Is an Ertio Ticket Not Enough? Just Wait a Little~
‘What exactly is a blacksmith in a fantasy world?’
The omnipotent being who can craft anything the protagonist desires? A heroine archetype with a refreshing personality and expert aura that magnetically captivates enthusiasts? Or perhaps the type who normally just hammers away, but when danger strikes, grabs a single hammer and charges to the front lines to slaughter enemies by the dozen?
No. In a fantasy world, a blacksmith could be summed up in one word.
Romance.
The scorching hot romance of sweating before a blazing red forge, hammering a lump of iron with a rugged hammer steeped in the weight of years to forge a legendary blade.
Of course, what I needed right now wasn’t that kind of heart-pounding romance….
I had just arrived at the Artisan’s Street in the Imperial Capital’s 7th District. This was the place where the continent’s most renowned technicians gathered.
Naturally, I didn’t even glance at the famous, thriving blacksmith shops in the central area. Those honest establishments that charged a premium and lived up to their reputations would never make the ‘pretty trash’ I was looking for.
My steps led me to the outermost edge of the 7th District. It was an ambiguous back alley treated practically as outside the capital, connecting only to other districts. The kind of remote corner where geographically challenged travelers or rookie capital defense soldiers might occasionally get lost.
Perfect, in other words.
If you’re looking for trash, you have to dig through the dump, right?
I went around poking through every shabby blacksmith shop clustered in that sparsely populated alley. The results, unfortunately, were even more dismal than I’d expected.
The self-proclaimed blacksmiths here didn’t even have the skill to make things look decent on the surface. They were all just hacks who owned rusty longswords with teeth missing from the blades or who simply ground weapons roughly on a whetstone.
One place even had a short, stout guy with a bushy beard that made me think he was a dwarf, but—
“When do dwarves drink beer?”
“Hmm… naturally after finishing all their daily tasks, to wrap up the day!”
“Wrong. The correct answer is that dwarves have beer in their mouths at all times, you fraud.”
He was just an ordinary, very short human uncle awkwardly pretending.
I got my hopes up for nothing. Tsk.
Well, dwarves were rare even in the central district, so what was I even expecting? I clicked my tongue and shook my head.
Before I knew it, the sky had turned red and long shadows stretched across the alley. I’d spent the entire day until sunset covered in dust, scouring the area, but there was no sign of the personal blacksmith I so desperately wanted.
I kicked a pebble on the ground and let out a deep sigh.
“Haa….”
Still, I need to find one by tomorrow so I can make a plausible weapon sample, add magic inscriptions, and sell it….
I didn’t know when the Iregos Principality would start the war. But the sooner I showed them the weapon samples, the sooner they could decide whether to buy or not. Only then could the Caldia Merchant Guild avoid walking the path to ruin too quickly.
Anyway, as I was pondering whether to return empty-handed for today and turning to leave, something caught my eye at the end of the alley, tucked between crumbling old buildings. A ridiculously small blacksmith shop I hadn’t noticed earlier.
It was little more than a hole-in-the-wall with no proper signboard. It looked completely hopeless, so I was about to walk past when a few weapons displayed on a stand out front caught my attention completely.
Up close, the surface of the sword was astonishingly smooth. The engravings on the hilt were so intricate and ornate that they could rival high-end weapons from the capital’s central district. It was exactly the perfect form of a sword I wanted on the outside.
They’re giving me this kind of opportunity? I should at least talk to them.
I lightly ran my eyes over the displayed sword and pushed open the old wooden door.
Creak—!
The characteristic sweltering heat of a blacksmith shop was completely absent. The forge seemed to have gone cold long ago; instead, a chill hung in the air.
Wondering if they’d closed for the day, I scanned the dim interior. Soon, I spotted a small figure crouched among a pile of scrap metal in the corner.
Exactly half my height, with sturdy shoulders and a thick beard. This time it wasn’t a poor imitation—it was a real dwarf.
The moment he saw me barging in unannounced, he glared and shouted.
“We’re not open! If you don’t want to eat iron filings, get out right now!”
“…….”
Sudden outburst? No, if I were the type to back down from yelling like that, I wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble in the first place.
Undeterred, I strode forward boldly, squatted down, and met his gaze. The craftsmanship on the weapons outside was far too good to simply ignore.
At my refusal to retreat, the dwarf furrowed his brow deeply. Then he looked me up and down, snorted, and muttered in a hoarse voice while roughly wiping his hands on an oil-stained rag.
“Hah. It seems the young noble sir doesn’t know me at all. Are you still too young…?”
“Do you know who I am? The previous emperor and the one before him personally kept my swords by their bedsides and stroked them every single day.”
“…….”
Suddenly reciting his life story? I hadn’t even said anything.
…Well, I might as well listen.
Whatever it was, the fact that he was willing to talk wasn’t a bad thing.
“Neighboring countries sent countless spies and carts of gold coins trying to lure me away. The swords forged by my hands were the empire’s pride and power itself.”
A faint glimmer of past glory flickered in his eyes as he spoke. But that light soon faded, swallowed by deep shadows.
“But… one mistake that day cost me everything.”
The dwarf’s small hands began to tremble violently.
“When His current Majesty was still the Crown Prince, I poured my heart and soul into a sword for a hunting competition. But… the moment it struck the first blow on the battlefield, that perfect sword shattered into pieces. The fragments nearly took His Highness the Crown Prince’s life.”
“I see. That must have been incredibly dangerous.”
Ah, I ended up responding without thinking.
“…Anyway, I was put on the execution block for nearly taking a member of the imperial family’s life… but through a narrow act of mercy, I was thrown into this back-alley garbage dump. Forgotten by everyone, I occasionally just hammered away.”
The dwarf covered his face with both hands as if in agony.
“But I can’t even do that anymore. I developed trauma… I’m afraid that if someone uses a weapon I forged, they might… they might die. So I can no longer hammer properly. Therefore, stop this pointless nonsense and go back.”
A desperate life story from a craftsman driven to the edge—one I hadn’t asked for, hadn’t wanted to hear, and wasn’t even curious about.
But perhaps as repayment for listening quietly until the end, a rather good idea popped into my head.
The ability to create weapons with appearances so magnificent even an emperor would fall for them, yet which shatter into pieces on the first real strike. Plus, a perfect mental state where trauma had made him completely abandon any thought of durability or practicality.
This… doesn’t seem half bad?
Of course, the soldiers who would end up using those weapons seemed a bit pitiful, but I only felt a twinge of sympathy and nothing more. My life was still peaceful, and the Original Prisoners hadn’t started moving yet. That was all.
This dark fantasy world was a half-insane place spinning out of control. To survive, it was only natural that I had to be half-insane too.
Besides, before I was a mere merchant guild leader, wasn’t I an old-timer who knew this rotten world setting inside and out? I already had dozens of methods prepared in my head for patching up this extra character’s broken mentality and making him pick up a hammer for me.
Still squatting on the floor, I began to speak in a smooth yet persistent manner. What followed was a long, long hour of persuasion.
“Old man, by dwarf lifespan standards, don’t you still have many years left to swing that hammer? Besides, looking at the weapons hanging outside, it doesn’t seem like you’ve completely given up hope.”
I literally poured on the flattery.
“That day’s mistake only blew up because the target happened to be His Highness the Crown Prince. It’s not that your skills have rusted—perhaps your condition was unusually poor that day… or maybe someone jealous of you secretly tampered with it. We can’t rule that out, can we?”
At the plausible hypotheses and conspiracy theories flowing from my mouth, the dwarf’s eyes began to waver little by little.
“You must prove it. Even the victim of that accident—His Highness the Crown Prince, now His Majesty the Emperor—showed you mercy and spared your life. How long do you plan to rot away hiding in this back alley!”
“…….”
When my tirade, which sounded like I’d been possessed by the cult leader of some heretical religion, finally ended, silence fell over the blacksmith shop.
The dwarf stared blankly at his calloused hands for a moment, then clenched them tightly and sighed.
“…Barundal.”
“Pardon?”
“The dwarf once called the Forge of the Empire. That is my name—Barundal.”
Barundal rose to his feet with a heavy thud, as if he had made a firm resolution. He thrust out his rough, large hand toward me.
“I never dreamed I would feel such overwhelming emotion toward a noble brat four hundred years younger than me. Your absurd, groundless consolation… it has made my blood boil once more. I look forward to working with you.”
“I am Ideon of the Caldia Merchant Guild. I will take full responsibility for the money you’ll need for the rest of your life and for the highest-grade ores.”
I gladly shook his hand, sealing the deal.
Now all that remained was to mass-produce pretty trash weapons that only looked good on the outside and dump them on the Iregos Principality.
I feel a little bad for deceiving him… so I’ll take the old man to Ertio with me too.
Afterward, with much lighter steps, I returned to the guild and immediately headed to the guild master’s office. There, I proudly and confidently announced my new talent acquisition to Elenoa, who had her nose buried in a sea of documents at her desk.
It was a tear-jerking success story about how I had scouted a mentally broken dwarf—who had nearly been executed for completely shattering the former Crown Prince’s sword—from a rotting blacksmith shop on the outermost edge of the 7th District and made him our exclusive blacksmith.
“…….”
After my magnificent speech ended, only a suffocating silence lingered in the guild master’s office.
Elenoa dropped the fountain pen she was holding. She didn’t even seem to notice the ink spreading across the documents.
Ever since I had taken the guild master position, a series of incidents had rocked the place like a never-ending poppin’ dance. I thought she had recently reached a state of enlightenment where ordinary eccentricities no longer fazed her.
But this one seemed to have completely surpassed even that level of detachment.
Her hands began to tremble, then moved to her slightly disheveled hair.
“Aaaaaagh!”
Elenoa finally forgot completely about the trivial difference in status between a former ducal family member and a commoner vice guild leader. She slammed both hands on the desk and screamed with all her heart.
Her eyes had lost focus and were spinning wildly.
“I… I really don’t understand anymore why I’ve been working so hard, barely sleeping all this time!”
With her face flushed bright red and breathing heavily, she pointed a finger into the air.
“Why! After purifying barren wastelands into sanctuaries and securing exclusive trade with a prideful principality, why do you always steer things in these insane directions the moment it seems like we’re doing well?! What sane merchant guild hires an attempted imperial assassin as their exclusive blacksmith?!”
“Come on… I told you, I have my reasons.”
Listening to Elenoa’s screams echoing through the guild master’s office, I turned my gaze out the window.
Just hold on a little longer. Once the destruction begins, I’ll give you a ticket to Ertio right away.
Or should I throw in a set menu of ‘appreciating my handsome face’ as a bonus?