How much time had passed since the new monster incident that day? Probably a little over a month.
A great many things had happened in the meantime.
For one, my relationship with the Loki Familia had grown much closer. Before, I had felt like I was only close with a few high-ranking members, including their captain, Finn. But after saving Lefiya, lower-level members such as Lefiya's friends came to thank me as well, and I had ended up with the title of [Benefactor] throughout the Loki Familia.
They even gave me a reward and covered my hospital bills, so I gladly accepted. Well, Lefiya was an adventurer mentioned as a future executive of the Loki Familia even in the original story, so perhaps this level of compensation was only natural.
Seriously... On the first day, the three racial representatives—Finn, Riveria, and Gareth—came to thank me. The next day, the executives close to Lefiya came too—the wolf bastard did not show up—partly to offer their thanks and partly so the Hiryute sisters could marvel at me. Then, on the third day, Raul Nord, the next captain, came flooding in with the other Level 4s...
They must have realized that coming in such a crowd was a nuisance, because on that final third day, the Loki Familia's visits ended with a huge pile of gifts sent by Lefiya's friends. Seems she is pretty popular.
...Amid muttered that if anyone came by the following day, she would formally file a complaint with the Guild. Thankfully, it stopped after three days.
My body seemed fully healed, but I had been hospitalized for over ten days. According to Amid,
"Even if you were healed with potions, they ultimately draw upon your body's own strength to heal you! You need sufficient rest and recuperation! Rest properly for at least ten days!"
That was what she said, but I was telling her I was all better. Really! So let me get my hands on a hammer already!
...I threw a tantrum like that, only for Mama Mia, who had come to visit me, to give me a German suplex. I got a full day of rest—because I was unconscious.
Well... Visits from the Loki Familia, the Hostess of Fertility crew, the Hephaestus Familia, Limus, who brought Rex despite having been doing fine on his own, and finally Guild personnel who came to hear my account again to find out what had happened—that was the end of my ten-day recuperation period.
How long had it been since then? Orario became noisy again.
The reason was a rumor that a white-haired adventurer had fought a Minotaur that looked to be Level 3 head-on and won, rising to Level 2 through that feat... And it was true. I saw it myself when I went on the expedition with the Loki Familia. It was that incident, the biggest turning point of awakening in the original story. He awakened by smashing the Minotaur that had traumatized him head-on... What a complete shonen manga cliché.
Anyway... When we returned from the expedition, Welf, who had been moving around in a party with Zeke, was grinning from ear to ear, saying he had found a new adventurer for a direct contract... There was a ninety-nine percent chance it was Bell Cranel.
Come to think of it, I heard the guy made fine equipment, but his names were so bizarre that they did not sell well. He himself grumbled that he had no idea why they were not selling, though.
...That naming sense of his, seriously.
But something was strange. Going by the original story, Liliruca Arde should have joined their party and completed their chemistry, yet from what he said about the party, it ended at three people. That meant the financial manager who supported Bell Cranel and later managed even the Hestia Familia's money was gone.
I had not expected the story to change like this... Is this the butterfly effect too? Well, it will work out somehow.
In any event, over the past month, Orario had been bursting with new gossip: the rampage of a new monster, the hospitalization of the Hephaestus Familia's vice-captain, the partial success of the Loki Familia's expedition, a Level 1's rebellion, a new record holder, and so on... So what had I been doing?
After returning from the expedition, naturally, I had been hammering iron. I may have pushed myself a bit this time, but I am a blacksmith first and foremost, you know?
Hm? What happened during the expedition? Ahhh, wait and I will tell you later. The longer liquor ages, the better it tastes!
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
So right now, I was making a spear.
More precisely, I was making its spearhead.
When making a traditional Viking-style spearhead, the first heating process involves adding charcoal powder to adjust the carbon content ratio. But since I was using steel ingots from the Hephaestus workshop whose carbon ratio had already been adjusted from the start, there was no need to use such an old-fashioned method... Or so I would like to say, but the basic method of making these Viking spears was pattern-welded forge welding, so I was still using old methods to some extent.
Of course, not the Japanese-style method of mindlessly folding and folding it again. I wrapped layers of small iron plates together with Orario-made iron wire, which had a far higher melting point, and placed them in the furnace.
I did not forget to sprinkle finely ground monster claw powder between the layers. Among monsters' drop items, hard bones, teeth, and claws are called adamas, possessing mineral properties themselves as metal-aspected pseudo-metals that can be smelted with other metals. That adamas helped considerably with bonding metals together.
Once the red-hot mass of metal had completely fused together so it would not separate, I began hammering it, and sparks started flying in every direction. Of course, my ultra-high heat resistance was not just for show, so not a speck of soot remained on my body. And ever since I became vice-captain, money had been coming in well enough that I worked in highly fire-resistant work clothes, meaning my clothes no longer ended up riddled with holes like before.
After hammering away for a while, I heated it again and quenched it. Familiar sounds of boiling oil filled the air as bubbles rose.
When the bubbles began to subside, I took the metal out and examined it. The seams had been hammered down until they were nearly invisible to the naked eye.
Leaving that metal in the furnace until it glowed red-hot again, I prepared another ingot.
I intended to use different iron for the spear blade and the central section.
The central section could not bend and needed to hold the spear firmly straight, so I increased its carbon content beyond that of the steel used for the blade. Not quite to the level of cast iron, but enough that one might think its carbon content seemed high for steel.
Anyway, I took it out, placed it in the small furnace beside the main furnace, where the iron for the spear blade was heating, quickly brought it up to temperature, and attached a thin iron rod to it.
I was not running the main furnace at maximum output because I wanted it to heat slowly, so I had a reasonable amount of time left.
I placed the heated iron attached to the rod upon the anvil and slowly hammered it into the shape of a spearhead.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
It may have looked leisurely, but not long after I began hammering steadily, the once rectangular ingot had taken on the shape of a willow leaf.
After quickly finishing the intermediate work, I looked back to the main furnace. The long piece of metal for the spear blade had heated to just the right temperature.
First, I placed an attachment with a deep groove carved into its center on the anvil, then set the heated metal on top of it.
Holding it firmly so it would not shift, I drove a chisel into the central portion positioned over the groove.
The chisel was not enough to cut through the heated iron, but it was more than enough to bend it in one direction. As it gradually sank in, the metal began to bend.
Once it had bent enough, I removed the grooved attachment and, gripping the still-hot piece with both hands, bent it into a U-shape. Level 4 strength was really convenient. I did not even feel like I had put in much force, yet it instantly bent all the way over, leaving only an angle of around thirty degrees.
Then I inserted the willow-leaf-shaped central piece of metal into it, its tip forming roughly a thirty-degree angle. Holding it firmly against the anvil with my left hand so it would not move, I hammered the extra length I had deliberately left on the metal intended for the blade, securing it so it would not peel away from the central section.
Once it seemed completely fixed in place, I put it back into the furnace and began heating it.
Whoooosh.
This time there was no need to take it slow, so I raised the furnace to maximum heat, quickly heated it, took it out, and began hammering.
Since impurities flaked away the more I hammered, I brushed off the outer scale with a steel brush about once every ten strikes.
Hammer, brush.
Hammer, brush.
Hammer, brush.
As I repeated that for a long while, it was visibly growing closer to a proper spearhead.
At the right moment, I removed the rod that had been attached to and supporting the center. As I held the lower end with tongs and hammered the red-hot spearhead, a thought occurred to me: were not all adventurers' lives much like this humble spearhead?
They hammer themselves through trials called feats, striving to reach the highest divine realm at the very end.
Though their goals, ideals, and dreams may differ, they forge themselves through feats, hoping to be reborn as a single, exceptional spear.
And adventurers who fail their feats and fall along the way simply vanish, remembered by no one in later generations.
.
.
.
.
My stray thoughts had intruded, but as I continued hammering the spearhead with delicate strikes, it had become quite thin before I knew it.
With its shape roughly in place, I took out the socket portion for the spear blade that I had prepared earlier.
Handling the spearhead and the joint with the shaft all at once from the beginning would make the work too cumbersome, so I had separately made the socket that would connect the shaft and spearhead in advance before finishing the spearhead.
First, I secured the spearhead completely in a vise, then heated the section of the socket that would receive the spearhead until it was almost molten.
At that point, anything would drive into it easily, so I began hammering it onto the ridged portion of the spearhead secured in the vise. The upper section had already been flared open to accept the shaft, so without concern, I continued hammering slowly and fitted the spearhead into the socket.
.
.
.
.
They were completely fitted together, but there was still a long way to go before it was finished.
I put the joined spearhead back into the furnace to heat it, then took it out and hammered it again.
Not merely fitted together—the inside had to melt and fuse so thoroughly that one could mistake them for having been a single piece from the start. I heated and hammered it with stubborn persistence.
Of course, I did not hammer only the seam. I hammered the spear blade that I had left unfinished earlier as well.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
How many times had I repeated quenching, tempering, and hammering? The ugly, thick spear blade had become the thin, spread blade of a long spear, nearly thirty centimeters in length, while the joint had narrowed beautifully into a smooth curve.
Of course, there was still a long way to go.
In case the shape had become distorted, I brought out a conical punch, heated the section where the shaft would be inserted until it glowed red, inserted it again, and hammered the punch instead, forming it into a cone in a way no human hammering alone could achieve.
Then I slowly ground down the uneven, ugly surface of the spear blade with a magic stone grinder.
With every spark that flew, the silver gleam and beautiful pattern hidden within revealed themselves. Complex patterns rippled beautifully across the blade, displaying their splendor, while the blade's central section had no pattern at all. Yet that contrast only made the blade's beautiful pattern stand out even more.
After grinding away most of the rough outer skin, I put the spearhead back into the furnace for one final heat treatment. It did not become completely red-hot, but after reaching a temperature that would instantly sear flesh to the bone for anyone without heat resistance like mine, I grabbed the spearhead as it was and plunged it into the cold water I had prepared for the final quench.
Since this was the final quenching, I deliberately used cold water, using the sudden temperature difference to make its internal structure sturdier.
Once the quenching was done, it was time for serious polishing. The first grinding had revealed the beautiful pattern within, but that had only been the tip of the iceberg.
Once I finished polishing it to the end, I would be able to see a much more beautiful form.
First, I prepared cold water so the edge would not be damaged during polishing.
You might ask what cold water had to do with edge damage, but the blade could grow too hot and deform during polishing, so it needed to be kept cool at all times.
Screeeech.
Screeeech.
Screeeech.
Screeeech.
Screeeech.
Using the expensive magic stone grinder I had bought, I ground the spearhead, whose blade alone was thirty centimeters long and whose lower socket was almost as long.
Slowly, the age-spot-like patches that still remained were shaved away, revealing silver underneath.
There was no shortcut to this polishing process. I could only repeat pouring cold water over the spear blade and grinding it again.
How long had I spent doing nothing but polish it?
The spear blade that had been mottled here and there with age-spot-like patches was nowhere to be seen, replaced by one filled entirely with silver.
A complete Viking spear would have required its distinctive twisted-knot patterns as well, but I decided not to add those this time.
Skipping the knot patterns, I took out the long birch shaft I had prepared. Though it was still a squared timber rather than a shaft.
Research on the most intact Viking spear excavated in my previous life—the one that retained not only the spearhead but its shaft as well—had found that its shaft was made of birch. Birch bark contains plenty of oil and burns easily, but its inner wood is extremely hard and does not warp, so even I thought it was an excellent choice of material.
The shaft found then was 181.8 centimeters long. Add the spearhead, and it was a long spear over two meters in length.
After I seriously set to work with an axe and a plane for quite a while, the sun briefly appeared between the rain clouds before disappearing again.
...Had I stayed up all night again?
Anyway, after slowly shaping it, I coated the shaft with a light-brown translucent finish so my hands would not be pricked by splinters. Then I slathered adhesive over the part to be inserted into the socket and sprinkled magic stone powder over it, helping the metal and wood adhere firmly together.
Finally, once I had connected both shaft and spearhead, I examined the completed spear once more and could only say that it was big and beautiful.
A long spear over two meters in total length. Its spearhead faithfully followed the traditional Viking style, and its shaft likewise followed the construction of the one found at the ruins.
Mm, it seems I have produced a fine piece for the first time in a while.
Now then... Where should I put it on display...?
"...Boss, do you have a moment?"
"Hm? Zeke? What brings you here? It has not even been two weeks since I sharpened your blade."
"...Please make me a weapon. One that can split apart anything—the neck, the body, even a pile of ashes. All of it."
...Something major must have happened.