4
Feline dyes my hair carefully with a wood comb, Kelly fiddles those two blue crystal contacts, Jack and Hairt pack the venison into my travel bag.
“Boss, you bring this with you.” Jack puts a coin bag into my travel bag.
“Haven’t you saved the coins for a long time?” I ask him.
“It’s nothing. Anyway, the saving is for using…”
“If it is like this, it’s alright that I take some enough for myself. You can keep the rest for yourself.”
“Stop talking, be careful that I will dye on your face…” Feline should be a good wife when she grows up, Heh heh.
After I leave tons of words to them, especially I ask them to keep practicing hard, I am kicked out by my two teachers. Pull up the head-cover of the magician gown, I start my journey…
On the road, I dress up like a probation magician who is traveling to expand his knowledge, plus the crystal contacts cover my black eyes and the hair is dyed as well, I do not have any troubles. Besides my swelling legs and my sunken wallet, everything is so normal.
Stepping on the green grass, walking under the burning sun, and feeling the refreshment brought by the gentle breeze, I come to the place where the dwarves live.
This is a big valley close to the dark forest, there are villages spreading around in the valley. It is the time of high noon, the rising cooking smokes stimulate my stomach, they keep reminding me that I should put something into my mouth.
“Bo… Boss?” Waldi gets his eyes wide-opened, he swallows the food in his mouth difficultly, “how do you get to here？”
“Walk.” I take the food which is in front of him, I sit down and begin gobbling up, “how is everything for you?”
“Not bad.” Waldi hands me a glass of water, “you alone? Why do you dye your hair?”
While I am having the food, I tell Waldi all the things that happened in the past one year. Of course, and the purpose why I come to here for.
“Our dwarf the weapons are the best!” Waldi thumps on his chest, “I guarantee that you can find the right stuffs in here!”
“Don’t be so complacent!” I drink down the whole glass of water, “your boss’s requirement is very special. Bur…b!”
“Hah hah, your way of having food does not have any change.” Waldi laughs, he pats on my back with his hand, “I will bring you to meet the best master of iron casting in our people after a while!”
I walk shoulder to shoulder with Waldi to a lakeside which is deep into the valley. There are a stretch of houses built by the lake in front of us, this is the place where the masters of iron casting work at. On the way to here, there are dwarves hailing Waldi heartily.
“Oh, Waldi,” I ask, “are your dwarves’ tempers all very irritable?”
“This is all the misapprehended.” Waldi takes a look at me. “We dwarves are very straight forward to regard things. To us, right is right, wrong is wrong, there is no third possibility. Everything is regular by the thing what it shows itself, we don’t chase any abstract things. Rather than arguing, we will have a fight instead, that way we can save time to do other things.”
“Not bad, come back here for a year.” I laugh and say, ”you have already learned a lot of things.”
We walk into the biggest room right at the middle, Waldi begins to show me all kinds of the weapons.
I try to pick in the weapons which can make people seeing things in a blur. but I feel very disappointed.
“If it’s not too long, it will be too short or too light.” I smile bitterly to Waldi, “please bring me to meet your master of iron casting!”
“Alright, come this way.”
Just right get into the door, a hot and moisture flavor comes right at our faces. In the “ding ding dong dong” striking sounds, Waldi yells to a dwarf who has the upper body bared.
“Master,” Waldi points at me, “this is my boss, he has something to talk to you.”
The hammer in the master’s hand keeps repeating the striking movements, he does not even turn around to take a look at me.
“What, say!”
I walk to him, I can see the sweats running down on his face which is full of black speckles, he has the pieces of strong muscles all over his body… He is really a pure man.
“I want to have a weapon.” I say.
“There are a lot of them out there.” he still doesn’t take a look at me, “you can go there to pick whatever you like.”
“I said,” I raise my voice, “I want to have a weapon.”
“There are a lot out there!”
“Those should not be called the weapons, they just should be called the tools.”
With “Dang” the sound, the master throws down the hammer which was in his hand, he raises his head and looks at me, “let’s go out to have a talk.”
Just right walking out of the door, the master turns suddenly and swings his fist at me!
Even I want to stay peace with him, but the present circumstance does not allow me to do so. It is not fun that getting hit by him, I know that I just look at his muscle. And it looks like that Waldi does not want to stop the master.
“Is it enough for you?” this is the seventh time that the master is thrown down onto the ground by me, my height and the strange to him martial art let me get all the advantages, “you will never win no matter how you fight against me.”
Maybe he notices this result now, the master does not lunge at me any more.
“You say! You say!” the master begins to breathe heavily, “how come are those just the tools?”
“After all, you are talking about this?” I find a place to sit down, “I thought that this is the special way you guys to treat guests.”
“You tell me clearly!”
“Alright, that’s not a problem.” I speak to him, “what’s called weapon? Weapon should be the thing that can raise the user’s ability to the highest level.”
“These things out there can do so!”
“Maybe they can do so to other people, but not to me. To me, your stuffs out there just can raise my harms to a certain level, but it is way far from the maximum level.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want to ask you to make a weapon which is right for me to use! Of cause, its form maybe is rare for you.”
“If you can think of it, I can make it out for you!” the master speaks angrily, “but if you want to fool me with something in a mess, you’re looking for the wrong guy!”
“How could I do so?” I lower my body, pick up a branch and begin to draw on the ground…
“The sword handle is long, you must hold the handle with both hands… but the sword blade is only two inches wide… look what your tip of the sword looks like… Mmm? Your this kind of sword tip… Could it be said that your sword is the single blade sword?” The master’s eyes are moving after the branch, he keeps speaking out his own views.
“It’s all like this!” I point at the draft on the ground, “it surely is a single blade!”
“This kind of weapon? Can you tell me the reason why it is like this?”
“Because it is single blade, we can thicken its another side, there will be no problem even hack against the two-hand heavy sword. And its body is very light, no matter hacking, pricking, or blocking, it can be more flexible and quicker! I can use less power as well.”
“Then what is this line for?”
“Blood groove!”
“What’s that?”
“Because the blade of this weapon is not that wide, the wound that it pricks into the enemy’s body will be not that big neither. So we need a blood groove like this to speed up the enemy to lose blood. And also because of this blood groove, it makes the user easier to draw the sword out of the enemy’s body…”
“What kind of material is the best to make it?”
“The best one is the metal with the better tenacity.”
“The better tenacity metal?” according to the master’s attitude that he deals seriously with it, he
has accepted my design, “I have some black iron left here, but it’s not enough!”
“How much you have?” Waldi asks, “can we add some other normal metals?”
“You come to do this!” the master scolds Waldi with bad temper, “it’s black iron! You tell me how to mix it into other metals!”
“Why can’t it be mixed with others?” Waldi is not convinced.
“I said that you are a stupid head long time ago, the characters two kinds of metals are different, the temperatures for them to melt down and solidify are different as well. Even they solidify, their volume are different too! You try to mix them together for me!”
“You are the expert for these.” I reach my hand out to stop Waldi and speak to the master, “can you tell me where we can collect it?”
“Boss, don’t tell me that you want to collect it by yourself.” Waldi says, “it’s very difficult!”
“Stop any nonsense, just bring me to there!”
“……”
“It’s this,” Waldi hammers on a white big rock, “the black iron ore is right inside of this kind of rock.”
“Shit!” I look at the condition that the dwarves around me use the tools to work, my heart gets half cold… The white stone is too tough, a hammer striking on it with all the strength just leaves a tiny white spot on it.
“If it is like this,” Waldi sits down dejectedly and despondently, “I don’t know when we can collect enough materials to make a sword!”
A dwarf finally cracks open a white stone, several small black ores fall out from it.
“Is this the black iron ore?” I pick up one piece to ask Waldi.
“Yes.” Waldi replies, “it still needs to be smelted, and then we can get the black iron!”
I walk to the white stone, I watch the cracks on it carefully. Suddenly, I think of a very simple way!
“Waldi, I have an idea, I have the idea!”
Watching the dwarves to dig hard some holes and pour in the water. Waldi asks me, “boss, are you sure that your way will work?”
“Relax! It surely will work!”
I order the dwarfs to put a big white rock onto the ground, and burn some fires around it… When the white rock is burned to almost red, I tell the dwarves to push the rock into the hole. After some white-smoke like steams rise up, the white rock cracks down!
“Hah hah haha!” Waldi looks at the pieces of the black iron ores and laughs exaggeratedly, “boss, you’re really amazing!”
“It’s amazing just only like this way?” I slap his head, “do you still have any ideals? Hurry up, we will go to see the master again once we collect enough ores!”