Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing — Chapter 6
Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing — Chapter 6
Lion was certain.
If that weren’t the case, his efficient, coldly rational grandfather—Petrick Asteri—would never have made a request like this.
‘By nature, when you love someone, you want to give them something even better than what you have.’
And there it was, that oddly self-conscious attitude.
‘Right. Grandfather must have been lonely too.’
Lion understood completely. His children had died young, and his grandsons showed him no affection whatsoever.
And it wasn’t as though their grandmother were still alive.
At any rate, this was an opportunity.
It was a gift for the one he loved, after all.
‘I can skyrocket his affinity.’
Utterly misreading Petrick’s expression, Lion clenched his fist and spoke with natural conviction.
“Just give me two weeks. I’ll make a higher-grade potion and bring it to you.”
“Two weeks?”
Petrick asked again, taken aback.
He meant, You can do it that quickly? But…
“…I’ll do it within a week!”
Having completely misunderstood, Lion strode out of the room wearing the resolute face of a man who had just made a decision.
Petrick reached a hand toward the latch-clicking door, but Lion was already gone.
“Haa, he didn’t even ask why…”
He had absolutely no idea what sort of misunderstanding had arisen, or how.
Well, at least it saved him the trouble of laying out excuses, so he decided to consider it a good thing…
No.
“Ah, no, you fool! That’s not what I meant!”
Too late, Petrick grasped the nature of Lion’s reaction and shouted at the already-closed door.
* * *
Once outside the room, Lion organized his thoughts.
“How do I make a three-star potion?”
Option one was blind grinding: level up somehow and hope a high-grade potion came out.
But he didn’t have enough time for that.
Option two was to buy high-grade herbs and craft it.
Easier on the body than the first option, and the odds of a good potion were higher.
However, if he went that route, he would be better off buying a potion from another alchemist.
Pass on that too.
That left only one option…
“The orthodox method was all that remained.”
The orthodox method.
Naturally, that meant doing everything himself—from gathering the herbs to crafting the final product.
“Bare hands have their limits.”
No matter how delicately he used his hands, rubbing against dirt and sand inevitably dulled his senses, making it impossible to harvest the finer herbs.
Moreover, for plants that required harvesting only the stem without damaging the root, grabbing and yanking them was practically guaranteed to cause damage.
In other words, it was time for a tool.
And a fairly good one at that.
Lion headed straight for the largest smithy in the territory.
Clang! Clang!
Tsssss!
The rhythmic hammering of iron echoed through the smithy, and red-hot metal steamed as it cooled in oil.
A wave of heat hit him, and Lion reflexively raised an arm.
“Not bad.”
Just as Lion murmured his admiration, a laborer who had been feeding firewood on one side approached.
“Welcome. What’re you looking for?”
Apparently discerning at a glance that Lion wasn’t an ordinary commoner, the man addressed the young Lion with polite deference.
“Are you in charge here?”
“I’m not the one in charge, but I can sell you goods. A regular sword? Or we have an easy-to-wield rapier, too.”
He seemed to be treating Lion as some wealthy young master who had just taken up swordsmanship.
“I’m looking for a hand hoe and a sickle.”
“…”
The laborer’s face twisted oddly. It was a look of pure incomprehension.
“A hand hoe and a sickle, why on earth… ahem, never mind. Please, this way, first.”
As if instinctively realizing he shouldn’t get too entangled, the laborer showed Lion to a corner of the smithy where hoes and sickles were stacked.
[Common Hoe]
[Rough Hoe]
[Plain Hoe]
“Hm?”
The quality of the hoes was merely passable.
‘That level won’t cut it.’
To obtain good herbs, he had to use equally good tools.
Well, it wasn’t as if an artisan-class blacksmith would ever make this sort of implement. And artisan-class blacksmiths were already busy taking commissions from all over, doing nothing but crafting arms and armor.
Even if Lion revealed that he was the eldest son of House Asteri, a top-quality hand hoe wouldn’t simply materialize by the end of the day.
So Lion decided to change his approach.
“Would it be possible to get some hands-on smithing experience here?”
“Excuse me? What kind of ridiculous…”
“I’ll pay you handsomely for your trouble.”
Lion took out his coin purse and handed it to the laborer.
“I can throw in more if you want.”
“…”
The laborer surreptitiously checked the contents of the purse, then his mouth fell open.
Instead of immediately running off somewhere…
“Seems you’re still a young master who doesn’t know much about the world!”
He scolded Lion and took a small handful of gold coins from the purse.
“This much alone is more than enough, so take your purse back! No matter how good the world gets, pickpockets can turn up anywhere. Do you understand?”
“Ah…”
Lion was the one caught off guard in turn.
‘I gave him extra on purpose…’
The idea had been for the laborer to take a little and show the bulk of the money to the artisan as a show of sincerity, but…
“Good grief, paying money just to try out something like this… Please wait a moment.”
The laborer left Lion standing there, went off somewhere, and shouted loudly enough to cut through the hammering.
“Brother! Come here a minute!”
“I’m busy to death, what d’you want!”
“Ah, just come here, I said! A big spender’s here!”
“Then milk the easy mark and sell him the lot, you dimwit! I’m already racking my brains over the fire!”
“Ah, that’s not what I mean!”
“…”
Lion could hear everything.
Then why had he been told to wait right here? Lion wondered, but he waited nonetheless.
Only after a bout of noisy back-and-forth did a considerably short-statured man emerge from deep inside the workshop.
A long braided beard and iron rust caked under his fingernails… he was unmistakably the longest-serving artisan here.
‘He’s a dwarf.’
Dwarves.
They could thrust a hand into fire without being burned; aside from their monstrous strength, they stood at the absolute peak of meticulous craftsmanship—so much so that their creations were said to be the finest in the world.
The alchemy set Lion used had likely been touched by dwarven hands as well.
He’d heard that only a few of their descendants remained, but he never expected to find one right here.
The dwarf dusted off his hands with a clap and stopped in front of Lion. Then he tilted his head up and spoke.
“So. You want to make a hand hoe yourself? A bookish fellow like you?”
“Correct.”
“Why?”
He couldn’t exactly say that there was nothing worth buying here, so Lion answered calmly.
“Before I came here, I only intended to buy something and leave. But after seeing this place, I got curious. The act of striking iron to create something—it looked impressive.”
“Hm…”
“So now I want to try making one myself.”
“Hmm…”
“As a point of reference, my name is Lion Asteri.”
“Aha.”
Being an eccentric really was convenient.
All his earlier explanations had failed to land, but seven syllables of a name, and the dwarf wore an expression that said he understood everything.
“Bring that thing over for this eccentric!”
“Good heavens, brother. Watch your tongue, please!”
The laborer broke into a cold sweat at the artisan’s remark, but he did as instructed and set up a work station.
An anvil, iron, tongs, and a hammer.
The setup was no different from any other smith’s.
“You can use the fire over there! And since this rascal here fleeced you for some extra coin, feel free to order him around while you make whatever you want!”
“Much obliged. But your name?”
Sssss.
The dwarven descendant had already vanished back to his work.
“…My brother’s name is Millionth Mudu. You can just call him Brother Mudu.”
The laborer, who had now learned Lion’s identity, supplied the information in a slightly more deferential tone.
“I see. And you are?”
“Just call me Hand. Well, er…”
Perhaps still bothered by how he’d fussed over Lion’s money earlier, Hand rubbed the back of his neck.
“Don’t worry about it. More than that, I’d like to look around the smithy.”
“Ah, come this way. It’s going to be rather hot.”
Hand walked ahead, showing him around the smithy: a blacksmith doing the forging, another shaping the rough iron to its intended use, another polishing the coarse edges smooth, and finally a blacksmith attaching the handles.
Each one focused on his task, endlessly producing goods.
Lion shed his coat and slung it over his arm as he inspected the place thoroughly.
There wasn’t a single part that lacked organization.
‘How strange.’
In that case, no matter how far from an artisan’s touch, the hoes shouldn’t have fallen to such low quality.
“And lastly, we put iron in here and apply heat.”
“Ah.”
Just as he thought. So that’s why.
Lion stared into the roaring forge of the smithy.
It was radiating enough heat to melt metal completely, yet something was lacking.
‘Come to think of it, Mudu said he was racking his brains over the fire, too.’
Peering more closely…
Gleam.
Within the blazing furnace, something flashed with a different quality.
[A Lesser Fire Spirit is looking at you.]
- It appears weaker than ordinary spirits. Might it have some grievance?
[☞Click to check the spirit’s grievance.]
“Is the fire normally this weak?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it weak… but certainly, the firepower has fallen a little compared to before. It hasn’t been a major problem yet, but… Brother Mudu seems pretty troubled by it. But how did you know the fire was weak?”
“The fire told me.”
“…Ah~.”
Hand’s reaction arrived a beat late.
Only then, it seemed, did the image of ‘young master’ give way in his mind to ‘eccentric.’
“So, what does the fire say would make it happy?”
“Good heavens. As if fire can talk.”
“…”
“Well then, I’d appreciate it if you’d show me how to make a hand hoe now.”
“Ah, yes. Follow me.”
Wearing a queasy expression that said he’d just realized something, Hand was about to guide Lion back to the personal anvil when—
“Don’t move!”
Millionth Mudu, who had disappeared earlier, planted himself in their path again.
His expression was utterly different from before.
“Hand. Go make yourself busy elsewhere. I need a word with this eccentric fellow.”
“What, but earlier you told me to handle him…”
“Are you going, you rascal?!”
“Tch, what a temper. Fine! Call for me later!”
Hand grumbled, but as if this wasn’t his first or second time dealing with it, he cleared out.
Or perhaps it was because he’d witnessed the eccentric side of Lion.
“…Hrrm. Come on, follow me outside.”
Lion followed Mudu out.
Mudu led him through the smithy’s back door, put some more distance between them and the building, and stopped where there were no people before opening his mouth.
“You saw it?”
“I saw it.”
“Do you know?”
“Most likely.”
An enigmatic exchange between two eccentrics.
What it meant was: Did you see the fire spirit? And have you determined the issue?
“And can you resolve it?”
“And if I do?”
“Hrrm…”
Mudu scratched his head with rust-stained fingernails. Iron filings dropped to the ground each time, but Lion paid no mind.
“You said you wanted to try making one yourself. I’ll teach you personally.”
“And?”
“…I’ll prioritize your orders above all others, anytime.”
It was an exceptionally generous condition.
The smithy of Asteri Territory was famous enough to receive commissions from other territories, after all.
Only then did Lion extend his hand with an air of satisfaction.
“I’ll start tonight.”