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“Thank you for saving my son.”
This person is the smith? He’s damn huge! He’s at least ten times my height! How the heck is his kid so short!? “Are you a giant?”
The smith laughed with his mouth wide open, revealing a lot of missing teeth, and the ground shook from the tremors. Jeez. Softie said really good smiths were hard to find, but I could’ve spotted this guy from miles away. “I get that a lot, but no. I just have the blood of a titanic metal-eating bear running through my veins. You’re the captain who claimed twenty sky-realm experts’ heads and returned my son to me. I’ll create three weapons for you, free of charge.”
Mm. The crown prince sent a message to this smith letting him know about me. And it only took about twenty minutes for him to arrive. Thankfully, I got a meal in during that time. I’m still eating through my supply of aurochsen that never seems to run out. Anyways, I get three free weapons! “I want two swords that look like this!” I gave the giant smith the blueprint that Ilya made. It was about the size of his fingernail. Could he even make a weapon fit for someone like me with such large hands? “And, and, uh, I wasn’t expecting a third weapon, but I want something that I can sell for a lot of money!”
Ilya hit her forehead with her hand. Sheesh, for an alchemist who has to be very precise with her hands, she sure is clumsy sometimes.
“You’re quite the honest foxkin,” the smith said with a smile. “Aren’t you afraid of offending me?”
“Uh….” Did I say something he’d be offended by? I don’t think I did…. Is it because I asked if he was a giant? “I don’t care what other people say; you’re very not large at all and it’s totally every doorframes’ faults for not being large enough to accommodate you.”
The smith stared at me. Then he turned his head to the crown prince, who looked like he was sobbing in the corner. “Is she … alright? You know, up there.”
Hey! I try to be nice and he calls me an idiot!? This bastard. If he wasn’t the one making my weapons, I’d have beaten him up and stolen every … single … thing…. Wait a minute. A smith who can make sky-realm weapons must be filthy f***ing rich! If I rob him now, I’ll literally be set for life! But the spoiled brat did say his father knew immortals…. Darn. I can’t let my greed override my sense of self-preservation! I guess I’ll let this man be rude to me. For now. I’ll remember his face to beat him up later when I become an immortal. Mn.
“Sorry, she has a defect that prevents her from hearing things.”
“Who’d you call defective, Ilya!?”
“Why did you hear that sentence but not the sentences before that one!?” Ilya tried to run, but I didn’t let her escape.
“Excuse me, foxkin,” the giant smith said. “You wanted two of these swords and a third weapon, correct?”
“That’s right. Oh! Make the third one a hammer. It has to be big; the head has to be at least as wide and as tall as you! And the handle should be as tall as me, but it has to be thin enough for me to wrap my whole hand around it. And it can’t be big by being hollow! It has to be completely solid and filled with the best metals you have so I can thwack things properly with it!”
The smith scratched his head, and the spoiled brat stared at me as if I had three boobs. “You know you won’t be able to sell a weapon that big, right?”
“It’s not for sale! It’s for gently thwacking misbehaving people.”
Ilya shivered. Jeez, if she’s cold, she should pull out a jacket.
The smith frowned. “A gentle smack will kill someone. A weapon that big will weigh a little over a hundred tons.”
“That’s it?” A hundred tons? That’s not heavy at all! Durandal’s previous maximum weight could go up to five hundred tons. And I could use something that heavy just fine when I was a saint-realm expert. Hmm. How much can I lift as an earth-realm expert? “Can you make it ten times heavier? Wait, no, twenty times! No. Thirty? Mm. Why is math so hard? Ilya, help!”
Ilya sighed and rubbed her slightly swollen head before giving me a pebble. “Here. I’ll put a block of mana in front of you. By calculating how fast the pebble moves through the mana, I’ll be able to—”
“Stop! You lost me at calculating. Just tell me what I have to do.” Ilya always insists on speaking with big words to show off her intelligence. That’s the only bad part about her.
“Throw this pebble as hard as you can through this blue light,” Ilya said. A blue box appeared in front of me. Wouldn’t it have been easier for her to say that the first time? Alright. Throw this pebble as hard as I can. Does that include with qi? Hmm.
“Unrelenting Path of Slaughter: Breaking Madness Pebble-Throwing Strike!”
“…What are you doing?” the smith asked. “Are we still designing your weapon or not?”
“I’m not sure, but Ilya knows!”
Softie’s face paled as the pebble disappeared off into the distance. “If that hits someone, they’ll die….”
Mm, would they? Nah. It’s just a pebble. A pebble never killed anybody. …Did someone scream just now? Hmm, it was probably my imagination. Anyways, blue symbols made of mana flashed in front of Ilya’s face, and she nodded. “Alright. The max weight you can swing is around four thousand tons. You’ll want your weapon to weigh about three thousand five hundred tons to use it comfortably.”
“Mm. You got that, Mr. Smith? The hammer should be three thousand five hundred tons.”
The smith furrowed his brow. “Does that have to be its base weight, or can I install a formation that can manipulate its weight freely?”
“Formation!” I’m starting to love formations. They can do anything! Just like magic. Maybe I can learn how to create formations? I might not have any mana, but formations are powered by qi! I can totally learn how to create them. …But learning makes my head hurt, so I’ll have to take it really slow. I should just delegate the learning to one of my minions. That’s right! I don’t have to learn how to create formations myself. I can make someone else learn it for me! Like Ilya. She already knows how to create formations. But if she already knows, then hasn’t my goal already been accomplished…? I’m a genius! I achieved a goal before even starting! I bet Durandal would be proud.
“Yeah, she’d like that formation on the two swords as well,” Ilya said. “Sorry for troubling you. She daydreams a lot.”
“I do not!” I just don’t listen!
“Alright, then shall I get started?” the smith asked. “These are the final plans, right? You can’t change them once I start.”
“Right, go ahead!” I’ve been waiting for this day for so long! My bed’s just not the same without Durandal. I can kidnap Softie to replace his cuddles, but she doesn’t have a penis. But if she had a penis, I wouldn’t have sex with her because I’m loyal to Durandal! Probably. Well, it’s not like she’d grow one, so this train of thought is stupid. Durandal’s getting a body again!
The smith reached into his mouth and … pulled out a tooth!? He rubbed the blood off against his shirt and nodded. Then he squeezed it with his hand! What was he doing? Is this smithing? Maybe it’s a good-luck ritual. When the smith opened his hand, there was a sword! It looked exactly like Durandal’s previous weapon body! “One sword done.”
“…The heck?”
The crown prince cleared his throat. “Yes, this is the power of our Kang Country’s sky-realm smith. Thanks to his titanic metal-eating bear bloodline, his teeth can transform into sky-realm-ranked weapons. Of course, he has a limited number of teeth, and they take quite a while to grow back.”
“Two swords and a hammer, just as you requested.” The smith held out his palm, and there were two mini-DalDals and one giant hammer—well, the hammer was on the ground since he couldn’t hold it in his palm. This smith is amazing! …Couldn’t I have stolen all of his kid’s teeth? Mm, it’s too late now. If I had known, I’d have had Mr. Feathers collect those too. Ah, what’s done is done. I have a sky-realm-ranked sword for Durandal now!
“Durandal! Come on out!” I retrieved Durandal’s spirit seed from my secret spot and grabbed one of the swords. Phew. Let’s do this. Careful, careful. Place the seed into the hilt…, and there’s the flash! …Eh? Durandal didn’t go inside? “Why didn’t it work?”
The smith leaned over and squinted at Durandal’s spirit seed and the sky-realm-ranked sword. “It seems like the grade of your spirit seed is too low. You’d have to put it in an earth-realm-ranked sword.”
…
…
…
“Durandal!!! I’ll f***ing f*** you to death, you f***er!”
About six paragraphs down.
[“Uh….” Did I say something he’d be offended by? I don’t think I did…. Is it because I asked if he was a giant? “I don’t care what other people say; you’re very not large at all and it’s totally every doorframes’ faults for not being large enough to accommodate you.”]
“… you’re very not large at all…” better is “…you’re not very large at all…” of course, this is what Lucia is saying, so she could have incorrect grammar.
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