Chapter 2: The Swordsmith They Never Expected

About a year had passed since I started working at my father’s forge.

Having turned 16, I was living a completely different life than before.

“Tarsha. I heard the sword you made this time is incredibly popular among adventurers!”

“Right now, the requests to make swords are no joke. Thanks to that, my arms feel like they’re about to fall off. My skin’s gotten all dark too.”

My father said so, but his face was overflowing with a smile.

Of course it was.

He had gone from an ordinary blacksmith in a rural village to a craftsman everyone now recognized.

Thanks to that, our standard of living had also risen quite a bit.

I’m not just talking about our house.

Because the swords were good, many people came to the forge, and because of those people, the inns and restaurants also got more customers.

Because of my sword, this entire rural village was enjoying an unprecedented boom.

It wasn’t for nothing that the faces of the villagers passing by these days were gleaming as if they’d been waxed.

‘Now that they can live comfortably, they’re probably starting to pay attention to their appearance.’

I’m not particularly interested, though.

“It’s all thanks to you, Tarsha. At first, I was so shocked that you were magicless that I thought you were just talking nonsense…”

“Why are you being so sentimental all of a sudden?”

Honestly, it was harder to persuade my father than it was to go through the hardships of making the sword.

Letting his daughter, who had just come of age and was also magicless, work in a forge was something he, as a father, could never allow.

But that was all in the past.

The forge had long since become my front yard.

Of course, at first, no one was pleased with me coming and going from the forge.

I understood.

If a girl who had never even swung a hammer was giving unsolicited advice from the side, I would have said something too.

So what about now?

“By the way, Tarsha. You haven’t been stopping by the forge at all lately. The other men keep asking where you’ve abandoned your daughter and why you’re coming alone.”

Now, they were the ones looking for me first.

“Are you not feeling well? Should I call a doctor?”

“No. I’m perfectly fine.”

“Then why… Don’t tell me this work is too hard for you?”

“Hmm… Well. It was certainly hard.”

To create the optimal carbon steel, I baked and rebaked iron in charcoal.

Since there was no equipment like an infrared thermometer, I estimated the temperature by the color of the iron’s surface and found the suitable temperatures for tempering and annealing.

During this process, I practically lived at the forge.

There was even a time when I didn’t return home for over three days and was half-dragged back by my father.

Someone might point a finger and call it inefficient, but what could I do?

There was no advanced equipment.

Even the units were arbitrary.

In a situation like this, the only way to increase accuracy was to pour in time and gather as many samples as possible.

Recalling it like that, it was hard to deny that the past year had been damn hard.

But.

It didn’t matter.

“It was fun, so it’s fine.”

Looking back, it was a truly fulfilling and enjoyable year.

Controlling variables and repeating the process until the desired result is achieved.

If you can’t enjoy this process, you can’t call yourself an engineering student.

At least, that’s what I thought.

That’s why I chose engineering.

Besides, when else would I get to bake iron myself in such a classical forge?

Being able to test the knowledge I’d only seen in textbooks was an incredible stroke of luck.

“Then why…”

My father repeatedly asked with a curious expression.

Only then did I snap out of my reminiscence and recall the topic of our conversation.

Right.

We were talking about why I hadn’t been going to the forge lately.

The conversation had gotten quite long, but the reason was absurdly short and simple.

I smiled at my father and said.

“I got tired of it.”

---

To be honest, I’ve done everything I could at the forge.

Most recently, I even succeeded in producing pattern-welded steel.

The kind of sword with a wave pattern on the blade that the Vikings used in my original world.

After that, I couldn’t think of anything else to do at the forge.

It would be a different story if there were some new materials.

No matter how much better my father’s financial situation had become, it seemed that such rare materials were very difficult to obtain.

If not new materials, the only other thing I was interested in was magic, but it seemed that not only did no mages live near this remote backwater, but they rarely even passed through.

“Sigh. This godforsaken backwater.”

The outside had already grown dark.

After finishing dinner, I sat at my desk as usual and muttered.

A pile of used parchment was stacked on the desk.

‘What if I make something like this? What about something like that?’

The doodles I’d made had already piled up this high.

Ideas were overflowing and the world outside was full of possibilities, yet here I was, rotting away in a corner of my room.

My head felt like it was about to explode from the suffocating frustration.

“Should I just pack my bags at night and sneak out?”

But every time that thought came to mind, my magiclessness held me back.

I knew all too well what a great disability being magicless was in this world.

Even if I couldn’t use magic since I wasn’t a mage, the inability to strengthen my body with mana was too significant.

On top of that, I was a girl now.

Combining those two factors completed the terrible phrase: ‘A girl weaker than pubescent kids because she can’t use mana.’

One stroke of bad luck and my life could be over, forget about new materials or whatever.

“What am I to do…”

Just as I was muttering like that and starting to scribble something on the parchment.

Knock, knock.

Someone knocked on the door.

From the sound, it seemed to be my mother.

“Tarsha. Are you awake?”

“Yeah. What is it?”

“We have guests. They said they want to meet you, Tarsha.”

Guests at this time of night?

And they want to see me, not my father?

“What do you want to do? If you’re uncomfortable, I can tell them to come back tomorrow morning.”

“No. That would be a hassle for them too. I’ll come out now.”

When I opened the door, I met my mother’s eyes.

My mother looked me up and down slowly, then finally sighed and gripped both my shoulders tightly.

“What kind of attire is that to meet guests in.”

“Ah.”

Only then did I realize I was wearing only underwear and a single cotton top.

My mother tightened her grip on my shoulders and pushed me back into the room.

“I’ll tell them to wait a bit, so hurry up and change before you come out.”

Slam.

The door was shut roughly.

That damn attire.

Attire.

For me, who had thought even in my past life that the most important factor in clothing was convenience, it was a demand that was too difficult to adapt to.

---

By the time William arrived at the rural village where Tarsha lived, darkness had already completely fallen.

“I heard it was in the countryside, but I didn’t think it would be this far out.”

William got out of the carriage, dumbfounded.

Soon, a shrill voice came from inside the carriage.

“What is this? It’s a total boondocks. Is the craftsman who made that sword really here?”

A small-statured woman with red hair flowing down to her hips got out of the carriage, muttering.

Kyla.

At a glance, she looked like a child, but she was, in fact, a magic teacher at Ceylon Academy.

The academy’s symbol engraved on her robe, a crest made of a sword and a staff, was proof of that.

She looked around and spoke caustically.

“I don’t think there’s even a single proper workshop here. Aren’t you mistaken about something?”

“No. According to my investigation, this is the right place. I was told there’s a forge deep in the village…”

“Do you think a forge would be open at this hour? Ah. If I’d known this, I would have come tomorrow.”

‘If you hadn’t suddenly insisted on coming with me, we could have arrived much earlier.’

The words lingered at the back of his throat, but William held back what he wanted to say.

He was already tired from the journey and didn’t want to argue any further.

To break the awkward atmosphere, he brought up another topic.

“By the way, Kyla, you’re actually outside the academy. What’s gotten into you?”

“What are you talking about? As a mage, it’s only natural to be curious when you see that sword.”

Kyla said confidently.

“There’s no way a sword could be that hard without magic. They must have used some trick I don’t know about.”

“Are you thinking that blacksmith is some kind of mage?”

“They must have some degree of knowledge. I’ll go check, and if they’re any good, I’ll take them in as an assistant!”

While chatting like that, the two didn’t stop walking.

Fortunately, the village was not large.

After asking around, they were able to find the house where the blacksmith who made the sword lived without much difficulty.

Knock, knock.

When they knocked, a man poked his head out through a slightly opened door.

“Who is it?”

William explained his situation.

He was from Ceylon Academy.

He wanted to meet the blacksmith who made this sword.

“Hmm… Well, it’s late, so please come in.”

The man was skeptical at first, but upon seeing the ID that proved their affiliation with the academy, he readily let William and Kyla into his house.

‘Nothing special, I see.’

William, sitting in front of the table, looked around.

He thought that since this was a craftsman who could create such a sword, there might be something unusual about the house, but what caught his eye was, without a doubt, an ordinary family home.

“Please wait a moment. I’ll go check if my daughter is awake.”

The blacksmith’s wife said as she brought them tea.

William called out to her as she was walking away.

“Wait a minute. Why your daughter?”

“Didn’t you say you were looking for the person who made the sword?”

“…Excuse me?”

Something about the conversation didn’t quite add up.

William looked at the blacksmith and asked again.

“Didn’t the man here make this sword?”

“Well… it’s true that I made it. But I’m just the one who made it.”

“Just made it? What on earth does that mean…?”

“It’s exactly as it sounds. I just made the sword as my daughter told me to.”

The blacksmith added.

“If it weren’t for my daughter, I wouldn’t have been able to make that sword. So, in effect, my daughter made that sword.”

“…I see. If it’s not too much trouble, I would very much like to meet your daughter.”

William sipped his tea and waited.

Soon, a woman appeared from behind the blacksmith’s wife who had returned.

The moment she appeared, William felt a faint, metallic, iron-like scent brush past his nose.

Her attire was peculiar.

Except for the parts that needed to be cinched, the excessively loose fit of her clothes looked as if a man’s blacksmith work uniform had been heavily modified.

On top of that, a roughly tied pink ponytail.

When combined with her somewhat sharp eyes, it gave off an atmosphere he had never seen anywhere before.

“I’m sorry. This is the only suitable clothing I have right now. Ah, I’m Tarsha.”

“I am William. Um… if you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”

“I’m sixteen this year.”

Sixteen.

An age where one has just come of age and is in full bloom.

But was it because of her attire?

Or was it because of this metallic iron smell?

William felt something akin to seasoned experience rather than the unique freshness of a sixteen-year-old from the woman in front of him.

“I heard you were looking for me. May I hear the reason?”

At Tarsha’s question, William finally came to his senses.

He showed her the sword in the box and asked.

“I heard that you, Miss Tarsha, made this sword. Is that correct?”

Tarsha glanced at the sword for a moment and answered immediately.

“That’s right, I made it.”

“You knew just by looking at it.”

“Of course. This wave pattern can only be made at our forge.”

A confirmation without a hint of hesitation.

But the moment those words fell, Kyla, who had been silent all along, opened her mouth.

“Wait. Did you really make this?”

“Huh? Yes. I made it.”

“Ha. Liar. You’re magicless, right?”

Kyla’s two eyes were fixed on Tarsha.

She glared as if trying to see right through Tarsha and spat out sharply.

“There’s no way a magicless person could create such a masterpiece. It’s common sense.”

For a moment.

The atmosphere in the house froze.