“Excuse me!”
Two days after arriving in the city of Vistcourt for the first time, I finally reached the blacksmith shop. I realized there was a very high chance my request to learn craftsmanship would be declined, so my primary objective was to meet a dwarf for the first time. As such, it was important to present myself as assertive and energetic. To be honest, I had been totally exhausted when I reached the city, so Airena’s demand that I spend a day learning from her had been a blessing in disguise.
I understood the currency used here perfectly. A hundred copper coins was equal to one silver coin. Ten silvers was a small gold coin. Ten small gold coins was a large gold coin. In exchange for the apua I sold to Airena, she had given me fifty of those large gold coins.
A basic meal might cost a few copper coins. The room I stayed in the night before was quite luxurious and even had its own private bathtub, but the price of a night there, including all the fantastic food I ate, only amounted to five silvers.
Though it was very much just a rough impression, one copper seemed to have a value of around one hundred yen, making a silver worth about ten thousand yen. For the past two days, and likely for tonight as well, Airena had insisted on paying for my room. But when I thought about how much that would cost in terms of yen, I felt really bad. But I had asked her for a cheap place to stay, and she was the one who had vehemently refused and picked this particular inn, so for the time being I supposed it was fine to indulge in her generosity. The inn served fantastic foods like stew filled with plenty of meat, bread that was a little stiff but rich in flavor, and generously seasoned steaks, so I had no desire to cheap out on my lodgings now.
Putting all of that aside, the more pressing issue was the dwarf. The storefront displayed various kinds of weapons and armor, with the actual smithy located in the back. There was no way he hadn’t heard me, but the sound of metal striking metal from the back of the store continued unabated, so I contented myself with looking around the shop for now. If it was something he couldn’t put down, I had no intention of getting in the way of his work.
The front of the store was crowded with all sorts of wares, from brutally practical looking swords, to resplendently decorated armor, to tools I couldn’t even imagine how to use. Among them, my eye was drawn in particular to a large kukri, an almost boomerang-shaped knife with the cutting edge on the inside of the curve. Though it was large for its kind, it was still in the realm of knives and shortswords, so it didn’t compare to other weapons like axes and greatswords. But this kukri had a quiet aura about it, one that said it wouldn’t lose to any such large weapons.
Of course, I couldn’t touch it without permission. No matter how much it entranced me, it was still a weapon. If I picked it up without approval from the store’s owner and hurt myself, it would be a huge problem for them. Well, an elf like me visiting a shop owned by a dwarf may have been trouble enough, but that was a different matter entirely.
“Yo, thanks for waiting. You’ve got a good eye. That’s no ordinary steel you’re looking at... Hey, you’re an elf, aren’t you?! What do you want in my shop?! I’ve got nothing to sell to no damned elf!” As I stared endlessly at the kukri, a voice called out behind me, gentle at first but quickly turning to angry shouting.
Turning around, I found a short, muscular man glaring at me. His long hair had been tied up to keep out of his way. His appearance shouted “dwarf” so loudly that I couldn’t help but smile at seeing him.
“Hello! This is a fantastic kukri. I’d love it, but I’m not here for shopping, you damned dwarf. I do want it though! I really do! But I’ve already decided on the material I want to use for a knife! Oh, sorry. Here, I brought this gift as a peace offering.”
This was every bit a battle. I answered with a boisterous shout loud enough to match the dwarf’s angry rant. But of course, I couldn’t forget that the bottle I had brought for him was glass, so I made sure to hand it over carefully. One’s first greeting and gift were an important part of etiquette.
“You’re being awfully polite. Wait, who’d you call a damned dwarf?! You damned elf! How dare you bring such good alcohol! Damn, this really is good stuff...” Perhaps taken aback by my politeness, the dwarf’s demeanor also softened. “If you’re not here to buy something, what do you want? I appreciate the drink, but if it’s for something stupid, I’m still kicking you out.”
Yeah, it seems like he’s a good person after all.
You really couldn’t judge someone before you met them. I was extremely grateful he was willing to hear my request at all. Though that may have just been because of the bottle, which had set me back an entire large gold coin all on its own.
I took out the forest wolf fangs from my bag and put them on the counter. “On my way out of the forest, I killed a forest wolf and took these fangs. I want to make them into a knife, and I was hoping you could teach me how.”
The dwarf raised an eyebrow, then took one of the fangs in his hand to get a closer look. He was careful with the fangs and studied them with a serious eye. After a few minutes of careful inspection, he set the fang back on the counter.
“I thought you were weird, but it looks like you’re an idiot too. This is no forest wolf fang. It came from a much larger grand wolf. You’d need a lot more than a few pointers from me to learn how to work with something like this.”
Well that was a shock. How did I make that mistake? I’d assumed all of the wolves in the forest would be...forest wolves. Apparently that wasn’t the case.
“Yeah, I definitely didn’t want to mess it up, so that’s why I came here. I heard you were the best blacksmith in the city. I don’t have any of its fur or meat, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t waste the fangs and claws I do have.” I carefully put the fangs, which I now knew to belong to a grand wolf, back into my bag. As I did, the dwarf spoke again.
“If you don’t want to fail, it’d be better to ask me to make it. If you’re tough enough to hunt grand wolves, you’d make plenty of money as an adventurer without learning a skill like this.”
He really was a kind person, wasn’t he? He was all but saying he’d be willing to make a weapon for me. But that wasn’t what I wanted, so I shook my head with a smile.
“I’m not that interested in being an adventurer yet. I want to do more than make a single knife, and I’m interested in blacksmithing itself. You’re as interesting as I’d hoped you’d be, and I’d like to see the forge as well. I’d rather spend a decade or two learning blacksmithing than going adventuring.”
The dwarf looked at me like he was seeing some sort of bizarre animal for the first time. Well, that’s about the reaction I expected. I was aware that what I was saying was bizarre for an elf. But compared to my time as a human, this life span was so much longer. In the end, I needed to live true to myself more than anything else, even if nobody else understood. That’s what I had decided when I gave up my life as a high elf.
The dwarf sighed. “So you’re not an idiot; you’re just insane. Fine. I’ll take a madman over those arrogant elves any day. If you’re willing to work, you can learn blacksmithing from me ’til your head’s on straight. I would feel bad for the grand wolf if you wasted its fangs, after all!”
No matter what path I took, even if no one understood me, I would eventually cross paths with others. I held out a hand to the dwarf, who spent more time staring at it than he had at the materials I showed him earlier. But after realizing I wasn’t going to give up, he finally broke and shook it.