Kays Translations

Chapter 31: Stefana’s Sword

I was walking alongside Rugena, the rhythmic creak of the cart wheels accompanying us as we made our way toward the village forge.

This time, we were going to craft a sword using black hard silver — a rare metal also known as Dwarven Silver. The problem was that this peculiar metal couldn’t be melted in an ordinary furnace. Only a forge designed and operated by dwarves themselves, with their unique craftsmanship and secret methods, could bring such a metal to its molten state.

In other words, the forge in this humble village was useless for what we intended to do.

So, how were we going to make the sword?

There was only one answer. I would have to take the place of the furnace itself — melting the metal through alchemy.

If I aligned the heating formulae properly, the alchemical array should reach temperatures of up to nine thousand degrees Celsius. That should be enough. Or at least… I hoped it would be.

“Been a while since your last smithing, huh? Think you’re up to it?” I asked.

“No problem,” Rugena replied flatly. “A dwarf who forgets how to forge might as well die.”

She said it casually while pulling the cart, and I nearly tripped in surprise.

“I’m joking,” she added after a beat. “As long as I can still drink, living’s fine.”

I sighed. That wasn’t much of an improvement. Still, I understood what she meant — forging was her life.

“Alright then,” I said with a grin. “If we manage to finish the sword by morning, I’ll treat you to something special.”

Her eyes lit up immediately. “—Wait, you mean that?!”

“Exactly,” I said, suppressing a smile. “The one I bought just for your reward.”

Both my mother and Rugena were fond of apple wine — a sweet, fragrant drink that barely counted as alcohol. But to Rugena, who had the constitution of a true dwarf, it was far too weak.

Mother had once insisted, ‘I like this one,’ and bought two small barrels of it. Not only that — she’d arranged for the merchant Blows to deliver the same amount every month. When I asked her why, she’d simply said, ‘Rugena needs her drink, doesn’t she?’ — though, amusingly enough, she hadn’t actually asked Rugena.

“Now I’m fired up,” Rugena said, suddenly speeding up. “We hurry now!”

She began pulling the cart faster, eager as a child promised candy. I jogged after her, already regretting having brought up the reward so soon.

After about twenty minutes of half-jogging through the village, we finally reached the forge. Rugena was already waiting impatiently by the door, fidgeting like a restless cat.

Well, of course she was — I had the key.

“You’re late! You were the one who said there’s no time to waste, Arthur-sama!”

“Y-yeah, I did… but I didn’t mean run all the way,” I said between gasps.

Despite my daily sword training, my stamina wasn’t much to boast about. As I struggled to catch my breath, I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps I needed more conditioning.

“…Sorry, give me just a moment,” I said, unlocking the forge door.

Once I let her inside, I slumped into a chair near the wall to steady my breathing.

Rugena, on the other hand, didn’t even look winded. Not surprising — she was a former C-rank adventurer.

“No problem,” she said briskly. “I’ll handle preparations.”

“Thanks,” I replied.

She began moving efficiently around the forge, explaining each step aloud — what each tool was, what needed cleaning, what to heat, where to place the anvil.

Inside the forge were three furnaces. The largest was a blast furnace used to melt iron, while the other two were smaller hearths used for shaping and tempering metal — fire beds, she called them.

We wouldn’t be using any of them today; I’d be acting as the heat source. Even if we wanted to, the old furnaces had been unused for years — lighting them now would be risky.

As I watched Rugena work, I mentally reviewed what I knew about black hard silver.

As its name suggested, it was black and hard, a metal with a faint silver sheen. The problem lay in its melting point. Normal silver melted at around a thousand degrees Celsius, but black hard silver wouldn’t yield even in an iron smelter.

Only the dwarves had ever managed to forge furnaces capable of melting it — hence why it was also known as Dwarven Silver. The name “silver” came not from its composition, but from its brilliant metallic luster.

Fortunately, what we had today was already refined — a purified ingot of black hard silver.

“Arthur-sama, preparations complete,” Rugena reported.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Sit here, please. And form an alchemy sphere to your left, just within my reach.”

I did as she said, creating the sphere of controlled energy beside me. Rugena took position to my left — close enough that she could reach into it with her bare hand.

“Normally,” she explained, “you’d melt the metal and pour it into a mold. But since Stefana-sama wants a sword designed for both thrusting and cutting, we’ll use folding tempering instead.”

“Folding tempering?” I asked.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Ordinary swords are cast and hammered into shape, but for slender blades with high cutting power — like Stefana-sama’s — folding the metal makes it stronger and sharper.”

Ah… like the forging of Japanese swords, then.

“So all I have to do is heat it?”

“Yes. Too much heat, and the black hard silver will become too pure — like glass. Then it’s ruined.”

“Ruined? Wait, so it’s an alloy?”

“Correct. But what metals are mixed in — that’s a Dwarven secret.”

That made sense. Even if one could build a forge hot enough, without knowing the exact alloy composition, true Dwarven Silver couldn’t be replicated.

At that point, it was wiser to buy from the dwarves than try to compete.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s begin.”

“Yes!”

I expanded a complex alchemical array, layering three heating formulae together. If the metal couldn’t melt in an iron furnace, its melting point had to be above two thousand degrees. Three layers should suffice.

“Placing the metal,” Rugena said.

She used a pair of tongs to lift the chunk of black hard silver and set it into the sphere of heat.

Time passed. The metal glowed dull red, then brighter — yet she shook her head.

“Not enough,” she murmured.

“I can’t raise the temperature any higher. I’ll add another heating layer.”

“Understood. Just a little more — until the black spots disappear.”

Three thousand degrees… and still it endured. I hadn’t expected that. I drew another symbol, feeding more energy into the array.

“Good… good… almost there… now!”

At her signal, she pulled the molten metal from the sphere and set it on the anvil, hammering with swift, sure strikes. When the heat began to fade, she placed it back into the sphere to reheat — and repeated the process again and again, gradually stretching the metal thinner each time.

When it had been elongated enough, she cut a slit into it, folded it, and resumed hammering.

“How many times do you fold it?” I asked.

“If it goes well, eight times. If not… fourteen.”

The first folding alone had taken nearly thirty minutes. Even at the minimum, we had seven more to go — meaning I’d have to maintain the alchemical array for at least three and a half more hours.

I remembered how long the process had taken when I helped make her glasses, but today’s work would take even longer.

Two folds. Three. Four. The rhythmic clang of her hammer filled the forge like a heartbeat, the glow of the molten silver painting her face in fiery orange.

At last, after the tenth fold, she stopped and studied the glowing metal in silence.

“It’s ready. Folding is done.”

“What’s next?”

“Rest,” she said simply.

She buried the glowing metal in a bed of ash to cool, then straightened and stretched her shoulders.

I dismissed the alchemical circle and stood, my legs stiff from hours of sitting. Focusing that long without a break had drained me more than I expected.

“Ah, Arthur-sama — look,” Rugena said suddenly, spotting something by the doorway.

“What is it?”

“It’s from Stefana-sama.”

There was a basket sitting on the cart, with a folded letter tied to the handle. When I opened it, the letter contained only one line:

“Please don’t overdo it.”

“She must have come while we were working,” Rugena murmured.

“I didn’t notice either,” I admitted.

Inside the basket were sandwiches — small, neatly cut pieces easy to eat while working. The sight made both our stomachs growl loudly in unison.

“Shall we eat?”

“Yes! We eat,” she said eagerly.

As we ate, I reflected on Rugena’s craft — the preparation, the fuel, the time, the sheer effort that went into a single sword. It sounded simple when described, but witnessing it firsthand made me realize how arduous creation truly was.

And with that realization came another — how strange the current state of alchemy seemed, how detached it was from the raw labor of creation. But that was a question for another time… perhaps one the Royal Academy could answer.

“Arthur-sama, we continue,” Rugena said after finishing her meal.

“Alright.”

“This time, I’ll need you to adjust the temperature mid-process. Can you manage that?”

“You’ll give me instructions?”

“Of course.”

Temperature adjustment — that would be tricky. When heating water, I could simply alter the size of the formula, but once drawn, a sigil’s scale couldn’t be changed. That meant I’d have to regulate the heat by controlling the amount of mana I poured into it.

“Let’s begin.”

I sat again and activated the array at her command. Rugena retrieved the black hard silver from the ashes and placed it into the sphere. The moment she did, the clinging ashes burst into brief tongues of flame and vanished.

Then, with precise rhythm, she alternated between heating and hammering, gradually shaping the glowing metal into a blade.

“Lower the heat,” she instructed.

“—Understood.”

She had me lower the temperature again and again — high heat at first, then gradually decreasing as the sword took form.

I lost track of time. My world had narrowed to the steady pulse of mana and the ring of hammer on steel.

At last, she said, “Final stage — raise the heat at once.”

“What?”

After all that gradual cooling, we were raising it again? I channeled a surge of mana into the sigil, and the sphere blazed brighter than ever.

“Ready.”

“Now!”

She plunged the blade into the heart of the flame, waited for the perfect instant — then thrust it into a bucket of water. Steam exploded into the air with a loud hiss.

I dismissed the alchemical circle, watching as the cloud of vapor slowly cleared.

When she finally pulled the sword from the bucket, the metal gleamed like midnight glass. She examined it carefully from hilt to tip.

“Fufufu… a fine result.”

“So it’s finished?”

“Not yet,” she said, smiling faintly. “There’s still more to be done.”

“More?”

She set the blade gently on the table, then turned toward me.

“Arthur-sama, I’ll handle the rest. You should rest now.”

And before I could respond, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.

The warmth of her body, the faint scent of metal and smoke — it all washed over me. My strength drained away, my vision blurred, and before I knew it, the world slipped into darkness.

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