The crowd was spellbound and fell silent after hearing Greg's creation sang so perfectly that one of them starts crying full of happiness. Everyone else in the blacksmith shop had stopped what they were doing to listen. The lamp sang for a full minute before calming down and glowing softly. Greg could tell it was ready to sing again at any moment.
After a long pause, the village chief said, "Well, that was a pleasant surprise."
The dwarf blacksmith muttered, "Great heavens! Now that was an unexpected piece of art, ain't it, mate?"
"The boy makes a lamp that works better than most professional singers, and the dwarf calls it unexpected piece of art."
The young woman was looking at Greg with a mix of awe and anger. "How did you put a voice spell into a light?"
"That takes at least three separate magic circuits that work together perfectly."
Greg said honestly, "I didn't intend for that to happen. It just sort of happened."
She insisted, "Things don't just happen. Those kind of enchantments need focus and control."
The dwarf looked at Greg's lamp with professional interest and said, "Maybe for normal people."
"But I've heard things about the blacksmith lad in Ferndale. Depending on who you ask, they say the lad's either blessed by gods or cursed by demons."
"I'm not either," Greg said with a sigh. "I'm just somebody who makes things that turn out stranger than I planned."
It was easy to guess how people would vote. Greg's singing lamp won by a lot, but a few people voted for the dwarf's lantern because they felt sorry for him. The other blacksmiths were fine with losing, but the young woman kept coming back to look at the lamp, getting more and more confused.
"I don't get it," she said quietly.
"The runic structure is simultaneously too simple and impossibly complex. How are you sending this much power through plain iron?"
Greg replied, "It's probably a combination of talent and poor life choices."
Lylia pushed through the crowd, her face looking strangely tense. "That was incredible. I mean the lamp. It's lovely."
"Thanks, but I didn't mean for it to sing."
"Of course you didn't," Lylia said, and then she looked at the young woman who was still looking at the lamp. "She appears to be genuinely interested in what you do."
"She works as a blacksmith. It's part of her job to be interested to such things."
"I see... it's because she's a blacksmith, huh? I get it." Lylia's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "I should go back to the restaurant. A lot of people came to the festival, and I need to take that opportunity to make lots of money."
She left before Greg could say anything, moving through the crowd unusually quickly. Greg watched her leave, not sure why she had changed so suddenly.
"Is she all right?" Marina asked, coming up to him.
"Why do you ask me about that? Of course I don't know. She looked like she was upset about something."
Marina looked at him in a way that made it clear he was missing something. "You really don't see it, do you?"
"See what?"
Seraphine came up to Marina before she could say anything. She was holding her notebook to her chest in a way that wasn't normal for her. Her cheeks, which are usually pale, had a hint of pink, and she was carefully avoiding eye contact.
"As expected, the lamp was amazing," she said, her voice a little higher than usual.
"The way you combined musical spells with a lighting framework shows that you have an instinctive understanding of magical harmonics that most mages spend decades studying to get."
"Uh, thanks?"
"And the way you work, with such focus and confidence, it's very..." Seraphine stopped talking, and the pink in her cheeks got darker.
"That is to say, from an academic perspective, your method is very interesting."
"Uh... are you all right?" Greg wanted to know. "You look a little red. Are you feeling sick or something?"
"I'm fine!" Seraphine said it quickly. "Absolutely fine... ehem... just feeling warm all of the sudden, maybe it was coming from the crowd. Ahh! The forge, yeah, the forge is making me warm!"
"There are many people here." She ran off with her notebook in hand, which only made Greg more confused.
He asked Marina, "What's going on? It's the first time seeing her lost her ice like that."
"Oh, you sweet, clueless disaster," Marina said with a smile. "You really have no idea, do you?"
"What do you mean by 'no idea'?"
"Seraphine and Lylia both like you. Like, really into you. And seeing you work, being so talented and humble about it, probably didn't help."
Greg's brain stopped working. "What...?"
"Into you as in curious and attracted or maybe love?! Choose what you wanted." Marina patted him on the shoulder in a caring way.
"Lylia was jealous when that other blacksmith paid you too much attention, and Seraphine just realized she likes you more than just as a student. This is so funny to watch."
"That's not funny at all! It's hard to know that real fast!"
Marina said with a smile, "It's both."
"Welcome to being the most eligible bachelor in the area and also making legendary cookware. Things just got a lot more interesting in your quiet life."
Greg saw the people around him celebrating, the singing lamp that was still singing arias, Lylia's restaurant where she was probably avoiding him, and Seraphine, who was pretending to take notes but was clearly trying not to look at him.
He muttered, "I should have stayed in bed, arggghhhh..."
[Quest Update: Take Care of Your Growing Legend]
[New Problem: Romantic Interest]
[Warning: Things will get worse before they get better]
[The gods are writing down everything]
[Some of them are writing fan fiction]
"What are the gods writing now?" Greg asked the system, but it didn't answer. It was probably too busy laughing to do so.
Around him, the festival went on, with music and laughter in the air. His singing lamp had become the main attraction of the party, putting on impromptu concerts whenever someone got too close.
The other blacksmiths were gathering around it, trying to figure out how it was made, but they couldn't because even Greg didn't fully understand how it worked. And in the middle of all the chaos, two women were dealing with feelings they probably didn't expect, all because Greg made an opera lamp.
Greg said to no one in particular, "This is exactly what I was trying to avoid." But as he watched the village celebrate and saw people pleased, safe, and living in peace, he couldn't help but think that maybe all the trouble was worth it.
These problems now included women who were romantically interested in him and could potentially kill him in their sleep if they chose to. His life of peace had become difficult.