Alan’s Blacksmith Workshop

“Oh dear, pardon me. I lost my composure.”

As Alan finally regained his cool, I brought up work.

“The order consisted of one specially made sword and regular purchase of weapons from my workshop, yes?”

“That is correct. Our current route allows us to buy a good quantity at a low price but it’s hard to acquire high quality weapons.”

“I have no complaints regarding the price either. Besides, being able to provide weapons to the frontlines for the battle against the demon lord would raise our workshop’s fame as well. That aside, I had a question…”

Alan pushed against the table and spoke in a low voice for some reason.

“Will the weapons provided by us go through the mithril process?”

“That is the plan, is there a problem?”

“Not at all! If possible, I would like to buy one myself and show it off in my hall! This is precisely what dreams are made of!”

It would appear Alan’s weird switch got turned on again.

Garnet looked very displeased yet again.

Alan probably wouldn’t even imagine in his dreams that this face belongs to a pretty young girl.

Among my employees, Noire tends to become like Alan sometimes — I wonder if that’s why Garnet doesn’t get along that well with her.

“I would have liked to process it in my workshop as well but unfortunately, we’ve not been able to acquire the license for it… To begin with, none of us in the Blacksmith Association here have the license, you know?!”

We handle it pretty much everyday at White Wolf so maybe our perception of it has changed but mithril is a very rare metal after all.

As it’s impossible to mine it above ground, one can only hope to get their hands on it in dungeons.

Considering it’s scarcity, mining, processing and selling mithril requires a license from the royal palace and if violated, one could even receive a death penalty.

And as such, the order this time around is only limited to acquiring the weapons and I’ll have to do the mithril processing myself.

“…Ahem. My apologies, let’s return to the topic at hand. I have no objection to the terms and conditions. As for the specially made sword, we’ll get to it right away and send it your way once it’s done.”

Aside from occasionally going off-topic, the business talk went quite smooth.

And before long, the discussion regarding acquiring the weapons came to an end. Just when we were about to change locations to prepare for the special order, Alan brought up a different topic.

“Mr. Luke is an old acquaintance of Mr. Travis, right? I’ve even heard that you guys were party members once upon a time.”

“That’s all in the past now. I haven’t even seen him these past few years.”

“Then I guess I was an adventurer with him during those few years. It wasn’t for long.”

This might be a bit late but I’ve not met Alan before this.

As Travis actively accepts people to his party and has a policy of urging people to become independent, his members change quite often.

Since most of his current members probably don’t know me as well, it isn’t that weird for Alan to not know me as I didn’t visit Travis once during his time there.

“My family has been in the blacksmith business for generations now. I rebelled against my parents’ wish to succeed them and became an adventurer.”

As we left the Blacksmith Association’s building behind us and headed towards the workshop, Alan started talking about his past.

The weather looked a bit gloomy but I hope it doesn’t rain till we get back to Green Hollow.

“However, seeing how other adventurers entrust their whole lives to their weapon, I had realized the importance behind making them. That’s when I decided to succeed my parents’ business.”

“…You seem to have had a good experience there.”

“Yes. They are very precious experiences. After all, I was able to experience in person what kind of weapons an adventurer may wish for.”

As Alan and I were talking about stuff more relatable to us, Garnet only followed behind in silence.

Are we perhaps boring her?

Just when I turned back to check on her, our eyes met and I saw her smiling at me.

She immediately got rid of the smile and looked away with the utmost displeased looking expression.

“We’ve arrived. This is my workshop.”

“Finally. That was such a long wait.”

Before Alan could even properly invite us in, Garnet took out a folded paper from her coat and handed it over to him.

“Carve this into the blade.”

“This is… a magic pattern? I can’t accept an order for enchantment. I do not possess such skills.”

“Just having the seal engraved there will be enough. We’ve arranged for our magician to insert the effect onto the blade using the carving as a base later on.”

“I see, then there’s no problem.”

This was my first time hearing such a thing.

Carving? Magician? What exactly is she talking about?

“Oi, Garnet. By magician, do you perhaps mean Noire?”

“There’s no one else in Green Hollow who can use ‘Magic Tool Creation’, is there? I asked her when the topic of making a sword was brought up. If we’re doing this, I thought we might as well make it a super strong weapon.”

I was surprised. Surprised from the bottom of my heart.

Surprised by the fact that they’ve gotten close enough for her to make such a request to Noire.

Erika and Noire had also gotten close before I knew it — it seems the human relations in White Wolf are deepening unbeknownst to me.

At the same time, my chest ached a bit as I recalled Garnet’s statement from the other day.

—You should just trust Noire. Leave the doubting to me. Doing that would be easier for the both of us—

Doubting someone while trusting them is a hard thing to do — and I wasn’t the only one who had to do that.

If Garnet could doubt Noire just as a “role-sharing” stance, it would’ve been so much easier.

Garnet looked at my face and immediately gave me a light poke to the chest, wearing a frown on her face.

“Don’t go making weird faces now. I just decided to use any means to achieve my goal. If she double-crosses, I plan on cutting her down right away.”

“You… you don’t have a mind-reading skill, right?”

“Idiot. You just had a very easy to read expression.”

And like that, the briefing session to make Garnet’s weapon progressed.

Length, shape, weight. She designed every aspect of it to make it easier for her to use.

Of course, we also have to keep the mithril composition in mind while doing this and so I had assumed it would be quite a hard process but surprisingly enough, it went very smoothly.

But now that I think about it, I guess that’s only normal.

After all, Garnet is a knight — a specialist at using weapons, and Alan is a blacksmith — a specialist at making weapons.

Just when the discussion was being wrapped up, I heard the intense sound of rainfall outside.

I went to the entrance to check the weather but what awaited me was just a depressing scene.

“Heavy rain at this time, eh…. I wonder if it’ll stop before we leave…”

But it seems my wish was in vain as their meeting had ended and it was time to leave the town yet there was no sign of the rain stopping.

Worst case scenario, if we still tried leaving, we would have to go through this heavy rain for 5 whole hours.

“Garnet, what do you wanna do?”

“There’s nothing we can do. We have to give up on returning by today, don’t we?”

“Yeah… I guess there’s no choice, let’s go find an inn.”

After enquiring about the closest inn from Alan, we dashed out in the rain.