“Uh, um, ah, what is this……?”
Iris could not bring herself to continue.
Rather than being angry that she had been insulted, she seemed unable to accept the reality that the girl before her had spat such coarse curses.
“Why are you surprised? You were the one who was rude first. You should apologize.”
“I, um…….”
“She seems to be a dwarf.”
The red-haired dwarf looked at me with a satisfied smile.
“Well, young man, at least you have an eye for things! What brings you here?”
“The armor you are hammering right now is mine.”
“Oh, you are a customer! I will finish it soon, so wait just a little, all right?”
“Yes, thank you.”
I nodded with a smile. But Iris still did not seem convinced.
“No, no, I know dwarves!”
“Do you?”
“Yes! Dwarves are a race in which everyone grows beards, regardless of sex. A halfling, perhaps, but there is no way this girl can be a dwarf…….”
The atmosphere turned murderous. Unable to contain her anger, the red-haired dwarf clenched her fist tightly.
“Hey, hey, hey, hey! How can you say something like that?!”
“That is what the books I read said, and the female dwarf warriors I saw in person had beards too!”
Not knowing how to explain this, I bit down hard on my lip.
“Hey. Adult human men usually have hair, right?”
“Yes. Except for newborn babies, most have hair.”
“But there are men without hair too, right?”
“Yes.”
“It is like that…….”
Among dwarf women, there were, rarely, women who did not grow beards.
And pointing that out was taboo. Just as it was not wise to point out an adult human man’s hair.
“Ah.”
Only then did Iris realize her mistake. Before she could even apologize, the dwarf erupted in rage.
“Fine, you bitch! I do not have a beard! I was already sick of you green little bastards treating me like a newborn, and now I am going to rip out your hair and stick it on my chin!”
“I am sorryyy!!!”
Iris hurriedly bowed her head. The dwarf grabbed her lovely hair tightly.
“I-it really feels like it is going to come out! Please forgive me!”
“I am doing this precisely to make it come out!”
I rushed over and stopped the dwarf.
“Please calm down, calm down…….”
“Hah…… I will let it go because you are like my son, truly. Young lady, I will not overlook this next time. Understood?”
After fuming for a long time, the dwarf looked at my armor again.
“Handsome young man. This is your armor, right?”
“Yes.”
“It is good armor, but take better care of it, all right? I understand that it cannot be helped when armor gets nicked by swords in rough fighting, but what are we to do about plain poor maintenance? How sad do you think it must be?”
“There were circumstances.”
I had neither clean cloth nor polishing compound to wipe away dirt, and I had no oil. I had no time to maintain the armor, nor did I have any special expertise.
‘In truth, it is a problem that can be solved if I have a blacksmith, but…….’
A mercenary company had to become a small society on the move. Even a mercenary company could not fight every day, twenty-four hours a day.
Livelihood professions such as cooks, hunters, gatherers, and alchemists were as important as a mercenary’s military strength. A blacksmith was also one of those essential professions.
To receive a blacksmith’s help right away, I had to spend no small amount of money. There were costs for renting the smithy, metal, and fuel, but most of it was the blacksmith’s labor.
But if a mercenary company had a blacksmith of its own, it could handle maintenance and repairs of armor cheaply.
“Indeed. When fighting rough battles, you come to forget even about the blood on your armor. Everyone does. Everyone…….”
The dwarf gave a hollow laugh, then struck my armor with her hammer.
‘……This is different.’
Dwarves were a race of artisans. When it came to making and repairing weapons and armor, they were several levels ahead of other races.
At first glance, she seemed to strike the hammer carelessly, but on close observation, I could feel a pattern in it. I could feel her emotions in every hammer blow.
As I stood spellbound watching her, the smithy door opened.
“Mother! Come have a meal…… Oh my, are you the one who left armor with us last time?”
A red-haired human woman greeted me with a bright smile.
“Yes. I came to have a look for a moment.”
“Oh, do not worry! My mother is a dwarf blacksmith, after all! Mother, the stew is done! Come eat it while it is hot!”
“Mm, wait a moment. I will go after I finish what I am doing.”
“You said that last time too. You are not a child, what is this?”
“Good grief. There is nothing you will not say to your mother. I said I would go after finishing this!”
“Oh, what am I to do with you…… Yes, come after you finish hammering that armor!”
It was a warm atmosphere. The woman went back inside the smithy.
“Is she your daughter?”
“Yes, not my birth daughter, but. Does it not look just right? You would not know even if I said she was my birth daughter, would you? Her hair is just completely the same, bright red.”
A broad smile spread over the dwarf blacksmith’s face.
“That little child came crying because she was hungry…… I told her to eat this and leave, that she truly had to leave tomorrow, that she had to leave next week…… Then she ended up becoming my daughter.”
My heart felt warm. Perhaps she noticed my smile, because the dwarf blacksmith suddenly snapped at me.
“What is with that smile? Hey, I did not raise her all prim and proper…… but she is a pretty daughter in my eyes. I will not give her to a mercenary who might die any day!”
“I did not say anything.”
“Is that so? You have no thoughts at all after looking at my daughter?”
“No, she is pretty, but…….”
With an awkward smile, I carefully changed the subject.
“But you recognized that I was a mercenary very easily.”
“You are not an adventurer, are you? Those fellows have a more…… hopeful air about them.”
“Ah…….”
“How are your earnings?”
“What money would a mercenary have? I have spent even the money I had…….”
“No, if you quit gambling, quit drinking, and quit chasing women, you can save money! Do you have a wife and children back home?”
“It is not that. Treatment fees and armor repair fees. Once I bought this and that, it disappeared quickly.”
She was a dwarf I had only just met, but I felt as though I had met a familiar grandmother. Perhaps it was because I had just watched her speak with her adopted daughter nearby.
‘Well, for a dwarf’s personality, she is exceptionally decent.’
It was not easy to find a decent person among elves or dwarves. There were fewer other races without a sense of superiority or a victim complex than one might think.
“Have you got a request?”
“I am looking into this and that, but I do not want to take a bandit gang subjugation request for one hundred Gold…….”
“They are trying to work you for nothing, young man. Let me see…… How much does it cost to hire you for a request?”
I tilted my head.
“Well, it would depend on the request, would it not?”
“My daughter ordered some ingots from a city across the river, but they vanished completely. When I asked the guards, they said the goblin bastards in a cave nearby seemed to have robbed them.”
“Ah…….”
It was a little strange.
The goblins had no blacksmith who could melt ingots and make weapons.
Even if they had attacked a merchant and seized the ingots, they would not value ‘heavy rectangular lumps of metal they could not eat.’
But it was not wise to predict the goblins’ behavior and draw conclusions. They were cunning yet stupid, and at times they casually did things that made no sense.
“Clear out the place and bring back the ingots. I will give you four hundred Gold.”
“Wait a moment…….”
From the look of things, there did not seem to be exact information about the number of goblins.
‘If they are enough to rob a merchant riding in a wagon, there should be more than ten of them, and if they are inside a den…… In the worst case, around thirty?’
Goblins were weak. Judging solely by their combat strength, they were pitiful.
Even one bandit we had killed would not have much difficulty fighting and defeating two goblins.
‘But it is difficult to take this lightly.’
Setting me aside, our mercenary company was not suited to dealing with many small enemies.
Because we did not have many mercenaries wearing dependable armor, their poison needles would inflict considerable damage.
Whether the enemies were humans or goblins, the limit of the enemies I could hold down alone was seven to ten. Too many would inevitably slip past me.
One factor that had allowed our mercenary company to gain an advantage in the battle against the bandits was the nets.
But goblins were small, so they would not be easily caught in nets, and even if one was caught, it could not be called much of an achievement.
‘I think I need to do some calculations…….’
Four hundred Gold was not a small reward, but I was the mercenary company captain. The probability of succeeding was more important than the money we could gain from succeeding.
“Is four hundred not enough? I will give you six hundred, six hundred!”
“No. The price is enough. But I am not certain whether this is a request our mercenary company can take on with its current strength.”
“Your strength is insufficient? You could sweep them all away by yourself, young man. You are rather timid for someone with armor like that, hm?”
“I will not die. The others might.”
It was a harsh reality.
Goblins fought with numbers rather than quality. In that respect, they were enemies similar to Man-Eating Spiders.
But they did not spray webs. The poisoned swords and crude spears goblins used could ‘never’ pierce armor.
In an extreme case, if luck favored me even a little, I would probably have a high chance of returning alive even if I raided their base alone. Of course, I had absolutely no intention of taking such a risk.
But the mercenaries standing behind me were different. They could be stabbed and caught by goblin weapons, and injured.
“Then shall I come along?”
“Pardon?”
The red-haired dwarf gave a sly smile.
“I was a warrior when I was young too. Why, do you not believe me?”
“Well…… If I look at you that way, I can see it…….”
I fell into thought for a moment.
“I will accept the request for now. You said six hundred Gold?”
“If you include me, I will give you seven hundred Gold. What do you say? It is worth trying, is it not?”
It was an enormous sum.
In the first village I had visited, the village chief had trembled because he begrudged one hundred Gold.
For a dwarf blacksmith in a large village, her earnings might be good, but even so, it could not have been easy for an individual to pay seven hundred Gold.
“It is sufficient. But before that, there is something you must do.”
“You are receiving seven hundred Gold, so why ask me to do so much? Do you want an advance?”
“I would be glad to receive that, but that is not important right now.”
After firmly shaking my head, I bent one knee and met the dwarf blacksmith’s eyes.
“I need to make a decision.”
“What decision? A mercenary has money in front of him…….”
“Whether this is a goblin subjugation request that includes a dwarf warrior, or an escort request that must be carried out while protecting an important person.”
If it was a request to exterminate enemies while escorting a lady or a young nobleman who could not fight, its difficulty would inevitably rise geometrically.
Battle was not a game. If an important person I could not control joined the fight, the mercenary company’s fighting strength would drop sharply.
“Escort? Is this young man mad…… I am Melinda! Melinda of the Lava Beard! How dare a green little bastard treat me like baggage!”
“Lives are at stake here too, so I think I need to know how well you can fight, ma’am.”
The dwarf, Melinda, ground her teeth and glared at me.
“Lives…… Yes, lives are important. Bring out weapons! I will show you the taste of my axe!”
Melinda set down my armor, moved her short legs in quick little steps, and entered the storeroom beside the smithy.
“Did you not provoke her…… too much?”
Iris looked at me with worried eyes.
“You provoked her. Hey. Do you not know how serious it is to mock a dwarf for not having a beard? It is only because that grandmother is good-natured that one of you would not have died today.”
“Ah!”
After we waited, Melinda emerged. But her face could not be seen.
“Let us have a round, you bastard!”
A rough voice burst from inside a small mass of steel.
A dwarf warrior in perfect armor and helmet made for dwarves and forged by a dwarf. Melinda was looking at me.