There was an axe hurtling straight toward Arwin’s face.
That was rather surprising, as he’d only just swung the Infernal Armory’s door open and stepped out into the street approximately half a second ago.
He didn’t have any time to process why someone had flung an axe at him. The huge weapon was already only feet away from his nose and, given its path blurring through the air, didn’t seem to have any plans of stopping until it was embedded in his skull.
There was no time to dodge. His hands blurred as old instincts took over. Arwin clapped his hands together before himself, [Scourge] pumping through his veins. A resounding clang echoed through the street.
Arwin found himself staring at the edge of the axe blade. It was only about an inch away from his face, stopped dead in its track just instants before it had split him open like a ripe watermelon.
Did the Infernal Armory just bait me to step outside just in time to nearly get my head splattered? It would have known something like this never would have caught me off guard. Was that meant to be some kind of prank? Or was it actually just mad that its door was about to get slightly scratched up?
Was I just used as a human shield?
“Oh, shit!” someone called in a gruff voice. “Sorry about that, big man! I’ve never seen that door open! I didn’t think you’d actually come out!”
Despite their words, whoever was speaking didn’t sound all that distraught about having nearly killed him. Sёarch* The NovelZone.fun website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.
His eyes refocused over the crowd flooding the street before the Devil’s Den. Murmurs rolled through it as people shifted away from him, subconsciously paving a path right back to where the large weapon had originated from.
It only took him an instant to locate where the voice had come from.
A short, gruff person clad in an assortment of heavy leathers and stained silver armor stood beside a wooden cart. Their face was covered by a helm that left only their eyes exposed, though their voice marked them as likely female.
An assortment of tools hung from the woman’s waist and the cart was stuffed full of more weapons and armor than Arwin had ever seen in one place. It practically looked like a metal porcupine. Anyone walking too close to it was liable to accidentally cut themselves open.
The woman had the wooden body of what looked to have once been a weapon in one hand and stood before a small, portable anvil. That in itself was a misnomer. Anvils really weren’t generally portable — but this one hadn’t been on the street the previous night.
Arwin got the feeling he knew where the axe head had come from.
“Shit,” someone from the crowd muttered. “Is that Ifrit?”
“No way,” someone else beside them said with a scoff. “He never comes out. The dude doesn’t know what the light of day feels like.”
Ouch.
“Mind tossing that back to me?” the short woman asked, squinting at Arwin and waving her hammer in his direction. “Didn’t mean to throw it your way.”
“You nearly took my head off,” Arwin said flatly. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“A demonstration.” The woman shook the stick that had once been an axe. “Proof of the quality of my work. And you are getting in the way of my pitch.”
“Me?” Arwin asked incredulously as he stepped out onto the street. “What in the world does nearly killing someone have to do with proving that your work is any good? And I’d like to point out that your axe is no longer in one piece. That doesn’t seem very quality to me.”
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“The quality is that the metal is still right as rain, despite taking a full strength blow from my hammer,” the woman replied. She set the wooden stick down and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “There isn’t so much as a scratch on it. Good luck finding a weapon that can get hit that hard and not even get a chip in its surface.”
A flicker of anger sparked in Arwin’s chest. This was the smith that had been showing up every day to challenge him. He really didn’t care about that — but if anyone else had been standing in that doorway, they could have been seriously injured.
Energy pulsed through his veins. His fingers tightened around the metal in his grip. Arwin strode over to the woman, ignoring the full attention of the crowd as it followed him over to her. Then he held the axe head out, dropping it on her anvil with a resounding clang.
The head of the axe was so badly warped that it may as well have been a piece of scrap. It might have held up whatever the woman had done to it, but it certainly hadn’t been strong enough to withstand [Scourge].
“Is that so?” Arwin asked dispassionately. “It looks rather low-quality to me.”
The smith glanced at the remains of her axe. Then she looked back up to Arwin. She didn’t look disappointed in the slightest at the loss of her creation.
“You’re Ifrit, then.”
“And you would be the smith that’s been causing a ruckus on my street these last few days,” Arwin replied. “I have no issue with people trying to hawk their wares. I do have one with those who disturb the peace.”
The woman flicked her visor up, granting Arwin a look at her features. They were weathered by the sun and covered with small, pockmark scars. She was definitely up there in the years, but her hair was still a deep black without any hints of graying.
Something is off about her. Her features, her build… I don’t think she’s human. She’s a good bit taller than Wallace, but I think she’s a dwarf.
What the hell is a dwarf doing on my street? Is she a Dwarven Smith? If she is… she has to have better things to be doing right now. A real Dwarven Smith wouldn’t need to do shit like this to make a name for herself. What the hell is her angle? I’m missing something here.
“Your street?” the woman asked. She arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think so. This is the city’s—”
“No. I own it.”
The smith blinked. “You bought the whole street?”
“Yes. It is still subject to Milten laws, but I own this street. All of it,” Arwin said flatly. “And I am quite confident that Milten does not permit idiots to go flinging axe heads at people’s skulls, regardless of if you are attempting to demonstrate the effectiveness of your subpar gear or not.”
“Those are fighting words,” the smith said, a spark in her eyes. She extended her hands outward like a gladiator. “You want to put some worth behind them? It’s easy for you to say my work is trash, but I don’t see you proving that yours is any better.”
“People would not be applying to hire me if my work wasn’t better than yours,” Arwin said dispassionately. He didn’t have the patience for this in the slightest. There were far better things he could be doing with his time.
The only reason he was still talking with the woman was because he wanted to figure out exactly what her actual goal was. Perhaps this was just a dwarf who happened to be a smith. It could have been a coincidence she was here…
But Arwin didn’t believe in coincidences. Not anymore. Dwarves were too secretive for him to buy that one had just randomly showed up on his doorstep after not properly interacting with one for years as a hero.
There’s definitely something going on here.
“You can say what you want, but all I see is someone hiding from an honest challenge,” the woman said with a one-shouldered shrug. “Look around you, Ifrit. All these people are going to see you rejecting my challenge. Don’t you think—”
“Let’s cut the shit,” Arwin said flatly. “You’re not here to challenge my smithing abilities. It only takes one look at the shit in your cart to make it clear that you don’t have the ability to justify me wasting any time on you. Either tell me what it is you really want or get off my street.”
The woman stared at him for a moment. Then she smirked and reached into her toolkit. “You think that’s my best work? Those are just toys. Take a look at this and tell me with a straight face that it isn’t worthy of challenging you.”
She pulled a small hammer free. Almost instantly, Arwin’s skin prickled. The weapon was magical. He could smell it from where he stood. But he didn’t care about the enchantment. He cared about the fact that it looked exactly the same as Wallace’s equipment.
This wasn’t just some random dwarf. She was definitely a Dwarven Smith. She probably wasn’t just any old smith either. Wallace had made it clear just how rare his equipment was. Someone with gear like this had absolutely no reason to be challenging him to some stupid smithing battle.
“You recognize this?” the smith asked, her eyes sharpening. “Seen it before, perhaps? Because your gear has been looking awful nice for a random backwater smith, Ifrit. Almost… inspired.”
“It’s a hammer,” Arwin said flatly. He kept any emotion from entering his voice. But, even though he was pretty sure he hadn’t let much on, even the flicker of hesitation was enough to reveal more than he’d wanted.
“Oh, but it’s not just any hammer, is it?” the dwarf’s voice lowered to a sharp hiss. “This here is a Dwarven Smith’s tool, boy. And you’re no Dwarf. So why do you recognize it? Could it be that you’ve seen it before? Someone breaking our laws and teaching you more than they should, hmm?”
And just like that, Arwin finally realized what the smith’s goal was.
She wasn’t here to challenge him at all.
The dwarf was here to figure out who had taught him.