The Stubborn Old Blacksmith
I drew a line across the complex organizational chart spread out on the desk, the quill scratching steadily. The upcoming opening of the high-society exclusive salon, the distribution of awakening potions promised to the cartel and the resulting profit split, the training schedule for the newly acquired slaves, and the slave trading methods to be sold to Vivian. The documents, a chaotic tangle of expenditure slips and projected revenues, looked like a battlefield map from some grand war. Even the murder-for-hire operation, which so far only had a signboard, was being meticulously organized under my fingertips.
In my previous life, I had been closer to a destroyer than a manager. An M&A devil who would deliberately trigger corporate crises to devalue companies, or conversely, dress up hollow shells and sell them at a premium—shifting the scales of profit however I pleased. ‘All I ever did was flip or steal someone else’s table. Setting one myself feels entirely different.’
Grasping the reins of direct management and meshing every gear together was unfamiliar, yet it gave me a strangely exhilarating sense of fulfillment. I circled the most urgent item with the tip of my pen.
No matter how many premium materials we produced, without a place to sell them they were nothing but rotting meat. After checking several candidate locations to drive the first wedge into the market and break Golden Scales’ monopoly, I finally set down my pen.
As I left the office and headed down the corridor toward the bedroom, I ran into Silvia.
“Call the engineers first thing tomorrow morning. We start the cold storage design immediately.”
“Yes, Master. I have already received the required materials list from Sir Theo.”
Leaving Silvia’s concise reply behind, I opened the bedroom door and a single ball of fur tumbled out. Having played an intense game of hide-and-seek with Evelyn, Rua had already drifted off to dreamland on the cushion prepared for him, his tiny tongue poking out.
I gently stroked his soft fur. Looking at the current situation, it was clear that variables could arise requiring me to be separated from him for twenty-four hours at a time. ‘I should commission a special carrying bag soon—one that can safely transport Rua. Something with cushioning magic woven into it.’
With that idle thought, I went to bed.
The next morning, sunlight slipped through the window frame and filled the room. The moment I opened my eyes, I felt a heavy, fluffy weight on my chest. Rua had curled into a perfect ball right under my chin.
“...”
I stared at his soft fur for a moment, then reached out and pushed him to the side. Rua let out a small “Yip?” and wagged his tail, but I rose without hesitation. He rubbed his head against my pant leg, yet I didn’t even spare him a glance as I picked up the water bottle on the nightstand.
Knock, knock—.
A restrained knock sounded, followed by Silvia’s voice from beyond the door.
“Master, it is Silvia. May I enter?”
“Come in.”
The door opened and Silvia, neatly dressed, stepped inside and bowed at the waist.
“After breakfast, I will head to the armory. Call the hunchbacked slave I mentioned yesterday there as well.”
“Understood. I will prepare immediately.”
After a light meal, I made my way to the storage room. The hunchbacked man I had ordered to take over yesterday was already waiting.
I looked him straight in the eye and asked, “What is your name?”
The man trembled slightly with his hunched shoulders and lowered his head. “...It is Hans, Master.”
“Hans. From now on, you are responsible for the numbers in finance.”
I ran my finger along a sword blade missing a tooth and glanced at Silvia. Recent intense training and ogre hunts had pushed our equipment consumption to its limit.
“Silvia, what about arming the newly recruited personnel? The delivery deadline has already passed.”
“All blacksmiths within the empire are currently refusing new orders.”
“Reason?”
“The imperial family has forcibly assigned war material quotas. An imperial decree has been issued demanding they ignore quality and focus solely on overwhelming quantity.”
“Where were we primarily trading?”
Silvia continued with a troubled expression. “The Hepai forge has completely shut its doors, declaring, ‘I would rather extinguish the furnace fire than forge such garbage iron.’”
A fragment of Victor’s memory surfaced. An uncompromising, stubborn old craftsman. Given that man’s temperament, such behavior was entirely plausible.
“Under imperial law, any forge failing to meet its quota is strictly prohibited from private transactions,” Hans added shrewdly.
“As a result, equipment supply has been completely cut off, and only foreign merchants bringing in crude weapons from other countries are reaping enormous profits in the gap.”
Silvia calmly supplemented the information. “Due to the imperial restrictions, other merchant groups have also given up on securing proper equipment and are clinging to foreign supplies.”
Hans was proving more useful than expected. Not only could he handle ledger numbers, but his eye for reading market trends was sharp. Silvia was once again demonstrating her competence in gathering and reporting information.
The original Victor had sold this very Silvia to Gomez in his sister’s novel. What a madman.
A prideful craftsman, suffocating imperial regulations, and the profits arising from the cracks between them. I set down the chipped blade and recalled the stubborn hammering sounds and conversations buried in a corner of Victor’s memories.
“Silvia, tell Elina to finish her combat preparations and get ready to depart immediately.”
“Understood, Master.”
After Silvia withdrew with crisp efficiency, I looked at Hans, who had been holding his breath beside me. Cold sweat trickled down his hunched back, yet his eyes sparkled with the same brightness they had when I first bought him.
“Hans, I will be watching.”
“...I will keep that in mind, Master.”
Leaving Hans’s resolute reply behind, I moved on. Not long after, Elina arrived in the reception room wearing a tight leather cuirass. Her polite greeting toward me, combined with the way the leather flowed along her curved figure and her sharp senses, created a subtle sense of pressure.
“Carry Rua. We will travel by carriage.”
“Yes, Master.”
Inside the rattling carriage, it was Rua’s cheerful pawing that dispelled the bleak atmosphere. The usually timid creature had vanished; he leaped onto Elina’s leather cuirass, rested his chin on it, and made a soft rumbling sound.
“Kyuung.”
Elina’s sharp eyes instantly melted at Rua’s coquettish behavior. She carefully tickled his fluffy belly, and Rua, clearly delighted, spun his tail like a propeller and licked her cheek.
The sight of the woman who had butchered ogres now laughing helplessly at a tiny beast was rather amusing. I watched their playful antics with an indifferent gaze before turning to look out the carriage window.
The carriage stopped in front of the Hepai forge. Even in the middle of winter, this place should have been radiating the heat of bellows, yet before we even opened the door, the stench of alcohol and thunderous snoring filled the air.
Creak—.
When I opened the door and stepped inside, the furnace fire had long since died, and large wooden tankards lay scattered across the workbench. In the middle of that mess, an old man with a shaggy beard was sprawled out, fast asleep.
I ignored the old man’s disgraceful state and examined the equipment hanging on the walls. ‘As expected, his touch remains impeccable.’ Though the owner was drunk, the blades he had forged still radiated fierce spirit even in the dim light.
Balance, edge angle, durability. Victor’s memories once again confirmed that this old man’s skill was the best in the empire.
It was then that Rua, who had slipped from Elina’s arms and was sniffing around the forge, caught the scent of a massive shield propped in the corner and misstepped with his front paw.
Bang—! Clang!
The sharp noise shattered the silence and violently shook the interior of the forge. The old man, who had been lying on the floor, snapped his eyes open and whipped his head toward the source of the sound. With bloodshot eyes, he spotted the ball of fur hiding behind my heels and let out a hollow laugh.
“Hmm… hmm? What son of a bitch brought a real son of a bitch into this sacred forge!”
The old man pointed and roared. Startled by the coarsest scolding he had ever heard, Rua tucked his tail between his legs, clung to my pant leg, and trembled. He whimpered, watching the old man’s fury with terrified eyes.
“I want to place an equipment order,” I said, nudging the fallen shield upright with my toe.
The old man took a swig of his lukewarm beer and stared at me. Since he was acquainted with Victor, he recognized me quickly, but his attitude remained crooked.
“Victor? Have you lost your mind? Do you not know what the current situation is? The imperial bastards are screaming for us to churn out garbage iron, and you think I’ll pick up my hammer?”
“Take it easy. Just roughly make the weapons the empire is demanding. Simple, isn’t it?”
“What? You bastard…! You think I’d tarnish my name with such crude materials?”
The old man snorted and took another gulp of lukewarm beer. I nodded slightly and called to Elina, who stood behind me. In truth, the real reason I had brought her was something else entirely.
This old man was an absolutely fanatical devotee of Elina. In Victor’s memories, the old man had become a zealot after accidentally seeing her. He had written countless stories about how such a delicate woman, who shed tears every night for her family, had thrown herself onto the battlefield. Since those scenes were more than a few, the card named Elina in my hand would be extremely effective.
“Can’t be helped. Let’s go, Elina. We’ll have to look elsewhere.”
“.......Understood, Master.”
As Elina stepped forward into the light, the old man’s gaze locked onto her. His eyes bulged as if they would pop out, and the beer he had been holding in his mouth dribbled down his chin.
“E-Elina…?! Is that truly the victorious hero, the hope of House Valois, Lady Elina?”
“I was going to ask you to make equipment for Elina to wear, but since you refuse, I suppose there’s nothing to be done.”
The old man’s face twisted with shock and agony. It was the expression of a soul being torn between his philosophy and his ‘fanatical devotion.’ I didn’t miss the opening and drove the wedge deeper.
“Now that I think about it, Elina, didn’t you mention earlier that there was a problem with your cuirass?”
Elina blushed slightly and murmured, “It’s… a ready-made piece, so it fails to properly protect my upper body. It’s too tight and restricts my movements. It’s even a little difficult to breathe…”
Spurt—!
The moment those words left her lips, the old man sprayed a nosebleed and dropped to his knees.
“A-are you all right?” Elina asked in alarm.
The old man wiped his nosebleed with his sleeve and muttered nonsense. “No, it seems my nose was startled because I haven’t rested enough. The stimulus was too strong…”
He soon looked up at me with a serious expression. His eyes burned with a fanatical resolve.
“My convictions cannot be bent. However… if it is to create equipment that will cover a war hero’s chest—no, that will become her hands and feet—then I will gladly fulfill the empire’s crude quota. No, I will exceed it!”
I smiled benevolently and pulled out a well-rolled sheet of parchment from my coat. It was a contract I had prepared in advance.
“A wise decision. By the way, I happen to have some basilisk hide and a twin-headed ogre carcass… Would you like to use them? Even if you scoured the entire empire, you wouldn’t find materials of this quality. I’ll have to charge a rather high price, though.”
The old man’s pupils trembled violently. Craftsmen, by nature, could not resist good materials. I added the final nail in a low voice.
“Oh, and it’s not just a regular twin-headed ogre. There’s a three-headed variant as well.”
“......A variant? Of the twin-headed ogre?”
The old man’s breathing grew ragged. Suddenly, thick veins bulged on his muscular forearms as if they would burst. Though he hadn’t even picked up his hammer yet, his hands had already hardened in the air, as if he were tanning invisible leather. The craftsman’s obsession, instinctively recognizing the value of the materials, surged through his veins.
“A variant… that tough hide and bones infused with magic power…! Proceed with the contract immediately! Hey, is anyone there?! Wake up all those drunkards who passed out! Call back every apprentice sent to other forges right now!”
The old man snatched the parchment with a hand still stained with nosebleed and scrawled his signature. The forge, which had been as silent as an abandoned house moments ago, instantly filled with the old man’s shouts and vitality.
He glared at the cold furnace with eyes that looked ready to ignite it at any moment and shouted, “I, Hepai, swear on my name that I will create the finest defensive armor to wrap Lady Elina’s… no, her entire body without a single gap! Equipment on a completely different level from the scrap metal the empire has thrown at us!”
Hot energy began to circulate once more through the dead forge. It was the revival of the empire’s greatest hammer, the craftsman Hepai.
As the dead forge began to fill with heat again, Rua, who had been watching nervously, seemed to regain his energy. He wagged his short tail and bounded around every corner of the forge like a playful foal.
Elina ran her hand over Hepai’s practice pieces hanging on the wall, unable to suppress her instinctive admiration as a knight.
“The monster byproducts from the disassembly work will be delivered here by the end of today,” I said.
At my words, Hepai rolled up his thick sleeves and laughed heartily. “Excellent! Then I must madly hammer out those crude quotas the empire bastards dumped on me right away. Come back in a week, Victor! You will see items that overturn the empire’s common sense!”
I left the forge feeling extremely satisfied with the transaction, which had gone far better than expected. A route to exclusively secure high-quality equipment had been secured, and the revenue from the blocked monster disassembly yard was now perfectly protected.
In the end, the core of this structure lay in me holding their life and death in my hands while taking full responsibility for the profits. The disassembly yard would sell its byproducts to the forge, and I would purchase the highest-grade weapons and armor forged from those materials. From raw material supply to finished product distribution, gold coins would circulate entirely within my grasp—this was the completion of perfect vertical integration.
However, the current structure was merely a closed loop in which money leaving my wallet returned as alchemy materials and refined equipment. To reap true gains, I needed to use this internal ecosystem as a foothold to suck in massive external capital.
The combination of the disassembly yard’s premium materials and Hepai’s seasoned craftsmanship would be more than enough to generate explosive profits. The price of installing the two key gears—disassembly yard director and craftsman Hepai—into my company’s engine would return as a colossal tidal wave that would simultaneously shake the empire’s medicinal herb and weapons markets.
“Kyuu!”
With Rua’s cheerful cry—excited about who knows what—the carriage began rolling once more.