"Ahhh?!"
But—
Hearing Lefiya's earnest, guileless praise, Mary Kikakujou, who had already been drifting somewhere far away, went completely blank on the spot.
The flow of wind-attribute magic power?
Are. You. Kidding. Me!*
That short thrust she had swung out, dragging a vortex of wind behind it, had nothing whatsoever to do with her grasping the true essence of the wind element on her own!
And Lefiya's big, innocent eyes, brimming with starlight, were fixed right on her.
Shame crashed over Mary Kikakujou like a wave big enough to topple mountains.
She knew exactly where that power had come from.
Last night, in Kami-sama's room, her body had been remade by Kami-sama with a Forbidden Art of the Heavens that defied every law of reason.
It had not only purged that lethal poison mist from her. To stabilize the magic circuits, last night had also involved a great deal of intimate contact she could never bring herself to say out loud.
And it was in the middle of that fevered daze that Haimer had offhandedly soothed her, mentioning that magic circulation forcibly rebuilt by a forbidden art would, whenever she used her own weapon, sometimes manifest an elemental enhancement by sheer chance.
The moment she thought of that dim yellow bedside lamp.
The moment she remembered how overwhelming Haimer had been, and how she herself had dissolved into something soft as mud beneath him.
And then she looked at the elf standing in front of her, pure as an unwritten page.
N-no, no, that wasn't—
Mary Kikakujou's face went as red as if it had been thrown into a smithy furnace, and the cool aristocratic poise she worked so hard to project collapsed in a heartbeat.
A sore, aching weakness ran up the insides of her thighs again. She ducked her head, using her golden curls to hide her scalding face, and edged back half a step.
"That was... it's because of... some, um... s-something... K-Kami... sama's..." Mary Kikakujou clenched her teeth.
How was she supposed to explain it? Was she supposed to tell her elf companion that this was a special benefit earned by sharing a bed with a god and taking in the fluids he had graciously bestowed?
Forget concentrating well enough to continue sword practice. She was half afraid that even drawing a loud breath would let the lingering tingle drop her straight to the ground.
"Eh? Training from a god? I'm so jealous!"
Lefiya didn't catch a single one of the twists buried in those words. The worship in her eyes only deepened as she clasped her hands at her chest and leaned closer, the tips of her pointed elf ears trembling.
"Since it was special training Lord Haimer gave you himself, and the results are this obvious..."
"Miss Marie, please, you have to teach me. What does Kami-sama's special training actually feel like?"
The words landed.
BOOM.
The last scrap of reason in Marie's head was blown to ash by that thoughtless cannon shot.
Her face swelled into a ripe red tomato, and white steam hissed off the top of her head, so thick it looked solid.
What the training felt like?
She wanted to be taught? She wanted to experience it herself?
The moment even the outline of that scene began to sketch itself in her mind—
It was too horrifying to look at!
Thump!
In the end, she couldn't survive an interrogation that mortifying.
Marie's slender high-heeled boot slipped, and she came down hard on her backside, right on the edge of the padded mat beside the training ground's lawn.
She clapped a hand over that thoroughly humiliated face.
And whimpered in a small, pitiful voice, "M-mercy... please, Miss Lefiya..."
"This subject... let's skip right past it! I'm begging you!"
Marie had all but buried her face in her knees, and even with grass clippings catching in her magnificent golden curls, she refused to lift her head and face anyone.
That left the elf girl Lefiya, who understood nothing at all of adult matters, standing where she was.
She scratched the back of her head, utterly at a loss.
Still, seeing how exhausted Marie looked, the kindhearted elf could only assume that the training had been so brutally harsh it had left her companion with lasting trauma.
...
Afterward.
Several hours later, in fact.
Northeast Main Street, deep inside the [Valka's Red House].
The soundproof iron door, a full thirty centimeters thick, had shut tight.
The corridor outside was quieter than the furnace floor, but the heat still rolled steadily up through the ventilation ducts and baked everything in it.
Lili and Tsukuyo Inaba sat side by side, backs perfectly straight, on the long padded leather bench meant for waiting customers.
Hours had passed, and by now the two of them were afraid to so much as breathe hard in case it made a sound.
"Lili..."
Tsukuyo called softly toward the other end of the bench, not far away.
Her silver hair clung to a cheek gone slightly pink.
"Wh-what do you think they're doing in there right now?"
Tsukuyo asked with a guilty conscience. She didn't dare loose her "Mind's Eye" to sweep the room for movement.
Lili had already curled into a ball with her arms wrapped around her legs, staring at nothing, hot sweat beading on her forehead. At Tsukuyo's question, the tangle of her thoughts practically steamed off the top of her head.
"P-probably... t-taking off his outer robe?"
As a girl who had grown up scrabbling through the back streets.
Lili swallowed, her small face visibly flushing scarlet.
"I've seen it before... blacksmiths working bare-chested out on the street, sparks flying way up high. Lord Haimer usually wears one of those stiff, wide-cut long robes, so getting close to a furnace in it would be a nuisance."
"He'd definitely have to take it off."
At that point Lili's voice dropped lower.
"And... right now, in that completely sealed room, there are only two people. Lady Tsubaki and Lord Haimer."
"If Lord Haimer stripped down, Lady Tsubaki would have seen absolutely everything."
Lili covered her burning cheeks with both hands, her voice leaking out through the gaps in her short fingers, shot through with embarrassment.
"Uuu... if I'd known, I should have shamelessly followed them in, even if it earned me a scolding."
"I really envy Lady Tsubaki's nerve."
Tsukuyo bit down on a lower lip gone white.
The words "stripped down" brought last night's scalding flood of information straight back to life, and her sharp, pretty ears went red enough to bleed.
She shook her head hard, forcibly snuffing out the stray images filling her mind, the feel of Lord Haimer's solid chest under her palm, the sound of that ragged breathing, then pressed her knees primly together and sat up straight, deliberately slowing even the rhythm of her breath.
*
As for the far side of that heavy iron door, the one keeping the girls' fluttering hearts shut out.
The crimson glow of the furnace painted the walls the color of a sunset.
And not only that.
The situation inside the sealed room bore no resemblance whatsoever to the scenes the two girls had been filling in for themselves.
Quite the opposite.
The atmosphere in there was frighteningly serious.
Hours had gone by.
With a roar.
Fed by the pumping of an enormous bellows, the crimson furnace flames leapt more than three meters up, all but licking the raised bluestone ceiling.
Haimer stood before the anvil.
He had indeed shed the coat and long robe that got in the way.
All that remained on his upper body was a sleeveless black undershirt of tough, close-woven fabric, baring solid, clearly defined muscle.
Fine beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
His eyes, reflecting the light of the furnace, held an absolute, unbroken focus.
Clang! Clang! Clang, clang, clang!
Every stroke landed exactly where it was meant to.
He was hammering a thoroughly troublesome material: a fused steel billet of [Kakarot Sea Vine Sinew] and [lightweight gray quartz]!
These two substances.
One was the pliant sinew of a deep-sea behemoth from the Lower Levels, which could not take high heat.
The other was a brittle ore that soaked up loose magic power and shattered under any heavy blow.
In the hands of any high-ranking smith in Orario, that was a pairing of scrap materials that rejected each other by nature.
But Haimer.
He refused to use magic to force them into line.
He relied on nothing but the raw physical force of the hammer in his own two hands.
With an unbroken stream of minute shock waves, he forced the molecular gaps in the metal and the sea-vine sinew to change shape, biting into each other and locking tight, bit by bit.
"You've got a wicked eye, I'll give you that." Tsubaki swept the hair off her forehead with a sweat towel.
She looked at Haimer, who had long since shed the coat and shirt that hindered him and now wore only that close-fitting black undershirt.
"Deliberately picking out junk materials with plenty of toughness but almost no capacity to drink in magic power, and then specifically insisting we knead [Kakarot Sea Vine Sinew] into the mix."
"Only you could get away with it. Any other smith who heard that recipe would smash his workbench on the spot."
"But so far... not one impurity in the whole thing. The tremors each hammer stroke raises are canceling out the reactive force inside the material itself?"
As a Lv.5 first-class adventurer and a top-tier smith both, Tsubaki had a merciless eye.
She could see it plainly.
Haimer's understanding of weapon-making reached far past the shackles of mortal law.
Hiss—
A pale green quenching fluid splashed down and white steam billowed up.
Haimer lifted out the finished base with his tongs.
It was the rough shape of a crossbow.
Thin.
Compact.
The bow arms had a restrained, matte gray-black finish.
And the damning part was this.
Beneath this crossbow, there was no traditional grip at all!
Haimer reached over and pulled out several lengths of high-tensile black rubberized leather, the kind used to fasten armor, and began weaving and splicing them rapidly along the crossbow's underside.
He was building a ring-and-catch assembly that would clamp directly onto the front of a forearm!
Then, without pausing, Haimer drew a metal thread as fine as silk through his left hand.
It was a bowstring spun from the shed venomous tendrils of an "Abyssal Stalker," with the toxin stripped out.
One end he seated in the string groove.
At the other end, he actually fitted a round launcher tube with a clockwork spring hidden inside into the rear of the arm case.
The mouth of the tube narrowed slightly, and lodged inside it was a small, wickedly sharp three-edged barbed spike!
"Lord Haimer, what in the world is this murder-machine you're putting together?"
Tsubaki finally couldn't hold it in any longer. Curiosity had won.
She stepped closer and pointed at the launcher tube.
"Not only did you throw out the grip and make it an arm-mounted crossbow, you've got a grappling hook stashed inside it? A mechanical assembly that complex can't be easy to maintain, can it?"
Haimer twisted the last half-turn of thread tight with his bare hands.
Hearing Tsubaki's question, he picked up a dry towel, wiped the machine oil off his wrist, and let a smile touch the corner of his mouth. "It's called the Dark Owl."
Haimer slipped the thing onto his right arm and gave a casual demonstration.
There was a soft click.
The gray-black crossbow body settled flush against his forearm, leaving his hand free to grab and hold anything else.
All it took was pressing the wrist down to trip the mechanism.
"That child Lili is a Pallum. Her arm strength is naturally lacking, so this arm-crossbow cuts out the whole business of gripping and bracing and lets the large muscles of the arm do the pushing."
"As for this grappling claw."
Haimer pressed his thumb against a raised stud on the side.
A sharp whistle cut the air.
The three-edged barb shot out like lightning, trailing a tough green filament almost invisible to the naked eye, and punched clean through the test plate of steel several inches thick on the far wall!
"Lili will need to escape and infiltrate through complicated terrain from now on."
"This claw can bear the weight of three grown men without snapping, and the clockwork winch inside retracts automatically."
"Whether she's snatching a dropped Magic Stone from a distance or hauling herself up somewhere high to get away, it's a single thought away."
Hearing all of that.
And seeing exactly how much damage the claw biting into the steel plate could do.
Tsubaki was silent for a while.
Then she clapped a hand over her face and laughed helplessly. "Honestly, Lord Haimer."
"All of this just to bolt that one function onto a crossbow?"
"Isn't that going a bit far in effort and expense?"
"In the Dungeon, you can never have too many tools that keep you alive, can you?" Haimer said with a smile as he reeled the claw back in.
There was no need to worry that carrying so much gear would slow Lili down either.
After all.
Lili had started out as a Supporter.
Her skill, "Artel Assist."
When the weight of her equipment passed a certain threshold, it granted an ability bonus in proportion to that weight, allowing her to haul a great deal of baggage.
So.
It would hardly affect her at all.
And that still wasn't the end of it.
Haimer turned, reached into the water trough beneath the workbench, and fished out a pair of small brown leather boots that had been steeping in a specially made softening solution.
"Miss Tsubaki, that half-block of wind-element magic crystal powder I asked you to purify when we came in. Could you bring it over?"
Haimer held out his hand.
Tsubaki obediently passed him a small porcelain dish holding a green-blue powder.
Haimer picked up an extremely fine crystal engraving needle.
Dipping it in the wind crystal powder, he began working along the seams of both little boots' soles and around the reinforced edging at the toes.
"You're carving a magic circle onto boots?" Tsubaki leaned in to watch.
"The surface area is far too small. A conventional micro-engraving wouldn't even set. The magic power would scatter and leak away within two steps."
"Naturally, the mortal world's inscription system can't hold it."
Haimer didn't lift his eyes.
"This is the sacred script of the Heavens."
With that said.
The needle tip danced, and in a few strokes he had strung ancient, cryptic divine characters across both ends of the soles.
Then he touched a finger to them!
That layer of green-blue powder flared like kindled marsh fire, blazed once, and burned itself molten straight into the inner layer of the leather, leaving no trace to be found.
"Done."
Haimer picked up the two little boots and brushed a bit of ash off them.
"With these, when Lili gets swarmed by those savage monsters on the Lower Levels, all she has to do is pour magic power into her soles."
"Not only will her footwork be as light as goose down."
"She'll be able to solidify the tiny currents of air her toes tap into half a second of physical support."
"Which means a second or third change of direction in midair, straight against physics."
Tsubaki listened to this list of functions that all defied common sense.
Her mouth fell open.
She glanced at Haimer, her single eye full of complicated feeling.
"Lord Haimer... for that girl you only just recruited out from under the Soma Familia, you're really willing to bleed for her, aren't you."
"An over-spec [First-Class Armament] like this, plus custom enchantment."
"Out in the open market, the value would be an astronomical figure that would make even the great factions wince."
"Since I chose Lili, then of course I have to treat her as an equal."
"Isn't that what we, as gods, ought to be doing?"
"Sister Tsubaki."
Haimer looked at her with a smile.
"Lord Haimer, if I hadn't already heard certain rumors about you from the Heavens, I really would mistake you for a kindly, benevolent god."
Tsubaki shook her head with a wry smile.
"Well then."
"Let's call it a day here."
And with that.
Haimer carefully packed the compact Dark Owl arm-crossbow with its grappling claw, along with the tactical boots, into an elegant wooden case.
He lifted it by the handle.
Only then did he turn his head.
"Those two girls outside have probably worn their eyes out waiting."
"Thank you for lending me the furnace today, Miss Tsubaki. In a few days I'll send over a few jugs of fine wine I scrounged off some other gods, as thanks."
Having said that.
Haimer brushed the dust off the hem of his clothes and pulled his coat back on.
He walked to the heavy iron door of the sealed chamber.
And gripped the lever of the latch mechanism.
Outside.
The instant that dull clack reached their ears.
Lili, who had been propping her chin on her hand and staring into space, shot up off the padded bench.
Tsukuyo straightened her back as well.
The iron door slid slowly open.
A wave of air thick with scorched metal rolled over them.
Haimer walked out of that dark red firelight with a wooden case in his hand.
The sweat on his forehead hadn't fully dried yet, and two buttons at his collar hung open.
Yet the whole of him carried the calm authority a man wears after hours of total concentration.
"L-Lord Haimer!"
Lili spoke up at once, her gaze flicking to the wooden case, her heartbeat skipping two beats faster.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
Haimer walked up to Lili and pushed the long wooden case straight into her small arms.
"Open it up and see whether your new partner suits you."
The wooden case.
Lili's hands shook.
She swallowed.
Then she drew a deep breath and, with trembling little fingers, flipped up the brass clasp.
There was a soft snap.
The lid came up.
And when she saw the gray-black arm-crossbow lying quietly on the velvet lining, along with the pair of brand-new, feather-light brown tactical boots.
Lili's eyes.
Went red in an instant.
Fat tears welled up and spun in her eyes like beads off a broken string, then finally rolled over.
They struck the edge of the wooden case, one after another.
In those big chestnut eyes, disbelief and stunned gratitude tangled together with the enormous grief and emotion that came pouring out after years of being crushed down.
"Th-this... Kami-sama made this with his own..."
"With his own hands, for...?"
Lili couldn't get out a single coherent sentence.
"Now what's all this crying about."
Haimer sighed softly, laid his large hand over Lili's head, and brushed the wet streaks from the corners of her eyes with his thumb.
"The arm-crossbow has been improved with deep-level materials. It can easily fire hard enough to wound the vast majority of deep-level monsters."
"I'll prepare the bolts for you afterward as well."
Haimer pointed at one side of the gray-black arm-crossbow.
"This can carry you over cliffs and ridges."
"At your weight, Lili, I imagine this will get you to a great many places without trouble. Consider it a very good tool."
"On top of that, the Energy-Gathering Air Current Array is inscribed on these boots. Pour your spirit into them, and you'll get to experience what it's like to chain jumps off the wind the way Enju does."
____
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