The World After the Hero (2)
Now, next up are the dwarves. It was time to talk about the dwarves, who produced and sold iron tools.
The first race in this world to start handling iron tools: the dwarves. The dwarves, who had dug tunnels beneath the peaks surrounding Sagarmatha and made their home there, paid a great deal of attention to traveling merchants to solve the problem of living in caves. To the point where merchant caravans made up entirely of dwarves existed.
Hmm. I'll save that story for later. For now, the priority is talking about how the popularization of iron tools came with the expansion of logistics.
Iron, boasting strength incomparable to stone or bronze tools. The dwarves, with their exceptional skill in handling such iron, rode the wave of smoother distribution and began raking in huge profits. Before that, dwarf-made iron tools had spread only by word of mouth, but now that people could actually see and touch the real things, they became hot items everyone wanted.
Even a plain dagger—comparing a stone dagger from before to a dwarf-made iron one... the difference was night and day. Even if you smashed the iron dagger down with a brittle, easily dulled stone dagger... it was the stone one that shattered. The iron dagger just ended up with a slightly nicked blade.
And so, dwarf-made iron tools became items that sold out instantly. Excluding exceptions like elves and lizardmen, of course.
Elves—you can probably guess without me saying. Aside from a tiny handful of weirdos obsessed with iron tools, they shuddered at the mere mention of dwarves. In the Dwarf-Elf Racial War... wait, actually, the elves won the most recent one, so it should be the Elf-Dwarf Racial War. Aside from that elf swordsman who wielded a spirit sword—now hailed as the Elf Sword Saint—and her disciples, hardly anyone showed interest in dwarf goods.
That's why elves mostly used tools made from sharpened stone or bone. Though even if they shunned them, they surely knew deep down just how good iron tools were. They'd been in real danger more than once or twice in the Elf-Dwarf Racial War due to that equipment gap. Even arrows with stone tips fletched from tree branches couldn't easily pierce dwarf iron armor and deal a fatal blow.
Well, they wouldn't die even from a fatal wound anyway! In any case, unlike the elves, who stubbornly refused iron tools, the lizardmen...
How to put it? They rejected them for religious reasons, sort of? The lizardmen's public stance on favoring tools made from obsidian went something like this:
"The Creation Dragon God bestowed upon our ancestors an obsidian spear that would never break, so out of respect for her, we too must use obsidian!"
Hmm... No, that unbreakable enchantment on the obsidian spear was just a casual gift I tossed their way, but they were still honoring it to this day. Huh... It was kinda admirable, but I did wish they'd appreciate the convenience of iron tools...
Setting aside their public claims, when I looked deeper into lizardmen ecology... there was a clear reason they rejected iron tools. Namely, their living environment.
Lizardmen mainly lived in humid places like rivers, swamps, and beaches. And the biggest weakness of iron tools? They rust easily in moisture. The very humidity that was the lizardmen's greatest constraint—with their steel-like scales and flesh—was what made iron tools unusable for them.
The lizardmen weren't rejecting iron out of stupidity. Sure, religion played a part, but their environment was so mismatched that they simply couldn't use it. And it wasn't like they could migrate to a dry environment just to use iron tools.
Iron tools in a dry environment vs. no iron tools in a humid one—it was a balance game that meant nothing to the lizardmen.
Instead, they focused on developing obsidian. They made saw-like weapons by embedding small, sharp obsidian shards between wooden plates, crafted obsidian arrowheads and javelin tips, and so on. The most impressive of these efforts was...
The fusion of obsidian weapons and shamanism.
Lizardmen shamans had long possessed warriors with spirits to boost their power, but after hearing rumors of elves imbuing weapons with spirit power to fight, some tried a new approach: possessing weapons made of obsidian with spirits.
Forcing a spirited spirit into a weapon. This idea felt pretty alien to lizardmen, who treated spirits like friends, and most spirits indeed refused to stay in weapons. Except for one type.
Earth spirits. To spirits made of rock and soil, the obsidian blades on lizardmen weapons felt like an extension of themselves.
The synergy between obsidian and earth spirits was perfect. By housing an earth spirit in the obsidian blade, lizardmen could make their blades tougher and sturdier—turning them into unbreakable obsidian edges powered by spirit strength.
And this method—possessing weapons with spirits—drew less power than full possession shamanism, but had the advantage of no risk of the spirit taking over the body. It spread among warriors too unskilled in possession to host spirits directly due to poor rapport.
Thus, the lizardmen named this shamanism spirit weapon technique and embraced it actively.
Hmm... How did we veer from why lizardmen couldn't use iron into all this? Anyway, that's enough on spirit weapon technique.
It's pretty amazing, though. Rumors of elf spirit swords reached even the lizardmen, who then mimicked the idea to invent a new shamanism called spirit weapon technique. Life really is fascinating...
By possessing obsidian blades with earth spirits, this shamanism enhances weapon durability: spirit weapon technique.
The claim that it originated from the barbaric spirit arts used by some elves—the spirit sword—is utterly wrong.
Spirit weapon technique and spirit sword are entirely separate arts, starting with fundamentally different attitudes toward spirits. They merely converged through coincidental similar ideas and processes—convergent evolution, nothing more. The spirit sword is not the progenitor of spirit weapon technique.
As evidence, consider the differences between spirit sword and spirit weapon technique...
"Hey. You can't just write lies like that."
"Oh dear, whatever do you mean?"
"Why? Because lizardmen spirit weapon technique is at best a downgraded version of the spirit sword! It's limited to their obsidian weapons, and only earth spirits can possess them! It's a minor copycat ripping off just a fraction of the spirit sword!"
The elf snapped, but the female lizardman just smirked and replied,
"Lizardmen have no need for such flashy nonsense as spirit swords. With the obsidian gifted by the Creation Dragon God, our communion with spirits, and our sturdy bodies, we can solve any problem. We don't need to swap out spirits like tools the way spirit swords do."
"That's going too far! We're clearly the originals! It's even recorded! It debuted in the First Dwarf-Elf Racial War! A technique passed down from time immemorial!"
At that, the lizardman woman furrowed her brow.
"Lizardmen shamanism..."
"We're talking spirit swords and spirit weapon technique right now! Don't drag in your whole shamanism!"
The elf and lizardman woman began growling at each other. As the mood grew tense,
"Sigh... Creation Dragon God... grant me more patience..."
"You called?"
"I didn't call."
The silver-haired girl—who appeared around the lizardman woman with uncanny frequency—eased the tension a bit.
"Don't fight."
"We're not fighting. Just a little difference of opinion."
"Yeah. It's nothing, so don't worry."
The elf and lizardman spoke nonchalantly. Watching them, the silver-haired girl with dragon horns murmured softly,
"No fighting. Got it?"
"Yes. No fighting."
"Yeah. We're just so close we look like we're fighting."
"And the spirit weapon technique was indeed inspired by the spirit sword. Not from direct exchange—just mimicking what they heard through rumors."
At the words of the silver-haired girl—the Dragon Priestess—the lizardman woman's mouth clamped shut, while the elf wore a victor's smile.