The Blacksmith
"Hmm... interesting design. A little shorter than this. Yes. Understood. I'll make these up for you in several colors."
After getting measured, I pointed at the dolphin shorts and T-shirt Hana was wearing and ordered several sets in a slightly shorter cut. Once I'd paid for the mountain of underwear I'd bought, I stepped out of Linda's shop.
"Did you enjoy your shopping?"
I nodded in answer to the coachman waiting for us in the driver's seat and climbed into the carriage.
"Where to next?"
Once he'd confirmed we were all seated, the coachman asked.
I'd already ordered the robe Selena would wear, so now I needed to get Hana a bikini armor... Looking at how things had gone so far, though, I had a feeling this was going to be another custom job.
Through my conversations with Samantha — the shop clerk — and with Linda, I'd come to realize that for a fantasy world, this place had a seriously underdeveloped concept of armor defense. Picturing Hana in a bikini armor, I named our destination.
"A blacksmith. Take us to a forge that specializes in armor."
"A blacksmith, huh... Hans specializes in farm tools... Gordon does kitchenware... Ah! Come to think of it, there was a big stir not long ago about a group of dwarves opening a forge! I'll take you there."
After a moment's thought, the coachman got the carriage moving.
Having guessed why I was looking for an armor specialist, Hana fixed me with a thoroughly displeased stare.
But a master yielding to a slave's glare and abandoning his plans? Unthinkable.
I ignored her stubbornly clinging gaze and mulled over the shape of the bikini armor, and before long the carriage rolled to a stop.
"We've arrived."
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Along with the coachman's words came the sound of hammering. Listening to the ringing that vibrated right through my chest, I stepped down from the carriage and saw two dwarves gripping a red-hot metal plate on an anvil with long tongs, while a third brought a massive hammer down upon it.
Seeing it in person, the sheer force is unreal...
Watching the sparks leap with every blow of that head-sized hammer and the plate gradually flatten out, I murmured a quiet note of admiration, then scanned the suits of armor displayed on the racks just in case.
Nope. Figures.
Confirming there was no bikini armor among them, I cupped my hands and shouted over to the dwarves sweating buckets at the forge.
"I'd like to commission some custom armor!"
The dwarf who'd just brought his hammer down heard my voice and stopped mid-swing.
"What was that?"
He hadn't caught it properly over the hammering that filled the forge. Wiping the sweat from his brow with one hand, he waited, so I bellowed our purpose again.
"We've come because I'd like to commission some custom armor!"
"Tsk."
Clicking his tongue at my words, the dwarf turned toward the back and hollered.
"Bron! Customer wants armor!"
A moment later, a dwarf — Bron — emerged, scratching his head.
"Just pick something off the rack, why make it a hassle..."
Uh... I can hear you...
Grumbling in a voice thick with annoyance, Bron waved us in with one short arm.
"Come on in."
Answering the summons, I led Selena and Hana into the forge, which was thick with heat pouring from the furnace and radiating off the glowing plate metal.
Bron spread a rough sheet of paper across a desk cluttered with odds and ends and held out a stick of charcoal.
"Sketch the shape you want."
Taking the charcoal, I awkwardly drew a figure wearing bikini armor.
"The drawing's a bit rough, but if you could make it like this."
I pointed at my sketch of a person covered by nothing but three triangular plates over the chest and crotch. Bron tilted his head.
"Surely you're not asking me to make just that... You mean a full plate harness with decorations on the chest and groin, right?"
No. I really do mean just that.
I shook my head at Bron's misunderstanding of the design.
"Your first thought was correct. I'd like you to make a women's armor that covers only the chest and the crotch."
Hearing the explanation, Bron dug a finger in his ear.
"Have I gone deaf from too much hammering? I could've sworn I just heard something insane... You're asking me to make a women's armor that protects only here and here?"
He pointed at the chest and crotch. I nodded.
"Exactly. That's precisely what I want. Oh — and the chest pieces don't necessarily have to be triangles."
Bron looked at me like I was an idiot.
"Do you even know what armor is?"
The way he said it, he clearly refused to acknowledge what I'd ordered as armor at all.
How can someone be this closed-minded! Alas, what a tragedy!
Unlike Linda, who'd embraced the new meta of the bikini robe with progressive flair, Bron was trapped in outdated thinking, buried under convention, unable to accept a new paradigm. I met his eyes with pity, sighed inwardly, and spoke.
"Haha. I'm well aware it's an unfamiliar design. But this is armor that boasts overwhelming defensive—"
"Defense, my ass."
"—power. In my homeland, we call it bikini armor."
Ignoring Hana's interruption, I finished my explanation of bikini armor. Bron's face twisted with irritation.
"So you're telling me to design and forge a suit of armor that couldn't stop a blind arrow — the kind of thing practically guaranteed to get its wearer killed screaming? Are you completely out of your mind?"
Suddenly branded a madman, I hurriedly shook my head and scrambled to explain.
"Hana here is quite possibly one of the strongest people in the world, so you don't need to worry about that."
Trusting the skill of an S-rank hero who had saved multiple worlds, I pointed at Hana — who was wearing a thoroughly unimpressed expression — and spoke with absolute confidence. Bron looked at me like I'd grown a second head.
"Huh? That scrawny human woman who looks like she couldn't even swing a sword properly — like she couldn't beat Maxim, who just barely learned how to work the tongs — is one of the strongest in the world? What kind of nonsense is that?"
The moment Bron finished, one of the two dwarves holding the plate with tongs scowled and muttered.
"Senior Designer, why are you dragging me into this while I'm hard at work?"
"Oh, shut it. You're the one who whines that your muscles hurt too much to move after a single day's work."
"Hey! That was ages ago... And even so, comparing me to some frail human female is a bit much, don't you think?"
The instant Maxim, still grumbling, said the words "human female," a crushing pressure settled over the forge.
"Haa... I was keeping my mouth shut because if I moved I'd end up making sure you couldn't forge that stupid armor — and that I wouldn't have to wear it — but you just had to go there, huh? What was that? Female? Hey. Get over here."
Hana's voice went ice-cold as she addressed Maxim, who flinched at the sudden shift in atmosphere.
Realizing something had gone terribly wrong, Maxim stammered in a trembling voice.
"I-I'm sorry. I-it was a slip of the—"
Having just discovered that the woman he'd dismissed possessed power beyond imagination, Bron rushed to Maxim's defense.
"Th-that's right. H-he's still just a kid — it was a mistake. I'll make the armor right away, so please, calm down."
Hana glanced at Maxim, who was shaking like a leaf, and at Bron, who had abruptly switched to formal speech. She nodded as if she understood perfectly.
"Ahh, I get it. A mistake. Long-lived races like dwarves and pointy-ears are always making 'mistakes.' First they talk down to you, then they ignore you, then they start barking orders like it's the most natural thing in the world."
At first it sounded like she was accepting the apology, but the further she went the stranger it got. A panicked Bron hurried to cut in.
"Th-that's a misunderstanding. I-I'll grant you that the pointy-ears have no manners, but w-we always—"
"It's fine. It's fine. I understand completely."
With an expression and a tone that made it clear she understood nothing of the sort, Hana strode forward, claiming she understood everything, and snatched the tongs from the trembling Maxim's hands, hoisting them high overhead.
"I-I'm sorry! Please spare me!"
Staring up at the tongs raised impossibly high, Maxim dropped to his short knees in terror and begged for mercy. In that same instant, Hana swung the tongs and shouted—
"So how about you understand my mistakes for once!"
The tongs came down in a vertical blur.
The furnace, whose flames should have roared higher with every pump of the bellows.
The anvil, which had endured thousands upon tens of thousands of hammer blows.
Both split cleanly in half.
"Uh..."
"Ah...?"
"Heh... heheh..."
Thud.
Not some infamous demon blade, not a holy sword blessed by the gods, not even a legendary masterwork known only in myth — just a pair of forging tongs. And with them, the two most important things in a blacksmith's shop had been cleaved in two before their very eyes. The dwarves made hollow little sounds and collapsed where they stood.
Hana glanced at the devastation she'd wrought, then casually tossed the tongs into a corner.
"It was a mistake. A mistake. You'll understand, right?"
Needless to say, not a single dwarf claimed otherwise.
Scanning the silent dwarves, Hana spoke as if a sudden realization had struck her.
"Ah! At this rate you won't be able to make any armor! I got so mad at being called a 'female' that I just... oops. Mistake, mistake. I was looking forward to trying on some dwarf-forged armor, but I guess it can't be helped. I'll get my armor waaaay later — until then, I'll just go without."
You're not mad, right? Right?