This time-crossing journey had been a remarkably fruitful one for the party.
Aside from the underwater castle they'd entered near the end — a place that seemed to overlap multiple spaces at once, which they hadn't had long to explore — and the fact that they'd never managed to encounter any of the other living heroes, including Airon and Mam from before, with no way of knowing how those two were faring now.
Outside of that, things had gone smoothly enough.
Their primary objective — defeating Udaeus and retrieving its rare material drops to forge new weapons and equipment — had been accomplished without a hitch.
And beyond that.
During the large-scale [Monster Rex Banquet] they'd run into afterward, Isagi and Ryuu-senpai hadn't had any time to pick up the magic stones and materials scattered across the ground — but Goddess Artemis and Haruhime certainly did.
When those two came back, their supporter packs were stuffed to bursting.
Nothing particularly rare inside, but more than enough to serve as supplementary materials for forging weapons and equipment. The end result was that Cecil's smithing workshop ended up crammed absolutely full.
And the blacksmith girl was fast.
Taking advantage of the downtime after the expedition — the few days of rest in the city that followed every adventure as surely as night follows day — she'd already taken both [Wolf's Devouring Feast] and the moonlit greatsword away with her, ready to begin the improvements and upgrades to the greatsword they'd agreed on beforehand.
And so, for a time, the courtyard of the Garden of Stars rang out once again with the constant clang and clatter of a forge hard at work.
Autumn brought frequent rains.
The harvest season was well underway, and these days Isagi and Ryuu-senpai and the others were always out beyond the city walls, lending a hand to Goddess Demeter.
Another bumper year — though that was hardly surprising with the goddess herself overseeing things. As long as nothing out of the ordinary happened, there wouldn't be any problems.
At the same time.
With the unprecedented and complete eradication of the Dark Familia, this year's Goddess Festival — the Festival of Abundance — was shaping up to be far livelier than any before it. Isagi had heard that a host of new events were being added, rather than the usual arrangement where Freya, Demeter, and the other goddesses of plenty simply conducted their rites from the tower in Central Park.
It wouldn't just be a ball and done. Entirely new "activities" were being introduced — things like merging it with the Monster Festival that had already been successfully held before.
The Guild had apparently been run ragged dealing with all the preparations lately.
And so, on one such day.
Another cool autumn morning — the sky clear, the clouds riding high, a small and listless sun hanging at the edge of the horizon, too weary to be cheerful, which somehow only made the air feel more refreshingly pleasant.
Isagi and Goddess Artemis stepped together into the Hephaestus Familia's base of operations, "Valka Red Hall," and were immediately hit by the wall of heat rolling toward them.
Stifling, really.
If it weren't for important business, Isagi honestly would have preferred not to come at all.
He was here to see Miss Tsubaki.
As captain of Hephaestus Familia and the finest blacksmith in the city, Tsubaki had previously taken on Isagi's commission to forge the hunter's weapons associated with [Night of the Hunt].
Among them were firearms, as well as a great many practical, shape-shifting "conventional weapons."
In truth, over the course of this period, Tsubaki had already produced a large number of firearm-type weapons — portable handguns, as well as Isagi's personal favorites, [*].
Some of them had even been given to Loki Familia and Freya Familia by the boy — netting him a tidy profit, and serving as a form of sponsorship for their upcoming expedition, since the campaign to subjugate the corrupted Spirit had yet to begin.
According to intelligence gathered by the Xenos, the corrupted Spirit had retreated to somewhere beyond the 60th Floor and was sitting still. No one knew what it was brewing.
While letting it drag on would give the enemy more time to grow, given that it had already been growing for so many years now, waiting a little longer before they were fully prepared shouldn't cause any real harm.
The Guild was still of the mind to have the senior members of Loki Familia and Freya Familia accompany Isagi into the "special Dungeon" to level up — once everyone had reached Lv. 7, the odds of defeating the corrupted Spirit would be considerably better.
But that could wait for later.
"Very good," Isagi said.
Through this period of collaboration, Tsubaki's skill in crafting hunter's weapons had grown sharper and sharper — to the point where she had now produced even the most complex weapon yet.
"This thing is truly remarkable," the woman couldn't help but murmur in admiration.
What she handed Isagi at that moment was an exquisitely crafted cane.
He took it in his hand, set its tip lightly against the ground with his right hand, and instantly transformed into the very image of those distinguished, impeccably mannered gentlemen and nobles who came from the capital of some distant empire.
"It'd be even better with a monocle — ideally one threaded with a gold-and-silver chain, hanging from the ear—"
"Is that so," Isagi replied.
He couldn't picture himself looking like that even slightly, his full attention fixed on the weapon in his hands.
At a glance, it was just an ordinary cane.
A little over a meter long, hard, heavy, dependable — forged from the hardest metal, [Adamantine].
But in truth, a small twist of the switch hidden in the handle was all it took for a blade to snap out from the tip, transforming it in an instant into a slender, pointed longsword — excellent for piercing through monsters and causing massive blood loss. That much Tsubaki had said herself: a quality built into the weapon.
Unassuming as it looked, it had still been made by the strongest blacksmith in the city, with no compromises on materials — and as a result, it had already reached the level of Tier-One Armament.
It was a sword-cane.
And beyond that — pressing a different switch would cause the blade to snap outward, with the cane itself extending and transforming into a bladed chain whip, every link edged with razor-sharp steel.
As the keen blades danced through the air, they let out a sharp, piercing shriek.
Isagi gave it a casual crack, and it left several jagged cracks in the nearby stone floor.
Not bad at all.
No, this was genuinely impressive.
One weapon, three forms. Effective at range and in close quarters alike — a true master's weapon, and exactly the kind Isagi loved most.
Though it was his first time wielding it, something about it felt deeply familiar.
[This is wonderful —]
After a moment of quiet appreciation, Isagi turned to thank Tsubaki — but the woman wasn't having any of it, because...
"The one who should be thanking you is me," she said.
The one-eyed blacksmith wore an expression of complete sincerity, arms folded across her chest, voice serious.
"These weapons have given me a new insight —"
Tsubaki's dream was to forge a weapon that surpassed the gods.
But what did it actually mean to surpass a god?
The God of the Forge could craft Tier-One Armaments — and so could she. So where exactly was the gap?
As the strongest smith in the city today — or rather, one could say the strongest smith in the entire world.
Tsubaki naturally had her own convictions and her own relentless pursuit.
But in the past, that very obsession had also left her confused and stagnant, unable to move forward for a long time.
Until her collaboration with Isagi.
The woman seemed to have grasped something — faint, but real.
That something was [Purity].
Weapons, at their core, were things made to take life — whether that life belonged to a monster, an ordinary person, or even a god.
This was a crossroads every blacksmith had to face, a barrier they had to "convince" themselves past.
If the weapon you forged ended up killing someone — wouldn't it have been better not to forge it at all?
The moment you entertained that thought, you could no longer be a blacksmith.
Because it wasn't only a denial of the weapon's very existence — it was a denial of the smith who forged it.
If even the weapon itself was unnecessary, then the blacksmith was even more so.
And so, [Purity] mattered.
Whether it killed a person or a monster, whatever the weapon was taken away and used for — pondering such questions was itself pointless.
A blacksmith who forges a weapon only needs to know what purpose they forged it for.
A hunter's weapon exists to hunt "Beasts."
Nothing more than that.
And so — to refine it further and further through a thousand hunts, iterating toward its most perfect form.
The more hunter's weapons Tsubaki forged, the more she was captivated by their simple, uncompromising clarity.
She had realized something.
And so, the woman's goal was no longer the vague ambition of forging [a weapon that surpasses the gods]. She now had something far more concrete to aim for.
She would.
[Forge a weapon capable of killing the Black Dragon.]
Because in this world, the only thing that even the gods themselves could not handle was the Black Dragon.
And not only that.
In the old Zeus Familia and Hera Familia, the vast majority of members had wielded weapons and equipment forged by Lord Goibniu and Lord Hephaestus.
And yet the masterworks of the God of the Forge had failed to kill the [Black Dragon]. If she could do it — wouldn't that mean she had surpassed a god?
The clouds parted, the sun broke through — and Tsubaki suddenly felt as though she understood a great many things at once.
She had decided. This would be her goal, and she would begin working toward an entirely new kind of weapon.
As for all of this —
Isagi, of course, had no idea. He simply tucked the sword-cane back into his cloak, intending to add it to his everyday arsenal.
Meanwhile.
He found himself looking at the [Divine Armament] that Goddess Artemis was now handing him — the Arrow of Orion.
He hadn't thought about this at all.
Before they'd come, Isagi had wondered why Goddess Artemis had insisted on accompanying him when she heard he was headed to the Hephaestus Familia's base.
He'd figured the Moon Goddess and the Forge Goddess were old acquaintances, and she'd wanted to come along to catch up.
It was nothing like that.
Artemis had simply been waiting for the opportunity to hand him this god-killing weapon.
What on earth?!
Seeing the slightly bewildered look on Isagi's face, Artemis could only respond with silence.
Because —
The goddess, never one for words, had absolutely no way of telling the boy that she had "acknowledged" him.
What did it truly mean to be a [Hero]?
Ever since returning to the city, Artemis had found herself turning the question over and over in her mind.
Was it that great power brings great responsibility?
Was it justice and courage — the ability to save the world and those who were weak?
Was it strength?
Was it kindness?
Was it that all beautiful things should be present at once?
Or perhaps — perfection so complete that even she couldn't find a single flaw?
Artemis still didn't know.
But after living through that "journey across time and space," the Moon Goddess had come to understand one thing — and it was because of that understanding that she had resolved to hand over her divine companion weapon, the Arrow of Orion.
That one thing was [Uniqueness].
A hero was an existence of singular, incomparable rarity — once missed, the world would crumble, and no second one could ever be found.
Looked at from that angle, Isagi was, beyond any doubt, a [Hero]. Artemis felt no uncertainty about it, and she was sure she was not wrong.
____
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🔥 New history: Oshi No Ko: Co-starring with Kana Arima
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