"You lot, the captain's here! Get over here and bow your heads already~!"
""""Welcome back, sis!""""
"I keep telling you to call me Captain, but you idiots never listen."
"If we were going to call you that, we'd have done it a long time ago. Give it up, sis."
"These are supposed to be my members... Sigh... You see that guy who just spoke? He's the one who told me he nearly ran away from Orario after getting caught two-timing. Remember him well."
"...Ah, yes."
"Why are you bringing up something that happened ages ago? When the hell is it going to disappear from your memory!? And who's this next to you...?"
"Around the time you stop calling me sis. And this one is an applicant. I picked him up on the way here."
"So it'll never disappear from your memory... Tch..."
The brown-haired beastman who had been fooling around(?) with Tsubaki suddenly came over and began prodding various parts of my body.
...?
"Let's see... Judging by your muscles, you've worked metal before. For roughly... ten, fifteen years, and you're right-handed."
"...What exactly are you doing?"
"Ah, sorry, sorry. Whenever we bring in an applicant, we have to check them over like this. It'd be inconvenient for us if a complete novice joined. And even if someone has muscles, there's a difference between muscles built through farming, fighting, and working metal, so I'm checking which kind you have."
"You can tell all that just by poking my body a few times? Even how long I've been swinging a hammer?"
"Just think of it as one of my Skills. You haven't gotten permission from our goddess to join yet, so I can't tell you the details."
A chill ran across my entire body.
He could tell whether I was a blacksmith and how many years I had hammered metal just by prodding me a few times? Wasn't that utterly monstrous?
As expected of Orario, the City of Adventurers. Was this proof that you could not survive here with half-baked ability...?
"Anyway, where is the goddess? We need to either give this guy an entrance test or just finish with an interview."
"If you mean our goddess, she's probably upstairs. She seemed oddly pleased with herself, so perhaps she came up with another inspiration?"
"Got it, thanks. Let's go."
After hearing the answer, Tsubaki immediately started leading me upstairs.
"Um, Tsubaki? May I ask you something?"
"Yeah, what is it?"
"You mentioned an entrance test and an interview... What exactly do they involve...?"
"It's nothing much. For the test, we give you one to two weeks to make a weapon in a Hephaestus Familia workshop. For the interview, you speak directly with the goddess, and if she likes you, you pass. Sometimes we do both, sometimes just one, and the order can be test then interview or the other way around."
"Isn't the interview just an abuse of power...?"
"What are we supposed to do if our goddess, who sits at the very top of this Familia's food chain, says she'll accept someone? Still, she has firm standards and judges without personal feelings involved. In the end, she does choose talented people."
"I see... Well, then..."
"Right? Ah, we're here. This is our goddess's room. Wait here a moment."
Tsubaki knocked, threw the door open, and went inside. After about five minutes of indistinct chatter from within, she opened the door again and came back out.
"All right, come in for now."
"Ah, yes."
When I went inside, all kinds of weapons hung from one wall, while a desk and a bed stood by the window.
"Hello. You're the child Tsubaki mentioned, the one who wants to join our Familia?"
And there was a [God].
Red hair like blazing flames given form. A face half-hidden by an eyepatch, yet beautiful enough that the uncovered half alone made it obvious, crimson eyes, and then there was her presence.
It was not as overwhelming as that god who had reincarnated me, but it was still a distinctive aura that instinctively told me she was a god. Was this Arcanum?
First, greetings...
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Goddess Hephaestus."
"Hehe, you really are a polite child, just as Tsubaki said. When she suddenly said she was bringing a man over, I thought spring had finally come late for Tsubaki... What a shame..."
"Goddess!"
"If you want to talk back to me, go get yourself a boyfriend first."
Ah, she'd been sunk.
"An old maid like me... mumble mumble mumble..."
"Let's leave that old. maid. alone and talk about us, shall we?"
"...Yes."
"Hey, don't be so tense. I'm only going to ask a few simple questions. If there's anything difficult for you to answer, you can skip it."
"You may ask me anything."
"Hmm, then first... You worked as a blacksmith outside the city, right? How many years did you do it?"
"I first picked up a forging hammer and began striking metal when I was... probably around thirteen, so about fourteen years. Though I remember living at the smithy from far earlier than that."
"Was your family a blacksmithing family?"
"Yes. I heard they had worked as blacksmiths since the time of our distant ancestors, for quite a long while."
"What do you wish to make?"
A serious question out of nowhere? That came at me fast...
She was not simply asking what type of weapon I wanted to make...
Then...
"I want to make... fantasies."
"Fantasies?"
"I want to bring back into this world the fantasies people have forgotten, denied, and no longer seek to know."
"I will make the sword of kings who burned themselves away for the sake of the world."
"I will forge the spear of a hero who fought even knowing that, after ten years of war, a miserable defeat awaited him."
"I will sharpen a beautiful katana capable of cutting through anything in this world."
"To place forgotten fantasies, things people no longer know, back into their hands once more. That is what I want to do if I join the Hephaestus Familia."
I was speaking nothing but the truth.
In my previous life, I often made and carried cosplay props myself, mostly weapons. Then I fell into this world—a world where magic and fantasy truly lived and breathed.
Blacksmiths here were not simply craftsmen who made cold weapons. They were craftsmen who created weapons imbued with magic, weapons possessing special powers, indestructible weapons!
"When I came to Orario, I made a promise. I would hammer iron until the fantasies I know were fantasies no longer."
"Please, accept me here.
I have things I must make. Things I want to make!"
If you truly are a god, then you must be able to read my heart, my sincerity.
Now, answer me!
"--------"