The Great Hall was transformed into a field of fire and iron. Arthur, acknowledging the physical limitations of his six-year-old body, did not take up the hammer himself. Instead, he beckoned one of the Redanian smiths he had trained—a man who now moved with the disciplined precision of a scientist rather than the guesswork of a laborer.
"I shall provide the mind," Arthur declared, "and he shall be the hand."
The duel began. Ernst van Hoorn of Temeria worked with a frantic, artistic energy. He pulled Meteorite Ore and silver-infused flux from his packs, chanting low verses as he folded the metal. He was creating a Vorpal Sword, a weapon designed to look as lethal as it was beautiful. When he was finished, the blade shimmered with an iridescent, oily sheen, its crossguard etched with aggressive, attractive runes.
Arthur's partner, following the Prince's whispered, mathematical instructions, did the opposite. He used only non-supernatural metals, refining a specific alloy ingot that looked like dull, grey glass before it was hammered. There were no songs and no rare ores—only the strict application of thermodynamics and carbon-alignment. The result was a Balanced Sword. It was hauntingly simple, possessing a clean, satin finish and a geometry that seemed to disappear when viewed from the edge.
"A simple toy," van Hoorn scoffed, holding his glowing Vorpal blade aloft. "You bring a kitchen knife to a king's banquet?"
To settle the matter, King Vizimir II summoned two master-at-arms. Each was handed a blade.
The duel was brief but revelatory. The swordsman wielding the Vorpal Sword moved with confidence, but the one holding the Balanced Sword moved with a terrifying, fluid speed. Arthur had calculated the weight distribution to the millimeter; the blade didn't just cut—it flowed.
The climax came with a deafening crack. As the two blades clashed in a direct bind, the simple Balanced Sword didn't just hold—it bit. The "superior" meteorite steel of the Vorpal Sword began to chip away, its brittle, supernatural structure unable to withstand the uniform molecular density of Arthur's science.
The Great Hall fell into a stunned silence. The "attractive" weapon of the old world lay notched and failing, while the simple Redanian blade remained pristine.
"Appearance is a distraction for the ignorant," Arthur said, his voice echoing in the hush. "Your blade relied on the rarity of its birth. Mine relies on the perfection of its construction. You can hunt a thousand meteorites and never find a match for the 114 truths."
Van Hoorn fell to his knees, staring at the ruin of his masterpiece. He had been beaten by a child's instructions and a commoner's hand. The "Balanced Sword" was undeniably superior, proving that the age of the legendary hero's blade was being replaced by the age of the perfectly engineered weapon.
The Great Hall of Tretogor was thick with a heavy, awkward silence. Ernst van Hoorn, once the proudest smith in Temeria, stood trembling before the shattered remains of his vorpal blade.
"Witchcraft!" he suddenly shrieked, his voice cracking with desperation. "It is a trick of the Brotherhood! No child, royal or not, can make steel that bites through meteorite ore without a pact with Chaos!"
Arthur didn't even blink. He looked at the gathered crowd—the knights who had felt the weight of the balanced sword, the Dwarven elders who had seen his charts, and even his father, King Vizimir II.
"You call it witchcraft because you cannot calculate the stress-strain curve of your own materials," Arthur said, his voice cold and clinical. "The Balanced Sword is superior because its density is uniform. Your 'Vorpal' blade had microscopic impurities at every point where your magic met the metal. It was a beautiful glass house, Ernst. My blade was a mountain."
Arthur's explanation of molecular integrity and structural engineering was far more devastating than any insult. He had just turned a "legendary" artisan into a relic of a dying era.
The Temerian smith looked around the room, searching for an ally. Instead, he found only the scorn of Redanians and the mocking smirks of the non-humans who had already accepted the Prince's "New Ways." Unable to bear the crushing weight of his humiliation, van Hoorn turned and fled the banquet hall, his boots echoing hollowly on the stone. He didn't just leave the palace; he left the city, desperate to escape the shadow of a six-year-old polymath.
Vizimir watched him go, then looked at his son. "You have not just won a duel, Arthur. You have terrified every smith in the North. They will come for your secrets, or they will come for your head."
Radovid, sitting beside them, gripped his own wooden sword tighter. His eyes weren't filled with fear, but with a burgeoning, dark fascination. He saw how easily Arthur had dismantled a man's life with words and logic.
"Let them come," Arthur replied, already sketching a new design on a napkin. "I have more to teach them than just how to fold steel."
The public humiliation of Ernst van Hoorn acted as a catalyst for a continental enlightenment. Within Redania, the shock of a six-year-old prince dismantling the "Old Ways" of metallurgy turned skepticism into a feverish hunger for knowledge. The blacksmiths were the first to adapt, but the revolution did not stop at the forge.
It was soon revealed that the 114 Elements were not just the secrets of steel, but the foundations of life itself. The periodic table was adopted by scholars across the kingdom, who realized that "potions" were merely complex chemical reactions and "herbalism" was a study of bio-organic compounds. The era of vague "essences" was being replaced by the precision of modern herbology and industrial chemistry.
Under Arthur's direction, the Academy of Sciences was established in Oxenfurt. While the original university had focused on liberal arts and philosophy, Arthur's new wing was a fortress of logic. Students in pale green cloaks no longer debated the "essence of life" over ale; they calculated the atomic weight of silver and studied the molecular structure of Celandine.
For Arthur, the institutionalization of science was a strategic relief. With a generation of "Engineers" and "Chemists" now beginning to handle the heavy lifting of industry, he could finally turn his attention to a more insidious enemy: disease.
He looked at the reports of the "pestilences" that regularly ravaged the North—smallpox, typhus, and the bloody flux. In this world, these were seen as curses or the inevitable toll of living. To Arthur, they were simply biological malfunctions caused by pathogens he had eradicated centuries ago.
"The Brotherhood thinks the greatest threat to humanity is a Striga or a Dragon," Arthur mused, looking through his newly commissioned microscope at a slide of contaminated water. "They are wrong. The greatest killers are invisible, and they don't care about silver swords."
His next objective was clear: use the 114 Elements to create the world's first antibiotics and vaccines. He would not just conquer the Northern Realms with steel; he would make Redania the only place on the Continent where a mother didn't have to fear the "cradle-cough" or the "rot-fever."