barundal finally relaxed a little and nodded. The way he wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes with the back of his rough hand made him look exactly like a frightened child. And on my own lips, as I comforted him, there bloomed a brilliantly bright smile.
It worked… It really, truly worked this time!
Please, whatever you do, never touch this perfect flaw. It’s absolutely ideal for screwing over those Iregos bastards! Please!!
Back at the forge, Barundal barricaded himself in a dark corner of the workshop, breathing hard. The image of the broken sword hilt the guild leader had been holding still flickered before his eyes.
The young lord kindly said it was his own mistake for failing to control the aura’s pressure, but…
Barundal stared at his own trembling hands, still shaking from the trauma.
No matter how I look at it, that was my error. What meaning does a weapon have if its endurance changes depending on whether the wielder is strong or weak?
Faced with what felt like a fatal flaw that signaled the end of his path as a blacksmith, he nearly collapsed to the floor in utter despair. But just as he began to curl in on himself again, the memory of Ideon’s passionate voice and outstretched hand echoed in his ears. Recalling those intense eyes that had restarted his rusted heart, Barundal somehow pulled himself together and rose to his feet.
“That’s right… I haven’t properly held a hammer in nearly thirty years.”
He would hammer again. He had to discover the cause. With that resolve, he began pushing firewood into the furnace to light it. In the forge where only the crackling of burning wood could be heard, the words Ideon had muttered while stroking the broken cross-section suddenly flashed through his mind.
The metal bonding… was severed at an extremely fine level? I remember learning that such a peculiar phenomenon usually stems from imbalance in the hammering itself rather than the tempering…
“……”
Barundal’s hands froze as if by magic. Standing before the blazing furnace, he sank deep into serious contemplation.
Yes, that’s it. At four hundred and ten years old, a dwarf is only just entering his prime. It’s too early to claim his senses have dulled or that age has made his hammering unbalanced.
There was no way his strength or senses had already declined. Members of the other races noticed any change in themselves faster than anyone. Above all, even after centuries of staring into flames, his eyes had failed to catch that tiny fracture at the moment the weapon was completed. That meant there had been no problem with his body or technique.
Then… the hammer’s own balance?
Barundal whipped his head around to look at the old hammer lying on the workbench. It was a precious gift his late father had given him three hundred years ago on the day of his debut as a blacksmith. With trembling hands he picked it up and drew it close to the furnace’s red glow. He examined the surface and the joint between head and handle with eyes that had never once doubted the tool he had wielded like his own limbs for a lifetime.
And then Barundal’s eyes flew wide—wider than the flames themselves.
Aah… the tip of the hammer head was bent inward by the width of a single hair.
Because the hammer itself was warped, every one of the thousands upon thousands of strikes had accumulated a minute yet fatal imbalance inside the metal. Which meant that the young lord had seen through an invisible flaw that even he himself had failed to notice after decades of use—simply by swinging the weapon once.
That man… before he was a guild leader, his eye for blacksmithing was already that extraordinary…?
Barundal set the hammer down and gazed up at the faint moonlight beyond the spider-webbed window. An uncontrollable wave of emotion ran down his spine. He shouted at the top of his lungs, whether toward the night outside or toward the young guild leader who had awakened him.
“Now I understand completely! I had lost my pride as a blacksmith for a while and was merely lost in shallow nostalgia with my father!”
His voice thundered throughout the forge and across the entire Seventh District.
“First I shall forge this hammer anew, perfectly! Then I will present you, Guild Leader, with a flawless blade that will never break no matter how much aura any warrior pours into it!”
About three weeks after Barundal had delivered his prototype, I sat in a daze on the floor in the middle of the audience chamber in the Iregos Principality, eastern part of the continent.
Before me, the current Prince of Iregos lounged sideways on his throne wrapped in luxurious furs, gazing at me with sincere reverence.
“When I had our knights test the weapons the guild leader brought as samples in actual combat, their overwhelming performance nearly made my eyes pop out.”
“……”
“To be honest, at first I suspected they were just more flashy-looking trash. But the perfect durability and sharpness that burst forth the moment mana was infused into the blades… At this rate, it seems perfectly reasonable to entrust fifty percent of all future weapon procurement for the entire Iregos Principality to the Caldia Merchant Guild.”
“I see……”
“Haha, truthfully I wanted to ask for seventy percent, but I was told it would collapse many of the principality’s own merchants. Still, in my view, continuing business with someone of your character would benefit the principality far more than dealing with those conscience-less vermin… What a shame.”
He even offered a benevolent smile and clapped his hands lightly.
“Ah! The apples grown from the magic stones you brought as an extra were absolutely exquisite. Barhel was particularly fond of them.”
“Thank… you.”
You damn dwarf geezer… Just what the hell did you do to my swords?!