Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
The sound of hammering rings out, as it always does in the Hephaestus Familia.
It is the process of heating metal to its limit and striking it hard to drive out its impurities.
The only difference from usual... would be that, in one particular place, that sound has not stopped for three days and nights.
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
Ssssss, whoosh
The blacksmith, who has spent those three days without sleep hammering iron, grasps the long piece of glowing-hot metal in his bare hand and plunges it into the barrel of oil beside him in an instant.
An ordinary person would writhe from the heat and suffer burns just from bringing a hand close. The flames rising from the oil touching the steel would leave them unable to use that arm again. Yet for some reason, his body is perfectly fine.
No, more than fine—it is strange.
They say that turning something ordinary one hundred and eighty degrees makes it strange. But if you turn it another one hundred and eighty degrees from there, is it strange, or ordinary?
There is no trace of pain from the heat touching him around his eyes. There is only the madness of a craftsman.
Hunger, sleepiness, lust, thirst, pain, exhaustion, hope, elation—none of them can cross the wall of that madness.
There is no hesitation in the way he returns the steel, having finished another quench, to the furnace and waits for it to glow red again.
Neither Orario, nor the Hephaestus Familia, nor his previous life—nothing can pull him away from this process right now.
Even if war broke out in Orario this very instant, he would remain seated here and continue completing his creation. If someone tried to stop him? He would remove them. That was all.
His eyes reflect only that enormous, unidentifiable mass of iron. His mind is likewise filled with nothing but it, and his body has no intention of grasping anything else. Well, except perhaps the hammer meant to strike it.
The eyes that had been fiercely staring into the furnace flash once. He grabs the steel within with his left hand, pulls it out, lays it upon the anvil, and begins hammering it with the hammer in his right.
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
He continues hammering the crimson metal, which can no longer be called a lump of iron and is clearly taking the shape of a blade. By the time the hammering stops, it is no longer merely shaped like a blade. It is unquestionably a blade.
No, not an ordinary blade. It is the blade of a greatsword.
A greatsword with a blade thirty centimeters wide and one meter long. Including the tang, the blade of the greatsword he holds is a full meter and sixty centimeters in length.
Ssssss, whoosh
He plunges the blade back into the enormous oil barrel beside him, drawing out its remaining heat and making it still harder. He quenches it with the single-minded conviction that it must be the strongest, worthy of the name Great King.
Then he puts it back into the furnace and watches.
It is the same process he has followed for the past three days.
Put it in, heat it, hammer it, cool it, put it in again.
But a change comes to that action, which he has simply repeated over and over.
He tosses several small magic stones that had been set nearby into the furnace. Being clearly smaller than the massive blade, the magic stones instantly crack and shatter in the furnace, which has been kept at maximum heat to warm the greatsword, and their forms vanish.
Whether they simply disappeared or vaporized and went somewhere else, Smith pays it no mind and waits to take the blade out again.
He removes the blade once more and perfects its shape.
This time, he begins striking carefully, making fine adjustments with every blow of the hammer.
Clink
Clink
Clink
Clink
Clink
Clink
Clink
As the shape of the blade is refined, the sound of the hammering changes as well.
Unlike the earlier strikes, which used great force to establish the overall form, he is now making delicate adjustments with less force, producing a somewhat higher sound.
Once the hammering is done, he dips the blade into the oil barrel beside him once again.
Whoosh!
The quenched blade is perfect.
Its edge stretches straight, maintaining perfect levelness.
The blade maintains perfect symmetry around its central ridge.
Perhaps because he added magic stones during the final heating, it gives off a soft glow.
A blade one meter long, with a sixty-centimeter hilt.
A greatsword of overwhelming size, one meter and sixty centimeters in total length, is complete. Of course, the crossguard, grip, and pommel still remain, but the blade is the sword's entire skeleton and musculature. If those parts are its skin and hair, then it is almost finished now.
But he cannot relax yet. Do you know the saying, "Without lips, teeth grow cold"?
It means that without lips, teeth grow cold. No matter how fine the bones and muscles may be, if the skin protecting them is defective, death comes in an instant.
The same goes for a sword.
If the crossguard is made poorly, it cannot support the base of the sword. The blade will not be secured and will wobble.
If the grip is made poorly, it will break, leaving you to fight while clutching the bare blade.
If the pommel is fixed poorly, the balance will be off, and your lifeline will be cut short.
Each of these parts is important enough to rival the blade itself.
He puts the steel ingot he had taken out earlier into the furnace and waits.
When the ingot heats until it glows white-hot, he takes it out in his bare hand and begins hammering.
After only a few strikes, unlike with the blade, the crossguard quickly takes shape. He grasps it and quenches it in oil.
He puts the quenched crossguard back into the furnace and heats it again.
Once again, he takes out the white-hot crossguard with his bare hand, sets a small chisel against its center, and begins striking it with his hammer.
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
Clang
If he strikes too hard, the chisel could bounce away, so at first he taps lightly enough to make a small dent. Once it begins to bite in, he starts striking with all his strength.
No matter how hard the crossguard is, it cannot withstand a blacksmith's hammering forever. Eventually, a hole is punched through it.
He fits the crossguard onto the blade standing beside him.
There is a slight snag where the crossguard meets the base of the greatsword's blade.
He goes to the magic-stone grinder set off to one side and prepares to work on the crossguard. Since metal filings getting into his eyes could blind him, he puts on protective goggles and begins slowly grinding down the part where the crossguard and blade catch.
Whiiiiir
Krrrshhhk!
He examines the section he has ground into a diamond shape, matching the greatsword's blade, confirms that there are no cracks or other flaws, and fits the blade and crossguard together again.
It fits exactly, with neither gaps nor protruding parts.
He separates the two again and moves them aside so they will not interfere with his work.
This time, he takes out four thumb-sized pieces of iron and puts them into the furnace. Just as with the magic stones earlier, they heat up in an instant, and he removes them.
He shapes each one into a round disc, quenches them, and heats them in the furnace again.
After taking them out again, he slowly punches holes through them, just as he did with the crossguard earlier.
When all four holes have been made in precisely the right shape, he brings over the blade and fits them on one by one. After confirming that they fit exactly—not too loose and not too tight—he takes two ten-centimeter pieces and one twenty-centimeter piece of ironwood from beside the stack of ingots.
In his original world, ironwood simply referred to hard wood. But ironwood here is different. It grows in places richer in magic, absorbs iron from the earth along with that magic, and boasts strength equal to real steel.
He prepares the magic-stone grinder and protective goggles again, then compares the pieces of ironwood against the template he had made beforehand to see which sections need to be cut away. Fortunately, the wood blocks are the right size, so they only need to be shaped.
He secures the ironwood tightly in a vise and starts the grinder.
Whiiiiir
Krrrraaaaaash!
Gripping the grinder with both hands, he presses it against the ironwood block fixed in the vise. Sparks fly, and it slowly begins to be shaved away.
One at a time.
One at a time.
He slowly carves them into rounded cylinders, then releases the breath he had been holding.
He sets down the grip sections, shaped just as he intended, takes out a file, and begins removing even the slightest protrusions.
Scrape, scrape
He takes the chisel that had served him for both the crossguard and the discs. This time, he heats the chisel itself in the furnace.
No matter how much magic and iron an ironwood tree has absorbed, wood is still wood. It will burn if placed in a furnace.
Using the red-hot chisel from the furnace, he slowly strikes the ironwood.
Tap
Tap
Tap
Tap
A chisel is fundamentally an inverted triangle, so he cuts halfway through from one side, then cuts out the remaining half from the other. Of course, if he stopped there, the interior would be shaped like an hourglass and he would be unable to fit the grip onto it. So he takes out the file again and begins grinding out the inside.
He shapes all three wooden pieces in this manner, then sets down the file and chisel.
Now, all that remains is the pommel.
He already made the pommel beforehand, so he brings it over.
First, before fitting the crossguard over the blade's hilt, he spreads a small lump of clay over the hilt and then slides on the crossguard. It is apparently a type of magic item, a substance that helps bond metals together.
Just as he tested earlier, the crossguard fits perfectly without any misalignment.
Next comes the grip.
He brings over the discs and ironwood pieces he made earlier. First, he fits on one disc, applies a little resin to the inside of an ironwood piece, and slides it on. Then another disc, and then another piece of ironwood...
In that way,
disc—ironwood—disc—ironwood—disc—ironwood,
he completes the grip and moves on to the pommel.
He clamps the blade as tightly as possible in the vise with the grip facing upward, then begins fitting on the pommel. It goes in partway by hand, then stops.
Now it is time to use the hammer.
He picks up a hammer smaller than the one he normally uses and strikes the pommel. It slowly begins to slide into place. By the time it reaches the final disc, the end of the hilt is protruding slightly. He then strikes that part hard, flattening it little by little until it instead serves to secure the top of the pommel.
He brings out the leather strap meant to wrap the grip, applies special adhesive to its starting end, and begins winding it tightly around the grip. This adhesive reacts only to animal hide and wood; it does not react to people.
Pulling tightly enough that the leather will not tear, he winds it around. At the second disc, he cuts it once, applies adhesive, wraps it around once, and binds the lower ironwood pieces in the same way.
Lastly, he must engrave inscriptions on this sword.
Thinking of this, he had received two hieroglyphic phrases from Lady Hephaestus in advance.
On one side of the crossguard:
Praise the Sun
On the other:
Lord of Cinder
He engraves those two phrases.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It is truly finished.
He has not sharpened the edge yet, but it is finished.
Without anyone's help, in this distant foreign land, he has recreated—clumsily, yet perfectly—the fantasy he saw in his homeland. His vision blurs.
Then his sight goes dark.