Greg woke up at dawn with only one desperate wish, and that is a day without noise. And also he wanted no commissions, no big surprises, and no making legendary items by accident.
He wanted to drink his morning tea, maybe take a nap in the sun in the afternoon, and live in peace without someone coming through his door with problems that would change his life. He was able to enjoy that fantasy for exactly twenty minutes before reality hit him hard.
"SENSEI! I FIGURED IT OUT!"
Felix crashed through the workshop door like a drunk ox, waving what looked like a rough drawing. Bork came in behind him and looked a little green, which was how he had always looked since he got there.
"What did you figure out?" Greg asked, already wishing he hadn't.
"The secret to making things in this world!" Felix threw the paper down on Greg's workbench with a lot of drama.
The drawing showed something that looked like a sword, but the curves were too complicated, and the handle looked more like a decoration than something useful. "I have to make famous weapons from my world again! Give it some thought! If I can make the famous Mangetsu, or maybe Excalibur, or even the Scissor Blade from Kill la---"
Greg cut in, "I'm not making you a weapon."
"But Sensei!"
"No weapons. That's what I'm all about."
"Have you not been paying attention to what I said back then?"
Felix's mood dropped like a sad balloon. "But how can I become a great hero without a great weapon? Every isekai hero gets one!"
Greg said, "You're not the main character, I am," and then he regretted it right away when Felix's eyes lit up with understanding.
"YOU ADMIT IT! You ARE the main character! That makes me the funny sidekick who everyone loves!" Felix struck another silly pose. "This is great! I can handle this! The sidekick doesn't need a legendary weapon because they just need to be excited and have a few clutch moments!"
Greg stared at Bork. "Is he always like this?"
Bork said, "I've only known him for a day, and I already want to hit him with something soft," and then he gagged a little. "Sorry, I just felt sick when I thought about hitting."
Greg said, "You two are going to give me an aneurysm." He pointed to Bork. "You."
"You have to clean because you can't handle hammering. But not just that, you're also going to need to organize the scrap pile in the corner, sweep the floor, and do something useful without using any tools."
"I can do that!" Bork said with excitement. "Not a single hammer involved!"
Greg looked at Felix. "And you. Fine, if you really want to make something. But it won't be a weapon. You can make a broom. A very good broom. That's what you need to do."
Felix looked hurt. "A broom? Sensei, that's so below my potential as a..."
"Do you want to learn or not?"
"Learning! Without a doubt, I'm learning!" Felix took some things off the workbench. "But can it be a cool broom? Like, shaped like a katana? Just for looks?"
Greg said, "I don't care what shape it is as long as it's not a weapon." He was already walking toward his bed, determined to make the most of his peaceful morning. "I'm going to sleep. Don't set anything on fire."
"Don't make any promises!" Felix called with a smile.
Greg should have known better. He really ought to have.
He was just starting to fall asleep when Lylia's voice cut through the morning air like a knife through butter. "WHAT DID YOU FUCKING DO?!"
Greg jumped up to see Lylia standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, looking at Bork with a look that was somewhere between shock and anger. There were pieces of raw gemstones, rare metals, and maybe even pieces of ancient artifacts all around the dwarf.
"I was just doing what Greg told me to do!" Bork protested and held up his hands in defense. "I had no idea there was all this stuff in the scrap pile!"
"That's not junk, you idiot!" Lylia marched over to look at the pile. "This is starsilver. And moonstones, too. And is that a piece of orichalcum?"
She turned around and looked at Greg. "How long have you been throwing away legendary crafting materials?"
Greg said honestly, "I don't know what half of those words mean. Metal is metal. If I don't need it, it goes in the trash."
Seraphine came out of her research corner, looked at the pile, and her whole face went pale. "Greg! These things are worth more than the whole village."
"People think that some of them are lost to history. For decades, researchers have been looking for samples of orichalcum."
"Wow." Greg looked at the pile with a face that doesn't give any single fuck. "Neat."
"NEAT?! That's all you have to say?" It looked like Seraphine wanted to shake him. "Do you know what we could do with these?"
"Maybe make something that becomes famous by accident and causes even more trouble," Greg said. "So I say we just leave them alone."
"May I have some?" Bork asked with hope. "Because you're not using them?"
"Go ahead, just take it."
"Greg!!!" Lylia and Seraphine shouted his name at the same time.
Felix, on the other side of the workshop, was making his own kind of chaos. It appears that he took Greg's advice about how to make a broom very seriously, but he did it in a way that made sense to his anime-obsessed mind. The end result looked like a push broom that had been mixed with a katana.
"Look, Sensei!" Felix held up his creation and said, "I've managed to make the famous Sweeping Blade, made in the fires of determination and shaped by the hammer of enthusiasm!"
Greg said, "You didn't use a hammer."
"Metaphorical hammer!" Felix swung the broom in a way that he probably thought was cool. The bristles made a sound like whooshing. "Look? It just feels right! I can clean and look cool doing it!"
Elwen, who had been quietly drawing in the corner, looked up from her work. "Felix, that's not bad at all. The weight is well-balanced, and the handle is easy to hold. Did you mean to make it work?"
"I make everything work!" Felix said with pride. "I may be a gamer who stays inside, but I paid attention to weapon stats!"
Greg said firmly with his tired of all this shit face, "It's not a weapon, by the way, it's the thing you use for dust, and it's called a broom."
Felix said, "A broom that LOOKS like a weapon. It's entirely different from any boring broom!"
"Okay, whatever. Call it what you want."