Chapter 36

Chapter 36
## Chapter 36: Mage Hunt (2)

The workshop of Old Man Ironhammer, Gullak, was a cramped, dilapidated hole.

The scent of oxidized iron clashed with the damp, heavy odor of mildew, creating a stench reminiscent of congealed blood. The floor was a chaotic mess of tongs, hammers, wedges, and heavy sledges, while the storage bins meant for finished wares remained barren. A rusted anvil sat beside a bellows full of punctures, and the forge—dark and empty as a skull’s eye socket—seemed to have forgotten the sensation of roaring flames and dancing sparks.

A thick, clumsy silence stretched between the blacksmith and his unexpected visitors. Eventually, hospitality forced Gullak to limp forward with a serving tray. Dented tin mugs held a swirling, murky liquid of dubious origin.

“……My apologies that I have nothing better for you, Your Excellency the Intendant. This is a batch I fermented two years ago. I doubt it’s to your liking.”

“Please, don’t apologize. I’m the one who intruded without notice.”

Gullak placed the tray on the anvil as if it were a dining table. Enrico winced. To any smith who viewed their anvil as a holy altar, the gesture was sacrilege. Kadim, however, simply took a cup and drained the contents in a single, unhesitating gulp.

He then offered his unfiltered assessment.

“This is disgusting. Did you use dog milk to brew this?”

“……”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

Enrico was mortified. Such a blunt insult was beyond the pale. Attempting to salvage the situation, he quickly took a drink of his own.

He didn’t even manage to swallow before his body rejected it.

“Gah—ack! *Pah, pah!* W-What…… Gullak, what in the world is this?!”

“……It is dog milk liquor, Your Excellency. Forgive me. It appears it truly isn’t to your taste.”

While Enrico sputtered in shock, Gullak began gathering the cups. As he straightened his back, he cast a subtle, fleeting look toward Kadim. The way he regarded the barbarian had shifted, if only by a fraction.

It took the Intendant of Remtana a few moments to recover from the assault of the dog milk liquor. Once he regained his composure, Gullak sought to verify the stories he’d been told.

“So, this mercenary from the Atalain…… he actually cleared the troll from Twin Gorge?”

“Ahem, indeed. He did so entirely alone.”

“And he rescued Your Excellency as well?”

“That is correct.”

“Is that why Your Excellency has brought him to my door?”

“It is. Regardless of what others might claim, there isn’t a single craftsman in this city who can match your talent.”

“……”

Gullak’s expression turned as cold and hard as coal. Enrico maintained a strained, artificial smile. In the heavy silence, the two men watched each other with guarded eyes.

To Kadim, the dynamic felt entirely backward.

It was normal for a tradesman to be wary of an Intendant’s temper. When the highest power in the city visits your home, you walk on eggshells. But seeing the Intendant walk on eggshells around the smith? That was bizarre. He had the authority to simply command the man to work.

What happened next was even more unexpected.

Enrico let the fake smile fall and rubbed his jaw. He paced slightly, exhaled a weighted sigh, and then stood up from his seat.

Then, he dropped to his knees before the blacksmith.

“……!”

Gullak’s eyes went wide with shock. With his head lowered, Enrico spoke with steady conviction.

“This is long overdue, but I offer my deepest apologies for the hardships you have suffered. A man in the position of Intendant is supposed to carry the weight of the entire city. I failed in that duty, and thus this apology is shamefully late.”

“……”

“I am well aware that you haven’t touched your tools in years. But could you find it in yourself to help my savior just this once? This task is not for common hands. I can only trust a master who is as discreet as he is skilled.”

Even in the shadows, Kadim could see the conflict warring within Gullak.

The man’s matted beard twitched. The deep lines at the corners of his eyes shook. It was the silent, hollow grief of an old man whose eyes had run out of tears to shed.

The internal storm lasted a long time. Eventually, Gullak found his voice again, though it was strained.

“……Stand up, Your Excellency. You haven’t done anything to merit this—why would someone of your station kneel to a broken smith like me……”

Enrico refused to move until Gullak physically hobbled over to assist him.

“Fine, enough. If Your Excellency is willing to go to such lengths, how can I refuse…… Tell me what needs doing.”

Enrico bowed in thanks and signaled toward the door. The soldiers waiting outside moved in, carrying a massive object wrapped in heavy cloth. When the covering was stripped away, the polished surface of high-quality plate armor reflected the dim light.

Gullak let out a sharp breath.

“By Remillion…… This is……”

“That belonged to an imperial high paladin. And those shards inside it are what tore through a ‘divine soldier’.”

Kadim’s voice was flat. Gullak rubbed his eyes as if he were dreaming, then slapped his own forehead.

“Holy hell. If you live long enough, you see everything. I never imagined I’d get a look at a high paladin’s kit in this life…… How did something this dangerous end up here?”

“It’s a long story. Knowing it won’t do you any favors, so we’ll leave it at that. And obviously, keep your mouth shut about this.”

“……”

“Anyway, I want these materials repurposed into weapons. Can you handle it, old man?”

Gullak’s focus had already shifted. He was mesmerized, circling the armor with a hungry gaze. He touched the metal, tapped it to hear the ring, and even bit a small fragment to test its density. He leaned in so close to the glowing heat of the divine soldier shards that he nearly singed his skin.

After an exhaustive inspection, the smith wiped sweat from his brow and spoke with genuine awe.

“Blood iron blended with cobalt…… Magnetite, refined silver, and several other alloys. The balance of heat resistance and durability is staggering. The engravings, the joinery—it’s a masterpiece. There’s a power woven into it I can’t even name. I’d love to take it apart, but those divine soldier pieces are too volatile……”

“……”

“But here’s the problem—you can’t touch that divine soldier material because of the rejection, right? If I melt the whole thing down, the holy blessings will dissipate. So how do you expect me to turn that into a weapon?”

Kadim began to outline his plan, detailing the process he had in mind. In truth, even as he spoke, he wasn’t entirely sure it was physically possible.

Gullak snorted once the explanation was finished.

“That’s insane. You think metal is just wet clay you can squish together? There isn’t a smith on this earth who could pull off that kind of refinement.”

Just as Kadim felt the sting of disappointment, Gullak continued in a low, grumbling tone.

“Well… none except for the ancient dwarves who once ruled the Northlands… and ‘Old Man Ironhammer’ of Remtana.”

Gullak smirked, revealing his missing front teeth.

It was a look of pure, unadulterated professional arrogance.

“……Then the task is yours.”

Gullak gave a sharp nod. The fire that had been missing from his eyes for years was back, burning with the intensity of a blast furnace. His voice boomed with a new energy, as if he had shed a decade of age.

“I’m starting immediately, so get out of here, Your Excellency! Let’s see, I need to scrub this tomb, clear the rust off the anvil, patch the bellows, source some decent coal and timber…… Oh! Hey, mercenary. You drank that swill earlier without flinching—want a refill? There’s plenty left……”

Kadim almost snapped back. Had the old man already forgotten he’d called the stuff “dog milk”?

But since his gear was in the man’s hands, he figured playing along was the better path. He offered his empty leather flask. Gullak grinned and filled it to the brim with the foul liquor. In his newfound excitement, he even offered a bonus service.

“Got any weapons that need a tune-up? I’ll have the forge hot anyway—might as well sharpen your steel while I’m at it.”

After a moment of thought, Kadim handed over Mosquito but kept his axe. The dwarven axe was in good condition, and he didn’t want the smith getting distracted by its craftsmanship and wasting time.

“Lord, you’ve treated this blade like a common shovel…… Between the new build and fixing this sword, I’ll need at least two weeks. Go enjoy the city while I work!”

The sun had dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in deep shades of twilight as the Intendant, the barbarian, and the escort left the crumbling smithy.

Even as they walked away, they could hear the frantic sounds of the smith reclaiming his shop.

—

“……Poor soul. A man destroyed by his own talent.”

As they walked from the slums toward the heart of the city, Enrico shared the history of Gullak.

“He was a local, lived here long before I was appointed. Even as a boy, his skill with metal was legendary in these parts.”

In those days, the lands around Remtana were crawling with monsters, which meant mercenaries were everywhere. There was a constant, lucrative demand for high-end gear. Gullak became wealthy and famous, married a local woman, and started a family.

Then came the Magic Tower’s purge.

The extermination order wiped the monsters out. The mercenaries followed the prey and abandoned the city. After years of watching his business wither, Gullak decided to relocate to the metropolis of Delutana.

“Moving residency as a free citizen requires a massive fee. He didn’t have enough for the whole family, so he used everything he had to send his wife and son ahead. He planned to work here until he could join them.”

However, the previous Intendant refused to lose such a valuable asset. He doubled the relocation fee on a whim, trapping Gullak in Remtana.

Gullak was furious but powerless. A blacksmith cannot fight an Intendant. He spent years working himself to the bone to save the new amount, eventually presenting it to the office.

“But the Intendant betrayed him. Instead of signing the papers…… he fabricated a crime, confiscated every coin Gullak had saved, and had his Achilles tendons severed.”

“……”

The pieces finally fit for Kadim. The reason for the abandoned forge. The tension between the men. The reason a high official would kneel to a cripple.

Kadim didn’t feel a surge of pity. This was the same brand of mundane cruelty he had witnessed for three centuries. If anything, the strange part was an Intendant taking responsibility for a predecessor’s sins.

Noticing Kadim’s look, the Intendant continued.

“An Intendant of the Alliance isn’t like an imperial lord. A lord owns the land forever, but an Intendant only serves for ten years at most.”

“……”

“But the duty remains the same: to carry the city’s burdens. His pain is now my responsibility. I intended to seek him out eventually, but the crisis with the mage kept me occupied. You gave me the reason I needed to face him.”

“……The job sounds like a headache.”

“It has its moments. Though I won’t pretend I do it solely out of the goodness of my heart……”

They arrived at the Intendant’s manor as the conversation ended. Enrico offered Kadim a room so they could coordinate the search for the mage, but Kadim shook his head. A massive barbarian moving in and out of a government building would draw eyes they didn’t want.

Instead, he found a room at an inn on the main thoroughfare.

“Welcome to ‘The Drunken Ox’!”

A cheerful waitress with short hair greeted them as they entered.

The quality of the city inn made rural places like ‘Ekkl’s Feast’ look like stables. For ten luden, one could get a hot bath—a prospect that had Duncan looking like he’d found heaven. When she mentioned that for a hundred luden, a woman could be provided to help with the scrubbing, he turned red and stammered.

“H-Ha, no, thank you…… I-I have a wife waiting at home……”

Duncan turned her down as politely as possible. Even when she joked that his wife would never find out, he didn’t waver. The waitress turned her charms on Kadim, following him toward the bathhouse.

“Our girls are top-tier, you know? A big, strong man like you, sir…… Whoa, by Remillion……”

“……”

“E-Even the largest Atalain men would…… leave satisfied……”

As she took in the barbarian’s massive frame and scars, she actually blushed. She let her eyes wander over him before meeting his terrifying, cold stare, at which point she beat a hasty retreat.

Intimacy with a woman was a luxury Kadim had discarded the moment his frenzy took hold. He washed away the dust of the road and went to his room. Duncan was already there, sinking into a feather mattress with a look of pure bliss.

The sight triggered a ghost of a memory.

Lying on a soft bed for hours, ordering food to the door, drinking cold beer from a can. A life that felt like a dream from a different world.

That was why luxury felt wrong. Kadim scowled and prepared to leave.

“Check out the city, Duncan. If you get thirsty, finish that flask.”

“Yes, sir! B-But where are you going?”

“Hunting a mage.”

“……What?”

Kadim didn’t stay to explain; he simply vaulted out the window.

He landed without a sound. The night air was cool against his skin. In a city this size, most lamps were already extinguished. The moon was hidden, leaving only the dim light of distant stars.

For a barbarian, it was more than enough light.

‘The Intendant said the mage was seen in the north district…… I’ll start there.’

Kadim took off into the night, his powerful frame vanishing into the ink-black shadows.

Would you like me to generate an image of the plate armor and the divine soldier fragments as described in the chapter?