A great many things had happened over the past six days.
On the first day, the two of us fidgeted awkwardly for a while before simply starting work without a word.
Once again, I entered super-focus mode and, without even realizing it, gave Jian one instruction after another. I nearly worked from lunch until dinner without eating a thing, until Jian smacked me across the back with a hammer and brought me to my senses so I could eat.
In Jian's words:
'I-I was told by Lady Hephaestus to hit you regularly, because if I didn't do this, you'd keep working without even eating... I'm sorry...'
...Cute. In any case, a Lv. 1 hitting me did not hurt. Thanks to [Tempering of Steel], it would take a fairly serious attack to hurt me, and Jian's hit had felt like little more than something bumping into me.
On the first day, I had only intended to refine the basic materials, but I got absorbed in it again and nearly went beyond that. Fortunately, she stopped me well.
When I said as much and patted her head—my height was 185 centimeters, while Jian was just under 120 centimeters tall, so my hand rested perfectly on her head—she froze up. Then I wondered whether she was angry, so we both remained frozen for a while.
On the second day, while preparing for the production, we performed the initial processing on the ash wood brought in from Wyshe Forest through a request I had placed with the Guild; the hide membrane of Cadmus that I had paid for and taken from the Familia workshop—since it had been bought with Familia funds for communal use, I would have to replenish the money or leave materials of equivalent value behind—and a piece of Salamander Wool I had acquired personally.
This ash wood contained a great deal of magic power, but it was not ironwood, so I first used an axe to split off one long piece from the center, following the grain.
While I processed the ash wood, I asked Jian to work on the hide membrane of Cadmus and the Salamander Wool. When I handed her the design with the measurements written according to Finn's arm and asked her to process them, her gaze changed completely, and her eyes sharpened.
As I sanded and filed down the squared piece of ash wood, I slowly infused it with [Illusion], which could be called the primary material of a [Noble Phantasm], just as I had been instructed. The image I envisioned was a circuit. Like Emiya Shirou had done in my previous life, I sent [Illusion], which felt different from magic power, flowing through the numerous circuits within the spear shaft.
By the time I had smoothly carved the spear shaft down to 120 centimeters to fit Finn's height and fully infused the shaft with Illusion, it was nearly midnight, despite having started immediately after lunch. Startled, I looked over to where Jian was, only to find that she had processed everything according to the design and was nodding off.
I did not want to wake her unnecessarily, so I finished a few simple cleanup tasks, carried Jian in my arms, laid her in one of the spare beds in the workshop, and went to sleep in my own bed. I vaguely heard her make some strange sound like, 'Hauu...,' but I was tired and fell asleep quickly.
On the third day, I began making the bracer and glove from the hide membrane of Cadmus that had been processed the previous day, fitting them to Finn's arm.
I asked Jian to prepare the furnace, since once the bracer and glove were finished, I might have to work the iron ingots for the gauntlet that we had refined on the first day.
If you cannot understand why a blacksmith needs to do delicate work such as sewing instead of merely hammering metal, think about who makes chainmail. Every single ring has to be made and linked together. In any event, I used as much of the excess material as possible and joined the membrane with a sharp needle.
With every stitch, I infused [Illusion] again. This time, the image I imagined was drops of ink falling into a cup of water. With each stitch, [Illusion] gradually spread as if ink were diffusing outward. When I finished the final stitch, thankfully, it had spread evenly through the entire piece without leaving any gaps.
After completing the bracer, I began sewing Salamander Wool into the elbow section. Even if it was an effect of the Noble Phantasm, boosters would erupt from the elbow. There was no way it would not suffer heat damage. By attaching Salamander Wool, which would grant resistance to heat, at the elbow, Finn would be able to throw his spear more reliably.
When making the glove, I used the clay slab Finn had pressed his arm into. His hands really were small... In any case, I cut out the palm and back-of-hand sections from the membrane I had set aside for the glove, then gradually joined them together with stitches. For this, I borrowed Jian's hand as a fellow Prum.
Her hands could be slightly different because she was a girl, but they were similar in size, and we were at least of the same race. So I used Jian's hand to establish the basic shape and made it according to the clay mold. Her face had turned bright red from tending the furnace for too long, so I placed a hand on her forehead—and it turned even redder, which startled me.
The bracer and glove were finished, but I left them soaking in a tank filled with a special solution to soften the stiff sections. Apparently, it allowed magic power to permeate the leather, increasing its flexibility while preserving its toughness... It did not seem as though it would cause any problems in completing the Noble Phantasm, so I decided to use it.
Once I had put them in the tank, it was already almost time for dinner. I tried to fill my stomach with the preserved food I had bought to last a week, but Jian made a terrifying expression and threatened that she could not forgive me for filling my stomach with this kind of thing. She said she would make me a proper meal, so I should eat that instead... It was scary.
Once she had finished dinner using the ingredients at home and the supplemental food, she seemed to come to her senses.
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry...! I overstepped my place. I'm sorry!'
She looked ready to prostrate herself on the floor, so I told her I was actually happy to have met someone who would make sure I ate properly. That seemed to calm her enough that we finally sat across from each other at the table. Though she was still embarrassed, judging by how red her face was.
As we ate, I told her that she was such a good cook that she would be dearly loved after getting married. She muttered something under her breath. Did she not plan on marrying...?
After dinner, I heated an ingot made from iron ore mined in Ronza—a subterranean mountain village that was also Gareth's homeland—which I would use for the gauntlet tomorrow. I told Jian to hit me with a hammer if I tried to do anything beyond shaping it.
...I think I hammered it once, but then a heavy shock suddenly struck my waist. When I looked down to see what was going on, I had already completed the shape and was about to heat it again. When I searched my memories, all those steps were clearly there, but I had not registered them.
...King Crimson?
In any case, I thanked the trembling Jian and went to bed.
On the fourth day, I began hammering the gauntlet I had roughly shaped the day before in earnest. First came the upper arm and shoulder sections.
This time, with every blow of the hammer, I hammered in [Tempering of Steel] while breathing [Illusion] into it. The image I held in mind this time was a balloon. With every strike, I blew one breath into it. When I struck with a hammer glowing as if red-hot from Tempering of Steel and then quenched it, magic power spread out with the flames—whether it was Illusion or the remnants of Tempering of Steel, I did not know.
After finishing the shoulder section, a shock from my waist brought me back to my senses, and it was already lunchtime. Jian had apparently grown used to it by then, because there was no particular guilt visible on her face. Annoyed by that, I pretended to be hurt. Seeing her fret like a whining puppy, I forgot I was acting and burst out laughing without realizing it. Then, seeing her blank expression made me laugh again, and I got hit once more. This time, it hurt a little.
As an apology, I took her to the Hostess of Fertility and bought her lunch. When I called over Mia Grand and introduced Jian, she suddenly made a serious face and shouted, 'Please take good care of me!' I thought she would become a regular too, so I said we would be seeing each other often from now on. Jian's face turned beet red as though she were angry...
After enduring Mia Grand's teasing and finishing our meal, I returned and began making the upper-arm section of the gauntlet.
The shoulder section was simply a pauldron, while the upper-arm portion was closer to armor than a gauntlet. The lower arm was an armguard, and only the final hand section could really be called a gauntlet, but I was broadly calling all of it a gauntlet.
Like before, I began hammering it step by step while breathing [Illusion] into it with the feeling of inflating a balloon. I made the iron plate that would protect the outer part of the upper arm, quenched it, then reheated it with the long-drawn iron bar and joined it into a line that wrapped around the outer contour of the biceps—the part we call the bulging arm muscle. One mistake would mean starting over from the beginning, so I hammered with every bit of focus I had.
I had told Jian not to touch me under any circumstances once I started this, so there was no risk of making a mistake from outside interference. At ease, I hammered away in a trance.
When I came to my senses, it was thankfully—or perhaps unfortunately—already dawn.
Jian seemed to have gone to sleep, so I took the bracer that had soaked in the tank for a day, hung it out to dry, and went to bed myself.
On the fifth day, I planned to make the lower-arm and glove portions of the gauntlet.
Unlike yesterday, today I would complete the lower-arm section from a single iron ingot. I put the ingot into the furnace, ran the magic-stone bellows at maximum output, heated it to the absolute limit where it could still hold its shape, and immediately grabbed it with my bare hand to pull it out. Jian had no heat-resistance Skill and was still only Lv. 1, so I told her to stand back.
Once more, I put all my strength into [Illusion] and brought the hammer down.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
With every strike, sparks flew in all directions. Naturally, my clothes were no exception. My trousers were made of fairly heat-resistant material, so they only ended up with a hole or two, but my shirt was ordinary clothing. It was quickly scorched in places by the sparks, turned into scraps of rags, and fell to the floor.
But I paid it no mind and kept striking. I had no time to worry about clothes. Once I had even made the small rings on the back of the lower-arm section that would connect it to the upper arm, it was somehow already lunchtime. The heat must have been intense, because even from far away, I could see a flush on Jian's face. When I approached, she recoiled in shock and backed away. Wondering what was wrong, I realized my shirt had completely burned away and that I was half-naked.
I apologized for showing her something unpleasant and went to change into spare clothes. I thought Jian said something, so I asked what it was, but she said it was nothing. Thinking I must have misheard, I headed to the Hostess of Fertility for lunch.
When I arrived at the Hostess of Fertility, Mia Grand was looking at me strangely. I asked whether I had done something wrong, and she suddenly asked when I planned to show her a grandchild. Dumbfounded, I complained that I did not even have a girlfriend, and she looked at me like I was pathetic, snickered, and abruptly smacked me across the back... Why?
Jian seemed frightened to see me being hit and went limp, so I complained about that to Mia Grand too. This time, all I got back was another snicker... What was going on?
After returning from lunch, I immediately began making the glove section.
This was the greatest obstacle in producing Durindana. Knightly armor itself was a culmination of all the technology of the medieval age, and the hand portion of a gauntlet was just as complex. First, I made the back-of-hand section, as well as the connection points between the fingers and palm on the palm side.
After that came the true difficulty. I called Jian over, and we began making the small components for the fingers. Thankfully, this was not a proper, full-fledged gauntlet but a simplified one. Had it been the real thing, even in a world overflowing with magic and Skills, there was no way we could have finished it in a single afternoon.
By the time we had finished all the work, it was past midnight and already dawn. Neither Jian nor I could keep our heads straight, so we simply fell asleep.
On the sixth day, I was supposed to lay the foundation for Durindana... But when I woke that morning, Jian and I were lying together in the same bed...? My memories of the previous day were vague, so I was wondering what this was when Jian opened her eyes and rubbed her face against my chest like a puppy... Huh...? A moment later, Jian came fully to her senses, her face, ears, even her neck turning bright red, and ran outside.
Her scent... was nice...
That day, we were both so out of it that we did nothing but compose ourselves.
After going through all that, we had reached today, the final day—the seventh day.
We had to finish every step of Durindana today, including what we had failed to do yesterday, so we needed to push hard.
"You're ready, Jian?"
"Yes, sir!"
Her spirited response made her seem like a puppy and was so cute that I kept smiling like a father or an uncle.
Pulling myself together, I looked at the adamantite I had only received after desperately pleading with Lady Hephaestus that I could handle it—the strongest metal in this world. If I could work this properly, Durindana would be complete. I had overcome the gauntlet, the greatest obstacle, but that had only been the greatest obstacle because it was complicated. This adamantite... I could only overcome it through my hammering alone.
"Once I start hammering, keep going unless I tell you to stop or unless I stop myself, no matter what happens. Understood?"
"Understood."
As I had the other day, I heated the adamantite at maximum output. But it would not soften easily. As expected of the strongest metal. I kept heating it for an hour... Now. I grabbed it with my bare hand and pulled it out.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
With every hammer blow, I thought of the great hero Hector. I poured [Illusion] in alongside [Tempering of Steel] and struck with all my strength. Unlike when I made the lower arm, it was not on the verge of melting, so my clothes did not burn much.
With one hammer blow, I held his youngest brother Paris, whose actions began the Trojan War.
With one hammer blow, I held his thrown spear that killed Protesilaus, the first man to set foot on Trojan soil.
With one hammer blow, I held his unending battle with Ajax.
With one hammer blow, I held the fate by which he killed Patroclus and drew Achilles into the war.
With one hammer blow, I held his final bloody battle against Achilles.
I held all of it within.
I quenched it, heated it again, and hammered it once more...
At every step, I remembered his heroic tale and imbued it with him.
Against enemies more than ten times his number.
Against a fate that would inevitably end in defeat.
Against the great heroes of all Greece.
Here, I recreated the weapon that would praise Troy's great defender, who never took a single step back and stood proud before them all.
'Well, thanks for thinking so highly of an old man like me. Should I give you a little gift or something? Put it in, put it in.'
It was as though I heard his voice from somewhere, and Durindana's spearhead shone brightly.
But Jian and I were already focused on completing this, so we ignored it and moved on.
.
.
.
.
.
.
And that night, Durindana Pilum was completed.