Chapter 27: The Sword Meets the Sword (2)

The Sword Meets the Sword (2)

I watched the old man’s back.

Clang-!

The old man raised the hammer and struck again.

Clang-!

There is no difference in strength. There was no difference in the height of his swing.

Clang-!

The perfect sound was constantly repeated.

Again, I felt my heartbeat quicken. A faint rush of blood to my head.

Clang-!

My first memories and reality perfectly overlapped.

Clang-!

An unknown sensation filled me, then quickly disappeared. It happened before I even realized it.

I attempted to recall that sensation, but the sound of hammering that continued uninterruptedly in the background broke my focus.

I felt as if I lost something.

I watched the old man. He had stopped hammering. He brought the iron into the furnace, held it there for a few moments, then brought it back.

Again, he raised his hammer against the heated iron.

Clang-!

A flaming blade.

Suddenly, a white hand appeared in my vision.

Something cold touched my forehead.

It was as if I was woken up from a dream.

“Ah…”

Until that moment, I was unaware of anything else around me.

Only the old man’s hammering mattered.

Now, I noticed other sounds. The other smiths beating heated iron. The sound of the bellows hissing. The sound of the flames clamoring.

“Your Highness, you’re sweating too much.”

I heard Amelia’s voice. She held a wet handkerchief against my forehead.

Only then did I look around.

The other smiths, who were busy with their own hammers, stopped and bowed. Their apprentices who were stepping on the bellows knelt.

A strong middle-aged man wandered around the workshop and forced the smiths to stop working.

Then, he ran and fell at my feet.

“The lowly things greet the Prince.”

He had a different aura than other craftsmen in different fields. He didn’t have the clumsiness peculiar to a craftsman, only a sense of strength and efficiency.

“Your Highness,” Torrance introduced him, “He is Saxony, who is in charge of the guild.”

“Right.” I said briefly, then turned my head again to the old man.

“What are you doing?” I heard Saxony yell out. “Stop what you’re doing and pay your respects! Stop!”

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“Stop,” I told him, shutting him down.

“Yes, Your Highness?” He looked confused as if he was trying to figure out my intentions.

He wiped his mouth. Then, he rubbed his hand on his jacket as he looked around.

The faces of the smiths around him were full of dissatisfaction. They could not protest, however, but their displeasure at having to stop their work was plain.

“Why did you stop them?” I asked him.

“Y-your Highness?” Saxony’s eyes widened.

I turned and spoke to the smiths around me.

“It will cool down.”

At my words, the smiths looked confused.

“Keep feeding the flames in the furnace!”

The smiths suddenly realized what I was saying and immediately jumped into action.

“What are you doing? Are you not stepping on the bellows?”

“Start moving! Feed the flame!”

The smiths started yelling at their apprentices.

The familiar sound started reverberating in all directions.

The bellows hissing, the sound of hammering.

They did not contain the perfection of the old man’s swing, but the overflowing vitality in the workshop made me satisfied.

* * *

I watched the old man for a long time. He didn’t stop working until the end, never even sparing a second to look at me.

Carls and other court knights wanted to make him kneel down, but I stopped them.

Time passed. The sun was almost setting.

“Let’s stop for today,” I announced.

Unfortunately, I had to stop watching him. I want to keep listening and watching to the old man, but I could not stand watching the heavily armored court knights wilting in the heat of the furnace any longer.

As we stepped out of the workshop, Carls face was red, and the court knights were breathing heavily.

They didn’t say it, but the visit was obviously a painful experience for them.

“He has been making and dissolving swords for half a year. He works on them with full concentration like that, but once he finishes, he melts the sword immediately,” Torrance explained.

“Are the finished products failures?” I asked him.

Torrance shook his head.

“That is what’s odd, Your Highness. The King even gave him the title of “Master Swordsmith”. All his works were perfect. Even the ones he melts off were masterpieces.”

“But why would he melt a masterpiece?”

Torrance shrugged and sighed, saying he doesn’t know.

“He has been working hard on that one for a month. He hardly sleeps. As he is not young anymore, I am not alone in worrying whether he would get to finish that sword.”

* * *

I visited the old man again the next day.

The old man was always the same. His movement, his posture… the only thing that changed was that the iron he was pounding was now almost like a finished blade.

I stayed in the workshop from sunrise to sunset, peacefully listening to the sound of the old man’s hammer.

I didn’t feel the odd sensation that fleeted through me on the first day. However, I didn’t get tired of the sound of the man’s hammer.

When I came back after spending a day in the workshop, Count Ellen was always waiting for me back at the mansion.

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Having dinner, sharing boring conversations.

If there wasn’t for the guild, I would have left the Count’s place immediately.

“Are you interested in metallurgy?”

Uncle came into my room one night to ask me.

He heard that I was staying in the smithy all day.

“It’s not that I am interested, rather, I feel at peace when I am in the smithy.”

Uncle tilted his head as if he could not understand what I was saying.

He said something else.

“We’ve stayed here for almost three days. We’ll leave for the Templar Castle soon, so if you have another place you want to visit here, do it tomorrow.”

“I will. You’re so busy that I hardly see you.”

“There is something that His Majesty asked me to do. It will be finished in a day or two, so you have nothing to worry about…”

Uncle looked tired. It seems that the King did not give him permission without asking for something in return.

* * *

It was the day before we were scheduled to leave Count Ellen.

As always, I headed to the guild’s workshop.

“Oh, you’re here again.”

Saxony saw me and gave me a cringy greeting. I shook his hand roughly and went straight to the old man.

The old man greeted me with his back, as always.

Clang-!

Clang-!

I listened to the sound of his hammer as I looked at the old man more closely.

Within a few days, he was noticeably thinner. He seemed to have reached the limit of his physical strength. As Torrance said, it was likely that he would fall before finishing this sword.

Surprisingly, the sound of his hammering remained the same.

“I wanted to see it before we left,” I said loudly at his back.

The old man didn’t answer. He just adjusted his posture and continued hammering.

I felt the workshop earlier than usual. As today is the last day of my stay at Count Ellen, I had something else to do.

Of course, it was to attend a useless farewell party prepared by Count Ellen.

“I have to go.” I told the old man.

I left the workshop and looked back in regret several times.

* * *

Finally, he’s going.

Torrance Allen sighed with relief.

How anxious he was when he heard that the First Prince, infamous for being an idiot, is coming to visit them. It was terrifying to think of what evil he may do in their estate.

Just as expected, there was trouble from the first day.

The Prince arrived one day later than the date they were informed of.

He cursed the Prince under his breath as he led the cavalry to search for them in the plains.

Still, he was very happy when he met them. It was absolutely fortunate that a member of a royal family didn’t die somewhere in their territory.

The First Prince was rumored to be a fat pig with a nasty attitude.

However, the First Prince he met was completely different from the rumors.

He wasn’t a fat pig, and he wasn’t a nasty idiot.

The Prince was a handsome man with a physique of someone who had been training.

His words and actions were sometimes rough, but by no means nasty or idiotic.

Of course, he couldn’t let his guard down even after the good first impression.

He waited for the Prince to reveal his true colors.

In fact, at the welcome dinner, the Prince did not say the greetings he should express to the host.

Even if that was insulting, his father presented him with valuable weapons. It was a luxurious gift to prevent the Prince from thinking of something nasty to do in their mansion.

So, the first day passed safely.

The next day, the Prince said he wanted to tour the guild’s workshop. His father, who was familiar with the sassy character of the smiths, didn’t want to accompany him, expecting that trouble would be brewed in that visit.

But the Prince could not be stopped!

Eventually, Torrance had to claim responsibility and guide him.

As they walked to the workshop, he warned him about the attitude of the smiths, but the Prince didn’t seem to be listening.

Torrance was filled with anxiety.

As expected, the smiths didn’t even put their tools down. It was only after Saxony yelled out and made a riot that they reluctantly expressed courtesy.

Fortunately, the Prince seemed to take that well.

However, as always, everything in the world doesn’t work out as he would have liked.

The old master didn’t even want to look at the Prince.

Surprisingly, the Prince wasn’t angry with that treatment. Rather, he even stopped Saxony, and his court knights from stopping the old man’s work.

He even urged the smiths and the apprentices to resume their work immediately.

“Keep feeding the flames in the furnace!”

It was then that Torrance realized that the Prince was not the bad seed that everyone thought him to be.

He was convinced day after day, as he watched the Prince in the workshop. He never interfered or ruined the smiths’ work.

He seemed to be in deep regret that he was leaving without seeing the master complete his sword. It was such a strong emotion that even the people watching him felt his sadness.

So, when he learned that the master was almost finished, Torrance ran to the Prince to inform him.

Surely, the sword would be melted again this time, so he hoped that the Prince would see it before it the inevitable happened.

Only

However, he was wrong.

When he returned to the workshop with the Prince, the master had attached a handle to the blade he had been working on.

Whoa.

As Torrance stared at the finished sword, he understood why all the other swords that seemed fine were melted off.

“I dedicate this sword to Your Highness.”

The master offered the handle to the Prince.

A great sword, created by an inspired soul who worked on it tirelessly for a month.

He offered it to the Prince, whom he hadn’t said a word to in the past few days.

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